What happened to the squatters?

May 22, 2022 8:39 PM

From at least the 90s to mid-2000s (but I think going back significantly earlier as well), there was a scene in the US of squatters/anarchists/punks in most major cities. Freighthopping and hitchhiking was popular, people made zines, that sort of thing. This scene doesn't seem to exist anymore — what happened to it?
posted by wesleyac to Society & Culture (21 answers total)

I can only speak for Chicago and Minneapolis in the past decade, but I would say that reports of anarchist or punk scene death are greatly exaggerated.

Razorcake might be a good place to start to get reconnected again? https://razorcake.org/
posted by kitarra at 9:04 PM on May 22, 2022

For trains I can point you two works by the same author. Experimental journalist Ted Conover wrote a book on the culture and people of who hop trains called Rolling Nowhere. It was published on September 11, 2001 based on research he did right after college. Then after growing up and having a family, his teenaged son wanted to experience the rails. He wrote up that story in Outside Magazine. I seem to recall the second piece explains why freight hopping is no longer as popular. Apparently it is lots more dangerous amongst other reasons and the rail cars are much more purpose built for their purpose which makes traveling in them and hiding lots more difficult vis-a-vis old timey box cars that you are familiar from popular culture representations of trains.
posted by mmascolino at 9:08 PM on May 22, 2022

Last week I was in Duluth and I walked past a shelter where I heard one guy telling another guy how to hop trains out to Montana.
posted by soelo at 9:12 PM on May 22, 2022

Anarchists are still here but mass surveillance and cloud technology has made it less easy to have squats in the same way that they used to exist. Also, hitchhiking only can really robustly exist in a culture that supports it; regular people stopped letting people hitch with them.
posted by corb at 9:19 PM on May 22, 2022

Too many homeless for sustainability. Oh, the homeless stories back around 1998 or so, those stories don't go over well here nowadays. Tread with caution. It's gotten to crowded and turned into encampments and safety in numbers vs tight group of cohorts. Too many now slide down fast from hobo/squatter to cardboard box downtown under the bridge and the middle has gone. Too populated to slip under the radar. Causal circumstances are different. The marginal space has narrowed, if there are any left they're not going to advertise. Too many people, resource exhaustion. It was fun though... wouldn't want to try it now even if I was twenty years younger. Not the same now, too many people.
posted by zengargoyle at 11:50 PM on May 22, 2022

When I think about the places I hung out (or wanted to hang out) in the early 2000s, the punk houses and the squats, I think about neighborhoods that in the past 20 years have been so crushingly gentrified that all the wisecracks are actual reality: there's a luxury condo where this squat used to be; there's a whole foods where that squat used to be. And so on.
posted by entropone at 6:26 AM on May 23, 2022

Ha, wow. that scene you're describing, OP, that was me 20+ years ago. Got arrested train-hopping and everything. Hitchhiked to ABC No Rio. Saw some shows in the derelict C Street Squat that had standing water on the ground and electricity being stolen from another building.

One thing I suspect that killed this is the music scene itself has become fragmented. Back then, the internet was young, and people still used MRR "Book Your Own Fuckin' Life" to set up DIY punk tours. Hell, to train hop we had a "King Toad" Railroad Map xeroxed and passed along to other crusties by word of mouth. There is no such unification of the scene like that now, at least not where I live. Maybe on the West Coast? It always seemed stronger out there anyway (lot easier to be homeless when the weather is decent all year).

I suspect 'zines don't really exist anymore because they were supplanted by blogs, and then stuff like Facebook or Instagram.

Also, the climate in the country is different. In the 90s there still seemed like there was some sort of hope for the future, and the punk/ crust scene still had some faint connection to the '80s hardcore scene, and some level of political activism. Much of that sort of optimism/activism in general seems different now. The internet, 9/11, Trump, I don't know... A lot changed. Oh, also, back then it was possible for penniless idiots on drugs (like me) to live for virtually nothing in the inner city. Now everything is a million-dollar condo.

IDK, those are just some of my attempts at answering this question from the perspective of someone who was part of the subculture. I do still see echoes of it out there, but it's certainly not as prevalent as it once was.

(Literally the building we used to do DIY punk shows in back then is now an upscale spa and sandwich shop on the first floor, and expensive live/work lofts on the other floors).
posted by SystematicAbuse at 6:35 AM on May 23, 2022

Not Punk but Bluegrass …Freight hopping is featured in the video for Billy Strings' Watch it Fall.
posted by brachiopod at 7:28 AM on May 23, 2022

I lived in a squat in Washington, DC in 2003-2005. At the time the city was in a development boom (that's still going, I think) and there was a lot of energy put into demolition of the places that were squattable (especially along the 14th St. NW corridor, which is stunningly built up now). It's not something I feel like was inappropriate, either the squatting or the development--the squats were taking advantage of unattended proporties that were inevitably going to be razed or heavily redeveloped after the city's very public, very publicized, very transparent 20 year comprehensive plan. People were flooding back into cities after a couple decades of the opposite trend, so development is probably the engine that removed a lot of cities' bones for squatting in.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 7:32 AM on May 23, 2022

There’s a robust zine scene where I live and I drop off food and water to two different squats and know of half a dozen other. I suspect that it’s highly regional and probably quite hidden if you don’t know anyone in it. The warehouse scene is down to a single location (that I know of) here, and that’s because the rest are in use.

