I Left My Lunch in San Francisco
I'm now familiar with the consitency of mixed beer, vomit, and broken glass shards
The concert tonight was a lot of fun. I went to see The Melvins, one of the pioneering northwest "grunge" bands, teamed up with Fantomas, Mike Patton of Faith No More/Mr. Bungle's new band, playing together as one band in San Francisco.
CitySearch.com's description was a "tinnitus-inducing chugfest," which, I must say, it definitely was. Incredibly loud music and a club of GenX rock-and-rollers drinking like department store Santas. This is the first concert I've been to that was restricted to those 21 and over, and really I don't know why. Kids can handle vomit.
Anticipating that driving (and parking) in San Francisco on New Year's Eve would be impossible, I decided to take BART. The Lake Merritt station in Oakland has free parking, and it runs late. I determined at which BART station I'd have to get off, how to get to Slim's, the concert venue, and set off, only to find that there was absolutely nowhere to park at the Lake Merritt station. Nor, apparently, was there anywhere to park in all of downtown Oakland.
Odds are you know this, but Oakland doesn't have a reputation for being the safest or most crime-free location in the world. In fact, it doesn't really have a reputation as being the kind of place where you "probably won't be murdered." I don't mind parking next to a BART station or post office, as each of those entities has their own police force that patrols their relatively small beats regularly, but in my quest for a parking space I was getting ever farther and farther away from either one of those. After searching for roughly a half hour, I saw an entire street with meters and no cars whatsoever. I've been in the city long enough to know that when you see a street like that without a single car parked on it, there's something wrong. But I didn't care. I pulled into the nearest metered space, hopped out to make sure I didn't have to pay at night, and then I saw the sign: "NO PARKING 12 AM - 3 AM MONDAY WEDNESDAY FRIDAY. STREET CLEANING." I'm not sure if street sweepers are government employees or just contracted, but hoping that they wouldn't come by as it was officially, at midnight, New Year's Day, I left my car and headed to the station.
A 10-block walk and a short train ride later, I arrived at Slim's -- your run of the mill, dark, crowded, sticky-floored auditorium with a horde of smokers outside (indoor smoking is illegal in California, though this law is, from what I have seen, almost always overlooked once the music starts). I was pleased. This was the kind of place where the best concerts invariably take place, reminding me of La Luna and the Roseland in Portland. Except now I could drink.
I ordered a Long Island and then walked over to listen to the first act, two DJs, one of whom would frequently start rapping poorly, attempt to perform over the hateful shouts and jeers of the crowd. "Get off the stage!" "Kill yourself!" "Sometimes I masturbate in the shower!" (I'm really not sure how that last one is an insult, but nevertheless, it was yelled.) At one point, someone shouted out to the performers that they were "fags," to which one of them stopped and responded, "This is San Francisco, and you're calling us fags?"
Apparently this duo was Kid 606, and I had to agree with the audience. They sucked. Also playing that night were The Lucky Stars, a cowboy-type band that I actually liked quite a bit. All of these bands, as it turns out, including the headliners, were members of Ipecac Records, home to other greats such as The Kids of Widney High, a special education class from Southern California with such wonderful songs as "Every Girl's My Girlfriend" and "Bugs," a song about the danger of bugs. Sadly, The Kids were not to make an appearance that night.
After a set change and some projected Felix the Cat cartoons, the Melvins+Fantomas began. This was the meat of the show. This was what we were all there to see. I crowded my way up to the front, where the bodies were packed in at a rate of approximately five people per square foot.
It was loud. Oh, how it was loud. There is a popular guitar distortion pedal made by DOD called the "Buzz Box." It is, I have been told, named for Buzz Osbourne, guitarist of the Melvins, who was at this very minute, standing a mere five feet in front of me. I wore no ear plugs, and my ears were ringing well into the next day. I know that I am probably going to wind up with serious damage to my ears one day, but I am having a lot of fun getting there.
Some guy behind me kept trying to crowd in in front of me. He looked like he was about thirty years old, but was also about a foot and a half shorter than me. I was reminded of the short Kids in the Hall character who never gave up on picking fights in bars. He was trying so hard to squirm in between me and the person next to me that I had to laugh. Sorry, pal. I wasn't endowed with GQ-like looks or great social graces. At least I'm taller than most people, and I'm taking advantage of that. If he would have just asked, I'd have let him by.
