Goodbye 347 -- part II
Hokay, here's part two of the 347 Divis reminiscences, from people other than me. Feel free to add your own...
LAURA BOLES:
Dear Dan, I am so sorry you are moving out of your apartment. All things must pass, but change is always, always hard. You asked us all awhile ago to write down our memories of your apartment. Here are mine.
I hardly ever saw your apartment in the afternoon. I either came over at night, or was there the next morning, stumbling around hung over or sleep deprived. When I first visited you that friend of yours Devi the dominatrix was living there, she and a bunch of other people I don’t remember. I remember a dinner party in which someone innocently asked Devi what she did for a living. She replied with relish that she “looked at men’s dicks.” When the interrogator naturally asked her to elaborate, she said, “I hit men, usually naked men. I am a dominatrix.” The room fell silent and all the men stared at Devi with speculation, lust and interest.
At the entrance to your apartment was a shop otherwise known as “Nerdsville USA”. It was a Dungeons and Dragons hideout/supply store and it hosted lots of tournaments. We were always looking in to see fat hairy hippies crouched over table s with little game pieces spread out. Usually the game had been narrowed down to two or three players, who were intensely concentrating in the middle of a small crowd of rapt on-lookers. I was always so glad I was going to a party at YOUR house, rather than joining the party at Nerdsville, USA.
The lights were always dim in your living room, the couches always soft and enveloping. A sparse yet womb-like atmosphere. There is a strange lack of décor - no big paintings, no junk. Everything a beige/brown. Some Christmas lights somewhere. That long echoing hallway which I many times negotiated drunk/high stoned sometimes in the middle of the night, groping along trying to figure out which room was the bathroom, which the toilet room (there is a difference!) and which was the bedrooms of Dan’s hapless roommates. Always in the toilet room the April March poster. It said April March on it, and then underneath something like Cromminence Decoder. I do not know who April March is, but she always looked remote and cool and impossibly hip. Every time I saw that poster I was drunk/high/stoned, and her cool countenance would stare out at me as I enjoyed a moment of calm before re-entering the fray of Dan’s loud parties. I don’t think of you, Dan, as much of a “partier” yet I remember so many fun, high times at your house:
One party about ten years ago at which my friend Thomas saw fit to take mushrooms, pot, and drink. He was so high he could not negotiate the stairs, and sat at the top, peering down, muttering, “I can’t go down….it all spins….best to stay here.” He stayed and stayed, only to be one of the last to leave at 4 am.
Many happy hours spent in the smoking “room” (I use the term loosely) off the kitchen. This “room” was cold, dank, and filled with old bikes, overturned plastic buckets, luggage, and garbage bags filled with old clothes, yet it was the heart of many a party. Smokers squatted on the buckets and slumped on the bags and littered everywhere with their cigarette butts. I often got in drunken conversations there and never left, I stayed out there shivering, bumming cigarettes, and babbling about movies, movie stars, and movie directors.
New years Eve one year I took X with Dan and Dan’s girlfriend at the time Ryan, and my husband. We went up on the roof and looked at the fireworks, and then spent the rest of the evening on those couches. At 2 am or so, Russ, Dan’s roommate at the time, came home and engaged us in some sort of discussion. I remember I did a lot of babbling, I remember Russ eyes, magnified by his big ’70 style glasses, staring at me dubiously as I prattled on, and on. At this party I, high as a kite, naturally requested soul music, maybe some Aretha or some Stevie. Dan informed me that he did not have CDs by these artists. I then requested “anything by anyone black.” Dan was unable to oblige. He then put on a band called “Lambchop” . This was an outrage. I liked it Ok, since, yeah, I was high as a kite and would have listened to the spin cycle of a washing machine, but really … Lambchop? The fact that Dan owned no music made by black people was a revelation to me. I realized Dan was remedial in this area, and I have mocked him ever since. He since, bowing to pressure, has bought many CDs by black people, but there was a time when the pickins was mighty thin, mighty thin.
