Monthly Archives: January 2010

Washington, DC has only produced a few indigenous music styles. Second only to Go-Go, hardcore punk has come to stand as the city’s greatest rock-and-roll export. While the image of Georgetown and the image of hardcore punks are not ones that often get confused, there is an odd link that ties these two things together: the Haagan Dazs.

In the early 1980’s, the manager of the Georgetown Haagan Dazs was a Glover Park teenager named Henry Garfield. He hired one of his Glover Park friends, Ian MacKaye, to work at the ice cream store. By this time, both Garfield and MacKaye were already active in the burgeoning DC hardcore scene. The dissonance between the public perception of the hardcore punks and their actual behavior in Georgetown was discussed at length by MacKaye in this contemporaneous documentary (the Georgetown part starts at 1:40):

Or in a parlance of a later age: it was hip to be square.

Soon after the photo above was taken, Garfield was given his dream job to be lead singer of the seminal band Black Flag. He quit his job at Haagen Dazs, moved to Los Angeles, and changed his name to Henry Rollins. The rest is history.

MacKaye stayed in DC. After singing for his own seminal band, Minor Threat, for three years MacKaye eventually played guitar in yet another seminal band, Fugazi. While Fugazi is in an extended hiatus, MacKaye can still be seen playing along with his partner Amy Farina in the Evens.

Photo by Susie Horgan from Punk Love, an excellent photographic history of hardcore.