When Bill Conway and brothers Matt and Ed Saincome started The Hard Timesâa fake, Portland/Bay Area-based punk news site heavily inspired by the Onionâin 2014, they knew they werenât working with the most accessible concept.
âWe kind of just figured 10 friends would like it, and then 10 other people would try and kick our asses,â Conway tells me. â[Originally], we never put our names on the site because we figured some New York hardcore dude was going to have someone read an article to him, and he would be like, âAre you fucking making fun of my life?ââ
The Hard Times quickly outpaced its foundersâ expectations. âI remember we launched with six articles, and one of them was âHenry Rollins to Start Third Black Flag,â because [Keith Morris had Flag, and Greg Ginn had Black Flag],â Conway says. âI remember seeing a friend of mine from back home share the article, thinking it was real, and saying, âHenry, we donât want this.â
âI think within two weeks, Ron Reyes [of Black Flag] shared an article and we were like, âWait, this is actually reaching people? This is just for us and our stupid friends!ââ
For Conway, the days when The Hard Times was merely a goofy bedroom hobby are a distant memoryâthree years since its inception, heâs the managing editor at a legitimate media organization.
âWe have a lot of other contributors now, to the point where I basically just edit everything,â he tells me. âItâs mainly me doing all the drafting and editing and shaping into The Hard Times voiceâthe division of labor has changed for sure.â
The subject matter of the siteâs content has also broadened. You donât need to own a âTerrorâ patch to appreciate the caustic satire in âBill OâReilly Leaves Fox News to Harass Women Full Timeâ or âFBI Releases Thousands of Emails Gary Johnson Thought He Was Googling.â
A Portland comic notable in his own right, Conwayâa Massachusetts nativeârelocated from San Francisco around three years ago. And while he stresses that there arenât many Hard Times articles that poke fun at Portlandâs music scene specifically, a few hit pretty close to home.
In 2015, the site published an article titled ââThis Is an All-Inclusive Space,â Says All-White, All-Male Audienceââa biting parody of slacktivist bro grandstanding in the punk scene. (ââWe donât discriminate,â said volunteer Chris Smith, who showed us medical documents to prove that he is in fact colorblind. âAll fans matter.ââ) Accompanying the article was a photo of a show at Portlandâs very own Laughing Horse Booksâone of the most polarizing venues in townÂâbefore shuttering in 2014 and being a replaced by a hair salon. (The ultimate fate of every legendary punk venue.)
âThe progressive politics of Portland lend themselves to the high ideals of, âThis is an all-inclusive space, says all-white, all-male audience,ââ Conway says. âThose are great intentions, but what else are you doing aside from saying something?â
But The Hard Times has more or less been embraced by the scene it relentlessly skewers, disproving the myth that punks have no sense of humor. After all, Conway is a punk, too. âWhen you start going to shows when youâre 13, it bleeds into your everyday life,â he says. âItâs just ingrained in you, and I think thatâs part of why the site has been able to do so well. This will sound arrogant, but none of us are poseursâitâs not like we started listening to punk or hardcore within the last year because we saw a gap in the satire market.â