One night, I spent the night in Dan’s spare room with my husband. We had been to a party up the street, and Dan had very nicely allowed us to sleep at his place rather than drive home drunkenly. As it happened, we did not drink much but we did see fit to take X at this other party. So we arrived at Dan’s very late and very high. Luckily for Dan, he was in bed when we showed up, and we were left to stumble that long echoing hall in the dark, whispering, “which one is it? I think it is this one….” We were sleeping in this little spare room with a bed and a few books and little else- my husband went right to sleep but I was still wired and I stayed up all night looking at someone’s art books. Books on Durer and Fra Angelico and Kandinsky. Early in the morning I crept out and got coffee down the street. It was always such a thrill to wake up and be on Divisadero street!
One night I walked out with Ryan to that park near Dan’s house, and sat in the dark, watching the dawn come up. I think it might have been the same night I tormented Russ with the babbling, but maybe not. I was wearing a black feather boa. Ryan left me and went home, I stayed and watched it get light. A homeless man came up and asked me if he could wear my boa- I gave it to him and he pranced around the park, saying “I am a princess!” over and over. He gave it back to me and I went back to Dan’s. Standing on the street, I always had trouble telling which metal gate was Dan’s - the stakes are high at 6 am when you are coming back from the park in a feather boa. I guess he left the gate open for me that night, there is no way he would have woken up to let me back in.
I remember an Artfuck decorating party - we all decorated Artfuck issues.
I remember a great TKS party, people were dancing on the sofas. The crowd went berserk when that song “Jump, jump jump around! Jump around and get down!” came on. That is not its real title, but you know the song I mean. I remember Dan’s floor swaying under the weight. I got really drunk and crept off and fell asleep on Dan’s bed. The police came. It was a great party.
DEVI SNIVELY:
1. Our first party - we attempt to square-dance to somebody's bizarre mixed tape and our neighbor calls the cops to report we're having a ho-down. I believe this was the night she earned the nickname "The Grommit" - though I'm not sure we ever quite discovered why.
2. Watching the 90210 episode where Tori Spelling is nearly raped. Dave announces, "Tori Spelling - the first woman who actually deserves to be raped" then adds, presumably in jest, under his breath, "except my mother." We never were quite sure if he was kidding or not.
3. Discovering the 1 thing we all had in common was liking the Sheila E. song "The Glamorous Life" and dancing to it before an/or after many of our parties.
4. Ellen finally leaving and Hany sharing his Egyptian goat fable.
5. The "Fuck Room"
6. mornings when John Coltrane Mass drowned out our upstairs neighbor's morning retching ritual.
7. Spanking night of course!
8. Accidentally getting ratio of liquor wrong in Jello shots and everybody puking. I had to be forcibly dragged from the toilet I was hugging at Bondage-A-go-go
9. Dan's sausage quiche.
10. Hany's phone messages about late charges on porno video rentals
TOM SCOTT:
I was around at the very beginning. The genesis. I had different glasses then and was newly married. I was key. Without me the Divis place would have never existed. “Bullshit!” you say! Well then:
1990: I meet Dave and we become friends.
1991: My girlfriend sees a flyer on a telephone pole looking for softball players. I sign up and begin playing for the Consumers.
1993: I get Dave to join the Consumers. Dan meets a few Consumers at a party and is asked to join the team (was I at the party? Maybe). Dave and Dan decide to move in together, each bringing a friend to complete the original line up.
Tada: The Divis place. It was big with many rooms.
My memories in no particular order:
Girls were attracted to Dave and would sneak into his room at night.
Devi had a whip in her bedroom window overlooking the street. She didn’t really like me much.
Hany wore suburban-looking clothes.
A swarm of drunken Consumers descended the night of that first Thanksgiving and ate Dan’s turkey leftovers (he got kinda mad). I recall he also liked ice cream quite a bit.
I used to fall asleep in the living room during parties.
Caption for photo:
The first party, October 16, 1993. It was a birthday party for me.
HYLAND BARON
I Never had Sex at 347 Divisadero
I never had sex at 347 Divisadero. But I did once pop out of a cardboard cake. For Dan's 30th birthday.
Years later I learned that cake popping customarily entails nudity. I was not nude. Which was ultimately a good thing for all parties involved, but in retrospect I think it must have been rather lackluster for the birthday boy and the guests.
I was never offered sex at 347 Divisadero, but/ and/ therefore the place is obscene to me none the less. Every time I am there I am stunned by the amount of space and the number of rooms. I think that at one point Dan had a bedroom, a sitting room, a drawing room (for comics), and a writing room.
