Going deep into the San Diego under­ground we find our­selves in a ware­house full of strange projects, 3D art, and a mid 20th cen­tury Cuban themed party.

The Yard in SD

It is start­ing to get late on a Fri­day evening full of dis­par­age­ment. I get a bar­rage of text mes­sages from my evil twin, one of which says “OMG PUNK SHOW AWESOME COME HERE I WILL GUT U IN ITS BY UR HOUSE RAVE LATER”. All cap­i­tal let­ters it must be impor­tant. I like to take pills and touch myself as much as the next guy but I just was not feel­ing this Fri­day evening. I don a black hoodie and I set off for The Yard an under­ground punk rock venue on 17th & Imperial.

Just a few blocks away from my stu­dio I stepped right in the mid­dle of some­place I did not want to be. You know that part of town that seems like it is on the news a lot. Yeah, I was right in the mid­dle of it. Shop­ping cart shanties and a small army of home­less just wan­der­ing the streets. I meet the evil twin who walks me into a fenced in area next to a dilap­i­dated two story home. “Aww shucks” I say to myself. I “For­got to pick up my stud­ded patch cov­ered leather jacket at the dry clean­ers”. As a cou­ple of punk rock leather jack­ets eyed me as I walked into the yard. “Ohh he’s my one and only plus one.” says this girl stand­ing off to the side with a can of Busch in her hand. The guy dubi­ously draws a sym­bol in my hand, I guess to emu­late a hand stamp you’d get at a club.

Evil twin, punk rock girl, and I head over to the other cor­ner of the yard past a guy who passed out on some scaf­fold­ing leav­ing a trail of puke on his way there.  I get intro­duced to a bunch of drunk punkers and a dog whose names I can­not remem­ber. One guy asks me “Do you like grind­core and shit man?” I look down at my Blood Broth­ers jacket and then responded with, “Yeah its alright.” he then responded by look­ing past me and started doing this very low growl­ing scream. Then walked past me and con­tin­ued to do that on the other side of the yard.

I met a few other peo­ple then some ran­dom dude who looked like he stepped out of a fra­ter­nity and donned a Mis­fits jacket tried to kick us out of the house and told us to keep the doors shut. No one really knew who he was con­sid­er­ing it was the peo­ple who ran “The Yard” that let me in. The band was play­ing whose name I can­not remem­ber was play­ing what sounded like Grind and Hard­core. They had a female vocal­ist who was actu­ally sounded pretty decent despite the pawn shop PA sys­tem. Kids started slam danc­ing in a cir­cle and I started to feel a bit nostalgic.

But in all it seems like that whole ideal is tired and rather stale. I’ve seen the same peo­ple and the same bands play and do the same thing for years now. I’m not say­ing “Punk is Dead” but it is not really that alive either. Evil twin said that they were going to kick all the punkers out at mid­night and have a rave. I felt no need to wit­ness them try­ing to kick the punkers out and then what­ever they were going to do at that house/yard that they were call­ing a rave. Off I went into the dark.

The Hour of Power strikes San Diego. Hosted by our friends The Ruby Room. We are going to guest bar­tend and serve up $1 12oz drafts. This is hap­pen­ing every Thurs­day start­ing Jan 21st and there is no cover. Kamele has cre­ated an hour long music video com­pi­la­tion that some­what resem­bles 1980’s era MTV on acid. Stir­ring up good tunes and some nos­tal­gia all to $1 drafts.

So Thurs­day 7:00pm — 8:00pm come in for dol­lar beer and then stay for the free enter­tain­ment of the evening.

Call me ter­ri­to­r­ial, call We Are Around You Dot Com kinda gang like. I don’t mind. But maybe I just dis­like my style get­ting cramped or what­ever. I don’t even really know how I feel. But some col­lege film school kids tried to take Improv Everywhere’s 9 year run­ning event of rid­ing the sub­way  in NYC sans pants and try to imple­ment it in San Diego’s Trol­ley system.

I always enjoyed my Subway’s with extra cellulite.

Now here is the truth about San Diego’s pub­lic tran­sit. No one who would be impressed or shocked by pant­less rid­ers rides the trol­ley. Espe­cially on a Sun­day where usu­ally tweak­ers and the home­less ride them around aim­lessly just for some­thing to do. I decided to use it as I felt like I can get by with­out dri­ving along with bicy­cling to my des­ti­na­tion as well. Now I am get­ting depressed being around (I hate to say it) all the bot­tom feed­ers that use pub­lic tran­sit. It is not good for your moti­va­tion to be around peo­ple who have no out­look or ambi­tion in life.

