Punk you

Last night Sally and I had dinner at a local mall. It's always interesting to watch the passing parade of people at shopping malls. They definitely run the gamut. Lots of Asians, Mexicans, white teenagers. White punk teenagers. One kid walked by wearing a black baseball cap with huge white letters on front: FUCK YOU. My thought was, well, fuck you too, kid. A message that hostile makes you wonder about that kid. He didn't look older than 17, but he had those huge silver dollar-size things in his earlobes. You know, the kind that will stretch him out until he has a hole in his lobe big enough to park a Hummer. He'll feel like shouting out FUCK YOU to the world when he is unemployable because of his stupid earlobes. Where did the fad for self-mutilation start, anyhow?

Today walking through the hall of a local high school full of affluent white kids, I encountered a hardcore kid all decked out in his punk finest. Why hasn’t this style died the death it should have died back in the late '70s, when it popped up in the UK? The high school kid had on a Misfits t-shirt and his hair was arranged Sid Vicious-style. Sid was the subject of the 1986 Gary Oldman film, Sid and Nancy, about how two people can effectively screw up their lives beyond all recognition and die young (Vicious at age 21), yet be remembered nearly 30 years later. I'm not sure he's remembered by the high school kid wearing his hair. More likely the kid is just aping what others have done on down the line to 1979 and Sid Vicious.

Whenever I see these kids with spiky hair, ratty black clothes, chains dripping off their tight pants, I wonder why? What is it exactly about the anarchic rebellion of that era that appeals to kids over 30 years later? Or have I answered my own question with the word anarchic?

Punk is something that as a style manages to hang on, and it's probably because in over 30 years no one has managed to look any worse, any less employable, any less social or more FUCK YOU-in-your-face than the punks.