Over the past few weeks the hardcore community lost some pretty incredible people. Most significantly to me Bo Lueders from Harms Way and The Hardlore Podcast,and Matt Krupanski from Boysetsfire. While I knew Matt quite well back in the day, I didn’t know Bo at all and yet I have found myself mourning their losses in a very deep and meaningful way. I believe this is not by mistake, but a beautiful and intentional byproduct of what makes hardcore so fucking cool in the first place.
The first time I ever saw two friends hugging was at a hardcore show.
I was 13 at the Cobalt Cafe in Canoga Park, Ca. It was the kind of venue that seems to exist purely to allow misfit adolescents to do sketchy shit out of the purview of their parents with relatively low consequences.
Sticky carpets, damp couches and a $6 cover ($5 with a flyer).
As a freshman in high school with really cool parents I was already about four years into my punk rock indoctrination. I had gone from Green Day and Rancid, to Operation Ivy and Fat Wreck Chords, from using a cassette to record songs off the radio, to taking trips to Home Depot so I could build my own chain necklaces.
I was a good kid, but I wasn’t good at the kind of things a good kid should be good at. I sucked at school and sports and really any of the kind of stuff that a boy might be able to lean on for an identity while their voice dropped.
Instead I found skateboarding and punk rock and with that there were a few ways things could’ve gone. In the first two weeks of high school I found myself not behaving like myself. I was skipping classes and getting high under bridges - not because I really enjoyed it, but because I didn’t have a good reason to stop myself from doing it when the other kids who sucked at sports and school told me this is what we were supposed to do - that these were OUR extracurricular activities.
Borrowed From Blakes Substack. Read whole article here: CLICK HERE