XOXO By Ali Crutcher Gossip Girl aired from September 2007 through December 2012. For those of you who know not of this production I hold so dear, let me paint a picture for you. It depicts the lives of a group of privileged youth from the Upper East side of New York City. The story is centered around a beautiful leggy blonde named Serena Van der Woodsen. Serena is a socialite that naturally, comes from a very wealthy family. The show starts with her coming back to the city after leaving abruptly to attend boarding school upstate. Her best friend named Blair Waldorf is also a socialite and daughter of a prominent fashion designer. And let’s not forget about those boys. Nate Archibald and Chuck Bass are a major part of this influential group of friends. Both only sons of wealthy New York moguls, they party together and stick by each other's side no matter what. They are the girl’s love interests and confidants. Across the bridge in a far off land by the name of Brooklyn,

Like a lot of other kids growing up in the 90’s I came from a broken home. My parents divorced when I was pretty young and I ended up living with my dad whose health was rapidly declining. To sum it up I was just another lost youth in America. We ended up moving to a beach town in southern San Diego called Imperial Beach. At the time I was really into Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons. It was my escape from everything going on at the time. One day in 1996, I was handed a cassette that would impact the rest of my life. Joe and Daniel, some punk kids I associated with at our lunch table of outcast and misfits handed it to me and told me to check it out. Punk O Rama, a compilation of the bands on Epitaph Records at the time. I distinctly remember the bright green design with red font naming all these bands I never heard of before. I put the tape in the cassette player at home and was instantly blown away. It wasn’t like anything I had heard before. It was fast, aggressive, a