Electric Shepherd at the Hemlock Tavern

Please don’t send me twenty five options for dinner.  Why don’t we just eat by the Boom Boom Room? Ok, 1300 on Fillmore looks good.  You’ll meet me at work?  Perfect.

Why does it take thirty minutes to find a cab in this town?  Yes, baby, I know that there are hotels and restaurants that way but I usually find a cab over here.  There’s one.  You were right again baby.

1300 on Fillmore looks rad!  Where do they put the bands?  Behind the curtain?  We should definitely check that out sometime.  I wonder what “twenty minutes extra wait” for fried chicken means in a half empty restaurant on a Tuesday.  Manhattan?  Yes.  Good wine too.  Chicken is okay, but your fish is amazing.  You always know what to order!  It is nice to just sit here and shoot the shit.  Excellent and friendly service.

Boom Boom Room is just up the block.  Looks like those guys are rolling a joint in broad daylight and not even trying to hide it.  Cops in this town will probably light it for them since they only have matches and it is windy over here.

Franziskaner is out?  Ok, let me taste the Arrogant Bastard.  Whoa!  As bad as I remember.  What about Stella? Out too?  Is it a problem with the CO2 or something?  How about Negra Modelo?  Thanks.  Yes, I got introduced to this beer by my cousin who likes it because of the name.  Yes, I’ve told you that before.  Good beer.  Not as good as Bohemia though.

I wonder which guy is Justin.  He said that he “might” be wearing sunglasses because his onstage persona demanded it.  I’ll go talk to the band.  Oh yes he’s in DVO.  I’ll go ask those guys.  Thanks.

Thank you for taking the time to meet with me!  It is so cool that you founded livemusicblog.com.  Did you live in New Orleans?  Chicago huh?  Nice!  We want to visit.  You have equipment for a podcast?  Perfect!  We want to get that going again.  We should meet again to talk video and not be rushed, I agree.

What a long sound check.  NVO does sound really good though.  Hate to run, but we have to catch Electric Shepherd at the Hemlock.  They played Brick & Mortar Music Hall earlier this month and had a nice write up in SF Weekly.  Always easy to catch cabs here, another reason to love the Boom Boom Room.

Hemlock Tavern, Interior, Night.  Me:  “Who’s up next?”  Doorguy looks at lineup on wall.  Shouldn’t you just ‘know’?  I mean you have one job here man.  Yes, we’ll take earplugs, this place is crazy loud.  I’ll get beer.   I can’t believe that there is no one here and we get to sit right up front!  Great band!  Awesome set!  Really glad that Electric Shepherd are SF locals.  Want to see them again.

No Mercy for Dogs Part X

Image by AlejandroLinaresGarcia. You can read all previous parts of No Mercy for Dogs here.

The silence in the truck as Mr. Ramos drove me back to the ranch was beyond tangible, it felt like being slowly buried alive in concrete; that not only was speech forbidden, it had somehow become physically impossible. He didn’t seem to ever listen to music when he drove, so I attempted to distract myself by memorizing the terrain. A few landmarks from our earlier trip through Cerralvo jumped out at me, and I began to feel fairly confident that if push came to shove, I could find the Ramos compound again on my own. It might take me two hours to get there from the ranchita by foot, but it was do-able. This independence seemed a sort of salve to me, a tiny bit of breathing room amidst the rubble burying me alive.

My internal mapping program was interrupted when the Hammer made an unscheduled stop in the placita, pulling up to a small cart built on the obviously homemade frame of a large tricycle. The contraption was topped by an immense beach-style umbrella in red and white, bearing the logo of a country club near Monterrey. Somehow, I doubted that they had loaned it out to the vendor. As Gelo rolled down his window, the proprietor hustled over to the truck with a huge smile on his face and bathed us in a rapid-fire steam of campesino-Spanish. I didn’t understand a single word, not even the greeting. So much for progress, I thought glumly.

