SEPARATING FROM HARDCORE

RITUAL: SITUATING POST-

TRADITIONAL RELIGIOUS
EXPERIENCE IN THE LIFE COURSE
WITH EX-STRAIGHTEDGERS
Jason Torkelson

ABSTRACT

This article explores aspects of separation from “post-traditional” religiosity

characteristic of certain late/post-modern affiliations. To do so, I analyze in-
depth interviews with 44 individuals who formerly identified with straightedge –
a clean-living youth-oriented scene tightly bound with hardcore music that is
centered on abstinence from intoxicants – about their experiences transitioning
through associated music assembly rituals. While features of hardcore music
assemblies – e.g. moshing, slamdancing, sing-a-longs – have long been treated as
symbolic connections that potentially conjure the religious as conceptualized in
Émile Durkheim’s “effervescence” and the liminality of Victor Turner’s
“communitas,” data on transitions from these features of ritual remain scant.
Ex-straightedgers generally believed the sorts of deep connections they pro-
fessed to experience in hardcore rituals as youths were not necessarily currently
accessible to them, nor were they replicable elsewhere. Findings then ultimately
suggest some post-traditional religious experiences might now be profitably
considered in terms of the life course, which has itself transformed alongside the
proliferation of newer late/post-modern affiliations and communities.

Keywords: Straight edge; subculture; life course; effervescence; communitas;

liminality

Subcultures
Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 54, 31–52
Copyright © 2022 by Emerald Publishing Limited
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-239620220000054003
31
32 JASON TORKELSON

This is my therapy
You breathe life into me
My only sanity
Within these walls is where I’m free…
These are the only crowded rooms…where I’m not alone –Bane (2005)
The sense of the niche, community, brotherhood when you’re younger…I mean you’re standing
there in a room full of kids who are screaming the same thing and it’s so positive, so full of hope
and everything that is beautiful and wonderful … and it’s very uplifting … I don’t think that
there is much else that is quite the same. For example, a football team could maybe have the
same effect but its organized by an adult, its part of this institution…your parents are into it.
This is so removed from that, it’s so very DIY, it’s very do-it-yourself … It very much satisfied
something for me that I don’t think anything else could have quite done except for maybe
religion, and I don’t really have that. –Margaret from New Jersey, 28, Attorney

INTRODUCTION
The forms in which youth culture congeals into sites of gathering, or potential
community, has comprised a central fixture in subcultural studies – from
canonizing work on post-World War II working class youth formations in 1970s
Britain (Cohen 1972; Hall and Jefferson 1976), to more recent considerations of
affective or ephemeral youth affinities (Bennett 1999; Redhead 1997). In cultures
where music has been central, scholars have frequently emphasized the potential
for “peak” or “sacred” experiences, akin to the religious underpinnings of Émile
Durkheim’s effervescence and the liminality in Victor Turner’s communitas
(Durkheim 1995[1912]; Turner 1967, 1969, 1974), to materialize inside music-
based assemblies (cf. Fonarow 2006; Gaillot 1999; Haenfler 2006; St John 2004;
Lewin 2015; Tsistos 1999). While documentations of the “sacred” in youth
studies, roughly understood here as “post-traditional” religious experience, are
abundant, empirical data on this aspect of separation from these rituals is scant.
In this article, I explore degrees of passage through one such type of assembly
ritual: the hardcore show. More specifically, I analyze the accounts of 44 indi-
viduals who previously identified with straightedge – a clean-living youth-
oriented scene tightly bound with hardcore music centered on abstinence from
intoxicants – about their experiences with, participation in, and transitions from
hardcore music shows. As reflected in the above song lyrics by the internationally
prominent hardcore band Bane, who themselves formerly espoused straightedge
values, a state of heightened togetherness is idealized in this gathering context.
By explicitly centering potential “sacred” experience, collected data in this
article go beyond the general focus on bodily deployment in prior work on ritual
transitions from music scenes (e.g. Fonarow 2006; Tsistos 2012). This article also
extends our growing general understandings of how identity, style, music con-
sumption and youthful cultural affinities collide with the inevitability of adult-
hood (e.g. Bennett 2013; Bennett and Hokinson 2012; Kotarba 2013; Torkelson
2015). Specifically, the “sacred” is explored in terms of (1) how the sacred is
accounted for from degrees of retrospection and (2) whether, where, and in what
Separating from Hardcore Ritual 33

forms informants believe the sacred continues to apply to hardcore assembly or

any other sphere of their current life. Many of the participants I interviewed
echoed reflections similar to the quote above by New Jersey Attorney Margaret
who told me she once often but no longer much attends hardcore shows. Like
Margaret, many ex-straightedgers ably described sacred connection in hardcore
show rituals and still attached significance to it even with measures of distance;
yet, most also idealized these experiences as being tied to youth-hood, of their
own kind, residing in their pasts, and therefore frequently as something that was
no longer necessarily available to them in full in their present lives. Broadly, how
respondents accounted for (generally more youthful) encounters with the
“sacred” in hardcore ritual did not appear to be ordered by their current music
consumption habits, levels of show attendance, or degrees of general connection
with other possible subcultural spaces.
I begin by detailing how the sacred has been theorized in the works of both
Turner and Durkheim, and applied to contemporary music-based cultures. Then
I describe the evolution of straightedge culture and related ritual forms of
hardcore assembly in line with these perspectives. Next, I detail relevant work on
transitions from ritual in music assemblies, questions for investigation, and
methodological procedures. Presented data first explore how sacred experience in
hardcore shows is accounted for from degrees of separation; I then consider how
respondents view the possibility of similar connections in their present life, both
inside and outside hardcore shows. Finally, the implications of and context for
these data within the contemporary life course, elective youth (sub)culture(s), and
the positions of “post-traditional” religiosity are considered by way of concluding
discussion.

