 The panel we have for you today is a distinguished one. V. Vail was the publisher of Search and Destroy magazine, probably the most influential dean in the San Francisco punk. He then later was the publisher of Research and which had really evolved into a publishing house. Dean Mickey Creep Samson, who's with us today, was the publisher of Creep magazine. And Verna Wilson and Linda Walker originally started out with South Bay Ripper, which later became Ripper magazine and served the entire Bay Area. And me, as Pellet Nellope said, I did a few things, but amongst them, I wrote for the first fanzine on the West Coast, in my opinion, which was Slash, fanzine for the blank generation, which I will tell you to this day, Slash magazine of Los Angeles stole its name from. I also wrote for Starting Fires, which was published by Debbie Dubb, who's with us today. I wrote for New Zeezes, which was published by Jean Caffeine. I also wrote for Max, I had a column in Maximum Rock and Roll for a while called AK-47, Know Your Weapon. And I wrote for another room via NART magazine, which was a one issue zine, in which I wrote an article called Punk Is a Tomato Smashed Against the Wall. But zines in general in the punk scene were crucially important. And I think those of us who were around in the day know that they, before I ever saw a punk band in Los Angeles, for example, I was already writing for a fanzine there. In 1976, when I was in UC Berkeley, I did get to see the Modern Lovers and I saw Patty Smith, but most of the year I spent with my nose in NME and melody maker reading about English punk and I got a subscription to Punk Magazine out in New York. So, my personality as a punk was already being shaped by the printed media. And I think especially for those in the far flung parts of the land where a burgeoning scene was not in their midst, the zine was crucially important, but in those developed centers, those few that we had back in the day, the zines were also crucial in terms of providing not just reports about the bands, because really that's not what they were about, that's not what they evolved to be at all. Starting fires had lessons on creating incendiaries right on its front cover. So we went well beyond covering the bands and there was philosophy, there was art, there was social critique and amongst other things, there was always a list of other zines. Never saw a Punk Magazine that didn't have that feature. And New York was heavily influenced and sort of given a sense of entity, a sense of unity by Punk Magazine and Legs McNeil, its publisher was the key figure there. London equally influenced I would think by sniffing glue and sniffing glue is my kind of a zine, it's got bad hand laddering on the cover, it's Xerox, it wasn't one styded as I recall, it might have been though. But sniffing glue was put out by Mark Perry, went on to form Alternative Television, who did this song that I think only a Punk band could have recorded, which is My Love Lies Limb. I don't think anyone else would have had the courage to do that song except a Punk band. But anyway, sniffing glue was a very vital importance to the development of the London scene. Likewise in Los Angeles, we had Slash Magazine, which I mentioned as being the thieves of their name. That was put out by Steve Samyoff and Kick Boy Face, Claude Bessie, who was quite a character and much missed. Up in Seattle, they had Snot Rag. It seems to me that the further northwest you go, the more junior high school the sensibilities get, by the time you get into Vancouver, you got things like Joey Shithead. It's kind of a progressive thing that happens. But again, very important, Portland also coalesced around their zine. Down in Austin, Texas, they had Sluggo, very influential. In Boston, and I preserve this one mostly, not for its tremendous influential power, but for its unique nature, they had Miscarriage, which as you can see was a single sheet upon which virtually every space of white was used. And I thought I think that this is one of the more fascinating punk scenes to come out of the era. Harlow and Essex had 48 thrills, sort of the sniffing glue of Essex. Glasgow had ripped and torn, and ripped and torn, by the way, published a top 10 list, which is the only time that the Dills made the top 10. Out of Glasgow, they loved, I hate the rich, and I can well appreciate those sentiments. And here in San Francisco, where we are also literate and cultural, we had quite a collection. In addition to Search and Destroy, we had new diseases. I mentioned that Gene Caffeine brought out, we had Maximum Rock and Roll, which still publishes to this day. Punk Globe, also still publishing to this day, by Ginger Coyote. Brad Lappin brought out Damage Magazine. Mickey contributed Creep. The Wilson Sisters gave us Ripper, and John Gulak, or Gulak of the Mutants, was responsible for another room with some other folks. They were an amazing influence, I think, on our culture, especially when we look back to Search and Destroy. I think about they're delving into situationalism and into surrealism and dada, and they got us thinking, they got the gray cells working. And Punk was always more than the bands. We all know that if we were from back in the day. There was a tremendous diversity. It was an absolute cultural explosion that touched so many places. It touched on film, it touched on photography, graphic arts, music, politics, social organization. It was really a total package, a cultural revolution that occurred in our society. And the zines documented, and they also cross-pollinated and helped to create a dialogue that fueled all of this process. So I could talk forever, because I just can, but I'm going to move to our distinguished panel now. After one quick additional endorsement, if you will, for Penelope and Michael's call for you to contribute. I would like to just emphasize what Michael and Penelope have already said. If you have stuff, this would be a wonderful repository for it. We can't lose these things. What we did back in the day was too important to be lost. It may meet with the derision of historians. It may be dismissed by many, and it's so often misreported by young music critics these days, but it was a crucially important social development that can't be allowed to be lost. So if you have things taking up space, stored in your basement, in your attic, this is the place where they belong. They'll be protected here, and they'll be preserved, and people will know what we accomplished. So without further ado, I want to turn to Viveil and ask you to tell us a little bit about your life prior to publishing the zine, and then tell us also what your primary motivation was when you decided to launch Search and Destroy. Thanks for that question, Peter, which I see you pre-formulated. Punks were supposed to be spontaneous. We weren't supposed to be so pre-planned. We're supposed to, and I think we're also animals, and we're also rebellious animals. I think we should be called homo-rebellicus rather than homo-sapiens, and you can't understand something about punk without understanding the context before. It's totally essential to keep going back in time, and I think there was, worldwide, there was a huge rebellion, and rebellion is an emotion. It is a drive, and it's very precious, and you have to be around other rebellious people to keep it alive and expose yourself to other rebellious thoughts all the time. It's a continuum, rebellion never ends. We're all verbs, not nouns, and we're all work in progress, and we never, if you start being complacent, that's the end of you. And so it's not like the hippies were just purely something to be reviled because I think we have better non-corporate food because of them, but I'm not sure if there's any other contribution that's as major as that. But the point is that everything was corporatized, and you start having these stupid guitar superstars, and you start having these huge woodstock kind of festivals in which you felt like a peon and nothing, and there had to be a grassroots rebellion all over the world, not just San Francisco. It was a spirit, it was anger that fueled, it was this complete cultural rebellion, it wasn't just music. Music is very important to bring people together, it's like the most powerful emotional magnet we have socially. However, there is the role of thinking and staying up all night talking and making fun of everything in society that you think sucks. And that was a very important component probably of all undergrounds is staying up all night talking and just blasting the politics, blasting the sexism, blasting the anti-gayism in the world because remember we're in a bubble, San Francisco has been the gay bay forever since the 40s. And we have had, when I first came here, so long ago before all of you were born, my uncle brought me here, first thing he did was take me to a lesbian bar. And it was in North Beach, just a block or two from where I have lived the last 40 years. And so I think it's no accident that so many earliest punk bands had women in the forefront, not just boy bands, this stupid Ramones idea that