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A WAY TOO SHORT BIOGRAPHY of David T. Warren
A WAY TOO SHORT BIOGRAPHY:
David T. Warren (aka: Flamo LaGrande, R. J. Mololopozy) lived a strange and unique life. After a tempestuous upbringing in the home of a prominent building contractor in Hayward, Dave left town with a traveling carnival. Here he learned the art of eating fire as well as various sideshow skills including magic. Later, he would apply his showmanship to selling Kirby vacuums and became tops of his team of salesmen. Of other door-to-door items he peddled, perhaps the strangest were Venus’ Fly Traps — carnivorous plants that Dave touted as “organic insecticide.”
At a crucial junction in his life involving separation from his wife and children, he moved to San Francisco after the 1972 demolishing of the seaside amusement park “Playland At the Beach.” Upset by the destruction of this park, Dave formed his one man Playland Research Center and initiated a series of Playland parties in the rubble of the park. PRC was dedicated to collecting and archiving photos, film, personal interviews of and about the classic attraction out at Ocean Beach that served as a magnet for young and old alike. His mottos “Do It” and “Have Fun” were painted on a large wall at Ocean Beach to spread his message to passersby.
In 1978 David, along with Gary Warne, Adrienne Burk and Nancy Prussia had a wild experience where they clung desperately to a heavy barricade chain atop the seawall under the Golden Gate Bridge at Fort Point as thirty foot waves crashed down on top of them. Later, in the early hours of January 3 over hot chocolate the four friends decided to start a club where they would encourage members to “live each day as though it were their last” by creating events and experiences that would challenge their deep personal fears, expand their knowledge and understanding of their world and those in it AND be hella fun. This group became the San Francisco Suicide Club.
Also in 1978, along with Chris DeMonterrey and Steve Mobia, David restored and operated the Giant Camera below the Cliff House at Ocean Beach. Dave considered the camera to be one of the last vestiges of Playland and so it fit into his grand scheme. This spectral attraction, one of fewer that half a dozen surviving in the world, was often attributed to Leonardo DaVinci and became a popular curiosity at scenic tourist spots during the Victorian era. Though both the GGNRA and the Cliff House restaurant wanted this bright yellow building demolished, David worked overtime, cooking up publicity for this interesting but strange place and it was his passion (and thousands of signatures gathered at the camera) that years later finally won for the camera the “official” designation as a national historic building (which is why it still exists, even after the remodeling of the Cliff House).
Though David, and the “Friends of Ocean Beach” fought a hard grassroots battle to stop condominiums from crowding out the public on the old Playland property, the developers got much of what they wanted. However their plans to build right up to the rocky edge of Sutro Heights Park was halted. The parcel of land where Dave painted his festive signs is even today free of buildings and this is due to the struggle that Dave and the “Friends of Ocean Beach” put up to stop the developers.
The Suicide Club morphed into the Cacophony Society in the mid 80’s, which in turn birthed the Burning Man Festival as a desert event in 1990. That year, in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, Dave was the first human to ignite the 40’ wooden figure, inaugurating nearly 20 years now of desert shenanigans.
David had a rough time of it the last decade or so. For someone who inspired people and brought humor and adventure into their lives, he could never seem to shake the many demons that plagued him and eventually brought him to his end. Many concerned friends searched out and/or helped to find David several times from the mid-90’s til 2008.) He would lapse in and out of binge drinking and usually end up on the street , sometimes making it into a group home or hospital/rehab clinic. Over the years some of us visited him at a graphics artist retirement home in Oakland, a group home in Oakland, a nursing home in Hayward as well as a couple of different camping spots in Castro Valley, Golden Gate Park and Hayward. His son put him up in an apartment in Sonora for a few months around 2002 but Dave’s weakness for drink always managed to sabotage any gains he might have made. He lived in Golden Gate Park for various periods through out the early 00’s and with Richard Tuck in El Cerritto for a while as he worked on the upcoming museum. We always eventually found him.
About a year ago, we became concerned when Richard was notified that David’s storage space in Santa Rosa was in arrears and about to default. Over the years, whether David was living indoors or not, whether his rent checks cleared or not, he ALWAYS paid the rent on his storage. He placed great importance on the stuff he had stored though much of it (boxes of empty vodka bottles, hundreds of pounds of Encyclopedia Britanicas, stacks of wood, etc.) might strike the casual observer as being of little or no value. Regardless, David lived homeless many years in order to insure his storage fees were paid. So when we learned that after 10 years he missed the rent we were pretty worried that maybe this time we wouldn’t find him again. And, sadly, we didn’t.