I have a thing for space. Beautiful space. Elegantly proportioned space. Elegantly proportioned rooms. Hallways. Stairways. Wainscoting. That wainscoting in the playroom. The ceiling medallions, the crown molding. Oh, baby... no wonder I’m now melancholy that I never had sex at 347 Divisadero.
[Note to self: Must ask next boyfriend to whisper architectural details to me in the heat o’ the moment, especially “lath and plaster.”]
Oh details, how thou doth make me weak. Those old-timey tin things in the corners of the stairs that (I'm guessing) are designed to prevent dust from collecting in the corners and to make sweeping easier. I can’t rightly say that I’ve ever seen them anywhere else.
I never had sex at 347 Divisadero. But I often wanted to curl up in a corner and spend the night. 'Night, Dan. 'Night, Elka. 'Night, Ozzie.
BRENT SEARCY:
OK, here's my 347 memory. Kind of unexciting, but if the engineer doesn't reminisce about the history of the sound equipment, who will?
I remember that, while we always had DJs at the TKS parties held at 347 Divisadero, we didn’t actually own any real DJ equipment. So, two hours before the party, we would each be unplugging various pieces of our home stereo system (random turntables, old single-tray cd players, whatever speakers we hadn’t blown out during the last party) and lugging them up the stairs. The only legitimate DJ gear we owned was the Numark cross fader, which we positioned prominently in the center of all the random equipment we scavenenged from our bedrooms … and that comprised the sound system that kept everyone dancing in the living room. Somehow, it always worked out and sounded great for all those parties at 347 Divis. Ultimately, we ended up melting the insides of our under-powered amplifier and graduated to using real equipment at the Rickshaw Stop.
CHRIS BATY:
The magazine XLR8R is located around the corner from 347 Divisadero. XLR8R is a popular magazine for obsessive techno and hip-hop heads, but they're just geeky carpetbaggers compared to the real publishing empire on the block. I'm speaking, of course, of Nerd Magazine, one of the several well-respected magazines run from the Divisadero apartment over the years. And getting out the pre-eminent journal for nerds and the people who love them sometimes required the use of the entire apartment. I'll never forget the time I came over to visit Dan and the entire length of the football-field-length hallway was completely coated with hundreds of hand-screened Nerd Magazine covers, the blood-red fists on them giving an inspiring Nerd Power salute to all who came and went.
**
The Three Kinds of Stupid 003 party was the last one Dan, Brent, and I threw at 347 Divisadero before harassment from The Man forced us to go elsewhere. All the TKS parties were exciting in their own ways, but at TKS003 I experienced a moment that will stay with me for the rest of my life. That moment happened early in the evening, when my would-be date for the evening, Elly Karl, arrived at the party. Elka had promised to bring Elly (her sister) to the party in a none-too-subtle matchmaking effort. I was standing in the living room when she arrived, and I looked through the doorway into the kitchen and caught a glimpse of a very cute blonde girl, her hair pinned back in a sexily Bjorkish manner. She was smiling and clutching a huge bottle of Makers Mark, and I could tell that my future had just arrived. Best of all, it was a laden with whisky!
The pigs shut the party down around 2 am (I believe it was more like 12:30 - the Editor), as they always did. But for the first time in 347 Divisadero party-throwing history, I was absolutely ecstatic to see the men in blue arrive. Because it meant the third TKS night was finally over, and my first night with Elly could finally begin.
JAKE STROHM:
I can't believe 347 Divisadero is to be no more. This is probably the house I have spent more time in than any except my own. I don't know what I will do for baseball season or basketball season or football season. Did I really watch the Red Sox beat the Yankees at 347 Divisadero? I know I saw one of the most boring super bowls of all time. I don't remember when I first showed up, but it had to be in the early 90s. I remember going to parties and knowing no one ... then slowly meeting Dan, Dean, Dave, Will, Christian of course, and maybe Craig. No, Craig came later. Who else was around? Tom and Kathy, Hany. It seemed like every party I knew a few more people, and I would always bring everyone I could think of, because in those days a free keg meant drop everything else. We were always looking for women, and what better place not to find them and leave late feeling lonely.
