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Weekend Sound Track
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"We're all all right..."

The Park was a defunct theatre in downtown Holland, MI that Shannon Stewart rented out and turned into one of the finest dance clubs a true 'alternative' teenager could ever hope for in 1989. Pre-grunge, post-punk children of Reagan gathered here week in and week out, year round, decked out in the worst the Salvation Army had to offer. Punks, goths, techno weenies, industrials, straight-edgers, poseurs and the truly hard core would be making out in the Balcony, grooving on the Stage or slamming in the Pit, kicking each other's heads in.

Saturday night was the smell of the smoke machine, tracers from the light show and the deep thump of the subs moving through your teenage bones with the speed of adrenaline and an aftertaste of nicotine.

For a lucky few of us it was both a home and a job. Lawnjart, the gilded frame, thefez, robnotrob, clampe, TheMagus, myself and a half-dozen other of our closest friends (who had the good sense to never, ever make an account on E2) ran the place. We were doormen, bouncers, dj's and the poor bastards who cleaned up the puke, piss and blood at 3am before hitting the local Denny's for what I liked to call the 'big mistake slam'.

Those were the times, that's what it was. Where it was at. The music could never quite survive outside of The Park ... 'Hit That Perfect Beat' couldn't work at the beach and Book of Love's 'Witchcraft' was just embarrassing in the light of day. Jogging to Kon Kan? Below is my set list, good only for one night in the late eighties, when the tired radio is playing Def Leppard's 'Hysteria' and you can't get the fucking chorus for 'Man in the Mirror' out of your head. Pack four friends into the '84 Ford Escort with no rearview, kick the tape deck in hopes of Disintegration and speed madly towards The Park.

$5 at the door ... unless you're with us.

- Ryan Postma