What’s punk in 2025?

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On my computer from KQED is a newsletter blurb. The enticing headline was about reviving a punk club from the 70s and 80s. I wondered if I could be the “”Mabuhay’” because I was here then and that was the only punk club I knew. And went to.

Although I knew I had been to the Mabuhay I couldn’t remember anything about my experiences there and wasn’t sure whether I had gone with Vincent before the fall or Linda after the fall. I texted Linda. Yes, she remembered going there and thanked me for the memory. Then I asked her about the 181 club which she didn’t remember to my astonishment. I texted back “You and I had been to hell and back when we met but compared to what was going on at the 181 we were innocents.”

A few hours later after riding on BART and emerging into and navigating through the low life on16th between Mission and Valencia, I walk a mile to the gallery where I will sit for four hours watching people and selling art.

Two people walk in. I think they’re guys and I say “Hey guys” when I realize that one of them has breasts and is probably not technically a guy but then I recognize that “guys”. although perhaps politically incorrect, is often said referring to an all-around person and not just a male so I’m not too embarrassed about the fact that I’ve used a masculine term for a couple. Then I think the Spanish language does this all the time. All of these thought processes take less than a second.

When the person with the breasts speaks they have a much deeper and fuller voice then the guy with the beard. It’s of no business of me or mine what the pronouns are. I’m never interested in that. I’m interested in who the person is, not what sex they like or are.

We greet each other, and after I ask them how their day is going, and hear their answer, I tell them that I have them trying to figure out who owns PayPal. This is a true icebreaker. We are at it right away… with Musk, Amazon, Airbnb: billionaire bashing.

These two people are so young and beautiful and alive and smart and all sexes at once, just so. This is in someway innocent compared to what they were doing at the 181 in the tenderloin of SF 40 years ago. That was scarier: more dangerous and vulnerable

But hey what’s going down for vulnerable today if not now everyone?

A woman in a hat with the dog comes in. The white dog is named Julian. Julian is so full of love, all I have to do is look at him, tilt my head a little, and he starts to wag his tail.

The woman with the hat and dog mentions the news. We together lament the news as I had been doing earlier in a different way billionare bashing with the guys.

This woman is more pointedly directed towards fascism. I wholeheartedly agree with her and say something hopefully stupid like “Still, it couldn’t happen like it happened in World War II“

She says “It’s already happening. They’re already taking innocent people and putting them away“.

All I could do is agree.

She bought a set of my heart card images. She paid cash and she, after tax, didn’t want the 72cents change. Told me to keep it. The heart cards she bought I originally made in February as “Valentines”. After February I call them “Love cards”.

Who doesn’t need a little more love?

LOVE

 We were in Barcelona, so we were going out to dinner at nine. We finished around 10:30 and then we walked down to Barceloneta because it was the feast day of Saint John in late June and there were bonfires on the beach. The bonfires would burn all night long. None of us were going home before sunrise.

I was looking for a special someone. I had been single about six months and was still furious that my last boyfriend had broken up with me. What made me most angry was he didn’t have much of a reason. When I thought about it truthfully I didn’t have much of a reason for getting together with him in the first place. 

My girlfriends and I were drinking sangria on the beach and with each glass we got louder. Some people had a beach ball and we began throwing it back-and-forth. Someone made a makeshift fence and we were playing pretend volleyball. A person started drumming on an upside down plastic bucket and someone else started to sing.

It was a joyful scene but I was sad inside. I was so sad that I walked towards the water’s edge and then I walked along the waters edge. It was around midnight and there were so many people on the beach. I felt like I was in a crowded bar even though I was outside. 

I looked around and then I saw him. He was standing in a clearing all by himself looking up at the moon. I recognized him. I recognized in him what was in me. It was like I was looking at the other half of myself. It was strange.

Just as I was thinking that, he turned to me and smiled. At that instant, all of the anger within me drained out the bottoms of my bare feet into the sand. I felt like the stars we’re inside me pulsating new hope home. With that tingly feeling throughout my body, listening to the sound of the sea, moving back-and-forth along the shore, I started to walk towards him with more certainty than I had ever felt before.

He stared at me with a serene presence, and I could hear a voice inside my head that said, “I know you.”  I wasn’t sure who was talking to who.