Eat Me

Hippies. Although i share some ideals with hippies, crunchies, or whatever you choose to call the tie dyed wearing masses these days i have moved so far away from any association with such folks. The earthy aspect of my personality has been heavily overshadowed by the punk aspect of my personality in recent years and the shadow just seems to grow more and more every day.



My ideals have not changed as much with time. With the exception of far less chemicals being consumed since graduating college my environmental inclinations and passions have not wained. In fact they have only strengthened. So why has the ever present punk aspect of my personality all but dominated my adult life as it did in my childhood?



A pit stop to the restroom of a hippie run eatery this past weekend helped me realize why. More specifically, the graffiti on the walls of said lavoratory brought me to my enlightenment. The neo-crunchie graffiti of 2008 is exactly the same as the Phish-head graffiti (who are getting back together, as an aside) of the 1990's, which is exactly the same as the Dead-head graffiti of the 1980's and the hippie graffiti of the 1960's and 1970's.



Mushrooms, Alice in Wonderland "eat me, drink me" references, pot leaves, and 420. Even the dress code has not changed. If you wanted to waste use of a time machine on a meaningless experiment you could take 'hippies' from any time period and drop them off at a concert in any other time period and not only, according to my hypothesis, would they fit in without damaging the space time continuum they (or anyone else around) would not even realize that they were of a different time.



There is absolutely no progress within that counter-culture. There is just a romantic cling to the roots of the movement, and that is all.



The punk movement, on the other hand, is constantly moving and redefining not only it's look but it's very core to stay ahead and to stay true. By the time something is beginning to catch on within the scene enough for the larger populace to notice, a new wave is coming up just under the surface. It stays timely and applicable.



Of course you will see some throwback aspects to certain looks and even some keeping an 'old school' look alive, but generally speaking, if you were to repeat my same 'hippie' time machine experiment with the punk scene a discrepancy would be noticed within a nanosecond. Footwear, pant type and sizes, shirts, jackets, headwear, and haircuts are always constantly evolving. There are tribal stylistic threads which carry on and pass from one era to the next but there is enough variation and self style included into the mix to keep it fluid and pertinent.



Drop a current skater from the local park into a 1980's backyard halfpipe and you would have thought an alien had descended. Even more than the surficial fashion - the art, the music, and the ideals of the punk have always kept up with the times. In fact, in many cases, they have been far ahead of their time.



That sense of progress, that sense of growth, that sense of timeliness is what keeps the punk counter-culture so near to my heart. Much like the pin-up pornography of the 1950's the only way you can truly define punk is by saying you know it when you see it.