Take a walk on the wild side: Punk music walking tours in New York City

Abstract

Walking tours on the streets of cities like New York offer music fans the opportunity to tread in the footsteps of their punk rock idols. Music lovers seek a tourist experience that constructs intra- and inter-personal authenticity as a ‘true fan’ as they seek to see for themselves where their idols lived, worked, recorded, and performed in New York City. Music walking tours are situated as a form of embodied music tourism or psychogeographic practice as they connect fans with the soundscape and the cityscape. When fans document their walking experience, they contribute to a history of music culture and to the practice of music tourism as an embodied social practice. This article engages with popular media through tourism and tells the story of one of many cultural communities with a special tie to the Lower East Side.