seems to have ruled people's cliched apprehensions of punk, but we had a lot of women singers and we had gay singers, the nuns, members Richie Dietrich, R.I.P., anyone remember them? Anyway, Penelope who's amazingly youthfully alive. And you know, those who've been forgotten, DD of UXA, I'm talking about the earliest punk rock and I'm also talking about the fact that as Peter said yesterday, I don't know how long it took to build up just 50 hardcore so-called punk rockers a while. And I pegged two years for 200 because you had a lot of weekenders and you had people who just didn't really get it and because if you got it, you would start a band, you would do a zine, you would do posters, you would make amazing clothes because you could get clothes for nothing in thrift stores that I'm talking about designer dresses for a quarter because no one knew what they were and you could rip and tear them and slow them and safety pin them and anyway, it was a lot of fun and the one thing that I wish I had done was have one of my friend photographers take pictures of the entire audience every night because like Peter here, somebody said it wasn't just the stars. The whole movement was super important. It was like a big extended family and there are a lot of creative people who they just, I don't know, sadly they're not even recorded in our zines, a lot of them, very sad. I mean, people that are under-recorded for me in terms of mental stimulation was like Michael Kowalski. I mean, he was kind of a genius who looked a little, reminded me of Marlon Brandor or somebody but he always was provoking you. He was like, he already knew so much. He knew, when punk started, he knew a lot about reggae for example and other people knew about German synth music and punk was way, way, way more complex than all these corporate media books tell you. So don't, that's why, to bring this around, that's why you had to look at zines and they were hard to get, you had to send away for them. That took energy, that took curiosity, that took drive and you had to start writing these people. You know, good old fashioned letters, postage and knowing that he might have traveled and that's kind of sad or I would have been in New York in 75. But anyway, it's just like, I still think the punk spirit continues. I don't think anything has better has come along because it's three DNA principles for me. It's black humor, i.e. you make fun of the status quo all the time, you make fun of the politicians, you make fun of authority all the time, every hourly. You also try and, but you try and do it in a humorous way because you gotta have fun. I mean, it's really important to deploy humor as your primary weapon. And then, I put DIY and anyone can do it which is not quite the same as DIY. I put that second, not first. Everyone else puts DIY first, but fuck, pardon me. That led to Silicon Valley startup culture, or anti-culture, there's no culture in Silicon Valley culture. It's just pure greed and money making and a weird kind of worship of this zeros and ones digital language, coding and all that stuff that I think isn't even human, but I'm prejudiced. Anyway, I still think it's very important to get together in person like this group and not just stay online all the time. Glue to your iPhone. So you noticed how Vail avoided talking about blue cheer the entire time? Well, he actually hit on the point that I really hoped you would which was your three elements of what defines punk. So I'm gonna let you off the hook for that bit but I am gonna hit Mickey up for it. Mickey, you wanna tackle what were you doing before publishing Creep and why did you decide to do Creep? I was a young adult child of psychoanalysts, so yeah. So I read a lot and was high-verbal and was board stiff and drank a lot. And then I was last, I was 21 and 77, 20 months to that year and punk rock changed saved my life. And like a lot of people, I mean, I grew up and I'm hearing what I'm gonna loosely call rock and roll and I mean that term broadly and I liked some stuff and didn't like others. And I liked, you know, I grew up in East Bay and it was a rebellious time and I was sort of naturally rebellious and I liked and felt, I thought then, I mean I remember reading articles questioning is Mick Jagger a revolutionary or not? And you know, this is in the 60s, Street Fighting Man had come out, that sounds really silly now, but in fact, if I were older, it might've been silly then but I wasn't and it didn't, it simply meant a lot. But by the mid-70s, a lot of you probably remember rock and roll was like corporate, it was boring and it was meaningless. It was not gonna inspire revolution, rebellion. It wasn't gonna inspire poor manners for Christ's sake. It was like, it was dead and it was like, I don't know if the world does have an us and a them, the people that were on the stage were part of the them if you know what I mean. And they were like tiny little gods on a distant stage and whatever that was, it wasn't something I was a part of and then punk rock happened and I started going to the city a lot from the East Bay and going to Mabuhay and other clubs, seeing the bands and the audience and gradually transition from my people being high school friends drinking buddies to my friends being people I knew from the shows were also drinking and drug buddies. And there was a feeling that everyone there did something. I mean, you'd see the band and they'd be on the stage but they wouldn't like, I don't know, go fly off in a helicopter after they're set or something. They'd be there and watch the other bands and a lot of people that were in the audience either were in other bands or were contributing in some way to another fanzine or something like that. And I was looking for what to do and being in a band never struck me as within my skill set until a few years ago and searching to try and stop publishing and so Creep seemed rather obvious. Creep wasn't just me, and maybe 50 people of whom I didn't give an issue, 30 of them were active and but somehow I'm the one who got all the credit and... Because you're making Creep, that's right. Yeah, that's right. How you funded it. Well, I helped fund it. But it wouldn't have been possible without the others and I wanna say part of what was cool about it was like we could do it and there were no computers, now it would be easy. But then we did all that on an IBM Selector, rented and then we stopped paying the rent on it and just kept it. But none of us that had anything to do with the magazine had any training whatsoever in journalism, in music, in any of the other things that would justify thinking, oh yeah, they should start a magazine. They should, I don't know, go all time Newsweek or Rolling Stone in the world or something or Berkeley Barba in the world even, Berkeley Tribe, whatever. But it didn't strike us that we couldn't, we made a lot of mistakes and can't defend every word we wrote but we did some good stuff. What meant a lot to me was people would get a hold of me and depending on my state of intoxication when they asked, hey, I wanna help you with the magazine, either they'd become my new best friend and work with us for a while or I'd say, oh yeah, like can you call me later and I'd blow them off, not because of them being more or less valuable but because I was erratic at the time. But a lot of people came like that and wound up being major contributors to the magazine and one guy in particular, his story is meaningful. He showed up and said, I have a car and I can copy stuff, I can cut and paste, just don't ask me to do anything creative. And I made it my personal goal to get him to either write a story, design a page or do something like that. He did write a story and I forget if it was in number four or number five. And I felt really proud of that because the idea that there exists a people called artists who are not all of us or that there exists a people whose story is worth telling that is not all of us or that there exists a people who should be the ones who get to do magazines or get to do bands or get to write our history or whatever. The idea that that's something that requires specialists and special knowledge is kind of bullshit. And I think we reclaimed, tried to reclaim. I mean, we collectively not just create, we tried to reclaim the, you can do this. I mean, why do you start a magazine? You start a magazine because when you go to, there used to be these things called bookstores I don't wanna remember, but you'd go there and they'd have like a billion magazines and you'd look at the magazines and you'd ask yourself, what is it I wanna read in a magazine that's not there, right? And then you'd write that which wasn't there. We were political. We cared about, these things sound silly now but the direction of the scene. There were all these schisms then, political punks versus non-political punks or whatever. And I guess they seem important now. I mean, I think I was always on the side of those who wanted to blush it up instead of those who wanted to have hit singles and probably hasn't changed a whole lot. And what we did, most of you included