Bart Bull

Bart Bull is an American writer, reporter, author, columnist, and critic.

Background

Born in Seattle, Washington, Bull grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. He dropped out of high school to write a novel, and then returned briefly, leaving again without graduating.

Bull was the editor of Sounds, a free monthly Phoenix-based music newspaper, in the mid-1970s, West Coast Editor of Spin from 1985 to 1988, West Coast editor of Vogue, West Coast editor and a founder of Details. He co-founded Browbeat, first American xerox-punk fanzine, with David Wiley in early summer 1977. He managed The Consumers (1977), an obscure but increasingly acclaimed early American punk band from Phoenix, Arizona. He has written for publications including the Washington Post, Arizona Republic, New York Times, Harper's Bazaar, The Village Voice, The Face, and GQ.

From the earliest days of his work, Bull chronicled subcultures, with pioneering reporting on skateboarding, cockfighting, lowriders, punk, cowboy and rodeo culture, hiphop, heavy metal and others. His reporting on what he called "mall culture," led to writing about architecture, urban life and design in North America, Europe and Australia, often including a critique of modern practices, urban development, and monoculture. One of the earliest writers on punk and hiphop, throughout his reporting career, he has covered issues that would typically be considered "metro desk" stories, while presenting them in a manner more typical of magazine feature writing. His crime reporting has explored bank robbery, drug-dealing, murders, rape, and patricide.