By Greg Kim
“What’s with all the graffiti in the hallway?” Luke asked, gesturing toward the front door that led out into the common hallway. It was early afternoon and none of us had been outside, so we were confused by the question.
Thinking he was referring to the existing graffiti that littered the walls, Joseph asked, “When was the last time you were over here? Graffiti’s everywhere.”
Luke shot back, “Yeah, I know, but somebody spray-painted “Rip Sneaks Meat” all over the place. It’s everywhere!”
We all hurried to the front door like children rushing to the playground at lunch. Luke was right; we had never seen this graffiti. It was new and covered the walls, top to bottom.
Rip was our upstairs neighbor and obviously somebody must have caught him eating meat or suspected that he was sneaking it. Besides our space, there were four other spaces that shared our warehouse and all of them were vegan like us. Rip was no different. We believed meat was murder and were ready to back up these words with action!
After checking out the new graffiti, we went back inside to talk anarchist business with Luke. Having worked at a printing company for years, he always helped us with our flyers and booklets for shows and our record label. We needed flyers for an action we were planning. Luke listened intently as we described our plan.
A few weeks before a friend told us that a local petting zoo in the park were keeping bunnies in cramped quarters, many bunnies to a cage. Joseph checked it out and it was true. We told him we were going to liberate the bunnies and needed him to mail a letter to the media explaining our actions and asked him to make a handful of flyers that we would leave at the petting zoo. Being a good soldier, Luke agreed. Before he left, we warned him about leaving fingerprints on the letter and flyers.
After Luke left, Joseph, Steve and I met to discuss the details. We decided on a date and loosely planned the details. We had done so many actions—though not to this degree—so we were a little cocky and flip. After hashing out many boring details, we came up with a plan: “Fuck it, we’ll just go up there and get the bunnies.” We never thought about what we would do with the bunnies, how we would get there and how we would break into the cages.
That week Joseph went to the Berkeley library. They had public typewriters, which could be used to type our letter of intent. It seemed like a good idea. We didn’t want to use our typewriter because if we got caught or were under suspicion, they could link us to the crime through a bad or missing key on the typewriter. I had just seen Jagged Edge, where Jeff Daniels was linked to the crime by his typewriter. Even with this handy information, I’m surprised we came up with it, as we weren’t the brightest guys.
The letter attempted to explain our position and justify our actions. Instead of staying on topic, focusing on animal rights issues, we included everything under the political sun, somehow tying in corporations and women’s issues (equating woman to animals through terminology) into this petting zoo. Of course, the grammar was poor and spelling atrocious. It was becoming our trademark.
After finishing the letter, careful not to expose its contents to wandering eyes, Joseph walked over to Luke’s work and gave him the letter and picked up the flyers he made. Both were careful to handle everything by the edge. Joseph asked him to wait until the day after the action to mail the letter, just in case we were caught. If we did get caught, he should destroy the letter. Tara, Joseph’s girlfriend, would act as the go-between, disseminating information about the action.
The next full moon, Joseph, Steve and I grabbed three pillowcases and the flyers, putting the latter in my frayed black satchel, and walked out the door, prepared to liberate some bunnies. We were dressed all in black. Steve was wearing a black beanie.
A few hours earlier, Frank, our other roommate, and I took the license plate off an abandoned car in our parking lot and put it on my Plymouth Champ and removed the lights illuminating the license. The new plate had no registration stickers, drawing more attention to our vehicle than the original plates. But we didn’t care. Putting on new plates added to the excitement of the action.
We parked the car in a residential area and walked into the park. The moon fully illuminated the concrete path. The air was brisk and fresh, slightly burning our lungs when going uphill. Joseph led the way, occasionally stopping to make an arbitrary decision of which way to go. We passed by a parking lot, over a small bridge and into a manicured clearing. “There it is,” Joseph announced, pointing to a cluster of barnlike buildings, slightly up the hill.
Having gotten his bearings straight, he was a man on mission, marching up the hill, knowing exactly where to go.
The bunnies were in three wooden elevated cages. A Master lock and thick chicken wire kept them from getting out. Joseph tugged on one of the locks to see if it was left open.
“Steve, do you have the crowbar?” Joseph asked. The barn obscured the moon, casting a dark shadow over the cages. We could not see or hear the bunnies, but we knew they were in there.
“I don’t have it, we must’ve left it in the care” Steve replied, a shadow of his face shaking side to side. Joseph didn’t ask me, he knew I didn’t have the crowbar.
All three of us silently turned around, walked back across the bridge, through the parking lot and up the tree lined street that led to the car. It was about a mile trek, the last half being up a steep grade.
Out of breath, sweating and cold, I opened the hatchback and rummaged around for the crowbar under the spare tire. Steve grabbed it and off we went down the hill.
As with all bigger actions, I was getting cold feet and hoping that I could somehow get out of it without losing face. It was peer pressure, just in a different light.
“This is stupid, let’s get out of here,” I complained. “Man, I don’t want to walk all the way down there and back again. We don’t even know if they’re bunnies in the cages.” Complaining was a good diversion. I wasn’t admitting that I didn’t want to do it nor was I saying I wasn’t committed, I was just complaining. And hoping they felt the same way.
Joseph tersely responded, “We’re here; let’s do it.” We followed our footsteps back to the bunny cages.
Steve pried the crowbar between the lock and the jam of the cage and gave it a good yank. The wood gave out a loud creak, the crowbar roughly breaking through the weathered wood. Steve tried again, prying the crowbar a little above the last tug, giving it four quick blows.
“Fuck, the crowbar bent.” He extended his hand toward our faces and showed us the crowbar, now in an L-shaped formation. He dropped it and used his hands to open the door of the disabled cage. The door swung open. I was waiting behind him with a pillow case. He moved out of the way and I attacked the cage, pillow first, sweeping the inside for soft fur. I cornered one and awkwardly pulled the pillow case over his head, while using my left hand to push him father down the pillow case. Once in, I quickly pulled up on the case and he tumbled to the bottom of the pillow case, looking like a hobo bag. I jumped back and Joseph gave it a try. As I moved back, two bunnies jumped out of the cage and disappeared into the darkness. They were just darting shadows but by their movements it was obvious they were bunnies.
“Fuck, what was that?” Steve cried while spray-painting “ALF” on the adjoining barn. He saw small shadows moving quickly past him.
“Two of the bunnies got out.” I responded. Joseph was trying to corral the fourth and final bunny.
With no crowbar to break into the remaining two pens and two bunnies loose in the woods, we took the two bunnies in the pillowcases and called it a night. I took out the flyers in my bag and threw them high into the air, littering the grounds of the petting zoo as we quickly left.
When we reached the parking lot, we stopped under a faint parking lamp and looked at the bunnies. They were petrified, making some sort of bunny scream and thrashing about. I had volunteered at the San Francisco Zoo and was a bit afraid of bunnies. They always charged me when I fed them and went out of their way to bite me anytime I tried to pet them. This time was no different. I knew that any act of kindness, a gentle pet, would result in a nasty bite. Fuck these ungrateful bunnies, I thought. This is what we get for liberating you?
We trudged on, dreading the long ascent back to the car.
Maybe it was climbing the hill for a second time, or maybe the damn heavy-ass bunny I was carrying—squirming and squealing—was getting on my nerves, but I had to say something.
“Jesus, what are we going to do with these bunnies?” I was out of breath, cold sweating and the allure of liberating animals was long gone. In our initial meetings to discuss the action, we forgot to talk about what we were going to do with the bunnies. You would have figured that this would have been one of the larger topics of conversation. That, and bringing a real crowbar to break into the cages.
Steve stopped, looking up at the sky, breathing heavily. Joseph walked a few more paces, stopped and put his hands on his knees. He gently placed the pillow case on the road, keeping a tight grip on the opening. The bunny adjusted, happy to be on familiar ground. We grew quiet as all of our energy was focused on getting up the hill and back to the car.
“Maybe we should let them go? What the fuck are we gonna do with them?” I blurted. In any other circumstance, we would have all at least feigned disgust at letting them go and objected; however, it was late, we were tired and, most of all, the bunnies were heavy and we didn’t want to carry them the rest of the way up the hill.
I walked over to where the woods met the road and laid down the pillowcase, the opening extending toward the woods. The bunny didn’t move so I grabbed the pillowcase from the opposite of the opening and gently pulled up. The bunny spilled out and ran off. Joseph did the same with his bunny.
We walked up the hill in silence, the sounds of our labored breath penetrating the cold night. When we reached the car, Steve said, “Better free than in a cage.” We accepted this, but when retelling the story, none of us mentioned what we did with the bunnies.
Every day after the action, we scoured the local newspaper for a mention of the liberation. Three days later, a small blurb appeared on page 6 entitled: “Dumb Do-Gooders Free Rabbits.” The article said that money had been allocated to build new cages, but because of the vandalism, the project was on hold. It also said that two bunnies were found huddled near their destroyed cage. There was no mention of the other two bunnies.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
Nice Basket by Tom Pitts
Being a bike messenger in San Francisco during the Nineteen Eighties was magical time. The city streets were teeming with its own scruffy underclass, an otherwise unemployable bunch of artists, musicians, and drug addicts who all thought their bicycle jobs were temporary stepping stones to greater things. The city was still undiscovered to me, filled with the noise and the stink of excitement. Everyday my small world, my tiny grid of one way streets in the financial district, would expand block by block.
Alone on my bicycle, every delivery brought a new sense of discovery. The physicality of the job challenged my stamina. The unending slow and steady pump of the pedals drained my body of calories. As often as possible, I found myself off the bicycle, gobbling candy, smoking, and letting my sweat be cooled by the breeze. I’d mastered the monotony of riding elevators up and down the skyscrapers of the financial district and treasured getting out into the neighborhoods, away from the suits and the perfume.
There, I could try to glean some of the history that made San Francisco such a magical place; names of streets that sounded oddly familiar, like déjà vu, nightclubs and bars I had only read about in books. It was a magical place. The Haight Ashbury was still reeling from the fallout of the sixties. Hordes of punk rock runaways had migrated to the city. There had been The Peoples Church, Harvey Milk, Charles Manson. Reganomics were raining down. There was aids, crack. The streets were full of freaks. Freaks could still afford to live there.
Up on Sutter Street, between Larkin and Polk, I found myself searching for an address to a tiny advertising firm. I stood straddling my Schwinn one-speed, off the sidewalk and between two parked cars, gazing up at a large residential building.
“Hi.” I heard a friendly voice say. I was focused on the building, comparing the address to the numbers scrawled on the paper clutched in my hand.
“Hi,” the voice repeated. “How’re you doing today?”
A young man stepped off the sidewalk, holding his hand up for me to wait. I hadn’t realized the greeting was meant for me.
“Hell of a day. Beautiful, isn’t it?” He stood in front of me with a tight little grin stuck on his face. I didn’t know what the man wanted. I hoped he had recognized my uniform, shorts and a black t-shirt with Quicksilver screened on the back, and come out of his office to receive his package.