Sacred Assembly: Effervescence and Communitas

More fully understanding the dynamics of ritual assemblies like hardcore (or
hardcore/punk) shows can require accounting for the ontological and even what
could be said to be religious bases of these gatherings. Contrary then to narrower
commonplace understandings of the “traditional” religious sacred as being
directly given or as something that necessarily resides in things like theological
doctrine, obligations to the divine, the supernatural, or salvation, certain forms of
contemporary religious experience can increasingly be found within arrays of
newer – often non-institutionalized, and some would argue even “atomized” –
sites that have been taking shape in late/post-modern times (Gauthier 2004; [in
general see St John 2004]). As D’Andrea (1998:2) characterizes the landscape of
this “post-traditional order,” it marks “a veritable revolution in religion…[S]
ociability and subjectivity increasingly become sites for continuous experimen-
tation and redefinition. There is no longer a sacred canopy which pre-determines
answers, identity, place and role” (see also Giddens 1999). Despite this individ-
uation, certain newer “post-traditional” arenas can nonetheless channel the
“collective effervescence” or bonding Émile Durkheim (1995[1912]) identified as
essential to the generation of nascent societies as well as the heightened togeth-
erness in states of “communitas” later elaborated by the anthropologist Victor
34 JASON TORKELSON

Turner (1967, 1969) which operates to counterweigh the constraints of modern

social structures, roles, hierarchies.
At their core here, both theorists are describing dissociative, transcendental
states uniquely possible in forms of collective gathering, particularly those
involving percussion, dancing, singing, bodily closeness, even pain and ascetic
demonstration (Durkheim 1995[1912]; Turner 1967, 1969, 1974). For Durkheim,
the intensity of effervescent social assembly fosters feelings that powerful forces
above and beyond any individual exist. This perceived externality galvanizes
collectivities by providing the raw emotional material necessary to bind indi-
viduals to higher ideals, as well as generate a society’s most elemental thought
categories – the sacred versus non-sacred, or profane. Where the sacredness felt in
effervescent assembly comes to be inscribed into representations – symbols,
myths, legends, in/out-group awareness, general classificatory schemes – it
comprises the basis of social life as an essential religious underpinning of it.
Worship, in even traditional religious context, then is – and has always been –
ultimately rooted in the worship of this state of togetherness, or the society itself
to Durkheim (see Durkheim 1995[1912]).
For his part, Turner also distinguished qualities in the process of heightened
assembly, which he furthermore saw as a countervailing force to social stagnancy
and over-routinization. Turner viewed human societies in terms of a dialectic
between structure and anti-structure, or alternating experiences of rote ritual and
liminality from which “communitas” could develop. Similar to the social soli-
darity function in Durkheim’s collective effervescence, communitas is a state of
common humanity and fundamental human bond that exists separate from –
even ideally temporarily melts – social hierarchies, obligations, distinctions
(Turner 1967, 1969). To Turner (1969), in context of modern differentiated cul-
tures specifically, such highly emotional spaces inject needed vitality via
providing reprieve from the staleness risked in movements toward rationalization
(e.g. Weber 1922), formal role development (e.g. Merton 1949), or general ide-
alizations of human existence as operating more strictly within social structure
(e.g. Parsons 1937).
In this vein, although the energy generated in heightened togetherness is
theorized to integratively recharge quotidian norms and attendant moral precepts
in ways that strengthen these as structures, assembly is at the same time idealized
as a vehicle creative cultural development, particularly when transpiring inside
epochs of broader social transformation (Durkheim 1995[1912]; Olaveson 2001,
2004; Pickering 2009[1984]; Turner 1969, 1974). For Turner, the liminoid phe-
nomena that drive anti-structure are just by nature ripe for generating alternative
symbolic bases of culture (Turner 1969). Regarding Durkheim, as Pickering
(2009[1984]) notes, on the one hand effervescence can be re-creative, or a process
where collective representations and community affinity are renewed. On the
other, however, effervescence may be creative – or as Durkheim labeled it
effervescence créatrice – where new ritual forms and moral horizons may be
developed from its inherent uncertainty, and this can especially flourish under
arcs of historical social change (see Durkheim 1995 [1912]; Olaveson 2001, 2004;
Pickering 2009[1984]).
Separating from Hardcore Ritual 35

The Study of the Subcultural Sacred

Scholars of subculture picking up on these concepts have usefully explored
(evolving channels for) the sacred in music-based gatherings and communities
that have developed through the latter twentieth Century where the general
contours of consumption and commodity are fundamentally transformed, and
identification too can be understood as multifaceted, fluctuating, elective –
roughly the agreed upon terrain prominent theoreticians have described and/or
debated as late versus post modernity (see e.g. Baudrillard 1994; Bauman 1992;
Beck 1992; Giddens 1991). Music assemblies and ritual forms ranging from those
more DIY (Do It Yourself) in orientation to those corporatized to degrees have
received attention. In some instances, poststructuralist frames (e.g. Maffesoli
1996) have arguably better articulated aspects of togetherness and peak experi-
ence in more shifting or ephemeral cultural forms that characterize certain rave
and dance cultures (Gaillot 1999; St John 2004; but see Olaveson 2004). At the
same time, bedrock sociological/anthropological concepts of community, iden-
tity, and ritual sequence have profitably connected with aspects of the sacred in
scenes like indie rock, hardcore/punk, and other communities like Deadheads
(Fonarow 2006; Haenfler 2006; Lewin 2015; Smith 2017; Tsistos 1999).
In any case, reception is idealized over production, the audience and
performer must be considered equal actors in a larger unfolding event (see
Barthes 1977; Goffman 1959), and a general Romanticist quest for experience,
emphatic expression, and pleasure can potently supplant ostensibly “outside”
values (like control, introversion, and order) when heightened states are reached.
In general, empirical studies show the veneration and pursuit of transcendence/
trance-like states, “losing oneself,” “connection,” and “release” that is uniquely
possible with bodily togetherness and musical presence (Fonarow 2006; Gaillot,
1999; Gauthier 2004; Haenfler 2006; Hutson 2000; St John 2004; Lewin 2015;
Tsistos 1999). While such collected studies have well demonstrated the applica-
bility and possible power of the sacred across various contemporary music-based
gatherings, direct accounts from those who may have separated from partici-
pating in these to degrees have received less attention.
The music assembly form most closely bundled with straightedge – the elective
culture informants in this study have categorically left behind them – that has
been noted to reflect these values and elicit peak experience is the hardcore show
(Haenfler 2006; Peterson 2009). As Haenfler (2006:19) notes of how peak expe-
rience is idealized in hardcore shows: “In the eyes of hardcore kids, the best show
is one in which both band and audience ‘go off’, losing control, jumping, and
screaming together in a melee of tangled bodies. A great show carries a tense
feeling in the air…”. It is to the evolution of straightedge culture and the hardcore
show that I now turn.

