Strolling Westward on 14th street yesterday I walked past a slow-moving punk couple headed the same direction. They were attired in these extremely elaborate punk outfits. He in plaid pants, a leather jacket studded with a veritable plethora of chrome studs (where they wouldn’t crowd out patches with band logos), she in a black leather miniskirt, fishnet stockings and knee-high jack-boots. They both had interesting facial piercing and hair dye. (Click the first result here if you’re still having trouble picturing it.)
I don’t really know anybody who is serious enough about punk rock to dress like that. Even people I’ve met who went to see Iggy Pop rock CBGBs back when punk was a socio-political counter-culture rather than a fashion statement, who dress more plainly than I do. I speculated on this and came up with a theory that I thought was rather interesting. It’s probably a bunch of bullshit, but hang with me for a second.
The Present-Day Punk Rock Economic Isolation Theory: I don’t interact with these people or know any not because we are so different (I’m sure most of them would agree with me on 95% of political and a good 70& of social issues), but because they live in the economic equivalent of a parallel universe. Where do these people hang out? CBGB, St. Marks Place, tattoo/piercing parlors, and stores that sell the kinds of clothes, music and accouterments appropriate to that lifestyle. Since I don’t really spend much time in those places (other than the occasional jaunt to St. Marks for a bowl of noodles or hummus), I don’t have many opportunities to interact with them. But the ramifications of this are deeper: Not only do they spend their free time in those places, those are also the places that they work. You never see a guy who takes off his pinstripe suit and power tie on the weekend and gets his punk guy uniform on. These folks work at the music stores where the people that work at their clothing stores come to buy tunes and vice versa. They go to concerts where they work and if they’re in a band they play for the people they buy things from with the money they make from shows and CD sales. Anyways I guess you see where I’m going with this. The only money that’s leaving the system is being spent on food and rent. There’s money entering the system from people like me who might swing by CBGB to catch a show before it closes forever. But on the whole there’s mostly this finite amount of capital circulating amongst the truly dedicated members of the punk community. I bet there are $20 bills that haven’t left punk hands for five years!
Well not that that was based on anything other than conjecture, but if it has any truth, or even if it doesn’t, I think it’s at least an interesting notion.
Posted: April 25th, 2005 under Miscellaneous.
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