Bay-Area-based rock and punk bands animate 924 Gilman at Warm Winters benefit!
Photo-essay
I had never been to 924 Gilman before, but I had read about it.
The straight-edge, DIY punk venue helped Green Day and Operation Ivy get their start and, over the years, booked bands like Fugazi, Jawbreaker, and At the Drive In. The show I stumbled into was Gilman’s Warm Winters benefit on February 25, featuring four young, Bay-Area-based bands (Jest Dogs, Pacific Panic, New Fossils, and Triggered Heart) and two slightly-older, Texas-based artists (Soaked and Goldbloom). Despite the cheap entrance fee for seeing six acts and the curious renown of the space, I was so tired from a week of attending events and fulfilling commitments that I knew I was not going to stay for the whole show — I had sleep to catch up on, and I hadn’t eaten anything all day except a banana muffin. Clutching my more-than-amateur-but-less-than-professional Canon Rebel, I decided I would check out the space — if only to take photos of a few acts, then discretely slip out, boil pasta at my apartment, and collapse into bed.
Once through the door, I realized how much larger Gilman was than the DIY venues in the Inland Empire where I was from. The space featured a general audience floor, stage with lighting and sound system, room for a merchandise store, and bathrooms (sans soap — at least, for that night). Murals, stickers, posters, and assorted decorations covered many walls. Behind the stage were two, white, spray-painted messages ordering no stage-diving and proudly acknowledging Gilman’s 30 years of on-and-off operation. There were colorful murals of a phoenix (or some other kind of mystical-looking bird), Cereberus (or was it a three-headed bear?), an ostensibly anti-capitalist McDonald’s logo, a multi-eyed monster, and much more. Halloween decor, including webs, skeleton heads, large plastic-and-wire-made spiders, and strands of colored lights, covered the sound booth. Huge, white, printed pages listing the names of bands that had played the venue were plastered on the wall above the bathrooms — and happily noted at the pages’ bottom that the extensive list was a partial catalog. A homemade bust of Bender from Futurama perched atop the wall opposite the front door, and signs advertising venue-volunteering and attending membership meetings appeared in multiple places throughout the space. A long table, stools, and benches graced the left side of the general floor, and teenagers and some adults trickled inside, selecting a spot to sit or stand while they talked among themselves.
Then the music started. Regardless of personal and audience taste or artists’ talent, what was immediately obvious was each band’s energy. Band-members performed, then watched their peers play — sometimes moshing or yelling back the lyrics. Somehow, the space persuaded audience-members that there was an endless endurance and vitality inherent in anyone under 25. Supporting details of Gilman’s implicit argument were Triggered Heart playing their punk-ish songs on the floor in dim lighting; New Fossils jumping about on-stage; Pacific Panic getting audience-members to shout back their lyrics; and Jest Dogs encouraging yet more attendees to come to the front of the crowd and raise their fists. Of course, the argument seemed contradicted by my own tiredness, and, after Jest Dogs finished, I snuck out of the space, looking up New Fossils’ Bandcamp page on my phone and wondering when exactly I would return to the unique, DIY venue.
Triggered Heart
New Fossils
Pacific Panic
Jest Dogs
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