'Punk Houses' For Yuppies
Punk houses have finally been classed up and commodified! Not only in a book of fancy photos by a SELL-OUT 29-year-old artist who documented life in 42 punk houses for purchase and prominent display on your fancy mahogany coffee table in your comfortable, single-family home or apartment full of professionals found on Craigslist, but also in a lengthy Times "Home & Garden" section plug of said book, which will help explain the entire concept to your grandmother. We were going to follow that with a representative, forehead-slapping line, but an entire paragraph jumped out at us as too hilarious to break up, so we'll just stick the whole thing after the jump (Ron Paul).
The punk house is a curious and sometimes beautiful habitat, the expression of a music scene and do-it-yourself culture that went underground decades ago, in an attempt to opt out of just about everything that smacked of the mainstream: cities, clubs, bars, alcohol, processed foods, agribusiness and the record companies, for example, not to mention all media larger than a photocopied zine. With its roots in old-fashioned counterculture communes (like Findhorn in Scotland, but really messy, and with a thrash-hardcore beat), the punk house is a multifunctional dwelling: typically a place for like-minded males in their 20's to live and to make and hear music. This is not to say that there aren't all-female punk houses (there are) or ones with girls living among the boys. As with punk itself, the punk house eludes a tidy definition. "Punk Is (Whatever We Made It To Be)" is the title of a song from the Minutemen, a punk band in the early '80s.
Also Thurston Moore was once sneered at in a Minneapolis punk house for wearing "a nice winter parka."
