Those of you who buy PUNK UNDER THE SUN (hardcopy or digital version), whether you were in SFLA during the 1980s or not, are part of the extended family the book was created for. We want to hear your story: why you are interested in that time or what connection you had/have to it, what music and art you saw live or heard about, what band or clubs or fun times in the SFLA alt-culture scene you experienced during or since the ’80s, and what the hell you’ve been up to since! Photos of you, friends, venues, etc. enjoying the SFLA alt music and art scenes, ’80s till now, are welcome too, and we’ll share them here and on our social-media pages. Send your stories HERE. Meantime, here’s the first in a series of check-ins from PUNK readers. We’ll start with

BARRY S. ANDERSON:
My brain has been spinning since I received PUNK UNDER THE SUN this past week. I have thought about the past and those wild days many times but shoved most of it away and moved on. Congratulations on this accomplishment, and thank you for bringing all these memories back.

I moved to Ft. Lauderdale in 1982 to go to the Art Institute, transferred from Pittsburgh after a few wild years there. Week One I run into a punk girl on the Strip who told me I needed a haircut and gave me her card. I called her a few days later and next thing I know my long hair was gone and I had a shaved head with a long rats tail. I hit the Army Navy store and went for it. I was out many nights a week in Ft. Lauderdale, then I worked my way down to Hallandale and Miami, on the weekends especially. I would start at the New Wave Lounge and end up down at the Button South or Fire & Ice unless a good show was playing at the Cameo. All the clubs and bands and people!

I was always at Pearl Art & Craft, and that may be where I met Brad Stewart and Roger Deering. I got to know the Drills and painted their jackets with a skull being drilled. I hung out with a punk rocker named Draco (Emilio) from Miami quite a bit, and Mohawk Kevin. I had some of the greatest times of my life, and some of the worst. Sex Drugs and Rock & Roll was my lifestyle from 18 to 28 yrs old, then I crashed and burned. You can’t go on at full speed ahead all the time and not hit something or run out of gas eventually.

Lucky for me, I did manage to accomplish quite a few things during all of the chaos. I had changed my style to more rockabilly after constant police harassment and also barroom altercations; the rockabilly look didn’t make things too much better back in those days but it got me hired on Miami Vice. I was an undercover cop extra (nonspeaking part) on the full first season (1984). I became an FX makeup artist working on mostly B horror films, several are cult classics: George Romero’s The Day of the Dead (1985), The Unholy (1988), Jeepers Creepers (2001), etc.

By 30 I was trying to live a calmer life and settled down with my wife. I now live in Central Florida, moved up here a year after Hurricane Andrew looking for a steady job with benefits. I removed my “Die Yuppy Scum” hat, put my leather jacket in the closet, and tried to pretend to be normal.

I am now 63 yrs old and it has been a wild crazy ride. I was fortunate that I followed my passions and was stubborn enough to keep trying to work as an artist in one way or another. I silk screened T shirts, worked as a painter at art studios, worked for a costume shop, sculptors assistant, etc. to pay my bills before I got into the film industry in South Florida. I got the opportunity to work on The Day of the Dead, helping to make armies of zombies over in Sanibel Island and Ft. Myers in Dec. 1984. It was an exciting time in many ways, but sadly all the talk about Florida becoming the next Hollywood never really happened. I did most of the film work as a side job. I moved to Central Florida around 1993 looking for steady work and got a job with the Ripley Entertainment company’s art dept. I always loved the weird and the strange, and the world headquarters had just moved to Central Florida at the same time that I moved here, and I got in at the beginning. I worked as a museum figure maker and prop maker and worked for them for 17 yrs. I was the director of the art dept. for around 12 yrs, and we made stuff and shipped it around the world to the many various attractions. I still did illustrations for fun, including a T-shirt design for the South Florida band the Van Orsdels in the early 2000s.

At the age of 50 I decided to change things in my career and got into medical training devices for the armed forces, creating innovative prototypes and manufacturing the commercial products with a military contracting company. It was interesting and challenging work. I retired in July 2023.

Some of my memories from SFLA in the day:
–Dion Warwick and Phillip Michael Thomas visited me in my little FX shop in North Miami, close to the old Ivan Tors Studio, where Vice was being filmed [also filmed there, in the 1960s: Flipper and Gentle Ben!]. Phillip surprised me—he asked if he could bring a friend. Shocked me! They were so cool. They hung out with me for several hours and I took face castings off of them.

—25^th Parallel was a magazine from South Florida in the early 1990s. The senior editor was Brian Warner, aka Marilyn Manson. Really good magazine but short lived. They did a nice article on my early career. Lots of local and nonlocal bands interviewed, and artists, etc.

–Saw Black Flag at Finders Lounge on May 21, 1982, with Roach Motel, the Abusers, Saccharine Trust—that was my initiation to hardcore. I had seen Iggy and the Ramones prior to this but this was an adrenaline rush like no other.

–I knew Johnny Depp a little bit just prior to him heading out to Hollywood. The last time I had a conversation with him was on his birthday, he was celebrating it at the Button South in 1984 and he had just finished working on Nightmare on Elm Street. He told me he was going to try out for a TV show called 21 Jump Street. The rest is history.

Wish I had a time machine to go back to those days every so often. I still put on some Clash or Dead Kennedys every now and then.

You guys have created something truly special, a historic document of a special time and place. I am glad we were all part of it.