One night Dan said he was having a party, and it was going to be sort of different -- all KALX people this time. I sat on the back porch with Dave and Craig wondering who was this guy Russ who was getting a surprise party. The events changed as cooler music was played, and a lot of the old people moved away. Dan had his 30th birthday featuring a cake and a zine. We watched a lot of foreign films. And I started hearing about this crowd centered around Chris Baty who watched Survivor every week and did really cool things on the weekends and took trips to Baja and went to Burning Man. I learned that Chris Baty wasn't even really the center; he was just the one part of the group that I knew. I was dying to meet these people, and sure enough one night there they all were at yet another 347 party. Thus began the greatest period in the history of 347 Divisadero: Three Kinds of Stupid parties, pimp parties, peeing in the sink, dancing in the front room, dancing in the back room, wigs and hats, '90s parties, the soft rock room, top ten songs, free stuff, old school hip hop, Belle and Sebastian, Grateful Dead parties, downloading, disco balls.
Thanks for the memories, Dan. I'll miss it more than you. Well, not quite that much, but a lot.
DAVE MUSSAY
Oh yeah, I'm going to write something for sure. Maybe a horror story about the first scary night by myself in the apartment, alone with nothing but a small black and white t.v. and that rickety wooden ladder (I'm sure it's still in the smoking room) or that rip-roaring Halloween pre-party and going up to John Sloan's and Devi putting clothes pins on her nipples, or about the shocking time I walked in and Devi was giving Hany a massage on the couch (I lost my eyesight for hours afterwards), or the infamous stand-off about unclogging the toilet or the fateful party I met Lori at or, man they go on and on and on.... there's the party where Hany and I argued about who got to hit on/strike out with Lori first. I think during that party we ran down to chances to play pool, and she left her driver's license there. The next day we again argued about who got to return it to her. Idiots.
to: artfuck
from: bjkiem
re: 347
the brain
added together we're a prime number
prime of our lives: celibacy, debt
glands
i owe it all to the jungle gym for
introducing me to the allure of
inanimate objects, unattainable
self-destruction, self-mutiliation
self-gratification in the shower
after i discover a cache of girlie
mags, it takes a village to burn a
witch stoked, stoked elevated gray clouds
spirit
divisadero, neat incision of
youth, exposed fear and desire, the food
longing
women with men, women with women,
red hooks sierra nevadas madre,
mother where are you, on this gray street?
LAURA BOLES:
Dear Dan, I am so sorry you are moving out of your apartment. All things must pass, but change is always, always hard. You asked us all awhile ago to write down our memories of your apartment. Here are mine.
I hardly ever saw your apartment in the afternoon. I either came over at night, or was there the next morning, stumbling around hung over or sleep deprived. When I first visited you that friend of yours Devi the dominatrix was living there, she and a bunch of other people I don’t remember. I remember a dinner party in which someone innocently asked Devi what she did for a living. She replied with relish that she “looked at men’s dicks.” When the interrogator naturally asked her to elaborate, she said, “I hit men, usually naked men. I am a dominatrix.” The room fell silent and all the men stared at Devi with speculation, lust and interest.
At the entrance to your apartment was a shop otherwise known as “Nerdsville USA”. It was a Dungeons and Dragons hideout/supply store and it hosted lots of tournaments. We were always looking in to see fat hairy hippies crouched over table s with little game pieces spread out. Usually the game had been narrowed down to two or three players, who were intensely concentrating in the middle of a small crowd of rapt on-lookers. I was always so glad I was going to a party at YOUR house, rather than joining the party at Nerdsville, USA.
The lights were always dim in your living room, the couches always soft and enveloping. A sparse yet womb-like atmosphere. There is a strange lack of décor - no big paintings, no junk. Everything a beige/brown. Some Christmas lights somewhere. That long echoing hallway which I many times negotiated drunk/high stoned sometimes in the middle of the night, groping along trying to figure out which room was the bathroom, which the toilet room (there is a difference!) and which was the bedrooms of Dan’s hapless roommates. Always in the toilet room the April March poster. It said April March on it, and then underneath something like Cromminence Decoder. I do not know who April March is, but she always looked remote and cool and impossibly hip. Every time I saw that poster I was drunk/high/stoned, and her cool countenance would stare out at me as I enjoyed a moment of calm before re-entering the fray of Dan’s loud parties. I don’t think of you, Dan, as much of a “partier” yet I remember so many fun, high times at your house:
One party about ten years ago at which my friend Thomas saw fit to take mushrooms, pot, and drink. He was so high he could not negotiate the stairs, and sat at the top, peering down, muttering, “I can’t go down….it all spins….best to stay here.” He stayed and stayed, only to be one of the last to leave at 4 am.