It all seems pretty blue but one time a couple of years ago when I had tracked him to a disheveled camping spot behind a huge boulder in Carlos Bee Park in Hayward which was his home for several years . David explained why he was there. It was mid morning on a glorious day, sunlight was streaming through the thick canopy of pine trees across the streambed just below his camping spot. The park was beautiful and seemed much as it must have back before the 49ers invaded the West. I was pretty upset that David was living in such straits – sleeping in a soggy pile of blankets and cardboard. Being morning time, he was sober and, for the time being had regained more than a bit of his old eloquence and insight. He could see I was bummed and had started berating him somewhat for not staying sober and retaining his quite comfortable room in the nursing home on B Street. He gave me that intense gaze of his, eyebrows raised in mock sardonic judgement. “Just look at this” he said gesturing grandly with the old showman’s panache’. “ This park, these trees and rocks and that stream… it’s all mine. I sleep where I want. I walk where I want. NO ONE tells me what to do, where to go, what I can’t say, WHO I SHOULD BE! You should be so lucky, kid!”
That is how David T. Warren should be remembered.
Written by John Law & Steve Mobia
Stories about David T Warren
The Most Beautiful Baby
Dave asked me to play the “mother” of the baby for the most beautiful baby contest he wanted to enter. I borrowed a baby from a friend for the pre-contest physical checkup (probably just to confirm that there really was a baby!). I went down and filled out all the paperwork using my friend’s little guy. We then went to the baby beauty contest, where Dave, wearing a homemade papier mache Swee’ Pea mask and diaper and carrying a giant pacifier, with his body painted with Calamine to give it a nasty, unnatural pink hue, disrupted the contest. (See pics on the Pictures page.) It was a pure David escapade! – Shirley Sheffield
R. J. Mololopozy
My memory of this may be off, but my understanding is that Dave picked up a ‘signature’ rubber stamp at a garage sale, and that signature was the erstwhile ‘R. J. Mololopozy’. An alias was born! – BobC
The Chinese Food Caper
One time I found myself riding around with Dave in his car, and a few other cronies (Pierre among others as I recall?). The day or so previous to that, Dave had found a dumpster filled with discarded chinese food and decided to cover the hood, roof, and trunk of his big ol’ GM sedan with mounds of chinese food, which was by now getting a bit ripe. It was a good look though! Anyway, late that night we stopped at Clown Alley on Lombard, and I stayed in the car while everybody else went inside. Parked at the curb, the car was eye-catching, and it caught the attention of SFPD, who decided to inquire further of me, as I was sitting in the car. I mumbled something about an art project and they cited public health concerns and suggested we lose the chinese pronto. I thanked them and assured that we would do just that, and passed their suggestion on. It was probably just as well that Dave missed the police part, the whole thing might have gotten more theatrical. – BobC
Letters from the Dean of San Francisco State
Lawyers
1978 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN – ON THE ISSUE FREAKS OF NATURE… ODDITIES OF BIRTH in… A TRIBUTE TO FILM PARANOIA!! AT THE ROXIE THE FIVE THOUSAND FINDERS OF DR. T
1978
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN – ON THE
ISSUE FREAKS OF NATURE…
ODDITIES OF BIRTH in…
A TRIBUTE TO FILM PARANOIA!!
AT THE ROXIE
THE FIVE THOUSAND FINDERS OF DR. T Made
in 1953 in color, Hollywood’s and the fifties
forgotten fantasy that is probably the strangest
film ever made with a beginnings, middle and
end, in that order. It is also the only feature
film ever made of Dr. Suess’s work and actually
had his collaboration.
The dream (substitute for plot) involves a
young boy (Tommy Retig of Lassie, recently
sent to prison in the 70’s for cocaine possession)
who is forced to take piano lessons from Dr.
Terwilliger (played with incredible zest and
nastiness by HANS CONREID). The boys parents
(Peter Lind Hayes & Mary Healy) won’t listen
to his pleas of mercy and he is forced to escape
to a world of dreams in which his mother is
under the evil teachers spell and his father
must be convinced that she must be rescued.
Even in his dream he is not safe from the piano
lessons that take place is a huge football sized
field with bleachers as never ending keyboards
circling fortress Terwilliger and he ultimately
must make his escape thru underground
dungeons, in which all the other little boys
that resisted music lessons are eternally
doomed and have mutated into the instrument
that they despise the most, (playing themselves
for eternity.) This scene alone is worth the price
of admission and is beyond belief, as is Dr.
Suess’s thinly disguised comments on children’s
oppression and the adult world of authority,
coercion and ‘if it hurts, it’s good for you”
mentality. Even the paranoid fifties thought this
film was too-much and besides- it was paranoid
of the wrong things!
Dr. T will be shown at 6:30 and 9:30 p.m. It
will be more difficult to understand if even the
first few minutes are missed…so come early.
AND AT NO EXTRA COLST……CATCH AS CATCH
CAN Made in 1969 in Italy, color. A truly
unknown film, in fact, it is not even commercially
available in the United States and unless your
response is as ecstatic as we imagine, it probably
never will be. So be sure and tell the Roxie
Management, who have also never seen either
of these films (or even heard of them) that it
must be resurrected!