One thing I've noticed, at this concert and the one I went to the night before (Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade), is that California crowds seem to be much more well-behaved than Oregon crowds. There was a lot of crowding and squirming but, really, nobody had been instilled with the overwhelming desire to get up and break something. Deciding to show them all how it's done, and having had three beers and a double Wild Turkey and Coke since the Long Island, I began jumping up and down and flailing about. It didn't last long, though, before I fell flat on my ass, right there in the middle of the crowd. The shrimpy guy ran by me, but some hippie in front of me gave me a hand up. I decided then that maybe I should trust everyone else on proper over-21 concert behavior.
After the show ended, I went down to the coat check to retrieve my sweatshirt, and there was this totally wasted girl in line who kept throwing up everywhere. It was amazing. She seemed to be all alone, leaning against the wall, head drooping over, face pressed against the brick, and just throwing up. Throwing up, throwing up, throwing up, non stop. She was pretty, too. I like it when attractive people do disgusting things, it makes me feel like I'm winning. But I felt like I should do something, that I should ask if she was all right, but what would I have done if she said no? Her eyes were rolling around her in her head, obviously unable to focus on anything. Finally some other girls asked her if she needed them to take her to the bathroom. Drunk girl shook her head no, took a few steps forward, leaned back against the wall and continued to vomit. Seeing that someone who could actually do something had offered assistance, I put it out of my mind.
On my way out, I noticed just how much spilled beer, broken glass, and vomit was all over the floor in front of the stage. It was very, very impressive. Walking out the door, I passed by a man saying to everyone "Goodbye! Thanks for coming! Thanks for destroying my fucking club!"
BART rides were free that night, on account of the city of San Francisco knowing that the entire population would be out, about, and pissed drunk. It was jam-packed on the trains. Getting on, I saw two seats that were strangely vacant, while a lot of people were standing and hanging on to the rails. Looking a bit closer, I saw why. The empty seats were covered in vomit. A little later, someone who apparently didn't mind getting vomit on their pants took a seat there.
On the train, whenever we got to a new stop, everyone would shout "Don't let them on! Don't let anyone else on!" and people would form a chain blocking all the entrances so nobody else could get on. A couple of gantsta-looking guys (who later proclaimed themselves to be of West Oakland) forced their way on in a flurry of shouted "muthafuckas." It was incredible.
Downtown San Francisco on New Year's -- everyone's too drunk to stand and people are throwing up all over the place. I wish every night of my life involved this much vomit.
CitySearch.com's description was a "tinnitus-inducing chugfest," which, I must say, it definitely was. Incredibly loud music and a club of GenX rock-and-rollers drinking like department store Santas. This is the first concert I've been to that was restricted to those 21 and over, and really I don't know why. Kids can handle vomit.
Anticipating that driving (and parking) in San Francisco on New Year's Eve would be impossible, I decided to take BART. The Lake Merritt station in Oakland has free parking, and it runs late. I determined at which BART station I'd have to get off, how to get to Slim's, the concert venue, and set off, only to find that there was absolutely nowhere to park at the Lake Merritt station. Nor, apparently, was there anywhere to park in all of downtown Oakland.
Odds are you know this, but Oakland doesn't have a reputation for being the safest or most crime-free location in the world. In fact, it doesn't really have a reputation as being the kind of place where you "probably won't be murdered." I don't mind parking next to a BART station or post office, as each of those entities has their own police force that patrols their relatively small beats regularly, but in my quest for a parking space I was getting ever farther and farther away from either one of those. After searching for roughly a half hour, I saw an entire street with meters and no cars whatsoever. I've been in the city long enough to know that when you see a street like that without a single car parked on it, there's something wrong. But I didn't care. I pulled into the nearest metered space, hopped out to make sure I didn't have to pay at night, and then I saw the sign: "NO PARKING 12 AM - 3 AM MONDAY WEDNESDAY FRIDAY. STREET CLEANING." I'm not sure if street sweepers are government employees or just contracted, but hoping that they wouldn't come by as it was officially, at midnight, New Year's Day, I left my car and headed to the station.
A 10-block walk and a short train ride later, I arrived at Slim's -- your run of the mill, dark, crowded, sticky-floored auditorium with a horde of smokers outside (indoor smoking is illegal in California, though this law is, from what I have seen, almost always overlooked once the music starts). I was pleased. This was the kind of place where the best concerts invariably take place, reminding me of La Luna and the Roseland in Portland. Except now I could drink.
