Punk

What is BORF? Washington commuters in 2004 were all too familiar with the graffiti campaign and its mysterious artist. Even if the paint is gone, the punky, rebellious message remains. Borf is one, Borf is many. Borf is coming for your comfort.

No doubt D.C. music fans were intrigued when they picked up the Washington City Paper on September 23, 1983: "Funk funk funk funk it up at the pick of the picks tonite…a combination of punk and funk that should be the hottest show of the summer." For the first time, Trouble Funk and Minor Threat would be performing together. The show melded D.C.'s dominant homegrown music styles, Go-go and Hardcore Punk, and promised to be a concert like no other.

Emerging in D.C. in the early 1990s, the Riot Grrrl movement changed punk music, making space for young female musicians and ushering in a new wave of DIY activism. In reaction to the violence and sexism of the hardcore music scene, Riot Grrrl made way for a "girl-dominated" punk community, and though the movement was short lived, and arguably short sighted, its impact on punk music, let alone the D.C. scene, was massive. 

The first fliers that appeared in the mail in the summer of 1985 seemed inconspicuous enough. All of them, though, were emblazoned with the slogan, “Be on your toes. This is Revolution Summer.”

Washington in the 1980s served as the backdrop for the emergence of hardcore punk and the straight edge movement. Fed up with what they believed was a culture of excess that had incorporated itself into the punk subculture of the 1970s, a small group of teenage Washingtonians decided to take matters into their own hands. The goal? "Renouncing the unattainable rock & roll myth, making music relevant for real people."

The 1995 rumors were true. The famed 9:30 Club was gearing up to move from its downtown F Street location, to its new home at 815 V St. NW, formerly known as the WUST Radio Music Hall. While the club was known as a destination for alternative music in the 1980s, it had just as strong a reputation for being cramped and dirty. Owners Seth Hurwitz and Rich Heinecke, hoped to create a larger and cleaner space, while keeping all of the 9:30’s atmosphere and character. And on January 5, 1996, the reborn 9:30 Club opened with a concert from the Smashing Pumpkins.

When the Atlantic building at 930 F Street NW was completed in 1888, it was on the cutting edge. Designed by James Hill Green, the supervising architect of the U.S. Treasury Department, it was the biggest commercial structure in the District and one of the first to feature a passenger elevator. Over time, however, it was gradually was overshadowed by newer, flashier modern buildings, and became a largely-forgotten bit of the District's architectural history... until the 1980s, when the building achieved new fame as the epicenter of the District's alternative music scene.

Chuck Brown, Trouble Funk, Rare Essence, Minor Threat, SOA... If you lived in DC in the 1980s, you probably recognize these as local Go-Go and hardcore bands. If that's the case, the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s exhibit, Pump Me Up, is sure to invoke nostalgia. For those who have come here more recently, the exhibit offers a rare opportunity to see how much DC has changed in the last thirty years and how homegrown music was right at the center of the city's experience.