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SFist Memoirs: Pat Montandon, Part II - 'I Fixed My Heart In San Francisco'

Leanne Maxwell — Wed, 23 May 2012 11:10:45 GMT

After a three-week hiatus (it's been a busy month), SFist Memoirs returns with the second half of our conversation with the legendary San Francisco party girl, Pat Montandon, about her noteworthy first experiences as a young woman moving to San Francisco in the 1960s. (Read Part I here.) From coming to the rescue of people crashing their cars near her apartment on the crooked part of Lombard to wearing sequins in the Tenderloin to being the tenth person in the world to have heart surgery and survive, Pat's lived an extraordinary life, and these stories are just the tip of the iceberg.

I loved living on the crooked block of Lombard, and living there had its own issues. One day, I ran out the door — I had to go down the steps and then out to the street, and cars were always crashing. A car came down the street and crashed above my head when I was trying to get to the studio (KGO). I was such a Good Samaritan, I couldn't just let them lie there. Someone called 9-1-1. There was a woman who was bleeding, and I ran in and got her some bandages. She said, "I'm OK. Please call my dentist for me."

So I called, and the dentist said, "Well, she'll call me when she wants an appointment."

Right across the street from my apartment was Castle Court Apartments. I had a little dog that I took to the studio with me. My show was early — 8 a.m., which was early for me because I had to put on make-up and get over to KGO. At that time, KGO was right down in heart of the Tenderloin. I had my little dog, and we go running down the street and open the car door. Another dog was running around without a leash at Castle Court. So my dog takes off after him and goes running up into the apartments. I'm carrying my shoes and wearing an evening gown because I was really done up early in the morning. My hair was in curls falling down my back. I run into Castle Court, chasing my dog, right into a door where a man is wearing shorts. I said, "My God, why are you letting your dog run around without a leash?!" I think the man was in shock.

One day, I was going out to my car which was parked in a lot near the studio in the Tenderloin. I was wearing sequins and lots of make-up, and it was 10:30 in the morning when I got through with my show. And this car of fellows came by, and you can imagine — they whistled and yelled, "How much, baby?!" From that time on, I always put on something else and took my make-up off before I left the studio.

There was a little grocery store that was just on the corner of Union Street by where I lived, right at the top of the hill (now Top O' the Hill Market). The nicest Italian man ran that grocery. Everyone was really friendly, and it was a really small town in terms of the vibration. I'd go in to buy my groceries, and one day, the man, who spoke with this heavy Italian accent, wanted to know if I was OK. I guess I looked like I needed to be taken care of. He would cook soup for me, and I would eat it in the back of the store where there was just a shelf for a table and some chairs. He would make all this Italian food, and say, "Eat! Eat!" That was such a lovely feeling.

To me, the city was a fairy land in every way. It was magical. I loved the fog rolling in. I loved the hills, even though I had to walk a lot, which was very hard for me because I always wore high heels, like an idiot. And everywhere we'd go, we'd get dressed up. It was really a dressy city. I liked that. Hats and gloves. High-heeled shoes.

I loved Golden Gate Park too. I loved to go walking there. I don't think it's changed, except for the better maybe. During the Summer of Love in the '60s, it was filled with people sleeping out there, and the wonderful musical events that were going on. And it was colorful. Everyone was going around, saying, "Peace, man." I wasn't as involved in it as you might think, even though I was right there in the middle of it. I'm regretful that I wasn't.

I've always been the type of person to go do it, whatever it is. I don't consider what the norm might be because I create my own norm. I didn't know San Francisco was supposed to be a closed city in terms of Society, with a big "S." And the next thing I know, I'm going to the opera. I saw my first opera at that beautiful Opera House — La Bohéme. I was carried away with it, the music and also the glamor of it. The opening night and all the fun of it. It was grand.

I dedicated my first book to San Francisco because I felt as if — and still do — San Francisco is a living, breathing entity. It's not like other cities. It lives. Look at all the things that you can do there. I remember going out on the bay with a friend in a boat. My God, I was crazy. I would tell my grandchildren and my son not to do the things I did. Going out in the bay in this little tiny boat with the waves sweeping up on either side of us, like we were in an inter tube. The bay is big and can be violent too.

I loved the fog horns at night. I would listen to them before I went to sleep, and I named them. The heavy, deep one, and the not-so-deep one. I think there were three of them that I could hear. I just loved that mysterious kind of feeling about San Francisco.

I had been diagnosed with a heart condition before I lived in San Francisco and ended up at UCSF hospital. It turned out they could operate on what I had wrong. At that time, I was the tenth person in the world to have heart surgery and live. They perfected this surgery at UCSF during the year I had it done. I was in the hospital on and off for a year before they operated on me, so I became very familiar with that part of San Francisco. Going there for the check-ups really put me in touch with the city.

