Category Archives: nightlife

#5 Farewell, Ace..

I’ve often felt I was born too late.

I didn’t come of age at The Farm, or The Mab,  and I missed Off Broadway and the Nightbreak by a few years. By the time I hit the scene there weren’t too many options left for a young punk rocker lookin for a wild time. It had already become a world of hand stamps and IDs, cover charges and agro doormen. Gone was the hint of danger, the controlled violence of a good mosh pit, gone was the urgency to hurry up and have the time of your life before the cops show up to shut the whole thing down.  Gone was the underground, the afterhours, the night…

But even in the absence of relevance there were those who played on. They came to the shores of Tire Beach with generators, they came to the corner of Mission and 20th to play live in front of what once was Leed’s, and they came to Ace Junkyard, the last bastion of underground culture in San Francisco.

Located on McKinnon st. in the dirty depths of the Bayshore, Ace was a legitimate junkyard by day. A place where you could find a replacement alternator or a motor for the robot you were building in the garage, a place where the air was heavy with the smell of rust and rotten gasoline, and black grease was thickly caked on every hand you shook.  What set it apart from the area’s other dismantlers was the owner, a man named Bill. (Or, on occasion, a woman named Billenda.) It was his generosity and support of the local art and music scene that made the place what it was, but it was his soul that gave the place a life of its own.

Image by Scott Beale

Image by Scott Beale

If you’ve been lucky enough to have watched Cookie Mongoloid from atop a pile of scrap, or brave enough to have ridden one of the bike rodeo’s homemade thrill rides, or been fortunate enough to get to know Bill, you understand.  Ace was more than a place to see a show, or find a spare part. Ace was, to me, more than the sum of its parts. It was a place where I felt I belonged.

And now it’s gone.

After 25 years of operation, and a year long struggle with the landlady, Bill has been forced to close the gates of Ace for the last time, and so the unstoppable force of progress reduces to memory yet another sacred somewhere.

I raise glass to you Bill, and thank you with all my heart for the many ways Ace touched my life.

The spirit lives on in all of us.

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#4 Burn, Hollywood, Burn

Though it has sat empty and forgotten for years now, the walls of 61 Golden Gate are still adorned with the signage of the late Hollywood Billiards. A peculiar perspective from beneath the feet of a giant, who, cue in hand,  moves with a confident swagger, and stands forever; captured in the midst of a single , vast stride.

hollywood billiards

The building itself stands on a wedge of street where Golden Gate is haphazardly intersected by Market, just inside the gaping mouth of the Tenderloin. Sitting towards the narrow end of the wedge, the property faces out onto both streets. So, 61 Golden Gate was the entrance to the pool hall on the second floor, and 1046 market was the entrance to the strip club downstairs that shared the building.

This wasn’t no family billiards. (Family Billiards is out on Geary, anyway.)

On a weekly basis, law enforcement tossed the place, and anyone who happened to be in there when it happened would be put up against the wall outside to be searched and humiliated in front of god and fellow criminal.  Inside, the air was heavy with bad intentions. Shadows cast themselves across torn and tattered wallpaper, steadily creeping with the ominous silence of gathering dusk, lamenting their indelible presence there. Rust colored stains of various age told a story of violence in the dingy, mauve carpet, in this sink of iniquity, haunted by a darkness ever growing. It’s memories, distant echoes of anguish.

I loved this place.

It has been closed forever since the night of December 10th, 2003, when it died a violent death.

Market S. Entrance

It was three of us on the table , and the night that would be the last for Hollywood Billards semed at first like any other. The music was bumpin , and  the placed was full, but not packed, the crowd consisting mostly of representatives for the local asian gang,  as it usually was at night.  Nothing seemed odd, I didn’t smell trouble..

In fact, I thought, as a I was chalking my cue and watching a couple of guys throw down the ro-sham-bo, (that’s rock scissors paper for those of you who didn’t grow up in the sunset), the atmosphere pretty relaxed for once! Almost.. jovial.

Suddenly doesn’t describe how things changed.  Fuck, neurons don’t fire that fast!  I had barely turned around to go back to my game, when those two started swingin.( Couldn’t help but think “Damn! Rock beats face! Ooo!”) Fisticuffs in Hollywood billiards was par for the course so we weren’t concerned til a few seconds later, when 10-15 people were goin at it, an official brawl.

