Shred (as it was known) was the name of
our general-purpose skaters' (as in skateboard) union. We first
formed to fight a proposed ban of skateboards from San Francisco
(seriously). Duke made up the name, as a triple-entendre/pun,
originally to be a gay skateboarders group. No I won't explain it.
We ended up expanding into decidedly non-skate things: barbeques,
organized political rallies, zine publishing,
Hit'N'Run shows, experimental housing. We also put on a bunch
of HOMOCORE shows, and all of the FUGAZI shows in the SF area
(though I doubt we'll do another one).
Here is the front of our house, 164 Shipley, which was in the back
alley. We moved here in January 1986? Shipley was two blocks long;
we lived in the respectable half. Old folks from the Salvation
Army home across the street got mugged a lot, but the other block
had street sex, drug deals and the annual dead body. There was
essentially permanent construction on Shipley, part of the "Yerba
Buena Redevelopment" project, a local boondoggle. Shipley was just
a barrel of laughs. Here is my
previous nice car, my 1970 AMC
Hornet, covered in sperm(s). (It was a big rubber stamp made
for the occasion.) Notice the open door. This usually isn't a good
idea. More than once we had really unpleasant people walk in
unannounced, one of whom stumbled in stinking and crazy, asking
everyone "do you want to play?".
164
Shipley was a scroungy warehouse. Our portion was 22 feet wide, 19
high, and 60 feet long. This is what you saw when you went in the
open door like some bum off the street, after passing through the
front room, which really wasn't a room but the big open space where
we made stuff. The place was designed like a rabbit warren (we
actually used that phrase). We built it out ourselves (including
the loft, stairs, kitchen, etc you see here). All except the floor
right above the kitchen here was scrounged. I carried eight-four
20-foot lengths of 2x6 tongue-and-groove floorboard on a roofrack
on my Hornet. The wood was stripped out of demolished buildings
on the site of what is now the "South Bay" area of San Fransicko,
about First and Brannan, which were punk squats towards the end.
Here's the kitchen, behind the eating counter in the previous
picture. Note we have a theme here: dumpster. We carried in the
most worthless shit off the street, even we had a hard time believing
it. We were relentless dumpster divers. Note the lovely kitchen
shark. it was painted with a roller. The whole place was painted
with $2.00 a gallon paint. (Notice the prototype sperms stamped
on the washing machine.)
It is hard to recall how many people lived here, from 86 through
when we moved out in summer of 90. We were pretty a project-oriented
household; we put on shows, skateboard events,
Hit'N'Run music events, weekly semi-public dinners, zine
publishing (HOMOCORE, plus peripherally PAVEMENT OF SURFACE, SHRED
OF DIGNITY SKATERS' UNION RAGAZINE, WARNING, others), I lived off
Fido Software during this time, we did organizing and sound and
lights for lots of political events (and attended some notorious
ones like the Gulf War, the
incredibly stupid big skinhead
rally in Napa. Hernan had his sound equipment, Duke had his
contractor tools, me, computers of course. Valerie, Greta, Dave,
Hernan, Sharon, Shawn, Bambi, Jane, Lisa Mud, Will... #ask val &
gret for more names# We usually had 5 or 6 people officially living
there at one time, plus we had dozens of houseguests, bands, etc.
In this picture we're collating some damn thing on the kitchen
counter.
The
view of the big room, from the zine table/Fido Software. Hernan is sitting about 10 feet off to
the left; about 10 feet to the right is the kitchen.) Greta slounging on the grimy couch
dragged in off the street, Deke probably working on some damn zine
and drinking the characteristic JOLT cola. You can't see it, but
the "coffee table" Greta has her feet on is a 6 foot long, three
inch chunk of Lexan. Our neighbors in this building were Shitty
Plastics ("City Plastics is Plastic City" was their slogan, no
shit), who moved out. So we burrowed in through the walls, and hung
out, skated, and took huge amounts of plastic they had left behind
(really). It also got squatted.
Dave and Valerie sitting around
in the kitchen.
This
was a cool thing put up high on the wall when we first moved in.
Probably if we were into painting, we would have left it alone. It
sits up high above where Greta is sitting in a previous picture.
OH NO EARTHQUAKE!!! Where were *you* during the SF quake? (I was
in Olympia Washington visiting my boyfriend Michael, and missed it
all! Boo hoo!) The scumsucking landlord, Mr. Chips (whatever his
name was), thought he pulled a fast one, and had the building RED
TAGGED (meaning: unsafe vacate immediately) 90 days after the
deadline for such things. The building was fine. Boy did he make
a big mistake! Mr. Chips always thought we were just a bunch of
dirtbags. Fool! Duke is a structural engineer (and hilariously,
pretty much single handedly designed and constructed the City's
quake-damage database!), most of us have done construction-like
things, we're all super media savvy, we all write, photograph, and
essentially do communications as part of our lives... It took 11
months, the most grueling thing we ever did, and basically wrecked
our household. We had a great lawyer though; Marilyn Kalman of
Bayside Legal (tenants rights advocates who win a lot). We did
daily press kits to TV, radio and the papers, and ultimately got
120 seconds at the top of the local news, with us talking calmly,
the landlord refusing to talk to reporters. We pulled a few stunts
which got us more publicity. Since we were basically a bunch of
punk engineers, we did some rather elaborate props like the giant
rooftop unfurling banner visible for blocks. It helps that the
landlord was actually a total scumbag, third-generation rich scum,
an actual yuppie, daddy got tired of him doing nothing but sailing
(young Tom regaling us with his sailing stories... yawn) and gave
him a building to manage. Mistake! When we were through, we left
him some time bombs, in the form of registered housing in a city
database that he'll probably run into when he goes to put up a
highrise or something.
First,
after Mr. Richy Rich got the first floor tenants out in front, and
boarded it up (to make it look "dangerous") we used the opportunity
to say a few words (The little picture above is kinda lousy, sorry,
the big one is much clearer). HINT: Always do such things on a
Friday afternoon, when it's too late to get a crew to repaint, so
it sits over the weekend at least.
Greta and I made this thing out of some old sheets, and unfurled
it off the roof, 40 feet over the street. This got on TV. Again,
the weekend angle. Plus commuters saw it Friday afternoon on their
way home, in time to see it on TV.
Oh that earthquake was a lot of fun! Here I am
on 6th Street, aka Wine Country, about Howard Street. Some old
wino hotel is getting wrecked behind me. And I missed it all!
