Queer Punks

Postcard from Bloomers Bar located at 2700 Jane Street

Poster for The Five playing at Travelers Social Club. Though a poster was made, there is speculation as to whether the show happened.

The Harriet Stein Collection does more than include "punk" within the subject headings of the Pittsburgh Queer History Project's archives, it also effects how we invoke terms like "queer history." Harriet is fond describing the punk scene in 1980s Pittsburgh as politically progressive towards sexual diveristy, centering punk rock venues as her broader counter-culture space over venues like Bloomers [formerly Wild Sisters] and Travelers where lesbian and gay proprietors centered sexual politics for sexual communities. 

A few items in Harriet's Collection [Bloomers postcard, Travelers poster] demonstrate the visibility of queer folks in Pittsburgh's punk scene, and make room to ask questions about how Gay Liberation, Lesbian Feminism, and radical queer politics may have interacted with broader audiences through music and performance.

Beyond of the Collection

Items from beyond Harriet's collection (embedded below) ask similar questions. A 1980 short film "Le Cyrk Wedding" by New York based artist Peggy Ahwesh (formerly of Pittsburgh/Canonsburg) documents a wedding ceremony between local musicians Orange Dave and Ken Leasure. Although many bands were present in part or whole, Carsickeness played for the wedding party. Chanting "Sex, Death, Ecstasy," guests crammed into the short-lived venue "Le Cyrk" to celebrate a union between Ken and Dave. Despite the counter-cultural aesthetics of the music, the party, and the dinosaurs fucking on wedding cake... "Le Cyrk Wedding" is what you might expect from any nuptials film. The camera circulates in the crowd as guests laugh and call out to each other. They hurry around Ken and Dave to kiss them on both cheeks and give them their congratulations. 

Le Cyrk Wedding from Peggy Ahwesh on Vimeo.

From the Robert "Lucky" Johns Collection, we've included this home-made commerical from the Travelers Social Club in which employee "Mike" turns from a jerking crowd of Blondie fans to advertise Punk Rock nights every Wednesday night from 9 to midnight with live groups at 10. As part of archival projects, we are often confronted with strange evidence, like posters for shows that never happened, or advertisements which sought to create an environment rather than represent one. While digitizing Harriet's collection she recalled that the poster (see above) for Pittsburgh's most popular punk band "The Five" playing at Travelers may not have ever happened. And so we're left with loose media and orphaned files from an equally interesting moment in history, when a disco-logged after-hours gay night club circulates punk rock media in hopes to draw in members, change their aesthetic, or just try something new.

Travelers In-house Commerical for Wednesday Punk Rock Nights