Many happy hours spent in the smoking “room” (I use the term loosely) off the kitchen. This “room” was cold, dank, and filled with old bikes, overturned plastic buckets, luggage, and garbage bags filled with old clothes, yet it was the heart of many a party. Smokers squatted on the buckets and slumped on the bags and littered everywhere with their cigarette butts. I often got in drunken conversations there and never left, I stayed out there shivering, bumming cigarettes, and babbling about movies, movie stars, and movie directors.
New years Eve one year I took X with Dan and Dan’s girlfriend at the time Ryan, and my husband. We went up on the roof and looked at the fireworks, and then spent the rest of the evening on those couches. At 2 am or so, Russ, Dan’s roommate at the time, came home and engaged us in some sort of discussion. I remember I did a lot of babbling, I remember Russ eyes, magnified by his big ’70 style glasses, staring at me dubiously as I prattled on, and on. At this party I, high as a kite, naturally requested soul music, maybe some Aretha or some Stevie. Dan informed me that he did not have CDs by these artists. I then requested “anything by anyone black.” Dan was unable to oblige. He then put on a band called “Lambchop” . This was an outrage. I liked it Ok, since, yeah, I was high as a kite and would have listened to the spin cycle of a washing machine, but really … Lambchop? The fact that Dan owned no music made by black people was a revelation to me. I realized Dan was remedial in this area, and I have mocked him ever since. He since, bowing to pressure, has bought many CDs by black people, but there was a time when the pickins was mighty thin, mighty thin.
One night, I spent the night in Dan’s spare room with my husband. We had been to a party up the street, and Dan had very nicely allowed us to sleep at his place rather than drive home drunkenly. As it happened, we did not drink much but we did see fit to take X at this other party. So we arrived at Dan’s very late and very high. Luckily for Dan, he was in bed when we showed up, and we were left to stumble that long echoing hall in the dark, whispering, “which one is it? I think it is this one….” We were sleeping in this little spare room with a bed and a few books and little else- my husband went right to sleep but I was still wired and I stayed up all night looking at someone’s art books. Books on Durer and Fra Angelico and Kandinsky. Early in the morning I crept out and got coffee down the street. It was always such a thrill to wake up and be on Divisadero street!
One night I walked out with Ryan to that park near Dan’s house, and sat in the dark, watching the dawn come up. I think it might have been the same night I tormented Russ with the babbling, but maybe not. I was wearing a black feather boa. Ryan left me and went home, I stayed and watched it get light. A homeless man came up and asked me if he could wear my boa- I gave it to him and he pranced around the park, saying “I am a princess!” over and over. He gave it back to me and I went back to Dan’s. Standing on the street, I always had trouble telling which metal gate was Dan’s - the stakes are high at 6 am when you are coming back from the park in a feather boa. I guess he left the gate open for me that night, there is no way he would have woken up to let me back in.
I remember an Artfuck decorating party - we all decorated Artfuck issues.
I remember a great TKS party, people were dancing on the sofas. The crowd went berserk when that song “Jump, jump jump around! Jump around and get down!” came on. That is not its real title, but you know the song I mean. I remember Dan’s floor swaying under the weight. I got really drunk and crept off and fell asleep on Dan’s bed. The police came. It was a great party.
DEVI SNIVELY:
1. Our first party - we attempt to square-dance to somebody's bizarre mixed tape and our neighbor calls the cops to report we're having a ho-down. I believe this was the night she earned the nickname "The Grommit" - though I'm not sure we ever quite discovered why.
2. Watching the 90210 episode where Tori Spelling is nearly raped. Dave announces, "Tori Spelling - the first woman who actually deserves to be raped" then adds, presumably in jest, under his breath, "except my mother." We never were quite sure if he was kidding or not.
3. Discovering the 1 thing we all had in common was liking the Sheila E. song "The Glamorous Life" and dancing to it before an/or after many of our parties.
4. Ellen finally leaving and Hany sharing his Egyptian goat fable.
5. The "Fuck Room"
6. mornings when John Coltrane Mass drowned out our upstairs neighbor's morning retching ritual.