Straightedge, and (the Sacred in) Hardcore Assembly

Straightedge emerged among youth as an outgrowth of the early 1980s Wash-
ington DC punk music scene, and it has since received a fair amount of direct
scholarly and documentary attention (Atkinson 2003; Haenfler 2006; Irwin 1999;
36 JASON TORKELSON

Fig. 1. The Teen Idles’ 7 inch EP Featuring “X’d up” Hands.

Kuhn 2010; Lahickey 1997; Mullaney 2012; Peterson 2009; Petrarca 2006; Tor-
kelson 2010, 2015; Williams and Copes 2005; Wilson and Atkinson 2005; Wood
2006). Many punk rockers of the day were channeling their rejection of perceived
status quo lifestyles into excessive intoxication and adherence to a “live fast, die
young/no future” ethos. Other punks, however, began questioning whether this
was any real rebellion within a society that itself glorifies alcohol, intoxication,
cigarettes, and casual sex (Haenfler 2006; Peterson 2009).
At all ages punk shows in Washington DC, club owners were drawing large
black permanent marker X’s on the backs of underage attendees’ hands as a
means of distinguishing those who were not allowed alcohol. The black magic
marker X was featured on the Washington DC’s Teen Idles’ (1981) 7 inch EP
cover (see Fig. 1) and soon thereafter linked to straightedge as its primary and
most distinctive emblem when vocalist Ian Mackaye later posited the physical
and mental benefits of living drug free while singing for Minor Threat in the song
“Straight Edge.” In these lyrics, Mackaye screams:
I’m a person just like you.
But I’ve got better things to do.
Than sit around and fuck my head.
Separating from Hardcore Ritual 37

Hang out with the living dead.

Snort white shit up my nose.
Pass out at the shows.
I don’t even think about speed.
That’s something I just don’t need.
I’ve got the straight edge. (Minor Threat 1981)

From this song, “straightedge” became a discursive tool for punks tending
toward sober lifestyles to simultaneously identify as distinct. Many adopting
straightedge were by this time “X-ing up,” or placing the black X’s on the backs
of their hands on their own accord (as shown in Fig. 1) prior to attending shows
as a marker of straightedge identity and shared pride (Haenfler 2006). The letter
X has remained the most enduring representation or symbol of straightedge
culture, adorning clothing, band names, tattoos, and many other artifacts
(Atkinson 2003; Haenfler 2006; Peterson 2009; Wood 2006).
Straightedge quickly proliferated outward from the DC scene and was taken
up by other touring bands. It wasn’t necessarily the case that these bands were
playing music and live shows that were sonically, lyrically, or ritually similar to
their punk contemporaries with the addition of occasionally promoting a drug
free lifestyle. Even early bands taking on straightedge were coming toward a
faster and more abrasive brand of music – soon thereafter labeled “hardcore” –
where different types of politics anchored lyrical themes and ritual assembly
forms broke from punk (Haenfler 2006; Peterson 2009).
Given its origins, straightedge possesses a close relationship with hardcore,
and hardcore is highly likely to be relevant to individuals who have affiliated with
straightedge for any time (Haenfler 2006; Irwin 1999; Lahickey 1997; Peterson
2009; Wood 2006). It does nonetheless, remain the case that some might adopt
straightedge in the absence of consuming hardcore music, and that many indi-
viduals participate in hardcore without adhering to straightedge.1 However,
hardcore music, artifacts related to hardcore, and DIY hardcore shows continue
to provide the primary mediums through which straightedge’s messages are
proliferated, adherents gather to socialize, and core values are retained (Haenfler
2006; Irwin 1999; Peterson 2009). Hardcore shows can be viewed through crea-
tive and re-creative effervescence (Durkheim 1995[1912]) where ritual forms in
hardcore assembly have solidified, mirrored, if not outright driven shifts in sonic
aesthetics and political foci through several movements of straightedge from its
early 1980s inception to its present state at the close of the Twenty-First Cen-
tury’s second decade – roughly from “old school hardcore/punk” to the “youth
crew” era to “the 90s” and “post-millennium” times.
With the decidedly coarser sound of what is often referred to as “old school
hardcore/punk” music came a fuller break from the “pogo dance” common to
1970s punk shows where early 1980s old school hardcore/punk music assemblies
more comprehensively featured “slamdancing.” Slamdancing is a ritual “in which
participants (mostly men) violently hurl their bodies at one another in a dance
area called a ‘pit’” (Tsitsos 1999:397). The pit is typically located close to where
the band plays, and acts as a means of sustaining constitutive energy between
band and audience during the performance of music (see also Scott Simon 1997).
38 JASON TORKELSON

Lyrical themes that developed with these rituals too broke from their punk
predecessors. Song lyrics sloganeered pointed social criticism and referenced self-
actualization through avoiding intoxication (among other things). In all, these
distinctive symbolic bases and changing ritual forms paved the way for partici-
pants to envision and subjectively experience chosen community (Peterson 2009;
Wood 2006).
By the time the 1980s were finished, notions of distinctive community were
further solidified in frequent appeals to “unity” both lyrically and in the ritual of
the show (Wood 2006). Often referred to as the “youth crew” era of straightedge
and hardcore, many participants were seeking to extend the energy they experi-
enced in hardcore shows positively to the outside world in activist and commu-
nity forms (Haenfler 2006; Peterson 2009). In assembly, these times saw the rise of
the “sing along.” During a “sing along,” enthusiasts emphatically flood the stage
area, often piling on top of one another, and share in singing songs with their
favorite bands, frequently to refrains or slogans pre-built into song structures that
either employ or call for group vocals to bring the room together. (see Fig. 2).
Stagediving and “headwalking” atop tightly packed rooms of enthusiasts while
bands played were also established as prominent ritual practices (see Haenfler
2006). Youth crew hardcore also marked a further definitive break from punk

