Questions & Answers
1997 — Burn The Quilt
21 Bernice Street
Can you describe both 21 Bernice Street and The Lennon Studios on 7th Street/Dore Alley?
Both of the venues are in “Western SOMA” – the western part of the South of Market section of the City that contains the SF Leather Cultural District. The back exterior wall of 21 Bernice forms the back patio wall for the San Francisco Eagle, and the Lennon Studios facility is on Dore Alley (of the legendary Dore Alley Fair), half a block away from the Lone Star Saloon, the original “bear” bar.
Can’t find interior photos of 21 Bernice – it’s a corrugated-metal space of about 3000 square feet with vaulted ceilings and skylights, built in 1906, and used as a warehouse and light industrial facility. Lennon Studios, the same – a somewhat bigger building with an amazing performance/recording space seen in the photo on the lower left. When they opened on Dore in 1992, my best friend and ensemble drummer Willie J. Watson was a friend of the son of the studio owner Carole Lennon, and when Willie took me over there to meet Jimmy Lennon and Carole, they had just finished building out that space, and I jumped on it – Animal’s Positive Christmas was the first public event held there in December 1992.
Which performances did you show there? And in what years?
21 Bernice:
Patriots, Perverts, and Pieces of Jesus – Song Cycle - November 1990
Reprises of Pieces of Jesus (aka ANIMAL/SEEMEN) – Workshop with SEEMEN – June 1991
Pieces of Jesus – A Sacred Warehouse Chamber Opera – September 1991
The Lennon Studios:
Animal’s Positive Christmas: A Viral Celebration – December 1992
Issue of Blood – First Iteration with Full Ensemble – May 1993
Animal’s Positive Christmas 2: The Virus That Causes – December 1993
Sex and the Savage Lutheran and Animal’s Positive Christmas 3 – December 1994
Animal’s Positive Christmas 4 – December 1995
Can you describe Tom Marzella (director at 21 Bernice St)? How did you get to know Thom?
(Shows photo of Tom.)
This is Tom Marzella, photo from last March, and he looks today almost exactly like he did in 1990. The man does not age. Tom was one of three people who had leased 21 Bernice and fitted it out as a theater/performance space. In the summer of 1990, I was writing my very first full-fledged performance art piece Patriots, Perverts, and Pieces of Jesus and was looking for a place to mount it. While walking around the neighborhood, I saw flyers for a production of the play The Dreamer Examines His Pillow at 21 Bernice; I hadn’t heard of the venue so I took a walk over and met Tom and Peter Broome (long since lost to the four winds; an unpleasant fellow, he turned homophobic and left the scene many years ago), took a look around, and asked if they’d be open to an outside artist like me renting the space for my show, they said sure, and that was that!
Tom was and is an amazing man. He’s got an art rock band called Puce Moment that started in the 90s and still records I think; he’s the drummer. Tom is gay – he came out fully during the early 90’s so I got to see it – and he was also dating my female viola player! Wild, just wild. He’s measured, kind of soft-spoken, and a steady presence at the theater and as a friend. It’s been 11 or 12 years since we’ve seen each other, and today I sent him a message asking if he’d be open to talking with you!
Were you living in Bernal Heights at this time?
No. In 1990, I lived at 1188 Folsom Street near 8th Street in an artist’s residence hotel called Hotel SOMA, where I composed Patriots, Perverts … which was the seed for the full-length Pieces of Jesus the following year.
I stayed there until the spring of 1991, then had a series of short-term sublets and fleabag hotel stays through September, writing the orchestration for Pieces of Jesus at the last possible moments in a September heat wave in a stifling Folsom Street flophouse without a keyboard (only the flute) just hours before my ensemble was gonna walk out because the parts were late.. then couch-surfed and house-sat for a couple of months.
In 1992 I rented a studio apartment in the Tenderloin/Lower Nob Hill district, which I left the day I got my test results back telling me I was HIV positive. I spent the next six months staying with friends in Union City, about a 45-minute ride on the BART commuter train southeast of the City, and then in April of 1993 – I think, it’s way past my bedtime right now! – is when I moved to Bernal Heights, where I stayed until March of 1997 with a three (six?) month gap between stints there during which time I wrote Sex and the Savage Lutheran, a jazz vespers based on the Lutheran evening service that was an activist piece to goad the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America into allowing LGBTQ+ people to be ordained ministers in the pulpit.
