Personal History | The Che Underground

Opening Kings Road Cafe

January 1, 2011August 25, 2008 by admin

Jason Seibert’s generous donation of early-’80s San Diego flyers offers a prime opportunity to open discussion of the Kings Road Cafe (née the International Blend), a small venue that played an enormous role in fostering and showcasing an eclectic mix of bands.

The Seibert Collection represents a slice of life at Kings Road in the summer of 1982, starting in June when the club morphed from the I-Blend under the management of Peter “English” Verbrugge. Other artifacts, including a July 1982 calendar (with membership card offer!), highlight the variety of performers that visited 4034 30th St. that summer, both San Diego regulars and up-and-coming out-of-towners.

The Jam at Perkins Palace

December 13, 2017August 23, 2008 by admin

(San Diego mod pioneer Dean Curtis recalls the impact of this seminal band’s 1982 California visit.)

It was in the spring of 1982 when I realized the Southern California mod scene was growing by leaps and bounds. Many of us in San Diego made the day-long trek up Highway 1 to see The Jam at Perkins Palace in Pasadena. Few of us had highway-legal scooters (mine was a 125cc Lambretta), so we had to take the scenic route along the beaches. We were harassed a bit by the Marines in Camp Pendleton for not wearing proper footwear for motorcycle riding, but they eventually let us through.

Our asses were aching by the time we got to Long Beach, and the drive along PCH through all the South Bay beach towns seemed endless. But it was all worth it, as we showed up at the theater the next day on a rumor and got to see the band run through their sound check.

Then and now: Adams Avenue Theater

April 14, 2012August 21, 2008 by admin

(Roving correspondent/ photographer Kristen Tobiason revisits and documents the scenes of our youth. Today, the Adams Avenue Theater meets “Project Runway”!)

No one could have imagined that this hallmark of our glory days, the Adams Avenue Theater (3325 Adams Ave.), would metamorphose into something so random as Discount Fabrics. I don’t think it’s as humiliating as it is simply bizarre.

The humiliation occurred in the late ’80s, during the venue’s brief reincarnation as the Purple Rain Club. The transforming of a theater into a fabric store has a thread of irony that keeps San Diego “weird.” Frankly, I prefer it to the gentrification that has sucked the charm out of other neighborhoods.

Discount Fabrics never remodeled. Outside of the merchandise, everything looks the same as it did. A quarter-century later, there is still a reflection of the building’s punk-rock roots. Shadows still linger, and I can imagine an entryway streaked with the scuff of Doc Martens and cigarette butts; blood, sweat and spit in the hall; the pit, a cluster of motion, like hornets, swinging fists and bodies, a stage bomb, a swan dive from the balcony …

“Tourist, go home!”

January 1, 2011August 20, 2008 by admin

Detail: San Diego population growth chart I heard that a lot when I moved to Leucadia from Milwaukee in 1976 to start seventh grade. (I was born in Manhattan, lived in upstate NY for third and fourth grades, then moved to Wisconsin for fifth and sixth; the license plates on our VW station wagon advertised our status as new arrivals.)

I got a later start in SoCal than many of you, but I know I’m not the only transplant among our ranks. In fact, I believe our social scene was created in large part by the influx of young families that arrived in San Diego County in the ’60s and ’70s, literally reshaping the sprawling landscape and introducing a booster shot of youngsters to the region just as the nation’s post-war baby boom was giving way to Generation X.

Those all-ages clubs opened their doors to us for a reason, and our suburban anomie was prime territory for “Lord of the Flies”-style social experiments.

Then and now: Topsy’s

December 11, 2017August 15, 2008 by admin

(Roving correspondent/ photographer Kristen Tobiason revisits and documents the scenes of our youth. Today, Topsy’s becomes a bear sanctuary! Photos by Kristen Tobiason; text by Kristen Tobiason and Matthew Rothenberg.)

In the pantheon of 24-hour, Formica-countered restaurants of early-’80s San Diego, Topsy’s was the Rolling Stones to El Cajon Blvd. Denny’s’ Beatles: less-polished and slightly tougher than its competitor to the east.

But like “Gay Denny’s,” Topsy’s’ after-clubbing hours and proximity to San Diego’s Hillcrest neighborhood also put a queer spin on the mix of patrons.

Reborn as Brian’s American Eatery, the restaurant at 1451 Washington Ave. expands on Topsy’s’ tradition of diner fare and a mix of gay and straight clientele, with special affinities for the “bear” subculture of the former.