“Is this for you?” I asked.
He glanced at the manila envelope without looking and gently shook his head. He looked a little apologetic for not being the one the package was addressed to. I put my foot onto the peddle and began to push off when he said,
“I want to ask you about your tattoo …”
We both looked down at my calf at the same time. I was fiercely proud of my new tattoo. I given it to myself, spending painful hours poking myself with a pin wrapped in thread and dipped in Indian ink. I had eventually marked out the outline of a bird, a primitive cave drawing of a bird, but clearly a bird. It was placed squarely in the middle of my calf for maximum exposure during work hours. Like any young man with a new tattoo, I thought it made me look tough and grown up, confident of my place in the world. I was flattered that someone else had noticed.
“That’s nice, I like it,” he nodded with a fraternal sense of approval. He continued, “Listen, the reason I stopped you is, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions.”
Here it comes, I thought. I’d already been accosted by Scientologists during my first week in the city. Their agent zealots had staked out the civic center looking for potential converts. They spotted me staring up at building I was about to enter for my first ever job interview. My hesitation was interpreted as naïveté. I was quickly propositioned like a runaway fresh off the greyhound bus. Now, I was determined to keep my guard up.
“Have you ever done any modeling?”
I may have blushed a little before shaking my head.
“Really?” He sounded astonished. “Would you be willing to consider some modeling, maybe?”
I shrugged.
“Look, the reason I ask is because I work for a large shoe company, one of the biggest.” When he said this he raised his eyebrows up like it should carry some extra weight.
“We’re doing a new advertising campaign. I think you have a great look. It’s exactly the kind of thing we’re looking for.”
He sensed my hesitation.
“Look, this is professional stuff, for shoes only. We’d focus mostly the calf and foot. You’ll be paid well, maybe sign on for more work.” He said it casually, but the implication was there. I could be discovered. This could be the happy accident that sent me on my way. Suddenly my common sense kicked in, my cautious skepticism,
“You guys don’t want me, I’m marked up, I’ve got this tattoo right in the middle of leg.” I felt like tainted milk, damaged goods.
“That’s exactly why we would use someone like you. It’s new, edgy, different from the campaigns they’ve been using. You’ve seen that crap. They wanna go in a whole new direction. You’re perfect.”
A large truck flew by behind me and the compliment was lost to the noise. The stranger went on.
“You’ve got the right proportions between your knee and ankle,” he said, pointing to my legs. “You’re tanned from working out here in the sun; you’ve got just the right amount of muscle from riding this bike. The pay is good and it won’t take too long. We could make an appointment or we could do it right now. Whaddya say? You interested?”
I gave him a small smile. I thought about the delivery I was still supposed to make, the address I still needed to find. Maybe I just wasn’t cut out to be a bike messenger. Maybe the world had better things in store for me.
He stood there waiting for me to make up my mind. It was as though I was the only one in San Francisco who had calves with feet attached to them. He wanted me to know I was his best option, his top priority.
“Yeah, I’ll think about it.”
Immediately he produced a business card between his two fingers and said, “Oh, one last thing. How’s your basket?”
I didn’t understand the question. I thought he was only interested in my calves and feet, not my bicycle. I looked at the package strapped into the wire basket that was bolted to the handlebars of my bike. I looked back at him, confused.
“Your basket,” he repeated, “do you have a nice basket?”
My basket was the same as every other bike messenger in town, dented and beat up from too many days on the job. I pointed to it and shrugged.
“No, not your basket, your basket,” he said. He cupped his balls to let me know that he didn’t mean the basket on my bike at all. I had never heard this term before. I felt all at once stupid, naïve, and cheated. I was on my way to fame and fortune and now I was back on my way to just another delivery. I knew at once that my basket was not part of the geography of my lower leg, that there was no shoe ad, that I was not perfect.
I looked at my stranger’s feet and thought that a man working for a shoe company would probably be wearing nicer shoes. I stepped on my pedal and rolled up Sutter Street, letting the business card flutter to the ground.
Tom Pitts 3/21/11
Friday, April 1, 2011
White Dope on Punk: Chapter 9.The Colonel is Fucking with the Chickens
By Greg Kim
One of the last Doggie Diners in the Bay Area sat at the intersection of Adeline, Macarthur and San Pablo. The iconic wiener dog sign stood high above the eatery, looking over the border of West Oakland and Emeryville. Shortly after we moved in the neighborhood, it was leveled and replaced by a check cashing business.
We welcomed the check cashing business by spray painting “GET OUT OF OUR NEIGHBORHOOD” on their new stucco wall. We tried breaking their front window but it held strong, the bricks bouncing back and almost hitting us. We found this type of window familiar, like the one we were not able to break the McDonald’s at 52nd and Telegraph…though we tried. Our paranoid side thought they reinforced the windows, knowing that we might try to break them.
After spray painting the check cashing business, we went back to our warehouse and got my car. The night was early and there were still many windows to break and walls to spray-paint. We had no plan; however, we had a few clumps of concrete that we got from our warehouse parking lot, two cans of spray paint, crazy glue, ski goggles, a crowbar and a small can of butane—a well-stocked vandalism kit.
Driving north on San Pablo we slowed down to admire our past work on a wholesale butcher warehouse. The walls were speckled with various colors of paint bombs from the months prior, giving it a Jackson Pollock/Damien Hirst feel. We used mason jars and house paint for paint bombs. Both were in limited qualities, so we rarely carried them anymore.
It was 3 am and the streets were empty. We were listening to a Chumbawumba cassette. The only people out were drug users looking to score, prostitutes and us. Near the end of the Berkeley border, we eyed a Kentucky Fried Chicken. For some reason, Steve and I were particularly against KFC. They were no worse than Burger King or McDonald's, but we just liked saying “The Colonel is fucking with the chickens.”
We parked the car a block away and slinked in the shadows back to the KFC. I ran to the front door and squeezed crazy glue into lock, looking eye-to-eye with a graphic of Colonel Sanders on the glass door. Steve yelled, “Watch out!” I looked back and he had a large rock that he pulled from the landscaped walkway. I ran back to the sidewalk. Laboring with the large rock, he awkwardly moved toward the front plate glass window and heaved the rock. A low boom rang out, alerting the neighborhood that we were now fucking with the Colonel. It felt like a bomb went off. As the alarm rang out and glass settled on both sides of the window, we turned and retraced our footsteps back to the car.
I kept the headlights off until we reach San Pablo. We were both scared and excited, chattering a mile a minute:
"Jesus Fucking Christ Steve, did you hear that?” I said, half laughing and still out of breath from the sprint to the car.
“I know, I had no idea. Those things usually never break.” Steve admitted, his voice getting higher with the excitement of retelling the act.
I met Steve in an arranged friendship. We had both responded to an ad looking to start an anarchist punk collective in an East Bay warehouse. Before we moved into together, Steve came over to my apartment in the Haight. At the time, he was living in a shitty squat in Noe Valley and was happy at the idea of having permanent housing.
Steve was from North Hampton, Massachusetts, and never let you forget it. He was about 5’ 10”, had naturally spiky brown hair, wore oversized wire-rimmed glasses and had intermittent tattoos over his arms. On our first meeting, he proudly showed me two of them: the ubiquitous Black Flag bars and the “squat” symbol, a lightning bolt through a circle. He would later add the intertwined peace and anarchy symbol on his inner wrist, another staple tattoo of anarchist punks. He divulged that his mother felt that anybody who had over three tattoos was a sexual deviant. If this was true, Steve was a deviant and so was his father.
After breaking KFC’s window, we decided to call it a night and go home. On the way, Steve yelled, “Stop. Pull over! I’m gonna flatten its tire.” A large truck with a logo that said “Quality Meat” was parked on San Pablo, on a block without a lot of commercial businesses. Steve jumped out of the car and ran over to the front tire nearest the sidewalk. For minutes, a loud hissing permeated the air. It abruptly stopped, replaced by sounds of a short struggle. The large cab of the truck obscured my vantage of Steve, but I could see his feet. He had moved from a crouching position next to the tire to standing next to the hood. His feet moved back to the middle of the sidewalk then ran to the hood, jumped, then jumped a few times more, lunging forward.
Steve came back to the car laughing, shaking his head and with a windshield wiper in his hand.
“What the hell were you doing?” I asked. “From here, it looked like you were fighting the front of the truck.”
“Yeah, I was pissed off because flattening the tire was taking too long, so I decided to rip off the windshield wiper,” he said, a bit perplexed why taking a penny and jamming it into the valve of the tire wouldn’t flatten the tire in less time.
As we took off, Steve rolled down the window and threw the windshield wiper at the truck.
At the corner of University and San Pablo in Berkeley we saw two cops, guns drawn, slinking around the corner of a bank. The light was red and we watched as they cautiously moved forward. The light turned green and I made an immediate right, getting off San Pablo to take a less traveled street. Somebody must’ve broken into the bank.
Riding down Hollis, Steve once again yelled for me to stop. I pulled over and he ran across the street with the ski goggles and the crow bar. Pulling the hood over his head and putting on the ski goggles, Steve approached the ATM. He looked around, reached into his pocket and squirted a large dose of butane on the ATM. He put the butane in his hoodie pocket and reached in his pocket for matches. Moving one step back, he lit a match and threw it at the ATM. A faint bluish yellow light reflected on to Steve’s dark clothing. The expected large burst of flames didn’t happen. He took the crowbar and alternated between bashing it like a baseball and wrenching the crevices. After a few swings, he gave up and walked quickly back to the car. The fire had gone out and the alarm was silent.
We were tired and it was time for some sleep.
The next morning we watched the check cashing business clean the graffiti off the walls. That night Steve and I returned and spray-painted “…And Stay Out!”
One of the last Doggie Diners in the Bay Area sat at the intersection of Adeline, Macarthur and San Pablo. The iconic wiener dog sign stood high above the eatery, looking over the border of West Oakland and Emeryville. Shortly after we moved in the neighborhood, it was leveled and replaced by a check cashing business.
We welcomed the check cashing business by spray painting “GET OUT OF OUR NEIGHBORHOOD” on their new stucco wall. We tried breaking their front window but it held strong, the bricks bouncing back and almost hitting us. We found this type of window familiar, like the one we were not able to break the McDonald’s at 52nd and Telegraph…though we tried. Our paranoid side thought they reinforced the windows, knowing that we might try to break them.
After spray painting the check cashing business, we went back to our warehouse and got my car. The night was early and there were still many windows to break and walls to spray-paint. We had no plan; however, we had a few clumps of concrete that we got from our warehouse parking lot, two cans of spray paint, crazy glue, ski goggles, a crowbar and a small can of butane—a well-stocked vandalism kit.
Driving north on San Pablo we slowed down to admire our past work on a wholesale butcher warehouse. The walls were speckled with various colors of paint bombs from the months prior, giving it a Jackson Pollock/Damien Hirst feel. We used mason jars and house paint for paint bombs. Both were in limited qualities, so we rarely carried them anymore.
