At 1pm on a Monday, a hundred punks are wilting in the mid-afternoon sun. The collars of a hundred black anti-establishment T-shirts are tugged at and regretted. A hundred complexions of beach party-scorning pale are burning from white to pink all the way to hell-fire red. A hundred unnatural hair colors are in danger of bleeding down into two hundred eyes, all of which are set on the door of the Fireside Bowl, waiting for it to open and bring relief.
There is a timeless quality to the punk scene, this demimonde of high-school sophomores with their backpacks and black shoes, handing each other fliers, always waiting for the show, reminiscing about the last show or talking excitedly about the next one. Today it's Scared of Chaka, Dillinger Four and the other bands on the "Take Action Tour" criss-crossing America courtesy of the tiny Van Nuys label Sub City. But if you squint a little you feel like you could be surveying the crowd waiting to see The Germs and X in L.A. circa 1979, or Minor Threat with Gray Matter in mid-eighties D.C.
The anachronistic feeling is bolstered by the London circa-1984 spiked hair-dos, the 1988 California ska pins, and all the Dead Kennedys T-shirts: A great band, to be sure, but one that broke up long before most of these kids started sprouting pubes. Which isn't to say that contemporary groups aren't represented on all the shirts, pins and patches, too, in all of their terse glory: Shift. Alert. Dissolve. Avail. Some of the fashions are definitely of the decade, like the very latest thrift store chic, shirts formerly owned by a gas station attendant or factory worker and still bearing the breast-pocket emblazon of "Pete" or "Ted." One result of this blue-collar camouflage is that it takes a moment to register that "Rick" really does work at Midas next door, and he really does want all these kids the fuck off his property. A Fireside functionary apologetically herds the spillover back onto the sidewalk in front of the club, explaining that "We normally don't have shows in the afternoon."
The odd scheduling hasn't hurt attendance any: Once the doors are finally opened for the 2pm show, the place is quickly packed, despite the fact that there's another show with the same bill tonight at 7. The Fireside's owners have calculated, accurately, that heat or no heat, summer is the time to reap maximum gain from your largely under-21 clientele. They may not be drinking, but they've got nothing else to do: "Oh yeah, I'm coming back tonight," says one energetic fan. "What else am I gonna do today?"
(Ben Winters)
copyright 1999 New City Communications, Inc.