Fig. 2. Hardcore Enthusiasts Join Greg Bennick, Vocalist of Seattle

Straightedge Band Trial, in a “Sing Along”. Image credit: xsheepx.
Separating from Hardcore Ritual 39

through an even harder sound than “old school” hardcore/punk (Haenfler 2006;
Lahickey 1997). These times saw vegetarianism, spirituality, positive living,
abstinence from promiscuous sex, and an ideal of deep commitment become
prominently linked to straightedge in song lyrics, sing-alongs, and strands of
practice as well (Haenfler 2006; Wood 2006).
The 1990s into the post-millennium have brought additional potential new
inflections in straightedge culture and innovations in hardcore assembly. Where
many in the youth crew era may have taken on vegetarianism, strict veganism has
since become central, and scores of bands and individuals now fervently bear the
banner “vegan straightedge.” Some had begun exhausting straightedge’s clean-
living precepts to their radical excesses by the end of 1990s via extending their
abstinence to things like caffeine and prescription medication (Haenfler 2006;
Peterson 2009; Wood 2006). Militant or “hardline” versions of straightedge
(Wood 2006) and “crews” often likened to gangs with a propensity toward
violence and territoriality (Purchla 2011) also became firmly established both
inside and outside hardcore shows (see also Haenfler 2006).
Shifts in ritual and sonic aesthetics echoed these violent overtones, tendencies
toward rigidity, and/or tribal mentality. A good deal of hardcore music fused
with traditional elements of heavy metal where more distorted guitars, chugging
riffs, and song structures that required a greater measure of precision and cleaner
execution were favored. Sing alongs and lyrical sloganeering remained popular,
but there also developed a more technical form of dance that has become the
cornerstone of most metal-oriented hardcore shows called “hardcore dancing” or
“moshing” (Tsistos 1999). “Hardcore dancing” typically takes place in larger
open spaces in front of bands during live performances to slower metal-injected
chugging guitar riffs called “breakdowns.” During “breakdowns” individual
audience members show affection for bands – as well as the messages they may be
advocating – via performing “windmills,” “floorpunches,” and more generally
pantomiming fighting against the air via kung fu style kicking and punching in
rhythm with the breakdown’s chug. Within these interactions, dancers are typi-
cally engaged in an exchange of energies with the band, and with one another
(Driver 2011; Haenfler 2006; Purchla 2011; Tsistos 1999).

Leaving Ritual and Questions for Investigation

From slamdancing, hardcore dancing, sing-alongs, collective affirmations of
communal symbols, sloganeering, to just close-knit co-presence, these developed
forms of hardcore music assembly have carried forward to the present day. Many
contemporary hardcore shows exhibit hybrids of these. Regardless of the specific
shape it takes, scholars have documented hardcore assembly as a site that can
potentially galvanize community, recharge values (straightedge or other), affirm
self, and elicit peak experience, particularly in contexts where distinction between
band and audience is as limited as possible and show attendance/density is high
(Driver 2011; Haenfler 2006; Lewin 2015; Tsistos 1999; see also Riches 2011).
Despite the potential salience of these connections, the reality is many individuals
eventually leave the community or their participation in hardcore ritual sub-
stantially changes as they age beyond youth-hood (Haenfler 2006; Torkelson
2010; Tsistos 2012).
40 JASON TORKELSON

In her work on the social organization of “indie rock” gigs, Fonarow (2006)
usefully distinguishes three zones of audience participation: zone 1 being space
closest to the band where audience members dance and seek out ecstatic bonding;
zone 2 which typically surrounds zone 1 and is populated by individuals
embodying a more contemplative focus and passive demeanor; and zone 3 where
individuals occupying organizational or insider roles either flank on-stage bands
or assume even further distance. Fonarow posits a general movement from zone 1
to zone 2 among scene veterans – one mirroring the metaphysics of adult tran-
sition in Western cultures – in which individuals can even come to outright reject
the activities and conditions of zone 1 no matter how fervently they may have
once participated (Fonarow 2006).
In a complementary study of aging hardcore ritual participants also focused
on the body, Tsistos (2012) finds older individuals can come to feel out of place in
hardcore shows in ways (especially inside Fonarow’s zone 1), limited in occu-
pying aging bodies, but that some can, on occasions recapture feelings roughly
akin to the sacred experienced in youth. Tsistos crucially argues periodic return to
ritual participation among older scenesters, however, is less aimed at the current
community than it is connection with one’s past. He asserts “to the extent that
older individuals are, in fact, reconnecting to the scene when they [hardcore]
dance, it is important to keep in mind that the scene with which they are
reconnecting is often an idealized vision of the past” (Tsistos 2012:72).
This investigation extends the emphasis on bodily deployment and sampling
focus on continued participants in these studies to specifically center subjective
conceptions of community, feelings of togetherness, and peak experience –
essentially the “sacred” – while also including narratives of individuals who may
have more substantially separated from ritual participation. In this vein, I ask:
how do (former) participants of hardcore shows recount togetherness or poten-
tially sacred experience from degrees of hindsight and distance? Where appli-
cable, how significant do respondents now consider these experiences to be? How
are (more youthful) emphatic behaviors in ritual assembly perceived with age?
Perhaps most importantly, inasmuch as individuals profess to have experienced
the sacred as youths in hardcore assembly, in what forms or areas of their lives do
informants believe they are currently able to experience similar phenomena?
Finally, what are the implications of the relative transferability of these feelings,
and any shapes they may assume post-youth?

METHODS
I conducted 44 face-to-face interviews (averaging roughly 70 minutes in length)
with former straightedgers across the United States and Canada as part of a
larger project focused on straightedge and identity exit (Torkelson 2010, 2015,
2022). My respondents were asked a variety of questions about their past asso-
ciation with straightedge culture and about their subjective experiences with and
perceptions of hardcore ritual over time – how it made them feel, how they now
feel about it, frequency of participation, and how ritual and community look
from degrees of distance or hindsight.
Separating from Hardcore Ritual 41

Leaving straightedge itself is unique in being unambiguously marked, typically

via the incorporation of intoxicants into one’s life (Haenfler 2006; Torkelson
2010; Wood 2006); all respondents identified as “ex” straightedge. Respondents
were aged 18–43 with an average age of 27. The length of time that had passed
since informants were part of straight edge culture varied from one month to 23
years. The average age of first claiming straightedge was 15, and the average age
of relinquishing affiliation was 22.
The majority of respondents were recruited via music scene internet message
boards associated with various localities. Many other respondents were collected
offline via word of mouth. The final sample was relatively geographically diverse
within North America, which arguably helps further mitigate against possible
shortcomings of snowball methods (Biernacki and Waldorf 1981).2
Crucially, all respondents professed to have attended what they nominated as
“hardcore” shows during their time as straightedge, and voiced experiences with
reviewed ritual forms like sing-alongs, stage diving, feeling togetherness in
densely attended shows, hardcore dancing, slamdancing, and others. Current
participation in hardcore varied. The strong majority reported at least occa-
sionally listening to older hardcore (or punk) music they enjoyed while
straightedge. Among those who still consumed hardcore (or punk) music, there
was a close split between those who sought out new bands versus not. More
importantly, most ex-straightedgers stated their participation in hardcore shows
had diminished substantially; others asserted they no longer attend shows at all;
only a small handful stated they still attended shows at a rate close to their
younger straightedge years. This resulting mix set up nicely to draw upon per-
spectives ranging from those who continue to participate in hardcore but may
possess a different relation to it upon aging and leaving straightedge, to those
who only infrequently participate (e.g. special occasions), to those who may have
left ritual assembly forms behind altogether.