what we did. I love Mike, but it is bizarre that we are an object of historical discussion, right? We did this little temporary zins that we thought would be, I don't know, entertaining and formatting and amusing to a few of our friends and that might just maybe in some useful ways help some people make connections between Band A and Band B that they hadn't made or Band A and the nature of class oppression society that they hadn't made or something like that. We were ambitious, but the idea that what we, I mean, on one hand, we thought big, right? We were gonna change the world. The revolution was coming within a year or two, no doubt. And we were gonna be on the front lines playing punk songs or something, for real. I believe that then. And I think my sense of timing was a tad off. But I do wanna say we existed then to fight the monster, the corporatization of life, not just rock and roll. Rock and roll by itself is like entertaining diversion. It's amusing or whatever, but the corporatization of life, the birth, school, work, death cycle that we're kind of trapped in. We were fighting against that monster then and sadly, the monster's gone stronger and they also had anger and I think that's it, but revenge too, I mean. I think revenge against a world where the Vietnam War ends, Nixon gets impeached and the same people are still in charge of every aspect of our life and they are now too and they're better at it and they're more subtle and we get these exciting diversions like the Super Bowl or the Republican debates, which I view as, no, I view them as similar in a way, they're distractions, you know. And I'm pretty sure that come November of 2016 Goldman Sachs is gonna do okay and yeah, I'll probably vote for Bernie too, although I don't believe that change comes from the top down, but no, he doesn't, but why then is he running for the top job instead of organizing from the bottom up, but. But we do digress. Yeah, we do digress just a wee. Anyway, the monster's still there, it's still big, the anger's still there for me and I hope from us to you and if I can leave you with anything, you can fight the monster, you can do a zen, start a band, you can change the world, we can build a better world and if we can, we have an obligation to do it. Thank you. You know, I am coming back to you later, Mickey, so don't, don't, don't wrap everything you want. Damn, that was so funny. I knew, I knew it was, I knew it was. You know, Mickey said that it's kind of absurd that we're something to study for history today, but you know, it's not so strange, we are because we lost whenever you lose, then your archives are interesting to go through. Wait a minute. At the time, at the time we were fighting to win, so you don't think about the permanence of anything, you know, it's only there for the moment, it only matters for that moment because you're transforming the world. It's only later on when the world isn't sufficiently transformed that then people have to come back and rediscover it. It's an observation, but I would need to go down to the south end of the table here and talk to the Wilson sisters. Could you tell us, you don't need to see on topic, no one else did, but nonetheless, tell us a little bit about what you were doing and why you decided to launch your zine. Well, I'm going to start. I don't know how I can talk these two guys here really seriously. I'm going to start with me because I'm the one who got my sister into pump walk and as growing up, I've always been a rock and roller since I was a little kid. And in the 70s, the only people that saved my life was Mark Bowlin and David Bowie, you know, more of the rebellious. Glam. You know, the sweet and the, more of they called them glam bands at the day, but I love them because they were so different and they dressed different and they were kind of rebellious and they had a lot of good shit to save, right? But my poor mom had a really hard time with me. I was a very rebellious child and I got more rebellious because I was clashing with my mother constantly and I wind up leaving my house right when I turned 18. I said, can't live with you mom, bye. And went to Hollywood with this girl who was a groupie and lived with her. And the only problem is between her and me is just, she liked the fucking Beach Boys and Fleetwood Mac. Couldn't sleep at night. I swear to God, this girl had a record player, we had a record player. She would play, what is that Fleetwood Mac, that stupid album? Rumors. Rumors. No, it's not a bad album. It's a good album, but if you had to hear it, over and over and over. We all did. Every single fucking night, so I tried to sneak and get away. Okay, so I had a friend who was a pimp out of mine in England and she told me, say, there's a fucking great punk band. I said, what's a punk band? She said, call the Sex Pistols. And she said, they're coming out with a single called God's Save the Queen. And I thought, hmm, God's Save the Queen, okay, all right. So she sensed me when she stood in line in England and London, got the record and she sent it to me. I played it. Oh my God, my life completely, another change, you know, then the Sex Pistols changed my life and then after I started discovering more music, then I got into the Ramones. And I love the Ramones. And I started listening to other, mostly a lot of English punk bands. I'm really into English punk. And after that, that was fun because my poor roommate, middle of the night, switching, God's Save the Queen, and she's like, ah, you know, and everything. So after that, the Whiskey of Go-Go started putting other bands like The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. I went to go and see them. And I saw Elvis Costello for the first time and really, really unknown. I mean, these guys weren't even known yet. And I decided that I really, really hated Hollywood and I really hated Southern California. I wanted to come back home. So took off, told everyone to make goodbye and went back to San Jose where I lived pretty much my life. I was born here in San Francisco, but grew up in San Jose. And it was funny, I came back to my mom's house and so we got along for a while and I went to college. I was studying art and everything. And then I started coming to San Francisco because I heard about the scene in San Francisco. And this was around late summer, early autumn, and this is when I went to go and see, you know, like the Avengers, crime, the mutants. Every time I walk in, the mutants were always pulling me. And yeah, every time I walk in, it's just there's Sally mutant and doing her little thing. And psychotic pineapple and all those great bands. And I really got into it. So I was telling Berna, you know, to come with me. Now at the time, 77, I was 18. I was getting ready when I couldn't see the man. So I was getting ready to turn 19 and Berna couldn't get into the clubs or anything. I started dragging Berna and Ron Greco from crime. I got to be really friendly with him. And he used to sit by the doorway all the time. And I started talking to him. So I used to take Berna's. So somehow, some way, we got in to the club, you know, without chicken IDs. And go and see great bands. And then after a while, we started hanging out in coffee shops around San Jose, around Campbell area. And we start meeting other kids from the suburbs who were really into punk rock music. And that's how we met Sid Tarrif from the Undead before he was the Undead. And Raymond, you know, Raymond. And we all used to get together. And Tim Tanuka, he is one of our co-founders. I wish he was here with us, but he's not here with us. And we all sat around the cafe and talk about punk music and what we learned and everything. And talking about the Reagan era and how we're all gonna die and get nuked. And you know, how everything sucked and society sucked and everything. You know, we just had this really, it was great just to be around these people that had so much in common with me, you know. And so we decided, so we kind of one day, we were just sitting around and I turned to Tim and Bernard and I was like, you know, why do we start a magazine? You know, I mean, there's a lot of good bands that are starting to come out here in the suburbs. Maybe we can try to get the community together and have some of the San Francisco bands, you know, to come over here and play. And Tim said, yeah, you know, this sounds like a pretty good idea, you know, and everything. So we decided to pick out a venue and we picked out the Rose and Thistle. It was a pub place where we can have beer and chips and stuff by then I was getting ready to turn 21. Was I 21 yet? 20. 