I could go on for days about what it was like to be a punk in the 80’s, but would be boring! Check out this rad documentary that explains it much better than I ever could (the interview with Chuck Dukowski makes this extra rad because he is so articulate). Just to put it into perspective – there was a whole industry built around De-Punking your teenager, like sending them to Anti Punk Bootcamp (which my mom wanted to send me to). It’s also important to note that Darryl Gates was the LA police chief back then, and he practised his oppressive police tactics on us that he would later use against African Americans in the Los Angeles uprising during the 90’s. Police brutality is something we had to deal with on a daily basis, as you will see in this documentary, but even the threat of authoritarian suppression did not stop us from being ourselves.
