Gimme Something Better (37 page)

A young hip hop promoter seized the opportunity to present a super hip hop extravaganza, featuring talent from two rival sections of East Oakland. One group gathered in the parking lot across the street. The other group held fort inside. The kids in the parking lot were suddenly flashing guns like cowboys. The man operating the searchlight in front of the club ducked for cover.

The police responded in force. The days of Ruthie’s Inn were numbered.

Rachel DMR:
Wes wanted to do a Ruthie’s Inn documentary before he died. It was really disappointing because people who should’ve been there, that should’ve contributed, didn’t. I was really upset. Here’s the one person who gave us a chance, you know. It was hurtful to hear so many people bad-mouth him and not step back and realize where they came from.

Dean Washington:
The bottom line is, had it not been for Wes, the Berkeley punk rock and/or metal would not be what it is to this day. He did what no one else would do and some of those bands are huge today. Slayer, Metallica. I honestly don’t think it would have ever happened had it not been for Wes Robinson.

Kate Knox:
Absolutely right. Slayer’s still playing Fang and Verbal Abuse and Sick Pleasure songs. I think it had a huge effect.

Jeff Goldthorpe:
Polytechnic High was originally squatted in late 1982.

Portia:
Polytech was a huge abandoned high school on Parnassus Street near the Haight-Ashbury district. It was rumored that it was abandoned due to asbestos. Many different types of people lived there. Some hobos, some skins and the punks.

It was left without ever being emptied. There was still chalk left on the chalkboards, and costumes in the drama room. The lights still worked and there was still running water. But all of the toilets were plugged up and the bathrooms were unusable.

Audra Angeli-Slawson:
You would go to a room and squat there for awhile, and then somebody would shit in the corner or something, so it would fucking reek and you couldn’t stay there anymore. So you would just close it up and move on to the next room.

Portia:
At one point, we were all in some room on the roof. The last place that I recall everyone staying was the drama room. The police used to raid Polytech and arrest people for trespassing.

Jeff Goldthorpe:
The
Bay Guardian
ran an article on squatting in San Francisco, detailing the activities of the recently formed Squatters Anonymous. The group made it clear that, unlike some East Coast squatters who had moved into empty government-owned buildings in order to negotiate legal residency, they viewed illegal squatting of privately owned property “as a solution, not just a tactic.”

Hilary Binder:
I had heard about squatting from friends of mine in New York and Europe, and went to San Francisco with a friend from the D.C. yippie scene. The Democratic Convention was coming up in San Francisco that summer.

We went to a meeting of people who were interested in organizing a counter-demo. Jim Squatter and Peter Plate were both present. Jim did most of the talking. Peter was this mysterious character. He didn’t say much but he had this presence of someone who really had something to say.

Courtenay Dennis:
Peter Plate used to speak at the anarchists’ bookstore. He kind of looked like the singer for Midnight Oil. He always wore a black beret and carried a big shoulder bag. He was super eloquent. I remember feeling like I was a little too dumb to be there.

Mike Tsongas:
Jim Squatter was a Greenpeace activist and very involved in the squatter movement.

Hilary Binder:
I had found an apartment in San Francisco and was just about to sign the lease. Jim said I should check out his squat. He gave me the inspiration. The idea that something like this could work if I had enough energy to do it.

So I went walking around the city, looking for places that were abandoned. I found HOLC on Sixth and Folsom. I went in and stayed there for a few nights by myself. At the Mabuhay Gardens, I ran into a young punk woman who needed a place to sleep. I invited her to stay and that’s how it all started.

Jeff Goldthorpe:
The Hotel Owners Laundry Company was nicknamed HOLC or “hole-see.”

Courtenay Dennis:
It was an old laundry service plant.

Hilary Binder:
The Vats and Polytech were models to us. But there was a lot of drugs and drinking. They were basically a bunch of musicians and youth. Predominantly, the people involved with HOLC were anarchist identified.

Jeff Goldthorpe:
Many of the squatter activists evicted from the Vats moved into HOLC. There were two rules: no shooting drugs, and everyone had to work.

