Category: History

For 5 years from 1977 to 1982, the Suicide Club nooseletter rolled out every month and many events from mild to wild occurred.

Go to the Events page for a complete list.

 

 

 

Harkness Hospital was a former San Francisco hospital located in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, where many of us lived.

We adopted it as a frequent destination for events such as dart gun games and climbing expeditions.

 

 

Peter Field rappelling a wall, and Bob Campbell traversing between wings

 

 

 

 

Photographer Greg Mancuso captured the Suicide Club in a massive food fight that took place in a house rented by Pierre Barral in the Glen Park District of S.F. The house was to be torn down later that week; the opportunity to completely trash a house, Three Stooges style, was simply too great for the Suicide Club to pass up.

 

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This event took place in April 1977 – led by Ron Unger

 

John Law recalls:

“I think the same day as naked cable car we did the Union Square Stunt. We parked on the bottom level of the parking lot (4th level?) in 2 or 3 funky vehicles (Dave’s beanbag seat Ford Galaxy 500, a hippy type van-Bob C’s?) There are 3 elevators. The scenes I recall were: 1). Candlelit dinner. Nicely dressed couple, red checked table cloth, Bob Shlesinger? In top hat & tails playing violin. 2). Man (who?) in easy chair attended by a boot black, a manicurist and a barber. 3). Shower scene. I was behind the shower curtain (taped across half the elevator car. Jeri Pupos (Phoenix writer), Ron Del aquila and a third person were in line waiting to shower. We were all wearing only towels. I had a shower cap on, soap on a rope and a tape recorder playing running water. Two well dressed elderly women heading for Macy’s got on the car without looking. I peaked over the shower curtain and, as they realized they were surrounded by near naked people, I told them they would have to take their clothes off and get in line if they wanted a shower. They laughed. 4). A car filled with balloons. 5). Three people bound & gagged and held at gun point by a Gorilla. 6). Flammo LeGrande with the beautiful Maureen Rowland (I think) doing the “Fountain of Flame) out the elevator doors at each level. This one got the cops called and we frantically packed everything up downstairs. We were just pulling out as the police arrived.”

 

 

   

Scariest thing I ever did. Many of us spent the night at Nancy Prussia’s apt. (I was dating her at the time-2 mos+/-) We got on the very 1st  (6AM?) car at the Cable Car Barn. 6-8 blocks later we stripped of all clothing and the grip and brakemen on the cable car just stopped in the intersection until we were done with our photo shoot (2 photogs were waiting for us at the intersection). One carman was a small, older white guy who was shaking his head, obviously annoyed at our interrupting the even flow of his cars early morning operation. The grip was a portly, good natured black guy who, to the chagrin of his brittle partner refused to engage the cable and leave until he had had his fill of oogling the bare breasts and asses he was surrounded by. My stomach was tied in knots from the fear of embarrassment and disapproval that public nakedness would no doubt cause. Quite to the contrary, I felt as though a weight had been lifted of me along with my raincoat. I was exhilarated by the experience and came to realize that no one gave much of shit about me being naked. My petty bourgeois fear was conquered.

 

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John Law recalls:

“We had refrigerator boxes which we cut up and used as sleds to go down the letters.”

“This event was the capper of an incredibly arduous and mind bending, adventure weekend. Big fun.   This night Gary & Ron showed North by North-West at Circus of the Soul. I experienced an extreme example of a type of synesthesia while watching this film, Hitch’s “final word on the chase film”. Lying on the floor of the bookstore, stuffed into pillows and entertwined with the equally exhausted bodies of my Suicide Club comrades I realized that I was IN the movie we were watching. We had moved in one unified and non-stop comet’s arch from the incredible vistas of the GGB through the pre-parade rush of China Town, onto the colossal concrete letters of S.S.F. and straight onto the precarious crevases of Mt. Rushmore with Martin Landau trying to kick us to our death. Wheww! That night and after I felt these people where my family; it was as though I had known them forever. I was already hooked by the Suicide Club but this was the clincher.”