If you haven't heard about the new movie being released soon called Bomb City, then you should really know what it's about. The incident it's based on happened in Amarillo, but a lot of us from Lubbock were in that scene, too.

I graduated from Lubbock High School in 1992. I wasn't friends with Brian Deneke, but many of my friends were. Many people from Lubbock were. But we were all punks. And being a punk in the 90s in Lubbock and Amarillo meant that to the majority of the people in the town thought you were a low life. A criminal. A thug. A waste of life.

There was a huge divide in the high schools, especially between those that chose to live differently, and the rest -- differently than the small Texas town "norm" of dressing a certain way, listening to certain types of music, and playing sports all the time. Some of us just weren't cut out that way. We were just different. And that made us targets.

One night in Amarillo in 1997, that targeting cost Brian Deneke his life. Bomb City is that story, and it's an important one.

If you've lived in Lubbock since the 90s, then maybe you remember some of this. If you're fairly new to town, then this is a part of our history you should know. Because there was a time when many of us that were different were fighting for our lives in Lubbock and Amarillo. We were assaulted constantly with no repercussions for the perpetrators because those in authority thought we deserved to be beat up because we were different. And that threatened them, for some reason. We were living in extremely conservative cities that attacked anything and everything that was different or didn't conform to their approved way of life. Then, they swept those attacks under the rug because even though the violence should be condemned, violence against the "freaks" was OK because they deserved it. Because they were different.

Lubbock, and I'm assuming Amarillo, are very different cities now than they were in the 1990s. And while there are still a lot of people in our cities that still look down upon those that choose to live a different life then the one they approve of, there are a lot more people who accept others for who they are, no matter how they choose to dress and look.

But it wasn't always this way, and its a history of our city that needs to be remembered. Or it could happen again. You can read here a little about what life was like for some people in west Texas in the 90s.

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