Gimme Something Better (23 page)

Somehow, people found out that Jeff was down in the Pit drinking. The Pit was a construction site but construction had halted. It was just a big hole and it was there for years. A lot of bad fights happened there.

Everyone went down there to beat up or kill Jeff. No one thought about the fact Jeff would almost certainly have something sharp on him somewhere. Terry Bash tried to get him first, but Jeff’s really quick—he’s got a natural springiness to him. He snapped out like a little pit viper and cut Terry’s forehead wide open, blood all over his face.

Ace Disgrace charged in and knocked Jeff over. Ace was a big guy but Jeff just went off like a Tasmanian devil, swinging with that straight razor. He eventually broke the knife on the back of Ace’s head and left a maze of cuts because Ace wouldn’t let go. Terry started kicking Jeff in the head. Jeff was really lucky to come out alive. Jeff’s a good friend of mine. We laugh about it now and again.

Silke Tudor:
When I first started hanging out at 13, 14, there were a few badass punk chicks that really fucked with me—I’ve got some good Tenderloin scars. But after my wannabe skinhead boyfriend shaved my head, that pretty much stopped. Well, Audra hunted me for awhile but that was because she was sleeping with him, too. We were just getting wasted, hanging out with thugs and behaving very very badly, but there was no philosophy behind it. My childhood boyfriend was black and Portuguese. My younger brother is half black. I hated his father but I fucking loved that kid. When I was 14 and he was four, I would dress him up in little boots and braces, and take him to hang out with my punk friends. That’s how little any of this had to do with race. It was fucking violent, though, no doubt about it. Very violent.

Audra Angeli-Slawson:
Skinheads went hunting for trouble. One night, it was like every skinhead for a 100-mile radius had planned to meet at the Farm and rush the door for some show. I was already inside when they rushed the door. It was really gnarly, just crazy. They were beating up people that I knew. I got kicked out along with the rest of them. We went back to Skinhead Hill.

Jason Lockwood:
It was Hippie Hill originally. The park that’s at the end of Upper Haight before it drops down into Lower Haight.

Audra Angeli-Slawson:
There were about 40 skinheads from everywhere and they were all pissed off because their plan had been foiled, or whatever, and they were just looking for trouble. We got some beer, and four or five of them found some people on the hill to beat the shit out of. Me and my boyfriend were flipping out, yelling, “Do not fucking hit this person anymore! Stop—you’re gonna kill them!!” It was really bad.

David Solnit:
There was a handful of people who would fuck up a show and 300 people just wouldn’t do anything to stop it. All the more sensitive, creative, positive-minded people stopped going to those shows. It was ludicrous.

Jello Biafra:
One day they had a touch football game, punks versus skins, in Golden Gate Park. The real badass semi-organized skinheads hadn’t really hit the scene yet. They were starting to turn up but it hadn’t really gotten bad, so I thought, oh, what the fuck. I was the worst athlete in my whole school, but I never minded being knocked around in gym class. It was kind of what pogoing was about. So I played football with the skinheads.

Jeff Goldthorpe:
The midsummer punks versus skins football game did not clear up the problem. Punk audiences and the clubs in the Bay Area were pulling back from the scene because of the mounting problems with the skins.

Fat Mike:
Marc Dagger was interviewed by Tim Yohannan on
Maximum RocknRoll
Radio. That was hysterical. The guy made no sense at all.

Marc Dagger:
I ended up ripping the microphone out of the wall. Tim Yohannan and all those guys hated our guts ’cause we were just a bunch of violent fucking assholes. But they wanted to politicize everything.

James Angus Black:
I called in on that show because Dagger is my best friend and Tim Yohannan was getting the upper hand. I wanted to get in Dagger’s corner. But, even at that time, it was obvious the skins were going to break up the scene. I agreed with Jello on that completely. I wouldn’t tell him that.

Marc Dagger:
Peter Jennings interviewed us once. We were on
World News Tonight
’cause we were getting a lot of notoriety for what we were doing up in the Haight. He was talking about gang violence and skinheads coming to America. It started some stupid media sensation. I stayed out of it ’cause I didn’t want my face on the TV.

We had a reputation because a lot of black dudes used to come up to the Haight from the Fillmore District and mug people, rob people, and stab people and stuff. It got to the point, man, where every time we saw them, it was a boot party. And the cops liked it. They turned a shoulder to it because we were taking care of a problem they obviously couldn’t deal with.

They stopped coming up from the Fillmore District ’cause a couple people were found dead in the park. So we were basically running the frickin’ place. Then some of the storefronts were targeted because gay dudes owned the pizza place. When we started fucking with them, the cops started coming down on us. Because they owned the buildings and we were running off business.

Carol DMR:
I remember some terrible band was playing at the Sound of Music and Terry got his throat slit. They had done something shitty to some black guys outside and the guy came in and slit Terry’s neck from ear to ear.

Steve DePace:
The Sound of Music was the first club that popped up beyond the Mab. It was a transvestite strip bar on Turk Street.

Carol DMR:
Terry didn’t die but I’m glad I wasn’t there because this was somebody I knew and I used to hang out with. Before he became a Nazi skinhead.

