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A Brief History of the Word ‘Rad’
\’ra-di-kəl\
Hearing teenagers in purple flannels call their soy mochas “rad” perfectly illustrates the mechanisms behind the regurgitating cow stomach that is American pop culture. Not that that’s a bad thing — “nothing new under the sun” and all yields innovative hybrids — but the feedback loop of fashion really strikes a nerve when what was new in your youth becomes another generation’s vintage clothing. One of the dominant aesthetics of the last few years has been the 1980s: Ray-Bans, short shorts, fanny packs, wrist warmers. Forget the old “friends don’t let friends wear neon” maxim. The image of Pretty in Pink James Spader and his antagonistically feathered hair seems the most fitting mascot for our time, a time where we find eighties slang unwittingly coloring our conversations: dude; awesome; bummed; stoked; shred; balls out; this rules. And of course, the crown jewel, rad.
On the suggestion of a childhood friend who is also struggling with the difficult fact of our combined seventy years, I rented Thrashin’. It’s a sports-sploitation flick that came out in 1986 when we were nine years old, and it features all the stomach-churning, Pepto-tinted vibrancy of the era, as well as a Circle Jerks song.
In the mid to late eighties, Hollywood spent much time and money trying to capitalize on then-underground sports and their…
