Needless to say, the Chatham Coffeehouse will not be having any more hardcore/punk shows.

This is not the first time this has happened. One club shut down because someone ripped a condom machine off of the wall. Pitt stopped having shows aftersomeone burned a flag. Another space, after one show, stopped having them because somebody felt the need to carve on their walls. The list goes on and on and on and it all adds up to one thing. There is nowhere to have shows in Pittsburgh.

It's amazing. I run a mail order distrobution of punk records and people from all over the world write to me and tell me how lucky I am to live in the same town as Aus Rotten and Anti-Flag. Little do they know that I can never see these two bands, because every time there is a show someone has to do something stupid to get it shut down.

I know many of the people who put a lot of work into this scene, and I do not want to see it all destroyed by someone who thinks that punk is nothing more than a mohawk, a sneer, and a bad attitude.Folx, alternative is a fashion, punk is a community. It's the corporate presidents, politicians and lawyers that are fucking each other over for their own immediate personal gain gain...how punk is it to emulate that? How punk is it to act like the school yard bully in the mosh pit? How punk is it to plunge a knife into the backs of the very few people that support you instead of trying to control you? If punk is all about worrying more about instant gratification than the long-term consequences of your actions, then the Exxon Valsez is the punkest thing that ever happened.

So the question is, what do we do about it? I'm not sure. I've never had much of a fondness for police and don't have much of a desire to act as one, but that may be what has to happen. Racist skinheads rarely come to punk shows anymore, because the majority of the scene took a stand and said "Nazis are not welcome here." Perhaps this is what we have to do now. When you're standing at a show and you see someone drinking beer openly, get in their face and tell them to take it outside, far outside. If you see someone destroying the property of the club, don't look the other way, call everyone's attention to it. Let them know that they are not a part of our scene. Don't let the few fuckups ruin the punk scene for all the people that actually care.

I hate to be typing this. I shouldn't need to. This is all common sense. Punk is about supporting each other, not tearing each other down. Punk is about helping to build something, to be a part something, something Ours, not given to us by the schools, the curches, the youth groups, the government centers, something that we make, that we define and we control. But if we let these few MTV loving mainstream jock assholes in punk clothing continue to fuck up all our clubs, pretty soon we won't have anything left at all.