Fullerton Museum Gets a Dose of Orange County's Punk Rock Rebellion

O.C. punk rock exhibit is the largest, longest in Fullerton Museum Center history.

A display of artifacts from the band Social Distortion. This band formed in Fullerton in 1978 and blew up after signing its first major record deal in 1989 with Epic Records. Photo by Joel Beers, Culture OC

Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial. Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while. –Bob Dylan, “Visions of Johanna,” 1965

Whether Mr. Zimmerman had a point, or just landed on a killer rhyme, one interpretation of that lyric poses the question: Once something is sanctioned as historic and institutionalized, whether within the walls of a museum or by a governing body like a UNESCO World Heritage site, is it fixed in time – static and unchanging, stripped of its vitality as an ongoing, evolving entity?

Not if you’re Orange County punk rock.

For proof, consider the exhibition opening Saturday at the Fullerton Museum Center: “Punk OC: From the Streets of Suburbia.” This immersive dive into the history of punk in Fullerton and the rest of Orange County chronicles the impact and legacy of the raw, aggressive genre that served as the soundtrack to the lives of multiple generations of local residents, as well as the region’s surf and skate subcultures. But beyond celebrating and paying homage to the past, the exhibit also includes the state of contemporary punk in the county, showing how it’s evolved while still connected to that rich history.

And that state is very strong, with seminal O.C. punk bands still actively touring and performing locally at high-profile venues like the Observatory in Santa Ana and the Anaheim House of Blues, and venues such as Chain Reaction in Anaheim and the Garden Amp in Garden Grove booking touring and local, newer bands.

The venerable Doll Hut in Anaheim is still around, and then there are venues like Fullerton’s Programme Skate and Sound, a skate shop/music store by day that regularly books local punk bands at night. And, as the Fullerton Observer’s Isabella Rollison reported in October 2024, the DIY punk aesthetic remains strong, with newer bands taking to social media sites like Instagram to announce pop-up shows at places like a Buena Park Wells Fargo parking lot.

Documenting the past while commenting on how punk remains a vital component of the local music scene is integral to the exhibit, the largest and longest-running in the museum’s history, according to director Elvia Rubalcava.

“We’re not telling the super complete story,” Rubalcava said. “We’re still a smallish museum, and to tell it thoroughly we’d need two to three times the space. But we’re giving it a good platform and providing a good sense of history. For those coming in who know the history, it will be a (good walk) down memory lane, and those who are new to it can get a good overall picture of what punk (in the county) was and is like, now.”

The exhibit is the largest since the museum’s founding in 1985, with nearly every centimeter of the 2,000-square-foot square exhibition space covered with approximately 2,000 objects including flyers, album covers, set lists, lyrics, newspaper clippings, instruments, tickets and punk artifacts and photographs, from the first punk rock board game, Séance, to one of the Offspring’s early royalty checks, a check for less than $20.

The exhibit is also vertical, with large photos of punk rockers who have moved on, like Steve Soto, who played with the Adolescents, Agent Orange and Manic Hispanic, and Todd Barnes, the original drummer of T.S.O.L, nearly touching the high ceilings.

Artifacts cover the walls in the Punk O.C. exhibit at the Fullerton Museum Center. PHOTO 1: When the Commonwealth Pub closed in Fullerton in 1990, the Doll Hut in Anaheim became the leading liquid refuge for the punk community in North Orange County. PHOTO 2: Scores of flyers from long-gone venues, including an O.C. laundromat, help document the O.C. punk scene in the early 1980s. PHOTO 3: Album covers from The Adolescents. The band formed in Fullerton in 1979 and was in the vanguard of O.C.'s hardcore punk scene. PHOTO 4: La Vida Hot Springs, located in Carbon Canyon, was a resort and spa from around 1910 to the 1980s, when it turned into a biker bar and attracted punk and other musicians to perform. Photos by Joel Beers, Culture OC

Special Events This Weekend and Through Summer

The exhibition kicks off Saturday with the grand opening at 5 p.m., which also includes a pop-up show in the museum’s smaller gallery courtesy of the Las Vegas Punk Rock Museum, which is celebrating its second anniversary. Later Saturday night, it takes over the adjacent Fullerton Plaza with a full-on, all-ages punk show featuring T.S.O.L and DI. The event, which will be emceed by comedian Chris Estrada with Joe Escalante of the Vandals serving as guest DJ, has long since sold out its 1,300 tickets, and since punk rock is punk rock, there will be barricades, security and a noticeable Fullerton Police Department presence.

Events coinciding with the exhibit will take place during the summer, underlining the museum’s need to lure repeat visitors. The Museum Center has struggled to remain open since the city of Fullerton cut off funding.