It was 3 am and the streets were empty. We were listening to a Chumbawumba cassette. The only people out were drug users looking to score, prostitutes and us. Near the end of the Berkeley border, we eyed a Kentucky Fried Chicken. For some reason, Steve and I were particularly against KFC. They were no worse than Burger King or McDonald's, but we just liked saying “The Colonel is fucking with the chickens.”
We parked the car a block away and slinked in the shadows back to the KFC. I ran to the front door and squeezed crazy glue into lock, looking eye-to-eye with a graphic of Colonel Sanders on the glass door. Steve yelled, “Watch out!” I looked back and he had a large rock that he pulled from the landscaped walkway. I ran back to the sidewalk. Laboring with the large rock, he awkwardly moved toward the front plate glass window and heaved the rock. A low boom rang out, alerting the neighborhood that we were now fucking with the Colonel. It felt like a bomb went off. As the alarm rang out and glass settled on both sides of the window, we turned and retraced our footsteps back to the car.
I kept the headlights off until we reach San Pablo. We were both scared and excited, chattering a mile a minute:
"Jesus Fucking Christ Steve, did you hear that?” I said, half laughing and still out of breath from the sprint to the car.
“I know, I had no idea. Those things usually never break.” Steve admitted, his voice getting higher with the excitement of retelling the act.
I met Steve in an arranged friendship. We had both responded to an ad looking to start an anarchist punk collective in an East Bay warehouse. Before we moved into together, Steve came over to my apartment in the Haight. At the time, he was living in a shitty squat in Noe Valley and was happy at the idea of having permanent housing.
Steve was from North Hampton, Massachusetts, and never let you forget it. He was about 5’ 10”, had naturally spiky brown hair, wore oversized wire-rimmed glasses and had intermittent tattoos over his arms. On our first meeting, he proudly showed me two of them: the ubiquitous Black Flag bars and the “squat” symbol, a lightning bolt through a circle. He would later add the intertwined peace and anarchy symbol on his inner wrist, another staple tattoo of anarchist punks. He divulged that his mother felt that anybody who had over three tattoos was a sexual deviant. If this was true, Steve was a deviant and so was his father.
After breaking KFC’s window, we decided to call it a night and go home. On the way, Steve yelled, “Stop. Pull over! I’m gonna flatten its tire.” A large truck with a logo that said “Quality Meat” was parked on San Pablo, on a block without a lot of commercial businesses. Steve jumped out of the car and ran over to the front tire nearest the sidewalk. For minutes, a loud hissing permeated the air. It abruptly stopped, replaced by sounds of a short struggle. The large cab of the truck obscured my vantage of Steve, but I could see his feet. He had moved from a crouching position next to the tire to standing next to the hood. His feet moved back to the middle of the sidewalk then ran to the hood, jumped, then jumped a few times more, lunging forward.
Steve came back to the car laughing, shaking his head and with a windshield wiper in his hand.
“What the hell were you doing?” I asked. “From here, it looked like you were fighting the front of the truck.”
“Yeah, I was pissed off because flattening the tire was taking too long, so I decided to rip off the windshield wiper,” he said, a bit perplexed why taking a penny and jamming it into the valve of the tire wouldn’t flatten the tire in less time.
As we took off, Steve rolled down the window and threw the windshield wiper at the truck.
At the corner of University and San Pablo in Berkeley we saw two cops, guns drawn, slinking around the corner of a bank. The light was red and we watched as they cautiously moved forward. The light turned green and I made an immediate right, getting off San Pablo to take a less traveled street. Somebody must’ve broken into the bank.
Riding down Hollis, Steve once again yelled for me to stop. I pulled over and he ran across the street with the ski goggles and the crow bar. Pulling the hood over his head and putting on the ski goggles, Steve approached the ATM. He looked around, reached into his pocket and squirted a large dose of butane on the ATM. He put the butane in his hoodie pocket and reached in his pocket for matches. Moving one step back, he lit a match and threw it at the ATM. A faint bluish yellow light reflected on to Steve’s dark clothing. The expected large burst of flames didn’t happen. He took the crowbar and alternated between bashing it like a baseball and wrenching the crevices. After a few swings, he gave up and walked quickly back to the car. The fire had gone out and the alarm was silent.
We were tired and it was time for some sleep.
The next morning we watched the check cashing business clean the graffiti off the walls. That night Steve and I returned and spray-painted “…And Stay Out!”
Thursday, March 31, 2011
White Dope on Punk: Chapter 8. Your Mama, CHP
By Greg Kim
New Method Laundry warehouse sat on a corner parcel at 36th and Adeline in Emeryville. County maps had the property half in Oakland and the other half in Emeryville. I never saw the maps—it was more of a verbal history passed on through former tenants. Jug Liquors #3 was across the street; they sold crack pipes from underneath the counter. #1 and #2 were a block away in different directions. To the south, I-580 ran parallel with the second story windows for the length of the building.
A block away on 35th, hookers lined the street that led to the freeway on-ramp. If you didn’t lock your car doors and the traffic light was red, they would jump in your front seat and ask you for a date. If it was locked, and you were unlucky, they would lift their dresses to reveal a panty-less vagina or penis. And if you were really unlucky, they would rub their genitals against the passenger side window. I was unlucky once, which was enough to make me investigate alternative routes.
The neighborhood was a mixture of various industrial warehouses, rundown residential houses and abandoned buildings in various stages of disarray. All windows and doors were covered in bars, and fences were fortified with signs warning of big dogs. It was what you would call a bad area, ravaged by the crack epidemic of the 80s. When guests from out of town visited, they were told to always go left, if they went outside at all. To the right were the panty-less hookers and the worst of West Oakland; to the left was slightly better.
New Method was shared by two groups and one individual: Peace Punks (us), a spa company, and Dave the Foundry Guy. The spa company occupied the west side of the building and we were in the front. On the roof was a propped up, life-size Jacuzzi with two mannequins waving to the freeway traffic. We would regularly reposition the mannequins to simulate sex, doggy style, and alter their hands so they appeared to flip off the cars on the freeway.
We slowly moved into our space in November of 1985. I moved in first, sleeping in a sleeping bag on a large stack of plywood, which would eventually be the floor to the 4 bedrooms we were building. It would be the only modification to the space.
My roommates, Joseph and Nancy, lived upstairs in another space; Frank and Steve were not moving in until the bedrooms were finished. None of us knew each other except Joseph and Nancy, who were boyfriend and girlfriend. We all came together from mutual friends and an ad placed in a local punk fanzine.
The first week of November before construction, I woke up on my bed of plywood, surrounded by two inches of water. It had rained heavily the night before. Hundreds of leaks from the roof dripped onto the second floor and found its way to the concrete foundation where my bed rested.
I tiptoed through the water and out the front door, to alert Joseph of the flood. In the hallway was a deeper lake that came into through the parking lot, running down the hallway a little past our door, stopping at the foot of the stairs that led to the other spaces. Most of the water in our space came from the hallway.
We called the landlord and his lackey appeared the next day with tubs of tar to patch the second floor roof. We asked him about the flooding in the hallway and he said there wasn’t much he could do, as our space was lower than the hallway and the hallway was lower than the parking lot. The lease was for three years and we had just signed, giving over first and last month’s rent. That was all the money the landlord ever received from us. We took pictures the water, gave them to some hippie lawyer with a ponytail and stopped paying rent. He said we should put our rent money in an escrow account. What he didn’t know was that we never planned on paying rent past our initial down payment, regardless of flooding. Also we had no idea what an escrow account was.
Due to the flooding, a plan was devised to raise the first floor off the concrete by a few inches. Working with a budget of zero, and with materials mostly stolen from construction sites, we decided to use pallets to raise the floor, and leave the hallways as exposed concrete.
Finding quality pallets proved a tough job. You never realize the difference in quality in pallets until you start looking. We found the motherlode of good pallets across the street, under the freeway, in a fenced-in area used to park large construction equipment. We scaled the fenced at night and tossed over 32 of the heaviest pallets in the yard. It was hard work and took hours. Because of limitations imposed by the pallets, each of our rooms was exactly eight pallets large.
Joseph had worked construction, so he led the project. During one weekend, Steve, Joseph, Nancy, Frank and I framed the rooms, hung sheetrock and installed doors with no locks or handles. It was easier than I thought. Not knowing what to do about the flooding in the hallway, we employed skateboards to ferry us through the water and stacked two-by-fours end-to-end like a tightrope to get us to the stairs or out the front door. Luckily, the three years that we lived in New Method, it was relatively dry.
By mid-January we had moved in and began living as an Anarchist Vegan Collective. Since we didn’t pay rent, we had lots of time to pursue multiple anarchist activities:
1) Music. The band was called A State of Mind—with all the As circled for anarchy. I played drums and acoustic guitar. We labeled ourselves as anti-music, as we were about the message, the music being the medium to get our ideas across.
2) Mail Order Business. We distributed pamphlets and books on feminism, veganism, animal rights and generally anything we deemed anarchistic. Woman was spelled womyn and corporation was spelled corp(se)oration.
3) Record Label. Mind Matter Records put out records from bands that had anarchist lyrics; music was irrelevant.
4) Destruction. This is where we shined. Late at night we would spray-paint businesses that dealt in animal flesh, throw bricks through windows of fast food restaurants, glue the locks of banks and generally wreak havoc on anything that pissed us off. We were one step away from bombing and arson.
Around the time we moved in, we started seeing posters and flyers for an action in April called “No Business As Usual.” It was a national event sponsored by the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). The flyer listed scheduled events: protest at Bechtel, Die-In at 5pm downtown, etc. Even though we despised the RCP and the money behind their full-colored flyers and posters, we decided to take part in the event; however, instead of being part of the die-ins and protests, which we found too pedestrian for our anarchist ways, we decided to plan our own unique actions to coincide with the event. This would involve some planning.
Over the next few months we came up with the following plan. Since the day was about stopping business, specifically corporations in downtown San Francisco, we decided to block the Bay Bridge during the morning commute. Instead of advertising for a group protest at the foot of the bridge, and then walking up the on-ramp to the bridge, which had already been done, we wanted to abandon a car during the height of the rush hour and throw as many tires on the bridge that two cars could hold. One car would be left on the bridge and the other would be used as the getaway. That getaway car would be ditched somewhere near a planned protest in progress, where we could blend into the crowd. None of us took into account that the car would probably be abandoned around 7:30 am. There was a pretty good chance that no well-attended protest would be that early. Protesters are notorious late sleepers, as were we. Getting up early would prove to be the hardest part of the action.
Once we abandoned the second car, we would split up. We thought it was a great plan and creative.
