Mission Mission

Tonight at Brick and Mortar check out their monthly FREE party Wood Shoppe featuring three pretty cool Bay Area punk bands Culture Abuse, Scraper, and Never Young!

[Photo by Carla Leshne]

VatRat1 reminds us of Hamm’s beer and it’s SF past:

The Hamm’s brewery in San Francisco opened in 1954 at 1550 Bryant Street, close to the Seals baseball stadium. The brewery closed in 1972. In the early 1980′s, the beer vats were rented out to punk rock bands, and it was a used as music studios until the building was renovated and turned into offices.

Don’t believe him? Well check out this amazing article from foundsf.org, detailing the Austin thrash band Millions of Dead Cops (MDC)  moving into the abandoned San Francisco factory in the early ’80s and repurposing the actual beer vats as living, practice, and punk show spaces.

Dave, lead singer of MDC, described the tanks as being 40′x 10′x 10′, able to house half a dozen to twelve people each, with ten or twelve vats on each of the four floors. At any given time 30 or 35 vats would be in use. Soon people started living inside the building’s hollow walls on little ledges, sometimes fixing them up quite nicely. With the bands’ energetic activity the space became a crash pad and a scene landmark for visiting out-of-town punks and punk bands, the site of after-concert parties and band practice sessions.

The article seems to indicate that the Falstaff Brewery, a couple of blocks away from the Hamm’s building, was the actual site of this crash pad. Still pretty amazing.

More at foundsf.org. Be sure to check out that awesome video, too.

I heard Giant Haystacks for the first time a couple weeks ago on KALX, was floored, looked them up, was bummed to learn that they broke up last year, and bought two full lengths from their mailorder page. They arrived right away with a hand-Sharpied note:

ALLAN -

THANKS FOR ORDERING THE RECORDS. CHECK OUT MYSPACE.COM/AIRFIXKITS. IT’S OUR NEW BAND. WE PLAY OUR FIRST SHOW APR. 19 IN S.F.

CHEERS,

- ALLAN

That’s right, guy’s name is Allan too. Airfix Kits’ stabby riffy punk is quite like Giant Haystacks’ stabby riffy punk, so come on down to the deep Mission if you’re in the mood. Note that this is an early show.

Link to Airfix Kits on MySpace.

Link to Giant Haystacks on MySpace.

Link to the Knockout on MySpace.

Link to KALX on MySpace.