I wouldn’t assume it’s gone, just that you’re unaware of it.
posted by Bottlecap at 7:56 AM on May 23, 2022

I do think Bottlecap and kitarra raise a fair point too- it may not be gone, it may just be different or less visible. I'm in my mid-40s... I have a lot less interest in squatting and train-hopping than I did when I was 17! There are certainly still punk & hardcore bands, so some of this other stuff might still be happening too. Food Not Bombs and CrimethInc both still exist, for example.

Note to young people: train hopping is extremely dangerous and illegal. As an old I would strongly caution against it.
posted by SystematicAbuse at 8:08 AM on May 23, 2022

There seemed to be a resurgence of this culture around 10-ish years ago, and it had a relationship with the word "oogle" I never truly understood. (Were the crust punks calling themselves "oogles"? Were "oogles" a subset of crusties who were doing it wrong? Never was sure.) In recent years, I have seen this culture relabeled as "vagabonds." There are subreddits that are easy to find for that, if you're the kind of person who does Reddit.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:48 AM on May 23, 2022

Hitchhiked to ABC No Rio.

I have friends who were part of the ABC No Rio. The group is still around, they're just not in the same building. I still donate to Food Not Bombs and Books to Prisoners projects. There were a lot of anarchist-run mutual aid groups that sprung up during the early COVID Era to help people get access to information, supplies and just general help.

I suspect 'zines don't really exist anymore because they were supplanted by blogs

There are definitely fewer of them but there's still a really active zine culture. Here's a set from Olympia. Here's a zine library in Portland. Here's a zine librarians speakers bureau. I do think it's true that social media has co-opted "rebellion" somewhat but those folks are still around and still doing stuff, it's just not as much of a mainstream media story anymore.
posted by jessamyn at 9:53 AM on May 23, 2022

The couple of train hoppers I'm loosely familiar with have drifted to off the grid Independence living in the wilderness. They cite increasing government control, the fact that everything is digital and tracked and monitored, and how many things require connectivity and registration to get by in daily life.

They tend to very much favor under the table jobs and things that either don't ask for identity or don't check it very closely.
posted by Jacen at 2:17 PM on May 23, 2022

A friend of mine recently connected with siblings via DNA testing. One of her nephews visited her; he lives on the road, hops trains, the whole thing. Drops by to visit family from time to time. She was adopted at birth and saw in him, and in others of her biological family, a tendency to extreme risk-taking that helped her understand herself and her own kids better.

I recently read the book Leave Out the Tragic Parts: A Grandfather's Search for a Boy Lost to Addiction. I didn't think the writing itself was great, but the story is fascinating: one of his grandsons set out to live on the road, learned to ride the rails. He died of an overdose, and the grandfather set out to find out what he could about his grandson's death. He met people who were friends of his grandson's, including the young woman who taught him to hop freight trains. The family wrote what I think is a really beautiful and loving obituary for him.

Anyway, I learned a lot about the lives of young people who live on the road from it. It was fascinating.
posted by Well I never at 2:49 PM on May 23, 2022

There’s a lot of misinformation here that does not reflect reality. C-squat still exists, many of the squats were legalized in an interesting way through the organization UHAB. Squats have been extremely active throughout Europe. Zines are still a thing. Young punks are still putting on great shows in illegal spaces, the scene is extremely active, extremely political, etc etc etc. I beg people who are no longer active in the punk scene to sit this one out and not speculate. I’ve had a really long demoralizing day and dont have enough energy to list all the amazing stuff going on, especially by punks of color
posted by asimplemouse at 4:40 PM on May 23, 2022

The availability of empty buildings in which to squat has dropped precipitously. This constraint has made squatting less feasible even if the culture is still around and being practiced in other ways.

Urban living has become more popular in the last 20 years. After the Great Recession building in urban areas didn’t keep up with population increases and demand which is part of the reason we have a housing crisis. These conditions are the opposite of the flight to the suburbs that happened between the 1970s to 2000 that made squatting possible.
posted by scantee at 7:05 PM on May 23, 2022

I lived in two separate warehouse squats in the early 2000s in Asheville, NC. The warehouse district along the river and rails was turned into the "River Arts District" starting in 2005ish (I think...I left town and didn't return until 2018) and all those empty warehouses were turned into art studios and breweries for the most part. The scene probably still exists but it moved to somewhere the real estate market isn't white hot. At least one local bookstore has a pretty big zine section still though!
posted by schyler523 at 7:08 AM on May 24, 2022

Legal squats are a non-sequitur. There is authorities turning a blind eye until some owner or such complains, but if you are there legally, it's not a squat. Squats require stealth and a "squat key" (usually a crowbar or more commonly a big screwdriver to skirt the possession of implements of nefariousness). You're not squatting unless you could be charged with trespassing. Maybe just a different definition of squat.
posted by zengargoyle at 1:28 AM on May 25, 2022

They are here in northern CA and Oregon.
posted by moons in june at 4:32 AM on May 25, 2022

Yeah, the scene is still active in New England, the Bay Area, and South Texas at least (just places I’m familiar with). A lot of peoples lives have changed as they had kids and gotten older but they’re still anarchist punks living in dingy places with writing on the walls and feeding hungry people. I grew up on the margins of the scene as a child in the 2000’s and friends of mine who are a bit older got into it as teens in the 2000’s went through their own ‘oogle’ culture, so I think that’s just a shift in name. I think of oogles as more likely to be into crafts and selling found-material jewelry out of their backpacks or doing tattoos but essentially the same as any other hitchhiker/freight hopper. They all have dogs that they shoplift medicine and food for and feed before they eat themselves.
posted by Summers at 9:11 AM on May 29, 2022