Hilary Binder:
There was a goal to provide housing and to do something with it as a public space. We had community dinners every week or two.

Mike Tsongas:
Most of the meals came from dumpster-diving. You could find all kinds of fresh vegetables in the dumpsters behind Safeway. It was amazing what we found.

Julie Generic:
If we dumpstered a crate of tomatoes, it was spaghetti night.

Hilary Binder:
We also started a free-food program. We raised the money through donations, then would drive over to a distribution warehouse in Oakland sponsored by a church. We would load up the car with near-expiry vegetables and fruits for 15 dollars. Drive back to the city and set up a free distribution stall somewhere. First we did it from the HOLC, then on Sixth Street, and near Church Street. We kept the program going for a few years.

Mike Tsongas:
They were actually doing so many wonderful things. Everything was very positive and very inclusive.

Julie Generic:
We had a big room that had 15 mattresses in it, and we all slept on those mattresses. We had movie nights once a week. It was fucking genius. It was so fun. We showed underground movies that people had made, stuff from Crass and PLH, political movies.

Courtenay Dennis:
Everybody was really into MDC. They came over a lot. And the guys from the DKs and the Dicks came over. And Kurt from DRI. People would play music and have debates. Listening to those people who were older than me talking about what was wrong. So many of them were really bright, politically astute people. Hilary certainly was.

I always felt like it was Hilary’s place. She was the boss. She looked kind of dykey. She wore shirts with the sleeves cut off, no makeup—sort of a hippie punk. She was like a weird grumpy mom. She was very outspoken and she had a temper.

Julie Generic:
Hilary was a self-righteous bitch. I know she was a well-intentioned person, but she always fucking hated me because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, and she felt like she had to tell me what to do.

Aaron Cometbus:
She was kind of hot.

Courtenay Dennis:
The summer of ’84, that was when the political punks were really the most visible.

Julie Generic:
HOLC was home base for Rock Against Reagan that summer. They pulled one of the big school buses inside. All the sound equipment was there, the crew—everybody was staying at the squat.

Hilary Binder:
A lot of people were in and out, from Rock Against Reagan, yippies I knew from New York. They were doing the West Coast tour, and then going down to Texas for the Republican Convention counter-demonstrations. We had meetings up the wazoo to figure out what we wanted to accomplish. We met with more established organizations, and with the whole DIY scene of anarchists and punks. I went to the Rainbow Gathering in Mount Shasta that summer to drum up body support from the Love Family.

Jeff Goldthorpe:
HOLC was also a part of a broader squatting activism. They held meetings at Bound Together, St. Anthony’s Coffeehouse, the Hotel Harold and HOLC, where new sites would be discussed.

Hilary Binder:
We did consultations with the homeless people on Sixth Street. I was encouraging them to go inside this abandoned apartment building. They were really against the idea because “that’s illegal.” Eventually they did occupy the building, but they didn’t want to go as far as stealing electricity. By that point we had learned how to get electricity from the street lights.

Julie Generic:
A group of people branched off from HOLC and created the Women’s Squat, which was on 20th and South Van Ness. The whole process of creating that squat was really cool. They created a safe sanctuary for women. I was never into segregating the sexes, but it was good.

Jeff Goldthorpe:
A high proportion of European nationals heard about HOLC through political squatter networks.

Andrew Flurry:
The squatting symbol was a circle with a lightning bolt arrow going through it. People would draw it everywhere, I’d see it on signs all over town.

Courtenay Dennis:
Hilary had that symbol tattooed on her arm.

Hilary Binder:
San Francisco has a long history of free clothes and free food, from the Diggers on. You could eat pretty well if you knew the schedule of all the kitchens. Whether it was the Cauliflower Collective or the Coltrane Church or the Krishnas. I became friendly with the Haight-Ashbury Soup Kitchen. I learned how to make bread in coffee cans. They were really great, open-hearted people.

