Organizations, institutions and networks in local scenes: The growth of San Francisco Bay Area punk rock

摘要

Economic geographers have extensively acknowledged the importance of the cultural industries to many regional economies and have begun to establish that these industries have economically important interactions with local "underground scenes." Less well known however is how these scenes themselves develop. Based on archival research on zines, or small circulation independently produced magazines, I illustrate how the 1980s San Francisco Bay Area punk rock scene was a vibrant cultural community. I demonstrate how what was once an underground scene also became a commercialized one, with bands like Green Day and Rancid becoming hugely popular in the 1990s "wave" or growth of the genre. I develop a framework for understanding the growth of local scenes, arguing that the essential ingredients are a robust mix of organizations, institutions and networks. Of particular importance are institutional practices of frequent communication and inclusivity and networks on both local and extra local scales.