Vitorio Gassman plays an Italian actor of tv
commercials, whose arrogance, masculine ego
and horror of dirt, the outdoors and anything
not antiseptic compels all of the animals,
insects, fish, and birds within a five mile radius
to try to destroy his disdain and mistrust of his
own animal and to crack his ego and arrogance
once and for all. If you think that is a bizarre
idea for a plot (and we won’t quibble, it is) wait
until you see the results when he is driven to
madness and BEYOND. See it at 8 & 11 p.m.
Everyone who previewed this film said they
thought it was THE funniest film they ever saw
in their life. So ladies and gentlemen, decide for
yourself in our offering of (possibly) the strang-
est film ever made AND the funniest film ever
forgotten in a true tribute to PARANOIA IN THE
CINEMA. AND THANKS TO THE ROXIE FOR
MAKING THIS BENEFIT POSSIBLE.
“Anything that does not kill me
makes me stronger”
– F. W. Nietzsche
Suggestions Based Upon Experiential Data….or…………..Blowing it Gary Warne, John Law, Adrienne Burk, David Warren from the Golden Hind, Sewers & Kennedy Hotel Events
Our format has been adopted to insure the minimum of arguing, bickering, amending, censoring, and voting on other people’s ideas,rules, and other volatile subjects. Each person is totally responsible for their fantasy, the logistics of carrying it out, and the rules they want abided. It is up to the members to decide if they want to attend and when, if they do attend, they want to end their participation. At the same time guidelines have been offered by people in very empirical terms-i.e. what they would have done differently if they had only known…. These aren’t rules because we don’t even meet much less vote.
They are for whatever purposes you may use them for and as warnings or assurances for those events that bear our names.
WE DID THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT IS WRITTEN BELOW
1) Discussions will take place at the first meeting place. People became too excited and it was so chaotic in the sewers that we couldn’t get people to listen to us, stop talking, count off or apprise them that people were following us that we might have been in danger.
2) The leader will give a point by point description of the adventure as they imagine it. Diagrams would be helpful at the meeting place. When people climbed the side of the ship facing the guard house on the Golden Hind we realized that what was obvious to some wasn’t so obvious to others.
3) The leader will give a point by point fantasy of what he thinks could go wrong and what he fantasizes doing about it. If they’re wrong, great!
4) We will not be meeting people beyond the first meeting place where the discussions and planning takes place. We realize that this will be a hardship but it has been more of a hardship trying to avoid hardships.
5) Verbal directions are out. Duplicate maps will be given all drivers.
6) The organizer will provide a list of the equipment necessary and will give it to someone to check off as we leave.
7) We won’t simulate danger, even for joke purposes, in situations that are possibly dangerous already.
8) We’ll ask someone to be an official explainer and talk to witnesses that insist on staying and being perplexed when we’re climbing buildings, etc.
9) A firm hand grasp (holding hands) will be our universal, non-verbal signal to stop talking at any volume.
10) Everybody should have all of the equipment that is specified, the organizer has advised us with a reason, we shouldn’t disqualify ourselves from their requirements because we think we know better. If it says everyone must have flashlights- this means everyone (and many people still don’t own one- buy one). If it says no kids- it means no kids- if it says hard soled shoes, it means hard soled shoes, if it says everyone should have a candle-
EVERYONE has to have one. We feel its best of tell people the truth, if not the whole truth, about what we’re doing. Many people are not using the planned chaos form and so are leaving information out of the write ups that others need to know or that the leaders are not thinking about. Use them. On the small but positive side- we feel we were right about the use of costumes to offset police suspicion/ repression and food (pot luck) helps too!
Carnival Cosmology by Gary Warne
CARNIVAL COSMOLOGY
– Gary Warne
The world is a midway; cities are its sideshows.
The only difference between children and adults is
that there is no one to take care of us. When we
left home it meant we were lost on the midway
and, unlike God, the carny boss will only let us ride
as long as we pay.
No one will come to find us. Some children will hurt
us, others will stop to play…some are still deciding.
But you can sneak in too.
I have been exploring a world of adventures, exotic
locales, mystic essences, confronting my fears was
the immediate goal, the predominant focus of the
explorations and challenges. Now, nine months
later, my fears have become wafer like and
crumbling, shadows of their former selves. Now I
find fear only a final, non-evolving image that stills
other possibilities, the creation of more intoxicating
future images, that prevents me from entering into
a visionary dialogue with whom I could become.
Recently I have walked past the place where my
fear images blotted out what would have come
next if I had not been afraid. I climbed the Golden
Gate bridge three weeks ago immersed in images of
falling thru space into the ocean. There was
nothing to fantasize beyond this one, final, deadly
image. Fantasies of my friend’s deaths were
perhaps even more vivid and recurring. People who
didn’t go asked their companions to call them when
they returned, no matter what the hour. Those
unable to express their love in this way simply
asked for the rent before their roommates left for
the climb. The image of death, for many THE
culminating fear image, blots out all other
possibilities.
