Our hometown of gaming tables, showroom stages, and celebrity chef restaurants is developing a reputation as a home to something else: weird museums. From neon signs to cursed dolls to Tommy guns, collections of the unusual have succeeded where fine art has failed. The newest addition to the roster may be the most unexpected — not just for Las Vegas, but anywhere — as the Punk Rock Museum prepares for its March grand opening. How does a cultural movement founded on sweat, spit, safety pins, and smashing institutions turn itself into, well, an institution?
“Punk rock is more than just ‘smash the state.’ There’s passion and creativity. Its influence has reverberated through art and other music forms and education, even the way that people approach doing business,” museum co-founder Vinnie Fiorello says. “It wasn’t supposed to last at all, but it’s lasted 50 years.”
Fifty years?! Does a punk rock museum mean that punk is dead, like the mummies of the Egyptian Museum or the dinosaurs of the American Museum of Natural History? Scott Crawford, director of the Washington, D.C., punk/hardcore documentary Salad Days and author of the accompanying book Spoke, doesn’t think so. “I've never subscribed to the idea of punk being dead and never will. Every new generation redefines it and makes it something entirely their own,” he says, adding that museums are essential to “helping to document and preserve such an important cultural movement. It’s only natural that some of the people that were informed by punk rock are now in positions where they can create such a space.”
The museum’s collection will be organized chronologically, from early ’70s Blondie relics to last year’s Amyl and the Sniffers merch. But there will also be a focus on the punk scene of various cities. “Before the internet, you had this sort of tribalism of San Francisco punks and L.A. punks and New York punks and Chicago punks and being able to show that sort of tight-knit group — the shows and the clubs and the photos and some artifacts,” Fiorello says. The relics of punk rock tend to be ephemeral: flyers, setlists, T-shirts, ’zines, cassette tapes, and 45s, although there are some sturdier items such as club signage and leather jackets. There are also guitars, but their durability may depend on museum guests, since visitors will be able to actually play the instruments used by bands such as Rise Against, Sick of It All, and Pennywise.
There’s one thing Crawford would like to see — or hear — within the museum: “In addition to the flyers, photos, and usual ephemera, I think keeping an audio archive that includes first-person accounts of various shows, events, and personal stories would be a nice addition — kind of like a punk rock StoryCorps, if you will.” And the museum will have its storytellers, although you won’t be able to press play on them without getting your hand smacked: Members of bands such as Agnostic Front, Anti-Flag, L7, and more will offer personally guided tours for smaller groups (and a bigger ticket price).
The Mob Museum, the Neon Museum and the Atomic Museum, among others, all represent major parts of Las Vegas history. But punk rock is a minor part of the city’s past … at best. While there was indeed a scene here, it was no New York or Los Angeles, or even Boston or Minneapolis. Which is actually part of the reason the city was chosen, according to Fiorello. “People have big thoughts on New York punks to L.A. punks, or L.A. punks to San Francisco punks. But Las Vegas is a very neutral city,” he says.
If punk is neutral on Vegas, there was a time when Vegas was definitely not neutral on punk. (Former Desert Companion editor) Andrew Kiraly, who booked and played shows back in the ’90s, recalls struggling to find places to put on bands. “The punk scene had to deal with really strict laws, so we had to go kind of DIY,” he says. “We had venues like the VFW hall on Main. There was the Tubes — that was a series of drainage tunnels. Losee Road — empty places at the edge of town, industrial infrastructure meets desert. There was a place called the Caves because they were actual physical caves.”
If Las Vegas is a punk rock Switzerland, it’s also a place that’s fiscally feasible for both the museum and its patrons. “If we were going to put that same size, 12,000 square feet, of a museum in New York City, it would cost an exponential amount more money, and the same goes for Los Angeles or London,” Fiorello says. “Vegas is set up for people from everywhere to be able to go there, stay there at a reasonable price.”
Of course, it’s not as though the Punk Rock Museum is in a corporate casino or tourist trap. It’s on Western Avenue near the train tracks, down the street from a 7-Eleven, next door to a strip club. And Las Vegas’ one globally renowned contribution to punk culture will be represented within the museum: The bar will be an outpost of the legendary dive, the Double Down Saloon. “In Las Vegas, punk bars and (Double Down owner) P Moss kind of go hand-in-hand,” Fiorello says. “We’re lucky to have him involved.”
Fiorello continues, “Moss did say something very right on the money. He said, ‘You don’t know what this space is gonna become. You have to open it and let people come. They gravitate to what they like, and it takes on a life of its own, and it becomes what it’s supposed to become, not what we think it’s supposed to be.’ He meant the bar, but that’s the spirit of the museum, the spirit of punk rock music.”
It’s also a spirit that has found a home in a town that never wanted to give it one. Punk indeed.