For some reason, and I'll bet there are a lot of theories, punk rock never completely died in the Pacific Northwest. My theory in less than fifty words is this: It's not San Francisco, L.A. or New York, three cities who sway midwestern trains of thought, every home has a basement to play in, and it's cold outside. Couple this with Portland's own Poison Idea (everyone still compares and trades videos from shows 10 years ago) and you've got fertile punk breeding ground for generations. Weinhart's brewed just downtown, so cheap beer is really cheap, and stores downtown still sell bondage pants and stretch jeans. When I first moved up here, the amount of punkers roving the streets was absolutely staggering. Last year the punk down the street bought his little brother his first bottle of dye and and taught him how to make liberty spikes. I guess up here being a punker is as much tradition as it is about disregarding it, which makes no sense unless you also figure in that the only other alternative to high school jock-dom is growing ultra-sensitive and getting a pair of glasses just like Calvin's. But even then, your local chapter of Food Not Bombs may take up too much time otherwise spent making other monumental discoveries. Like gutterpunks. Gutterpunks, I imagine, are all over. Portland has a pretty good population, and region to region, the Pacific Northwest is probably the leading gutterpunk haven, with cities like Eugene, Portland, Olympia, Seattle, and even more eastern towns like Boise. While 3 of 5 punks would never admit having been to a Crash Worship show, 1 of 5 falls directly into the gutterpunk category, and still 2 of the same 5 sport either an army fatigue jacket, cut off camouflage shorts, or the telltale crappy made-with-a-Sharpie patch, sewn somewhere onto their person.
My friend, Moby, lives in a building co-op. So many gutterpunk-junkies live there. It's gnarly-—this one girl is 14 and from Idaho somewhere and I saw her around downtown before I met her. She looked like a lot of the other kids because so far it’s been pretty fashionable still to look a mess, a real mess. But this girl is a real mess. I met her on the roof at Moby’s. There were about ten kids up there sleepy and not moving, all resting in a heap of eachother. In one of the corners, a skylight made a backrest for them and I recognized a few of those kids from around the building. I also noticed a kitty. It was just walking around up there, I like cats, so I got it to come over. I was checking to make sure that it wasn’t falling apart, it was a downtown cat, and some are pretty wrecked. It looked okay and Moby said it was okay and then that girl, the messed up one who’s 14 came up from her pile. It was during the summertime, and she was wearing shortsleeves. Real short shortsleeves. You could see bruises on her arms and she wore a thick blue rudder band around the top. She was just wearing it around. “It’s an alright cat, it’s Jan’s cat. She just washed it,” and then she knelt down and picked up the cat. I stood with her, petting the cat too, and then quickly handed it over to me. Then she says this: “Oh, he smells the rat.” Alright. “I have a rat in my pants.” She had a rat in her pants. And then, “See?” while reaching down into the crotch of her pants. “This is It. That’s his name, It.” It’s white and a big rat, much bigger if you consider it lives in her honey pot. “See? I told you I had a rat in my pants.” Yikes. 3 months later everyone got evicted from the building. There were too many shady kids staying there and the Hemp activists on the third floor were finally getting enough money coming in that they could afford the whole place. That’s the other thing Portland’s full of—Hippies.