First we had to find two cars that were not registered to anybody we knew, or, preferably, stolen. None of us were thieves or possessed the skills to steal cars, so that was out. We settled on fixing two of the abandoned cars in our parking lot. There were plenty of working class punks hanging around the warehouse, who had enough skills to get a car to run for at least a half hour. We would enlist them under the guise that the car would be sold to help the anarchist cause. Whether you believed in our politics or not, if you were punk, you somehow found a way to empathize with our politics. It was part of the contract.
With that settled we moved onto acquiring used tires to throw on the bridge. There were plenty of tire shops, who were more than willing to let a few “art students” take some tires home for an art project.
With the tire and cars secured, we waited until the day before the action. That night, we painted the tires with slogans: Fight War, Not Wars; Destroy Power, Not People, and my contribution: Your Mama, CHP! (even in my most dogmatic hour, I still had a sense of humor) and loaded them into the cars. Tara, Joseph’s new girlfriend would drive alone in one car and the rest of us (me, Joseph, Steve and Frank) would follow close behind in the other car, Joseph driving.
The night before the action, we stayed up late, as usual, cooked fried potatoes (without boiling them first) and listened to music. Around 5 am, we went to bed, only to get up an hour and half later.
Joseph, the responsible one, woke early and got us up. All of us slept till noon every day, so it wasn’t a pretty morning. We put on the clothes that we wore the day before and the week before that—ripped black pants or jeans, multiple ripped black or white shirts, usually dirty, cloth shoes of some kind and some sort of black jacket, standard issue for peace punks. Tara wore the same or multiple loose dark colored house dresses. Women Peace Punks either looked like the guys or like peasants. Layering was big. The first time I saw Tara in a single T-shirt, I was amazed that she had breasts. I was so used to seeing her in so many clothes that I had no idea what her body looked like.
We wandered out into the morning half asleep. The cars were still caked with a decade’s worth of dirt, so we borrowed Dave’s hose and washed the windows, scraping the dirt off with newspaper.
While the cars warmed up, we loaded the last of the tires into the trunks. I saw my tire and smiled. It was a cold morning and we stood around the back of the car in silence, our hands in our pockets.
Tara got in her car and the rest of us piled into the other. It was a little after 7 am.
As we approached the toll plaza of the bridge, the traffic was lighter than expected. None of us had ever commuted, so we just assumed that it was bumper-to-bumper-every morning.
The plan was to dump one car and tires on the SF side of the bridge, at the highest point of the span.
Once through the toll plaza, we stayed in the middle lane, going 55mph, the flow of the traffic. As we got nearer to the top of the span, adrenalin replaced our sleepiness. As with most actions, doubt started to creep in.
“The traffic is going way too fast.” I said, hoping that we would just keep driving. I was too nervous to get out of the car and knew that if we got caught, we’d be in deep shit.
As planned, Tara slowed down as she approached the apex. We were both in the middle lane and slowly came to a stop, like a train pulling into a station. Cars on both sides sped past us with angry faces, confused as to what we were doing. Carefully opening the driver’s side door, Joseph shimmied his way to the trunk and opened it. We followed suit. Traffic was backing up behind us and the rubberneckers had slowed commuters to a standstill. As fast as we could, we threw the tires all over the bridge, blocking all five lanes. When the tires were gone, we moved on to the trunk of the car Tara was driving. She had already opened the trunk and was waiting in the driver’s seat with the engine on. She was the getaway car. After emptying her trunk of tires, Joseph threw the keys to our car over the guard rail and into the Bay. I looked at Joseph and he had a huge smile on his face. We ran to Tara’s car. As we sped away, we all looked out the back window at our handiwork. The tires had successfully worked as a wall, stopping the traffic dead.
A man in a Honda got out of his car and picked up the closest tire. He walked to the edge of the bridge and tossed it over the side. I remember thinking, “Stevet, I hope there’s not a boat passing under the bridge.” The floodgates opened, and others joined the guy, moving the tires to the narrow sidewalk. By then, we had already exited on Harrison and were speeding toward Market Street.
Just past Mission Street, Tara pulled into a metered yellow zone. We abruptly exited the car, leaving the doors unlocked. Walking briskly toward BART on Market Street, Tara tossed the keys into the first garbage can. We slipped into BART unnoticed and vanished, taking the first outbound train.
On the train, we stood amidst the commuters and silently reflected on the morning’s events. We were tired, very tired. Getting up this early proved to be the hardest part of the action and I was questioning if it was worth it. What had we really achieved? Pissing people off?
As the train jerked forward, I thought about the man who threw the tire off the bridge and fretted that it may have hit somebody.
New Method Laundry warehouse sat on a corner parcel at 36th and Adeline in Emeryville. County maps had the property half in Oakland and the other half in Emeryville. I never saw the maps—it was more of a verbal history passed on through former tenants. Jug Liquors #3 was across the street; they sold crack pipes from underneath the counter. #1 and #2 were a block away in different directions. To the south, I-580 ran parallel with the second story windows for the length of the building.
A block away on 35th, hookers lined the street that led to the freeway on-ramp. If you didn’t lock your car doors and the traffic light was red, they would jump in your front seat and ask you for a date. If it was locked, and you were unlucky, they would lift their dresses to reveal a panty-less vagina or penis. And if you were really unlucky, they would rub their genitals against the passenger side window. I was unlucky once, which was enough to make me investigate alternative routes.
The neighborhood was a mixture of various industrial warehouses, rundown residential houses and abandoned buildings in various stages of disarray. All windows and doors were covered in bars, and fences were fortified with signs warning of big dogs. It was what you would call a bad area, ravaged by the crack epidemic of the 80s. When guests from out of town visited, they were told to always go left, if they went outside at all. To the right were the panty-less hookers and the worst of West Oakland; to the left was slightly better.
New Method was shared by two groups and one individual: Peace Punks (us), a spa company, and Dave the Foundry Guy. The spa company occupied the west side of the building and we were in the front. On the roof was a propped up, life-size Jacuzzi with two mannequins waving to the freeway traffic. We would regularly reposition the mannequins to simulate sex, doggy style, and alter their hands so they appeared to flip off the cars on the freeway.
We slowly moved into our space in November of 1985. I moved in first, sleeping in a sleeping bag on a large stack of plywood, which would eventually be the floor to the 4 bedrooms we were building. It would be the only modification to the space.
My roommates, Joseph and Nancy, lived upstairs in another space; Frank and Steve were not moving in until the bedrooms were finished. None of us knew each other except Joseph and Nancy, who were boyfriend and girlfriend. We all came together from mutual friends and an ad placed in a local punk fanzine.
The first week of November before construction, I woke up on my bed of plywood, surrounded by two inches of water. It had rained heavily the night before. Hundreds of leaks from the roof dripped onto the second floor and found its way to the concrete foundation where my bed rested.
I tiptoed through the water and out the front door, to alert Joseph of the flood. In the hallway was a deeper lake that came into through the parking lot, running down the hallway a little past our door, stopping at the foot of the stairs that led to the other spaces. Most of the water in our space came from the hallway.
We called the landlord and his lackey appeared the next day with tubs of tar to patch the second floor roof. We asked him about the flooding in the hallway and he said there wasn’t much he could do, as our space was lower than the hallway and the hallway was lower than the parking lot. The lease was for three years and we had just signed, giving over first and last month’s rent. That was all the money the landlord ever received from us. We took pictures the water, gave them to some hippie lawyer with a ponytail and stopped paying rent. He said we should put our rent money in an escrow account. What he didn’t know was that we never planned on paying rent past our initial down payment, regardless of flooding. Also we had no idea what an escrow account was.
Due to the flooding, a plan was devised to raise the first floor off the concrete by a few inches. Working with a budget of zero, and with materials mostly stolen from construction sites, we decided to use pallets to raise the floor, and leave the hallways as exposed concrete.
Finding quality pallets proved a tough job. You never realize the difference in quality in pallets until you start looking. We found the motherlode of good pallets across the street, under the freeway, in a fenced-in area used to park large construction equipment. We scaled the fenced at night and tossed over 32 of the heaviest pallets in the yard. It was hard work and took hours. Because of limitations imposed by the pallets, each of our rooms was exactly eight pallets large.
Joseph had worked construction, so he led the project. During one weekend, Steve, Joseph, Nancy, Frank and I framed the rooms, hung sheetrock and installed doors with no locks or handles. It was easier than I thought. Not knowing what to do about the flooding in the hallway, we employed skateboards to ferry us through the water and stacked two-by-fours end-to-end like a tightrope to get us to the stairs or out the front door. Luckily, the three years that we lived in New Method, it was relatively dry.
By mid-January we had moved in and began living as an Anarchist Vegan Collective. Since we didn’t pay rent, we had lots of time to pursue multiple anarchist activities:
1) Music. The band was called A State of Mind—with all the As circled for anarchy. I played drums and acoustic guitar. We labeled ourselves as anti-music, as we were about the message, the music being the medium to get our ideas across.
2) Mail Order Business. We distributed pamphlets and books on feminism, veganism, animal rights and generally anything we deemed anarchistic. Woman was spelled womyn and corporation was spelled corp(se)oration.
3) Record Label. Mind Matter Records put out records from bands that had anarchist lyrics; music was irrelevant.
4) Destruction. This is where we shined. Late at night we would spray-paint businesses that dealt in animal flesh, throw bricks through windows of fast food restaurants, glue the locks of banks and generally wreak havoc on anything that pissed us off. We were one step away from bombing and arson.
Around the time we moved in, we started seeing posters and flyers for an action in April called “No Business As Usual.” It was a national event sponsored by the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). The flyer listed scheduled events: protest at Bechtel, Die-In at 5pm downtown, etc. Even though we despised the RCP and the money behind their full-colored flyers and posters, we decided to take part in the event; however, instead of being part of the die-ins and protests, which we found too pedestrian for our anarchist ways, we decided to plan our own unique actions to coincide with the event. This would involve some planning.
Over the next few months we came up with the following plan. Since the day was about stopping business, specifically corporations in downtown San Francisco, we decided to block the Bay Bridge during the morning commute. Instead of advertising for a group protest at the foot of the bridge, and then walking up the on-ramp to the bridge, which had already been done, we wanted to abandon a car during the height of the rush hour and throw as many tires on the bridge that two cars could hold. One car would be left on the bridge and the other would be used as the getaway. That getaway car would be ditched somewhere near a planned protest in progress, where we could blend into the crowd. None of us took into account that the car would probably be abandoned around 7:30 am. There was a pretty good chance that no well-attended protest would be that early. Protesters are notorious late sleepers, as were we. Getting up early would prove to be the hardest part of the action.
Once we abandoned the second car, we would split up. We thought it was a great plan and creative.
First we had to find two cars that were not registered to anybody we knew, or, preferably, stolen. None of us were thieves or possessed the skills to steal cars, so that was out. We settled on fixing two of the abandoned cars in our parking lot. There were plenty of working class punks hanging around the warehouse, who had enough skills to get a car to run for at least a half hour. We would enlist them under the guise that the car would be sold to help the anarchist cause. Whether you believed in our politics or not, if you were punk, you somehow found a way to empathize with our politics. It was part of the contract.
