reported in the L.A. Times.<\/a><\/p>\nAmy in Fullerton called into AirTalk to share that her brother actually started the Hong Kong Cafe.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were the first club outside of the Masque to play bands like Fear, X, Black Flag, the Germs, and art bands like Nervous Gender, The Bags, and Alice Bag,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth the Hong Kong Cafe and Madame Wong’s were considered institutions in the L.A. punk scene that paved the way for all sorts of punk bands with different styles,\u201d Thurston said.<\/p>\n
Madame Wong\u2019s closed its doors in 1985, and Hong Kong Cafe followed a decade later, shutting down in 1995.<\/p>\n
Rooted in rebellion<\/p>\n
Americans in the mid 70s felt the weight of economic uncertainties, including high gas prices and inflation \u2014 not unlike today.<\/p>\n
Thurston said this is part of the reason punk rock was born, out of a form of resistance to the overproduced, corporate music in the mainstream at the time.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aI was a UCLA student at the end of the ’70s, and I was in a band with my best friend. I remember there was just a summer with all these people there\u2026pierced flesh, big paperclips\u2026 and we kinda thought, who are these people? We realized that we were the band that was on the way out and said, \u2018You know what? I think we ought to just graduate and go to law school.\u2019\u201d \u2014 Michael in Santa Monica<\/p>\n
Bondage pants, leather jackets, and torn T-shirts<\/p>\n
\n A red parachute anarchy shirt from1977, designed by Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren.\n <\/p>\n
(<\/p>\n
Courtesy of the Skirball Cultural Center<\/p>\n
)<\/p>\n
\n Young punk outfits on display.\n <\/p>\n
(<\/p>\n
Sarah M Golonka<\/p>\n
\/<\/p>\n
Courtesy of the Skirball Cultural Center<\/p>\n
)<\/p>\n
\n Stage diving at a Circle Jerks concert at the Country Club in Reseda in 1982.\n <\/p>\n
(<\/p>\n
Ann Summa<\/p>\n
\/<\/p>\n
Courtesy of the Skirball Cultural Center<\/p>\n
)<\/p>\n
\n Assorted punk pins.\n <\/p>\n
(<\/p>\n
Sarah M Golonka<\/p>\n
\/<\/p>\n
Courtesy of the Skirball Cultural Center<\/p>\n
)<\/p>\n
\n Alice Bag of the Bags in Los Angeles in 1978.\n <\/p>\n
(<\/p>\n
Melanie Nissen<\/p>\n
\/<\/p>\n
Courtesy of the Skirball Cultural Center<\/p>\n
)<\/p>\n
Thurston said the punk movement was just as important off the stage as it was on.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aThis is a story of the children it didn’t get better for, who created their own world where they fit in and where they found a place for themselves,\u201d she said. \u201c\u200aIt was visually different than anything out there at that moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
“Outsiders, Outcasts, Rebels + Weirdos: Punk Culture 1976\u201386” is on display at the Skirball Cultural Center through September. Learn more here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SoCal History: Skirball\u2019s latest exhibit explores LA\u2019s Punk culture Guest: Cate Thurston, chief curator at Skirball Cultural Center…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[37791,150684,48,52,51,150683,47,50,55027,49,150685,29484,69994],"class_list":["post-371949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-airtalk","tag-hong-kong-cafe","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-la-punk","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-music-history","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-madame-wongs","tag-punk","tag-skirball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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