20? Okay, I was drinking beer, you know, I got away with it. Anyhow, so we had every Thursday night, we all got together. We somehow we got the word out to a lot of other kids who were into, we put bulletin boards, you know, about the magazine, you know, that we're designed to do a magazine. And we sat around and these kids were pretty much studying graphic arts and, you know, photography, painting, whatever, whoever was created, musicians, you know, we all sat around the table and we started our first magazine. And we were really excited about that. And that started our journey, you know, to bringing our magazine to be closer, to create a punk rock community for kids who really had a lot to say, not just like these guys say, not just with music, but politics and the way we were feeling and, you know, just the rebellious side of what we love doing, you know, to start a revolution. That's what we wanted to do, you know. And I'm thinking I'm gonna let Werna talk for a minute. One of the things that made us different than a lot of the bands, a lot of the magazines that were coming out at the time was that we were stuck in the suburbs and we were stuck in a community where punk rock wasn't being very supported. It was mainly hair bands that were being supported and a lot of these punk groups would be playing in small scattered clubs throughout the South Bay and the East Bay and they weren't being covered by a lot of the press or by the radio and we would get together and we would talk about them and we would say, we wish we could see more of such and such group, we wish we could see more of such and such group and we realized that we would actually make phone calls to some of the club owners and say, can so and so play? Oh, I don't know about them, you know, and then every time they would play, these bunch of kids from the suburbs would try to start fights with everybody, the club owners didn't want that so so it was very hard to convince them to get these groups to play. So we were very disillusioned all of us and out of being disillusioned, we decided to start our own scene and that's when the ideal of a magazine came about. We said, well, why don't we write articles ourselves? Why don't we take pictures ourselves? And Tim had a little bit of experience working for Craw Daddy. So Tim said, well, why don't I just bring some of my experience and show you girls and show you what we can do and we'll just sort of lead it from there. So Linda was into graphics, she was majoring in art, I was majoring in literature and I was also doing writing on the side so I thought, well, this gives me a chance to really get a chance to capture some of these groups and not just San Francisco, San Francisco had a lot of wonderful groups out and we were going to see them but some of the groups in the South Bay and the East Bay that really weren't getting a lot of attention. So out of the disillusion from not getting enough of what we like to see or what we like to read, we just decided that we were gonna do this ourselves and we thought it would be fun because it would form a community and artists and photographers could contribute some of their, contribute what they were doing and they would show us their work and we realized that it was more than just the groups, it was a whole scene coming together and we were really excited that we were covering the local kids and the audience and the photographers and even some of the clubs and the club owners, we were covering some, we did some articles on them and we were giving everybody a chance to speak, it was giving everybody a voice because in the suburbs, we were taking a risk every single day doing this. The way we were dressed, the way we looked, people would throw things at us, they would try to beat us up. Bottles, we were, the girls were called Blondie, the guys were called Devo, they never knew any, but they never knew any other groups. My favorite was the cars. Yeah, oh yeah, these cars suck, yeah. They used to call us the cars. So we were stuck in a place where, we were living in a place where it wasn't, the punk culture was not being embraced and I imagine in San Francisco, they probably had the same issues, but suburbs. We wasn't too safe here either. Right, I imagine they had the same issues, but in the suburbs, it was getting really horrible. I mean, we would be walking out the street and a bunch of idiots in a car would stop and they would say, hey, punk rockers, you bunch of idiots and they took no, they had no scruples and throwing things at us and interrupting the shows. We just had to fuck you back to them. We just had to fuck you back and we threw things back at them. Yeah, I mean. But I mean, the shows would get interrupted, fights would erupt, like I said, and the groups would have to stop playing and it was, and because, and then after a while it started easing up after the first and second issues started coming out and we were distributing, we were getting our distribution list coming, it was getting larger. People started picking up the magazine, including club owners around the area and they would call us up or send us a letter and say, hey, let's have these groups play. Yeah, I mean, pretty much, I mean, we hit the clubs, like Tim used to have the tape recorder, used to go backstage and he would just talk to these guys and get all these interviews and he had a lot of the interviews and everything. So we decided that what interviews was gonna be on what issue of the magazine and stuff and he'll have pictures ready and stuff. I've learned so much from this guy. I have learned incredibly a lot. We learned a lot from Tim. And it was just really amazing just to go in the clubs and get to know people and just handing our magazines and just listening to these great bands and everything and just for people just coming together and we started getting recognized and people recognized who we were. So a lot of bands really got, some of them got their start, I think, pretty much because of our magazine. Yeah, it's just a river. So I guess we could say that you literally created a scene with the scene. But several of our speakers tonight have talked to the fact that a couple of things that I wanna draw from this first round, which is that probably the most important thing that punk accomplished was to dissolve the line between the bands and the fans, you know. That rhymes. The band from the 10th. And it does rhyme. He's good at that. Vail has got a acutely tuned poetic year. But in any case, I think that if there was one thing we accomplished, that was what we accomplished, was that we had people in the scenes who were huge, who you couldn't imagine the scene without them, and they weren't in bands. Maybe they were later, but they weren't in bands initially. And that's the other thing that's interesting is how many people went to the clubs and then started bands. I mean, we had this huge proliferation that occurred. But the other thing that I heard was, and Mickey articulated perhaps best, but the Wilson sisters have just sort of said the same thing. You go and you look for what is it that I wanna read and when it's not there, you just go write it. So I think that's what gave birth to ours. I'm gonna move on to a second question, which is preordained and you can just part from it as much as you like, as you have so far. What impact do you believe that your periodical had on the development and orientation of the local punk scene and did your editorial policy consciously attempt to shape the perspective of the local punk community? And Vale, you wanna tackle that first? Well, I did do the first punk publication in San Francisco and I was consciously intended to both document and catalyze what I called the emerging international punk rock naive art revolution as it was inventing itself. It wasn't top down as to use Peter's phrase. I've never said top down in my life. And I will, I've met you before, but it's true that with respect to the esteemed Wilson sisters, when I first saw Ripper, I frankly only associated it with another Asian man named Tim Tanuka. I mean, that was my historical consciousness. I associated Ripper with Tim and it made me think that there weren't many Asians in the early punk two years take my word for it or POCs, everyone know what that word means, people of color. And yet, well, the few that were there kind of did stuff. Linda Nakamura was, she started in, she was, why didn't know about them? I only knew about impatient youth. Who was maniacs, a band? No, it was a promotional group. I thought it was called impatient youth. Isn't that weird? We all have our niche history views. No maniacs is what they're called. New youth, you're thinking of. New youth, thank you. Oh yeah, not impatient youth, thank you. I know it's, our lives are instant history, believe it or not. And, but it's like being in quicksand sometimes, trying to arrange things in order of progression. And that's why in search and destroy, I guess I had an advantage because I was kind of super literate compared to a lot of other people working at City Lights bookstore. And it felt, I felt that we had a duty to connect punk to all the subversive movements in history prior to punk. And that's why I consciously included articles on surrealism, data. And what I thought was actually most important and it's really emerged now, years later, is there was a huge article on black humor. And I felt that that was it. Because it sort of, that concept transcends any little groups you can nicheify a name like, you know, Lydia Lunch is so proud of No Wave. We weren't punk, we were No Wave. Well, you know, you