That's why when I got divorced, I wanted to move there. And I did. They fixed my heart in San Francisco. They told me I probably would've died in my 20s without the surgery. I was very lucky. Now, the procedure isn't considered serious surgery. Now they don't even have to operate on you.

If you haven't already, be sure to read, Oh, The Hell of It All, and keep a lookout for Pat's forthcoming book, Peeing on Hot Coals. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter!

Tell us your stories: sfistevents@gmail.com

SFist Memoirs: San Francisco Light

Leanne Maxwell — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 14:25:36 GMT

This week's SFist Memoirs features Lt. Dwayne Newton of the San Francisco Fire Department, who's also an S.F. native and veteran photojournalist. Dwayne says he owes his passion for photojournalism to growing up in San Francisco in the '60s, from attending anti-war protests and "staring at hippies" to watching Shaft in the theater with his dad and brother at age 12 and consuming every magazine and newspaper he could get his hands on. Take it away, Dwayne!

I'm going to approach this from the perspective of how growing up in San Francisco inspired me to become a photographer. I'm a San Francisco native. I was born in 1959 in the Presidio at Letterman Army Hospital, and I'm a fraternal twin. My brother is also a firefighter in San Francisco.

My father is a naval officer, and my mother was a secretary. They met in the '50s in San Francisco. My dad was in submarines, and my mom came here around 1932 or '33. She remembers when Treasure Island was built and the World's Fair. She went to high school with some celebrities, such as Johnny Mathis. She worked in jazz clubs in the 1930s. My parents traveled all over the place, all over the world, and my mom was a get-up-and-go sort. She was a San Francisco girl. She liked to get out.

Growing up in the city in the '60s, I was keenly aware of what was going on in the world, like the Civil Rights Movement in the early '60s. I was an early reader and read the paper every day and all of the picture magazines, such as Life, Look, Ebony, and Jet, and I watched the news. There was a lot of stuff going on. As I got a older, like in the summer of '65 or '66, I thought, "This is going to be another summer of riots." I thought that was a normal occurrence because every year in the '60s, the cities blew up, like the Watts Riots, Detroit, Newark.

My dad didn't hide anything from us because he figured we'd find out anyway. He censored nothing. He'd take us to movies, and they'd say, "I don't think they should be in here." We saw Shaft in 1971 at age 12, Alice's Restaurant, The Sterile Cuckoo. These movies were considered heavy-duty in their day.

We rode all over the place on our Stingray bikes. We'd ride to the Haight — we were told not to go over there because it wasn't safe. It was full of speed freaks and runaways. We would go to all the hippie hangouts and stare at them, like at Hippie Hill. We went to Glide, and the Panthers had their food program in the basement. My dad used to bring home the Panther paper and the Berkeley Barb.

The times had a heavy influence on me. The mood, the vibe, of the city, the era, the culture for a 10, 11, 12 year-old.

The Protests

We used to live on 10th Avenue between Anza and Balboa, and the war protests would go down Geary to Speedway Meadows or the Polo Fields. We'd go down and watch the protests. They were huge marches, like 100,000 people. We'd go to hear the speeches and the music. I saw Dick Gregory when he said he wasn't going to eat until the war's over. And I thought, "How the hell is going to do that?"

There were some violent anti-war protests. I got caught in a riot down in Playland in '71. I don't know if it was an anti-war protest, but I remember seeing cops on horseback riding through crowds with these long nightsticks just clubbing the crap out of people. And tear gas. I got lost, and the cops came in cracking heads, going in and out of those underground bathrooms. They saw me and said, "Get the hell out of here!" And I was mad at my brother for leaving me.

Being there, seeing these events, like the riots at S.F. State — they closed the park and I was mad because they closed the park, People's Park, Kent State, the Martin Luther King shootings. I thought all these things were normal. It all had an effect on me.

Leaving San Francisco

We left the city in 1971 and moved to Virginia Beach, Virginia, because of the busing. I lived in the Richmond District, and I went to three different schools in three years. My dad said, "That's enough." The school system was starting to decline.

The Vietnam War

Being aware of the news, as it were, I felt like I had to be there. It didn't really gel for me to become a photographer — a photojournalist, specifically — until April of 1975.

My older brother came back from Vietnam without an arm. My father retired from the military when they tried to send him to Vietnam. He said, "There's no way. My son just came back without an arm." So he got out. He ran the electronic warfare school over on Treasure Island, so for him to say that as an officer is a pretty big deal. He said, "To hell with that." The war had a heavy effect on our household.

In April '75, I was 15, and the war was ending. They had these segments about the Vietnam War with Harry Reasoner and Walter Cronkite, and one segment was on the media, the journalists, who covered it. They showed these guys hanging out of helicopters and taking pictures, getting paid to go all over the world to take pictures, and I thought, "Wow, that's what I want to do!"

