(Brown Town, Athens, Ohio, 3.14.2009)
Halloween 2004 was alright and the skatepark is always fun, but, seriously, fuck Athens. I generally respect rural Ohio folk, that is where I grew up, and I’ve learned to tolerate the perpetual nightmare of being around Ohio public universities, but the combination has left me saying I’m never coming back the last half a dozen times or so.
This trip was nearly the exception.
I saw some great bands at Brown Town including Region Rock superstars Fuck It Factory (photos 1 and 2), Sister Shuffle (3-5) striped down punk with singing at times that sounds like the better female Crass vocals (they keep getting tighter each time I see them – maybe it’s the dual set of siblings?), and Panty Hearst, the band I’ve been hearing the most lately and still don’t know the words.
No, the trouble in Athens this time began on Sunday. On Saturday night the Columbus entourage raged it hard and late, yet respectful, before ten of us crashed across the downstair of some punk house. Around 10 a.m. or so we hear some stomping and a dude comes down the steps slamming doors, bumping into us and carrying a large suitcase.
Did he just move out?
Nope, unfortunately. A few minutes later he comes back in and continues to slam doors until we get this is some sort of passive aggressive signal to leave.
While piling into the van we notice our rear license plate is spraypainted black. It’s the only one on the entire block.
While driving to the outskirts of town we get a call from our host saying his roommate, the door slammer, said we stole all the knives from the house. Right … We might piss some people off when we roll deep to other cities, but we have our own knives.
Turns out it was just a lie by door slammer to get his roommate to hate us.
Sometimes a good ass kicking is the only language people like this understand. Come to Columbus, motherfucker. We’ll show you where we hide our knives. That is if you can watch us stab you through your spraypainted eyes.
