I landed in San Francisco in August 1976, with my then girlfriend Kris, at the end of a six week, 6000 mile road and camping trip in a beaten up silver blue mid 60s Chevy Nova. But that is another story, in this one I’m more interested in how I found myself in this city and immediately sensed that it was where I wanted to be – for now, and how I came to be involved in the Suicide Club over the next couple of years. The city was no longer the hippie enclave of years before, it was harder, and had more social issues, although strong remnants of that counter cultural time in the 60s still remained. I remember one long term resident called Kathy who said  “Living in the city was good but once in a while you’re going to step in the dog shit.” She was in fact the first person I remember telling me about the existence of this shadowy group called The Suicide Club. My interest was piqued. 

    Kris and I first lived in the Haight Ashbury, renting an apartment from a slightly dodgy landlord called Carlos. I found work eventually as a walking courier, carrying plans in tubes from one high rise office to another in the downtown district and then moved into temp office work. Outside this time I began to cultivate and explore the social world around me. I walked a lot, exploring  Golden Gate Park, the Mission and Castro districts, in fact all over the city.    

    Within a few months I had met some people in the Haight district who pointed me towards the Communiversity magazine. This was a free university, which offered classes in all kinds of esoteric subjects. It listed local and free classes in the neighbourhood. Several of these classes took place at The Circus of the Soul Bookshop run by a character called Gary Warne, who turned out to be one of the main instigators of the Suicide Club. So one thing led to another and I found myself in the spring of 1977 subscribing to the monthly Nooseletter, which listed all the events and activities that were on offer within the Suicide Club the following month. (The name was chosen deliberately to deter some people and invoke a sense of danger too.)

First there was a ‘so called’ initiation ceremony to induct newcomers to the club. It had no official membership or rules to speak of, except that on this night there were no drink or drugs involved. This event, which from memory occurred on the night of the Chinese New Year involved being blindfolded at the start and then having to follow and track down clues across the city, travelling by bus and on foot. From memory this ended up at the end of the evening in an elaborate gathering near The Palace of Fine Arts. It was entirely peaceful and enjoyable but with a surreal sense of humour surrounding the activity. I was in.

What follows are some of the activities I took part in. Sadly no photographs of mine exist.

It was the summer of 1977. A night was chosen to get into and explore Hamm’s Brewery. This brewery was a local landmark, which had fairly recently closed down. It was on Bryant Street in San Francisco, a tall building with huge metal cylindrical vats. I was among a group of Suicide Club members who broke in and crawled all over, up and down and inside the metal vats. We made some strange sounds effects by banging things and using our voices. The brewery site was later famously squatted and became a centre for musicians in the punk music scene.