This article examines the narratives that enabled and legitimized the gentrification of several neighbourhoods of Washington DC during the 1980s. What links each of the neighbourhoods (Georgetown, Mt. Pleasant, Adams Morgan, sections of the U Street/Shaw neighbourhood and parts of Penn Quarter) is that all experienced gentrification after the arrival of punk communities to their spaces in the early 1980s. I argue that DC punk urbanism is tied to a process through which middle- and upper-class suburban youth valorize neighbourhoods marked by urban decay and disinvestment, occupy those spaces without putting themselves into relation with already existing subaltern urbanisms and subsequently replace the neighbourhood fabrics of the residents who formerly lived there with their own.
Review of: Music by Numbers: The Use and Abuse of Statistics in the Music Industries, Richard Osborne and Dave Laing (eds) (2021)
Bristol: Intellect, 270 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-78938-253-2, h/bk, £85.00
Review of: The London Musicians’ Collective: ‘An Obstinate Clot of Invention’, Trevor Barre (2020)
London: Limbic, 233 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-52726-657-9, p/bk, £13.00
Pianos, Toys, Music and Noise: Conversations with Steve Beresford, Andy Hamilton (2021)
London: Bloomsbury, 291 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-50136-644-4, h/bk, £81.00
Review of: I’m Not Holding Your Coat: My Bruises-And-All Memoir of Punk Rock Rebellion, Nancy Barile (2021)
New York: Bazillion Points, 190 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-93595-020-2, p/bk, $14.95
Review of: Punkzines: British Fanzine Culture from the Punk Scene 1976–1983, Eddie Piller and Steve Rowland (2021)
London: Omnibus Press, 176 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-91317-213-8, p/bk, £16.99