Photojournalism

Everything after that moment was geared toward becoming a photojournalist. In high school, I studied journalism. I was on the school newspaper. Then I went to photography school, Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara. As soon as I got out, I worked at the Santa Barbara News & Review. My first published news photograph was of a fire.

I was sent on clandestine environmental missions with Greenpeace, Abalone's anti-nuclear protests down at Diablo Canyon. I went to Central America in '84 and '86 — Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala. We drove down for the peace conferences in Honduras from California in '86. We got ambushed in El Salvador, which changed my whole outlook on conflict photography. I realized you can get a good image, but you can also get yourself killed.

So, I moved back to San Francisco after that and started working at Butterfield & Butterfield shooting antiques and art. It was a whole lot safer.

San Francisco Light

Anybody who grew up here and is visual enough to notice — especially out in the Avenues — there are certain times of day here where the light is very unique to San Francisco. I don't know if it's the geography here, the hills, the density of the structures, the water, the microclimates — you're just frozen by the light. It's something you don't see. I call it San Francisco light, and I like to keep my camera with me at all times to capture that light.

When Dwayne isn't fighting fires, he continues to document local, national and international current events. Check out his site at dwaynenewton.com.

Have any good Bay Area stories from before 1995? Give us a shout! sfistevents@gmail.com.

SFist Memoirs: A Baseball Love Story

Leanne Maxwell — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 10:25:45 GMT

Reader Jayn Pettingill brings us another great piece this week about her Great Aunt Maye and Maye's husband Tony Lazzeri, a major league baseball player — most notably of the New York Yankees. Both Maye and Tony were San Francisco natives who grew up in the Sunset and Cow Hollow respectively. Be sure to check out Jayn's story from last week! We hope there are many more to come.

This is a baseball story, a love story and simply a story about my great aunt, a woman I met when I was young. She told me of promenades in South Park on Sundays, "where all the young ladies went to show off their hats." She read tea leaves, had a serious talk radio habit and believed that the dearly departed were watching over us. My great aunt was born in the City in 1907 and passed away in 1994; Maye was one of the toughest ladies, and yet one of the most elegant, I have ever met. For me, she epitomized the ideal San Francisco woman.

My love of baseball came through my great aunt and my grandfather. He regularly wore the tools of ignorance for a semi-pro baseball club in San Francisco — the Golden Gate Natives. He was a red-haired Irishman seemingly born to the job of catching: short, strong armed and ready to brawl. With his red hair and fiery temperament, his nickname of "Red," probably wasn't too hard to think up. He had married my great aunt's sister and eventually introduced Maye to her future husband, a young infielder on his team named Tony Lazzeri.

Tony's skills and talent as a player went beyond the team he was on and he was soon drafted to a Pacific Coast League, the Salt Lake City Bees. By then he and Maye had met and upon his return to the City, he asked her to marry him. She was 17 and his next minor league assignment was to be in Peoria, Illinois. It was 1923 and he had no idea what his future would hold. He told my great aunt that he wouldn't play baseball anymore if she didn't marry him and go with him. That, she told me, is how she knew that he loved her.

The Irish and the Italians in San Francisco have a long history of sharing neighborhoods side by side. Sometimes things were not as friendly as one would think: in reality there was some friction. Maye explained that Tony's mother did not like her at first. She wasn't Italian to begin with and, just as importantly, she couldn't cook. It took learning how to cook from Tony's mother that earned her a degree of respect. Out on the field, Tony was having to prove himself as an Italian that could play baseball. He excelled, batting .355 and hitting 60 home runs in the Pacific Coast League. His stats provided ample evidence of his talent. He and Maye made the move east. Signing with the Yankees for a sum of $5,000 in 1926 he became the first Italian-American to play professional ball in New York.

This was on a hunting trip Tony took with Ruth back in the day — might be offensive to non-carnivores though!

Maye told me the thing she missed most about San Francisco were its sunsets and the sourdough. In the off season, they would return to the west, gathering many of the Yankee ball players at their house in the Marina. Tony would stuff as many Murderer's Row guys as he could into their new Cadillac, put it in a low gear and off they would go, trying to see how many hills they could get up, or not.

In 1946, Maye was widowed. Maye never remarried and always spoke of Tony with great love and affection. Visiting her when I was in college, she would tell me that she had seen Tony in a part of her house, telling her that he was waiting for her. She died not too long after, a long life lived in extraordinary times.

Tell us whatcha got: sfistevents@gmail.com!

Babe Ruth and Tony Lazzeri; at the end of their careers Ruth was on the Brooklyn Dodgers and Lazzeri was on the Cubs. This is a photo of them reuniting on the field during a game.

