Build Date: Fri Dec 27 01:10:07 2024 UTC
Maximum strength opiates barely dull the buzzsaw katzenjammering in my head...
-- Ratsnatcher
Gilman St. In Trouble
1999-01-15 23:02:00
OK, so, if you're not from the San Francisco Bay Area, you may not know about the Gilman St. Project. It's the seminal club around here for the punk resurgence of the late 80's/early 90's. Hell, it's where GREEN DAY started! Woo-hoo! Anyways, it's in trouble.
I know, you're probably thinking, "Who the fuck cares? Another stupid club comes and goes." Or maybe you're like Flesh, and you're so Old Skool Punk that you don't think any club since the Ingrown Asshair in 1978 is worth even pissing on. [Flesh rebuts: "I not only helped raise money for [Gilman], I was one of the very first people through the goddamn door."]
Well, what makes Gilman important is that it's a) member-owned and -run, b) cheap and c) all ages. The people who wanted to hear music in Berkeley, but didn't have a venue, made one themselves, and they've kept it open through constant adversity, playing some pretty decent music in the process. It's another cool example of people making the shit they like happen for themselves and for others. It's like Free Software, or Burning Man, or whatever. And that's why it's worth saving.
Anyways, Gilman's in trouble with the City of Berkeley. Apparently the area they're located in -- a crappy industrial slum -- is zoned for "re-development", and the City and some of the high-teck businesses moving in are unhappy about having a bunch of punx walking around their new office parks on the way to the shows. So, they're trying to get the permit for Gilman revoked.
The Gilman St. site has a petition you can sign to tell the big bastards to keep their hands off small, non-profit venues. You should go do it, even if you could give a rat's ass about punk music or Berkeley or whatever. Just go sign the fucking petition, eh? SIGN IT!!!!!! OK? OK.
T O P S T O R I E S
The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
'Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch'
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
SF Hippies Can't Get Their Act Together
The annual 420 Hippie Hill event in Golden Gate Park, where large crowds of hippies, wannabe hippies, and hippie poseurs drape themselves in tie dye t-shirts and gather on a hill on 4/20 to smoke weed, was cancelled this year because the organizers couldn't get their act together. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
On the Implementation of a Grocery Bag And Overforestation Initiative
Patient Joab and his evil cohort, Patient Steve, develop a proposal for the plastic-v.-paper problem that EVERYONE can be happy with. An EXCLUSIVE from Spock Mountain Research Labs! (More...)
One of our star reporters was sent to Comdex by his employer. El Destino reports live from the biggest, geekiest trade show in the world. (More...)
Brother Wayne Lays Down the Truth
Flesh interviews Wayne Kramer of MC5. (More...)
Poor Metallica. All they want is to continue to put out the same weak "Heavy Metal" they've been churning out since the "And Justice For All" days? and make gooey wads of cash in the process. The problem is, people aren't buying their bound for the heavy metal scrap heap, over-produced, uninspired, tired crap. And let's face it, their various commercial endorsements won't pay for the lifestyle they've become comfortably accustomed to. Resorting to lawsuits makes perfect sense, when you need spending money. But just one lawsuit isn't going to pay their bills. So, to aid Metallica, I've composed an open letter to the boys in the band, with suggestions as to whom else they might sic their lapdog lawyers on... (More...)
Patient Joab's scientifick editorial discusses aspect of the space-time-beer continuum never before processed by sub-bush-robot minds!!! Too fabulantastic to contempulate! (More...)
