On a Saturday afternoon in September, a fifteen-year-old with blue hair and a lot of piercings stood in River Bottom Park in Montrose and said something you don't hear much in town. "Normally when you're walking around and you kind of look like me, people like shoo their kids away from me," Arlo said. "But here no one's done that, which is nice."
This was Punk on the Unc, what may be the first punk festival Montrose has ever seen. KVNF put it on. The tickets were free, eight bands played, and for months nobody at the station knew whether anyone would show up. So we spent the afternoon asking the people who did come, why they decided to come out.
The first answer was surprise. "I didn't think people like this existed out here," one woman said. "They just came out of the woodwork."
Shane brought his whole family. "We don't get an opportunity to do that ever in this part of the world," he said. "Here in this part of the world, everyone kind of looks the same and acts the same, and it's good to get the weirdos out and the freaks and let the kids know that people look different and act different and that that's okay."
It was a chance for many to be seen and accepted as they are in a public setting. Arlo was at their first punk show ever. And for many, feeling seen and accepted is what got them to the show. Ana Maria is Arlo's mom, and she grew up not far away. "That was me when I was 15," she said. "I was totally punked out." That was more than twenty years ago, "and it was not quite the same as it is now for kids in small rural towns and I would have loved something like this when I was that age."
We heard some version of that story from almost everyone. Mara had pink hair and her face painted ghostly white. "I wear what makes me feel good about MYself," she said, "and it's really nice to be in an environment where that's somewhat normal." Her friend Eldon works in the oil field. "You can't really wear these kind of clothes out there," he said. "I finally get to come out and do something fun and wear what I want to wear."
Dennis Barker came with his daughter. He is a big man with a bushy beard and a metal band T-shirt, and a Marine Corps veteran.
"I didn't serve so that everyone could be like me," he said. "This is my kid. I tried to teach her to be different. Be yourself. You don't have to fit into any of these molds or any of that."
The last word went to a young man at the skate park, who told us the first band of the day had said that
'love and kindness is the most punk thing you can be right now'. "Mosh pits can be fun," he said, "because people will pick you up if you fall down. You don't necessarily get that everywhere."