SFist Memoirs: Dinah Washington

Leanne Maxwell — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 10:50:06 GMT

This week's SFist Memoirs comes to us from reader Jayn Pettingill, who is a fourth generation San Franciscan as well as an accomplished saxophonist and composer. In this fabulous piece, Jayn introduces us to her uncle, a jazz-loving policeman in the 1950s, who worked a night beat in the Fillmore District on occasion. This is our first reader submission, which we hope will inspire more readers to drop us a line!

This story was told to me by my uncle. He was a motorcycle cop in the City during the 1950s; later, in 1967, he and his boyfriend opened up a restaurant on Castro Street: The Sausage Factory.

But this story concerns one night of his life as a cop on a beat in the Fillmore District. As I mentioned, he was usually assigned to motorcycle duty, but when he pulled the evening shift he was part of a squad car patrol that worked Fillmore Street. My uncle was a big music fan and I wonder if any of his patrol buddies shared his tastes. His favorite vocalist was Bing Crosby and to this day I have never seen a larger "Bing" collection than what was at his house. He looked forward to these shifts because it afforded him the chance to hear the music that was happening in the Fillmore clubs. At that time, the street was swelling with jazz clubs.

This particular night, the goal was to go in and check out various venues for gambling. There had been a rash of such activity and they were tasked to keep up the pressure by arriving unannounced in some of the jazz clubs. A raid if you will. But certain cops had particular friendships, and my uncle was on friendly terms with the fellow who owned this particular place.

I won't mention the name of the Fillmore Street club where they went, but it was among the more famous. As they entered, people began scattering, rushing to the back of the club or wherever they could to attain wall flower status. The two officers my uncle was with extended their search into the back of the club and into the restrooms. My uncle didn't pursue. He presided ceremonially over the proceedings and then went back to the squad car. As he waited, the two men brought out with them a woman from the club, whom they claimed was involved in a game of dice. She had fled to the restroom with her winnings and had sought refuge in a stall.

My uncle got in the back seat with the alleged gambler and took a look at her. He said to his squad car mates, "You've arrested Dinah Washington; we have to take her back."

The two cops didn't believe him. She seemed nonplussed by it all until my uncle asked her to sing "What a Difference a Day Makes." She obliged; the squad car was turned around and Miss Washington was returned to her engagement.

Everyone has a story. We'd like to hear some of yours, as long as they took place in the Bay Area before 1997. Type something up or just send us an audio recording to transcribe: sfistevents@gmail.com.

SFist Memoirs: Alternate Realities, Part II

Leanne Maxwell — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 11:35:48 GMT

This week, we continue with Eric Becker's stories from the late '80s/early '90s, in which Eric picks a fight with James Hetfield, goes against popular opinion regarding Anton of Brian Jonestown Massacre, and tells of an account in which he had syringes thrown at him on stage with his band The Big Sissy Brigade at the Cactus Club in San Jose. Plus, more!

In 1989, a speed metal band called Kreator played, and James Hetfield was there. My friend went up and asked him for an autograph, and Hetfield was really condescending and said, "Whatever, if you want one." That pissed me off because the friend he mouthed off to was just the nicest guy. He didn't have a negative bone in his body. Plus, I thought I liked to fight at that time.

I walked up to him and said, "You got a fuckin' attitude problem."

And he said, "Yeah, what are you gonna do about it?"

"I'll fix it right here, right now, Motherfucker!"

We got in each others' faces. I was really ready to throw down, and he looked like he was able to throw down but didn't want to. Then the bouncer stepped in and looked really nervous. James Hetfield was 6' 4", and I was 6' 5" and weighed 275. So it was going to be ugly if it did go down. He pulled us apart eventually, and as I was leaving, he said, "Get a life!"

And I said, "I have one. You better check yours before you lose it!" I really should've punched him in the nose.

The Western Addition:

When I first moved to San Francisco, I moved into a flat on Hayes Street at a time when the original projects were still open there, and it wasn't called Alamo Terrace, it was called "Slap a Ho Terrace" by the locals. All sorts of wacky stuff was happening all the time. Lots of gunplay, pitbull fights, and fistfights. The wackiest thing that happened was one night at 1:00 in the morning, I heard gunshots, and there was a guy running down the middle of the street. A few seconds after him was a guy running and shooting: "Pop! Pop! Pop!"

The next apartment I moved into was only a couple of blocks away, but it was a world of difference. It was much better because there were more families.

Brian Jonestown Massacre:

Everyone knows Anton from Brian Jonestown Massacre for being a total nutjob, but I actually had one of the most interesting and lucid conversations of my life with him at this church in the Mission that a bunch of bands used as a rehearsal space, including, I think, Brian Jonestown Massacre. It was always weird to me to hear all these reports of what a nutcase he was when he was really one of the more well-read people I had ever met in San Francisco. He was already familiar with people like Gurdjieff and Krishnamurti. Everybody else would just go, "Huh?" [In reference to Dig!:] Smart went crazy.