FINDINGS
Presented data first explore whether and to what extent ex-straightedgers account
for their – generally more youthful – participation in hardcore assembly as a
meaningful site of experience from measures of retrospect and distance. Second,
the perceived durability or transferability of any feelings, experiences, or heights
of consciousness respondents attached to encounters with hardcore ritual are
considered, both in context of any continued relationship with hardcore assembly
(where applicable) as well as any other possible spheres of life. Enclosed quota-
tions are representative of themes that emerged from the larger sample to noted
degrees. To most firmly represent applicable continuities and endogenous change,
many selected interviewees are deliberately placed in both sections.

Recounting Youth Assembly and Potential Sacred Experience

There was some variation to be sure. However, the overwhelming majority of
respondents linked involvement in hardcore ritual with youth-hood, and
described strong feelings of connectedness to others when reflecting upon their
experiences inside shows. Perhaps most significant in a broad brush then, many
42 JASON TORKELSON

still described hardcore assembly as a substantial site of peak experience in their

life, even though most spoke from distance and hindsight when doing so.
Almost all interviewees attested to participating in various ritual forms asso-
ciated with hardcore assembly in their youth. While the content varied, recol-
lections were typically strong, and many described their behaviors as emphatic. In
looking back 28-year-old Upstate New York librarian Navin stated: “you
[would] know the lyrics to every song…if there’s something to jump off, you’re
jumping off it, if there’s someone to jump on, you’re jumping on them”; 32 year-
old Nashville librarian Micah likewise reminisced, “I was the guy who was doing
flips off stages. I wasn’t standing in the back…it was very I’m here, I’m ready”;
when asked how she once behaved at shows, the 28-year-old New Jersey attorney
Margaret responded: “Loudly. The old adage if you don’t wanna get hit don’t
stand in the front. We stood in the front/…/singing along…knew all the words,
stage diving depending on the venue.”
Furthermore, many directly characterized hardcore shows as a sanctuary of
sorts in which such emphatic behaviors were a “release” (see also Haenfler 2006)
from conventional social structures and roles (cf. Turner 1967, 1969). Perhaps
partly echoing Tsistos’ (2012) interviews with aging hardcore scenesters, however,
most described fervent participation in terms of a bygone life segment. In this
excerpt, the 28-year-old Minneapolis artist Jawsh described his former mode of
participation as a “release” from common teenage social roles that applied to a
specific age range when he said:
For me it was kind of the release from everything. You go to school all day [at age] 16, 17 and
you’re starting to get your first job…That’s what it was all about, the release…Work sucked,
school sucked, and then you go to a hardcore show and you…go running around, stage diving.
You come out with the biggest smile on your face just hi fiving everyone.

Beyond this reprieve from social structure, data must be presented on how
interviewees recollected connection with others inside shows. Here, like Jawsh,
27-year-old Oakland social worker Jared idealized his participation in hardcore
shows within a specified period, but also reflected an association between youthful
enthusiasm and collective bonding that was pervasive among informants:
[From] like 15 to like 19…my like whole existence was going to shows, and I’d be looking
forward to them all week. Like the highlight of my youth is going to these shows just because of
the excitement at the shows and again the camaraderie.

The basic camaraderie Jared voiced was notably described both as a touch-
point of community congregation, and as a potential site for summoning peak
(collective) experience. With respect to community gathering, 25-year-old
Brooklyn advertiser Aaron told me hardcore shows were once a reliable outlet
where he could visualize a community where he belonged. When I asked him how
he once felt inside shows he said:
I felt like a comrade [in hardcore shows]…That was where I got to feel like I was a part of
something. Like all the other kids, they got to do it 7 days a week. They were still in class with
all their fellow[s]…I really wasn’t. I didn’t get to see those [my] kids til the weekend. They all
went to other schools or they weren’t in school.
Separating from Hardcore Ritual 43

In terms of collective experiences, explicit references to ritual immersion

and feelings that co-presence conjured at hardcore shows were common. For a
simple example of immersion, 29-year-old New Jersey Human Resources
Manager Simon looked back and said, “I was surrounded by people who
[were] into the same stuff as I was, and I sang along to every song, moshed
along to every song.” Regarding co-presence, 28-year-old Eastern Pennsylva-
nia resident Marcus retrospectively discussed how ritual once possessed such
infectiousness for him it could seize his youth counterpart even in instances
where he assumed a bystander role. In describing his experiences of shows he
attended when younger, Marcus’ reflections articulated sentiments voiced by
some other respondents regarding both spectatorship and aging:
There was a lot more energy in the room…shows you’d go to were full of positive energy…and
everyone was going off, going crazy. People were just coexisting with each other and there was
also being a lot younger…You [could] get an adrenaline rush just standing at a show.

In her work on the social organization of music gigs, Fonarow (2006) con-
cludes passive spectatorship (zone 2) to be a means of exalting the performing
band via “aural connoisseurship” in ways that are phenomenologically distinct
from the communion of frenetic bodily experiences characteristic of the front or
mosh pit (zone 1) – she writes “Habitués of zone two do not report experiencing a
sense of connection to fellow audience members. In zone two, audience members
suggest a connection only with the music and performers” (p. 115). By contrast,
Marcus’ account provides a case where he recalled becoming enraptured in even a
bystander role as a youth, and that this centered on the energy he felt generated
by other audience members rather than the band solely. This bystander experi-
ence was, moreover, so strong that it was voiced even in past tense terms.
This general focus on the event itself, or worship of communal co-presence in a
Durkheimian vein, was even further evident in ways many other informants were
able to recollect past connection with others. When asked how he perceived
others inside shows while they transpired at the height of his scene involvement,
the Upstate librarian Navin simply stated “you’d really feel you were amongst
friends.” Likewise, the Nashville librarian Micah told me that when bands played
“[I felt] powerful. I felt like I was at home. It was the same concept as being at
home with my parents/…/150 people in a room you can say are all best friends.”
Gatherings that may elevate individuals into states of heightened collective
consciousness, like Durkheim’s effervescence or the distinctionless togetherness
and reprieve of anti-structure in Turner’s communitas (Durkheim (1995[1912];
Turner 1967, 1969, 1974), by nature too contain ineffable elements. Unlike the
accounts above, I also encountered respondents who noted elements of ineffa-
bility. For instance, as the 29-year-old Pennsylvania social worker Raul put it:
There’s nothing like it. I can’t explain it to my wife. I can’t explain it to my kid. It’s not possible.
You had to be there I guess. You had to feel it. You can’t just watch it on a YouTube video.
You had to be there, you had to be there, you had to feel it, you had to be involved in it,
because, it was special.

