I stopped in Washington Square Park on my way home the other day to rest my feet, take in some rays, and wolf down a salad I had packed in my bag the night before. Washington Square Park, located in Greenwich Village, basically acts as the New York University Campus since it is smack-dab in the middle of all the main buildings. It is a concrete playground for hip and trendy undergrads, avid chess players, drug dealers, and exhausted tourists traveling on-foot. As a tourist once myself, I spent many hours hanging out in that park; as an NYU student I studied and dozed in that park; as a city dweller I spent many hours people-watching there: and it is where I met my significant other -- under the arch that sits on the edge of the park -- the landmark that looms in the distance as you head downtown on University Place. Not much has changed over the years: the chess players are still there, the drug dealers still roam the perimeters whispering their wares and scouting for cops; there are the studious, the trendy posers, street musicians, and the loafers.

As a saxophonist, playing a jazzy rendition of the "Flintstones" theme song, battled for airspace with a flutist struggling with a few harsh-sounding bars of God-knows-what, I scanned the park for the latest fashion trends. I pulled off my Rockports to relieve my aching feet, and noticed a bunch of guys pass by -- I laughed to myself at the lack of creativity displayed as the tie-dyed T-shirts shuffled along, heads hung low, hair hanging in front of their faces. "Boy that's been done," I thought, remembering some of my parents friends from the late 60's. I packed away my Tupperware container, feeling mighty smug, and thinking about the "coolness" of my own youth. We were the original MTV generation. We had synthesizers, multi-colored Mohawks, and spiked dog collars. We had the punk rockers, bar brawls, and economic recession. We had things to be angry about and we knew how to express it.

Then, as though to verify these formulating opinions, from out of nowhere emerged a body-pierced girl in ripped up underwear with a large tattoo around her belly-button. With her heavy biker boots, she marched past me shouting through a large bull horn: "Take it off. Be proud. Shock you parents." Following closely behind -- a shirt-less guy carrying a huge sign that read: "Show Your Tattoos." An NYU camera crew ran up to her and started to follow her around the park as she worked her rebellion from corner to corner. With their cartoon theme songs, banal chanting, and imitation fashions, it struck me that today's youth must be suffering from a major identity crisis. The Western world has been a pretty quiet place in recent years. There are no American wars to protest; there is a relatively youthful and somewhat liberal President in office; more people are environmentally conscious; and less people are wearing fur. Does the lack of a cause leave little room for creativity? Do peaceful times breed redundancy? Or has everything actually been done before -- leaving little room for anything new, different, or unusual? The inherent message in the tattoo, the pierced tongue, the spiked hair, the leather and tie-dye is not enough in itself, so young people are forced to carry signs and shout through bull-horns in order to be noticed. Have their parents just seen it all before, and short of criminality, are they virtually shock-proof? I was amazed at the inconsistency of style, and the inability to etch their own marks of teenage angst with an original fashion statement; stealing from decades before with peace signs, bell bottoms, halter tops, and threats of nudity. "They probably think they're really cool and avant-garde," I chuckled to myself, "if only they knew how goofy they look."

My keen observations and wise interpretations were suddenly dashed to the ground as I got up to leave the park and came face to face with my own smugness. Before me stood two girls with pierced faces, bright red and neon green hair, finger-less gloves, and that ever-familiar expression of worldly indifference. They were draped in leather jackets embroidered with skulls and cross bones; wrists bound in leather; and Doc Martin boots. I had to hold myself back from shaking them by their spikes and chains: "Hey, who the hell do you think you are? That was my generation" (insinuating, of course, that it wasn't that long ago that my adolescent right of passage included shaved heads, spiked hair, metal chains, death images, and an I-don't-give-a-shit-about-anything attitude). In this mixed up gaggle of youthful chaos, my era: the coolest of cool, the most original, imaginative, and apathetic of all generations -- ever -- went retro.