Having a guest speaker talk about his experiences with punk rock was very unique and interesting, as it is not a field I normally hear about. Listening to Rich Stremme take us along his punk rock journey was very captivating. For him, his story started when his family moved to Connecticut and he was 11 years old. His aunt and uncle took him to a show and he found a group that sparked his interest, realizing that he wanted to be a part of their world. At the age of 12, he started making zines in order to start communication with people he did not know. Zines allowed him to network with people and create scenes with those in his area. His first show was to see the Anrthax and they later moved from the eastern part of Connecticut to the western part of the state for more space. He noticed that predominantly males attended these events, revealing the culture surrounding punk rock at the time. When he went to this show, he spread his zines around and met people that he ultimately wanted to begin a band with. Once he began making his own records, he sold them for a third less than what it cost him to produce, therefore he proved that the value for him was not in climbing an economic scale, but only socially become known. One of his most vibrant memories is the show he held in a poor neighborhood in Texas, nevertheless with people attending from both sides of the border. The events he experienced during this show felt surreal to him, as helicopters circulated with lights trying to catch border-hoppers. He channeled his experience in El Paso into the writing of his vinyl, Ashamed To Be White. After he graduated college, he moved to Brooklyn and met a graffiti artist, Revs. They initiated a collective band named God Squad and always had a mission; they would make crosses out wood and place them all over the city. Overall, punk rock is a free space, thus it does not need to be audio or physical, but whatever one can carve out and express, as Rich Stremme quotes from Ian MacKaye, concluding the essence of this topic.

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