Similar to Raul’s characterization of hardcore shows as something that needed

to “be felt” to be understood, 25-year-old Cincinnati graduate student Roosevelt
notably reflected widely held sentiments when he said bluntly of shows he
44 JASON TORKELSON

attended that, generally, “it was like a cathartic experience.” Twenty-four-year-

old Pittsburgh banker Ed even described connecting with such feelings in the
present day in terms of bodily experience, but crucially located their origins in the
past when he said, “I [still] get goosebumps thinking about it…That’s what shows
were like.”
Where informants articulated behaviors that corresponded to heightened
states of consciousness that they professed to experience, both the performance of
established collective ritual forms and perceived shades of innovation upon them
(or the re-creative and elements of the creative) were evident in even hindsight
accounts. In course of our discussing how he once experienced straightedge
hardcore bands, the 27-year old Minneapolis restaurant worker Donny, for
example, retrospectively described becoming entranced into rituals with others in
ways he now likens to behaviors he sees in Evangelical Christians.
You’re into it, that message, you feel like its directly speaking to you and you’re a part of it.
Like you’re there, you’re the chorus for it/…/It was like they [straightedge hardcore bands] were
preaching to the choir, so you’re totally behind it. It’s like Evangelical Christians…throwing
their arms up in the air looking ridiculous praising Jesus. And you throw your arms up in the
air you look ridiculous praising some sort of mentality.

While Donny largely describes following form with the (re-creative) collective
here, a smaller handful of respondents also notably recounted innovative (crea-
tive) behavioral departures they attested were made possible through heightened
states that assembly contained. For instance, Randy, a 26-year-old Minneapolis
waiter who told me he now only rarely participates in hardcore, simply said, “my
creativity came out in moshing.” Going further, 30-year-old Washington DC
government worker Curtis, remembered of carving out his own niche:
I got taken. I was elevated in this weird way…I remember I had this ridiculous dancing
sequence that wasn’t hardcore dancing…I was just excited, and I would just express
myself…My friends would call it “pinball” cause it was like I was playing pinball with my
left and right hand and then flailing, but I just didn’t care.

Indeed, the strong majority of ex-straightedgers ably reflect upon – perhaps

even idealize their – encounters with hardcore assembly from their younger years.
Although these accounts are substantially couched in retrospective or past tense
terms, the descriptions of communal bonding and peak experiences well align
with vanguard ontological concepts in the vein of Durkheim and Turner (cf.
Durkheim 1995 [1912]; Turner 1967, 1969, 1974). Hardcore assembly generally
was – and continues to be understood as – a significant site of religious experience
for many who encountered it as youths in these terms, even for those who have
moved on from it to varying degrees.
In strikingly intersecting straightedge symbols with many themes presented in
this section, the 28-year-old Brooklyn make-up artist Johni perhaps best articu-
lated the general continued understanding of hardcore assembly as substantive
when she said of her experiences with measures of hindsight:
It was kinetic. It’s really one of the hardest things in the world to articulate. . .it’s this feeling of
intensity where everything around you is verging on complete and utter chaos and destruction
with really great guitar riffs and drum beats that kind of takes the place of your heartbeat, and
the energy of the crowd is palpable in that space. . .the energy of the crowd is something that
Separating from Hardcore Ritual 45

completely overtakes you, and just this sense of wild abandon that you can walk into this room
and lose your mind is something to behold. . .There was a sense of empowerment to putting X’s
on the backs of your hands and yelling in a group of people that would put their arms around
you. . ..A sing-a-long where you all mash into the singer of the band and everyone’s arms are
around each other, holding each other really tight and screaming together. That’s one of the
most incredible experiences.

Feeling the Sacred with Age?

Given that past encounters with hardcore assembly were frequently described in
substantive – if also at times quite evocative – terms, this provided a benchmark
from which respondents could calibrate their continued relationship with hard-
core (where applicable) and parse whether, where, and in what forms they
believed they possessed comparable “sacred” experiences in any other domain of
their current lives. Regarding hardcore shows, only a small minority who still
partook in these characterized their experiences as similar to their younger years.
Among these was 32-year old Minneapolis photographer Natalie, who, despite
forwarding fairly strong emotional continuities regarding her experiences with
current hardcore shows, notably abstracted her age in course of her reflections:
Hardcore shows and punk shows are just still awesome/…/just different now just because
there’s so many younger kids, obviously, like half my age. But even so…I would say like 95% of
the time it…still feels like home. Like it still feels good. Like this is where I should be.

Most informants indeed accounted for age as the primary reason they believed
their experiences with assembly ritual had changed. Of those who believed they
could still capture the same feelings they experienced as youths inside shows,
most generally spoke in qualified or significantly more limited terms than Natalie.
On one hand, and perhaps similar to Tsistos’ (2012) study of aging scenesters,
many of these respondents described their ability to still feel sacred connections as
residing in limited or more strictly special occasions. On the other, some spoke of
possible reconnection less as a reported experience, than a believed possibility.
Regarding occasions, the New Jersey Human Resources manager Simon, who
described vigorous participation and feeling connection at hardcore shows as a
youth, stated of his current show attendance “I’ll still go to shows, but it’s so
much more of a special event…like a reunion show,” and that of his ability to still
feel collective connection at shows that he now “can’t expect it to happen, it’s just
going to happen” if it does. The Upstate librarian Navin, for his part, described
continuities in his passion for hardcore music, but added qualifications into even
his descriptions of his ‘going off’ to a favorite band at a recent festival when he
said:
There’s still bands that I get excited to see even though I might be older. I was really excited to
see Betrayed at This is Hardcore this last year. I went off to Betrayed. But…I’m not as adamant
to listen to every word like I used to and…scream them at every show.

