Authors Aaron Cometbus and Scott Satterwhite are presenting from their book A Punkhouse in the Deep South: The Oral History of 309 at the Chattanooga Public Library on Saturday.

Using student interviews collected before the pandemic, A Punkhouse in the Deep South (University Press of Florida) describes the lives of a Pensacola punk rock community living in one of the country’s oldest punkhouses—309. Mr. Cometbus and Mr. Satterwhite’s presentation will offer a glimpse into the house’s origins and the punks that made the house a home, all the while creating everything from music to art, and even a few businesses.

The Library is hosting the authors on its downtown plaza with music, a zine making workshop, and a presentation of flyers from Chattanooga’s punk community, which are preserved in the Library's Local History and Genealogy Department. The event, open to all ages, starts at 2 p.m., with the authors presenting at 4 p.m. 

Copies of A Punkhouse in the Deep South will be available for purchase from the authors. For more information on the book, visit: University Press of Florida: A Punkhouse in the Deep South.

About the Book:

Told in personal interviews, this is the collective story of a punk community in an unlikely town and region, a hub of radical counterculture that drew artists and musicians from throughout the conservative South and earned national renown.      

The house at 309 6th Avenue has long been a crossroads for punk rock, activism, veganism, and queer culture in Pensacola, a quiet Gulf Coast city at the border of Florida and Alabama. In this book, residents of 309 narrate the colorful and often comical details of communal life in the crowded and dilapidated house over its 30-year existence. Terry Johnson, Ryan “Rymodee” Modee, Gloria Diaz, Skott Cowgill, and others tell of playing in bands including This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb, operating local businesses such as End of the Line Cafe, forming feminist support groups, and creating zines and art.            

Each voice adds to the picture of a lively community that worked together to provide for their own needs while making a positive, lasting impact on their surrounding area. Together, these participants show that punk is more than music and teenage rebellion. It is about alternatives to standard narratives of living, acceptance for the marginalized in a rapidly changing world, and building a sense of family from the ground up.            

Including photos by Cynthia Connolly and Mike Brodie, A Punkhouse in the Deep South illuminates many individual lives and creative endeavors that found a home and thrived in one of the oldest continuously inhabited punkhouses in the United States.