With that settled we moved onto acquiring used tires to throw on the bridge. There were plenty of tire shops, who were more than willing to let a few “art students” take some tires home for an art project.
With the tire and cars secured, we waited until the day before the action. That night, we painted the tires with slogans: Fight War, Not Wars; Destroy Power, Not People, and my contribution: Your Mama, CHP! (even in my most dogmatic hour, I still had a sense of humor) and loaded them into the cars. Tara, Joseph’s new girlfriend would drive alone in one car and the rest of us (me, Joseph, Steve and Frank) would follow close behind in the other car, Joseph driving.
The night before the action, we stayed up late, as usual, cooked fried potatoes (without boiling them first) and listened to music. Around 5 am, we went to bed, only to get up an hour and half later.
Joseph, the responsible one, woke early and got us up. All of us slept till noon every day, so it wasn’t a pretty morning. We put on the clothes that we wore the day before and the week before that—ripped black pants or jeans, multiple ripped black or white shirts, usually dirty, cloth shoes of some kind and some sort of black jacket, standard issue for peace punks. Tara wore the same or multiple loose dark colored house dresses. Women Peace Punks either looked like the guys or like peasants. Layering was big. The first time I saw Tara in a single T-shirt, I was amazed that she had breasts. I was so used to seeing her in so many clothes that I had no idea what her body looked like.
We wandered out into the morning half asleep. The cars were still caked with a decade’s worth of dirt, so we borrowed Dave’s hose and washed the windows, scraping the dirt off with newspaper.
While the cars warmed up, we loaded the last of the tires into the trunks. I saw my tire and smiled. It was a cold morning and we stood around the back of the car in silence, our hands in our pockets.
Tara got in her car and the rest of us piled into the other. It was a little after 7 am.
As we approached the toll plaza of the bridge, the traffic was lighter than expected. None of us had ever commuted, so we just assumed that it was bumper-to-bumper-every morning.
The plan was to dump one car and tires on the SF side of the bridge, at the highest point of the span.
Once through the toll plaza, we stayed in the middle lane, going 55mph, the flow of the traffic. As we got nearer to the top of the span, adrenalin replaced our sleepiness. As with most actions, doubt started to creep in.
“The traffic is going way too fast.” I said, hoping that we would just keep driving. I was too nervous to get out of the car and knew that if we got caught, we’d be in deep shit.
As planned, Tara slowed down as she approached the apex. We were both in the middle lane and slowly came to a stop, like a train pulling into a station. Cars on both sides sped past us with angry faces, confused as to what we were doing. Carefully opening the driver’s side door, Joseph shimmied his way to the trunk and opened it. We followed suit. Traffic was backing up behind us and the rubberneckers had slowed commuters to a standstill. As fast as we could, we threw the tires all over the bridge, blocking all five lanes. When the tires were gone, we moved on to the trunk of the car Tara was driving. She had already opened the trunk and was waiting in the driver’s seat with the engine on. She was the getaway car. After emptying her trunk of tires, Joseph threw the keys to our car over the guard rail and into the Bay. I looked at Joseph and he had a huge smile on his face. We ran to Tara’s car. As we sped away, we all looked out the back window at our handiwork. The tires had successfully worked as a wall, stopping the traffic dead.
A man in a Honda got out of his car and picked up the closest tire. He walked to the edge of the bridge and tossed it over the side. I remember thinking, “Stevet, I hope there’s not a boat passing under the bridge.” The floodgates opened, and others joined the guy, moving the tires to the narrow sidewalk. By then, we had already exited on Harrison and were speeding toward Market Street.
Just past Mission Street, Tara pulled into a metered yellow zone. We abruptly exited the car, leaving the doors unlocked. Walking briskly toward BART on Market Street, Tara tossed the keys into the first garbage can. We slipped into BART unnoticed and vanished, taking the first outbound train.
On the train, we stood amidst the commuters and silently reflected on the morning’s events. We were tired, very tired. Getting up this early proved to be the hardest part of the action and I was questioning if it was worth it. What had we really achieved? Pissing people off?
As the train jerked forward, I thought about the man who threw the tire off the bridge and fretted that it may have hit somebody.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
White Dope on Punk: Chapter 7. Pussy Galore
By Greg Kim
My first apartment in San Francisco was a three-room flat in the Haight Ashbury district. I lived in the only bedroom—a small, dark 15-by-12-foot room with the only closet and one window looking into the wall of the adjacent building. Henry and Jessica, my roommates, lived in the den and living room, which was divided by a sliding door. This was a normal layout for most SF apartments. The kitchen was a small sliver off the living room that dumped into the hallway leading to the front door.
Henry and Jessica were my sister’s friends, a little older and wiser to the City’s ways. They took me in and were patient with my transition from big suburban ranch house to small city apartment. When I didn’t do the dishes—a symptom of living on your own for the first time—they would gently remind me that my mom didn’t live with us. They also taught me how to bake a potato, so I wouldn’t starve.
Even though Jessica and Henry were first-generation SF punks, when punk was a little artier, gayer and people still pogoed, they tolerated my enthusiasm for hardcore punk. While they drank beer in the back of the club while seeing the Circle Jerks or Flipper, I would be in the front thrashing and stage diving. Every few songs I’d take a break, to catch my breath and see what they were doing. I would be bloody and beat to hell. They’d laugh. I got lucky with them.
Henry was a dispatcher at a bike messenger company and sold pot on the side. He had gone to school in the central valley of California and lived in the dorms. When his first dorm roommate moved out, he littered the floor of the room with garbage until it was about 18 inches thick. Everybody that the school sent to live with him refused, so eventually they gave up and he was able to live by himself until he graduated. I never asked if he cleaned the room, once the threat of a roommate was over. I would assume not. Henry was a shit stirrer before I knew him, but I only knew him as the smart, soft-spoken guy down the hall.
Jessica worked with Henry as an order taker at the same messenger company. She had flaming, red, curly hair, bunched up on the top of her head, falling in her eyes like a long pompadour. Despite it being a nuisance, it was part of her like her eyes and nose and her vanity prevented her from cutting it. For some odd reason, we called it her “poo-tang" (not poontang). Jessica had no problems with the name and adopted it.
Jessica was fond of saying, “Gregory, my poo-tang is bugging me,” blowing the hair from her face. I knew that she meant her hair was bugging her, not her crotch. This inside joke would backfire on her.
Jessica met a suave black man named Marvin at San Francisco State University. He convinced her to go on date with her with the line: “Come on, Jessica. A little wine, a little women, it’ll be nice.” She fell for it and Marvin came to our apartment the following weekend with a single red rose and leather loafers, reeking of cologne.
While Jessica fiddled about her room looking for a black cardigan to go with her black outfit, she nervously brushed away her “poo-tang” from her face. Marvin patiently waited. As she fluttered about the room, she absentmindedly said to Marvin, “Man, my poo-tang is bothering me,” pushing her hair off her forehead. Jessica saw Marvin’s reaction to the comment, and feebly tried to explain that poo-tang was the tuft of hair dangling in her face and poon-tang was between her legs. She tried but irony is impossible to explain. They still went out and I think Jessica gave Marvin a little wine, a little women and I’m sure it was nice because every once in a while I saw Marvin being led past my room late at night.
Since both my roommates worked at the same messenger company, it only made sense that I worked there, too, as a bike messenger. Henry got me the job and we would ride our bikes to and from work like a little family. At first I didn’t have a bike, so the company lent me a heavy one-speed with a basket in front, which was status quo for messengers back then.
Through being a bike messenger and Henry’s dealing, I met a fellow messenger and pot smoker named Tom. He would come over to the house to buy pot and would usually stay and hang out. Eventually he and I were going out all the time.
One Tuesday, Tom, Jessica and Henry and I went to see Tales of Terror and White Flag at the Mab. We crowded into my small car, picked up my sister in the Mission, got burritos and headed to the show. On the way, we pulled over and got a 12-pack for the road. It was customary to either drink beer in the car before the show or take it up to the club and find an alley to drink it. This time we chose the car.
Lisa had been drinking before we picked her up, so she was quite drunk by the time we got into the show. Lisa wasn't a mellow drunk—she was feisty, loudmouthed and opinionated. I wasn’t looking forward to babysitting her and keeping her from fighting, which was usually with guys. In situations like these, the only thing she had going for her was sexism: most guys wouldn’t hit girls.
Lisa, Jessica and Henry went to the bar and Tom and I went to the front of the stage. There weren’t many people there and we were able to get close enough to avoid the few punks thrashing about in the pit. Tales of Terror were playing, led by their singer Rat’s Ass, who was a notorious SF punk. He was notorious for two reasons: one, because of his name, and two, because it was reputed, by his own admission, that he had a tattoo of Elvis on his dick. This begged many questions: Was the tattoo on the head of his dick? On the shaft of his dick? Was he erect when the tattoo was inked? I was oddly curious.
After a song, Rat’s Ass unzipped his pants and announced: “I’ve got a tattoo of Elvis on my dick.” I pushed toward the front—finally, the question was going to be answered. He stopped halfway, then zipped it back up. Tease. Switching gears, he taunted the crowd: “Someone hurt me. Come on you fucking pussies, someone hurt me.” A guy in front of us grabbed the microphone stand and slammed it into Rat’s Ass’ face, the microphone careening into his front teeth. Stunned, Rat’s Ass stepped back, leaning over with his hands pressed against his mouth. He regained his composure, approached the microphone and said, “That did it, that fuckin' hurt!” His eyes were glassy, watering.
Tom and I retreated to the back and found my sister, who was having problems with a longhaired guy. “What the fuck is that?” my sister yelled at us, looking over our shoulders. The guy had tan, muscular arms and longish blond hair, and was wearing a sleeveless shirt that said Pussy Galore in large colorful letters. "What the fuck does Pussy Galore mean? I’m gonna rip that fuckin’ shirt right off him.” Luckily, the band was playing, drowning out her screams. The object of my sister’s hatred had no idea that a crazy woman was about to attack.
“Lisa, calm the fuck down, Pussy Galore is a band. It’s just a fucking band.” I pleaded. There was no stopping her, I had seen this behavior before and it was pointless trying to rationalize with her. Plus, she was wasted, having spent most of her time at the bar. Between the alcohol and years of Women’s Studies classes and yearly subscriptions to On Our Backs, I knew there was nothing I could do to stop her from attacking this guy. “Jesus Christ, Lisa, calm down!” I pleaded with her.
Tom and I watched as she walked toward the guy, his back turned. She immediately grabbed the top of his shirt and yanked downward as hard as she could, ripping it from the collar to the pit and then some. He turned around and yelled, “What the fuck?” He was pissed and rather confused. He could’ve kicked all three of our asses.
