Gimme Something Better (8 page)

Randy Rampage:
In the middle of the show there was these three secretary types, out for their punk rock weekend. Sitting on the end of the dance floor at the Mab. They started throwing bottles and glasses at Joe. So he didn’t take lightly to that, being the size he was, so he whipped out his cock and decided to piss over the dance floor, onto their table, ya know.

Joey Shithead:
I’d been famous for getting a good arc with a lot of distance. When I did that, I knew what Moses felt like. The Red Sea parted, and they ran for cover.

Randy Rampage:
He got this huge golden arch going, right? It was like people—“WHOOOOOAAA!” And there was Joe standing there, with this big spray. Right into these girls’ drinks. Never got a drop on them. But their drinks were covered, and everything. “That guy pissed in our drinks!”

Joey Shithead:
As soon as that was over, they filled up the dance floor again, and went nuts. It was a bizarre thing, but all the people in San Francisco went like, “Oh yeah. DOA’s pretty interesting.”

Ninja Death:
One time Stan Getz showed up wasted to a show by our band, the Emetics. He kept yelling that we needed a sax player. It was obnoxious. Stan managed to drink our whole tab away, then he jumped onstage and played one song a cappella with our punk shit, then went into the Mab alley and got a blow job.

Chester Simpson:
Will Shatter and I spent the night in jail when the police raided the Mab. I showed my press pass to the police. They chased me, beat me up, broke my camera, took my film and threw me in jail for obstructing the sidewalk.

Dirk Dirksen:
I had my nose broken I think seven times, both ankles screwed up, both my knees, and a broken elbow. So I paid my dues.

Klaus Flouride:
I remember Will Shatter being dragged out of the club, and kicking the front door glass through, and giving Dirk a bloody nose, and Dirk saying, “You’ll never come back in this place again.” And next weekend he’s there, and Dirk and him are all being buddy-buddy and insulting each other.

Robert Hanrahan:
Dirksen was a visionary showman who enforced his own local version of the record companies’ plantation system. He seemed quick to embrace New Wave. But Dirk’s Blow Job Machine outside the bathrooms was very cool.

Danny Furious:
Dirk Dirksen was a moneygrubbing old carney who saw a buck and chased it. Nothing wrong with that, until he showed his true colors by banning bands that chose to play alternative venues. He wanted to keep the whole thing for himself and his cronies like Howie Klein.

Dirk Dirksen:
Howie was there from the beginning. His name at the time was Jack Basher, he had a music column in an advertising paper called the
Progressive
. Cosmo Topper was running Aquarius Records, and he and Howie were friends. Howie and Cosmo had the show on KSAN,
The Outcast Hour
, late at night. Howie evolved that eventually into 415 Records.

Danny Furious:
Howie was a scourge on the scene. Being a friend of Jonathan Postal, our original bass player who was sacked for being a complete asshole, he tried to make life hell for the Avengers with bad press, or worse, no press at all. Howie had his own agenda and made out quite well, but I will always see him for what he is, a scumbag opportunist. A no-talent nobody. A con man. The epitome of everything I am against.

James Stark:
Michael Kowalsky had been around right from the beginning, he’d been part of the Crime entourage, he was a friend of Ricky Williams, and of De De’s. Later on he was part of UXA. But the Mabuhay was very important to him because his home life had been pretty fucked up. He was living the Polk Street type scene. He would hustle. Sell tourists drugs. “Here’s some great cocaine.” You were lucky if it was powdered sugar.

Joe Rees:
The father image. Dirk always liked to play that role. He obviously was older, but at the same time he wanted to play that role as the Bizarro King. Artists, if somebody gives you a theater to perform, you owe them.

Jennifer Blowdryer:
I’m glad that there was a tough fag in charge of the club. Because Dirk tolerated me just a little bit, and that’s all that I fuckin’ needed. And I started performing. I had a lot of anger and I’d been really fucked, and I became the aggressor. I could just let it out, and people thought it was kinda funny.

Sheriff Mike Hennessey:
I always loved being there at closing time, because Dirk would get up on the stage, take the microphone away from whoever was performing, and yell insults at the crowd. My favorite one was, “Alright, it’s two o’clock. I can’t sell any more beer, or make any more money off you, so get out!”

Dirk Dirksen:
“Begin moving towards the doors, now. Before we turn loose the police dogs, our tear gas and high-pressure fire hoses. I’m sorry, sir, I can’t accept your offer to have sex with me, because I’m already committed. Thank you, good night. Get out.”

