This book of portraits and recorded interviews takes us into the lives and living spaces of the punks and skinheads of New York's East Village of the 1980's. The photographs document an extraordinary moment in the history of New York City and American youth culture—the heyday of the hardcore scene—of rebellion, community, culture and music that thrived in the streets, the squats and the clubs of the East Village. In intimate and eloquent detail, Caruana's lens captures the whole environment of the downtown hardcore the mohawks and spiked haircuts ; the black leather, tattoos, torn clothing and body metal; the hardcore clubs, the abandoned tenement buildings and rubble strewn vacant lots. In these pages we see the faces of these rebels and hear, in the text, their voices and see them not as caricatures of pop culture but as unique individuals.