So I decided to attempt a Counter Cul­ture Jam­ming move­ment and gather a team of punk rock les­bians to stir up some trou­ble for these “sub­ver­sive (yet uno­rig­i­nal)”  film school kids. The ring­lead­ers of The Cacoph­ony have long since shunned this event.

The punk rock les­bians were too hun­gover and in Hill­crest hav­ing some hair of the dog action, as with every­one else on a Sun­day morn­ing. I even­tu­ally got bored sit­ting at the park wait­ing for this to hap­pen. Upon the arrival of four tran­sit cops at the neigh­bor­ing Trol­ley Sta­tion I decided to ask them what their busi­ness was. After a decent con­ver­sa­tion with the rollers I found out that. You can ride the Trol­ley with No Pants with­out a prob­lem. The cops seemed rather unin­ter­ested and una­mused by it, they did not care in the least. They were all there to make sure that no one from the Mary Kay con­ven­tion got hit by the nearly aban­doned trol­leys, seriously.

We have found this video of San­ta­Con check it out (and sup­port our spon­sors!)
Sorry for sell­ing out but we need to get some rev­enue in (take a half a sec­ond and click on any ads, it will help us a ton, thank you).

Done as a per­sonal ode to Laugh­ing Squid and The Port­land San­ta­Con Documentary.

Here is the arti­cle (every­one thank ThatElise­Girl, yes just thank her out loud right now, she can hear you),

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/around-town/events/Santa-Claus-Is-Coming-to-Town–79543427.html

They even linked a pretty amaz­ing web­site first thing!

For Live Footage (every­one thank Dr. M):

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/around-town/events/Santarchy_Takes_Over_San_Diego.html

Note that Both Dr. M and The Night Beast have skill­fully evaded NBC’s camera’s. Although you can hear the Rein­Beast (Night Beast’s hol­i­day per­sona) yelling “Ho Ho Ho” at the Santa’s at (1:30).

The weather out­side wasn’t fright­ful, but the San­tas were so delightful.

San­tas gath­ered and an under­cover detec­tive doc­u­mented the deba­cle. The detec­tive never reported back for duty and the cam­era was later found in his aban­doned down­town apart­ment. The video is being restored and edited by our crack team of A/V spe­cial­ists. If you have video or pho­to­graphic evi­dence of a Santa sight­ing please elec­tronic mail it to Dr. M at changecolours@gmail.com .

Ho Ho HO

Santa is start­ing at Bal­boa Park by the foun­tain and work­ing up through Banker’s Hill and Hill­crest. Santa prefers to drink at Nunu’s, Trac­tor Room, Mo’s, and The Ruby Room. If you can’t find Santa call or text the hot­line 503–333-3681.

Crazy New Yorker Santas

The musi­cal stylings of Math Rock are still alive and kick­ing as I just recently dis­cov­ered this four piece instru­men­tal out­fit known as Sleep­ing Peo­ple. Though they have not seem active in quite some time last tour­ing or releas­ing any music well over one year ago. It seems they lost the rea­son why I found them and that was hav­ing a female gui­tarist in a harder play­ing math rock band. While I was research­ing polyrhythms and other fun aspects of exper­i­men­tal music. Let’s hope we find these guys drink­ing at The Cas­bah soon. We will be there on Sun­day for the Lady Dot­tie Show. Hope­fully they do not check into our retire­ment home soon like Wild Sweet Orange is.

Four.. yes four free shows and T.J. hot­dogs as well… where at you say? You should already know.

The Cas­bah on Ket­tner Blvd. San Diego

So what does Santa do after he is parad­ing around town emp­ty­ing glasses and bot­tles all the while deliv­er­ing gifts to every­one on the naughty list?

He goes to the Cas­bah to rock and and drink Whiskey Sours and Cas­bah Cof­fee. There is one thing San­tas like and that is “free”

Here is the calendar:

* Sun 20 Cas­bah Christ­mas Party — Lady Dot­tie and the Diamonds,The Style­tones
* Wed 23 The Jivewire Before Christ­mas — DJ’s Bart Black­stone, ATARI, El Torito and more
* Thu 24 Exile on Ket­tner Blvd
*Sun 27 The Local 94/9 Presents a FREE show w/ Chil­dren Of Nova,
Ital­ian Japan­ese, West­Fire and Trou­ble In The Wind

So another hot evening with Lady Dot­tie, some­thing good to do on X-mas eve and day, and Tim Pyles with free hot­dogs. This is a win for all Santa’s and every­one on the naughty list.