1983:
Rectangle Party: First beer, bonfires, and naked skateboarding.
That entire summer I hung out with Andy Baptista, Danny Gabor, Steve
Howard the liar, and Gordon Salel. Most of our activity revolved
around hanging out at the creek, the fairgrounds, and the Rectangle
and other skate spots. Curbs. Parking lots and loading docks.
The Rectangle was a drainage ditch in between tree-lined Foothill
Road and the Castlewood Golf Course. It was about 3 miles from my
front door. I used to ride my skate there with Steve the liar kid,
who was a few years younger than me, a tan and bleach blonde rich.
We both had G&S boards.
I hung out with him even though he was younger than me. I had been
ostracized by my peers in the end of 8th grade, betrayed by friends
(Mark Bethel, Scott Bonner, Brady Baker and some other kid) who
threw my skate on top of a backstop. When I climbed up to get it,
they told me they were gonna kick my ass and called me a poser who
couldn't skate. Probably because I hung out with Matt Krueger who
was also called a "Poser". We weren't posers though, we were just
both really small guys for our age. We could skate as good as anyone
else. Even some guy in the christian group made fun of my G&S
Sidecut. It was in 8th grade that I decided they could all fucking
die.
But I also hung with Danny Gabor, a year older and wiser, who was
an old friend from CYO track and an awesome punk athlete. He had
a mohawk in 8th grade, and wore bondage pants to school. Plus he
hung out on a cool block in Pleasanton, behind the high school.
All the kids in his neighborhood knew each other for years and were
pals. He taught me skate tricks by the aquatic park, and was always
nice.
I think the first time I went out to the rectangle was with Danny.
We skated out there, It was a hot summer day, and AndyB. was there,
with a unibrow, a mohawk and a home-made black flag t-shirt.
The rectangle was huge; a cement dry ditch around 30 yards long,
14'deep, with 3 sides to skate. The other side faced a dried creek
bed, where runoff could be diverted away from the train tracks,
and fed into the marshy creek. There was some RAMONES graffiti and
DOA graffiti, probably done by Andy. I was scared to skate it at
first and borrowed some pads from Andy, and skated something close
to vert, but more like 45%.
There was a big old hole running the width of one end of the ditch,
about 4'X16'. The spray paint label read: DEATH BOX. The thing was
to carve the box on the steeper side. If you fell, you were likely
to fall into the Death Box. There were other hazards too, gravel
and holes in the walls big enough to lock up on. But I definitely
got the hang of it with time. I just wore kneepads or elbow pads
if someone had them. The coolest trick you could do would be a Boneless
Air, a Gabor specialty.
I started hanging out with older kids in the beginning of the school
year, mostly kids on the track team who liked to drink. We often
went to beercan beach outside of Santa Cruz. Later on, I set my
personal record of 11 Stroh's with this group. The beginning of
high school looked bright.
The school year started, and I went to a party at the 'Tangle with
Andy. It was twilight in the fall, Oak trees hiding us from foothill
road. There were tons of cars parked along the creek and near a
utility building we called the Jail because it had bars on the windows.
There were lots of older kids there, a lot of skaters, and I met
the Hubers there for the first time.
I was handed a semi-cold Budweiser can, and thought, "what the hell".
I smoked clove cigarettes supplied by Andy. There was a bonfire,
and kids were jumping over it. I drank two or three beers and I
was stoked. Dennis Huber took it upon himself to take off his pants
and shoes and carved the deathbox. I had found my people.
Thrasher party, San Ramon, 1986, summer.
This was the time of the terrible three: Mike, Tony, and Darren.
We were getting kicked out of parties all over the Valley. We all
had shaved heads, and wore flannels and t-shirts and skate shoes.
My band Rabid Lassie was supposed to play at this party, at a friend-of-a-friend's
house. Parents were away. The house was occupied by 2 teenage girls.
The older sister left before we got there.