Mr. Ramos said something to him in response, and the man went immediately to work, opening up a large insulated chest welded to the front of his cart. He whipped out a large, curved blade from a sheath attached to his belt, and quickly cut a coconut down the middle. One portion of this he began to slice into small chunks, which were added to the other half, which acted as a bowl. On top of this he squeezed four or five cut limes, and sprinkled a red powder on top of everything. He did something else with his left hand inside the chest, before producing a black plastic spork. Mr. Ramos took the proffered coconut in one hand, while quickly slipping his old cell phone into the outstretched paw of the vendor. The transaction happened so quickly that I knew it would have been impossible for anyone outside of the truck to have seen the transfer. Papa Ramos produced a pre-folded bill from his shirt pocket, and handed the coconut to me without a word.

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Postcards from Mexico City: The Tlacoyo Nazi

The old woman had ruled this corner of La Roma for over 30 years, and man, that bitch didn’t like outsiders…

Skipper and I had been waiting 20 minutes for the tlacoyos that we ordered, or should I say tried to order from her. This particular grandma had the perfect neighborhood corner from which to ply her made-to-order vittles – the bakery a few feet away had huge pictures of pastries, desserts, and fresh bread covering the windows for about twenty feet in perpendicular directions – meaning that nobody could approach her corner without having been visually bombarded with massive images of delectable treats. Not to mention the muy delicioso aromas.

About twenty minutes ago, Skipper and I had succumbed to the same ploy.

“You gotta try these, dude,” he said as he licked his lips, “these are the kind of street food you can only get from Chilangos.” He explained that that tlacoyos were long, thick torpedo shaped blue corn cakes stuffed with cheese and beans and other goodies. You can find tacos nearly everywhere, but tlacoyos were harder to come by as they took a lot more handiwork and the recipes were proprietary and rooted in family tradition. In a city known for awesome street food, these were the literally the top of the food chain.

“Hey abuelita – what’s in your tlacoyos?” Skipper asked as he walked up. The chef looked to be about a few winters north of 82 years old and her face and hands were the color and texture of dried figs. She carefully completed one of her creations before deigning to answer through a clenched mouth full of gold teeth: “Nopales (prickly pear).”

“Cool. Can I get one?”

“Well, I’m in the middle of an order,” she said with a baleful eye, “it’s going to be awhile.”

Skipper shrugged his shoulders and looked in my direction. I nodded and he passed the nod on to her. She looked us over while continuing to shape and cook. It was clear she marked us as outsiders and potential troublemakers.

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Welcome to San Jose Part III: Closing the Deal

Read San Jose Parts I and II here and here.

While it might not have been the stupidest ever idea for a tramp stamp, it was certainly in the running.

My buddy Tom had introduced me to the leggy, bikini-clad hostess of the New Fantasy massage parlor in San Jose, Costa Rica about five minutes previously, and she was currently giving us a complimentary tour of the facilities. She had spent most of this time performing the spellbinding trick of walking backwards on four-inch stiletto heels while pointing out highlights such as the sauna and steam rooms, and after one near-miss with a working mamacita elsewhere earlier in the evening, it didn’t take much to get my mojo risin’.

My desire was soon cruelly crushed – not once, but twice.

“Hokay,” she drawled seductively in heavily accented broken English as she approached the middle of a long hallway. ”Here the private rooms.”

As she turned to open the door of an unoccupied chamber, I saw that she had four letters brazenly tattooed on her tailbone…L…U…I…S. Whatever fucked-up logic that led her to the conclusion her johns would want to know her boyfriend – or even worse, her father –  held such a special place on her anatomy was beyond my comprehension.

I was shaken back into reality as she concluded her schpiel.

“So, papi…One girl, one hour, one sex – fifty dollars. Two girls, one hour, one sex – Seventy-five dollars,” she explained. “ju want sex ‘oral,’ or anal…is extra. Sex no condom…is extra.”

A pregnant pause, so to speak, followed. I recall saying “thank you” but I covered the distance from the hostess to the door so quickly I can’t be certain. What kind of suicidal sad sack would even think of having unprotected butt sex with these girls?! Answer: Some moron named Luis, that’s who.

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Color Of Authority

Image by Bernd. “Hunter,” the San Quentin Death Row property officer called to me from the tier outside my cell bars, “got something for you.”

