CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
In a true testament to the detachment of Australia’s media caste, the online news cycle has this week been littered with the amazing discovery of a youth subculture that is so well established in Western Sydney that it was pioneered by people who are no longer youths.
A spree of articles across the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and several other Murdoch tabloids has this week profiled ‘Eshay culture’ as though Pig Latin it is something that kids are only just getting into.
The Eshay culture is defined as a fashion-led subculture of disenfranchised working class youth from Sydney’s housing commissions. Eshays typically dress in luxury labels like Nautica and Ralph Lauren, paired with rugby league shorts, bumbags and Nike TN sneakers.
They are also identifiable by their shin tattoos, gold jewellery and a penchant for drinking longnecks.
Ten years and millions of views after Western Sydney rapper Kerser popped up on YouTube with his now iconic gutter ballads ‘Highest Man’ and ‘Kerser is the sickest’ – it seems ournalists around the country are finally taking notice.
The music industry’s active ignoring of Kerser is another example of how out of touch both the media and arts are from the youth, as the 30-year-old Campbelltown product marks ten sold out nationwide tours and ten albums at ARIA number one – without any of his songs being played on a Triple J daytime slot.
As it stands, Australia’s three biggest musical exports – in the shape of the Polynesian drill band OneFour, Indigenous rap star The Kid Laroi and the Britpop rock band DMA’s – have for a long time been linked with the uniquely Sydney subculture
It seems the ‘culture’ only became of interest the newspapers after the NRL grand final, when the Penrith Panthers’ Islander boys began proudly displaying their close ties to Mount Druitt and OneFour.
While the ageing white wine swirling Australian media continue to mythologise the ‘bodgies and widgies’ and skinhead gangs of Romper Stomper of their era – the idea that young people still hang ut at trains stations has sent a chill down the spines of the private school parents at NewsCorp and Nine.
At time of press, the journalists at The Daily Telegraph were speechless upon discovering the Instragram stories of the Woolloomooloo eshay icon, SPANIAN.
MORE TO COME.