From there it just got worse. As we scrambled to get outta the way, I watched the situation escalate from people throwing punches to people throwing barstools, and my pool cue, forgotten in my hand, was snatched and recruited fro the war effort.  it was then I remembered that earlier, I had given the counter man my ID, as deposit for the balls, and there was no way I was leaving without it.

It was Pandemonium. Complete chaos. And as I ‘m making my way to the counter, it gets worse. I hear from behind me, over the general din, this kree-azy kung- fu war cry that had no business coming out of anyone but Bruce fucking Lee. I could not not laugh. But when I turned and saw the ninja in question actually leap up onto a pool table , with a cue for a bo staff, and start wailing on people with the grace of  chow-yun-fat, I had to take a moment to appreciate both his skill, and the absurdity of finding beauty in all of this.

I never heard the first shot fired, but I saw when it hit the man not 5 feet in front of me . He went down Hard , clutching the back of his leg,  yelling, almost understated,

“Arrgh! I been shot, nigga!”

Now it is serious. There is gunfire.  We will be shot. The police will be here, I am holding. I will go to jail. The counter guy still has my id, and one of my friend has disappeared.

And all of a sudden, I am calm. Zen. I interfere the counterman before he escapes, and he returns my ID.

“Game’s on the house.”, he tells me.  I catch my friend before he tries to get out through the back door, grabbing him by the scruff and telling

“NO! We are leaving together through the front.”

And we do. Calmly, quietly, all three of us, walk right out the front not 30 seconds before the police storm right in. We walk past the body of the man shot out front, and say nothing til we reach the car. We found out later another victim was found shot  in the room just behind the door my friend was trying to leave through.

1 dead, 3 wounded. A violent end to a violent place.   But It was a historical night for us, truly one of the better stories we have. The telling of which is always made better when presented alongside of our suitable souvenir from that night that sits on desk even now, as I write this.

The 8 ball.

Taken off one of the tables, by my friend , to be used, if needed,

As a weapon.

Last Game

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#3 NOPE

this picture was used without permission. shhhh....

When I was 16, I decided I was going to be a bartender, much in the same way idealistic little children decide they’re going to be firemen or astronauts. The only thing that gave my aspiration an advantage is the fact that most children don’t spend a lot of time hanging out in space, or loitering around fire stations, where as I already spent much of my free time in bars, so it was not such a far-fetched notion that I would someday tend them. And lo, at the age of 21, my dream was realized.  For the next 7 years, I would proudly sling suds at a few different establishments. But nowhere was I more proud to do so than at the Odeon.

The Odeon was a three-ring circus ran by a bunch of misfits with a penchant for the theatrical,  under the celebrated ringmaster Chicken John.  Featured , nightly, were acts that would have otherwise never found an audience, as no self-respecting venue would ever book the likes of “Monsters of Ukulele!”, or host something called “Porneoke”.  (well, not if they wanted to make money.) So many talented artists were given a chance on that stage they otherwise would not have had, and so was I.

Cornmo, monsters of accordion tour

I don’t know what possessed Chicken to hire me.  I had relatively little experience, and looked fairly plain compared to the other seasoned showmen working there.  (Not to mention I had never once been to Burning man.) Perhaps he thought I had potential, or he may have sensed that I needed that place as much as it needed me.

Or maybe it was just dumb luck.

Either way, I felt accepted, and was proud to serve alongside my brothers,  doin it, as we were, for the cause.

I learned many things there, team work, showmanship, how to run a bar off the books, how to paint signs…

I learned that the best place to light a cigarette is off the tongue of a fire-eater, and that nothing is as surprising as a snowball to the face.

I learned what it felt like to be part of something that matters.

Chicken John for Ask Dr. Hal

The Odeon is long gone now, and although its successor “The Knockout” is a fine establishment, it is of course not the same. I was not present for the last hurrah, for I always run from goodbyes. One of my few regrets. So I’d like to take this time and tell you all, Phoenix, Flash, Ben, Robyn, Ena, Gene, Nevis, and most of all Chicken,

Thank you.

*Bring up the house lights and cue the band!*

Ladies and Gentlemen I also wanna thank Dr. Hal and K-rob! YO! David Cappouro! Big thanks to Brian Doherty, Chris Carney and Eric Cash! Lemme hear it for Jascha, Sean Hayes, Zoli, Chloe, Justin and the Bike Rodeo and the BUS!  Give it up for the Odeon Cocaine All-Stars Band! And last, but not least, thank you gentle reader, thank you and good night!

No! Applause!!