can claim that all you want now, but there are hardly any punk record stores in 77, 78. And you were grateful that the few existed and you sent your records and you sent your zines, publications to them. And those were little cultural aces all over the world. And there weren't many of them. And so you might call yourself No Wave now, but believe me, punk rock was the overarching. And it is a label. It's just a label. It means what you bring to it. I mean, it's very, and we all hate labels actually, we were in punk. I don't think anyone in the first two years of punk ever called themselves a punk and meant it. I mean, it's just, come on, we laugh at each other. You punk, I don't know if you can get that now or not. We used to use New Wave and Old Wave. Like, that's so Old Wave. Oh yeah, I suppose. New Wave was a little later as a word. It was, I thought it was like a record company attempt to cash in on punk and kind of make it a little more palatable to the consumeristic masses. And so yeah, and I included articles and situationism in Search and Destroy and that was conscious. And I put William Burroughs, John Waters, one of his first interviews was in Search and Destroy. I put in Russ Meyer, who maybe he's been forgotten. Oh hey, someone applauded. And you know, J.G. Ballard, whom I still think is super prophetic. And of course, like I said, William Burroughs was on the cover of number 10. So, I guess, you know, I mean what is punk? You know, Biafra has been on a campaign against what he, for all his life, for what he called punk rock fundamentalism. And I think, I'm sorry to hear about the violence that the Wilson sisters had to experience because I felt that was the violence virus. Did I just coin a phrase? Was brought to and created in Orange County by just one or two bands like the Circle Jerks what an odious name. They brought it up here and they ripped off local bands. Those kids were young, violent and really they're already mentally ill, I think. And so, let's see. Yeah, yeah, we wanted permanent rebellion and I think we want permanent dissatisfaction with the status quo and we want, but it's got to have black humor. Come on, guys. We don't wanna be some horrible political ultra left Trotsky group. They're no fun. So, yeah, I would say politics is kind of important. But you know, it's like, actually I went and saw a Jell-O-Be-Offra play just a month ago in a very small club here. I don't see anyone here in the audience who was there. Was anyone there? But the point is that it was so much fun hearing him not only play classic decayed songs and his new band songs, but more importantly, he just went on a rant like, fuck Uber. And he went, and you know, dump on Trump or take a dump on Trump or something. And that's what punk rock was really about. It's, and it's very important those words between the songs, you know, and which you're trying to remind people why punk started to begin with. And so, I think that's why I don't think, until we have a perfect world, I don't think punk will ever be dead or obsolete. Because it's so simple. It's just so, the bar is so low. Anyone can do it. Anyone can start a band. Anyone can publish. Anyone can stay up. And I urge people to stay up all night talking because you will have fun. And you will do a lot of social criticism in theorizing, even if the word sounds highfalutin. It's important for people to talk and work out their ideas and have fun and invent more critiques and jokes about what controls us, as Burl's called the control process. That will never end. And so, take away from this today that Baila's told you, black humor matters. Black lives, yes. And black lives as well. Mickey, what about you? Did creep try and shape the views of the community? How did you view that? We probably did try and do that. And we probably have. And we probably could have been, I think we probably could have packed more humor into what we did than we did at creep. We were kind of, sometimes we were kind of deadly serious both in our interactions with each other as we did stuff and in our attitude. And I mean, we saw all these threats to what we saw as this perfect community or whatever. We saw these threats once we perceived where people from the suburbs, Orange County, who came and beat us up, people from the sunset who came and beat us up. People within the community who wanted to stay away from serious topics and move towards commercial production. I don't really mean banned so much as some promoters, some people who ran independent labels. And I think we missed some pretty big threats. So did we try and shape the community? And try and, I don't know, help guide or help organize or help create a political vision we did as to how much we succeeded. In the fourth issue of our magazine, there was a split between those with drug problems and those without, those with me and some friends kept the magazine and we got through issue number five. I think we missed a great big threat from within that we probably should have been saying something about and that that was part of being young, naive, it was part of being addicted, I suppose. But you know, I mean, yeah, we tried. No, we didn't succeed. And you didn't have any blood purges like they did in Maximum Rock and Roll? No, the split was more friendly than that. I mean, I think people were disappointed with this, but we weren't kicking people out for not following the correct line as much as happened over there. Yeah. But I have to say, Timmy O'Hannon was a good friend of mine and just one of the most fun, arch-stallinous that I've ever known. Yes. You know, one of the greatest rock and roll arch-stallinous that I've ever known. I think that's right. And I hope anyone here who knew Tim as I did and I think we all did knows that, I mean, I too refer to him as a stallinist and I think if Tim were here, he might refer to himself that way, but I do that with a lot of love. And Tim was just a great guy and he happened to have some rather hard line views on a few issues that I didn't share then, don't share now, but despite that, he was a lot of fun. I met Tim before he started Maxim Rock and Roll. I met him at KPVA when I went there to be on a show and his cultural obsession then was rockabilly music. And rockabilly, which he played on his show, I don't know if anyone knows that, but and he, where am I going with this? He quick, he pretty, he saw the light and I think after my show and then he got on board with Maxim Rock and Roll, which I don't think started till 1979. For me timelines are very, very important because every day you might have one more person in San Francisco getting into punk rock in a super serious way if you were lucky. And the more time progressed, the easier it got. I'm not putting later covers down, but it just became easier and easier, but the downside is at a certain point you stopped knowing everyone's name. You would literally know the name of everybody in the room in the early days and that was something that was wonderful. That's very true. So moving on again, your situation was very different coming out of the suburbs and at a later, somewhat later point, how did you see this issue? Were you trying to have an impact on the perspectives of the local community? How did you view that issue? I felt that we were trying to let the local community know that we really weren't going away. The first issue, a lot of people told me that that first issue that we did was nothing but a big ego trip, but we were focusing on the kids and the audience and the artists, besides the groups, photographers, people with their opinions, people having a voice, and that made an impact on the community because people saw it and then they started sending us records. They started getting ahold of us, sending us letters and saying tons of letters and saying, tons of records from there. Hey, we want to be a part of this. And then they would say, hey, I run a club or hey, I have a group and come see us and come review our records. And then the Rippers started actually expanding that impact on the community and we thought we were breaking down a lot of cultural barriers that community was stuck with. And we were merging the culture of the city, the punk rock community in the city, and bringing it with the East Bay and the South Bay. And it focused on everybody, photographers, the kids. All the various countries. Everybody, yeah. And we felt that it was growing and it was giving everything a voice. Yeah, that was the most important thing that I think that we were trying to do is trying to give everybody a voice. Tim was pretty passionate about that and he was really passionate about punk rock. He was very good about writing what he felt and writing how things were impacting the community and the music. Because they used to remember, when we used to listen to records and stuff and Tim was like, listen to this, listen to that. He introduced us to a lot of great music. Yeah, he introduced us to music and yeah. And I think because of that, we did make a pretty good impact of that community. It got larger and larger. And then a lot of people wanted to write for