Inside the Surprising World of an Urban Underground Collective of Artists, Punks and Non-Conformists

In Brooklyn, the world of squatters, punks, activist houses and communes lives on, a continuation of ‘60s ideals that have morphed as the decades wore on. At 13 Thames, a punk house in deep Bushwick, a collective of punks lives a communal lifestyle that shuns government greed, while their music and art blast government corruption. Here’s how I first journeyed to their underground:

I walked down Saint Mark’s on the prowl for punks.

A few blocks in, I passed two kids dressed in all black and skin tight jeans, sitting on the corner with a cup between them. One of them, cute with short brown hair and dark eyes, was wearing a hand-studded leather jacket – one sleeve painted red – with tight black jeans covered in patches of different punk bands. A bandana was tied around his neck. Next to him was a blue-eyed boy with blonde hair to his shoulders. He too wore a bandana, folded like a headband under his hair and across his forehead.

“Are you crust punks?” I asked them.

“No,” they both responded.

“We’re fucking clean, and we don’t do drugs,” said the blonde. “We’re street punks.”

We walked to Doc Holliday’s, a bar by Tompkins Square Park, where I bought us all a round and pulled out my notebook. They were so chatty we small-talked the whole way there. They told me all about the differences between street punks, gutter punks, crust punks, skin head punks, and other subgenres of punk. Eventually, they told me their names – sort of. Nick, the blonde, offered only his middle name, James. Ryan, the brunette, swore alongside Nick, that his last name was Rebel. I was naïve enough to believe him until he revealed weeks later that his last name is Perry.

Twenty-five-years-old, Ryan had just returned from a world tour with Total Chaos, a ‘90s street punk band from California, and had been in New York for a matter of days. A street punk homeless in the city, he was not alone. He panhandled, drank, squatted, and ate with Nick James, also 24 and homeless, as well as a longtime friend, before lifestyle choices sent them reeling down separate paths.

Nick grew up in Woodstock, New York and went to live in a foster home at 13. All he will say about family prior to his placement is that he had a “bad home life.” The foster home, however, could not have been much better. There, his foster father molested him and several other children. “He is going to jail now for over a hundred years,” said Nick, who was still waiting to finish up the legalities of the case.

When word got out that the kids were being abused, the foster home was absolved and Nick was on his own again. He dropped out of school and headed for the city.

Once in New York, 14-year-old Nick was taken in by the punk scene. He lived in a squat called The Bat Cave in Brooklyn. “You wouldn’t want to go in there without a bunch of people, maybe grab a rebar on the way in, because the people in the basement were crazy ,” said Nick. The next few floors, though free from “crackheads,” were also no place for an abused child. “The next couple floors was crust punks and shit. It was disgusting, needles on the floor. The top two floors were mostly punks. We kept it clean, kept the needles out,“ he said, divulging details of his life with a sweetness and eagerness to help me get it that I still do not fully understand. Something about his demeanor reminded me of a young Kurt Cobain – broken, rebellious, and likable.

Back upstate, 16-year-old Nick James met 17-year-old Ryan Rebel. Memory of the union was difficulty for Ryan to recall, but Nick was quick to remember. “He was living in a bus, and it was after the foster home, I was living in a yert.” For “five to six years” Ryan lived in a bus with his mom and her boyfriend. If my math is correct, he was homeless by the time he was twelve.