![]() He said he came to the Showcase Theater every night, no matter who played, just to fuck around. I had just become aware of hardcore, metal, and “scene kid” music and eyed it with distrust. I asked if he came to all the punk shows. It gave those hippies at school a run for their money. He had the tallest spiked hair I’d ever seen and the most thrashed, moldy Cramps shirt. I met a 19 or 20-ish year-old guy who’s name I don’t remember. This Corona was redneck shit indeed, and my sheltered Mexican-mom-having adolescent self was about to get his first taste of it. There were also a few middle aged people there too, just as punk as the rest. They screamed at each other, played grab-ass, while the older ones smoked cigarettes. The parking lot was alive with girls and boys with blue and pink hair, spiderweb tattoos, painted leather, and cheetah print everything. As we walked up to the building, he snapped a picture of the building’s cheesy marquee: The Showcase Theatre. My old man seemed more accustomed to this kind of scene than I was (after all, he saw the Doors in the 70s). We parked beside some girls hanging out in a blanketed truck camper, slyly drinking forties. We went another block or two, past the city library, and then I turned my head to see hundreds of kids surrounding a frumpy brick building next to the 99 Cent Store. In spite of some charming old buildings and a curving line of trees, the place felt somewhat sad. A Del Taco to our left, a 76 Station to the right. We got off on Main Street and arrived to what seemed to me like flat-in-the-middle of fucking nowhere. My dad excitedly reminisced about visiting his aunt in Corona in the early 60s, riding mini-bikes in empty fields, and eating hamburgers at Hi Spot. We drove out from La Puente on the 91 and the 71 on a school night. Two tickets it was, and a ride down two freeways I’d never heard of. This time, he wasn’t just dropping me off. I pleaded with my father to take me again. In my mind, that’s where Mexican and white punks gathered in mass numbers, stood together against fascists, smashed fast food restaurants, and where the Adicts played whenever you wanted to see them. It seemed like all of a sudden the Inland Empire was the place to be, before I even knew of it’s reputation. The bell rang and I headed to class while the hippie punks returned to their hacky sack game. The older, hippie punks I knew, who had claimed to smash a cop’s windshield that night said, “Oh, it’s at Showcase.” They didn’t seem too surprised, and smiled slightly.Īt what? At where? I had only heard of punk shows happening in backyards in the San Gabriel Valley, clubs in Hollywood, and this lame coffee shop in Azusa called Smart City Grinds where Cheap Sex played once. I was extremely disappointed to have missed the Adicts, essentially the only band I came to see, until it was announced that they were playing another show a week later, for half the price. My dad had been nearby listening to KFWB in his old Datsun, heard about what was going on, and came back and swooped me up. A flier announcing British punk band the Adicts return from hiatus to play at the Showcase Theatre in Corona, California Courtesy of Logan Colby A skinhead demonstration had led to a stabbing, tear gas, looting, and riot police. The show got shut down after I had been there for two or three bands. I was supposed to see them a week prior, not too far away at the British Invasion festival at the Orange Pavilion in San Bernardino. Way the fuck away from my home in La Puente. ![]() The Adicts at the Showcase Theatre in Corona, California. For us, literature and language are as much about marking and representing space, as they are about storytelling. With “Postcards,” creative non-fiction stories grounded in place, we aspire to create a new cartography of California.
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