us and everything. But we had a lot of flakes too. Well, in punk rock, flakes? Everybody has disagreements if you can. Oh no, we had some characters that just, unbelievable, you know. If we started telling stories like that, we could be here till midnight. I know, that's true. You know, this reminds me, I think one of the very overlooked and most important factors in the rise of any underground, I don't care if it's 100 years ago or 100 years from now. It's the people who start more or less clubhouses. Places where bands can play, places where you can gather that are free. And I don't honestly know if there was the, we had the Mabui Gardens, a Filipino place here for two years. We were lucky before it kind of got wrecked by the people from Orange County. And but I wonder if San Jose had the equivalent of an only punk club. The only punk club that was at the time that started out and still around, I think it was, was one step beyond, was one of them, was the first club. And a lot of the smaller bands, they would play like in little halls in little places down in downtown San Jose, like Black Flag. Like a one-off or something. I can't remember the place. I think it was a church where they played? I think so. Yeah, it was a church hall. I don't know. It was such a long time ago. But I mean, there was like Hotel Sinclair. Hotel Sinclair. Did Ripper get involved in concert promotion and all down there, or was that done separately? I think it was done separately. I don't know. I think it was done separately. Yeah. I think it was done. Yeah, we were just there for the scene. We were just there to cover the groups. Right. To cover the groups. Yeah. We didn't do that stuff. We didn't really do bookings or anything. Well, we did have benefits. And we put together some benefits for the zines. And that gave a chance to cover a lot of... Because we needed money. We needed money, of course. And that gave a chance for some groups to show what they were doing. We played, I think, at the Rusty Nail. The Rusty Nail was the first benefit. The Mabuhay was the second. And then I think there was a third benefit at the Mabuhay. Now, you changed your orientation from the South Bay to the broader Bay. To the broader Bay. And that was at what point during Ripper's development? Yeah, we kind of dropped the South Bay part and just put it Ripper because... And when was that? It was more for just the Bay area now. Yeah. At what point, though? At the third issue. Oh, third issue? So early on? Early on. Yeah. It was just like, yeah. Expanded pretty fast, actually, the... A lot happened in those days. A lot happened during that time. Okay, let's take a step back from our specific periodicals and look at the broader issue of zines in the community. So, Vail, what do you think that the function of the zines was in the Punk community magazines? And assess also the contribution. Punk Rock was primarily a scene around music, but I like to... The way I like to express it is I like to say that growing up in America or Britain or Australia or Canada, anywhere in the English-speaking world, in the era that we came of age, rock and roll was the lingua franca that we employed, right? It was the idiom that we knew how to employ. So if we were gonna say anything to the larger world, we were gonna say it through rock music because that's what we spoke. So I think in Punk being associated with music in that sense it was because it was our idiom. But so we had Punk bands, we had zines and we had other contributors. Try and assess if you can kind of the relative contribution of those entities. I think we're talking about something that's pretty rare, which is how an underground more or less forms itself. And in a real underground, everything's personal and you do know the names of most of the people because it isn't like 10,000 people, it's impossible. It's so few or committed. And I do remember, and I don't know if this is before Debbie Dove lived at the house on Joan Street briefly. Didn't you live there? Yeah, but that was kind of more towards later. And I remember, I don't know if you were there, but I remember these people from Australia showed up in our door and we'd never heard of them or seen them or anything, but they were heavily into Punk. They were like total strangers. And then after we talked to them a half hour, we let them sleep in our living room. Now could you do that today without an underground? I'm not so sure. And also there was a lot more letter writing from my part of Punk and that's how I got so many contributors all over the world and they weren't paid by the way. This is outside of capitalism or it's anti-capitalist perhaps or there wasn't much consciousness. I don't think it was so political. It's just like it was a cause. Punk was a cause and you wanted to participate in elucidate, hey that rhymes, and promulgate, hey that's three words in a row, that rhyme. What was it, elucidate? What did I just say, I don't even remember. Hesitate in elucidate. No, hesitate is way later. Bifurcate. Bifurcate, you don't do that till you're in the decadent stage of your so-called revolution building. No, copulate, oh please. No, that's the hippies. I was moderated or I need to rein us in. But anyway, I also always wanted to be international and not just provincial and I don't think that's such a bad idea except that I do like that phrase someone came up with a long time ago about think global and act local and I do agree with that. You can't have a community again without places to meet and preferably talk. And I think the people who gave us venues are way underrated. I really wish I had done heavy duty interviews with like Paul Rat and I don't even know who did the tattoo lagoon. You were there Peter. Or no, were you? But I don't even know who did it, which is a crime and I didn't even think of interviewing Ness and Durk at the Mabuhay or Robert Hanrahan when he did the deaf club that anyone who gets up off there, you know what and does a venue, that is way important, super important. And I- Do you think the zine serves as kind of a virtual assembly point when we don't have that? Well, I think everyone has to build their own little community and through a zine and you will attract contributors and friends. You will, everyone, and if you do a band, you will also start your own little niche community around you but the sad thing for me is that I can't seem to get a handle on like a huge overarching underground today that and the reason I say this is because I've had a string of rebellious 20-something interns for the last 25 or 30 years and the sad thing to me is that first thing I ask them who are your favorite bands and I go check them out and it's never, is there an overlap with the previous interns, list of favorite five bands and I don't think that's a good sign. I can't tell you why I don't think it's a good sign but that's what my gut tells me. So there is some huge information overload, huge nitrification, huge fragmentation, huge differentiation which I don't know how you can build a truly unified mass culture, rebellious movement that's international now. I'm just worried about that happening and I think the big, to me, the big enemy is the huge distraction addiction machine which is your iPhone. I mean it's an amazing event, it's addicting, it sends you little jolts of pleasure to your nervous system when you see cat pictures and rabbit pictures or whatever, raccoons and it's addicting but it's also distracting and it's just a massive distraction culture we're in now and I'm just not sure what to do about it of course, detox but good luck with that. So I think it's something that I'm just not sure, you know. It's a present challenge, I think we all are aware that this is by design, I mean all of the, Apple, yeah. Much of it is in response to us, I think. I mean I think they were taking it back culturally by what we accomplished and they got more skillful in the process, but good point. Mickey, what do you think about this thing, the whole idea of the building community, the role of the zine in the community, the relative contribution of the bands and the written word? Gosh, I think that's so subjective. I mean I think for me there are some, for me and for anyone in this room I think there are some bands mounting still in the world to us and there are perhaps some books that mentor still in the world to us and hopefully a lot of people that met and still me in the world to us and I don't think there should be like a either or dichotomy there. I mean I think that spoken word, written word, painting which I can't draw a straight line or cut one but painting, I mean I think at some level simultaneously everything's important and nothing's important, I don't know if that answers that but that's sort of what I think. And what do you mean nothing's important? We think punk's important or, so what? Right, exactly, so well, that's tough. It sounds really deep and important. It sounds really deep. Okay, to our two female participants, what do you think on these issues? What is the larger role of the scene? I just think what we presented in the magazine just