f Trying to have fun in ‘No Fun City’: Legal and illegal strategies for creating punk spaces in Vancouver, British Columbia

Music scenes are sites of a reciprocal relationship that exists between physical spaces and the bodies that occupy them. Music venues, as centralizing nodes within local punk scenes, are integral spaces of socialization in which scene participants actively produce identity, culture and community. If scene participants and the physical venues that they congregate in are engaged in such an active, inter-dependent relationship, then what happens to those participants and their established communities when music venues are shut down? When faced with the dissolution of these gathering places, punk scene participants utilize various spatial tactics of rebuilding or transforming space, even if only a temporary measure to address the demands of the community at large. These strategies may work within established legal guidelines or outside them in an attempt to escape the threat of surveillance. However, additional difficulties may occur within the scene itself when participants disagree not only on which strategy is best but also what type of space most closely conforms to their understanding of what exactly ‘punk’ is or should be. This article conducts a comparison of such strategies via two case studies located within Vancouver, British Columbia: (1) The Cobalt Hotel; and (2) The Safe Amplification Site Society.