New Riverside museum show tells the history of the city’s ska, punk scenes

Southern California’s punk rock history is often focused on Orange County and Los Angeles, but 60 miles east of L.A,. the youth of the Inland Empire were creating their own scene amid the smog and heat.

The Riverside Art Museum in Riverside is hosting a new exhibit, titled “60 Miles East: Riverside’s Underground Punk Rock, Hardcore & Ska Scene, from the late 1980s to early 2000s,” which is running through April 12, 2026, where punk and ska enthusiasts can revel in the Inland Empire’s contributions to the genres. The exhibit’s title is a nod to lyrics by Donax, co-curator Ken Crawford’s former band.

The museum also features historical items, including event flyers, ticket stubs, original band T-shirts, and other memorabilia. Along the walls, photos from co-curator Zach Cordner transport attendees back to the decades before the internet, when print flyers and word of mouth drove fans to backyards, house shows, and three of the main venues at the time: Spanky’s Cafe, UC Riverside’s The Barn, and the Showcase Theatre in Corona.

Co-curators Cordner and Crawford have known each other since elementary school and grew up in Riverside. By high school, their interests converged around skateboarding, punk rock and avoiding school activities like the prom and Friday night football games. Crawford developed a knack for skateboarding photography and later began shooting photos at the hundreds of shows they attended in their youth.

“Skateboarding and punk rock just went together,” Crawford said. “It was the soundtrack of hanging out and skating to punk rock.”

“It was also a really tiny community,” Cordner added. “The skaters were kind of outcasts back then. Skating wasn’t very mainstream, and neither was punk rock, so a lot of those scenes kind of just blended together.”

Crawford said it took them about a year and a half to collect artifacts and meet with people whom they hadn’t seen or talked to in decades. Luckily for the exhibit, several of the people they contacted had been holding on to flyers, T-shirts and original cassettes that helped make the museum the time capsule that it is.

While Cordner had plenty of photos from his own collections, he also contacted other photographers to fill in any gaps in his collection before his shooting days. Those photos, along with more than 250 flyers that others had collected, were scanned and added to a library. The exhibit features a massive wall of flyers showcasing punk rock and hardcore heavy hitters, including the Ramones, Black Flag, Strife, and T.S.O.L., topping the lineups.

Other impressive artifacts include the original Lucha Libre mask worn by local ska-punk Voodoo Glow Skulls front man Frank Casillas along with the original green painted Voodoo Glow Skull’s banner from 1989, a contract from 1993 between Spanky’s and then now-stadium act Green Day, the Spanky’s sign that hung outside of the cafe-venue and the bike that hung in the rafters at Showcase Theatre.

“It was an adventure putting this all together,” Cordner said. “We almost felt like archaeologists, digging through the past and layers of things to find the gems that we could put on the walls in this museum.”

Among the venues that housed Riverside’s punk rock music scene was the Barn, located on the UC Riverside campus. The venue’s programming was driven by an ambitious group of music enthusiasts working to make the Inland Empire a must-stop destination for punk and hardcore bands coming through Southern California.

The collective was known as 98 Posse and was created and led by Bill Fold, who went on to work as the festival director for the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. The group’s early days began with throwing warehouse parties, then setting up shop at now-shuttered venues like Attitudes and Harry CS before moving on to the Barn.

Art Moreno, who is now working for Goldenvoice in Festivals Safety Operations, was part of the 98 Posse from 1996 to 2000, where he said he and his group of friends helped organize affordable, all-ages shows at the Barn. Moreno said that some of the shows 98 Posse organized during his time included Korn, Deftones, Save Ferris, Incubus, Rage Against the Machine, and numerous local bands, such as The Skeletones and Voodoo Glow Skulls.

He added that the work at 98 Posse was hands-on, often involving bidding wars with neighboring venues over acts, and printing and cutting reams of flyers that were distributed on routes that included local record shops such as Mad Platter and extended all the way down to San Diego. After Moreno took a lap around the exhibit, he said that taking in all of the exhibit’s artifacts from his formative years filled him with a sense of nostalgia.

“All the memories just came back along with all the friendships I made and all the fun I had, and I still had the fun being in the industry, but it’s different,” Moreno said. “This was small, grassroots, and made me who I am today.”

Another person inspired by the music scene in Riverside was Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker. He frequently attended shows at Spanky’s, where he saw bands such as No Doubt, Firehose, and DRI. Like many musicians, his biggest dream was to be in a band, so he placed ads in magazines and fanzines, including Mean Street and Factor X, which were also featured in the museum. Barker and a rock band he was in eventually landed a gig at Spanky’s, competing in Battle of the Bands, where he was exposed to hardcore and punk.

“I’d never been to a show like that and I loved it,” Barker said. “I was playing in a rock band, and there was this sharp skinhead band that needed a drummer that I would play with, too. I would play with anyone that would have me, and I learned so much about so many different genres of music.”

He later met Fold of 98 Posse, who assigned Barker tasks to be more involved in the local music scene, including listening to cassette tapes of bands that could serve as opening acts for the headliners. During this time, Barker was in his first punk band called Feeble and was also starting to play with the Aquabats.

When the idea for the museum came to fruition, Cordner, who had worked as Barker’s personal photographer for several years, touched base with the drummer, who was happy to sponsor the exhibit and pay tribute to his roots. On one of the walls in the exhibit, there are photos of Barker at his original Famous Stars & Straps store in Riverside from 1999, illustrating a piece of his presence in the Inland Empire before his musical career skyrocketed.

“Travis was just a kid that had the time to hang around, and obviously, he caught on and did well,” Crawford said. “He succeeded playing music for a living, and that’s the point of it all. He won the lottery.”

Cordner and Crawford also have a love for Riverside and the region, and are the co-founders of The Riversider Magazine. As proud Riversiders, their mission was to create a tangible document that captures the arts and culture of the area, which ultimately inspired them to take a look back at the formative punk, hardcore and ska music scene of their youth, leading to the thesis of the exhibit.

“I hope it inspires people to see what happened here in Riverside many decades ago,” Crawford said. “The future is wide open to try to bring back another music scene here and hopefully an all-ages venue down the line. That would be amazing to have a place where high school kids can safely go to shows and where their bands can play.”

’60 Miles East: Riverside’s Underground Punk Rock, Hardcore & Ska Scene, from the late 1980s to early 2000s’

When: 10 a.m.- 5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays and noon to 5 p.m. Sundays through April 12.

Where: Riverside Art Museum, 3425 Mission Inn Ave., Riverside.

Admission: Free for children under 12 and $10.95-$15.95 for adults at riversideartmuseum.org.