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The Bug Jar on a Friday night with The Queers on the marquee. If that sentence does not immediately make you want to grab your jacket and head to Rochester, I am not sure what will. March 27, 2026, is going to be one of those nights people in the Finger Lakes punk scene talk about for months. The kind of show where you run into everyone you know and a hundred people you do not.
About The Queers
The Queers have been cranking out snotty, Ramones-influenced pop-punk since the late 1980s. Joe Queer and company wrote the playbook that a thousand garage punk bands have been photocopying ever since, and the originals still hit harder than the copies. Their catalog is deep, running from early punk snarl to polished pop-punk hooks, and their live shows are relentless walls of short, fast, catchy songs delivered with decades of road-tested precision. They have never stopped touring, never stopped recording, and never stopped being one of the most reliable live acts in punk rock. With The Robert Conn Band and The Canceled Sitcoms opening, this is a full night of punk rock done right from the first note to the last.
The Venue
The Bug Jar is the only venue in Rochester where I would want to see The Queers. Two hundred people packed into a room that smells like decades of good decisions and bad beer. The stage is so close you can see the guitar picks fly off into the darkness. The sound is loud, the floor gets sticky fast, and nobody cares because the music makes everything else disappear. This is a punk show in a punk room, and trying to separate the two would ruin both. The Bug Jar has been the heart of Rochester’s underground for so long that seeing The Queers anywhere else in this city would feel wrong.
Tickets & Details
The show kicks off at 9:00 PM on Friday, March 27, 2026. Tickets are $18 to $23. Get tickets before this one sells out, because it will. Friday night punk shows at the Bug Jar have a habit of filling up fast, and The Queers are a name that draws from well beyond Rochester’s city limits. Out-of-towners will drive for this one.
This is legacy punk in its natural habitat. The Queers belong in rooms like the Bug Jar, not in oversized venues where the energy gets lost in empty space. If you care about punk rock history and want to see a band that still delivers after nearly four decades of doing this, March 27 is your night. Rochester, do not let this one pass.