State of Love and Scene

by Stephen



   
It's not everyday we get the chance to be apart of starting a scene. Most often we join scenes that have been around for years and
years. They all seem to have long traditions of something or other. Story after story of the bands that came in the past and amazing
venues that went under. An all around sense of community amongst the underground.



Imagine January 1995, Abbotsford; B.C.


The kind people that came before us looked at Abbotsford, shrugged their shoulders and moved away. I grew up in the mid to late 90's
here in town and there was the occasional punk show, sometimes some more harder rock, but not often enough to be considered a scene.
Definitely no sense of community for us anywhere. There were others that came round and put in a whole ton of effort to try and get
something going here in town but to no avail. It's an uphill struggle to do on your own and extremely easy to burn out fighting for.
I would like to thank them all, for their effort and putting the fire in our hearts to realize the dream of a scene.



Welcome to present day, Abbotsford; B.C.


Here we stand at the very beginning. I don't really process a certain formula as to how it happened. Maybe some of those that graduated
didn't give up on Abbotsford; maybe the kids in high school realized it was all they had to do outside of school with the teacher's
strike or maybe it was just pure luck. No matter what it was it has all worked out into a beautiful thing. Never have I witnessed so
many people excited about this idea of Abbotsford actually having a scene. It's love. These people actually have love for the scene.
They're inspired and they're gonna start shooting off their own personal creative energy into it. It'll spread from music into art,
film, dance, all forms of expression. It will grow past a scene and become a community. We are standing on the edge of a most
beautiful time. The scene is now alive, no one person controls it or builds it. It's gonna take all of us now.