The band set up, there were only about 20 people there. It was a
one story suburban ranch job in an average San Ramon Neighborhood,
about 15 miles from home. The band set up, we had some shitty kind
of p.a. going, and after the first song, I broke a bass string,
making it impossible to play without another. My band mates packed
up and left. The party became a bit wilder, with parents absent
and all. More drinking. There were a lot of Basics there (baseball
hat and shorts guys), but they were okay.
Darren started things off by exploring the refrigerator. We started
by mixing things up in there; a little milk in the salad dressing,
eggs in the peanut butter, etc.
Then it was on to the microwave. I think it was around this point
when it was understood that the other girl who lived there left
to go dancing in Walnut Creek at Lipps or something. So into the
microwave went all sorts of treats: eggs (which exploded), fruit,
all sorts of stuff. Darren hung all his weight on the microwave
door, bending it permanently.
Other kids were getting interested and stopped playing hackysack.
Tony burned a a hole on the dining room table with a cigarette.
Some other guy we met decided to put burn marks on the faces of
hallway portraits.
I had hooked up with Tony at this time, Darren was busy chatting
with basics in the kitchen and buttering the kitchen floor. After
this was completed enough, kids were running and sliding across
the kitchen floor into the dark garage. He later claimed that some
guy buttered the family dog's ass.
Tony and I went to the girl's bedroom, a common place to explore
at parties. We went through her closet and found an Alhambra bottle
full of change. Tony dumped it on the floor and started to pick
out silver. I, meanwhile, was busy exploring the contents of the
space between her mattress, finding notes, and juicy personal stuff.
Just then, the older sister burst into the room, and screamed :
"what are you doing in here???" I looked up from the lifted mattress
and gave her a lame excuse:
"uh, looking for my wallet".
Tony and I both made a fast line for the door, and found Darren
and got the hell out of there. By this time, my band-members had
packed up and left, and no one would give us a ride to Pleasanton
anyway. We decided we were fucked, and we headed out of the house
for the main road that ran along the edge of the foothills. We found
a 7-11 and got some snacks. We lucked out when a pickup with 2 hesher
guys offered us a ride back to town.
Party at "B-Park" Fall,1987.
Mark Mikelonis turned me onto this place. We would drive out to
this corporate park near the freeway and the mall, and get drunk
with new wave girls, Nikki and Claudia. It was an artificial nature
place, all landscaped and bridged: with benches, fenced-in areas
of nature, grasses, flowers and artificial streams gurgling over
fake rocks. The orange halogen lights were on all night long. There
was some heshers there who had discovered a power outlet set-up
for the little corporate picnics that took place there during the
day. The heshers used it to plug in their blender and make fruity
alcoholic drinks. Apparently there were no guards because we never
got caught there and we were loud and stupid.
Summer of 1985: Kegger at the Ranch, party thrown by Jerry the
Punker
A party thrown by Jerry and Big Al Frye: a true metalhead punker
and an ex-skinhead, who still lived with his parents. A local legend
to all the young punks.
Jerry used to be a vato, and had jail tattoos to prove it. He lived
out there with his fat dad out on the ranch and acreage. It was
across the road from Camp Parks, the military base in Dublin. There
were rolling hills and sparse oak trees.
The location of the ranch was supposedly haunted; the rumor being
that it was once "the Gallows" in the old west days. An early version
of Rabid Lassie, " Clam Plate Orgy" Played this, their first show
outside of the garage. It was out on Dougherty road, an undeveloped
part of Alameda County outside Dublin. A bunch of metal bands played.
The yellow xerox flyer said "Kegger" on it and had a little map
drawn on it. There was an image of the Iron Maiden Eddie serving
up a keg. Jerry put them up at teenage hangouts like the Game Station
and 7-11 from Fremont to Concord.
The stage was built especially for the event, a plywood and 2X4
construction. It was built right in front of the ranch house. Clam
Plate Orgy played a few songs and the played "breakin the law" forever,
hoping to please the Metalheads, who had the potential to kick our
skatepunk asses.
I think what made this party memorable was the cross pollination
of local punks and heshers. I met Janet that night, and a bunch
of other Livermore punks. The amazing thing is that there were no
fights that I recall. Mostly the longhairs hated punks, until Metallica
and S.O.D. and Slayer came along. Their music got faster.