like we're talking about interviews and whatever, whenever that person is picking up that magazine and reading whatever we wrote about bands or if we wrote a little political verb or a record review or something, somehow I feel that that person is impacted by that and questioning yourself or whatever, if you don't, if you don't think that deeply or whatever, what can I do for myself? What do I wanna do in my life and everything? I feel like the scene has done a lot for a lot of the bands and people who were clubbing and everything because coming back now that we have this whole year, you know how it's been Peter, it's been really strange to come back to seeing old people that I haven't seen in years and everything, but I ask them what they're doing with their lives now and a lot of them that I've met are doing community service like Mickey here. Yeah, Sheriff's work program. I mean, but it's everything's impact of what you do. I mean, that's what I feel that whoever, I wish I could take the words out of my mouth and say it, but I think that's the most important thing, that's what the scene was for, it was just information, it was just, it's communication and that's the way we communicated because like we didn't have computers or fricking, phones that we use all the time or internet or nothing, we actually sat down and talked. Yes. Remember that? You guys remember that? No, and that was very important. Yeah. I think the keyword is inspiration we're supposed to provide, so you get up and do something, not just consume our zine. Bernie, you wanna add anything before we go to audience questions? Yeah, one of the things that I feel now with people, even though they're gathering together to talk about something or talk about a subject, is that with all the social media and all the iPhones and the way everybody texts and emails each other, I feel people are communicating less now than they did then. If we wanted to say something, we all got together and we talked and then one of the things that Ripper taught me is that if you really wanted to say something and you really wanted to bring something out, you can do it and you can create a whole community and you don't need, and all you need is a dedicated bunch of people to do it. And a willingness. And I felt that later, a lot of people were coming up to me, including a lot of younger people, saying, you know, I ran across an old copy of the zine that you worked with and it made such an impact on me that I decided to do this or I decided to do that and I was really influenced by it. How did you guys do it without all the, without all the technology and stuff that you have today, not just the social media, but also the graphics and the layouts and it was a lot of hard work and it was a lot of money, a lot of meetings, a lot of opinions and a lot of people getting together and talking and saying, okay, this is what's gonna be the final product here, this is what we're going to do and then hoping that it'll have that impact and we didn't realize later what it was gonna turn into. It's just, I mean, I'm just sort of blown away by how it's impacted people later because we were all just doing it for our love of music and our love of getting the art out there. And the construction of the zine grows from community, that active creation is an active community and then when it expresses it's outward self or it goes to the macro, it's building the community outward. It's a lot of glue stick. Glue stick and scissors were good. Yes, that's right. We're gonna go to audience questions so we're unfortunately not gonna be able to have the panelists discuss why the Beatles wrote Helter Skelter to provide proffesies to Charlie Manson, which I thought would have been really interesting but we wanna go to your questions so we're gonna pass on that. Good, thank you. Yeah. How about that? For Penelope's gonna be walking around with a mic so just raise your hand so that she knows to come to you. Before we do that, I just really quickly wanna, on behalf of Punk Rock Sewing Circle, wanna thank you all for your participation and I really wanna thank the Public Library for getting on board with this and I wanna encourage you again to donate to the new archives here. So questions. I'd also like to say that as of today, thanks to Mickey, we now have copies of all the zines, we've got copies of Ripper, we've got all the copies of Search and Destroy and we have four out of the five copies of Creep. So we do have all the magazines or zines that we're talked about today in our collection and we got two, three, four and five. That's in there. Yes, so you can come up to the sixth floor. We're also pulled a bunch of other magazines. Anyone who wants to come up to the sixth floor after this is over and view some of our collection up there, you're welcome to come up. We have them already pulled and set aside for your viewing. We should probably also let them know that some of the collection is elsewhere. For example, you have the small zine or the- Little magazines is on the sixth floor as well but there are some magazines on the fourth floor in art and music and on the fifth floor in the magazine collection but we have set aside some for you to look at today. And these are on the front table and they're very helpful in terms of identifying. So who's got a question? Oh wait, before everyone leaves, isn't there an event tonight, Peter? Yes, there's an event- Where is it? Where is it? Thank you very much. There is an event tonight at Public Works. Where's that? Which is at 14th and... It's right by the parole office if that helps anybody. No, where's that? No, Public Works is not on Cary Street. Thank you, off mission between 14th and DeBose. Off mission, leave to him. It's over by Rainbow. Oh, they are working. They are working. King.com. Anyway, there is an event there tonight and it is the opening six o'clock and it is the opening of a week of a photography show that's gonna run for a week. There's also gonna be several hours of punk film and then there's gonna be sort... Give me Danger or Plain. They're a great... Stubbs, yeah, yeah, Tribute. No, I can't call them a cover band, huh? Tribute band. Stubbs is Tribute Band and then there's DJing after that with Brian James who's all the way from Boise, Idaho to DJ for us. Hey, he was at the dam. So all sorts of stuff going on, but it starts at six o'clock tonight, goes to midnight. Okay, now, questions. There we go. A question as much as I wanna represent somebody who's not, hasn't been mentioned today. I'm going, I wanna represent two people. Going backward, I wanna mention somebody who was really important to me because I lived in the Mission District and he ran a club called Valencia Tool and Die. That was Peter Belsito who also had two magazines, one of which was really like if there was ever a punk ethic, that was it. He had one magazine called Ego and he had another magazine that was my favorite which was Water Drinkers. I don't know if anybody remembers Water Drinkers. It was a five by five or maybe four by four was a little tiny magazine and the program was that you paid to have your art put in it. So it was paid for by the people who you could put anything you wanted to in as long as you made your image the size of the magazine and it was free and you could get it everywhere. So Peter is represented here and then the other thing I wanna say to all the people who are history buffs is please, please, please get in touch with Chris Carlson and Shaping San Francisco. Chris has been working on the history of San Francisco. He started a virtual history 20 years ago in 1995. It morphed from a CD-ROM to a website and now it's a Wiki site. Go to Found San Francisco, Found SF and he is starting to make whispers about trying to make a punk presence on Found San Francisco. It's a wonderful website and please get in touch with Chris. Thank you. Question for our panelists. Hi, Mickey. I seems to me after punk you or after creep you had another magazine you were starting up and that was more specifically political as I recall. I did. Oh my, okay. In that case. Substance abuse is a terrible thing. I'm gonna ask a question to Vale then. Back in the days of search and destroy when all of the people were writing for free for your magazine. This was a good thing. It was done out of passion. It was done out of a sense of belonging and these days though, we see the same sort of a thing with Huffington Post which is then a bad thing. I'd like to hear you talk about what you think about that and how that's changed. Thank you. Sure, Huffington Post, they tried to get me to join their brainwash to herd of minions. Because I did write an editorial. I can't remember what it was. About and well, I think it sucks. But of course, in a word, in three word phrase, I think internet kills. What's the third word? I forgot. It's not just thought, but it kind of kills not exactly creativity but I guarantee you there's a ton of us who don't have the economy we had back in say 1992. In other words, people like me could publish books and pay my rent and I knew a ton of bands that could put out