The subject of fear has fascinated me for many
years. That night I felt I understood it much better.
Fear is a freeze on the future, the filter or floodgate
that stops our imaginings; something within us that
stops us from becoming more powerful and loving,
rather than fearing those things that are more vivid
than our fantasies, more powerful than our magic, more
mysterious than our own mysteries.
I buried the predominance of fear in my own
cosmology that night. After many months of
incredible experience and a rich new flood of images
and emotions I began to see the colours and text-
ures beyond the death images, beyond the
fantasies of authority and arrest, beyond inner
visions of my own failure of stamina or confidence.
And something more began to emerge.
I am not speaking at all metaphorically when I say
that it was the bright lights and moving colours of
the bigtop, carnival, amusement park-midway.
Once I was on the bridge I was greeted instead by
moonlight on still waters and the skyline of the city
diminutively reduced to scale on a plywood board,
ready for display. The outline of the city floated
across in, all of shades, autumnal colours of yellow
and orange. Our height did not make them that
way; it allowed me to see them that way as the
houses, ships and lights below took on a bathtub,
toy like countenance. The height silhouetted by
sky and underscored by the sea allowed me to
place it within a gigantic midway, rather than
myself as a stick figure man within the reality of
the cities overwhelming back buildings.
Two months before I had climbed the Oakland Bay
Bridge and for the first time the metaphor had
become real. The bridge was obviously a jungle gym
made to climb rather than drive over: the cars just
using it for the in between times. The girders were
so huge that you could climb inside them like chimps,
risking nothing but a strained heart from the
excitement. It was then that I was first struck with
the feeling that we were here to play, if nothing else,
here to play with the world and other people.
Before that I visited a ghost town in central
California and it became the spook house of a long
bankrupt carnival, disappearing into a marshy bog
at the same pace it was swallowed up by the past.
As I walked along the tracks at night that led to
the town, unsure if I was going the right way, a
bouncing yellow light appeared behind and we
waited for the predictable “hey you kids, get out
of here!” only to have it explode instead in to a
supernaturally silent coal black train screaming
into the night ahead, shaking the ground in great
heaps and gulps of air as it roared past.
My mind elongated with it, as it did as a small child
in front of the tv, when Daffy Duck sold Elmer Fudd
a new house and then turning to leave, opened the
front door and let a train rush straight at the
camera, straight at Elmer, straight at me, right
through his living room and mine, my child’s mind
simply gasping at the possibilities.
Other possibilities are becoming much more apparent.
The world is becoming a total play environment and
I am becoming something else entirely. The future
is no longer on a circuit like the news, entertainment
something an entrepreneur plans as I expectantly
read the notices in the bleached parchments on the
corner stands. It is an imagination away.
R.I.P. David T. Warren – Memorial Service
Memorial Gathering
On January 2, 2010 many old friends gathered to remember and honor David T. Warren, who passed away on this day in 2009.
As a tribute to the man of many paradoxes, we had a memorial/celebration of his life. Perhaps you were there, or perhaps you wished you could have been there. Hopefully the information on this site will satisfy.
About the Memorial Gathering
| Where: | Playland-Not-At-The-Beach 10979 San Pablo Avenue El Cerrito, CA 94530 Directions |
| When: |
2PM- 7PM
Saturday January 2, 2010 Main presentations:
3:30- 5PM (music/skits/readings/footage)Killer!
|
| What: | The memorial gathering is at 2pm. It is a carnivalesque potluck so bring food, snacks and beverages!Dress in a festive manner — put the “fun” back in “funeral.” We will have music, magic and film clips featuring Dave, as well as some of his many spiral notebooks filled with thoughts and ideas.
There will be stories galore as Dave’s life was so colorful. We are trying to reach as many of his old friends as we can. For ex-Suicide Club members, we hope to make this an intriguing reunion. Alcohol is permitted in the museum, huzzah! Since some of the proceedings will take place outdoors, dress for the weather. |
| Questions? | Click here to send email |
RULES GOVERNING A HEARSE AS SET FORTH IN MORTICIAN’S MONTHLY DIGEST
RULES GOVERNING A HEARSE AS SET FORTH IN MORTICIAN’S MONTHLY DIGEST
I. The hearse can be used for newsletter events, transporting materials to set up an event and scouting, although newsletter events take precedence over all others. Spot events are qualified by calling and contacting
five other members to ask them to accompany you. They do not have to be able to though. Scouting is the same and transporting is taking one other with you.
II The hearse is available to rent to other members of the club, for moving, etc. at the rate of 15 cents a mile plus gas (fee set by our mechanic) and the renter must get one of the donors to drive.
III There must be two people in the hearse at all times, in the cab, to help the driver park and pass and to be a witness in disputes (the hearse is 19 feet long).
IV The hearse can not be driven under the influence of drugs or alcohol and NO drugs and NO unsealed or open containers of liquor can be in the hearse at any time.
