SOMETHING STILL STICKS in my mind from the scattered anti-WTO vandals so long ago (was it really just four weeks?).

The most blatant, deliberate vandalism I saw involved a team of boys in black clothes with punk-anarchist insignia, pounding on Gap windows with small hammers until the windows finally cracked. They were communicating to (or at least greeting) one another with fake gangsta hand signals.

Back in my day, sonny, punk-anarchists didn’t pretend to be black. They pretended to be English.

But I shouldn’t have been all that surprised.

After all, it was at least five years ago that I realized punk had become older than hippie had been when punk started. As we approach a quarter-century since the first Ramones and Richard Hell gigs at CBGB’s in NYC, some two dozen or more variants on the old three-chord garage sound have come, gone, and in many cases come back–hardcore, queercore, emocore, mathcore, etc. etc.

But for the purposes of gross oversimplification (and what could be more punk than that?), let’s compare, in excessively broad definitions, punk (as I’d known it in the late-’70s-early-’80s timeframe) with today’s neopunk (the subculture that the Gap and Van’s Shoes, among other marketers, have been trying to exploit, to the anarchists’ disgust):

PHENOM..............PUNK...............NEOPUNK

Food................Greaseburgers.......Vegan burritos

Beverage............Jaegermeister.......Mountain Dew

Drug................Smack (alas)........Ecstasy (alas)

Summer..............Tour van overheats..Skateboarding

Winter..............Van stuck in snow...Snowboarding

Emotional stance....Glum ennui..........Exuberance

Footwear............Converse............Docs

Economic prospects..Dim indeed..........Where's my stock options?

Af-Am hero..........James Brown.........Ice-T

McDonald's..........Reliably mediocre...Root of all evil

Sex.................Simple time-waster..Too complicated by gender

Porn................Simple time-waster..Only OK if gay or fem-dom

Athletics...........Root of all evil....X-treme, man!

Vehicle of choice...Beat-up Chevy van...Rebuilt mountain bike

Baseball cap........Frontwards..........Backwards

Video game..........Atari 2600..........Dreamcast

Christians..........Annoying fascists...Tonight's opening band

Britain.............Rebel role models...No snow or surf

Corporate America...Trying to stop us...Trying to take us over

Fave hibrow author..Wm. Burroughs.......Edward Abbey

Hippies.............Old farts...........Young, cute, often naked

Major labels........Won't sign us.......Drop us, leave us in debt

Girlfriend..........Supports me w/job...My drummer

Boyfriend...........Sucks...............Licks

Future death-cause..Liver damage........Broken neck