amerikkkan punx

When I was thinking about what I was going to write about earlier today, I thought about how much I can enjoy the punk crowd. While watching MDC play at a street fair today, I thought, “I really like this.” However, by the end of the night, I was back to my mantra of “F-ing punks!”

Riot Cop and MDC played at the Laughing Horse Bookstore block party today. It was a decent show and it was the first time I had sold merch outside (and incidentally sat behind the bands while they played. It was going great when Ohnny showed up. Ohnny is a little punk who has been around the scene for a couple years now and who has been ostracized for his fondness of saying, “faggot.” Ohnny is not queer but thinks that he can reclaim the word being used as a joke. Ohnny IS a joke. Anyway, Ohnny has been asked to leave the space before and was asked to leave again. Instead, he sat like Ghandi and refused to move. Yes, I did somehow manage to refer to Ohnny and Ghandi in the same sentence. A concerned person came over to me and asked for help with security because Ohnny has a history of not respecting the safer space policy. I stopped the show and we tried to get Ohnny to leave. Ohnny wasn’t so much the issue as his friends were who were so quick to defend the word ‘faggot.’ After a while, MDC said we should chill out and the show should continue. Riot Cop held off for a little bit, the drummer told Ohnny to get out and then they continued with their show. The Ohnny ordeal wasn’t huge but there was little in show of solidarity from the performers which was disheartening. Luckily, several awesome activists were up for confronting Ohnny. Dave from MDC is queer and he has been around the scene for quite some time. I know this is very small potatoes for him but I would've liked for the bands to be a little more confrontational with fucks like Ohnny.

After the show, there was a stand-off on the corner between Ohnny’s crew and a bunch of activists. One little punk who I thought was a girl and turned out to be a 13-14 year old boy asked me who he was hurting by just sitting there. I asked the punk if he would just let a Nazi sit there and he said yes, he would stand in front of a Nazi. “What’s one Nazi going to do?” The punk then said that he uses the word ‘faggot’ and wanted to know if I have a problem with him. I said, “Well, yeah I have a problem with you. You’re a Nazi sympathizer.” That’s when the little shit shoved me. I’m not a violent person but I could’ve broke him in two. However, assaulting a minor was not on my to-do list so I stood back and someone held him back.

I'm looking forward to going back to Europe simply for the punks. American punk as a culture can be so fucked.