Tom and I grabbed Lisa and pulled her out of the club, leaving Jessica and Henry at the bar, who were oblivious to what was going on. She went reluctantly, screaming, “Fuck you, dude. Fuck you, you dick.” He returned the insults with, “Fuck you, bitch. What the fuck?” not sure why this crazy woman was trying to rip his shirt off him. But he stayed put, not following us. Just in case, we dragged Lisa halfway down Broadway, past Montgomery and down the hill until we couldn’t see the club.
When the coast was clear, we let go of her. She shook her arms, looked at us with a smile, thinking she had done something good, and said, “Fuck that guy, what the fuck did he think he was doing?” Before she could finish, I pushed back, “Fuck you, Lisa. That guy was gonna kill you. And probably me.” Tom chimed in, “And me too.”
Just then, a large truck drove by. A cowboy looking dude in the driver’s seat yelled, “Devo, B-52s!” It was something that straight people yelled at us all the time.
Lisa flipped him off and yelled, “Fuck your mother.” The wheels on his trucks screeched, throwing it into a skid. We grabbed Lisa and ran down the hill, making a left on Sansome and darting into the two-tiered free garage where we always parked.
“Lisa, you’re a fucking idiot. I’m sick of you doing this.” She was drunk and moving from feisty to apologetic and pathetic.
“I’m sorry, little brother.” At the end of the night, my name usually changed from Greg to Little Brother. “Fuck, I know, I know, but that guy was a fuckin' idiot.” She wasn’t giving up but she was fading quickly, slumping in the back seat. I failed to respond. “Come on, Little Brother. Don’t be mad at me.” We rode home in silence—me stewing in the front seat and Lisa slumped down in the backseat.
Driving down Market, past Van Ness, Lisa’s head popped up: “Pull over, I gotta throw up. Pull over.” I jerked the car to the right and turned off the lights, keeping the engine running. It was midweek and late, so there wasn’t much traffic. Lisa lurched out the back door and walked in front of the car, bending over where we couldn’t see her.
Tom and I sat motionless in the front seat, waiting for Lisa to reappear. Even though I was drunk too—drunk enough to get a DUI—and drawing attention to the situation could lead to all of us going to jail and the car getting impounded, I decided to pull back on the high beams while simultaneously laying hard on the horn. Lisa was really bugging me and I felt the need to get back at her.
There weren’t many people on the street, but the ones who were near us noticed the drunken woman crouched down, throwing up in front of a car. Tom and I laughed hysterically. After a few seconds, we figured she would appear, stumble back in the car and tell us to fuck off. No, this wasn’t my sister’s style. A lone finger—the middle one—slowly rose beyond the hood like the sun in the east. I stopped honking. Her middle finger stood stone like, pointing toward the sky. It was followed with a mumbled, barely discernible yell:
“Fuuuuuuck Oooooofff!” That's my sister. Defiant to the end.
My first apartment in San Francisco was a three-room flat in the Haight Ashbury district. I lived in the only bedroom—a small, dark 15-by-12-foot room with the only closet and one window looking into the wall of the adjacent building. Henry and Jessica, my roommates, lived in the den and living room, which was divided by a sliding door. This was a normal layout for most SF apartments. The kitchen was a small sliver off the living room that dumped into the hallway leading to the front door.
Henry and Jessica were my sister’s friends, a little older and wiser to the City’s ways. They took me in and were patient with my transition from big suburban ranch house to small city apartment. When I didn’t do the dishes—a symptom of living on your own for the first time—they would gently remind me that my mom didn’t live with us. They also taught me how to bake a potato, so I wouldn’t starve.
Even though Jessica and Henry were first-generation SF punks, when punk was a little artier, gayer and people still pogoed, they tolerated my enthusiasm for hardcore punk. While they drank beer in the back of the club while seeing the Circle Jerks or Flipper, I would be in the front thrashing and stage diving. Every few songs I’d take a break, to catch my breath and see what they were doing. I would be bloody and beat to hell. They’d laugh. I got lucky with them.
Henry was a dispatcher at a bike messenger company and sold pot on the side. He had gone to school in the central valley of California and lived in the dorms. When his first dorm roommate moved out, he littered the floor of the room with garbage until it was about 18 inches thick. Everybody that the school sent to live with him refused, so eventually they gave up and he was able to live by himself until he graduated. I never asked if he cleaned the room, once the threat of a roommate was over. I would assume not. Henry was a shit stirrer before I knew him, but I only knew him as the smart, soft-spoken guy down the hall.
Jessica worked with Henry as an order taker at the same messenger company. She had flaming, red, curly hair, bunched up on the top of her head, falling in her eyes like a long pompadour. Despite it being a nuisance, it was part of her like her eyes and nose and her vanity prevented her from cutting it. For some odd reason, we called it her “poo-tang" (not poontang). Jessica had no problems with the name and adopted it.
Jessica was fond of saying, “Gregory, my poo-tang is bugging me,” blowing the hair from her face. I knew that she meant her hair was bugging her, not her crotch. This inside joke would backfire on her.
Jessica met a suave black man named Marvin at San Francisco State University. He convinced her to go on date with her with the line: “Come on, Jessica. A little wine, a little women, it’ll be nice.” She fell for it and Marvin came to our apartment the following weekend with a single red rose and leather loafers, reeking of cologne.
While Jessica fiddled about her room looking for a black cardigan to go with her black outfit, she nervously brushed away her “poo-tang” from her face. Marvin patiently waited. As she fluttered about the room, she absentmindedly said to Marvin, “Man, my poo-tang is bothering me,” pushing her hair off her forehead. Jessica saw Marvin’s reaction to the comment, and feebly tried to explain that poo-tang was the tuft of hair dangling in her face and poon-tang was between her legs. She tried but irony is impossible to explain. They still went out and I think Jessica gave Marvin a little wine, a little women and I’m sure it was nice because every once in a while I saw Marvin being led past my room late at night.
Since both my roommates worked at the same messenger company, it only made sense that I worked there, too, as a bike messenger. Henry got me the job and we would ride our bikes to and from work like a little family. At first I didn’t have a bike, so the company lent me a heavy one-speed with a basket in front, which was status quo for messengers back then.
Through being a bike messenger and Henry’s dealing, I met a fellow messenger and pot smoker named Tom. He would come over to the house to buy pot and would usually stay and hang out. Eventually he and I were going out all the time.
One Tuesday, Tom, Jessica and Henry and I went to see Tales of Terror and White Flag at the Mab. We crowded into my small car, picked up my sister in the Mission, got burritos and headed to the show. On the way, we pulled over and got a 12-pack for the road. It was customary to either drink beer in the car before the show or take it up to the club and find an alley to drink it. This time we chose the car.
Lisa had been drinking before we picked her up, so she was quite drunk by the time we got into the show. Lisa wasn't a mellow drunk—she was feisty, loudmouthed and opinionated. I wasn’t looking forward to babysitting her and keeping her from fighting, which was usually with guys. In situations like these, the only thing she had going for her was sexism: most guys wouldn’t hit girls.
Lisa, Jessica and Henry went to the bar and Tom and I went to the front of the stage. There weren’t many people there and we were able to get close enough to avoid the few punks thrashing about in the pit. Tales of Terror were playing, led by their singer Rat’s Ass, who was a notorious SF punk. He was notorious for two reasons: one, because of his name, and two, because it was reputed, by his own admission, that he had a tattoo of Elvis on his dick. This begged many questions: Was the tattoo on the head of his dick? On the shaft of his dick? Was he erect when the tattoo was inked? I was oddly curious.
After a song, Rat’s Ass unzipped his pants and announced: “I’ve got a tattoo of Elvis on my dick.” I pushed toward the front—finally, the question was going to be answered. He stopped halfway, then zipped it back up. Tease. Switching gears, he taunted the crowd: “Someone hurt me. Come on you fucking pussies, someone hurt me.” A guy in front of us grabbed the microphone stand and slammed it into Rat’s Ass’ face, the microphone careening into his front teeth. Stunned, Rat’s Ass stepped back, leaning over with his hands pressed against his mouth. He regained his composure, approached the microphone and said, “That did it, that fuckin' hurt!” His eyes were glassy, watering.
Tom and I retreated to the back and found my sister, who was having problems with a longhaired guy. “What the fuck is that?” my sister yelled at us, looking over our shoulders. The guy had tan, muscular arms and longish blond hair, and was wearing a sleeveless shirt that said Pussy Galore in large colorful letters. "What the fuck does Pussy Galore mean? I’m gonna rip that fuckin’ shirt right off him.” Luckily, the band was playing, drowning out her screams. The object of my sister’s hatred had no idea that a crazy woman was about to attack.
“Lisa, calm the fuck down, Pussy Galore is a band. It’s just a fucking band.” I pleaded. There was no stopping her, I had seen this behavior before and it was pointless trying to rationalize with her. Plus, she was wasted, having spent most of her time at the bar. Between the alcohol and years of Women’s Studies classes and yearly subscriptions to On Our Backs, I knew there was nothing I could do to stop her from attacking this guy. “Jesus Christ, Lisa, calm down!” I pleaded with her.
Tom and I watched as she walked toward the guy, his back turned. She immediately grabbed the top of his shirt and yanked downward as hard as she could, ripping it from the collar to the pit and then some. He turned around and yelled, “What the fuck?” He was pissed and rather confused. He could’ve kicked all three of our asses.
Tom and I grabbed Lisa and pulled her out of the club, leaving Jessica and Henry at the bar, who were oblivious to what was going on. She went reluctantly, screaming, “Fuck you, dude. Fuck you, you dick.” He returned the insults with, “Fuck you, bitch. What the fuck?” not sure why this crazy woman was trying to rip his shirt off him. But he stayed put, not following us. Just in case, we dragged Lisa halfway down Broadway, past Montgomery and down the hill until we couldn’t see the club.
When the coast was clear, we let go of her. She shook her arms, looked at us with a smile, thinking she had done something good, and said, “Fuck that guy, what the fuck did he think he was doing?” Before she could finish, I pushed back, “Fuck you, Lisa. That guy was gonna kill you. And probably me.” Tom chimed in, “And me too.”
Just then, a large truck drove by. A cowboy looking dude in the driver’s seat yelled, “Devo, B-52s!” It was something that straight people yelled at us all the time.
Lisa flipped him off and yelled, “Fuck your mother.” The wheels on his trucks screeched, throwing it into a skid. We grabbed Lisa and ran down the hill, making a left on Sansome and darting into the two-tiered free garage where we always parked.
“Lisa, you’re a fucking idiot. I’m sick of you doing this.” She was drunk and moving from feisty to apologetic and pathetic.
“I’m sorry, little brother.” At the end of the night, my name usually changed from Greg to Little Brother. “Fuck, I know, I know, but that guy was a fuckin' idiot.” She wasn’t giving up but she was fading quickly, slumping in the back seat. I failed to respond. “Come on, Little Brother. Don’t be mad at me.” We rode home in silence—me stewing in the front seat and Lisa slumped down in the backseat.
