By William Orr
“I can’t wait to leave this fucking place,” reported Desiree Rousseau last Wednesday from her bedroom of the Apgar street punk house. “Everywhere you go, everything is ugly. There is no beauty in this place. There is only death.” The bedroom was decorated with a canopy of dry leaves, and a nineteenth century photograph of a woman bleeding from the eyeballs. Oakland is a strange place, indeed. Maybe Desiree is right about the whole death thing, but if that’s the case I must think death & decay are more beautiful than she does. Allow me to continue you on a tour through this gorgeous city in this weird & wonderful way I am being introduced to it.
First off, a great place to go is the landfill. This is the crop of land just behind a failing horse racing track where people build wonderful things for public use, like a hot tub and a skate park. Then, somebody comes along and totally trashes it beyond repair. Bummer. Sometimes, I am told, the City is this certain “somebody”. Latest (still functional!) projects include a wonderful treehouse, and a free library that doubles as a dwelling for the friendly homebum who runs it. You would think the guy would get kicked out, but you would be wrong because that dude has ex-Up Against the Wall Motherfucker Anarchist-street-gang-member-turned-lawyer backing. Pow!
The next place I was taken was a never-ending stream of houses where people occasionally host parties. You might not believe it, but one of these houses was (allegedly!) Hell itself. I’d never been, but it turns out Hell is one tiny cramped bedroom filled with strangers, lit only with one blacklite, and the radiator turned as high as it can possibly go. Also you cant leave because you just moved here and you don’t know where the fuck you are and the people that brought you feel like staying. Welcome to Hell.
To explain to all you Boston area residents out there, Oakland is actually a lot like San Francisco’s Somerville except, unlike Somerville, Oakland has enough self respect to tell you it isn’t fucking part of San Francisco! Also unlike Somerville, people actually want to live here.
If you MUST go across the river, however, it turns out downtown hotel lobbies are great public drinking spots. Once you have enough guts you can head over to one of the nudie booths in the (worker owned!) Lusty Lady. If you’re not too shy, they let you bring friends into the booth which is a great way to save money. In the small ones you can cram three people in there, and in the bigger booth at the end you can fit five. If that’s not your thing, some place there is a great burger place with a name I forgot. I also forgot where it is. Maybe there are some other stuff you should check out, but I wouldn’t know because these three things have really been what San Francisco is good for so far.
People do seem to have some strange habits around here. This new year BART cops (Bay Area subway police) celebrated by detaining and executing a guy, Oscar Grant, while he lay prone on a subway platform. This WOULD have ensued an ordinary, police brutality cover-up & routine pardon of the killer cop. Cops immediately began to confiscate all cameras and cell phones in the area as evidence, but not before the subway driver closed their doors and pulled away with multiple angle cell phone footage of the execution, footage which was subsequently totally fucking Youtubed.
Oops.
What’s more, on the same day of Oscar Grant’s burial the cop in question (who at this point was being kept anonymous) resigned, which basically abstained him of any responsibility for the murder. Needless to say people flipped their shit, or, as some Californians might say, “Many a mellow was harshed“. Windows were smashed, dumpsters lit on fire, and some folks ALMOST flipped over a police car, but not before being relentlessly tear gassed to the great disappointment of police antagonists worldwide. At this point in my report I MIGHT have mentioned what many of you have already guessed, that Oscar Grant was a black man and the cop was a white dude, and I WOULD touch upon Oakland’s history of racially motivated police brutality, but I am told by the time this rag comes out we will live in something called a “post-racial” America. From what I can understand this means stuff like race doesn’t really matter anymore because we will have a BLACK president sworn into office. So I won’t bother.
13 days and many a pissed off person later, the DA finally got around to arresting former officer Johannes Mehserle on warrant for murder. By then, the guy had moved to Nevada.
