The whole LA, Campbell, Willmington, Fullerton, Orange, scene is the best and always will be live shows every night best place to couch surf meet the best people and dicuss everything under the sun SOCAL HANDS DOWN!!!!!!

I'll have to go with London. I don't think there would've been punk if it weren't for the bands in London, such as The Sex Pistols and The Clash. New York City has to be second because of the bands that came from there like The Ramones and New York Dolls.

philly , thats al I have to say

You've got it backwards. There would be no Clash or Sex Pistols had it not been for the Ramones or the New York Dolls

QFT. Also you can add The Stooges, MC5, and Richard Hell as well.

Has anybody mentioned Detroit? Certainly the best City for protorock with MC5, The Stooges and Death all hailing from that neck of the woods. If we're being genre Nazis then London. Not for patriotic reasons, it just produced the greatest number of good punk bands. I do love the LA scene though.

True, but I think the London bands defined punk and the whole culture that went along with it. The New York bands were sort of a starting point.

Patti Smith and The Ramones and then the whole No Wave scene is enough for me to say NYC. Obviously, great cases can be made for London. And Detroit probably has the earliest roots with The Motor City Five and Iggy.

New York.

It started things off with the Velvet Underground, and then you have people like Patti Smith, Television, Suicide, and the Talking Heads coming after them. Of course, then you have the No Wave scene (which is experiment/punk) that includes The Contortions, DNA, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Glenn Branca, and eventually the almighty Sonic Youth.

So... yea, New York. Hands down. '

(London has Wire and the Clash - that's all I really care about).


Second choice. I love all three of those bands - especially MC5.

Toronto is a pretty underrated punk city, imo. Lots of solid stuff has come out of there in the last decade or two.