Some of the subcultures actually originated from E. Asia, where it's considered subculture/alt fashion rather than counterculture. For example, Rococo & Loli fashion has its roots in Kansai region from 1970s onward, with labels like Pink House, Milk, Angelic Pretty, Baby the Stars Shine Bright, Metamorphose temps de fille, Atsuki Onishi, Hiromichi Nakano, Jane Maple, Emily Temple Cute, etc.
The genre spread to other parts of Japan (i.e. Harajuku) in 1980s, and was further popuarlized by visual kei (image) bands like malice Mizer (1992-2001). The much smaller American following started mainly with cosplayers in 1990s, and didn't gain enough numbers to make the alt fashion niche market viable until the 2000's. Today you can buy the English edition of
"Gothic & Lolita Bible" on Amazon.com, and mainstream American designers like Marc Jacobs has taken elements of Rococo in his clothing line. In Japan some department stores carry goth/loli clothing lines.
As a spin off of
Kosupure-kei inshokuten (cosplay restaurants), you'll find the first "maid cafe" ROYAL/T in America at Culver City, Los Angeles:
http://www.royal-t.org/
Rococo Rendezvous video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aci-CMMLHcc
Now, on the flip side, this genre does have a "built in expiry date", after a number of years the people are simply too old to look the part. In comparison, stuff like manga/anime has much longer "shelf-life".
globetrotter wrote:
You have lived in Socal too long. You have lost the ability to tell normal from whackos.
The rest of the planet would think that the people in these photos are whackos and weirdos.
I think of it as artistic, non-mundane self-expression. Your opinion may vary.
i.am.geek
globetrotter wrote:
Really, California isn't normal momopi. You need to accept this. From the ruthless, lying business culture, to the fact that almost everyone lied on their house buying process (and felt they deserved to...), to the whackos photographed here who are reacting to the sick, stressful, untrusting and ruthless culture that exists in California and elsewhere in the USA.
I'm from Asia (Taiwan) and had one foot in OC and another in Taipei (where my parents reside) for some years. To me, OC is less competitive/stressful and nicer than Taipei, except the supply of Asian girls is much larger in Taiwan. From 2006-2009 I was part of the Irvine Housing Blog crew, and we advocated against buying properties during market bubble ("don't be a knife catcher"). I've never bought a property with anything other than full doc, 30-year fixed rate loans.
From my point of view, RE in Southern California is a bargain compared to Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Taipei, HK, SG, etc. I was in Tianjin a couple years back and thought the developments were mostly hit-and-run (my ex-GF's father was the developer, cough cough). In all honesty, I had a great time in California during my younger/school years -- fishing, summer camp, rowing a canoe, going to the beach, body boarding, play with snow at Big Bear, learning how to shoot from my older cousins, etc. But, it stopped being fun after college. The Chinese expression 下海 (down the ocean) describes the situation. It took me several years to figure out how to adjust my lifestyle/social life outside the comforts of school.
Commenting on the LA Mayor photo, my position is that if the anime cosplay hobby was considered so far off to the fringe and freakish here, he wouldn't have attended the convention and posed for publicity photo. Such photos would be detrimental to his future political career. To cite another example, I wouldn't expect him to attend a furry convention and pose for photos there. That, would definitely have a negative impact on his future (re)elections.
