This may be kind of a hard picture to figure out. It's me ..maybe in 98'?, turned so my back is towards you. Cassie is in the foreground ready to pull the rest of my pants down. I think Jamie or Ilhan took this picture and later when I brought a copy of it into the practice spot, Tedd wrote "Choad Flosser" on it in black sharpie and it was tacked to the wall of the Practice spot at 143 Turk st. room 22.
143 Turk or Francisco Studios in SF. Between Taylor and Mason. Some of us practed there for 10 years or more.
Mike (currently drummer for my band Mutton) was in a band called Ear Plug Boy". He was the first one to wrangle the spot and make it available for his band, my band Yusakuta and a band called Zen Guerrilla back in 1995/96.
10 years later I still practiced there. My band morphed from Yusakuta to Mighty Tight to Hoegarden to Hazy to Mutton all in one practice spot.
Today I moved all my stuff out. As Mutton (a three piece), we didn't want to pay the rent anymore. Mike and I figure we can build a studio in his basement at his home and hopefully practice more often.
I'll miss that place. I had a lot of good memories there...
Tedd's dead now, Cassie's moved far away. I spent a lot of time in that small room with the flickering fluorescent light and asbestos celling. Walls filled with Lunachick and CCR posters, clocks with Celtic men snapping whips at wolves, vomit bags, dental dams, photo's of bandmembers, stickers of bands long since departed. In the corner are racks of musical equipment seldom or over-used, amps with blown speakers. Broken strings litter the dirty carpet along with ends of joints, cigarettes, picks, pieces of duct tape.
We'd shared the space this last year with a band called Send for Help. They are taking over the lease from us. I snuck a swig off of their bottle of Whiskey before I walked out for the last time.
Here's to the Tenderloin.
3 comments:
Oh, man, i have some stories from that Turk st. studio! I was in a band with Bob and Mike Roche, called "Dr. Nick"(after elvis's doctor), i think it was 1986-87 when we had that space. it was the definition of degenerate there..
nice pic!
I'm always fantasizing about knocking on doors of houses I've lived in, just to see who's there now. Leaving a place you love is hard! I'm glad at least you're handing it over to friends. Here's to the next great space!
Kim, this post was so poetic, it made me cry a little. It must have been so hard to leave--the end of an era. I have a hard time with end of eras (except for the end of the Bush era, of course).
What's the Tenderloin like now anyway?
Have you seen my sister yet? Will you post about her?
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