The flip side of that is I met Courtney from The Dandy Warhols around the period, too. He was totally uninteresting. He was kind of a vain, shallow dude, which makes perfect sense as to why he was successful and Anton wasn't. He could be whatever they wanted him to be.

The keyboard:

This story is one of my top three favorites. Some time around 1993, I was walking down Haight Street with some friends, and I saw this keyboard at a garage sale. In the early '90s there wasn't much of a fad for retro gear so much. People wanted the newest, best whatever. This keyboard had wood paneling on it, and I said, "What is that?! Keyboards don't come with wood paneling anymore." The guy wanted $35 for it, and like an asshole, I tried to talk him down to $30.

He said, "Dude, no, $35." I tested, and it worked just fine. It weighed like 50 pounds, and I lugged it home on the bus. I got it home, plugged it in, and it's the greatest instrument ever that anybody has ever made. They list for $500-600 normally. So how I got one for $35, I don't know. I was really lucky that day. I introduced the founding members of Loquat and loaned the keyboard to them. They wrote their first song on it. On my Juno. It's the same Juno I'm going to teach my children the basics of synthesis on.

Track Star:

Seeing a band called Track Star at Noise Pop in the early '90s was kind of a pivotal moment. They were the last great, guitar-rock trio I've ever seen until this day, and I've seen literally many of thousands of bands. I was a bouncer at the Cactus Club in San Jose for several years, which was a crash course in diplomacy. I got to see Rage Against the Machine and Nirvana before they were big.

Scary Eric in Big Sissy Brigade

The Big Sissy Brigade:

I was in a band called the Big Sissy Brigade down in San Jose from '91 to '93. It was a flash in the pan. We had this incredibly dedicated following of speed dealers. We played in a Vietnamese bar in downtown San Jose that some bookers had managed to book shows in the downstairs room for a period. There were lots of danger signs that these bookers weren't the real deal. One, they had a speed problem. Two, they had a Radio Shack mixer for the entire room, which was woefully inadequate by any measure.

The stage was geared toward showcasing Viet performers. I'm 6'5", so the spotlights were literally in my forehead and I had to do splits for the entire show. I also couldn't see anything. Normally there was a lot of jumping around on stage at our shows, but there wasn't a lot of room for that. Somebody started throwing these little sticks of something at me. I couldn't see what they were until I picked one up between songs, and it was a syringe. Thankfully they had caps on them.

Sleep:

I got to see Sleep in their home town, San Jose, in 1990 or '91, at their height before anybody knew who they were, or even before they kind of fit in. They looked like extras from the River's Edge. They were scary. They were wearing bell bottoms when nobody fucking wore bell bottoms. There was nothing fashionable about them at all. Within a year, everybody looked like them, which was pretty funny.

Cactus Club

SFist Memoirs: Alternate Realities

Leanne Maxwell — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 12:10:59 GMT

Today's SFist Memoirs is set in the late '80s hard core punk scene, as told by Eric Becker, husband of Rene Becker, last week's SFist Memoirs contributor. Eric has quite the knack for winding up in interesting, movie script-like situations, such as attending a GBH/Stevie Stiletto show and a Chinese supperclub in the same night and experiencing an altered state amidst a swarm of rollerbladers and meeting "that one girl from that one band." Luckily for us, he's a great storyteller, and we're featuring him in two parts. So, stay tuned for part two next week!

In the '80s, I was a hard core kid. I was born in Chicago and moved to San Jose when I was about 12. I spent my teenaged years in San Jose, and San Francisco seemed like a magical world. It was a real city, it was big, and it provided anonymity, opportunity, mystery, excitement, and fear. So, we used to come up here a lot.

At that point in time, I think in 1988, there were one or two places on Haight Street that sold Doc Martens. So, at least every couple of months there was a pilgrimage up here to buy somebody their boots, back when that was the de facto footwear for hard core kids and skinheads.

The first memory that stands out the most — my first wild San Francisco experience — was coming up to see GBH down on Broadway at the Stone, in 1988 or '89. I had seen GBH a couple of times, and we were all rabid fanboys. Stevie Stiletto was the opener. I think it was around Christmas and Stevie Stiletto had a fake, cardboard Christmas tree with joints and bags of powder taped to it that he held out over the audience and let people grab what they wanted. And this was an all-ages show. I remember that vividly.

After the show was over — it was a weeknight, and we all had to go to school the next day. We decide — the naive little 16- and 17-year-olds that we were — "You know what, we're gonna hang out with GBH and party with them." We waited and waited and watched the doors and waited and waited, and they never came out.

At this point, it was getting pretty late. We were about to leave when we saw a commotion in the building next door, which was a Chinese bar. A guy came sprinting out the door, hauling ass down the middle of Broadway. It was about 1:30 on a Tuesday night so the street was empty. Five seconds later, about six guys came running after him, and they were pissed and yelling in Cantonese. One of my friends had noticed that the first guy had dropped something, and it turned out it was a wallet.