“Just new running shoes,” I answered and stepped to the bars.

Unlocking the tray slot, the guard handed me a pair of Adidas and then dug back into the box and pulled out two one-pound boxes of chocolates.

“That’s a surprise!” I exclaimed, eyeing the boxes of chocolates. Turning the boxes over, inspecting them, the guard said, “Need to check with the lieutenant about something. I’ll bring the chocolates to you tomorrow.” 

“Okay,” I said easily and went and wrote my friend Lisa, thanking her for the shoes and chocolates.

The next day the guard came by my cell, and said, “The chocolates were packaged in cellophane, so you can’t have them.”

“All right.” I shrugged. “I’ll send them back.”

“Can’t send back part of a package,” the guard informed me, “you have to send the whole package back.”

Shaking my head, I sighed, reached down, picked up the shoes, and started to hand them to the guard.

“No,” the guard objected. “I already issued you the shoes, so you can’t send them back.”

“What are you telling me?” I asked in confusion. 

“You can’t have the chocolates and you can’t send them back either.”

“So what can I do with them?”

“Donate them to charity.”

“What charity wants a couple boxes of chocolates?”

The guard didn’t say anything, and it started to dawn on me I might be getting jacked.

“Okay.” I waved him off. “Go ahead and donate them, just give me a receipt listing the charity so I can send it to Lisa. She’s my friend who bought the package.”

“No.” The guard shook his head. “You’re not entitled to a receipt.”

“Keep the chocolates handy,” I said harshly, “I’m filing an appeal.”

I filed paperwork stating if you take something that doesn’t belong to you, the penal code describes that as stealing.

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No Mercy for Dogs Part IX

You can read all previous parts of No Mercy for Dogs here.

It wouldn’t be accurate to say that I didn’t sense the trap. I did. Neither is it the case that I thought that I was smarter than Papa Ramos, or immune to his persuasions. I wasn’t. My radar antennas might have been cranked up to full blast, but my engines were running at full steam. One of my deepest personal failings has always been that most of the normal content of life - the day-to-day occurrences that make up our comfortable existences - bore me terribly; that when I stumble through the gray marshes of life and finally get a glimpse of the sea, it seems disingenuous not to go ahead and toss myself over the cliff’s edge and dive into the deep. I never thought that I would live forever, nor can I imagine why anyone would want to. There is no sense in avoiding the truth: I followed the Hammer into that building because the curiosity was simply too powerful for me to resist. Still, it did not evade me that this scenario was deeply reminiscent of the beginning of a bad joke: a white guy walks into a drug den in Mexico and …

The first thing that struck me was the size of Papa Ramos’s repair shop. The northern apex of the property was perhaps 450 to 500 meters in length, and the aluminum shed covered at least half of this space. The remainder was made up of a junkyard sporting roughly forty derelict vehicles and space for several 18-wheelers to park. The entire facility was covered in solar panels, an array large enough to power the entire compound on most days. Inside, the entire space was made up of concrete and was kept in immaculate condition. Halogen lamps made up for a complete lack of windows and huge industrial fans kept the place relatively cool.

There were three separate repair bays for tractor-trailers and five more for vehicles of regular dimensions. One of these was occupied by a red Ford F-350 Dually truck, and it was to this that Ramos led me. The only auto-mechanical skill I possessed basically amounted to dialing AAA, so the carefully orchestrated activity of the six men working underneath this behemoth mostly mystified me. As we watched, the rear axle was removed and laid carefully on a workbench. Several of the men began to hover over it like surgeons working on an etherized patient, and the assiduity of their movements impressed me. Only one of the men seemed to feel it necessary to speak, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying because he really didn’t appear to be talking to anyone in particular. Occasionally, one of the other men would grunt or chuckle at something he muttered, but the joke was beyond me.

