Cigarettes, occasional drugs, alcohol, and music was about the only escape available to us. Skateboards, wide planks with soft fat wheels, were the only sport we engaged in and our only mode of transportation. Maybe you saw us - shirtsleeves cut off, pants worn out, and sneakers or boots in their second or third generation of being handed down. If you did see us you probably yelled something, threw stones, or even got up in our face. I don't blame you. You were looking for escape too. And after all, we scared you. Our scrawny, home-tattooed, funny-haired skateboarding selves clearly scared the hell out of you. That I do blame you for. You should have been so much bigger than that.
In this expanding urban sinkhole of a community we didn't have a lot of people to look up to. I didn't have parents to look after me, and my friends families were either splintered or in a perpetual state of breakdown and dysfunction. And we didn't have heroes. Reagan was a joke. Sports were wasted weekends in front of the television. Police? Fireman? Soldiers? They were some of our primary antagonists. But what we did have was music. The rock god in a stadium phenomenon was a dismal joke by this point and the radio was pure top 40 bilge. ELO. Skynnrd. Oldies. I could go on. One of us in our group, and it wasn't me, discovered punk rock. I don't know how they did it, probably like all good things from a friend of a friend - cassette tapes and gig fliers were handed around like cigarettes or bad jokes.
I have to say honestly that discovering punk was the single best thing that had happened to my life to that point. All of sudden there were people out there who knew exactly what we had all been talking about; what we'd been missing, and they put it to music. Frequently without a chorus or much talent, but it worked. It delivered hope and respite from the plodding everydayness of everyday. It liberated our minds from our plight, and also reinforced the misery and the boredom. They weren't like rock stars, they were peers. They were doing it for us, and for themselves, and for the sheer hell of it, and it encouraged multitudes of others to do the same, to bring out their stories of failure and disgust.
It turned out we had other comrades as well, numerous across the country and throughout the world. As word of mouth spread, so did your record collection grow and thus your world view expand. I don't think it happens this way anymore. You're grown in a Petri dish of world culture from the moment you're born. It comes from everywhere and permeates everything. Thank you TV. Thank you internet. Still, I don't know if we're better off.
Maybe is some cases. Yesterday, for instance, I accidentally discovered a person, via the internet, that I had only seen in pictures when I was a teenager. Someone who I'd admired for her fashion sense and great looks, and envied for her luck at being part of the UK's early punk scene. I really knew little about her other than that. There weren't any articles written about her and as far as I know she wanted it that way. She was rumored to have to disappeared right around the time the Sex Pistols broke up - which for us was like space travel since we only really ever saw the light of the distant Sex Pistols after they were a few years burned up and gone. Still, we we enjoyed them as if they continued to be a major contributor to the punk scene.
But Soo Catwoman, as she was called, is still around. Living her life. Albeit a little more publicly as far as I can see. She has a website http://www.soocatwoman.com/, a twitter account http://twitter.com/SooCatwoman, and is indeed on facebook as well here And she has, at least at some point, had a myspace account too. I mean, I'm not outing her or anything. She's out there and in the world and she doesn't seem to have any problem with people appreciating her for her past roll in the punk scene. I for one am stoked, and a bit brain bent by the whole idea.
She's had people using her image without permission or recompense for years and now she's taking it back and selling her own t-shirts from her site. If your so inclined do her a favor and pick one up from her so the money goes to the right person. I plan to. She's one of the few punks that neither burned out nor faded away. I'm happy for her.
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