Punx vs. hipsters: We'll just be doing this when we're 30 and they'll all have jobs and families
Punx vs hipsters: We're just going to be doing this when we're 30, and they'll all have real jobs and families
Today began on a throbbing note. A headache, remnant of Thursday nights spacebag induced drunkening. As usual I managed to make an ass of myself but thankfully all my friends have grown used to that. I think I made out with matt s, but I'm not sure. Whatever. I woke up at 1:30 pm luckily no one and nothing depended on me being up earlier. I went to meet ole brian deller at the dube around 4. Coffee and a three hour conversation about literature, anarchy and punk rock ensued. Sometimes the old topics are still the best. Avoided the issue of women for once. We left to rent something at north campus, made food at my place and then walked through the alley to the 15th House. I really wish I made it there more often, but of late I've only been getting there for shows. Too much time spent doing schoolwork, attending yawnfests (activist meetings) and meeting with antiwar columbus kids several times a week to do things like make banners for symbolic feel-good-activist protests and more often than not have decent discussion with the folx involved. Honestly though I feel like until we actually get a serious and dedicated counter-recruitment campaign going everything we do is pointless. Which is unfortunate because it results in me turning into my bitter jaded activist self. I've just been doing the old protest song and dance for so long and it's such a joke especially since most people know the war is a huge mistake. Maybe 3 years ago when we took the streets and chanted people needed that but by now if you support the war you're in the minority. And it means that we can be doing more to directly impact the war machine like ending recruitment of high school students. Until we start actively doing that as a collective group I don't see antiwar columbus as being anything aside from a fun and exciting way for young activists to feel empowered and as rad as that is, it's not and never will be enough.
The conversation at 15th went from how sweet certain bands were or shittalking how certain bands have sold out or just aren't putting out the same quality of material or what some of our friends bands are doing or this or that or...standard scenester bullshit. Luckily for brian mikael eric s and myself that isn't the extent of our interest in punk and that turned into discussing why some of us felt that punk should remain a small, "elitist" subculture of people dedicated to creating a diy world and community apart from the mainstream monoculture we're confronted by every day. Essentially it comes down to the fact that not all of us feel comfortable within mainstream society so why force ourselves into participating? If after all we exist in a community of amazing artists, activists (i mean the ones that do community gardens, books to prisoners projects, animal rights actions like rescuing animals from slaughterhouses, fighting fascists and cops in the streets, throwing down with regular people when the need arises, physically supporting striking workers, acting as medics at protest actions, independent media, zinesters who write passionate political essays, bike mechanics who teach poor children how to fix their bicycles and then give them one,dumpsterdiving to survive instead of working, squatting instead of paying blood money, punx who work shitty jobs to support their collective house, to put out more records and to make more art, punx who organize shows to keep the spirit alive, who play in bands because they can't not do it, punx who live and breathe and would die if this community did not exist, and punx who denounce those who come into it not knowing what it is, who never had that choice between a gun to their head or a needle to their vein and a crimpshrine 7inch or a crass lp) and other like-minded people who are set on building a community of people to live and share this life, then whats wrong with that? The shittalkers, hipsters (i still will not identify with that term, even if i am setting myself willingly apart from mainstream society, i'm not in this for record collection status, being friends with all the right bands, or only being into punk to fuck all the women in the scene. [That shit ain't even hipster it's just disgusting and shameful] Hipsters are what give communities bad names, they are the people who crawl from the bottom to look down on everyone else from the top and shit on everything that made that culture great) and other people that won't care about punk in 5 years don't
concern me as much as genuine honest and really determined people do. The problem is that there are always more of them than there are of us. The question to is where do I get off, what makes me so much different or better than the very people I do not want "ruining my scene"? I guess it's because every day I try and measure what this community has meant to me, and what I have given back. I only hope that I can be as successful in supporting my friends and fellow punx as they've been in supporting me.
Today began on a throbbing note. A headache, remnant of Thursday nights spacebag induced drunkening. As usual I managed to make an ass of myself but thankfully all my friends have grown used to that. I think I made out with matt s, but I'm not sure. Whatever. I woke up at 1:30 pm luckily no one and nothing depended on me being up earlier. I went to meet ole brian deller at the dube around 4. Coffee and a three hour conversation about literature, anarchy and punk rock ensued. Sometimes the old topics are still the best. Avoided the issue of women for once. We left to rent something at north campus, made food at my place and then walked through the alley to the 15th House. I really wish I made it there more often, but of late I've only been getting there for shows. Too much time spent doing schoolwork, attending yawnfests (activist meetings) and meeting with antiwar columbus kids several times a week to do things like make banners for symbolic feel-good-activist protests and more often than not have decent discussion with the folx involved. Honestly though I feel like until we actually get a serious and dedicated counter-recruitment campaign going everything we do is pointless. Which is unfortunate because it results in me turning into my bitter jaded activist self. I've just been doing the old protest song and dance for so long and it's such a joke especially since most people know the war is a huge mistake. Maybe 3 years ago when we took the streets and chanted people needed that but by now if you support the war you're in the minority. And it means that we can be doing more to directly impact the war machine like ending recruitment of high school students. Until we start actively doing that as a collective group I don't see antiwar columbus as being anything aside from a fun and exciting way for young activists to feel empowered and as rad as that is, it's not and never will be enough.
The conversation at 15th went from how sweet certain bands were or shittalking how certain bands have sold out or just aren't putting out the same quality of material or what some of our friends bands are doing or this or that or...standard scenester bullshit. Luckily for brian mikael eric s and myself that isn't the extent of our interest in punk and that turned into discussing why some of us felt that punk should remain a small, "elitist" subculture of people dedicated to creating a diy world and community apart from the mainstream monoculture we're confronted by every day. Essentially it comes down to the fact that not all of us feel comfortable within mainstream society so why force ourselves into participating? If after all we exist in a community of amazing artists, activists (i mean the ones that do community gardens, books to prisoners projects, animal rights actions like rescuing animals from slaughterhouses, fighting fascists and cops in the streets, throwing down with regular people when the need arises, physically supporting striking workers, acting as medics at protest actions, independent media, zinesters who write passionate political essays, bike mechanics who teach poor children how to fix their bicycles and then give them one,dumpsterdiving to survive instead of working, squatting instead of paying blood money, punx who work shitty jobs to support their collective house, to put out more records and to make more art, punx who organize shows to keep the spirit alive, who play in bands because they can't not do it, punx who live and breathe and would die if this community did not exist, and punx who denounce those who come into it not knowing what it is, who never had that choice between a gun to their head or a needle to their vein and a crimpshrine 7inch or a crass lp) and other like-minded people who are set on building a community of people to live and share this life, then whats wrong with that? The shittalkers, hipsters (i still will not identify with that term, even if i am setting myself willingly apart from mainstream society, i'm not in this for record collection status, being friends with all the right bands, or only being into punk to fuck all the women in the scene. [That shit ain't even hipster it's just disgusting and shameful] Hipsters are what give communities bad names, they are the people who crawl from the bottom to look down on everyone else from the top and shit on everything that made that culture great) and other people that won't care about punk in 5 years don't
concern me as much as genuine honest and really determined people do. The problem is that there are always more of them than there are of us. The question to is where do I get off, what makes me so much different or better than the very people I do not want "ruining my scene"? I guess it's because every day I try and measure what this community has meant to me, and what I have given back. I only hope that I can be as successful in supporting my friends and fellow punx as they've been in supporting me.