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Performance Review: Bouncing Souls at Slim's (or the worst mosh pit I have ever seen)

Image by Sofia Salom. This last Tuesday, one of the big names in Pop Punk played a show at Slim’s in San Francisco. The Bouncing Souls, who have been playing since they formed in New Jersey in 1989, headlined an evening that brought back an almost perfect vision of my youth and going to poppy, “pogo” influenced punk shows throughout the south bay in the 1990s and early 2000s. Intermixed with overpriced booze, an angry, seemingly bald, glasses wearing bartender, the entire night was beaming with nostalgia. 

The opening band Luther, who seemed disappointed that the majority of the audience was there for the headlining band, was reminiscent of the Promise Ring and a little Broken Social Scene, while still trying to be metal.  The Mezingers, a really awesome four piece band fronted by a diminutive but loud and passionate individual, who screamed and bounced his head off on the stage, really stole the show for me. Their songs were catchy, well formed, and evena had a Springsteen and Lawrence Arms feel; singing with a visceral element which the rest of the night lacked. 

When the Bouncing Souls were set to come on stage, in my usual “I am not that old” mentality, I went to the very front of the stage and Mosh pit area. This being a poppy punk band whose music had made be jump around for at least fifteen years, I was excited for a bouncy-sweaty-crazy-fun time. This was my first time at a Bouncing Souls show and I wanted a high kicking anthem fun time. That is not what I found. Ignoring the actual performance for a minute here, I feel the need to highlight the mosh pit. Keeping in mind that I have seen plenty of bands at Slim’s and have had amazing experiences before, you have to realize that what I found was akin to a mosh pit black hole. The large span in the center was devoid of anything, as if a previous mosh pit had collapsed and sucked in everything around it, leaving only a small swirl of activity on the outer rim. When I finally grew tired of being punched in the back by the same jerk, who didn’t really get the point of mosh pits, I threw him down and walked back to my ever growing bar tab. 

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Bobby B

Image by LocalFitness.com.auHearing the unmistakable thunk of iron dumbbell crunching skull, I snatched the barbell my workout partner was repping off his chest, slammed it into the weight bench rack and glanced toward the sound. Bobby B was lying on off-white concrete, red flowing from the back of his head, staining the East Block Death Row exercise yard.

Whistles from the gunpost pierced the air, all condemned prisoners sat down on the ground and guards came running to the gate.

The sergeant ordered several condemned men to place Bobby B next to the gate for pickup but no one moved. Since the guards will not walk onto a yard full of dead men awaiting execution, it looked like Bobby B might be through, but he moaned as he began to regain consciousness, rolled from his back onto his stomach and slowly crawl toward the gate leaving behind crimson swath.

Chino, the East Los Angeles gangbanger who had caved Bobby B’s cranium, twitched his feet, perhaps preparing to rush and finish Bobby B, but the gunpost officer rotated his rifle towards Chino, and ordered sharply, “DON’T!”

Staring at the deadly end of a rifle ready to spat .223 rounds, Chino settled right back down on his butt and the rifle rotated up and away from his body.

Bobby B was off to the hospital for a few days, but he came back, and he was angry. Already a miserable, hate-filled cretin, Bobby B morphed into a screaming ogre. Since he was now too scared to venture outside to the exercise yard, all night long he‘d standby his cell bars hollering racial slurs equally damning all races. Since I lived in the next cell, I was pretty much operating on zero sleep.

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No Mercy for Dogs Part VIII

Image by Vcarceler. You can read all previous parts of No Mercy for Dogs here.

There was a family dynamic at work here that was completely foreign to me. These people truly enjoyed each other. You could tell that they actually wanted to be here, together. There were no masks of polished but nonetheless feigned interest, no attempts to buy affection instead of attempting the real thing, no need to start elaborate stories whose sole purpose was to waste just enough time to reach the pre-planned and much awaited point on the clock where it would be seen as acceptable to leave. Most importantly, there was no contest here, no expectations, no snide judgments carefully gift wrapped in the guise of polite inquiry, designed to surgically flay your skin back and expose your heart to ruthless probing and ridicule. There was genuine love here. It made me feel small and external, an interloper who had stumbled in from the cold and would soon be asked to leave.

