A Tribute to Punk Rock Legend Poly Styrene
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In the '80's I was pretty big into punk rock. One of my favorite tunes was "Oh Bondage, Up Yours!" by X-Ray Spex. I especially loved the way the tune started, first with a sweet female voice saying "some people think little girls should be seen and not heard....but I think". Then, with all the power you can imagine lead singer, Poly Styrene belted out the words that ring on in the minds of anyone who's ever heard the song: "OH BONDAGE, UP YOURS!".
Poly Styrene was one of the few females who made a mark in the punk rock scene. Pioneers like her paved the way for artists such as Madonna, P!nk and Lady Gaga. She passed away on April 25, 2011 at the age of 53 and I wanted to acknowledge her contribution to the music scene and to the lives of many girls and women who have plenty to say but are sometimes too afraid to say it. May this mix bring out the pioneer in me, in you and in anyone who wants to be bold and leave a lasting mark.
Punk Rope creator, Tim Haft, 47, has his company's logo tattooed on his left shoulder as a constant reminder of his mission: to eradicate the sedentary living epidemic by showing non-exercisers that the pursuit of fitness can be fun.
Haft’s Punk Rope class, which is offered at YMCAs, JCCs, health clubs, college recreation centers, and schools, is a playful and raucous cross between recess and boot camp. Wanting to share his unorthodox approach to fitness with a larger audience, a DVD seemed to be the ticket, so Punk Rope, Inc. released: Never Mind Aerobics Here's Punk Rope.
The DVD, which includes a music CD, features a 33-minute workout consisting of 14 intervals (total running time is around 50 minutes). From the opening scene, the viewer gets a sense that this DVD will be unlike any other in the fitness genre. It is, after all, filmed at a bar—Coco 66 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. After two warm-ups, Haft leads the viewer through alternate bouts of rope jumping and unorthodox conditioning drills and wraps things up with a core training segment and a cooldown.
The 23 cast members are all students in Haft's Punk Rope classes. They range in age from 20 to forty-something and vary widely in terms of body type and fitness level. Haft believes that it's important for viewers to be able to see "themselves" in a workout DVD. "If you pop in a workout video and all you see are super-fit and trim fitness models, for most of us that can be an alienating experience. While we may not say it out loud, what we're thinking is, "No matter what I do I'm probably never going to look like that."
The tone throughout the DVD is lighthearted with the emphasis on fun and fantasy. In "Hut, Hut, Hike" Haft and his teammates perform a variety of football-based moves such as fast feet, the 3-point stance, and quarterback squats while the Ducky Boys blast through "Boston USA" in the background.
In "V8 Nightmare," we follow three temptresses who are terrorized by a "monster" with hairy palms. To get away, they perform a series of reverse lunges and mountain climbers. And finally in "It's a Dog's Life," the cast pretends to be canines while doing "fire hydrants," quadruped, and "frisbee jumps" to the buzzsaw guitars of "Live This Life" by the Queers.