When we returned it to them, they invited us into the bar for a drink. We were obviously underaged and had mohawks, earrings, and leather jackets. The bar, which later became the Crowbar, was a strictly Chinese supperclub at the time. And there was one guy on the stage playing a Casio to a room full of these Chinese couples dancing.

It was really surreal. Here we were coming out of one environment that was all drugs taped to a Christmas tree, "leather bristles, studs and acne" — a GBH slogan — and into a whole other world right across the street, of middle-aged Chinese people quietly enjoying themselves at 1:30 in the morning on a Tuesday to the one guy on stage with the Casio.

I didn't know what to order. I knew that Long Island Ice Teas are particularly strong, and the bartender laughed and filled it all with liquor and gave it one shot of Coke at the end to give it color. I couldn't feel my face on the way home.

---

I remember the Summer of Haight, when the skinheads temporarily claimed control over Haight Street, in '86 or '87. At the time there hadn't been any factionalization yet. There was an awareness about the white power aspect of it, but most of them wanted to be like Skinner from Suburbia. They all got chased out of town in pretty short order. A lot of them wound up in Portland or the countryside around it.

---

Around 1990, my friend and I wanted to come up here to experience an altered state while watching the Spike and Mike Animation Festival. So we prepared ourselves for this altered state. When we got there we discovered that the line was way too big, and we were never going to get in. While we were trying to figure out what to do with ourselves because we were entering into this altered state, 300 rollerbladers with flashing LED lights — this was at the Exploratorium — came out of one of the archways and skated by us. We said, "We can't stay here."

So we went to North Beach because there were lots of flashing lots and we could be entertained without interacting with anybody. When the altered state hit me particularly hard, I sat down on a curb. Then the door opened at the club behind me, and 15 guys in drag filed out. It was weird because they all had a very uniform look like their ensembles were coordinated. And I was mesmerized. Then out came 7 or 8 girls dressed like steampunk motorcycle messengers in top hats, goggles, and leather waistcoats, and I was completely bowled over by this. "Wow, they're dressing the same as each other," I thought.

One of the women came and sat down next to me, and asked, "How ya doing?"

And I said, "I'm doing pretty good actually. I'm alright. How are you?"

She said, "I'm great. It's my birthday. We're having a good time."

I'm having this conversation with her while impaired, but I notice after about three minutes that there's this hint of recognition sinking in. I say, "Hey, you're that one girl in that one band." And it was Linda Perry from 4 Non Blondes.

And she said, "Yep, that's me." Then they all jumped into a cab, and she said, "Have a great night tonight!"

---

Stayed tuned for more of Eric's memoirs next week, as we see what he was up to in the '90s!

Everyone has a story. If you've lived in the Bay Area 15+ years, tell us about it: sfistevents@gmail.com!

GBH, Credit: Ian Harper

SFist Memoirs: Alive In Albany

Leanne Maxwell — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 11:50:52 GMT

This week's SFist Memoirs takes us to the East Bay in the early 1990s, as contributor Rene Becker shares some coming-of-age stories from her time spent as a teenager throwing spaghetti at Blatz at the 924 Gilman, smoking weed on Telegraph Avenue, and most importantly, giving Mr. Bungle's Mike Patton a piggy-back ride on stage. Rene moved to Albany from Sacramento at age twelve and lives in San Francisco now. Take it away, Rene!

Mr. Bungle:

We went to this Mr. Bungle concert at the Warfield in '92 or '93, and everyone we knew was there. I see these three girls stage-diving, and I was like, "They are stage-diving at a Mr. Bungle concert? I will not be one-upped!" I was taking it personally for some reason, and I was like, "I gotta do it. I gotta get on the stage."

Somehow — I don't know how, it feels like a dream — I got up on stage and was getting ready to jump. Then all of a sudden Mike Patton comes swinging at me while hanging on the curtains, lands on my shoulders, and I'm thinking, "This is not happening." I was really embarrassed and super shocked.

He somehow gets off me, and I looked around and thought, "Alright, time to do what I came here to do." I jumped off and was standing there afterwards, thinking, "Did that just really happen or did I dream it?"

924 Gilman:

My friends and I hung out at the Gilman every weekend in high school. We did some crazy stuff there.

Our favorite bands always played there, like NOFX or Blatz, and when Blatz played, we would all go over to my house and bag up the leftovers that needed to go, like old spaghetti or something. I don't know why, but at Blatz, you just threw stuff at the band, and that's what we'd throw at them. Or we'd bring squirt guns, Chinese firecrackers, bouncy balls. Whenever Blatz was playing, I'd say, "Oh, time to go clean out my mom's refrigerator." And my mom would say, "Thanks, Guys!"

I loved being part of the scene and getting to know everyone in it, hanging out at the club and in the mosh pits, getting all our energy out and letting it go completely.

