The same thing happened years ago to New Brunswick, New Jersey, a college town that produced some very successful artists in the past 2 decades: Lifetime, The Bouncing Souls, Thursday, Gaslight Anthem. Around 2006, the cops started scouring Myspace for shows and permanently shut down a number of popular house venues. Since then, the punks have responded by moving all info to the sneakernet; you can't find out any show details unless you're actually friends with someone who already knows a band or the house owner. Even physical flyers don't have addresses or exact times. It's effectively killed most of the output that this cultural hotspot used to produce.
Hey There! I live in New Brunswick, NJ. Sounds like you were around a few years ago. I live in a show house and also put together a little show calendar app at http://nbshows.org which has been up for over a year now. It gets about 100 unique hits a day.
There are never any address posted on it. Whenever someone emails staff@nbshows.org and asks for address's I am always careful about giving out info, I always google the email to make sure its not a throw-away.
I am really excited that this topic is on HN today, because I am working on a personal project that will be at http://diyshws.org. Basically it will be a site where people can create show calendars for the small city that they live in if there is no central way to find out about shows. (other than Facebook)
When I was a sophomore or junior in college, a friend and I drove the roughly 8 hours from central Indiana to New Brunswick for a show. A hardcore band we dug was playing their last show ever and we were like fuck it. Had an address and started east. Got into town and went looking for the venue. Was a little nervous we had the wrong address when somewhere along Hamilton St., there stood a house. All in all, one of the coolest shows I've ever been to. The show was in the basement and my friend, who is quite tall, actually had to duck in a few places to move around. The house threw a kegger afterwards that we hung around at for a little bit, talked to the band and generally had a good time. Some very drunk punk guy showed up who was promptly ejected (physically) from the house onto the street. Super cool and I certainly won't forget it.
> Since then, the punks have responded by moving all info to the sneakernet
1) This is a key part of the "local problem." Not all of the relevant legal context is written down or documented.
2) The power of real social connections in many ways dwarfs the power of online connection. Networks of people who know each other well and trust one another are a potent force that can even threaten the establishment. The British know this well, from the POV of the state. YC is also proof of this.
Thanks for mentioning Lifetime, I think that'll be my soundtrack for the day. Had no idea things got that bad in NJ, it seems that living in Austin for a while spoiled me.
The police using email for this sort of thing actually seems like a step backwards somehow. It's been well known for a while that the B9 board gets frequented by law enforcement (both for gang and show related activities) so going the direct message route seems like an unnecessary step. You're never going to be able to adequately integrate, why even try?
I went to Rutgers & it was day and night in 2004-2005 & 2006 onwards as far as house shows were concerned in NB. Unfortunately, NBPD has been known to use a heavy hand in a lot of things. Not too long ago, the Prosecutor's office was investigating an Internal affairs guy for mishandling 81 cases.
On a side note, NYPD had an elaborate, illegal surveillance operation spying on Muslims in the NJ area that was outed when a building super inadvertently walked into the apartment being used as their base.