Jason Lockwood:
I got kicked out of BASH. Dramatically. My cousin got jumped on Broadway by a bunch of thuggy hip hop kids. We called them stubbies. Instead of fighting, I just got him out of there. So I got kicked out. I had to fight Terry Bash on Skinhead Hill.

They actually wanted me to fight Jimmy Mange but I knew that Terry was not as good a fighter. I knew if I got into a fight with Jimmy, he was gonna maul me. And if I got into a fight with Terry he would just hit me a couple times. It worked out perfect. As perfect as it can be if you wanna completely shed all your self-respect. I wound up running because it was all the S.F. Skins and all the BASH Boys and I was certain I was gonna get killed.

I was never much of a fighter. I wanted to be a tough guy so desperately. I went through so much torture trying to be the guy that gets into fights. But I hate it. It terrifies me.

Marc Dagger:
I had to leave town ’cause I had warrants. Me and Spike and Bags stayed in New York with Harley from the Cro-Mags, Agnostic Front, a whole bunch of different skinheads that we used to take care of when they came to San Francisco.

Spike ended up getting pregnant and she didn’t want to be on the run. She wanted to go back to San Francisco to have the kid and be near Carole Lennon and her friends.

Tammy Lundy:
Carole Lennon owns Lennon Studios on Capp Street. Everyone recorded there. She was like the mother figure on the scene. Which we desperately needed.

Ninja Death:
When Aunt Spike and Marc broke up, she came back and had her treasure, Little Marc. She got a huge house on Baker Street and she immediately moved me in to be with her and Little Marc. This is where she started to actually shine. She always woke me up for school and got me on my way with a killer breakfast.

Marc Dagger:
I had to keep moving. I had a murder warrant, an assault warrant, and a probation violation—all of which got dismissed when they finally caught up with me in Texas and shipped me back to California. I ended up getting a year and a half on the probation violation.

Audra Angeli-Slawson:
But things got really weird with Bob Heick. Bob Blitz. Nazi Bob. He became a full-on crazy white supremacist.

Carol DMR:
Bob was a total nerd kid. We probably made fun of him. Six months or a year later, he came back with his boots and braces and he was a Nazi. He founded the American Front, and began working with Tom Metzger and the White Aryan Resistance. These were the same type of kids that got their lunch money stolen. These are the same type of kids that become cops.

Martin Sprouse:
This was above and beyond the Marc Dagger skinheads. This was the weird and organized Nazi skinheads.

Patrick Hughes:
They used to march down Haight Street on May Day during the late ’80s.

Jeff Goldthorpe:
Bob Heick made a name for himself in the neighborhood by kicking in the window of Bound Together anarchist bookstore.

Patrick Hughes:
Skinheads actually firebombed the store in the spring of 1989. I was working there and living behind the store so I was there to put out the fire. The White Aryan Resistance claimed responsibility.

Sara Cohen:
SHARP [Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice] grew up to combat all that shit. Everything just got so political. Shows were more like rallies than punk rock.

Silke Tudor:
A lot of us were uncomfortable with where things were heading. In private, even some of the guys admitted how fucked up it all was. But when we were at Baker Street, it was a different story. It is all so embarrassing. Unconscionable. I hope the way I live my life now makes up for some of that shit back then, but I really wish I had been less angry and fearful. I wish I had stood up.

Portia:
One day, Little Marc referred to someone as a “nigger,” so Spike packed up their things and moved north to start over. She ended up living in a small town in Idaho for 11 years, working as an EMT and a volunteer firefighter. Delivering babies, saving lives. Just like you’d expect. And Marc grew up.

Marc Dagger:
I have seven kids. I’m a grandpa now. I’m still not smart enough to walk away from a fight so I don’t go out a lot because of that. My kids need me out here.

Portia:
Spike was murdered while trying to break up a fight between two of her nephews in Mendocino County in 2008. All her favorite bands played at her memorial. Bad Posture, the Fuck-Ups, Verbal Abuse, MDC, the Lewd, Naked Lady Wrestlers, Fang and whole bunch of others.

Ninja Death:
I found out what happened to Aunt Spike from Johnithin Christ, of Code of Honor. He was her best friend. She was and always will be the only real family I ever had. She taught me how to skate, drink beer, cook, bake, sew, put on my makeup and never forget who I really was. She gave me
me
.

Jason Lockwood:
You don’t realize how bad you really felt as a kid until you look back and think, why would I do that if I didn’t feel terrible? Music really does influence you. I was a nervous wreck as a kid. So I would put on headphones and those waves of sound would white everything out.

I would pick up the stylus and drop it back on the song, over and over again like an OCD pattern. It was so dramatic, like a sensory overload, overpowering everything that I was terrified of. There was such a beautiful reckless abandon to the punk scene. I think that sound conditioned me to use music the way that I do now. If I need to be calm, I listen to chick rock. Horribly unabashed chick rock.

Rachel Rudnick:
Social Unrest was probably the best hardcore Bay Area band. They had really good catchy songs, anti-American songs, anthemy sing-alongs. Their singer Creetin was kind of the Bay Area version of Mike Ness. The girls loved him. He eventually came out of the closet, a lot of broken hearts there.

Danny Norwood:
Punk saved my life in some way. Because I was literally going to hang out in Hayward and work at the local radiator shop.