Other spots you can go are the gallery openings every month on Telegraph street. On rare occasions this is where you can spot three guys lighting American flags on fire and shouting obnoxiously. “They do this every month,” alleged an annoyed cigarette smoker on the scene. Actually, maybe it’s not so rare to see them. “Okay! Sure!” shouted a well-dressed man, reaching for a burning flag as all three men began to boo him. “I’m George fucking Bush! I’m pulling down your stupid flag.” Presumably, he worked for the gallery it was hanging upon. The whole event was a great opportunity to light your cigarette if you forgot matches at home, but art aficionados were left wanting more from the performance. “That really is a bit passé, with a complete lack of understanding of the fundamentals of performance art. This happening lacks spontaneity or originality, which are the very elements that make a happening a happening. The viewer does not feel affected by this whatsoever. I mean, come on,” said an unidentified well-educated man who’s sharp criticism and artistic vocabulary make him a highly respected art appreciator.
The art in the openings are always pretty good, and there is a great fry shack just across the street from the gross punk house where the exclusively-male inhabitants are wondering why no chicks want to move in. An ongoing investigation has, at time of press, yielded no concrete answers.
The final place was first described as a “fucking hellhole” by my wonderful tour guide at the moment, a punk named Dirt. “We are going to go to a rave at this fucking hellhole called the ‘flower shop’” she says. As we drive up and over the bay bridge we listen to a tape of Dirt’s goth radio show. Inside the truck are myself, Dirt, a quiet boy with chops who drives named Wacker, and Tank Girl, someone who’s body exists on this physical plane, but who’s actual essence exists as a pioneer into the fray of some other, yet to be explored, metaphysical space.
“I hope you are ready because this place is the deepest fucking hole in the Bay Area and we are going to go right into it,” explains Dirt. The goth radio show tape has bled in some sort of a way that you listen to not one, but both sides at once. “Are you ready for this place that, for the last ten years, has been the kingdom of Raver Shit Trash?” Joy Division comes out of the right speaker of the truck, backwards. “I’m ready for it,” I say. When we roll up to the warehouse Dirt pisses in between two cars. “Hey, if you guys want to give me a dollar or two this shit is a benefit for a program for kids in the neighborhood who don’t have anything to do,” says Dirt, buttoning her pants.
Dirt leads us through the back gate and across a path of pallets flanked on each side by airstreams and other semi-permanent housing. Inside there is a tunnel leading between two rooms, each presided over by a DJ. In the larger room there is a tent pitched on the ground, and another on the ceiling. The DJ in this room lords subtly from the mouth of a computer part & monitor filled room straight out of some anime where a 15 year old computer genius is in the process of actually turning himself into a robot. Above him an endless video is projected that is the stream of consciousness from a Windows 95 computer just seconds before its death. Some people here are dancing in a way that suggests they might be a cyborg. “This is really more of a psychological hellhole,” says Wacker. “What do you think?” Dirt says to me. “I think we should fucking dance,” I say.
Soon a troupe of women dressed in blue and black and holding bicycle wheel parasols assaults the dance floor and performs a choreographed sexy dance about bikes. A woman accuses the DJ that techno music is “totally played out.” For a moment he argues he has a “new” kind of techno, with beats that are “dark and heavy“. He argues this as his three extremely long dreadlocks flap around behind his right ear. She is unconvinced.
A girl offers me some drugs from her purse but I politely decline so I can start this very report, live on the fucking scene! You might think its impossible for a paper publication to say its reporting “live”, but I say it because I’m pretty sure this stuff is going on every hour of every day, so it does not even matter what time you read this article. Even when a guy in a Russian hat and a tooth missing starts poking me about “HEY YOU THERE! Guy in the corner. We’re all like fucking equal man or what ever. It doesn't even matter man, because we’re like all black or white...” I am reporting live on the scene for you, the reader. Even when a cute girl named Krista wearing a beret and black parachute pants comes over and tries to start conversation I pay no attention. I do it all for you. If you asked me about Oakland: “You mean they shred like THAT?” I would tell you:
“Yeah, they shred like that.”
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