Trent Nelson comments:
"I remember the bass player for Rot had a cardboard battle-axe on
the neck of his AXE. Then I remember my van got blocked in, and
you were supposedly spotting me as we backed out of a really tight
spot. We ended up hitting some guy's truck, lightly I think, but
he came over and was going to kick my ass. Thanks, Mike!"
Party in Springtown, 1986.
Springtown was a flat housingtract /development which was on the
other side of the 580 freeway outside of Livermore. There was hardly
anything there except houses which had been originally developed
around a public golf course in the early 70's.
Darren and Kirk were hanging out a lot at this time, Kirk lived
out in springtown with a bunch of roofers who liked crank and scrappy
rocker chicks. I was with darren and some girl? We went out to the
crank house, and the party was lame, just total heshers.
I was dying to go home after a few hours of macho bullshit, warm
beer. I tried to get Darren to go home with me, but he was such
a bastard that night. He was trying to get with this rocker chick,
and he got pissed that I wanted to leave. I ended up grabbing my
skate, and left with the intention to skate home.
This would be a fucking huge feat, since it was probably something
like 15 miles to home. I skated the first mile and made it as far
as the springtown overpass on the outskirts of Livermore.
I called my mom from a payphone at the 7-11, and my mom came and
picked me up, no questions asked. That was at the time my mom was
trying to get her shit together and was living at home with me and
my grandparents. I never told my friends that I got a ride.
Party at my house, 1985.
My grandparents were out of town, and I decided to have a party.
The first people to get there were the Hubers and Nathan Staska.
We drank a sixer of shitty beer and smoked bowls while watching
Polanski's "Popeye" on TV.
I remember how good it felt to have these 2 huge guys at my party,
being nice to me. I was a sophmore in High school, and the previous
year these guys were throwing sandwiches at me. Huber and Staska
were the 2 punk guys you didn't want to fuck with. They were 2 mormon
guys who were always trying to scare the shit out of everyone and
they looked like skinheads, although they were more california hardcore
than English Oi or something.
Nathan once tried to trim his eyebrows, but he kept trimming until
they were all gone. It was an accident, but the dude looked scary.
They would torture Darin Huber's younger brother, Dennis. One story
was that Dennis was at home after school one day with one of his
little rocker girlfriends, and the two big guys showed up. They
asked Dennis to come out of his room, and when he did, they tore
all his clothes off and threw him back into the bedroom where rocker
chick was. He was totally naked and very embarrassed. After the
girl left, they stripped him again and tied him to a rolling tool
chest in the garage and rolled him down the driveway out onto the
street. Poor guy.
Anyways, there was a party at my house, and it took a while for
people to show up. Paul Wells and John Ball showed up. This was
when the punker/rocker tensions were still high, but we got along
with these guys. Metallica had patched some things up. Weed smoking
helped bring us together too.
More people showed up. I just remember getting pretty loaded. Huber
didn't leave his seat the whole time. He was holding court. The
party got packed. Teenage drinking in a small condo in California.
Dave Hall (aka the shakey old man) came in the door and told us
how some rockers had thrown a beercan at him as he was skating up
to my place. This was a good opportunity to kick ass. Inside the
apartment were a bunch of fucking aggro drunk skate punk boys.
We all ran outside and there was some kind of 80's silver Mustang
or something, Dave was out there, and then Gabor and Hubers and
Staska were out there too. I had a small green baseball bat , a
souvenier from an Oakland A's game. Perfect weapon. Dave Hall threw
a beer can and broke the rear window of the car. He turned to the
rest of us and smiled.
I remember the car backed up towards the growing number of kids.
Gabor ran up to the moving car and used his skate to attack the
tail lights. Noise and confusion. People jumped on the back of the
car, kicking and yelling. Everyone bailed. A small group of friends
went back inside.
I went out after a while, all pumped. Scared of retaliation. I brought
my little bat with me. The cops showed up and asked me why I had
a bat, and I told them it was because these other kids were threatening
us. The cop took my bat and I went home.
