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A Dar t & A Dr eam : A DIY Cu lt u r e by Ken , Eileen & Tyson
Saint John has been touched on the in the letters from the editor, but after years of spending too much time observing, we have what feels like, endless amounts of notes to share. In Saint John, DIY kids are all or nothing. Like the city that surrounds the shows, it is boom or bust. Saint John?s massive gap in seemingly all things is reflected. Saint John is a port city. Foggy and gray, dominated by the Irving Oil Refinery, forever burning fires in the sky. When we were children the harbour used to stink like rotten eggs and sulfur. The pathos of the city ends up reflected in its residents; hard to find a 40 hours per week job without falling back on a call centre or Irving family-owned ventures, easy to become a statistic and get involved with drugs or become a teen parent. Fitting then, that like-minded young folk would come together and start bands, carrying the intangible feeling of being a Saint John local in our music. Like any town we have our challenges as a scene - we?ve raised our glasses to many a shuttered DIY venue. Our current stomping grounds is a Guatemalan restaurant where tables are cleared to the sides for an audience to gather, and we face fines as a community for running loud punk shows in a rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood. Nevertheless, we?re believed in and allowed to grow there and we adjusted our time slots to compensate.
