COSTA MESA : A Chance to Spread Some Vibes

In a nondescript shopping center off 19th Street, 20-year-old Chris Smith of Huntington Beach stood near a truck and delivered his a cappella view of life, the scene swirling around him Sunday afternoon.

He wasn’t alone. Half a dozen other rappers, backed by blaring bass-heavy tracks from their tape decks, were doing the same thing, oblivious to a live band pounding out its own beat just a few yards away.

Pausing for a moment from speaking in rhymes, Smith opined that Sunday’s “Psyclonepalooza” brought together a segment of society usually ignored.

“There’s nothing really the city or the country does for today’s youth. They don’t get our vibe. So we young people need to do it ourselves,” he said.

Several hundred Generation Xers came to the shopping center parking lot to listen to alternative music, watch a skateboard demonstration and hang out with others like themselves.

The free, daylong event borrowed its theme from the highly successful Lollapalooza concert tour, which features a combination of musical styles, while highlighting environmental and political concerns.

Sunday’s event, however, focused more on promoting local talent than politics. And there was a little capitalism driving the idea.

Twenty-year-old Pat Tenore--owner of the Psyclone boutique at 19th Street and Newport Boulevard, which caters to skateboarders and hip-hoppers--decided to organize the event two months ago as a way to promote what he called an otherwise “dead shopping center.”

“But it grew into something more,” he said.

Besides securing approval to offer live music, Tenore needed permission to put a 16-foot-wide, six-foot-tall ramp in the parking lot. Local amateur and professional skateboarders such as Omar Hassan, Chris Gentry and Koil Yagamoto exhibited their gravity-defying skills.

For fortysomething Brad Dorfman, owner of Vision Sports, a Costa Mesa-based skateboard company that loaned the ramp, the day was an exchange that more older adults should have participated in. “It’s nice for people to get together and share a new, young form of culture,” he said.

The tattoos, orange- and magenta-dyed hair and ever-present pierced body parts, normally characterized as counterculture, were commonplace Sunday.

Weird? Even their own admitted so. Natasha Schoultheis, 17, who drove down from Long Beach conceded: “I wanted to pick up a freak.”

“The babes, the music, the whole environment--that’s why we came,” added her friend, Christina Bejarano, 20.

For others, it was an alternative to the usual grind. “It beats watching TV,” said 12-year-old Anthony Rajanayan, who skated over from his home nearby.

Laguna Beach resident Simon Jones, 28, dropped by partly out of nostalgia for his own skateboarding days but mostly to see what’s new on the hip scene. “The good thing about this is seeing the younger generation into music that’s not TV pop,” he said.

Promoters strived to feature a non-commercial musical lineup, delivered live and by deejays, throughout the nine-hour event. Eight local bands presented reggae, acid jazz, hip-hop and rap inside the store.

“This event just gets people exposed to music they wouldn’t know existed--especially kids who are too young to go to clubs,” said Marc Miller, 18, drummer for the band Extra Soul Perception.