Albany:

Some friends of mine moved to Albany from Nevada at a time when no one dressed like punk-rockers, except a few who were more like gutter punks. You didn't see people with pink hair like you do today, and then these kids from Nevada showed up with this crazy hair and were all punk rock, and their parents listened to Morrissey and The Smiths. Their parents would drink with us, and their dad would give us joints sometimes.

I just felt alive when I met them. There weren't very many people at my school who were interested in the same things as me. It was more of a hip-hop scene. People were listening to Digital Underground and New Kids on the Block and dressing a little more preppy and clean-cut. It was boring in a safe and close-knit way.

These new kids were just so alive. They were considered freaks at the time but would be completely normal now. Mundane now almost.

Albany was a really good place to grow up. I'm glad I grew up in Albany. You'd get these characters there, which was kind of neat about the time. Dario, the old guy who'd right his bike around and get drunk sometimes, one of the 12-year-old kids with a purple mohawk who was kind of a loner, the old lady with a bun who drove an orange hot-rod Mustang...

Telegraph Avenue:

We'd take the 52 bus from Albany up to Telegraph, which is where everybody hung out. There were a bunch of different spots for people to hang out. I don't think I ever paid for weed when I was hanging out on Telegraph as a kid.

The first time I smoked weed was under Sather Gate on the U.C. Berkeley campus. We'd go up there and wander around, meet people and hang out with older guys. We'd hang out at Kip's, which was a bar that would serve us. Or we'd go to this store, Le Petit and pick up some beers. I remember smoking in front of Rasputins, which used to be a Levi's, and the cops came by and didn't do anything. We were little kids.

KOFY Dance Party:

We all went on KOFY Dance Party a lot. Everybody would go and buy outfits from Goodwill to wear on the show, and they'd end up with holes in their clothes halfway through the show. So a lot of times people would be wearing trenchcoats during the second half.

Moving to Albany from Sacramento:

It was the first time that I stopped feeling shy. There was so much going on. In Sacramento, you hop on your bike and ride around all day or play in your backyard. In the Bay Area, education is embraced and there are so many events going on. There are different expectations. You're expected to be morally responsible, creative, and to care about your community.

Moving to Albany felt like home right away. Even though I was weirdo, everybody was kind of a weirdo. I didn't fit in, but that was cool. Then these kids moved in from Nevada and I found my home with some people that even though I wasn't like them, it was right.

SFist Memoirs: Paid To Party

Leanne Maxwell — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:05:40 GMT

This week's installment of SFist Memoirs comes from Jim Doeppers, the uncle of this contributor. In 1973, Jim drove his hippie van from the Midwest to San Francisco at the tender age of 23 and instantly immersed himself in the counter culture of the time, where he remained for the next twenty years. From growing his own crops in Humboldt County and being Jerry Garcia's friend and drug connection to working the houseboat docks in Sausalito, and then ultimately ending up in rehab, Jim has experienced the party lifestyle inside and out. Let's start from the very beginning, shall we?

Jim's first California experiences:

The first night I stayed in California was in the White Panther compound in the Panhandle. The police raided it that night. That was my first exposure to San Francisco. The next day I moved to Marin.
The first time I did LSD in California, I was at a Grateful Dead concert at Golden Gate Park, and a guy who was running from the cops handed me a sheet of blotter paper. I had done acid in college, but it was nothing like that. Just by holding it, it started going through my fingers. It was very strong. By the time I swallowed some, I probably already had a couple doses going through my fingers. I passed it around to all my friends. That was one crazy episode.

Humboldt County:

We used to stand on top of our marijuana patch and watch the helicopters across the way on the next mountain pull those big cargo nets of marijuana up, and they would burn all of it in the state park on the freeway. All the people would come and stand downwind, and they didn't know what to do about since it was state land. There would be a thousand stoned-out people on Saturday. They'd burn it on a Saturday morning, and everyone would come and have a big, old party. That's the way it worked up there.
I was a personal friend of Jerry Garcia. I used to fly to Colorado to visit friends, and I would bring his "supplies." He'd call me and say he was doing a concert in the Red Rocks, and I'd bring him an ounce of coke and some marijuana.

Sausalito houseboats:

I worked for ten years as the manager of a houseboat marina in Sausalito with the multimillion dollar houseboats that have helicopter pads on top. Lots of rock and roll and bohemian types lived there. Sterling Hayden, Stewart Brand, Carolyn Garcia, and Grace Slick. Jack Lalanne also lived there, and he'd invite you out and give you carrot juice. Sterling Hayden would give you a joint and then start cutting you lines of cocaine and telling you stories about the high seas.
I was there to settle disputes and make sure all the houseboat owners were happy, so I got to know all of those people pretty well. I could barely get past a houseboat without getting invited in, since most of them were home all the time. My day was pretty much trying to get from one houseboat to the next. I was getting invited onboard for a drink and a smoke of marijuana, and then I'd be doing lines in the afternoon. It's all because they wanted me to do something for them. They either wanted the company because they were lonely or they wanted me to put them on the list to get a new pile for their boat, and I was happy to accommodate them. I was their friend.

