New York Magazine - not to be confused with the more literary New Yorker magazine - has a great article on the remnants of the punk scene on New York's St. Marks Place (a street in the East Village area of New York City, for you out-of-towners).  The article follows a few punk kids around for a few days and offers a fascinating look at a culture that had already died and has only been resurrected by those searching for the dead one. 

We're first taught about the various kinds of punks you'll find hanging out on St. Marks at any point during the summer: gutter punks, MySpace punks, hippy punks, etc.  All are essentially homeless (well, all the real ones, anyway), spending their nights squatting and their days drinking and doing drugs.  At one point in the story, one punk is arrested for smoking weed and the big concern among his friends after he's hauled away to jail is the fact that he was the only one who knew where the punk show was that night.  As the article points out, all these wayward kids descend on St. Marks looking for the famous filth and squalor that made the street famous among punks in the 80's.  Of course, now there's a Chipotle on St. Marks and that scene is as dead as Sid and Nancy.  However, the sheer number of punks coming to the street looking for that scene have created it all over again. 

Of course, underneath the clothes, tats and binging, is the music.  The punks interviewed in the article all claim a love of the music, but it seems secondary to their enjoyment of drugs and alcohol.  Perhaps the author of the article chose not to focus on the music or perhaps it isn't really that important to them, and the idea of the scene is a larger concern.  Who knows?  Then again, punk was never really about the music.  Sid Vicious couldn't even play bass, after all. 

Anyway, go read about one of the strangest scenes in the country: Punks Like Them.