Joanna R. Davis, a sociologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has just published a study in which she interviews six “authentic” punk rockers well past the age of adolescence in an attempt to understand how punk kids grow up. This is problematic for several reasons, but I’ll let her subjects speak for themselves:

Mitch waxes proud over a friend who is a “perfect example” of how to integrate the ageing adult and punk selves. This exemplar is now a high school teacher. Earlier in life, “he went on tour [as a roadie] and all that stuff, like, total just drunken fucker and now he’s teaching our kids … it’s awesome, like, he separates his, like, that life, with his other life, like, he teaches school … but like, he’s still tripping mushrooms and hanging out drinking, and he will always make time for a show that he wants to; he’ll show up to the show.”

This all begs some questions: Who vetted the members of her study? And what were the criteria of their authenticity? I’m not sure that the average sociologist would be able to separate an “authentic” punk from a Warped Tour hobbyist, which would mean that — in order for Davis’s findings to achieve credibility — she would need an “inside man” of sorts. It’s tough to say if she went to the trouble: If I were to interview six aging punks about their experiences, I’m sure it would be more enlightening than what I’ve read here.