(T's dog Leia and her new punk rock sweater.)
P’s Take: I love bitching about shit. Things piss me off almost continuously and I’m real good about voicing my dissatisfaction. A lot of people are. What a lot of people, like me, aren’t good at is getting up and doing something about what we’re whining about.
This past Sunday me and the Brother T took a long-ass ride down (west? lateral?) to Philadelphia for the nth Punk Rock Flea Market. The kids down there evidently put these things on twice a year to pay the cost of the insurance for one of their favorite venues. I can remember shows being put on to pay for peoples medical bills in NY and shows put on In Memoriam, but I don’t remember anything ever being done a couple times of year just to keep the scene going, so good for them I guess.
I think me and T both were hoping to find monster Marantz amps and KLH speakers for a dollar each, but it wasn’t like that. Things were even quite a bit more expensive than I thought they would be (5 dollars for a scratched CD of The Replacements “Pleased To Meet Me”?), but there was a lot of other handmade stuff that balanced everything out. Kids really put their heart into it and brought in their best nonsense; knitted punk gear for dogs, hand-shaded zines, comic books and various other sub cultural bizness. I was perusing some girls collection of marble cover notebooks full of her musings when I spilled some coffee on some nerds porn comic-poster. I had to buy it for four bucks and I can’t even hang the fucking thing up. But that’s all right too.
To be honest I wasn’t interested in most of the shit they had for sale there, but the point is that they recognized a problem and took steps to fix it. We got a recession on in full swing, a war on two fronts and still kids are down to keep their noise going however they can. You can’t hate that, even if the coffee was horrible and the place stank of ass.
T’s Take: Philly is one of my favorite sorta far places to go to, especially for punk rock purposes. This weekend was no exception as we got up at the butt crack of dawn on the Lord’s Day to drive out for the Punk Rock Flea Market, sponsored by R5 Productions, a local Philly Punk Rock promoter. Admission was 3 measly dollars and the proceeds went to a great cause, which was putting the money into local all ages venue The First Unitarian Church. I’ve seen two of my favorite Philly bands of all time, The Dead Milkmen and Paint It Black at this venue and it’s a really great place for a show run by some really great people. So I gladly handed over my 3 stinkin’ dollars.
The place where this was held was in a middle of nowhere industrial part of Philly that I wasn’t too acquainted with. Some sketchy dudes were offering parking for 10 bucks, luckily we were smart enough to bypass them and find FREE street parking around the corner. Once inside we were met with a fairly fine array of records, clothes, posters, shit, junk, and more shit. We were also met with one of the scariest bathrooms I’d ever had the pleasure of pissing in (sound and instinct were key in there). That aside, it was a good time. Personally, like P said, I was hoping there would be more in the way of stereo equipment to be had, but I still didn’t leave empty handed.
So what did I end up with? I bought a hand made sweater for my dog Leia (as in the Princess of the peaceful people of Alderaan), a sweet Propagandhi/Paint It Black poster, a really cool lithograph some dude made that chronicles the entire Goonies movie, a Bride of Frankenstein shirt, a Battlestar Galactica canvas bag that says “Frak” for the little lady (who as it turns out doesn’t like it), and a really awesome clear blue split 7” by two psychotic Louisville bands, Lords and Coliseum (and I’ve been listening to a lot of Lords lately so this was a real find for me). The only clunker in the bunch was a used CD copy of At The Drive In’s first album that skipped like a mother on my way into work today. I knew I was getting ripped off when I went to buy it and the girl asked for five bucks and I could see there were some sort of chocolate stains on the case but at that point I had already committed.
The one thing I will say I appreciated about the Punk Rock Flea Market is that there were a lot of people there that were selling their own art, clothes, etc and most of them seemed passionate about whatever it was they were selling and were more than happy to chat you up. Just good people out there trying to let other good people know about what they’re up to. Sorta like the FSS, and believe me we know how hard it can be.
So if you’re interested feel free to visit the following sites and check some of these like minded DIY punks out:
www.punkrockdogg.com
www.geekboypress.com
www.houseofmysterioussecrets.com
www.jimhorwat.com
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