“Don’t Forget the Struggle, Don’t Forget the Streets”: Masculinity, Urbanity, and Conservatism in New York Hardcore Punk, 1985–89

In the mid- to late 1980s, New York City’s hardcore punk scene shifted from an “anything goes” disposition to a more politically conservative, masculine, and dogmatic one. As the national punk scene fractured, New York’s rose to new prominence as the rising popularity of “tough guy” and “straight edge” bands like Agnostic Front, Cro-Mags, Youth of Today, and Warzone embraced the label of “NYHC”: a homegrown punk culture that prized an urban, masculine toughness and a more aggressive, metal-influenced approach to the music. This culture was liberatory for its devotees, largely working- and middle-class white and Latino men for whom it was a safe haven amidst the urban decay entrenched by neoliberal policymaking. However, it also contributed to a growing trend of physical violence and exclusion within punk culture.

By analyzing zines (noncommercial, nonprofessional publications constitutive of punk’s rich print culture) and other periodicals, oral histories, and songs, I will reconstruct the history of this scene—the United States’ most infamous one—by assessing the limits and possibilities of its cultural politics. The development of NYHC illustrates how hardcore punk culture could manifest within a more working-class, urban, and conservative scene, a sharp contrast from the national culture’s middle-class, suburban, and leftist disposition. I argue that NYHC demonstrates how an oppositional culture could reject a societal mainstream while simultaneously becoming more insular, exclusionary, and traditionally masculine. This analysis aims to correct romanticized understandings of punk as inherently leftist and progressive while also demonstrating why more dogmatic and conservative tendencies could have such appeal and support within the culture.