1801 East Wilshire Ave, Unit 2, Fullertonn — Private residence
Mike Ness, part of the band Social Distortion, rented a modest ground-floor apartment here in 1979. Ness welcomed his friends, providing a safe space for punks from across Southern California who were often fleeing abusive families or schools.
They held legendary parties here until they were evicted in the spring of 1980. Among the punks who emerged from the Black Hole was Robert Omlit, one of the first openly LGBTQ members of the scene and a champion of women punks at a time when many faced sexism from their peers.
Rikk and Frank Agnew, who lived here as teenagers, wrote about it in the Adolescents song “Kids of the Black Hole” (1981), describing “House of the filthy, house not a home, / house of destruction where the lurkers roamed. / House that belonged to all the homeless kids, / kids of the black hole.” The song added, “Messages and slogans are the primary décor, / history’s recorded in a clutter on the floor.” Its history is also recorded in that Adolescents song, and in Social Distortion’s “Playpen” and Penelope Spheeris’s documentary The Decline of Western Civilization (1981). It was a space for Reagan-era youth to express the cracks in Orange County’s veneer.
Punks and LGBTQ youth may have ended up in Fullerton because it is the first train stop outside Los Angeles, convenient for runaways, in an often-overlooked corner of suburbia where, in 1980, housing was more affordable. In this apartment they created alternative forms of domesticity and launched an art movement that reached international popularity.
The kids of the Black Hole critiqued suburban homogeneity, but they also desired some aspects of suburbia. As another Southern California punk band, The Descendents, shouted over a hard-driving bass guitar in 1982: “I want to be stereotyped, I want to be classified. I want to be a clone. / I want a suburban home, suburban home, suburban home . . .” Although many listeners assume this song was sarcastic, songwriter Tony Lombardo explained that he meant those lyrics sincerely: “I couldn’t live in a place where all the people are cool.” (For more on Orange County’s punk scene, see Sites 1–18, Back in Control Training Center and 6–11, Cuckoo’s Nest.)
To Learn More
- Boehm, Mike. “Kids of the Black Hole: The 1970s Were Waning When Orange County’s Punk Rock Scene Roared Its Dark, Hostile Message.” Los Angeles Times, July 23, 1989.
- Macleod, Dewar. Kids of the Black Hole: Punk Rock in Postsuburban California. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010.
Image: The Black Hole, Fullerton, 2019. Photo by Elaine Lewinnek.