and the Leather Dice as they had never agreed on a name. The band was formed with members of her youth group at church. Their first gigs were at church talent shows playing Nirvana and Pearl Jam covers. An arrest at age 14 crystallized her aversion to authority: having gone to the beach on Independence Day 1995 to watch fireworks, "I walked up on the boardwalk, and a cop was like 'Hey, get off the boardwalk; you're blocking the flow of traffic'. So I turned around and got off, and he came up to me again and was like, 'Get off the boardwalk.' And I was like 'I'm off the boardwalk. Grace claims to have then been slammed into a police car, thrown face-first to the pavement, jumped on, hogtied, carried "like a suitcase", put in a holding cell, not allowed to call her mom at that time, charged with resisting arrest and battery, placed under house arrest for the summer, and required to do 180 hours of community service, all because "I was a dirty, grubby little punk kid with black spiky hair who hadn't washed his pants in a year." Grace's mother hired an attorney, whom she could ill afford, who took the case to court and lost. Grace was charged as an adult and ultimately convicted of both felonies. Grace later said the experience "changed my life. [It] politicized me." "I have an inherent distrust of mankind. I think authority and government base their power on violence. I refuse to recognize anyone's power over me." After that incident, Grace came to identify with British anarcho-punk band Crass, calling them "to me, the best band to ever blend music and politics": "I felt like Crass' music legitimately made a change. They really backed up what they were doing. I saw that writing a song against something was just as valid as standing on a street corner holding a sign." Grace befriended James Bowman when they met on their first day of freshman year at Naples High School; the two have been close ever since. "We were both punk rock kids with spiky hair and more belts than necessary", recalls Bowman. "We just hung out and smoked pot and did normal kid things." Grace's first tattoo—a Crass logo on the right ankle—was done by Bowman, though she later covered it up with a tattoo of the Rebel Alliance symbol