wordy

saturday night found me freezing my ass off at 9th and gilman in berkeley. well, not that 9th and gilman. the one across the street. with all the yuppies.

tari, posse-ed up with her ex-work-but-still-homey dan, wrangled me to the built to spill show at the pyramid brewery. now, i've been to the pyramid brewery many times whilst attending a show (punk!) across the street at 924 gilman street (or "the gilman" as some call it like some call san francisco "frisco"). nothing makes you feel like an old sellout like going straight to the pyramid without having a show at the gilman to go to. as we walked up, i made tari and dan cross the street so that none of the real punks would jeer at me for being a micro-brew swilling yuppy.

while i crossed the street, i looked around nervously, like a creep about to duck into a vid store. my own actions reminded me of the countless times i saw the skumfukiest-crusto-anarcho punks get dropped off a few blocks away by mercedes station wagon equipped walnut creek moms. at the very intersection the three of us were now crossing, the punks would shrink into the shadows only to emerge from the night, moments later, like they had been squatting in the sewer the entire time.

really though, i should start from the beginning. i'll be honest, my first show at gilman street was july '95.

i'm a poseur.

loose change, that venerable ukiah pop-punk institution, was opening for john cougar concentration camp. i drove my mom's station wagon, later affectionately dubbed the "grocery getter," down to berkeley with jon (the fot master), joe m, and darcy.

i had attended a handful of punk shows before this warm summer night, but because this was my first trip to "gilman street" i thought it wise to wear my work boots in case i got "moshed" in the "pit" by some "punks" engaged in the act of "slam dancing" to "punk rock music." after parking a few blocks away because we didn't want anyone to realize the grocery getter's occupants were us, the three of us joined a large group of ukiahians. somebody, was it JB or maybe garrett?, greeted me with some phrase that i now recall to be at least intoned if not actually said "nice boots, dickhead." there's alot more i could say about this weekend, like i could talk about cashew's mack-10, i could get into "fucking el charro" or how we almost met skee-lo, but i really must stay on track.

that was the first of many nights at gilman street that were characterized by intense bro-rodery of the ukiah crew at the time. an important part to seeing any show was actually spent missing most of the show in "ice-800" alley. i forget how this alley got it's name, although i bet spanky had something to do with it. who is spanky? someone besides myself could do more justice to the question so i'll leave it at that.

ice-800 alley, named after a particular virile stripe of olde english 800 malt liquor, is along the south wall of what is now the pyramid brewery. at the time, the grounds of the brewery were occupied by an abandoned warehouse that was representative of the industrial squalor that used to define north berkeley. aaron cometbus has written about how punks moving into some horrible neighborhood is always the first step to the area's inevitable redevelopment (gentrification?). maybe the area around gilman street is a good example of that, what with all the pyramid's and r.e.i.'s and chipotle's that have sprung up in recent years.

about 100 yards from the street were a collection of logs were we could be found, most often with bottles of cheap beer in our hands. i think most shows i went to must have been in the winter because i remember my fingers numbed, but my spirit warmed by the company of my bros, as cheesy as that sounds. a favorite thing to do with an emptied bottle was to fire it through one of the hundreds of windows yet unmolested on the side of the empty warehouse. this was punk. looking back, i can't believe none of us ever tried to get into the warehouse. there was an incident that involved a jeep getting tipped over or something, but someone else will have to tell that story because i wasn't there.

let's jump forward a few years, actually a lot of years, to june of 2002. the pyramid brewery has been open for about 5 years. that wasn't without controversy, if i recall, and was clearly the first of many for the neighborhood. this was a fairly typical night in my latter gilman street days. i ran into some friends on the corner in front of gilman street, prolly ducked in real quick to get a new membership card and a stamp for the evening's show.

it would be easy to say we are old now, skipping the opener in favor a drinks across the street, but really, that's always been the case, except the beer is a lot more expensive. anybody that thought the music was the best part of going to a show wasn't up to the same shit i was.

the explosion was playing on this particular night, and we met up them across the street. million dollar matt had discovered a keen loophole in pyramid's beverage serving system. if you buy a 64 oz "growler" for $12 you can take it oustide to their beer garden and get wasted on one giant magnificent fuck load of beer. he also discovered that if you relax your fingers and the growler plunges to the ground, it will shatter and then pyramid employees will escort you and yours off the premises.

soon after the shattering glass and beer splashing and the words exchanged, the explosion were on stage playing a passionately drunken set, encouraging the attending crowd to "fuck that place across the street."

last saturday i find myself back on the grounds of the pyramid brewery. they set up a tent in the parking lot, with a stage at one end. outside the tent were the beer stands, with a race track for the kegs-on-wheels against the gilman street fence, we are all old here, drinking microbrewed hefewiezen, with a lemon wedge please. tari described the scene a having "an adult warped tour/aging fraternity vibe" which really sums it up far better than the 133 words i was going to use.

the show, advertised as a benifit for "bay area search and rescue" was also a "launch party" for a new "seasonal" beer. there were free samples and men dressed as beer bottles circulating amongst the crowd, flirting with the ladies and snapping polaroids to give away. we fucked up and didn't get our picture taken with the walking six pack. i really wished they would go away; i couldn't drink my beer around them. it'd be like eating a hamburger in front of a cow.

built to spill, a band i am not so familiar with, not because of a lack of praise, played and they played quite well. maybe it is because doug martsch, et al, look like grad student teacher's assistants, but there was something collegiate in the air. my guess ist that most, if not all, built to spill types have spent at least a few hours in college lecture hall. there was a definite sense that going to a built to spill show at a micro-brewery, whilst wearing fleece and perhaps a goatee, is what a fella does for kicks as the ten year college reunion approaches.

for an open air affair, the sound was really good, with a stereo mix even! everyone was wasted. there was a scuffle, not quite a fight, and some dickweed threw a cup of beer at the band. his voice echoing from the vocal effects that give his vocals their distinct ethereal quality, dr. martsch told us between songs,"in case you were wondering, we don't like having beer thrown at us. if you don't like us, we can't stop you from doing that. but just in case you thought we might like that, we don't."

i've heard the crowd was good for a bay area built to spill show. i can imagine a lot of crossed arms and nodding heads whenever they do their annual 4 night stand at slim's every year.

besides mist from my exhalations, there was the sticky-icky perfume of marijuana hanging in the air, and surprisingly, a few open-toed sandals on the ground. i took a lot of notes during the show because built to spill plays a kind of experimental (shoot me for using the phrase) indie rock that really lets your mind wander between the harmonized intertwining guitar solos.

i was thinking about how funny it was that in college i read douglas coupland's generation x and it had quite an impression on my impressionable mind. at the time i was struck by coupland's idea that our generation, or at least those folks just a few years older than i, suffered from a lack of history. while our parents partied with the kennedy assassination, the civil rights movement, woodstock, some weak-ass shake, watergate and LSD, all we had to show was maybe some punk songs about reagan and the challenger explosion. i think i wrote a paper bemoaning the horrible lack of history i'd have to live through.

shit fuk, i sure god dam got what i asked for. i should have kept my fuck tard mouth shut.