I must have lost myself in the fog of my musings, because when I came around I found myself sitting alone at the table. My place had been cleared, save for my cup. The sky was very clear, a remarkable cerulean free from the slightest taint of smog. Some children were playing soccer, trying to kick the ball past a very large, hulking man who protected a small space between two of the oak trees. After several failed attempts, the younger generation mutinied and began to attach themselves to the legs of the goalie. After six or seven of them had piled on, the adult feigned a loss of balance and gracefully and carefully fell into the grass. While the screaming pack held him down and shouted encouragements, a small girl with pigtails lined the ball up with excruciating care and scored the winning goal.

I looked away, somehow unable to view this scene any longer, I knew how it would all turn out, how the adult would pretend to be enraged at his defeat, and would make much of the strength and prowess of the young ones. In another life, I had been that guy. I don’t know how he got away from me. It all happened so slowly, the evolution too gradual to notice unless one took a step back. I did not think it possible to hate myself any more than I already did, but I kept seeming to find new ways to get there.

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Bailey

Image by Goya, “The Little Prisoner”, 1867. “Searching, searching,” I heard condemned men on the first tier of San Quentin’s Death Row calling. Looking out, a guard was already at my cell bars. After sending me through a strip search, I was allowed to pull on my boxer shorts, shower shoes, and then I was cuffed and yoked out of my cell and locked to the bars on the tier.

A guard darted inside, started searching my cell and came back out with a cardboard box, pulled back a flap, and I saw glued inside a six-inch razor sharp steel shank.

“What’s this?” the guard jammed me.

Closing my eyes, I just shook my head. Possession of an inmate-manufactured weapon was for sure at least a year in the hole.

Placing the box on the tier outside my cell door, the guard went back into my cell to search some more.

Yesterday, I came back from the hole after a week, locked up due to a case of mistaken identity. Another Hunter had received a write up and the guards had gaffled up the wrong one.

When I went to classification committee the associate warden had determined I should be returned to Death Row, and I had been assigned my previous cell. My tier cop, Bailey, had gone right upstairs and snatched up my TV, radio, typewriter, all my personal property and brought it right to me. Way cool, but apparently one of the boxes he’d used to bring my belongings to me had a shank concealed inside.

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No Mercy for Dogs Part VII

Image by Titanium22 You can read all previous parts of No Mercy for Dogs here.

If Cerralvo had not been exactly what I had expected, neither was the Ramos compound.

In place of the gleaming gaudiness on display at some of the other narco-castles we had passed on our drive, a cold functionality ruled behind the Hammer’s walls. A neat gravel parking area encompassed the section immediately past the gate. I saw about a dozen vehicles, all clean and in good shape but none of which that would have impressed the casual onlooker. The main house was beyond that, a simple one-story box of perhaps 2500 square feet. Aside from the elaborate solar array that covered every square inch of rooftop space, this could have been any house in town. About a hundred feet from this was an open pavilion under which sat seven washing machines. Large oak trees were trimmed so that an incredible array of clotheslines could be strung around this point.

Enough garments to clothe an army were hanging on these, my first clue as to just how many people depended upon the Hammer for their well-being. The south wall of the perimeter was made up of businesses which opened up on the main thoroughfare to the rest of town, and included a tortilleria, a carpenter’s shop, an electrician’s shop and parts supply warehouse, an auto repair shop, and on the corner, yet another of the ubiquitous depositos. The various portions of the family that operated each store lived in homes built on top of each showroom, each of which was draped in its own extensive solar array. A much larger tractor-trailer repair shop occupied the entire northern wall, though I could not see this from where we had parked. All told, the perimeter wall enclosed a rectangular space of perhaps 500 by 700 meters.

Most of that interior was parkland, which was fed by a system of hoses leading to yet another windmill/well array, only this one was supplemented by an automatic pump for days when the wind was playing hookie. The Ramos clan kept geese, ducks, dogs, cats, and a cantankerous potbellied pig poignantly named Vicente Fox Quesada in a barn on the east side of the complex. The geese were particularly mean bastards, I was soon to learn, and we would all have our revenge for nipped-at-ankles when we ate them at Christmas time.

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