Rehab:

All that led me finally to having to get into recovery. That lifestyle eventually got to the point that I was getting high every day with everybody on every boat. For ten years. And finally I had to quit that job and get in recovery. I was a mess.

After getting clean and sober, Jim worked at a recovery treatment center in Marin for ten years, and he now runs two sober living homes in Mill Valley.

Got some stories you want to tell? Email us at sfistevents@gmail.com!

SFist Memoirs: The Gentleman Chefs Club

Leanne Maxwell — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:45:48 GMT

SFist is beginning a new series in which Bay Area natives and long-time residents can share their stories from bygone eras. Our inaugural story comes from Bev DeBeaumont Warnecke, who worked at Baruh Wholesale Liquors in the late '50s, a job that gained her a unique view into the social lives of elite Bay Area business owners. Take it away, Bev! Warning: The last photo in the gallery is not suitable for work (NSFW).

by Bev DeBeaumont Warnecke

The “Gentleman Chefs” Club (Gent Chefs) was a social club started in the late 50's by a group of prominent businessmen from Oakland, including Bozo Miller (Baruh Wholesale Liquors), George Royal (Alpha/Juilliard Wholesale Liquors), Al Ghirardelli (President Bank of America and then founder of First National Bank of Oakland), Bill Fiset (Oakland Tribune columnist), Al Puccini (Sea Wolf Restaurant), Mitch Hoffman (Mitch’s Restaurant), Bob Mortensen (Mortenson Carpets), Charlie Sargent and Irene Sargent (East Bay couturier), to name a few.

The group met once a month for lunch in the banquet room at a selected restaurant in the Oakland/Bay Area. The owner of each host restaurant became an honorary Gentleman Chef. Most restaurant owners went on to become active members of the Gentleman Chefs Club. Guest dignitaries who attended the luncheon meetings, such as Jimmy Durante, became Honorary Gentleman Chefs. All the elected officers of the Gent Chefs were given titles such as “Chief Potato Peeler," "Chief Salad Dresser," "Chief Salt Shaker," "Chief Meet Carver,"...you get the picture.

The purpose of the Gentlemen Chefs Club was to have “fun”. At the monthly meetings events were scheduled for the coming months and included jaunts to Las Vegas, Reno, California Race Tracks (all for Chefs and male guests only) and Dinner/Dances (for Gent Chefs and their spouses and guests). One of the most fun events scheduled was the annual Miss Barbary Coast contest. Tickets were sold to the event and cash awards was given to the winners, the largest award going to *Miss Barbary Coast”.

Outside guests were sometimes invited to the Gent Chefs monthly meetings and since I worked for Baruh Wholesale Liquors, I was a guest at a meeting where the Chefs gave me a “Baby Shower” when we adopted our first baby. I was also a guest for my birthday one year. My sister Carolyn Berkowitz, who worked for
Alpha/Julliard Wholesale Liquors at the time, was given a “Wedding Shower” and a also Birthday Party at a monthly meeting. At the meetings I attended as a guest, the Chefs would put on Mickey Mouse hats and sing the full Mickey Mouse Club anthem, which was hilarious!!

All of the Chefs were known for their outrageous pranks. One that comes to mind was a weekend jaunt they made to Las Vegas. During their stay in Las Vegas, they attended the floor shows and had their pictures taken, some pretty risque with the showgirls sitting on their laps. Unknown to the Chefs, Bozo Miller had matchbook covers made with the photos on front and handed them to their wives when they returned home. I have no idea when or how the Club disbanded.

Got some stories you want to tell? Email us at sfistevents@gmail.com!

It Not Me, It's You: Post Your Breakup Stories

Brock Keeling — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:47:41 GMT

Before we post a few festive Valentine's Day events -- you know, fun ones with other lonely single folks; parties that will, hopefully, keep you from taking the final Nestea plunge over the Golden Gate Bridge -- let's commiserate on those who have broken our hearts. For Friday fun, share with us in the comments the most bizarre and/or depressing way in which somebody broke your heart. Or, if you must, how you viciously broke someone else's. And why. Did you do it via text? Did you fire her just so she would breakup with you? Did the crazy bitch slice open an artery in your bathroom? Did you lie and say you were gay?

We've all been there before, having our egos shattered to shards. So please take a minute to vomit up your inner most moments of anguish in our comments.

We'll start. Ahem:

Over the phone he said,"This is going to sound mean, but redheads really gross me out. Your hair sketches me out big time. Sorry."

Now it's your turn.