From New York to Jakarta, punks have long fought for their rights to the city. But just how much have they achieved – and will we ever see ...
From its earliest beginnings, punk as a youth cult was viewed as a social nuisance in cities – irritating but tolerated. But the battle lines were truly drawn in what became a focal point for the nascent hardcore scene: early 1980s Los Angeles.
“LA was a sketchy place then,” recalled Dave Markey, whose 1982 documentary The Slog Movie captured the LA punk scene in all its raw, ragged glory. Speaking in a 2011 interview, Markey, who was a teenager at the time, added: “You wouldn’t walk down certain streets. But it was also like a playground for us.”
Of course, then as now, the fulcrum of punk and hardcore rested on the music. For the scene to survive, hardcore bands needed places to play – and in venues free from intervention by authority figures or age restrictions (in the US, the drinking age of 21 would exclude a good 80% of the audience).
This meant a cat-and-mouse game of searching out friendly or unsuspecting venues – school gymnasiums, social centres, youth clubs and even war veterans’ meeting halls – and playing the hell out of them until their welcome wore out. Given the unfettered, rowdy nature of the performances and audiences, it often wore out midway through the show: the authorities were often called, and Black Flag’s Police Story would be played out in microcosm.
Something more concrete was needed. In the late 80s and early 90s, the scene’s dogged footsoldiers founded a series of autonomous spaces that have become global beacons of punk’s countercultural ethos: the 1 in 12 Club in Bradford; Berkeley’s 924 Gilman Street; New York’s ABC No Rio. Although primarily known for its function as a music venue, the 1 in 12 began life as a social club promoting anarchist values. Its four stories host a recording studio, bar, cafe and extensive library of anarchist texts. ABC No Rio offered a dark room, silk-screening facilities and a public computer lab in addition to hosting concerts, exhibitions and film screenings.
It’s somewhat surprising, then, that London has taken so long to establish its own autonomous space – and it was only due to the efforts of a small group that, in 2015, DIY Space for London was established.
“It was always about bringing the threads of music and activism back together in one space and seeing what could happen as a result,” says DIY Space co-founder Bryony Beynon of the culmination of a three-year fundraising campaign born of the eternal quest for a place to play music without interference.
Tucked away in an unfashionable corner of south London, DIY Space for London seems safe for now – “The project is seriously enormous,” says Beynon, noting that they now have 6,000 members who run the venue collectively – but cities change.
When 924 Gilman Street was established in the dusty backstreets of Berkeley in the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid-80s, it was hard to imagine that gentrification would ever become an issue. But as the tech industry boomed, those ugly warehouse districts suddenly became eminently desirable. Gilman Street found itself nestling alongside craft breweries, barbecue joints and – that vanguard of gentrification – a branch of Whole Foods. The venue’s future has only been secured by countless depositions to the local council, numerous benefit gigs and even the intervention of punk-rock millionaires Green Day.
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