“We can’t exist with just single ticket sales,” Rubalcava said. “That’s where these events come in.”

Those events include a book release and signing event May 20 with Daniel Kohn and Nate Jackson, longtime music editor of OC Weekly and currently a deputy editor for arts and entertainment at the Los Angeles Times, co-authors of “Tearing Down the Orange Curtain: How Punk Rock Brought Orange County to the World”; a book signing in July with the author of “With Time – The Roger Miret Archives, written by Miret, Agnostic Front lead singer; a book reading July 20 by T.S.O.L. frontman Jack Grisham from his book “An American Demon: A Memoir”; and a closing day event Aug. 10 timed with the museum’s permanent Leo Fender exhibition: “Fender Forever: The Sound of Rebellion.”

The exhibit is co-curated by the museum’s curator, Georgette Collard, who was hired full-time in August, and Jim Washburn, a music historian, author and longtime O.C. journalist. The exhibit’s multi-generational scope is reflected in the co-curators, as Collard represents the demographic that came of age in the 1990s, when punk bands like the Offspring and punk-inspired ensembles like No Doubt exploded, while Washburn, who owned a legendary record store in Anaheim, Beggars Banquet, before writing for The Register beginning in 1983 – along with covering music and culture for the Los Angeles Times and OC Weekly – reflects the perspective of someone who observed O.C, punk’s first major stirrings in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

“Georgette is a huge punk fan who brought a lot of that to the table,” Rubalcava said of Collard, who oversaw the opening night reception and the material collection. “And then having Jim (who wrote the wall text accompanying the exhibits), who has worked with the museum in the past, who is familiar with that history but is also kind of an outsider who could interview the musicians and ask a lot of the questions to get a complete picture – it was a good fit.”

To bring things up to date, a third person was needed. Washburn admits that he was never the biggest punk aficionado, and Collard, who first got into punk in fourth grade when she heard the Offspring, also acknowledges that she’s not as connected to the scene anymore.

That’s where a museum assistant, Jenni Lopez, a first-year Fullerton College museum studies major, came in.

“She is a phenomenal artist herself and a huge punk fan,” Rubalcava said. “ So she helped us with finding all these young punk bands in Orange County that we weren’t aware of and sourcing that material.”

For Washburn, whose musical coverage for local outlets mostly focused on non-punk acts that played at venues like the Pacific Amphitheatre and Irvine Meadows, working on the exhibit has led him to a greater appreciation of the genre.

“I’m amazed at the longevity and how a lot of these bands are making more money now than they ever did back in the day,” said Washburn, who mentioned the late Mike Boehm of the Los Angeles Times as perhaps the leading chronicler of punk in the county. “But also the impact they had, and still have, on so many people who found something in the music that they could call their own.”

Linda Aronow was one of the female photographers who documented the O.C. punk scene. Her book, as well as others, is available for sale in the museum's book store. Photo by Joel Beers, Culture OC

Fullerton Epicenter

The exhibit focuses mostly on Fullerton – an epicenter of punk in its early years – but also extends to the rest of the county, as well as Long Beach and Los Angeles' frenetic scenes. It is arranged chronologically and is geared mostly toward the bands and the venues, such as Costa Mesa’s Cuckoo’s Nest, La Vida Hot Springs and the Doll Hut, where they performed.

Agent Orange, who drew heavily from surf music, formed in Placentia in 1979. Photo by Joel Beers, Culture OC

Major bands, such as the Adolescents, Social Distortion and the Offspring, get their own sections, but dozens of others bands, from the hugely influential Middle Class, generally considered the pioneers of hardcore – the punk subgenre that would most come to define O.C. punk – to Shattered Faith, Agent Orange, Joyride and the Ziggens are prominently mentioned.

And while the most visible aspects of punk were predominantly male, women who played a vital role in punk’s story are featured, including Linda Jemison, former owner of of the Doll Hut and four women photographers who documented the scene – Linda Aronow, Alison Braun, Dina Douglass and Marla Watson – showing, as co-curator Collard said, that with “no punk girls, no punk history.”

Mounting a punk exhibit at a museum has not gone without some naysayers. But Rubalcava says the legacy and impact of punk in the county is too important to overlook.

“We’ve got a tiny bit of criticism, people making comments like why (is the museum mounting) a punk rock exhibit and so forth,” Rubalcava said. “But we have done hip-hop exhibits, we’ve done country and Fullerton and Orange County is so full of punk history, so it makes sense that we do it. These are important stories and just like we want to preserve the Fender history for Fullerton, we want to preserve these stories and bring that story up to date.”