When someone asks me where all the cool spots are in West Virginia, where I grew up, I always tell them to visit as many gay bars as they can fit into their travel itinerary. The gay bar is your best bet for meeting all and every low/high art, intellectual/drug addict, avant-gard/nerd, beauty/spazzoid, freak-star in town. As you walk through that often hidden door you will behold the vortex/apex, concentrated, boiling, sexy epicenter of PUNK! This goes for all towns, small or big anywhere, including right here in New York City.

We’re living in a black hole now, where the affect of punk’s legacy is depicted everywhere in malls and media, but its real spirit exists only at the gay bar. O, the gay bar! Just own it and you’re in. Take it to the max with hot intent behind your expression. Got an inflamed puss-crust zit on your chin? Put on some tight white jeans, draw a trillion more pimples on your face and call yourself Zitessa. I did! New friends were softly petting my face as if I was a baby owl. Got a limp? Take off your pants and dance it off, Aunt Peg! Got a chub butt? Stick a swan feather in your butthole and flutter it girl! Sexuality undecided, but know in your heart you are goth? See you in the K hole Tina! You stole every last one of grandma’s Percocets and you feel all guilty and shitty? Fuck! Me too! Oops, I digress…

The gay bar is where the fat, thin, beautiful, ugly, old, young, smart, dumb, rich, poor… every race, every proclivity, all levels of mental instability and stability are all punkin’ it up and truly free. My crusty bloody zits never looked better in dirty white leather.

ADRIANE SCHRAMM