"There are an awful lot of crusties here," I remarked to Megan the Water Moccasin inside the Knitting Factory last night.
Megan gave an exasperated sigh and proceeded to describe an instance a few minutes earlier where she had to try and scoot away from her prime spot near the front of the stage because someone's scent was so offensive. At the moment that Megan finished her story, I praised the gene passed down to me by mother that stuffs up my nose from October to March annually. Unless I'm either really close to someone, or the smell is that bad, I won't be able to detect it until spring.
Crusties tend to inhabit certain types of events. You will rarely spot them at Britpop, indie or electro clubs. They generally only surface at hip-hop shows if it's some sort of DJ-oriented event, the more experimental the better. If they are at goth-friendly happenings, it is usually only those involving the most psychedelic of artists, such as a Legendary Pink Dots show. Crusties are more at home in punk shows, particularly at DIY spaces, anything associated with PLUR and/or jam bands and all things avant-garde. The latter most likely describes last night's function, the details of which I will post later.
Crusties, as the nickname would imply, are a dirty bunch, some so filthy that you can practically see the scabies flying off of them. They are like hippies in that they seem to relish in the idea of community. They stand really close to people and have no problem with asking someone, namely me, for a drag off a cigarette. Excuse me? I don't even let my friends take drags off my Parliaments. I'm certainly not going to share one with a stranger boasting a scab-encrusted lip piercing. I usually dig through my bag to just give them a full one.
"Oh, no, I just need a drag."
"Take it."
"It's okay."
"Dude, just take it!"
Okay, so that part didn't happen last night, but it has happened enough times in the past to help illustrate my point. I can handle a lot of forms of contrived weirdness. Given, however, that I am still a sometimes over-hygienic American, I can't handle crusties. Apparently, neither can Megan.
So we chatted almost endlessly throughout the course of the night as to why people don't feel the need to shower at least sometime during the day before they go out to a club that is crowded and sticky hot. Do they think that people won't notice?
Then I wondered if people actually do notice that everyone seems to back away from them, but they attribute it to their fiercely individualistic, anti-corporate look. People, hear me now, Ritual de lo Habitual came out over fifteen years ago. Nobody cares if you have rainbow-colored dreadlocks and wear a dress over jeans. Nobody even cares if you are a guy wearing a dress over jeans and have a five-pound disk weighing down your earlobe. Take a shower and don't you dare try to mask the lack thereof by dousing yourself in patchouli oil.