One of the most interesting things I’ve ever gotten to review. A history of an early Orange County venue, Costa Mesa’s the Cuckoo’s Nest, as told entirely through police reports and public documents. Divided into chronological order, with an absolutely stunning cut and paste aesthetic, Suburban Struggle is a fascinating look at how punk was viewed by the “normal” populace. It reads as a pretty classic case of a venue’s demise: shows get put on, punks show up, have issues with the neighbors, concerns of property values and “children’s safety” arises, venue shuts down. Like I said, it’s all told through public records, though the editor does a fantastic job of parsing through them and providing a summation of each chapter. While some of the pages suffer from a little too much photocopy manipulation that makes them difficult to decipher, the vast majority of it is a visual wonder. It’s beautiful. It also placed me in a strange position: the editor posits that the Cuckoo’s Nest was essentially shut down via “state suppression,” i.e., cops, business owners, and city council eventually acting in tandem to get what they viewed as an unwelcome element out of their suburban enclave. That might even be true. Yet if even half of the public statements here are correct, punks at the Cuckoo’s Nest got their venue shut down mainly because they were shitheads. Cultural attitudes shift, I get that, but anyone who has ever helped sustain a venue knows: Don’t shit where you eat. For all of the state suppression that went on, there also seemed like a shit-ton of really young kids who were lighting cars on fire, breaking neighboring windows, kicking each other’s asses, getting drunk, and doing coke in the parking lot. I’m torn, which makes for a seriously fascinating read. –Keith Rosson (Suburban Struggle Zine, 3603 W. Washington Blvd., LA, CA 90018)