Dan Kinney remembers his punk rock days.
Kinney started coming to the Street Scene Teen Center, located under the Franklin Street post office, in 1998. His band, The Dirty Politicians, got its start at the center — the first place, he said, where he felt like he belonged.
“I played guitar and I wanted to play in bands, and the people that were here were the exact kind of people that I wanted to hang out with and get to know,” he said.
Kinney, along with old and new patrons of the center, gathered Saturday evening to celebrate the facility’s 20th anniversary as a haven for teenagers fighting social convention.
The fourth teen center to be started in the last 50 years in downtown Chapel Hill, Street Scene has lasted the longest.
“Some of the kids that have grown up down here can come back and see old directors and friends, and people who don’t know about Street Scene can come down here and see what its all about,” said Robert Humphreys, founder and member of the center’s board of directors.
To celebrate the anniversary, teens and directors looked over old photographs and memorabilia during the afternoon and held a concert late into Saturday night.
The program started March 15, 1985, after the Downtown Merchants’ Association — which Humphreys led for 22 years — received complaints about teenagers hanging around businesses on Franklin Street.
The town leased the post office basement to the center for $1 per year — the current lease rate — to create a teen-oriented center that would reduce the loitering.