Driving down Market, past Van Ness, Lisa’s head popped up: “Pull over, I gotta throw up. Pull over.” I jerked the car to the right and turned off the lights, keeping the engine running. It was midweek and late, so there wasn’t much traffic. Lisa lurched out the back door and walked in front of the car, bending over where we couldn’t see her.
Tom and I sat motionless in the front seat, waiting for Lisa to reappear. Even though I was drunk too—drunk enough to get a DUI—and drawing attention to the situation could lead to all of us going to jail and the car getting impounded, I decided to pull back on the high beams while simultaneously laying hard on the horn. Lisa was really bugging me and I felt the need to get back at her.
There weren’t many people on the street, but the ones who were near us noticed the drunken woman crouched down, throwing up in front of a car. Tom and I laughed hysterically. After a few seconds, we figured she would appear, stumble back in the car and tell us to fuck off. No, this wasn’t my sister’s style. A lone finger—the middle one—slowly rose beyond the hood like the sun in the east. I stopped honking. Her middle finger stood stone like, pointing toward the sky. It was followed with a mumbled, barely discernible yell:
“Fuuuuuuck Oooooofff!” That's my sister. Defiant to the end.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
White Dope on Punk: Chapter 6. Go Back to Russia
By Greg Kim
The transition from big-fish-in-a-small-pond of Pleasanton, California, to little-fish-in-a-big-pond of San Francisco was not easy. As a big fish in Pleasanton, I was a spectacle turning heads on Main Street. I felt special and enjoyed the attention, even though most of it was abusive. In San Francisco in 1983, it seemed like everybody under 25 was punk, and I was one of thousands of grubby miscreants going to shows and starting bands.
It had been building for quite some time. I knew I had to leave and so did my parents. Everything sucked to me—the town, the people, the schools, my friends—but I didn’t want to do anything about. I needed a push, which came in the form of the Pleasanton Police.
Around 11pm on a Saturday night I decided to walk down the block to my friend Bob’s party. Bob was one of my oldest friends, but since my conversion from burn-out to punk our friendship had soured. It wasn’t a conscious thing; but when my favorite band was Minor Threat and his was The Doors, there wasn’t much we could do to salvage our relationship. He didn’t understand my change and I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t want to change.
I walked the short block just to make an appearance and say hi, hoping that his younger brother Craig was not around. Ever since my punk rock coming out, Brian was always aggressive towards me. Even though he was a skinny kid, he was mean and had disapproving eyes, and was fond of calling me faggot. I had witnessed many Bob and Craig all-out brother fights, where Craig would get pummeled, but he never quit. I figured if he came at me he would act the same way.
By the time I got there the cops were breaking up the party. There was one police car out front and one pulling up. The front door of the house was open, the bright hallway light spilling onto their front lawn. Streams of people exited the house in an orderly manner, walking to their cars. Unlike Hollywood depictions of high school parties, no one was running or jumping over fences.
I pushed past the people leaving and looked for Bob. I knew the house well and searched for him, but I couldn’t find him. After checking the back yard, I left, stepping into the flow of humanity that was exiting.
The front yard was filled with small groups of people discussing where the next party was, while the police threatened them with incarceration. They moved on, replaced by new groups leaving the party.
Leaning against the side of their car in front of the house, two policemen watched me as I walked down the steps and into the yard. I kept my head down, paranoid, but something told me they were watching me.
“Hey, Comrade,” one of them said as I approached.
Not sure how to respond to such a stupid statement, I grunted, “Huh, what?” looking perplexed.
In an angrier tone, he finished his thought. “It's because of people like you…parties get busted. Go back to Russia.” His words followed me as I walked by. I turned and indignantly replied, “Dude, I just got here.” I would later learn that cops didn’t like to be called dude, or homes.
As I quickly walked out of the Bob’s cul-de-sac, I heard the cop indignantly say, “Dude?” Looking over my shoulder, I knew this verbal exchange between the Pleasanton Police and I was not over. As expected, they got in their car and slowly followed me. It was like an excruciatingly slow chase. They never moved in front of me, careful to loom in the background like a storm cloud.
I thought of running, but I had nowhere to go except to my house, which needless to say would be bad. So I slowed my pace, looking back at them, shaking my head. I knew this would piss them off.
Walking across the lawn of my house, I picked up my pace, making a run for my door. They hit the gas and screeched to a halt in front of my house. I quickly opened the door and slammed it shut, running to the den to peek out the window.
They were halfway up the lawn and moving toward the door. The doorbell rang. My parents were out for the evening, but my sister Lisa was home. I ran out of the den and to the bathroom, where Lisa had just taken a shower.
“Get the door. What’s going on?” she questioned. She could tell by the look of fear and excitement on my face that whoever was at the door was there because of something I did. I quickly explained what was going on. “Bob was having a party. When I got there, it was getting busted. I went in to say hi, but he wasn’t around, so I left. As I was leaving, these two fucking cops told me to ‘go back to Russia.’ And they followed me home.” I knew this information would piss off Lisa.
Not one to think things through, Lisa moved to the door, wearing a lush, white robe and towel around the top of her head, hiding her hennaed hair. With her chin high, she seemed to savor the anticipation of confrontation.
“Yeah, what?” she said, opening the door a crack, exposing her turbaned head. The entry way was dark—she didn’t turn on the light—and I assume they thought they had disturbed my mother while taking a shower.
“Well, uh.” They stuttered, not expecting this. They were expecting someone a little more mom-like, not my angry sister.
“Leave him alone, he didn't do anything. You’re harassing him because of how he looks.” That was it. She shut the door and walked back to the bathroom as if nothing happened.
I ran back to the den and watched them get back in their car. Lisa ruled! But I had had enough. I had outgrown my hometown of Pleasanton. Three weeks later, I moved to San Francisco.
The transition from big-fish-in-a-small-pond of Pleasanton, California, to little-fish-in-a-big-pond of San Francisco was not easy. As a big fish in Pleasanton, I was a spectacle turning heads on Main Street. I felt special and enjoyed the attention, even though most of it was abusive. In San Francisco in 1983, it seemed like everybody under 25 was punk, and I was one of thousands of grubby miscreants going to shows and starting bands.
It had been building for quite some time. I knew I had to leave and so did my parents. Everything sucked to me—the town, the people, the schools, my friends—but I didn’t want to do anything about. I needed a push, which came in the form of the Pleasanton Police.
Around 11pm on a Saturday night I decided to walk down the block to my friend Bob’s party. Bob was one of my oldest friends, but since my conversion from burn-out to punk our friendship had soured. It wasn’t a conscious thing; but when my favorite band was Minor Threat and his was The Doors, there wasn’t much we could do to salvage our relationship. He didn’t understand my change and I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t want to change.
I walked the short block just to make an appearance and say hi, hoping that his younger brother Craig was not around. Ever since my punk rock coming out, Brian was always aggressive towards me. Even though he was a skinny kid, he was mean and had disapproving eyes, and was fond of calling me faggot. I had witnessed many Bob and Craig all-out brother fights, where Craig would get pummeled, but he never quit. I figured if he came at me he would act the same way.
By the time I got there the cops were breaking up the party. There was one police car out front and one pulling up. The front door of the house was open, the bright hallway light spilling onto their front lawn. Streams of people exited the house in an orderly manner, walking to their cars. Unlike Hollywood depictions of high school parties, no one was running or jumping over fences.
I pushed past the people leaving and looked for Bob. I knew the house well and searched for him, but I couldn’t find him. After checking the back yard, I left, stepping into the flow of humanity that was exiting.
The front yard was filled with small groups of people discussing where the next party was, while the police threatened them with incarceration. They moved on, replaced by new groups leaving the party.
Leaning against the side of their car in front of the house, two policemen watched me as I walked down the steps and into the yard. I kept my head down, paranoid, but something told me they were watching me.
“Hey, Comrade,” one of them said as I approached.
Not sure how to respond to such a stupid statement, I grunted, “Huh, what?” looking perplexed.
In an angrier tone, he finished his thought. “It's because of people like you…parties get busted. Go back to Russia.” His words followed me as I walked by. I turned and indignantly replied, “Dude, I just got here.” I would later learn that cops didn’t like to be called dude, or homes.
As I quickly walked out of the Bob’s cul-de-sac, I heard the cop indignantly say, “Dude?” Looking over my shoulder, I knew this verbal exchange between the Pleasanton Police and I was not over. As expected, they got in their car and slowly followed me. It was like an excruciatingly slow chase. They never moved in front of me, careful to loom in the background like a storm cloud.
I thought of running, but I had nowhere to go except to my house, which needless to say would be bad. So I slowed my pace, looking back at them, shaking my head. I knew this would piss them off.
Walking across the lawn of my house, I picked up my pace, making a run for my door. They hit the gas and screeched to a halt in front of my house. I quickly opened the door and slammed it shut, running to the den to peek out the window.
They were halfway up the lawn and moving toward the door. The doorbell rang. My parents were out for the evening, but my sister Lisa was home. I ran out of the den and to the bathroom, where Lisa had just taken a shower.
“Get the door. What’s going on?” she questioned. She could tell by the look of fear and excitement on my face that whoever was at the door was there because of something I did. I quickly explained what was going on. “Bob was having a party. When I got there, it was getting busted. I went in to say hi, but he wasn’t around, so I left. As I was leaving, these two fucking cops told me to ‘go back to Russia.’ And they followed me home.” I knew this information would piss off Lisa.
Not one to think things through, Lisa moved to the door, wearing a lush, white robe and towel around the top of her head, hiding her hennaed hair. With her chin high, she seemed to savor the anticipation of confrontation.
“Yeah, what?” she said, opening the door a crack, exposing her turbaned head. The entry way was dark—she didn’t turn on the light—and I assume they thought they had disturbed my mother while taking a shower.
“Well, uh.” They stuttered, not expecting this. They were expecting someone a little more mom-like, not my angry sister.
“Leave him alone, he didn't do anything. You’re harassing him because of how he looks.” That was it. She shut the door and walked back to the bathroom as if nothing happened.
I ran back to the den and watched them get back in their car. Lisa ruled! But I had had enough. I had outgrown my hometown of Pleasanton. Three weeks later, I moved to San Francisco.
Monday, March 28, 2011
White Dope on Punk: Chapter 5. True Punker
By Greg Kim
We were from different sides of the tracks and would have never met if it wasn’t for work. If there’s one good thing about work, it's that it forces people from different cultures and classes to mingle, which is rare, no matter what Berkeley liberals tell you. Face it—all of our friends are little clones of ourselves and we rarely venture out of our comfort zone. And if we do, it’s usually forced and contrived.
For the most part, Greg and I were identical: we went to grade school together, lived in the same town and shared the same white, suburban culture. We went to different high schools and when we came back together during the summer after graduation we had changed.
He was essentially a burnout—stringy brown hair, dirty flared jeans, Vietnam army jacket and various concert T-shirts. I was a suburban punk: quarter-inch bleached blond hair, Vans and pegged, ripped jeans. While the difference in our appearances was a big point of contention between us (neither of us wanted to be seen with the other), our musical differences were greater. At this age, identity is everything; you define yourself by what you listen to and what you look like. Greg was rock and I was punk. Oil and water.