With respect to speculative reconnection, the Pittsburgh banker Ed, who

described still feeling “goosebumps” when reflecting on shows from his past,
more firmly placed direct ritual participation behind him when he said “when I
was a teenager I used to mosh and stage dive and stuff. I don’t do that anymore.”
Yet, like some others, Ed believed he could again become invigorated in ways
46 JASON TORKELSON

akin to his past when he also asserted “if I saw ya know one of my favorite bands
I would still probably stage dive and get into the pile-ons and the sing along.”
The Nashville librarian Micah, who also reported strong emphatic behaviors
at shows as a youth, takes these themes further. Micah too referenced physical
reconnection in terms of a hypothetical special occasion, but indicated strong
continued connection via specifically imagining his past while at the hardcore
shows he currently attends as a bystander. Micah also notably told me the
“straightedge hardcore community” felt like “family” for him at shows as a
youth, and of shows now:
The family element is gone, so now it’s just music and release. If I’m not releasing it [physically],
the only way I’m releasing it is internally in my head, and kind of remembering back to the day
when that was what I was…So I guess I am really more of an audience member now than I am
a participatory member…But if I went and saw Converge I wouldn’t be able to control myself.

When discussing his move into a composed bodily demeanor and spectator
position at shows – roughly from Fonarow’s (2006) zone one to zone two –
Micah here describes less a dispositional transition as Fonarow would have it
than he details a transfer of “release” from the physical to the mental. Further-
more, contrary to any repudiation of prior behaviors, Micah’s more youthful
emphatic conduct and idealizations of communal connect continue to be so
important to him that he believes his ability to still experience “release” of a
mental variety at current shows is substantially due to his recalling this past. This
underscores that idealizing a past vision of the scene can be central for aging
participants who do reconnect, but that this can manifest both via a return to
emphatic bodily deployment (see Tsistos 2012) as well as in an observer position.
At the same time, many others believed capturing the sacred or approaching
peak experience in context of hardcore shows was outright impossible.
Emblematic of this is the Minneapolis restaurant worker Donny who charac-
terized himself as formerly becoming enraptured to a point of feeling like a
conduit for bands’ choruses. Donny still attends hardcore shows in passive roles
now, but contrasting Micah’s use of the past to experience “release,” Donny drew
a fuller break from experiencing connection when he said:
There isn’t a band in the world that makes me feel like that anymore. Now it’s like, I’m gonna
go and I’m gonna enjoy it and try to find the spot in the room that sounds the best and basically
be a wallflower. I’m not a participant in it/…/It is what it is. It’s just not for me anymore.

Where applicable, such belief in reconnection being impossible was voiced in

numerous ways. Consider Brad, a 30-year-old Nashville technician who once
played in two internationally prominent hardcore bands (one of them straight-
edge) and idealized the “involvement between the crowd and the band” at shows
as what attracted him to his role in bands. Of the possibility of recapturing these
feelings, Brad told me “I do think about starting a [new] band, but then again it
won’t be the same…as what it was” and that “in the end I realize that I’ve moved
on I guess.” Complementing this account, regarding activities he partook in as an
attendee at shows like hardcore dancing and stage diving, 31-year-old Wash-
ington DC philosopher Thrasyamachus bluntly stated, “I don’t have the capacity
Separating from Hardcore Ritual 47

to be innocently absorbed in it like I used to be. It’s impossible to be that, and it’s
because I have this distance from that.” The Eastern Pennsylvania resident
Marcus who recollected once feeling communal excitement at shows in even
bystander roles simply stated that over time “a lot of the thrill went away.”
Finally, the government worker Curtis, who described once reaching transcen-
dent states at shows, more fully articulated fading feelings when he told me shows
even reached a point where he didn’t enjoy them any longer:
I mean a lot has changed. Personally, it was everything…My entire life was when’s the next
show?…That was it, that was everything. And then as I got older…shows became more
laborious and kind of boring…and it was not enjoyable.

Beyond the context of hardcore assembly, respondents generally did not much
believe the sacred they experienced in hardcore shows was translatable to other
spheres, or that they possessed similar connections in their present lives. Even
Curtis simply stated of his current life that now “the fulfillment isn’t as concen-
trated and it isn’t as experience based.” In the scattered instances respondents
described being able to approach similar peak experience, almost none referenced
moving into new communities, sites of collective gathering, or organizations –
religious or other – when doing so. Exemplary of this was the Brooklyn make-up
artist Johni when she said of the translatability of peak experience from hardcore
and punk shows as a youth that, “a really good orgasm can do that for like a
minute. But no, I don’t think that there’s anything like it…I haven’t come across
it.” Complementarily, DC philosopher Thrasymachus did abstract the peak
experience he attached with hardcore as potentially being available in “any kind
of activity that you find [yourself] passionately engrossed in…that gives a sense of
immediate visceral enjoyment, and…giving yourself over to the experience,” and
went further to state, “when I’m having sex with someone that I’m really into” as
a primary example.
There was, by contrast, generally strong sentiment voiced that heightened
experience from hardcore shows was of its own kind, and that this specifically
belonged in the past or to youth to substantial degrees. Illustrative of this is the
Brooklyn advertiser Aaron’s thoughts when prompted to consider whether any-
thing similar to what he experienced in hardcore shows was available to him in
his current life. He stated:
I’ve come damn close but I don’t think so. I think that’s a moment caught in time…It was
written in time. I felt like that time was like a bug caught in amber. That was how it was
supposed to be. Like I might feel that good but for different reasons.

The majority of interviewed ex-straightedgers who described sacred or

communal connections in hardcore assembly perceived their ability to recapture
these feelings as fundamentally limited, transformed, or outright impossible.
Where respondents did state a belief the sacred could continue to be felt, it was in
a number of cases rooted in explicit references to the past, special occasions like
“reunions” of old favorite bands, or even partly couched in speculative rather
than experiential terms. In general, the sacred was less described as outwardly
48 JASON TORKELSON

applicable to other areas of life than it was often idealized as something that
belonged in the past itself.
Moving deeper in this vein, as the Pennsylvania social worker Raul put it after
bluntly saying “no” when I asked him if he could ever feel anything again like he
described experiencing in hardcore shows as a youth:
[It was] just a combination of all the right things I think. The atmosphere was right, the
people were right, the bands were right, my attitude toward the world, the people in the
room, their attitudes toward the word, and our collective…It was just the right place and the
right time. I just don’t feel that same connection to the people there. The music is not as
intense as it once was.

