1991: THE YEAR PUNK BROKE (1992) - David Markey
I first saw 1991 THE YEAR PUNK BROKE when I was a freshman in high school. I was hanging out at Eat’n Park with a couple of my friends, we would do this sometimes on a Friday nights before we could drive. You could just order a coffee and water and stay as long as you wanted, plus there was a good chance that’s where everyone else would be as it was the only place open late in that particular suburb of Pittsburgh.
One of our older friends, a senior, came over and sat down with us. He asked if we liked Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. because his parents were gone for the weekend and some people were gonna head over there later and watch the movie, he’d just bought a copy at Eides (that’s where you went in Pittsburgh in the early to mid 90’s to buy the records and movies you couldn’t find in the suburbs). I remember driving there, stuffed in the back of my neighbors tiny Suzuki Samurai Jeep. Whipping around the dark windy roads so fast that I was sure I would fall out before we arrived. The movie it turned out, was mostly an excuse for everyone to smoke pot and make out. I wasn’t doing either of those things at that point so I watched all of it. It was only when it was over that I noticed that my ride had disappeared, presumably he’d gone off with a girl or maybe just vanished into the night, it was hard to say. One of my friends lived nearby though so we walked to his house. I remember as I fell asleep on his bedroom floor late that evening that the night felt particularly monumental.
Now almost twenty years it’s finally available on DVD.