V A logbook will be placed in the hearse with two uses:
A) Beginning Mileage/ Driver/ How many riders/ Use Fee Collected/ Ending Mileage
B) To reserve the hearse for future events, see instructions on the back page. These will be called in to the newsletter editor at noon on the day events are due and these reservations will take precedence over any
events from any other source.
VI Use Fee: A straight 75 cents per person will be collected at the BEGINNING of each trip including the driver. The driver (or the fund) will not, repeat, NOT loan this money and it will be borrowed from another rider or
the hapless individual will have to ride in another car.
VII Gas will be divided evenly between all riders, including the driver, based on 15 cents a mile. This fee could change as we get more data on the way the car drives. It must be TOPPED OFF!
VIII INSURANCE: No matter who is driving, under Cal State Law, registered owner must sue registered owner. The car is in David Warren’s name and insurance will be purchased on a quarterly basis.
IX Tickets: Tickets will also be on David’s name if the car is parked or towed when they are received. Every ticket a driver receives must be paid within 10 days and the DRIVER is ultimately responsible for tickets and towing and it is up to THEM to convince their riders that they should share in the cost since it is ultimately their judgment that is responsible.
X Parking: The hearse must be parked a reasonable distance (4-6 blocks) if possible) from the site of an illegal event. We cannot park in metered spaces because it is illegal to take up more than one parking space where
there are meters. We have to park in unlimited areas of up to 30 minutes in a yellow zone after 6 pm but before that you will be ticketed after a half hour just like anyone else.XI The gas tank must be filled at the end of each trip, and must be topped off. Since every one will have been taken home before the final mileage is computed. When the event is over and you are taking people to their homes, and a round figure to the mileage you already have and estimate where it will be by the time you fill it completely up and the end. Do not let any one out before this is done. The use and gas fee is from departure point to each individual’s home, thus justifying so many expenses (somewhat).
XII The car will be parked on Lincoln between 14th and 12th Ave. on the SOUTH side of the street. If it is parked on the North side, along the park, it will be towed! It must be locked.
XIII The keyholders are the original donors, who do not consider themselves owners and are bound by the same rules as everyone else. In fact, they made them- to use the hearse, to rent it, you must talk one of them into driving it for you. These donors now, as of Jan. 11, 1978 are: Adrienne Burk, David Warren, Pierre Barral, Kathy Hearty, Bob Campbell, John Law, Jayson Wechter, Todd Strong, Peter Field, Gary Warner, Jim Freund, and Steve Mobia.
Rules are seen here as present ways to avoid future conflicts. There will probably be additional rules as additional problems arrive. The use fee is for repairs to be incurred at a later date and to save up for registration ($76 a year). We will be gathering a list of 24 hour gas stations in the back of the log book- any entries you can provide in different parts of town would be appreciated. Also late night restaurants.
Why I joined the Suicide Club
WHY I JOINED THE SAN FRANCISCO SUICIDE CLUB –David T. Warren
As the years slip by and I try to align each day with the passing of my life, I find myself on tenuous ground. After forty years of living, dreaming, and working to build the kind of community that I would like to live in, I find myself faced with the reality of how little I’ve done to accomplish this task. I haven’t tried. I am accompanied into the future with the lessons learned by my daily attendance in the school of hard sox. Though reality has popped my balloon I arrive at this point in time with the buoyancy to find a better way to live the remainder of my life than the way I’ve been doing it. Apparently life offers no stable, secure rounded fulfillment. Life at best is for me an untidy mess of unfinished business, broken achievements, personal failures, half-successes, short-lived triumphs, belated insights, noble desires and shameful deeds. Hopefully through the years I have accumulated a little wisdom; but for me life is incomplete and much potential remains;
it eludes my mortal grasp. Life as an ongoing state has controlled me more than I it. Like most people I’ve had my moments of breathtaking perfection, but no permanent achievement seems possible.
This may be because as a human being I am only part of any evolutionary process whose task it is to till the soil, learn the rules, build the technology and make ready for the people of the future, where necessity will require that basic human needs and wants be provided for by the collective of the community and individuals will be set free from hampering emotions of jealousy, fear, and rivalry. The fact that people will also lose their ability to hate, love, have hope, or be generous will have little effect on the world of the future that will operate with ant like
perfection into the millennia. Provided of course, that we don’t blow ourselves off the face of the earth or drown in the slime of increased pollution in the interim. For me, these alternatives are grim and bleak and leave so much to be desired that I’ve decided to become a charter member in the San Francisco Suicide Club. The only requirements are that I put my affairs in order, stop looking for satisfaction on a tomorrow that may never come, and live each day as though it were my last. With this commitment, I bequeath half of my worldly belongings to the club’s trinary garage sale, these
funds go to support the club’s bizarre activities. Going places I’ve never been and doing things I’ve never done. Maybe I’ll see you there!!
