Post #314748 by Swanky on Mon, Jun 25, 2007 8:06 AM

On 2007-06-24 21:10, tikiyaki wrote:

On 2007-06-24 20:22, twitch wrote:
"Punks not dead, it just sucks now"
A lot of us (and you know who you are) tend to seek different ground when the current one gets too overpopulated with outsiders. What fun is it to go to your secret place to escape the world when the world is waiting for you when you get there?
Getting out of punk for a little while got me into several other cool things I might never have discovered, so scene-gentrification isn't 100% bad, but still, gotta be wary of who you let through that door...

Well Put.

When the dorky kid from down the street who picks his nose and eats it is suddenly hanging out in the secret treehouse, it's time to find a new treehouse. :P

Okay, I have to give my "old punk" story here, which likely has meaning to this thread.

I suppose it was around 1982 when I had gone off to college and started hanging out with the punks and goths and freaks. Somewhere in there we had Ronny Reagan and got our ears pierced and odd haircuts and strange clothes. Walking down the street was dangerous. People would yell out at you and throw things at you out of their cars. Even the little patch of us that hung out in the back corner of one of the clubs had to handle lots of jeers just walking back to our friends. "Queer!" was the usual. We'd smile and wave. My Mom threatened to dis-own me. My friends Mom would sneak into his room with scissors to cut his hair. Doors slammed ni your face. It was fucking rough to be a punk!

Then MTV happened in there somewhere. I didn't watch it. Who has cable? I can't pay rent! But it was out there and changing things. ANd after all the abuse I had lived through for years I came home to my sleepy small hometown and saw the little paper boy come by... with like 4 earrings and a mohawk! Dorky kid. MTV had made what me and a handful of weirdos had suffered to live through into a trend that covered the world!

I soon took my earring out and never wore it again. It didn't mean anything any more. Tattoos went that way too.

We are a helluva long way from this tiki thing being mainstream, but we are already in a place where some tropical thing is mainstream and getting called tiki. A co-opting of what we do.

Very few are going to be interested in what we know as tiki via BoT, but plenty will be into Target tiki and hobby shop thatch umbrellas. And we all know they are not the same thing.

It does suck to have the two confused though.

And more and more you see men in Hawaiian shirts. That is going to continue for a long time.