7. Spanking night of course!
8. Accidentally getting ratio of liquor wrong in Jello shots and everybody puking. I had to be forcibly dragged from the toilet I was hugging at Bondage-A-go-go
9. Dan's sausage quiche.
10. Hany's phone messages about late charges on porno video rentals
TOM SCOTT:
I was around at the very beginning. The genesis. I had different glasses then and was newly married. I was key. Without me the Divis place would have never existed. “Bullshit!” you say! Well then:
1990: I meet Dave and we become friends.
1991: My girlfriend sees a flyer on a telephone pole looking for softball players. I sign up and begin playing for the Consumers.
1993: I get Dave to join the Consumers. Dan meets a few Consumers at a party and is asked to join the team (was I at the party? Maybe). Dave and Dan decide to move in together, each bringing a friend to complete the original line up.
Tada: The Divis place. It was big with many rooms.
My memories in no particular order:
Girls were attracted to Dave and would sneak into his room at night.
Devi had a whip in her bedroom window overlooking the street. She didn’t really like me much.
Hany wore suburban-looking clothes.
A swarm of drunken Consumers descended the night of that first Thanksgiving and ate Dan’s turkey leftovers (he got kinda mad). I recall he also liked ice cream quite a bit.
I used to fall asleep in the living room during parties.
Caption for photo:
The first party, October 16, 1993. It was a birthday party for me.
HYLAND BARON
I Never had Sex at 347 Divisadero
I never had sex at 347 Divisadero. But I did once pop out of a cardboard cake. For Dan's 30th birthday.
Years later I learned that cake popping customarily entails nudity. I was not nude. Which was ultimately a good thing for all parties involved, but in retrospect I think it must have been rather lackluster for the birthday boy and the guests.
I was never offered sex at 347 Divisadero, but/ and/ therefore the place is obscene to me none the less. Every time I am there I am stunned by the amount of space and the number of rooms. I think that at one point Dan had a bedroom, a sitting room, a drawing room (for comics), and a writing room.
I have a thing for space. Beautiful space. Elegantly proportioned space. Elegantly proportioned rooms. Hallways. Stairways. Wainscoting. That wainscoting in the playroom. The ceiling medallions, the crown molding. Oh, baby... no wonder I’m now melancholy that I never had sex at 347 Divisadero.
[Note to self: Must ask next boyfriend to whisper architectural details to me in the heat o’ the moment, especially “lath and plaster.”]
Oh details, how thou doth make me weak. Those old-timey tin things in the corners of the stairs that (I'm guessing) are designed to prevent dust from collecting in the corners and to make sweeping easier. I can’t rightly say that I’ve ever seen them anywhere else.
I never had sex at 347 Divisadero. But I often wanted to curl up in a corner and spend the night. 'Night, Dan. 'Night, Elka. 'Night, Ozzie.
BRENT SEARCY:
OK, here's my 347 memory. Kind of unexciting, but if the engineer doesn't reminisce about the history of the sound equipment, who will?
I remember that, while we always had DJs at the TKS parties held at 347 Divisadero, we didn’t actually own any real DJ equipment. So, two hours before the party, we would each be unplugging various pieces of our home stereo system (random turntables, old single-tray cd players, whatever speakers we hadn’t blown out during the last party) and lugging them up the stairs. The only legitimate DJ gear we owned was the Numark cross fader, which we positioned prominently in the center of all the random equipment we scavenenged from our bedrooms … and that comprised the sound system that kept everyone dancing in the living room. Somehow, it always worked out and sounded great for all those parties at 347 Divis. Ultimately, we ended up melting the insides of our under-powered amplifier and graduated to using real equipment at the Rickshaw Stop.
CHRIS BATY:
The magazine XLR8R is located around the corner from 347 Divisadero. XLR8R is a popular magazine for obsessive techno and hip-hop heads, but they're just geeky carpetbaggers compared to the real publishing empire on the block. I'm speaking, of course, of Nerd Magazine, one of the several well-respected magazines run from the Divisadero apartment over the years. And getting out the pre-eminent journal for nerds and the people who love them sometimes required the use of the entire apartment. I'll never forget the time I came over to visit Dan and the entire length of the football-field-length hallway was completely coated with hundreds of hand-screened Nerd Magazine covers, the blood-red fists on them giving an inspiring Nerd Power salute to all who came and went.