1977 EVOLUTION INTO CHAOS: A CHRONOLOGY – Gary Warne
This paper is an attempt at describing the succession of stunts, parodies, and put ons that have gathered so much attention for Communiversity and,
at the same time, present the ridiculous concept of organizing principles for creating chaos, anarchy and high times. Towards this end it may also be referred to as ROBERTS RULES OF DISORDER. IT is shared
equally and for free to all comers in the hopes that you find the lost spirit of THE FEAST OF FOOLS and ALL HALLOWS EVE. When Communiversity was still at S.F. State in Sept. 1974, several of us got the idea to do a practical jokes class. This event was to signal a new era for Communiversity, the Free University Movement and many of us individually. As soon as it hit the streets we were told it (the class) was “Not educational, in poor taste and probably illegal from the sound of it.” Preliminary discussions went on among the top brass at State about withdrawing our pay checks until threats and coercion failed. At the end of the year we withdrew the school from State forming a non-profit. A hundred people signed up for the practical jokes class,making it the most popular class in the history of the school (so far).
See Class #1 on THE FRONT PAGE We filled a room with hundreds of large balloons,
covered the floor with mattresses and pillows, covered the ceiling with a parachute and waited…. Two doormen greeted the registrants, asked them to remove their shoes, picked them up, and threw them thru the door into the room. This went on for three hours- a balloon and pillow fight culminating in a whipped cream and feather fight separated the wheat from the chaff so to speak. People left hurt, pissed, creamed & feathered, and limping. The thirty people that stayed journeyed to North Beach in a Salvation Army bus and pulled five stunts. First the women put balloons in their blouses and tried to apply for jobs as topless waitresses. They wouldn’t let them in. We practiced carrying imaginary plate glass windows up the street sideways- it worked, people actually walked around us! Then we tried pan-handling the same people as they walked down the length of a block – thirty people asking for spare change-all acting as if they didn’t know each other. Then we tried giving money away- which didn’t work either. Finally we tried to buy a banana split and couldn’t come up with the money between us (30 of us that is). This one really didn’t work because we weren’t very good actors, the intersection of Columbus & Broadway was so choked with people the waiter couldn’t concentrate on us or even see clearly that we were together and the idea sounded much funnier in the room than it was in action.
CHAOTIC PRINCIPLE No. 1
DIVEST YOURSELF OF EXPECTATIONS
Make sure the people you’re doing something with can dish it out as well as take it. If it isn’t funny when it happens to them then you’ve got sadists instead of pranksters. Initiate them to be sure they have a sense of humor about themselves. Never preconceive what the reaction to an event will be like, you are sure to be disappointed. Ergo.
CHAOTIC PRINCIPLE No. II
YOU WILL NEVER BE TOTALLY IN CONTROL
CHAOTIC PRINCIPLE No. III
BE A FOOL N OT A SADIST. YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO TAKE IT AS WELL AS DISH IT OUT.
CHAOTIC PRINCIPLE No. IV
ALLOW PEOPLE THE VALIDITY OF THEIR OWN EMOTIONS (HUMOR IS A VERY SERIOUS THING)
When you are doing what you really want to do, maybe for the first time, allow people the reality of their own emotions and the sincerity of their own responses. Don’t be shocked or bummed out if you are ignored, slugged in the mouth or arrested. People can not be expected to think your jokes are funny. Their reactions are no less valid then your own.
NATIONAL CLOWN WEEK Aug 9, 1974
Twelve clowns went into the B of A at Powell & Market singing “We’re in the money.” And tried to deposit fish, flowers, juggling balls, and comics at the tellers’ windows. The guards came and they were really MAD, they were definitely going to beat up the ring leader. I was dressed as a Keystone Cop with a giant silver badge, British Bobby Hat, cane and long blue trench coat. I ran up, blew my whistle, arrested the lead clown, and dragged him away,
rabid as he was, and this was a very scary moment- the other clowns had already run for the door- burst out laughing. We ran. It was scary but it was their territory, their values and their job- accept what ever response is- it’s real. The fact that the group broke ranks was really terrifying.
Again remember Principle #III.
CHAOTIC PRINCIPLE No. V
SOLIDARITY IS A NECESSITY
(SEE FRONT PAGE)
Every time we changed locations in the course of the evening’s bizarity we lost people. This became a stead-fast rule of entropy in future stunts. This is not good. The people need each other for energy and support, plus it is relatively dangerous to go out as a group to do stunts – anything can happen. If you’re going to start something- finish it. Corollary- Nothing’s Ever Over When You Think It Is.
CHAOTIC PRINCIPLE No. VI
PLAY IT OUT TO THE END
(ANYTHING GOES (See page One)
A disaster- it fulfilled it’s title but the people couldn’t trust one another because of the things each of them brought and did for and to each other with out knowing one another- A common purpose or focus decided beforehand is the best- even if people still can’t go through with it- it will be an inner failing rather than paranoia. Other than initiations and despite Principle #2, Agree beforehand on what you want to do.
