san francisco hates the arts.
after bemoaning the impending loss of one of the greatest movie theaters in the san francisco bay area, i find myself now mourning the death of yet another bastion of creativity in our once-beautiful city. downtown music studios in hunters point has just announced that it will be evicting all 500 of the bands practicing in their spaces.
this comes as a blow to the san francisco music community that will be difficult, if not impossible to recover from. just in the past twelve months alone, our band has been evicted from two seperate rehearsal spaces in san francisco due to the rising costs of land and the gentrification of the dotcom.
merlin studios, our first rehearsal space was a quiet spot in the south of market that gave independent musicians in san francisco some sanctuary to practice their songs and test out new rhythms. run by friendly and cute musicians it was a relatively clean and safe place to play and experiment. we had made it our homebase for a little more than a year until it was unceremoniously shut down, giving us just a few weeks notice to find a new place for our six member band to find a home.
through some incredible stroke of luck, we were able to land ourselves safely in the warm arms of san francisco's art explosion studios. art explosion was a well-known and long-lived local place for musicians to practice their amplified and non-amplified chaos in an old industrial building near the heart of the mission district. thinking that the worst was over, we were ecstatic to finally be able to find a place we could once again call our own. art explosion nurtured a small community of musicians whom we were just starting to get to know when the letter showed up in the mail. the managers regretted to inform us that we had only two weeks to get our stuff out before they gutted the entire building to make way for some new internet company. we had just been there for barely a month.
fuck the new internet companies.
fortunately, our heroes the shimmer kids, have finally saved a space for ourselves at yet another small rehearsal studio in the south of market and we're grateful to be given the opportunity to play our music in the cramped, smelly rooms with little or no ventilation. it's a crappy little place, but damnit, it's our crappy little place.
having seen the expansive, gorgeous practice spaces at downtown studios with their giant bay windows and impressive security system, i am crushed that they are announcing their closure. now it's only days before san francisco becomes a horrible, soulless megamall with big bucks and no color.
would you like fries with that, too? <8.10.00>
all words (c) filmfatale industries 2000