life

NATU RE

BY GREG QEXem M

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ H

Can you be a punk

rocker and swear
off drugs, cigarettes,
violence, alcohol
andy oh yeah, meat?

THAT'S WHAT
STRAIGHT-EDGE ROCKER
STEVE HANSGEN
THOUGHT OF THE KIDS IN
SCHOOL WHO DRANK
AND SMOKED

OCTOBER

2005

hen Tom Schlattet

began touring with punk
rock bands at age 16, life
on the road was hard.
"Being a vegetarian, sometitnes there
was nothing to eat but bagels and
humtnus," the lead guitarist for
Infidel recalls. That was 10 years ago.
Today, Schlatter fares much better.
"Wherever there are punk rock clubs,
you'll always find vegan restaurants.
You eat really well."
Vegan punk rockers? Tattooed
skinheads who won't cat meat?
Yep-and more of them than you
might imagine, thanks to a youth
movement that calls itself straightedge. An offshoot of the punk scene

of the 1980s, straight-edge began

in Washington, DC, and has spread
throughout the United States and
Great Britain, embracing vegetarianism and veganism.
Swearing off meat was a logical
extension of the movement's
opposition to drugs, alcohol, tobacco
and, in Schlatter's words, anything
else "that the system uses to keep you
sedated." A reaction to the selfdestructive tendencies of the early
punk scene, straight-edge embraces
positive values, including control
over one's life. It also functions as
a form of shorthand. Offered drugs
or booze, kids can just say, "I'm
straight-edge." End of discussion.

w w w . v e g e t a r i a n t i m e s . c o m

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Schlatter seems to have

achieved an enviable balance:
He spends September
through May working as
a computer technician for the
New Jersey public schools,
and he tours during the
summer with his band. His
wife, Leigh, with whom
he used to tour when they
both played in a band called
The Assistant, teaches second
grade. In the summers, she
handles vocals and keyboards
for the straight-edge band
Wrong Day to Quit.
Marriage is not unusual
among older straight-edge
enthusiasts. Many of them
abstain from sex until they
are in committed relationships that lead to marriage.
Schlatter has been a vegetarian for more than a decade.
"About the same time that
I was working for a restaurant
and had to prepare tripe,
I was talking to friends who
were already vegetarians,"
he says. "I was originally
attracted more for ethical
than health reasons. Eventually, vegetarianism just fits
in with a universal respect for
yourself and for the world
around youa sense of how
your actions affect others.
I just didn't want to take
part in the killing of other
creatures." Today he says that
80 percent of the straightedge kids he knows are
vegetarians, and the vast
majority of those are vegans.

A MAnER OF CHOICE
They are opposed to violence,
which also sets straight-edge
apart from the punk scene. In
the early days, Fights between
straight-edge and other Idds

OCTOBER

200S

life

NATURE

For a better breakfast and a longer life,

were not uncommoti, and the

straight-edge set was often
regarded as exclusive and
even hostile toward others.
"When I was younger," Leigh
Schlatter says now, "there
was a lot of 'scene-policing'
going on, which gave straightedge a bad name. People
thought we were exclusive
and disapproved of other
people. They'd say, 'I was
afraid to talk co vou because

MARKS THE SPOT

Straight-edge adherents
often identify themselves
to one another with an X
drawn on the back of
the hand. This symbol
began as a show of
solidarity with rock fans
old enough to enter the
clubs but not old enough
to order alcohol. To show
bartenders that the
underage kids can't be
served alcohol legally,
bouncers marked their
hands with Xs. Eventually, older straight-edge
fans adopted the symbol.

you were straight-edge.' But

as I've become an adult, it's
more like a personal choice
not to participate in drinking
or smoking. If others choose
to do something else, as long
as they do it responsibly,
well, that's okay."
If straight-edge kids set
themselves apart from other

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punkers, there was a good

reason for it: They wanted an
alternative to the destructive
excesses of the punk scene.
Back then, Steve Hansgen,
who is now in his 40s and
makes his living as a recording engineer, played with
the first straight-edge band,
Ian McKaye's Minor Threat,
when the group had just set
out on what was its second
national tour.
"In high school, my best
friends and I were against
drinking, drugs and smoking,
mainly because the kids at
school who smoked and
drank were all idiots as for as

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I'm a person just like you

Circle reply #33 on Inio Center card

But I've got better things

to do
Than sit around ond
smoke dope
'Cause I know I con cope
Lough at the thought of
eoting 'ludes
Laugh at the thought of
sniffing glue
Always gonna keep
in touch
Never wont to use
a crutch
t I've got the stroight edge.
L

BYIANMCKAYE

we were concerned,' Hansgen

reflects. "We really didn't
know then what any of this
stood forat the time it was
basically just a way of setting
ourselves apart. By the
spring of 1981, though, we
had started to call ourselves
'straight-edge.'"

Cirde reply #9 on Info Center card

OCTOBER

2005

life

NATURE

THE NATURAL GOURMET

INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM
The song by that name (see
"Lyrics," left) became the
anthem of the movement,
which went national, then
international. Before long,
kids who were producing
straight-edge CDs in their
apartments were moving their
music businesses into offices
with warehouses.
Still, it is unlikely that
straight-edge will ever become
mainstream. But Schlatter
regularly discovers that he
has more in common with
vegetarians from more
bourgeois walks of life than
he might imagine. "Whenever
I go to the Jersey shore in
the summer, I shop at the
same health food store as a lot
of tie-dye types," Schlatter
says. "But we get along fine.
There's a sense of community
there that is really cool."

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Grde reply #36 on Info Center card

Schlatter also has an aunt

a "super metropolitan yuppie
type"^who told him at a
recent family picnic that she's
a vegan. "It's strange. Weird."
Most amazing of all to
him, Schlatter's 13-yeat-old
cousin announced that he'd
gotten into punk rock. "Then
he told me that he had also
joined the Human Rights
Campaign, to fight homophobia," Schlatter says.
"It's amazing that somebody
that young would understand
the politics behind the
musicsomething a lot of
punkers never did."
The Schlatters have yet to
start a family, but when they
do, they intend to raise their
children as vegans. What if
they rebel? "Well," Schlatter
says, "you have to let people
lead their lives. That's part of
being straight-edge too."

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