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About ten years ago, I was out with some friends in New York and they wanted to stop by a party their friend was having for his photography book of the late 1970s NY punk scene.
We swung by the book store where the party was, somewhere in the West Village, it was late summer. The bookshop was small so the party was mostly happening on the sidewalk outside and spilling out onto the street.
There were about forty people. The gathering had that atmosphere of “outside the club between bands”. I noticed some people were standoff-ish and stayed on the edges of the crowd. Other people mixed it up right in the center of things. Probably, just like they had done outside CBGBs in 1978.
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I was surprised how many people were still wearing variations on the traditional punk/new wave look: black skinny jeans, Beatle boots or converse high-tops, the classic horizontal striped shirt.
My friends were spotting people they knew and greeting old friends. I didn’t know anybody. But it was still fun, seeing this crowd. Here they were, the kids who dared to be “punk” when punk was considered a dangerous social disease.
Watching them, I had the thought: what gentle souls they have become. Despite the echoes of the old punk fashion, you could tell that many of these people did yoga, or practiced Buddhist meditation, or had taken up painting at their summer place Upstate. They probably took really good care of their plants.
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Which brings me to the subject at hand: The “PIONEERS OF PORTLAND PUNK 1977 to 1984” exhibit put on at the Central Public Library here in Portland, Oregon in July of 2024.
This would be my own personal version of that book party in New York. I was a junior in high school—in Portland—in 1977. The punk scene was one of the most formative experiences of my life.
It seemed appropriate this display and its opening festivities took place at the Central Public Library instead of the local art museum. I guess punk is more at home in a library than an art museum. Depending on what your idea of punk is.
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Before the exhibit even opened, there were stirrings around town about this show. I can only imagine the work and phone calls and coordination that was necessary. Not to mention the gathering and sorting and organizing of all the posters and photos and memorabilia.
And then someone had to decide who would be on the panel to discuss the Portland Punk scene in its earliest days. Which eight people were the most representative of a fractious music scene composed primarily of anti-social, juvenile delinquents?
But of course by 2024 everyone remembered the Portland scene as a supportive, caring, DIY group project.
That wasn’t what I remember. I remember drugs, weapons, stripper girlfriends, trips to the pawnshop, fights behind Satyricon, and the drummer of DOA trying to steal Chuck Arjavacs drum stool. When Chuck caught him and demanded it back, the drummer said: “I’ll flip you for it.”
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