Punk Rock Got Wholesome
Doc Martens and Dad Duty
Punk rock concerts aren’t what they used to be.
I don’t even know if that’s a bad thing.
It just… is what it is.
My kid’s current favorite band is local — The Creepshow from Burlington, Ontario of all places. And if he wanted the “real” punk experience, the one I grew up imagining, he’d probably be heading into Toronto for a show at Lee’s Palace.
But those shows are still 19+.
And since kids today apparently lack the entrepreneurial spirit required to obtain a fake ID, the solution became a two-hour drive to Kingston.
Now if you’re from Kingston and offended by this next part, I apologize in advance, but for me Kingston has always represented exactly two things: the de facto home of Paul Bernardo, until Kingston Pen was shut down, and receiving cancer treatments for weeks at a time.
How Bryan Adams crawled out of there I’ll never know.
At seventeen, a concert two hours from home would’ve involved borrowing the minivan, gathering a bunch of idiots together, and constructing elaborate lies convincing our parents we definitely were *not* driving to some filthy sports bar 200 kilometers away to watch strangers scream into microphones.
But this isn’t what punk looks like anymore.
The bar itself is still seedy.
Sticky floors. Buzzing neon signs. A bathroom door that looks like it survived several knife fights and at least one small electrical fire.
That part hasn’t changed.
The vibe has.
There’s somebody’s tattooed aunt teaching a couple weirdly dressed thirteen-year-olds how to play pool.
A clean-cut mom and dad standing beside their teenage daughter looking like they’d normally spend Saturday night at a golf club fundraiser instead of a punk show above a Subway sandwich shop.
A few genuine music fans in their sixties sitting quietly in the corner because they still love live music enough to leave the house.
And then there’s the locals — the regulars.
You can spot them immediately.
Because honestly, where else are they gonna be on a Saturday night except the bar above a Subway in Kingston?
Gone is the anger.
There is exactly zero chance of a fight breaking out.
Nobody’s posturing anymore. Nobody’s trying to prove how hard they are. Nobody’s looking for an excuse to swing on somebody because they got bumped in the pit.
Girls walk around relaxed.
Not scanning the room. Not calculating exits. Not wondering which guy is going to mistake friendliness for permission.
And maybe the strangest part of all?
Almost everybody is there with their parents.
Literally.
Dads holding merch hoodies.
Moms pretending not to know the lyrics while quietly singing along anyway.
Parents encouraging their kids to dance instead of trying to drag them home.
That would’ve been social suicide when I was growing up.
The whole point of punk culture used to be separation from adults. You escaped your parents. Escaped supervision. Escaped normal life.
But there’s no separation anymore.
Not culturally.
Popular culture isn’t divided by generations the way it used to be.
Back then you could identify someone’s age from across the room by their jeans, haircut, and CD collection. Parents listened to classic rock. Kids listened to punk or grunge or hip hop. Grandparents listened to whatever terrifying war-era music made them emotionally unavailable.
Everything had lanes.
Now everybody consumes the same algorithm.
A teenager listens to vinyl and 1990s emo.
A fifty-year-old man watches TikTok and wears sneakers designed for teenagers.
Kids discover bands from forty years ago before they discover local bands from their own city.
The walls collapsed.
And honestly, all the boundaries of propriety were already bulldozed decades ago.
Blue hair? Nobody cares.
Tattoos? Teachers have sleeves now.
Piercings? Your dentist probably has a nose ring.
Punk fashion got absorbed into mall culture sometime around the third Hot Topic expansion.
Even rebellion became branding.
Some older Gen Xers are dancing like Molly Ringwald in Breakfast club.
The only remnant of the old days is the smell of cigarette smoke drifting in through an open window because we stopped smoking indoors decades ago.
That smell hits like a time machine.
For one second you’re seventeen again.
Outside a venue.
Cold air.
Someone asking for a light.
A girl with dyed black hair laughing too loud.
A guy in a patched denim vest explaining anarchism badly.
Then the moment passes.
And instead of danger, alienation, and kids desperately trying to harden themselves against the world, what you mostly see is people having a genuinely nice time.
Which honestly feels very un-punk.
And yet maybe it’s the most punk thing imaginable.
Because wasn’t Gen X’s whole problem that adults didn’t understand them?
That’s what so much of the anger was about in the first place.
Feeling unseen.
Unheard.
Disconnected.
So are we really supposed to resent a younger generation because they don’t have to struggle through adolescence the same way we did?
That would be insane.
Why would we want kids to inherit our loneliness just so they can earn authenticity points?
A lot of what we romanticize about older generations was just untreated anxiety with a soundtrack.
Sure, the struggle created incredible music and identity and culture.
But it also created a lot of isolated kids trying desperately to find somewhere they belonged.
So maybe it’s okay that punk became wholesome.
Maybe it’s okay that parents understand their kids better now. That girls feel safer. That weird kids don’t have to hide quite as much. That rebellion softened into community.
Maybe this isn’t punk dying.
Maybe this is what happens after the outsiders finally win.
So as long as my kid’s still cool having me around, I’ll be there.
Standing awkwardly near the back in my Doc Martens, leather jacket, and the Bukowski t-shirt I made myself because honestly, where else are you gonna get one?
Trying not to look too interested. Pretending I’m only there as the ride.
Meanwhile I’m secretly judging the sound mix, admiring the bass player, and wondering if my knees can still survive a mosh pit without needing physiotherapy afterward.
And maybe that’s the final evolution of punk rock:
not rebellion,
not rage,
not even youth.
Just generations of weird people finding each other over loud music and realizing they were never actually that different.
FACT CHECK ME.