I was riding on a fairly empty bus the other day and I came to a horrible realization; two of the five people on the bus had mohawks. No, we were not headed toward the Fireside Bowl on the Fullerton bus 10 years ago, this was yesterday on the Irving Park bus. And I'm pretty damn certain that neither of my mohawk sporting friends had even heard of the Fireside Bowl. Why do I say this? Because they had mohawks for FASHION. At least, this is my guess. Not a lot of punks wear Armani Exchange where I come from, I'm just saying.
I see people with mohawks all the goddamn time nowadays and it makes my blood boil. I don't want to sound like an old man but back in my day having a mohawk meant something. If you had a mohawk you were a punk, period. Unless we're talking about way, way back in the day; then it meant you were part of the mohawk tribe. Even I'm not old enough to remember that. It was sort of a uniform for nonconformists, as silly as that may sound. If I saw a guy with a mohawk on the bus I could sit down next to him and discuss the latest Descendents album and I liked that. I liked the social profiling aspect of having a silly hair cut (mohawks, spiked hair, tri-hawks) and silly hair color; it basically let me know that we were on the same team. In my mind it was really no different than having a bunch of patches on your back pack or pins on your jacket.
Now it seems like everyone has some sort of mohawk. Or, God help us, they have a fucking faux hawk. Look, if you are going to spend the time and stick all the gunk in your hair to get it to stand on end in the middle just shave the sides, don't half ass it, son. At first I was irritated because I felt that if you weren't a punk you didn't deserve to have a mohawk. Quickly I understood how silly that was and that wasn't where my hatred came from at all. It came from one simple reality:
MOHAWKS LOOK STUPID.
Seriously, they look awful. There is no good reason to have a mohawk unless you are a punk or you are about to go shoot Jodie Foster's pimp. I feel that when they are worn by punks that it is done in sort of tongue in cheek way and that's why I accept that. At least I think that my friends who have been mohawked in the past have always had that self awareness about it. Yet when I see some dope who is obviously in art school with a mohawk I immediately know there is only one reason he has a mohawk, because he thinks it looks good. That's what drove me so fucking bananas staring at the assholes on the bus yesterday. Every little aspect of their "look" had been meticulously crafted. They had perfect little outfits of skinny jeans and designer name clothes. . . and mohawks. I guran-damn-tee they went to a stylist to get their cool haircut as well. In the summer they might even frost the tips to look even more fierce. Please.
Whatever tiny bit of coolness a person gains from a mohawk comes from the DIY aspect of it. You don't have a stylist fashion your mohawk for $75, you shave it yourself in a dirty bathroom while listening to Bad Brains.
(As an aside at the end here, if Krut or Ben reads this I will allow you 1 punch on the upper shoulder region. No more, no less.)
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