Courtenay Dennis:
Tree’s House in the Mission was a restaurant run by these hippie people, with a big room and long benches and a garden. We all worked over there and they had these theme nights for the soup kitchen. Oh my god, it was a magical thing.

Julie Generic:
Tree’s House was awesome. People who volunteered there would dress up for that week’s theme. So the girls would wear crazy Tahitian outfits and the guys would paint themselves up. You would see people in a grass skirt. The whole process of feeding people was like a tribal group experience. It was cool and kind of weird.

Jeff Goldthorpe:
The HOLC squat had avoided any major police harassment during the Democratic Convention. But they were finally evicted in mid-October 1984.

Hilary Binder:
It wasn’t a surprise. We were told the day they were coming. We barricaded the squat. I wasn’t there when it got busted. People believe someone opened the door for the cops. They didn’t have any trouble getting in.

Julie Generic:
They kicked us out of there. Articles appeared two days in a row in the
San Francisco Chronicle
and
Examiner
. We took all our mattresses and our cooking stuff and plants out onto the sidewalk. We drew windows and a clock on the wall in chalk, and made it homey. After we got kicked off the sidewalk, a bunch of us went to an abandoned funeral parlor half a block away. We got kicked out of there, too.

John Borruso:
Trial did a show in front of City Hall in support of squatting rights, December 8th, 1984. As I recall it was a special lineup with Roddy, then of Faith No More, performing with us.

Andrew Flurry:
Rock Against Rent was my first real punk rock show. I only remember the Dicks, ’cause Gary Floyd was this big fucking fat dude. There was a Dicks’ song on the
P.E.A.C.E.
compilation that I really liked. There were skinheads and Jaks there.

Aaron Cometbus:
It was a particularly ugly scene—some skinhead beat up an old homeless guy
and
his dog with a steel pipe. And Gary Floyd was there saying, “No, don’t just blame the skinheads! They’re not the enemy here.” He always seemed to see the skinheads as these misunderstood, basically cool guys. I loved the Dicks and have total respect for Gary, but, man, what was he thinking?

Andrew Flurry:
I was 13, so for me that show was mostly about the pit, and it was scary as hell ’cause I was tiny. The stage was in the park facing away from City Hall and there was a circle pit. Half the pit was on the concrete and half the pit was in the grass. But the lawn was sunken so there was a ledge and a gutter between the two. I remember this skate guy Zeke was in the pit doing handplants off the concrete into the grass. I thought it was the most badass thing I’d ever seen. The guy was like a fucking orangutan. I think he used to sell us acid.

Jeff Goldthorpe:
A leaflet was distributed entitled
What Is Squatting?
which acknowledged that “we have to reach out to people in order to get support.” But it was too little too late.

Hilary Binder:
The squats started going one by one. We tried to squat a place south of Market and immediately got kicked out by the cops. They followed us in their squad car as we were wheeling our stuff down the street in our shopping carts, looking for the next place. It really got bad. It was one of the reasons I stopped squatting that town. I had spent too much time in jail and representing myself in court. I left for Europe to organize what I hoped would be the international Stop Business As Usual demo.

Gary Floyd:
Hilary lives in the Czech Republic now.

Hilary Binder:
HOLC was only open for six or seven months. It was a pretty short-lived revolutionary activity, but it was an important one.

Julie Generic:
HOLC is a functioning laundry service again.

Gary Floyd:
Hilary lives in the Czech Republic now.

Hilary Binder: HOLC was only open for six or seven months. It was a pretty short-lived revolutionary activity, but it was an important one.

Julie Generic:
HOLC is a functioning laundry service again.

Sara Cohen:
Reaganomics, the Iran-Contra affair. That’s what Rock Against Reagan was all about. We had a very clear understanding about what the fuck was going on in our country, about what was going on in the world.

Oran Canfield:
I had a real fear that we were all gonna die. In Berkeley and the Bay Area, Reagan was seriously the devil. I would see him on the news and nothing he ever said contradicted the idea that these fucking crazy egomaniacs were gonna end up destroying the world.