Here's a nice review of the new book Punk House, which documents the squats and other punk dwellings the authors found on a cross-country trip. I crashed on a lot of sofas in houses that looked like these, and even held the lease on one at one point…



Author and musician Timothy Findlen, along with photographer Abby Banks, spent three months driving cross-country to visit and photograph sixty-five punk houses–communal, low-rent houses typically crammed full of punks, squatters, and artists. The end result is PUNK HOUSE, a collection of 300 full color photos and three short essays.

PUNK HOUSE documents a journey that most of us will have never taken; it shows us homes that most of us have never seen; it gives a small taste of a way of living most of us have never lived, and it does so in an easy yet successful way. Banks' digital snapshots are assembled by location, and are mainly colorful details of the punk houses, the communal punks that live in them, and the masses of oddball junk that decorate them. The photos range from disgusting (the bathroom at Casa de Otto comes to mind –is that blood or hair dye?) to the artistic (is this a junk pile of sticks or is it considered sculpture?).