I ordered a Long Island and then walked over to listen to the first act, two DJs, one of whom would frequently start rapping poorly, attempt to perform over the hateful shouts and jeers of the crowd. "Get off the stage!" "Kill yourself!" "Sometimes I masturbate in the shower!" (I'm really not sure how that last one is an insult, but nevertheless, it was yelled.) At one point, someone shouted out to the performers that they were "fags," to which one of them stopped and responded, "This is San Francisco, and you're calling us fags?"
Apparently this duo was Kid 606, and I had to agree with the audience. They sucked. Also playing that night were The Lucky Stars, a cowboy-type band that I actually liked quite a bit. All of these bands, as it turns out, including the headliners, were members of Ipecac Records, home to other greats such as The Kids of Widney High, a special education class from Southern California with such wonderful songs as "Every Girl's My Girlfriend" and "Bugs," a song about the danger of bugs. Sadly, The Kids were not to make an appearance that night.
After a set change and some projected Felix the Cat cartoons, the Melvins+Fantomas began. This was the meat of the show. This was what we were all there to see. I crowded my way up to the front, where the bodies were packed in at a rate of approximately five people per square foot.
It was loud. Oh, how it was loud. There is a popular guitar distortion pedal made by DOD called the "Buzz Box." It is, I have been told, named for Buzz Osbourne, guitarist of the Melvins, who was at this very minute, standing a mere five feet in front of me. I wore no ear plugs, and my ears were ringing well into the next day. I know that I am probably going to wind up with serious damage to my ears one day, but I am having a lot of fun getting there.
Some guy behind me kept trying to crowd in in front of me. He looked like he was about thirty years old, but was also about a foot and a half shorter than me. I was reminded of the short Kids in the Hall character who never gave up on picking fights in bars. He was trying so hard to squirm in between me and the person next to me that I had to laugh. Sorry, pal. I wasn't endowed with GQ-like looks or great social graces. At least I'm taller than most people, and I'm taking advantage of that. If he would have just asked, I'd have let him by.
One thing I've noticed, at this concert and the one I went to the night before (Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade), is that California crowds seem to be much more well-behaved than Oregon crowds. There was a lot of crowding and squirming but, really, nobody had been instilled with the overwhelming desire to get up and break something. Deciding to show them all how it's done, and having had three beers and a double Wild Turkey and Coke since the Long Island, I began jumping up and down and flailing about. It didn't last long, though, before I fell flat on my ass, right there in the middle of the crowd. The shrimpy guy ran by me, but some hippie in front of me gave me a hand up. I decided then that maybe I should trust everyone else on proper over-21 concert behavior.
After the show ended, I went down to the coat check to retrieve my sweatshirt, and there was this totally wasted girl in line who kept throwing up everywhere. It was amazing. She seemed to be all alone, leaning against the wall, head drooping over, face pressed against the brick, and just throwing up. Throwing up, throwing up, throwing up, non stop. She was pretty, too. I like it when attractive people do disgusting things, it makes me feel like I'm winning. But I felt like I should do something, that I should ask if she was all right, but what would I have done if she said no? Her eyes were rolling around her in her head, obviously unable to focus on anything. Finally some other girls asked her if she needed them to take her to the bathroom. Drunk girl shook her head no, took a few steps forward, leaned back against the wall and continued to vomit. Seeing that someone who could actually do something had offered assistance, I put it out of my mind.
On my way out, I noticed just how much spilled beer, broken glass, and vomit was all over the floor in front of the stage. It was very, very impressive. Walking out the door, I passed by a man saying to everyone "Goodbye! Thanks for coming! Thanks for destroying my fucking club!"
BART rides were free that night, on account of the city of San Francisco knowing that the entire population would be out, about, and pissed drunk. It was jam-packed on the trains. Getting on, I saw two seats that were strangely vacant, while a lot of people were standing and hanging on to the rails. Looking a bit closer, I saw why. The empty seats were covered in vomit. A little later, someone who apparently didn't mind getting vomit on their pants took a seat there.
On the train, whenever we got to a new stop, everyone would shout "Don't let them on! Don't let anyone else on!" and people would form a chain blocking all the entrances so nobody else could get on. A couple of gantsta-looking guys (who later proclaimed themselves to be of West Oakland) forced their way on in a flurry of shouted "muthafuckas." It was incredible.
Downtown San Francisco on New Year's -- everyone's too drunk to stand and people are throwing up all over the place. I wish every night of my life involved this much vomit.