Call them Guttter Punks, Crusty Punks or modern day hobos – I call them human beings that live outside of “normal” society. Hordes of traveling punks are all over the world, and like most homeless, the larger society treats them as invisible beings. This is not the case with the New York Photographer Steve Hirsch, who has documented the Crusty Punk dwellers of Tompkins Square Park with dignity. What is awesome about his site is that with each photo he takes, he gives the person space to tell a story which draws you into the photo even more…Now check out a gallery of Steve Hirsch’s flicks, plus some words from the voices that society tries to sweep away!
My father was an attempted cop killer, he was doing twenty years to life for shooting a police officer three times. He was serving five years in CCI corrections and my mother met him visiting my uncle who was an incarcerated Hell’s Angels. As my mom would tell you, she fucking fell in love with a felon. Got a petition with three thousand signatures on it and got my dad released in five years served, five years probation. He got out impregnated my mom. I was born two months premature and I was dying.
I got into punk rock music and squatting when I was thirteen years old. By fifteen I had been in jail, was kicked out of high school and I had a son on the way. In two thousand one, January third, my son Seth Alan Parker was born. At that moment I knew that I would never stick a needle in my arm or ride a train or ever do anything that would ever threaten me being there for him. I’ve traveled all over America, just not on trains. I’ve stayed in the dirtiest squat houses. I’ve cried over dead friends. I’ve cried over live friends. When I was eighteen years old we started a crew, it’s called the Dirty South Crew. We’re all family. We’re all poor, white trash squatters, scum fucks, losers, throwaway kids. Some of my friends died from overdoses. Some of them killed themselves. Some of my friends are still alive and wish they were dead. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one left that’s still normal. I look around me and just see all this disease and drugs and just hopelessness.
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When I was seventeen years old I was at a punk show in my hometown of Columbia, South Carolina. A straight edge hardcore guy named…approached me from behind and tapped me on my shoulder and said my name. When I turned around he grabbed my by my shirt, stepped on my feet and he smashed my face in. I had three thousand dollars of reconstructive surgery putting my nose back together. Putting my eye socket back together. Half of my face is metal. I have screws and brackets in my face. When I woke up I didn’t have a nose. I didn’t have an eye. My eyeball was loosely hanging out of my socket. Everyone kinda likes to joke that I’m the man with the metal face. Six years later after I got my face busted in that same guy he got stabbed nine times by a Nazi and his car was set on fire…via Crustypunks
Danisthebastard
April 17, 2013 at 12:18 pm
If living outside of “normal” society means not working than ya their doing that for sure but spare changing for drugs and alcohol is floating smack dab in the mainstream. These are rad photos and the stories are interesting but I have seen plenty of shitty things go on between “crusties”. A lot of these kids walk around with a self entitlement thing because their squatters. Don’t want to lump them all together because I have met some really rad travelers but a lot of these people get a bad rap for a good reason. Anyhow In Grind We Crust,haha.