For example, four years earlier, at the age of 14, my friends and I almost came to blows with a few friends-of-a-friend (FOF) over the band Foreigner. We were at my friend Chico’s house listening to the Rolling Stones on my boom box. While we weren’t looking, the FOFs changed the tape to Foreigner. They just assumed everybody liked Foreigner and it would be ok.
Before the first verse of "Hot Blooded" had been sung, the tape was flying through the air, landing on Chico's bed. The FOFs were stunned at our intense reaction to the band. They didn’t understand why we were so angry and ready to fight over such an innocuous incident. I told them that the boom box was ruined and that we’d have to throw it out. They quickly left, grabbing the tape off the bed, bewildered and shaking their heads. Once gone, we didn’t laugh or call them pussies like most 14-year-olds. No, we seriously lamented their actions and discussed actually throwing away the boom box. At 14, music was identity, even if it was the Stones we were defending.
Because of our differences, Greg and I were forced to make a strong effort to find common threads between us. Sports and weather were usually safe, but neither of us cared about sports, and discussing California weather, where almost every day is clear and warm, would only take us so far. So, we settled on the great common denominators of 1982: Pot and Aerosmith. Even though Aerosmith was a rock band, they were my favorite from childhood and I still clandestinely listened to their old records. I wasn’t much of a pot smoker—that was Greg’s thing—but I would compromise in the name of harmony and smoke with him. I learned that pot went well Aerosmith.
For a big stoner, Greg was kind of nelly and goofy. There were no pretentions or teenage posturing to him, unlike me, who was proving his identity around every corner.
He didn’t call me by my name; rather, he enjoyed calling me “True Punker,” emphasizing “Punk,” with a higher than usual note. It was so weird and he enjoyed it so much that I just went with it. In reality, punks hated the word “punker.” When saying it, you kind of outted yourself as a poseur. Staying cool and punk was not easy—you had to know the rules. But behind the costumes and punk vernacular, Greg and I were essentially the same person.
Greg and I worked as janitors. My mom got me the job through a guy that cleaned her office building. He owned the company and looked like Tommy Lee Jones in The Executioner’s Song. Greg was already working there and took me on as his partner. Before work, we’d meet at a pinball hall near the Alameda County Fairgrounds. Whoever got there first would play Aerosmith's "Kings and Queens" and "Draw the Line" (their punkest song). We’d play one game of KISS or Evel Knievel pinball and then caravan to our first stop: a Catholic church near the Livermore/Pleasanton border.
Having no janitorial experience and no passion for the job, we did the bare minimum and sometimes nothing at all. If the place looked clean, we’d empty the garbage cans and pick paper flecks off the carpet. That was it. This behavior led to our demise.
One Sunday in October while cleaning the church, Greg and I decided to smoke pot on the pulpit. He grabbed his bag and retrieved his bong. Smoking pot at work had become one our rituals, although we usually did it in his car.
Like most bad ideas, it seemed like a good idea at the time. He “fired up a bowl” and we both took multiple hits, very proud of ourselves. Smoking pot in a church was like the drug equivalent of having sex in public. Afterwards, we went about cleaning the main church. The place was dirty so we actually had to work.
As the industrial vacuum cleaner roared like a chainsaw, and the sun filtered through the stained glass windows, washing the pews in a kaleidoscope of colors, I felt a wave of paranoia and fear rush over me. What if there was a God? Maybe I was just plain scared of having offended God, but something told me that Greg was feeling the same way. There was a presence—internal or external—that was none too pleased. We kept looking over at each other, wanting to stay close, but not wanting to admit we were scared.
Finally, I said something: “Dude, let’s get our here. This place is freaking me out.”
We quickly gathered our cleaning supplies and vacuum cleaner and headed toward our cars. Once outside, we divulged our fears and vowed never to smoke pot in the church again. We were both stoned and paranoid, but we quickly got over it once we were in our cars. We were teenagers and really only cared about ourselves.
The next day I got a call from Tommy Lee Jones, my boss. He said I was fired—not for smoking pot in the church, but for not cleaning a dentist office that was our next client after the church. Supposedly, the dentist hid in the office and caught us doing only the bare minimum—emptying the garbage cans. We spent most of the time in the office trying to turn on the laughing gas. We were caught.
The next day, I drove to Tommy Lee’s house to give back the cleaning supplies. He met me in the front yard, took the supplies and then threw me against my car. He had on jeans and a tight white T-shirt that accentuated his muscular frame. I found him very intimidating and didn’t resist.
Pressed against the car, unable to escape his grip, he said I was a little asshole and that my actions cost him the dentist account. Behind him, his teenage son made faces and flipped me off. He finally let go and I sped away, as his son ran alongside the car, banging on the passenger side window, continually flipping me off and calling me a pussy.
Seven years later I was taking a piss at a Guns 'N Roses/Aerosmith concert at the Shoreline Amphitheatre. In the next urinal was Greg, looking exactly as I left him in ’82. He looked over at me and said, “True Punker.”
We were from different sides of the tracks and would have never met if it wasn’t for work. If there’s one good thing about work, it's that it forces people from different cultures and classes to mingle, which is rare, no matter what Berkeley liberals tell you. Face it—all of our friends are little clones of ourselves and we rarely venture out of our comfort zone. And if we do, it’s usually forced and contrived.
For the most part, Greg and I were identical: we went to grade school together, lived in the same town and shared the same white, suburban culture. We went to different high schools and when we came back together during the summer after graduation we had changed.
He was essentially a burnout—stringy brown hair, dirty flared jeans, Vietnam army jacket and various concert T-shirts. I was a suburban punk: quarter-inch bleached blond hair, Vans and pegged, ripped jeans. While the difference in our appearances was a big point of contention between us (neither of us wanted to be seen with the other), our musical differences were greater. At this age, identity is everything; you define yourself by what you listen to and what you look like. Greg was rock and I was punk. Oil and water.
For example, four years earlier, at the age of 14, my friends and I almost came to blows with a few friends-of-a-friend (FOF) over the band Foreigner. We were at my friend Chico’s house listening to the Rolling Stones on my boom box. While we weren’t looking, the FOFs changed the tape to Foreigner. They just assumed everybody liked Foreigner and it would be ok.
Before the first verse of "Hot Blooded" had been sung, the tape was flying through the air, landing on Chico's bed. The FOFs were stunned at our intense reaction to the band. They didn’t understand why we were so angry and ready to fight over such an innocuous incident. I told them that the boom box was ruined and that we’d have to throw it out. They quickly left, grabbing the tape off the bed, bewildered and shaking their heads. Once gone, we didn’t laugh or call them pussies like most 14-year-olds. No, we seriously lamented their actions and discussed actually throwing away the boom box. At 14, music was identity, even if it was the Stones we were defending.
Because of our differences, Greg and I were forced to make a strong effort to find common threads between us. Sports and weather were usually safe, but neither of us cared about sports, and discussing California weather, where almost every day is clear and warm, would only take us so far. So, we settled on the great common denominators of 1982: Pot and Aerosmith. Even though Aerosmith was a rock band, they were my favorite from childhood and I still clandestinely listened to their old records. I wasn’t much of a pot smoker—that was Greg’s thing—but I would compromise in the name of harmony and smoke with him. I learned that pot went well Aerosmith.
For a big stoner, Greg was kind of nelly and goofy. There were no pretentions or teenage posturing to him, unlike me, who was proving his identity around every corner.
He didn’t call me by my name; rather, he enjoyed calling me “True Punker,” emphasizing “Punk,” with a higher than usual note. It was so weird and he enjoyed it so much that I just went with it. In reality, punks hated the word “punker.” When saying it, you kind of outted yourself as a poseur. Staying cool and punk was not easy—you had to know the rules. But behind the costumes and punk vernacular, Greg and I were essentially the same person.
Greg and I worked as janitors. My mom got me the job through a guy that cleaned her office building. He owned the company and looked like Tommy Lee Jones in The Executioner’s Song. Greg was already working there and took me on as his partner. Before work, we’d meet at a pinball hall near the Alameda County Fairgrounds. Whoever got there first would play Aerosmith's "Kings and Queens" and "Draw the Line" (their punkest song). We’d play one game of KISS or Evel Knievel pinball and then caravan to our first stop: a Catholic church near the Livermore/Pleasanton border.
Having no janitorial experience and no passion for the job, we did the bare minimum and sometimes nothing at all. If the place looked clean, we’d empty the garbage cans and pick paper flecks off the carpet. That was it. This behavior led to our demise.
One Sunday in October while cleaning the church, Greg and I decided to smoke pot on the pulpit. He grabbed his bag and retrieved his bong. Smoking pot at work had become one our rituals, although we usually did it in his car.
Like most bad ideas, it seemed like a good idea at the time. He “fired up a bowl” and we both took multiple hits, very proud of ourselves. Smoking pot in a church was like the drug equivalent of having sex in public. Afterwards, we went about cleaning the main church. The place was dirty so we actually had to work.
As the industrial vacuum cleaner roared like a chainsaw, and the sun filtered through the stained glass windows, washing the pews in a kaleidoscope of colors, I felt a wave of paranoia and fear rush over me. What if there was a God? Maybe I was just plain scared of having offended God, but something told me that Greg was feeling the same way. There was a presence—internal or external—that was none too pleased. We kept looking over at each other, wanting to stay close, but not wanting to admit we were scared.
Finally, I said something: “Dude, let’s get our here. This place is freaking me out.”
We quickly gathered our cleaning supplies and vacuum cleaner and headed toward our cars. Once outside, we divulged our fears and vowed never to smoke pot in the church again. We were both stoned and paranoid, but we quickly got over it once we were in our cars. We were teenagers and really only cared about ourselves.
The next day I got a call from Tommy Lee Jones, my boss. He said I was fired—not for smoking pot in the church, but for not cleaning a dentist office that was our next client after the church. Supposedly, the dentist hid in the office and caught us doing only the bare minimum—emptying the garbage cans. We spent most of the time in the office trying to turn on the laughing gas. We were caught.
The next day, I drove to Tommy Lee’s house to give back the cleaning supplies. He met me in the front yard, took the supplies and then threw me against my car. He had on jeans and a tight white T-shirt that accentuated his muscular frame. I found him very intimidating and didn’t resist.
Pressed against the car, unable to escape his grip, he said I was a little asshole and that my actions cost him the dentist account. Behind him, his teenage son made faces and flipped me off. He finally let go and I sped away, as his son ran alongside the car, banging on the passenger side window, continually flipping me off and calling me a pussy.
Seven years later I was taking a piss at a Guns 'N Roses/Aerosmith concert at the Shoreline Amphitheatre. In the next urinal was Greg, looking exactly as I left him in ’82. He looked over at me and said, “True Punker.”
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