CHAOTIC PRINCIPLE No. VII
THE MORE EXTREME THE ACT, THE MOVE EXTREME AND VARIED THE RESPONSE WILL BE.
VOYAGE TO ANOTHER PLANET (SEE FRONT PAGE)
We broke down into three groups and talked about how we imagined life on other planets. Then we blindfolded twenty-five people and took them to two unusual environments- one natural and one synthetic. We told them that when we took off their blindfolds they could not use proper nouns, names or earthly references for the sights they would witness. They had to decide what they were, why they were, what they did, as if they had never
seen them before. Confused? For example, if we took them to a street and unblindfolded them they couldn’t use the word “concrete”, “street”, “Pavement”, “road”, etc.
We took them to the Judah street tunnel under the Great Highway and took off the blindfolds in the dark. They had to walk out the seaward side as if they were just landing on another planet and “decide” what the ocean was. The descriptions, fantasies and hallucinations were utterly incredible. I will never think of the oceans in the same way ever again! Then we reblindfolded them and took them into the belly of the monster. Alcoa plaza at midnight – to Ripple’s. A bar surely from the 21st century. TV sets two feet apart all the way down to the bar with curtains on either side of them like windows- all showing the ocean beating on the shoreline (?). Eight foot motion picture screens broadcasting a band playing while people danced- the band wasn’t there though. Women taking off their clothes in view screens over the urinals – women could enter accompanied by men but men
couldn’t see what was going on in the women’s bathroom. This place was so way out on a Saturday night that no one could come up with anything farther out. JOKE CLASSES ARE LISTED ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE FRONT PAGE We ran joke classes every catalog for two years until our “DEATHSKOOL” catalog when people got too confused and we stopped for awhile. Someone had registered for every joke class we have ever run no matter how outrageous it was written. When the HARIKARI class asked them to kill themselves they politely asked if it was real or not. For DEMONIC POSSESSION we were asked in a whisper if we “had connections.” When we ranPARANOIA AS A STATE OF HIGHTENED AWARENESS we had to re-evaluate the whole concept of joke classes- a device as far as we know- that no other alternative university has used. SIXTEEN people signed up for Paranoia. These were the ones either cowardly or fun loving registrars let sign up. Many more were turned away by other registrars. Some people didn’t want ANY other class but that one and as you can imagine HATED filling out the skills exchange (a program we run in which participants signing up for the school offer their skills for barter.) If you re-read the description a couple of time I think you might agree that it’s pretty horrible. But people wanted it. People in on the joke wanted it to happen but the BIG QUESTION MARK was what kind of people had signed up for it? The joke became too real- everyone who wanted to see what the registrants were like were also afraid to offer their homes to find out! The joke became very real. Eight months later someone was moving out of their house and offered to have the class the night before they gave the keys back to the landlord. We wrote and called people, had the class and had a very intense and fantastic evening of sharingwhat we were afraid of. Our first joke had become real. An incredible reversal.
CHAOTIC PRINCIPLE No. VIII HUMOUR IS AS RELATIVE AS ANYTHING ELSE
NIGHT OF ADVENTURES DEATHSKOOL
CATALOG- SPRING 75
Description: Bring your ready to live adventures. Leave your pride at home if we think they’re either too dangerous or too boring. Must be in the borders of S.F. Twenty five people signed up for this class and three came with adventures. After we talked for awhile people started thinking up practical jokes but I was never sure if they were fantasizing them THEN or they had brought them. There was a practical jokes class in that catalog listed without a teacher but no one signed up for it (because everyone was afraid to sign up first because then they had to offer THEIR house). We planned two of the three adventures for the first night and the third would be put together later. The first-mine-was to walk through the JUDAH STREET CAR TUNNEL from Duboce Park to Cole & Carl. Half of the group went home and never came back right then. Other people didn’t want to go through the tunnel and didn’t want to go home either so they waited for us at the other end.
CHAOTIC PRINCIPLE No. IX
FEAR IS A STATE OF MIND: THE FEAR/RISK RATIO IS NOT PROPORTIONAL
Since most fears are about things that have NOT happened to us or that we haven’t experienced but have only witnessed thru media representatives or in our fantasy states- we usually don’t know what an experience is like and our fears keep us from finding out.
CHAOTIC PRINCIPLE No. X
WE HAVE MANY THINGS TO RISK BESIDES OUR LIVES
It is also possible, I won’t posit a principle here- that our adventures and fantasies are a Combination of excitement and fear and other people’s adventures are more frightening than our own because THEY have the excitement/ motivation and we don’t so we are only left with the fear. To support this I offer up that one of the people who waited outside of the tunnel was the one who organized the FUR SALE demonstration, which
terrified me and which didn’t phase him.
CHAOTIC PRINCIPLE No. XI
WE SUBCONSCIOUSLY BELIEVE WE HAVE EXPERIENCED THINGS WHEN WE HAVE ONLY WATCHED THEM. WE HAVE NOT.
