Standing on the crowded sidewalks of St. Marks Place, tour guide Bobby Pinn is recognizable by his bleached blond hair—spiked for extra effect— multiple earrings, and aviator sunglasses. His shoulder bag, stuffed full of old record covers and photographs to display, sports a patch from one of his favorite punk bands, Rancid. Oh, and his real name isn’t Bobby Pinn, because the great punk rockers never went by their real names. Just ask Sid Vicious, Iggy Pop, and Joey Ramone, to name a few.
Pinn, whose real name is Ron Colinear, runs Rock Junket, a company that gives walking tours of New York City’s musical history. On the East Village Rock ’n’ Punk tour, he guides curious natives and tourists alike through the streets of the East Village and Alphabet City, pointing out the landmarks of punk, jazz, and rock that in today’s landscape go unnoticed by most passers-by.
“When you think of the East Village, you immediately think of creativity, music, artists, and fashion. In the 1950s and ’60s, St. Marks Place was becoming the counterculture street of America,” Pinn said.
The tour begins outside the final home of American punk icon Joey Ramone, on the corner of 9th Street and Second Avenue, and this serves as a fitting start to a journey back in time to a classic era of cultural rebellion. While pointing out sites such as the house where Iggy Pop once lived and the building that graces the cover of the Led Zeppelin album “Physical Graffiti,” Pinn drops in interesting nuggets of information—for instance, how Joey Ramone liked to drink Yoo-hoo backstage at his shows.
In many ways, the East Village of today bears little resemblance to the East Village of 30 years ago. For instance, Fillmore East—the rock venue where bands like the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers Band, and Jefferson Airplane played sold-out shows—is now the site of a bank, with the interior completely gutted and replaced. The street where Madonna first lived in squalor among drug dealers and the homeless is now lined with luxury apartments and neighborhood moms going for walks with their strollers. Much of the punk and rock ’n’ roll spirit that once charged the city streets seems gone.
“Like any big city, a lot of New York revolves around money and the pursuit of affluence. Punk music offers a rejection of that,” Natalie Robehmed, CC ’13, said. “I also think that the community spirit punk fosters can be really comforting. Punk is all about DIY ethics—putting on a show for you and your friends even if you have no venue other than your own living room.”
Robehmed hosts “Oi! Oi! Oi!,” a ska-punk show, on WBAR every Friday from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. She finds that small venues such as Death By Audio, located in Brooklyn, keep the punk spirit alive today, offering all-ages shows for under $10.
“I don’t think making punk into a tourist attraction will really keep the spirit alive—it’s in the small venues and the music of local punk bands that you’ll get it,” Robehmed said.
The last stop on the tour, CBGB (which stands for country, bluegrass, and blues), served as the epicenter of the emerging new wave and punk movements of the 1970s, featuring performances by bands such as the Ramones, Blondie, the Talking Heads, and the Misfits. Though the punk landmark is now the site of high-end men’s fashion brand John Varvatos, original graffiti still adorns the walls inside, preserving a small part of the musical history of the East Village for the years to come.