MISCmedia for 12/28/99
Punk After 25

SOMETHING STILL STICKS in my mind from the scattered anti-WTO vandals so long ago (was it really just four weeks?).

The most blatant, deliberate vandalism I saw involved a team of boys in black clothes with punk-anarchist insignia, pounding on Gap windows with small hammers until the windows finally cracked. They were communicating to (or at least greeting) one another with fake gangsta hand signals.

Back in my day, sonny, punk-anarchists didn't pretend to be black. They pretended to be English.

But I shouldn't have been all that surprised.

After all, it was at least five years ago that I realized punk had become older than hippie had been when punk started. As we approach a quarter-century since the first Ramones and Richard Hell gigs at CBGB's in NYC, some two dozen or more variants on the old three-chord garage sound have come, gone, and in many cases come back--hardcore, queercore, emocore, mathcore, etc. etc.

But for the purposes of gross oversimplification (and what could be more punk than that?), let's compare, in excessively broad definitions, punk (as I'd known it in the late-'70s-early-'80s timeframe) with today's neopunk (the subculture that the Gap and Van's Shoes, among other marketers, have been trying to exploit, to the anarchists' disgust):

TOMORROW: The Grinch who stole New Year's.

ELSEWHERE:

• A new resource for snowboard-punx--The Prime....
• A totally unauthorized "Choose Your Own Damn Pokemon Adventure...."
• ...while other clever smart-alecks have distilled a quarter-century of punk subculture into a fictional video game, Punkemon Island! (found by Rebecca's Pocket)....
• ...and a visit to America's only remaining pinball-game factory (found by Obscure Store and Reading Room)....

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS:

• Retail-as-theater and theaters as retail.
• Thoughts from having lived with Christmas for two months.
• Disposable tabloid zines of highbrow literature.
• Another look at movie restaurants and what they oughta serve.
• Indie film's potential resurgence.
• Last-minute gift ideas with a twist.
• What might really be behind announced massive mass-transit cuts.
• Why digital cable TV ought to have more than just movies.
• Unadvisable holiday gifts and cards.
• The relics of bank merger-mania.
• Some bad beers I have known.
• In the Brave New Seattle, every new building must be monumental, "world class," and tastefully outlandish.
• Imagining life after Microsoft, and exploring the roots of the Gates personality cult.
• The first and second parts of our visit to an imagined Northwest theme park.
• Parts one, two, three, and four of our WTO protest post-mortem; a list of WTO-protest links; and the earlier preview piece.

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