DISCUSSION
Even when accounted for in the past tense and from degrees of distance, hardcore
assembly continues to be understood by many ex-straightedgers as a fundamental
connection in ways that cohere to Turner and Durkheim’s conceptualizations of
religious experience. Despite the sustained importance placed on experiences in
hardcore shows, this connection is mostly described as residing in the past,
belonging to youth-hood, or being of its own kind. Broadly, informants did not
believe the heightened togetherness they professed to experience in hardcore
ritual was accessible in full in their present lives, nor that this was necessarily
transferable to other spheres of their life.
This general compartmentalization of a fundamental connection taken to be
of its own kind within a chosen communal gathering context (like hardcore
shows) and in a specific life course location (roughly youth-hood to early
adulthood) demands contextualization within how these have recently developed
in Western culture. For one thing, the post-World-War II era witnessed an
explosion of new countercultural movements and a questioning of ostensibly
conventional identities and life trajectories in ways that have been lastingly
impactful (Jamison and Eyerman 1994). In this fold too, life expectancies rose,
and the contours of the life course itself – especially the transition to adulthood –
transformed for many. Leisure, technologies of convenience, and consumption
became central fixtures of mass culture, and an elective component to self-
concept took center stage where it became ideally fashioned through the
expressions – and counter-expressions – made available within arrays of new
communities and identification constellations (see e.g. Bauman 1992; Beck 1992;
Giddens 1991). These transformations all stood to potentially inflect the sacred.
The time in which Durkheim lived predated these shifts in identity and
belonging, and thereby it was perhaps not as ideal for exploring effervescence
créatrice on the scale it has thus arguably since been available in these terms.
Writing more than a half century later, however, Turner certainly began to sense
different types of cultural intersections were developing, and that these might
provide new bases from which communitas might be conjured. In his later career
work, Turner indeed considered rhythmic stimuli and communitas in various new
Separating from Hardcore Ritual 49

religious orders, pilgrimages, millenarian groups, and 1960s countercultural

“happenings” – including rock music, communes, hippies – that were taking
shape in his lifetime (Turner 1974, see especially Chapter 6). New potential
interstices for and assemblages of heightened togetherness were clearly devel-
oping, but what might have escaped even Turner’s later inquiries was the fuller
scope with which such emerging formations might become uniquely youthful in
new ways.
In this vein, the category “youth” itself took on added meanings and became
fundamentally altered over the latter twentieth Century. The “teenager” was
born. Youth were for the first time outright expected to distinguish themselves
from both adults and peers as they electively navigated their way through an
increasingly vast ocean of magazines, clothing, musical recordings, and other
commodities geared toward their youthful sensibilities. The expressions, shapes,
and boundary forms youth assumed following these transformations have
comprised the core thrust of subcultural studies since the field’s seminal theori-
zations in the 1970s, and youth culture has only continued to shape into
increasing – and multiplicitous – arrays of communities, identities, and possible
sites of gathering into the twenty-first century (not the least of which might be
straightedge and hardcore).
Here, the collected reports from ex-straightedgers about their involvements
with hardcore shows support the claim that post-traditional religious experience
should not just be considered in terms of the sorts of late/post-modern affiliations
or communities that have proliferated since mid-century, but also the life course.
On the whole, many respondents voiced hardcore shows from their youth to be
the most potent site of collective experience they had encountered in their lives
despite that most possessed – sometimes even substantial – degrees of separation.
These sentiments were so strong many ex-straightedgers did not believe the peak
experience of hardcore shows could necessarily be replicated in full in their
present lives, and a substantial amount even felt it was impossible to recapture or
transfer in any form. Where individuals spoke of reconnection, it was most
frequently described as fundamentally limited, couched in speculative terms, or
rooted in envisioning the youthful past itself rather than participation in any
current community.
When looked upon through accounts that possess degrees of retrospect then,
the “peak experience” that has been documented as possible in many other
studies of generally youthful music-based assemblies (cf. Fonarow 2006; Gail-
lot, 1999; Haenfler 2006; St John 2004; Lewin 2015; Tsistos 1999) may arguably
serve as a primary – though not necessarily enduring – encounter with the
sacred that uniquely frames how it comes to be understood for youth passing
through certain scenes. The religious principles elaborated Turner and Dur-
kheim may in instances now most potently intersect, or be primarily inflected
into, newly available life course locations in elective affiliations or communities.
Contrary then to its given durability within “traditional” contexts or institu-
tions, and certainly the likes of the unitary “premodern” societies Durkheim
(1912[1995]) initially studied then, how the sacred collides with certain config-
urations of youth-hood or youth scenes across the contemporary “post-
50 JASON TORKELSON

traditional” landscape and may condition the most powerful experience of it for
some.
To be sure, it cannot be certain just how accounts from sampled ex-
straightedgers in this study might differ with more time, or what future
involvements they might may engage. For example, work on older generations of
rock n’ roll enthusiasts finds continued exploration in spiritual and religious
domains into later life (Kotarba 2013), and how this might intersect under-
standings of peak experiences is not fully clear. Longitudinal or retrospective
accounts from significantly older individuals from this population that span a
whole life course would be needed to properly qualify or lend firmer foundations
to these conclusions. Additionally, concerted comparative work between other
post-war music-based cultures like Deadheads in which heightened experience is
lastingly pursued over extensive time by enthusiasts (see Smith 2017) with those
where the sacred might be most saliently encountered by youth would valuably
aid in specifying possible life course applications.
In any case, the sorts of chosen identities, communities and life course spaces
that began expanding through the twentieth century’s closing decades have
conditioned unprecedented possibilities for multiplicities of – potentially youthful –
forms of post-traditional religious connection to conglomerate. Just what shapes
heightened togetherness assumes and what meanings are attached to them at
different points of the life course through the changes, uncertainties, and crises
hallmarking the development of the twenty-first century should provide fertile
grounds for inquiries ahead.

NOTES
1. Including some in this study’s sample who still attend hardcore shows post-
straightedge.
2. Urban localities respondents resided: NYC, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Pitts-
burgh, Toronto, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Chicago, Nashville, Winnipeg, Oakland, and
state-level residences: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Upstate New York, Iowa, North Dakota.

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