CHAOTIC PRINCIPLE No. XII
WHEN WE TEST OUR FANTASIES OF OURSELVES WE FALL SHORT- SO WE DO NOT.
Suicide Club Card Holder Agreement
The bearer agrees…
The San Francisco Suicide Club Description
THE SAN FRANCISCO SUICIDE CLUB DESCRIPTION
Have you ever explored a subterranean sewer at night with forty other people; climbed three stories on a swinging rope ladder to dine on the roof of a condemned building; staged practical jokes you’ve always fantasized about? No…? How about dinner at Rev. Moon’s or talking a policeman into hitting you with a pie? Well… we hadn’t either. The surviving members of the S.F. SUICIDE CLUB have agreed to EXPERIENCE THINGS THEY HAVEN’T EXPERIENCED BEFORE. In most cases they are challenges that we wouldn’t or couldn’t do alone because of the danger or need for team work. A large group also provides more investigators into the unknown, as uncovering mystery and adventure in the 20th Century requires a lot more detective work. Events generally fall into three categories: Adventures, infiltrations, and stunts. As you may notice in the above emphasized phrase, no WHY or PHILIOSOPHY is attached…
PURPOSE:
Fill in the blank yourself.
WHAT IT HAS NOT BEEN: So far, there has been no President, no voting, no meetings, no collectives, committees or consensus, no rules agreed on by everyone, no dares, no mandatory experiences. We do have initiations, but attendance at them is not required in order to participate in the club. We are neither secretive nor publicity seeking, but we also do not encourage the vicarious. Journalists or photographers must join the club and experience the events themselves in order to record them – we do not give armchair interviews.
HYSTERY:
On January 2, 1977 gale warnings were issued in San Francisco, and, at midnight, four friends unexplainedly found themselves holding onto handrails as 20 foot waves broke over them. Afterwards, they agreed they wanted to explore other such experiences in a larger group of friends. The SUICIDE CLUB was chosen as a name, based on the Robert Louis Stevenson story of a club that gamed at midnight, the losers forfeiting their lives. The name was chosen to alienate and frighten people away. It was offered in the Spring ’77 catalog of Communiversity, a San Francisco Alternative University without fees. Suicide Club initiation now follows Communiversity’s trinary catalog publications and registration on the 3rd Saturday of Feb. and June and on Halloween weekend.
The Club has two annual events: A Champagne Dinner on the Golden Gate Bridge on the last Friday of February and a MASSIVE TREASURE HUNT taking place amidst the chaos of the Chinese New Years Parade comprised of opposing teams, culminating in a water balloon and pie fight at the final destination on the last Saturday of February.
MEMBERSHIP:
The membership in the San Francisco Suicide Club is divided into three (3) separate, distinctive groups, one, associate, two, regular, and three, eternal members. To become an associate member you need only send _____ for ______ newsletters and your associate membership card, (on the back of your associate card is stamped a large ASS.) Your ASS.ociate membership card allows you to attend any of the events listed and become a regular member. To qualify for eternal membership a member must sponsor or convene an event for which they receive a Death certificate, (an event of some special achievement). Any member may convene or sponsor an event by completing and following through with the “Planned Chaos” form which are available to all members without charge.
San Francisco SUICIDE CLUB tee-shirts are available to $3.50, for anyone, member or not, who has gone on an event.
APPLICATIONS:
Application forms are your introduction to fantasy. Even if you don’t believe your ideas are realizable- Fantasize: ADVENTURES- INFILTRATIONS- STUNTS.
DECISION MAKING AND LEADERSHIP:
The individual creating an event is totally responsible for planning it and any rules to be followed. Their ideas on are not voted on, amended or censored; ultimately members vote with their feet. Convenors do write up what they feel were their mistakes in planning afterwards, if they want, and any subsequent rules they will offer for their next events as a 1) warning, or 2) assurance (depending on whether you like the rule or not). A Questionnaire- “Planned Chaos” is used for write-ups and includes the questions overlooked in the past.
RISK:
Possibility of physical injury and/or arrest is an ever-present part of many, but not all, adventures. These are not sought out and writeups usually attempt to detail their possibility and how the leader plans to avoid it. We are becoming very experienced in this area.
MAILING ADDRESS:
S.F. SUICIDE CLUB, P.O. BOX 7734,
S.F. CA. 94120
[Editors note 36 years later – don’t write to that PO box, sheesh! We lost it long ago. – Note that it sort of spells ‘HELL’ backwards 🙂 ]
The Club maintains the MUSUEM OF THE INCONSEQUENTIAL at 451 Judah at 10th Ave., open 2-7 pm, Mon-Sat. IT is a collection of the
disgusting, bizarre, and fun loving groups and events other denizens of the solar system have created.
DIVEST YOURSELF OF EXPECTATIONS SOLIDARITY IS A NECESSITY PLAY IT OUT TO THE END.