**
The Three Kinds of Stupid 003 party was the last one Dan, Brent, and I threw at 347 Divisadero before harassment from The Man forced us to go elsewhere. All the TKS parties were exciting in their own ways, but at TKS003 I experienced a moment that will stay with me for the rest of my life. That moment happened early in the evening, when my would-be date for the evening, Elly Karl, arrived at the party. Elka had promised to bring Elly (her sister) to the party in a none-too-subtle matchmaking effort. I was standing in the living room when she arrived, and I looked through the doorway into the kitchen and caught a glimpse of a very cute blonde girl, her hair pinned back in a sexily Bjorkish manner. She was smiling and clutching a huge bottle of Makers Mark, and I could tell that my future had just arrived. Best of all, it was a laden with whisky!
The pigs shut the party down around 2 am (I believe it was more like 12:30 - the Editor), as they always did. But for the first time in 347 Divisadero party-throwing history, I was absolutely ecstatic to see the men in blue arrive. Because it meant the third TKS night was finally over, and my first night with Elly could finally begin.
JAKE STROHM:
I can't believe 347 Divisadero is to be no more. This is probably the house I have spent more time in than any except my own. I don't know what I will do for baseball season or basketball season or football season. Did I really watch the Red Sox beat the Yankees at 347 Divisadero? I know I saw one of the most boring super bowls of all time. I don't remember when I first showed up, but it had to be in the early 90s. I remember going to parties and knowing no one ... then slowly meeting Dan, Dean, Dave, Will, Christian of course, and maybe Craig. No, Craig came later. Who else was around? Tom and Kathy, Hany. It seemed like every party I knew a few more people, and I would always bring everyone I could think of, because in those days a free keg meant drop everything else. We were always looking for women, and what better place not to find them and leave late feeling lonely.
One night Dan said he was having a party, and it was going to be sort of different -- all KALX people this time. I sat on the back porch with Dave and Craig wondering who was this guy Russ who was getting a surprise party. The events changed as cooler music was played, and a lot of the old people moved away. Dan had his 30th birthday featuring a cake and a zine. We watched a lot of foreign films. And I started hearing about this crowd centered around Chris Baty who watched Survivor every week and did really cool things on the weekends and took trips to Baja and went to Burning Man. I learned that Chris Baty wasn't even really the center; he was just the one part of the group that I knew. I was dying to meet these people, and sure enough one night there they all were at yet another 347 party. Thus began the greatest period in the history of 347 Divisadero: Three Kinds of Stupid parties, pimp parties, peeing in the sink, dancing in the front room, dancing in the back room, wigs and hats, '90s parties, the soft rock room, top ten songs, free stuff, old school hip hop, Belle and Sebastian, Grateful Dead parties, downloading, disco balls.
Thanks for the memories, Dan. I'll miss it more than you. Well, not quite that much, but a lot.
DAVE MUSSAY
Oh yeah, I'm going to write something for sure. Maybe a horror story about the first scary night by myself in the apartment, alone with nothing but a small black and white t.v. and that rickety wooden ladder (I'm sure it's still in the smoking room) or that rip-roaring Halloween pre-party and going up to John Sloan's and Devi putting clothes pins on her nipples, or about the shocking time I walked in and Devi was giving Hany a massage on the couch (I lost my eyesight for hours afterwards), or the infamous stand-off about unclogging the toilet or the fateful party I met Lori at or, man they go on and on and on.... there's the party where Hany and I argued about who got to hit on/strike out with Lori first. I think during that party we ran down to chances to play pool, and she left her driver's license there. The next day we again argued about who got to return it to her. Idiots.
to: artfuck
from: bjkiem
re: 347
the brain
added together we're a prime number
prime of our lives: celibacy, debt
glands
i owe it all to the jungle gym for
introducing me to the allure of
inanimate objects, unattainable
self-destruction, self-mutiliation
self-gratification in the shower
after i discover a cache of girlie
mags, it takes a village to burn a
witch stoked, stoked elevated gray clouds
spirit
divisadero, neat incision of
youth, exposed fear and desire, the food
longing
women with men, women with women,
red hooks sierra nevadas madre,
mother where are you, on this gray street?