records and sell them and pay their rent and it's just now we're at the 1% versus the 99% now. I think just a handful of superstar bands make it and everyone else puts their music out for free on the internet and they do try and do these tours in which they're sleeping on people's living rooms through Facebook, used to be MySpace and there isn't any economy anymore is what I'm saying of the most rebellious creative people. I mean, it used to be able to sell zines like search and destroy, I'd send them to Australia and never got paid but I didn't expect it. But once in a while I get paid, I mostly only got paid locally when I could go into the store in person but at least there was a semblance of a fake economy than a small one and the rents weren't so high. You could live cheaply, rents were not high then. I always appalled people when I tell them that the only reason I could do search and destroy you know, working part-time at City Lights on a very tiny income was my rent, I paid every month was $37.50 a month. Yeah, that rent, it makes a huge difference in line with the Karl Marx thing about how economics determines life. If you have to spend all your time working to pay $2,500 a month for a room in which someone, this girl I met, that's what she pays, $2,500 a month for a room, a room in a three-room flat and that's $2,500 a month. And anyway, what can I say? There's an awful lot to be dissatisfied about today. There ought to be a new punk movement. Well if I can on that question, one of the big distinctions is as you said, there was passion, there was commitment. The reason why people wrote for search and destroy for free was search and destroy was existing as a vehicle for their voices to emerge whereas Huffington Post is a going business concern. So you're just unpaid labor there and that's I think the chief distinction. Other questions in the back? Just to keep Penelope active. Okay, Val, you were talking earlier about how there was this moment where you wished you had thanked the people who had put together the venues. You wished you had taken the time to get to talk to the people who had put the venues together. And now we're starting to see this point where venues are starting to get stripped, ripped, raped, destroyed, leveled, gone. Is there anything left out there now and is there anyone out there brave enough and strong enough to put together a venue? Boy, you're right there. I mean, things, yeah, yeah, we barely seen what's gonna happen in the next year or two. I mean, I love this, I myself have gone to like the Hemlock Tavern and the Parkside and what, DNA and independent in the last month. And I know that this huge Ed Lee move, oh yeah, that was one thing we offered, let us all in a huge chanted his gig. Fuck, Ed Lee. Because of the way he just rolls over and presents his rear side to every developer who wants to give him $100,000, which is peanuts to these billionaires. But it's a lot of money to you and me. And I don't know, I mean, this stuff has gotta be government funded, I think. Well, I'm in line with that. Gilman. Pardon? Gilman. Still there, Gilman's still there. What a miracle. But I mean, don't take it for granted. Gilman deserves some real recognition. And who did keep that going? Oh, kids. No, I bet there's one or two, not just thousands. Oh yeah. Well, I don't know, does anybody know? It's not just a small group, is it? Oh, I mean, that's, the spirit is punk is lived on in the Bay Area, it's gotta be with the Gilman crowd. No, I think there needs to be government funded free places are very cheap for the arts or we can have movements like punk rock happen again or happen as a continuum, I mean, I think that has to be government funded. Sorry. I think when you all move back to Sacramento as the rents get too high, you'll find that it's easier to live there and easier to start venues and then there's more and more of you or your children or grandchildren move there. Something can happen there. It's a little hard to see people paying 4,000 a month doing rebellious art. And it's a little hard to see, given what the clubs pay in rent, it's a little bit hard to see the kind of new ban explosion that we saw in the late 70s here. I just picked Sacramento because that's where I want all the other right here to people to come, but there are a lot of other places. Maybe next time it'll be in Wichita. Not likely. Well, probably not Wichita, but I'm kinda hoping, I'm pulling for Sacramento. You know, Oakland is becoming a huge scene over there right now. That's because we all leapt over there and went to Oakland, didn't we? You know, I'm still kinda connected with some punks over there, some young kids and I meet at warehouse parties and everything. And some of these kids do take warehouses now and they're like, build their community there right now. Like, especially in Fruit Build, there's like a huge explosion right now of kids with warehouses and they do their own clubs and their own, you know, a lot of things that the cops will go for. You know, and, but yeah, I totally, I don't think that. I don't know, I think we're in a rat race personally with realtors and developments in that whole real estate inflation game. And like your beloved Oakland I read is the ninth most expensive city to live in. Now it is. In America. People remember the vats, right? Well, you know, I know this great church at 10th and Howard. Yeah, it's been empty. It's been empty for your decades or more. Mm-hmm, all right. If you had bolt cutters, just a thought. Occupy. Just a thought. It's too expensive, but we all know it's too expensive to rent in this city. So I think that if there's gonna be a future for this sort of thing, it's probably gonna have to take place on the down low. Another question for our panelists. I just wanna follow up on the last point. I was the Reno promoter 35 years ago and we had a venue and I gave a call to a guy named Peter Urban to bring up a band called The Zeros. And after that, we only did one more show. In the next two and a half years, we did one more show in a regular venue. After that, it was all house parties and halls and it's people's bedrooms, just the venues. Backyards. Backyards. And The Zeros almost died on that gig by then. They had to play three sets. We had to play three sets. We got all the way, we were returning to the city and we got all the way to just before the peak on the, in the mountain pass and the cars electrical system died. And we had two people in the back of this rider truck with no insulation. And it was well below zero. It was like up, anyway, it was an adventure, but it was a great adventure. Okay, do we have any more questions? Who's gone upstairs? What? Everybody should go upstairs. Oh. Up to the sixth floor. To say any of us don't want to leave the building. There is one more thing I would like to say. We're, because of the celebration of the 40th punk rock history, Peter Urban, Nikki, Berna and I and Elizabeth Murdoch did a zine. Ah, yeah, we do. A souvenir zine. We have a pack full of interviews and pictures and all kinds of great stuff to celebrate. And we'll have it there tonight. Wonderful history. We call it Final Warning. It's called Francisco. And it's the Final Warning, because it's the best. We got a lot of events over the next four days and I best see most of you there. Tonight at Public Works, tomorrow at Odd Fellows, Friday at Menna, Saturday at Verdi. There are also historic walks and I'm sure for some of you, if you go on any of those, they'll bring back a lot of memories. And for others of you, you'll see and hear descriptions of places the way they looked before. They got fucked over by successive generations of politicians in thrall to development. Yeah, and especially I want to draw attention to those free events. I mean, do make use of those. We've got three more walking tours that are going to take place. But it's tomorrow, Friday and Sunday, I believe. I think so. We're doing, Monday was South of Market. We're doing the Mission, Tenderloin and North Beach. So those are available. Also Thursday, Mickey already mentioned at Odd Fellows. We've got a swap meet going on or you can just bring stuff to share if you want. You don't have to sell things if you don't want to. And then that night, we've got two panels going. One is on the intersection of Queer and Punk Culture. And the other one is Summing Up. Do we win or do we lose? Vail and I, I think you're both on that one. Right, if you didn't get enough of Peter and Vail, they're going to both be part of that one. Could you ever really get enough? Right, I'm sure. So with that though, I'd like to thank you all for coming today. It's been a great experience, been a pleasure. Thank you, Peter. Thanks to our panelists, thank you. There's an event going to happen here in an hour or so, so they are going to ask us to clear the room. There's a bunch of flyers outside that we did a display if you want to check those out. And do come visit us on the sixth floor and check out punkrocksewingcircle.com for all the information about all the things that are happening this week. Thank you very much. Thanks guys.