I have no recollection of where I first spotted the New York hardcore logo (above, in case you’re unfamiliar, as rendered in blinding neon at Vinnie Stigma and Jimmy G’s tattoo shop on the Lower East Side), but it was invariably on a flyer for one show or another. While not quite as cryptic as other logos like, say, Black Flag’s bars or, later, Missing Foundation’s upended cocktail glass, it was an immediately arresting symbol that neatly encapsulated the scene and the subculture. In short order, not only was I spotting it everywhere, but I was summarily scrawling it everywhere. It usually prompted blank looks from the layperson — but if you knew, you knew.
Over time, the symbol took on a strange life of its own. As punks and hardcore kids turned into hardcore adults and started infiltrating the halls of industry, the symbol — or, more accurately, appropriated mutations thereof — started suddenly popping up incongruously in places not normally associated with hardcore. Gradually, variations of the the original NYHC logo became ostensibly “cool" shorthand for concerns looking to create certain impressions. As time went on, the original meaning and associations behind the symbol got lost in translation. I’ve spotted variations of the logo all over the place, and when I point out its origin, too often I’m met with stares as blank the ones I got back in the early 80’s. Much as with that Misfits Crimson Ghost image I spotted using to advertise a friggin' pilates class (read that tragic tale in the preamble to this post), the appropriators no longer bother to investigate where they’re getting their iconography from.
I think the most striking example of this I found was out in Quogue. A leafy, affluent enclave of Suffolk County where my mom lives, this sub-Hampton has never exactly been a hotbed of hardcore. My skulking around the town as a pointedly tennis-shunning teenager in a KRAUT t-shirt did little to change that. But about a year back, I was in a local chic boutique out there, looking for a birthday gift for the wife, when I spotted a t-shirt that pretty much knocked me out of my Chuck Taylor’s. I ended up buying it for my daughter, who wore it regularly for a while, blithely unaware and frankly uncaring of the symbol's antiquated roots in New York City punk rock.
In any case, my friend Drew Stone just posted another great installment in his ongoing video series that traces the roots of the symbol. If, like me, you spent large swathes of your youth evangelizing this insignia on every available surface with a sharpie, you should check it out.
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