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If you're a "scumfu*k" or an "oogle," best just keep on moving. The Haunted Kitchen doesn't need your type spoiling the delicate bouillabaisse of face-smashing hardcore music and cruelty-free vegan cuisine.

The punk ethic of this house venue on the corner of 19th and Louisiana burns bright enough to sear a good-sized loaf of Tofurkey with sheer indignation. Don't let the decomposing porch and beer-soaked dilapidation fool you-while those who live here aren't very passionate about property value, they're dead serious when it comes to the manifesto of the Haunted Kitchen.

"DIY or die," declares one of the earliest occupants of the Kitchen, Noah Kay. Considering the house is purportedly ghost-ridden, somebody may have taken that motto literally.

The Haunted Kitchen earned its name four years ago when the band Oroku, who fancied themselves hardcore metal foodies, moved into the storied ramshackle and soon noticed disembodied voices and other poltergeist-y goings on.

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The Haunted Kitchen

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"There was blood on the upstairs carpet when they first moved in," recalls current resident Cal Santo of the house's other shadowy omens. "There's this room upstairs that you just can't get to. There's a tiny little window and you can't get to it at all."

Despite these quirks-or perhaps because of them-house shows quickly became the norm at the Haunted Kitchen.

The successful rebirth of this Lawrence flophouse as a DIY concert venue stemmed from a perceived void in the area scene.

"I moved in here because I wanted to see punk shows," says Kay of his move from KC to the Kitchen three years ago. "At the time, in Kansas City, there wasn't any other place besides El Torreon to have shows at. This was the only other outlet for it."

Open arms to the wee-punks also helped set the Kitchen apart. "We're all ages," says Cal. "I hate bars. Shows at bars aren't very good. I'd rather go to a house show than a bar show and we try to cater to the bands that prefer that, too. Those are our favorite bands."

Oroku and Kay have since moved on, but the name remained, and the underground house show vanguard is carried on by whoever happens to be the Kitchen's current tenants.

Santo and two other flatmates are those current standard bearers, and they take the responsibility of honoring the house's political agenda quite seriously.

"It's through the heart," says Santo. "You can't have music and do things yourself without being fed well. We're resisting a system that we don't agree with, so we're sustaining ourselves. We're against the meat industry, because it tortures and murders animals, and the music industry is bullshit. We get to talk to bands, and the bands are just hanging out with people on the porch and sitting around with them. You get to know the people who are making the music. There's more of a personal connection, like with every level of the DIY culture."

Their dinner menu may be limited to veggie, but their musical line-up is a buffet of metal, punk, thrash, noise, folk, indie-basically anything that emits sound. "I don't want to keep it just to one kind of thing," says Santo. "We're going to do anything that we feel like we want to do."

That anything-goes attitude occasionally fosters some uninhibited audiences. Naked mosh pit, anyone?

"We just said before the show, 'Everyone who wants to get naked, get naked,'" recalls Santo. "'And be over 18 and sign this release,'" clarifies Kay. (The show was also a photo shoot for the nude calendar of anarchist organization Solidarity.) "It turned out all right-my wife was completely naked."

The Kitchen's laissez faire environment doesn't extend to the aforementioned "scumf*cks" and "oogles," however.

"'Oogles' are kids who like to train hop and probably should be in college," explains Kay. "They're not really here for the music and they're just here to get drunk and f*ck with the normal people-which are us. The only problems we really have are with traveler kids that are drunk assholes, and when we have a metal show and a bunch of dudes from Topeka show up."

The Kitchen and its regulars police themselves, and bad actors aren't tolerated. "There was one band where the guy just blurted out on stage, 'We're only here to get laid!' They've never played here again," Santo says tersely.

The Kitchen continues to host shows where other Lawrence home venues-most recently, the Pirate and Pink houses-have been forced to stop. Thanks to word of mouth and the internets, the Kitchen has consistently booked bands from as far away as Japan and Germany, and from as near as Hays and Great Bend.

"I've had bands here before and they forget what it's like to play in a basement," Kay says. "It sounds good down there and they also like to have the interaction, face to face, with the crowd. There have been bands that said, 'Man, we've been playing on three foot stages just looking down at people.' It's way cooler for them to be at eye level."

The longer it exists as a sought-after underground venue, the Haunted Kitchen is becoming-to the chagrin of its caretakers-an establishment. Regardless, the non-conformist collective currently living there doesn't plan on parlaying its success into careers.

"I'm not out to make money doing this, it's just a hobby," Santo says. "If it was a job, it might not be fun. We're just about having fun. The shows are fun-they're awesome."