Goth’s not dead: How a subculture survived over 40 years in Texas

Deep into the night, heat from the 100 degree day radiates off the sidewalk outside of Elysium, Austin’s oldest goth bar.

It’ll celebrate 25 years this year. By 10 p.m. on the Sunday I went, dancers covered the floor.

Not all were in the traditional goth get-up planted in our cultural consciousness by Hollywood. Some wore sundresses, battle jackets, muscle shirts and jorts.

Many music genres grew up in Texas — conjunto, honky-tonk, Texas blues, among others. In recent decades, goth joined the party. Alongside them, the subculture has grown to support several independent businesses and spaces.

Goth is far from new in Texas. Goth clubs like Numbers in Houston have been around for 47 years.

Its secret to immortality? Its flexibility.

“There’s a running joke in the subculture that in order to truly be goth, you have to deny that you are goth,” said John Wickham, owner of Elysium.

Wickham has been active in the Texas scene since the ’80s.

“Bauhaus, The Cure, Siouxsie Sioux, all those bands said ‘no, no, we’re not goth!” Which basically means they’re goth,” he said.

Zarl was just one of several attendees to a Depeche Mode vs. The Cure night at Elysium.

Darkwave, alternative, post-punk — one of the challenges of documenting “goth” is that it goes by so many other names. While many, like John, embrace the label, others I spoke with rejected it.

So, what’s in a name?

“To me, goth is about the music,” said Cassandra Davis, owner of Secret Oktober, a clothing store in Austin that caters to goth and alternative lifestyles. She also runs a webpage collecting goth-related events in the area, and runs a dance party called Dark Ritual Goth Night.

“That’s the number one thing,” Davis said. “Some people come at it from literature, some people come at it through movies, and some from just the fashion or just the makeup. But, to me, it is 100% the music. That’s where it all began.”

Historically, goth traces its roots back to a cluster of British post-punk bands —The Cure, Depeche Mode, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Joy Division — and the club culture that surrounded the British post-punk scene.

The label is generally attributed to Steve Abbott, frontman of UK Decay, who called their music “punk gothique.”

Much of the style and themes associated with the genre come from either punk culture or niche media — think German Impressionist films, Gothic literature and mid-century television, like The Vampira Show and The Addams Family. Universal Monsters, Anne Rice’s novels and B-movies have also influenced the culture.

The music and culture quickly spread. Wickham told me of his experience during the ’80s club scene in Houston.

“We used to have these things called teen clubs, where if you were 13, you could go to a club, and they didn’t have alcohol or anything, but they had dancing and lights and music,” said Wickham. “We went from that to graduating to going to Numbers and some of the clubs like that.”

He told me Numbers originated as a gay bar, then became a goth bar. Its first live band was the goth essential, Siouxsie and the Banshees.

“The clubbing scene that I grew up in in my teenage years, [it was] just really people who felt free expressing themselves, and the whole darker aesthetic, some of the music,” said Wickham.

Goths haven’t been rocking the same four tracks for this long, though.

“You have the traditional goths, which are into Bauhaus and the first wave,” said Sebastian Gnolfo, owner of Bloody Rose Boutique, another store in Austin which sells goth and alternative goods. He also runs The Darker Side of Austin webpage, organizes events for the community and is a musician in his own right.

“It’s expanded to mall goth, and to cyber goth,” said Gnolfo. “So you have people listening to metal and pop music, and they’re all goth. You have goths who listen to ABBA.”

Wickham told me many of the modern bands, as per tradition, will reject the goth label in favor of terms like darkwave.

“I think the reason the bands don’t want to be called ‘goth’ is because they want to be perceived as new,” Wickham said. “And so ‘darkwave’ allows them to be something new, whereas ‘goth’ tends to be something from the past.”

Along the walls of Elysium hangs a gallery of goth and alternative artists who visited the venue.

Some of the faces included KMFDM, Suicide Commando, Death in June, Covenant, Frontline Assembly, Voltaire, Douglas McCarthy from Nitzer Ebb, Psychic TV, Gary Newman and Shannon Funchess of Light Asylum.

“Amazing, amazing woman,” Wickham said of Funchess. “I highly suggest her stuff, it’s very new.”

There were a myriad of Texas bands as well. Among them were Evil Mothers (San Antonio), Mentallo and the Fixer (Austin), Curse Mackey (Austin), Twin Tribes (Brownsville), NITE (Dallas), Urban Heat (Houston), Rosegarden Funeral Party (Dallas), The Nimbus (Austin) and Mutant (Austin).

Wickham mentioned one of Nimbus’ merch shirts on the back says “RECOVERING GOTH.”

“Again, you have to deny being goth to actually be goth,” he said.

Over the past 50 years, certain fashion styles grew up around the music subculture.

With punk deep within their DNA, much of goth fashion still relies on DIY and custom pieces. Those stores that do cater specifically to the culture are generally independent, like Secret Oktober and Bloody Rose Boutique. 

“Even though there are certain styles, you don’t want to look like a clone and just look like you went online to TEMU and bought the goth collection,” said Davis. “You want to… put your own stuff in there.”

Her store has racks of sewing supplies, studs and buckets of patches.

“It’s very fashionable to wear lots and lots and lots of patches,” Davis said.

When asked what it’s like to be goth in a state that regularly hits the 100s, I was generally met with laughs.

“There is no such thing as being cool and dressing goth,” said Davis. “You just suffer.”

“I don’t dress for the weather,” said Gnolfo. “I dress to make myself feel good. And for a lot of goths it’s the same.”

He did recommend a parasol to keep yourself shaded.

Despite the heat, people have kept coming back to this subculture for almost half a century.

“I think there definitely is a resurgence in the goth subculture,” Wickham said. “More people are interested in it now, probably more than ever before.”

Part of this is thanks to its growing popularity online, in addition to a nostalgic resurgence of 2010s “vampire mania.” 

Stephanie Tsonetokoy, known professionally as Bunny Voodoo, is an artist and runs Blood Over Texas, which organizes horror events throughout Central Texas. 

Bunny Voodoo does not identify with the goth label.

“I would lean to horror, mostly because that’s more what I do,” she said. “My art is horror/goth. So, somewhere in that realm. We need a new name for horror goths.”

Of the community, Bunny Voodoo said that while the online side of the culture can be helpful, in-person events will always be the glue that keeps goths and goth-adjacent folks together. 

“You need to have a sense of community where you’re accepted and not judged,” said Bunny Voodoo.

Many of the goths I spoke with said the next generation (known in the community as “baby bats”) has taken up the mantle. 

“It’s really cool and vibrant here, how diverse the scene is,” said Gnolfo. “Even here at the store, I’ve got customers who are in their 50s and 60s coming in with their teenage and tween and younger kids, shopping together. It’s like whole goth families. I’ve even had goth grandmothers with their goth moms and the goth kids come in.”

The scene is showing no signs of slowing down. Texas-native goth and darkwave bands are drawing new audiences and many of the historic goth clubs and bars are celebrating milestone anniversaries. 

To Wickham, this makes perfect sense.

“I think that goth is a way of looking at all of the darkness in the world and all of the uncertainty and things like that and finding the beauty in it,” Wickham said, “no matter how much it might initially appear unappealing or scary or spooky.”

Correction: The audio accompanying this story incorrectly states John Wickham’s name. This story has been updated with the correct spelling.

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