Record stores: Unchained vinyl

April 23, 2012August 13, 2008 by Paul Kaufman

(Manual Scan/Lemons Are Yellow vet Paul Kaufman recalls a time when music shopping meant leaving the house.)

If you’re like me, you spent many hours flipping through records at stores, looking for treasures.

As a small kid, I started out locally, on Garnet Ave. in Pacific Beach. The Wherehouse and Licorice Pizza were a couple of blocks apart, so when I was just learning my history, I could spend hours looking at album covers and picking up magazines at those places.

As a 13-year-old, something commercially available was usually on the top of my list (early Badfinger fixation), and those sorts of places usually fit the bill. For a while, Licorice Pizza had a cut-out bin that had some real finds. They also carried imports, and I have distinct memories of saving up the princely sum of $2.50 each to buy the early Sex Pistols and Clash 45s (with real art sleeves! And no big hole in the middle!). It was a double thrill, because it was the closest thing to international travel I would experience until I was much older.

Then and now: Greenwich Village West

April 23, 2012August 6, 2008 by admin

(Roving correspondent/ photographer Kristen Tobiason revisits and documents the scenes of our youth. Today, Greenwich Village West learns Tagalog.)

Time has reduced my memory of the Greenwich Village basement to a hot cement pit: the flickering yellow light and a stairwell descending to a gully that had possibly the worst acoustics I’ve ever experienced!

I remember Morlocks guitarist Ted Friedman’s reverb hitting the wall — flat and nowhere to go, just like the smoke from our cigarettes. But we all had a good time. … Everybody who was anybody was there, right? (Maybe I’m harboring band-girlfriend resentment from schlepping equipment up and down those stairs.)

Remembering Renee Edgington, North Park Lions Club

March 21, 2018August 1, 2008 by admin

(David Klowden commemorates a San Diego punk pioneer and AIDS activist.)

Renee Edgington yearbook photo I was searching online for my former mentor, Renee Edgington, the founder of Shark Productions, who was responsible for creating so many cool shows in San Diego, and learned that she & her husband died in a car accident 10 years ago while vacationing in South Africa.

Anyone who attended a show at the North Park Lions Club between 1978 and 1981 has Renee to thank for making it happen.

I knew that she had been an AIDS activist in Los Angeles, but I didn’t know that she’d founded Clean Needles Now. Renee was a wonderful woman & I was deeply saddened to hear about this tragedy.

Shark Productions artifacts:

Then and now: Funland

January 1, 2011July 31, 2008 by admin

(Roving correspondent/photographer Kristen Tobiason finds that Funland — downtown arcade that inspired a Wallflowers song of the same name — has been plowed under: “This swarthy beast consumed the whole lower Broadway strip. Another boring-ass hotel. I miss Funland and all its classic wooden pinball machines.” Wallflowers singer Dave Rinck offers a requiem.)

This is not universally recognized, but the decline of arcade games reflects the soul-sucking changes that have taken place in modern life. Back in the day, arcade games had real physical moving parts, like pinball machines and Skee-ball. Then they invented computer games, and people started going to arcades to stare at computer screens.

Nowadays, kids play home video games on their TV sets, and I believe there aren’t really arcades anymore. This happened simultaneously with the computerization of the movie and music industries. Someday kids won’t even know what an arcade or a cinema even is — and as to music, well, we all know how that’s going. …

Lemons Are Yellow: “Jewish Like KISS”

January 1, 2011July 30, 2008 by admin

(Manual Scan/Lemons Are Yellow vet Paul Kaufman hails rock-‘n’-roll Yiddishkeit.)
David Klowden already perfectly summarized some pastrami- and tongue-in-cheek ethnic pride in a recent post: “I am putting together a seminar & book tour for my method: ‘Dave The Jew Shows You how to Make Beautiful Women Think You’re Cooler Than You Are in Ten Easy Lessons’ ™.”

In the spirit of David’s post (and our earlier “Hyphenates” thread), here’s “Jewish like KISS,” a musical number based on the irony of having one foot in the Ché Underground and the other in a cultural Old World. (Both had a healthy reverence for the historical.)

I thought it would be fun to have our own sort of self-referential “We’re an American Band”-type number, with all the required fake bravado. I threw in shout-outs to some of my favorite Jewish rockers, Joey Ramone (born Jeffry Ross Hyman) and KISS members Gene Simmons (Chaim Witz) and Paul Stanley (Stanley Eisen).