Max Volume:
“For the next five minutes you are welcome guests, after that you are unwanted trespassers.”

Rozz Rezabek:
Ness [Aquino] ran a supper club there. If we came around the side door at Mabuhay at 6:30, Ness would give us these greasy noodles, that were fried Top Ramen type, like Filipino something. He would feed us all.

I’m Already Committed: Dirk Dirksen at the Mab

Dirk Dirksen:
Some of them were too young to actually be in a bar, but because the Mabuhay served food, we could accommodate.

Jello Biafra:
I doubt I would have seen all those great shows or ever started a band if I’d had to wait ’til I was 21.

Tom Flynn:
If you were under 21 they’d put the X on your hand.

Dirk Dirksen:
That was the technique to be able to spot them. Out of that, the huge X’s, that became a thing across the country. Everybody had these huge X’s, wherever they were doing all-ages shows.

Ian MacKaye:
The Teen Idles went to California in 1980. Dirksen was letting kids into shows, and he’d put an X on their hands. So we went back to Washington, to the 930 Club, and we said, “Hey, we want to see these shows. And we’ll put an X on our hands if you let us in. And if you see us drink, you can kick us out forever.” We got the idea from the Mabuhay.

Tom Flynn:
Later on they had these curfew shows for minors. You could be under 18.

Sham Saenz:
Being an East Bay kid, going to the city was always kind of a treat. I’d get onto the F bus with everybody and we rolled it out to the bus terminal in San Francisco. We all got off and walked up to Broadway whoopin’ and hollerin’ and drinking 40s and lighting garbage cans on fire and breaking windows, just as much ruckus we could bring. I had to be 11 or 12 years old.
Bonedog
: We would panhandle for change to get beer money and to get into the Mabuhay. You went up to the front and you handed Ness a handful of change and you said, “This is all I got.” He would count it, a dollar forty two, or whatever. And he’d go, “Oh, come on in.”

Dave Ed:
I went to On Broadway all the time, upstairs from the Mab.

The person working the door would say, “Got ID this week?” “No.” He’d wait awhile ’til the line died down. Then he’d look up and down the street to see that there weren’t any cops around. “Alright kid, give me your money and get in here.”

Audra Angeli-Slawson:
My parents owned a restaurant in North Beach, the Mabuhay was three blocks away. My mom would send local police officers to pick me up. They would yell from their car, “Audra, your mother’s looking for you.” That wasn’t really cool.

I was like, “Could you pretend to arrest me instead of telling me that my mother’s looking for me?” The first time I went to the Mab I was 12. My mother had hired this crazy, coked-out French au pair. I convinced her to let me wear her leather jacket and take me to a show. She thought we were going to the movies. Instead I took her to the Mab.

Sham Saenz:
The very first time I went to the city was probably the most memorable. The show was the Dead Kennedys at the On Broadway. We got there and walked in, there was no one onstage. Then all of a sudden these four black guys walked out. At this point I had very little idea that there was punk rock anywhere else in the country. I thought it all happened here. Next thing you know, H.R. stepped out, did a backflip, his feet hit the ground and the band started. It was like the most powerful wall of music I have ever heard in my life. It just blew my mind. It was the Bad Brains. They wore flannel and jeans, but they just fuckin’ rocked so hard. That was the first record I ever went out and bought. Tim Tonooka: After the headlining band played and Dirk announced to get lost, you had to take off running as fast as you could to get to the Transbay Terminal downtown, to make the last F bus at 2:15 a.m. to get to Oakland and Berkeley. If you missed that one, hanging around the terminal until the next bus at daybreak was no fun, because you weren’t allowed to sleep there. They had security guards patrolling the place that would poke anyone sitting in the benches that had dozed off.

Dean Washington:
One day my buddy said, “Hey, let’s go to the Poster Mat over in San Francisco,” and so we went to North Beach, strollin’ around. The Poster Mat was run by an old man, he looked like one of the Freak Brothers. He had all the classics from the Fillmore, everything that went through Winterland.

James Stark:
Posters had been a tradition in San Francisco, from the ’60s, the psychedelic thing. Punk rock came along and stepped it up a couple of notches.

Winston Smith:
I saw a friend of mine making a poster for the Stranglers. So I started making up posters for bands that didn’t exist. They didn’t have any date, they’d say, “Friday.” And they’d have an address which would not exist. Some of them were up for a long, long time.