I actually attended Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary for a semester in 1993 for “Ministry of Word and Sacrament”, a course in liturgical and ritual studies to bolster my compositional and creative forms for performance… I did feel the call to the ministry at that time, but because of the homophobia in the corporate church, I could not be ordained. I left the church for good in 1995 and have never returned to fellowship, although I still consider myself a born-again Christian (I was raised Fundamentalist Evangelical as a “pre-Millennial Dispensationalist”, and converted to Lutheran in the Army in Ansbach, “West” Germany at age 20 when I was baptized and confirmed). I no longer keep my daily office of morning and evening prayer, but I maintain a strong and abiding faith that guides me and leads me by grace through faith in my continual discernment of the leading of the Spirit.
Both of the venues are in “Western SOMA” – the western part of the South of Market section of the City that contains the SF Leather Cultural District. The back exterior wall of 21 Bernice forms the back patio wall for the San Francisco Eagle, and the Lennon Studios facility is on Dore Alley (of the legendary Dore Alley Fair), half a block away from the Lone Star Saloon, the original “bear” bar.
Can’t find interior photos of 21 Bernice – it’s a corrugated-metal space of about 3000 square feet with vaulted ceilings and skylights, built in 1906, and used as a warehouse and light industrial facility. Lennon Studios, the same – a somewhat bigger building with an amazing performance/recording space seen in the photo on the lower left. When they opened on Dore in 1992, my best friend and ensemble drummer Willie J. Watson was a friend of the son of the studio owner Carole Lennon, and when Willie took me over there to meet Jimmy Lennon and Carole, they had just finished building out that space, and I jumped on it – Animal’s Positive Christmas was the first public event held there in December 1992.
Which performances did you show there? And in what years?
21 Bernice:
Patriots, Perverts, and Pieces of Jesus – Song Cycle - November 1990
Reprises of Pieces of Jesus (aka ANIMAL/SEEMEN) – Workshop with SEEMEN – June 1991
Pieces of Jesus – A Sacred Warehouse Chamber Opera – September 1991
The Lennon Studios:
Animal’s Positive Christmas: A Viral Celebration – December 1992
Issue of Blood – First Iteration with Full Ensemble – May 1993
Animal’s Positive Christmas 2: The Virus That Causes – December 1993
Sex and the Savage Lutheran and Animal’s Positive Christmas 3 – December 1994
Animal’s Positive Christmas 4 – December 1995
Can you describe Tom Marzella (director at 21 Bernice St)? How did you get to know Thom?
(Shows photo of Tom.)
This is Tom Marzella, photo from last March, and he looks today almost exactly like he did in 1990. The man does not age. Tom was one of three people who had leased 21 Bernice and fitted it out as a theater/performance space. In the summer of 1990, I was writing my very first full-fledged performance art piece Patriots, Perverts, and Pieces of Jesus and was looking for a place to mount it. While walking around the neighborhood, I saw flyers for a production of the play The Dreamer Examines His Pillow at 21 Bernice; I hadn’t heard of the venue so I took a walk over and met Tom and Peter Broome (long since lost to the four winds; an unpleasant fellow, he turned homophobic and left the scene many years ago), took a look around, and asked if they’d be open to an outside artist like me renting the space for my show, they said sure, and that was that!
Tom was and is an amazing man. He’s got an art rock band called Puce Moment that started in the 90s and still records I think; he’s the drummer. Tom is gay – he came out fully during the early 90’s so I got to see it – and he was also dating my female viola player! Wild, just wild. He’s measured, kind of soft-spoken, and a steady presence at the theater and as a friend. It’s been 11 or 12 years since we’ve seen each other, and today I sent him a message asking if he’d be open to talking with you!
Were you living in Bernal Heights at this time?
No. In 1990, I lived at 1188 Folsom Street near 8th Street in an artist’s residence hotel called Hotel SOMA, where I composed Patriots, Perverts … which was the seed for the full-length Pieces of Jesus the following year.
I stayed there until the spring of 1991, then had a series of short-term sublets and fleabag hotel stays through September, writing the orchestration for Pieces of Jesus at the last possible moments in a September heat wave in a stifling Folsom Street flophouse without a keyboard (only the flute) just hours before my ensemble was gonna walk out because the parts were late.. then couch-surfed and house-sat for a couple of months.
In 1992 I rented a studio apartment in the Tenderloin/Lower Nob Hill district, which I left the day I got my test results back telling me I was HIV positive. I spent the next six months staying with friends in Union City, about a 45-minute ride on the BART commuter train southeast of the City, and then in April of 1993 – I think, it’s way past my bedtime right now! – is when I moved to Bernal Heights, where I stayed until March of 1997 with a three (six?) month gap between stints there during which time I wrote Sex and the Savage Lutheran, a jazz vespers based on the Lutheran evening service that was an activist piece to goad the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America into allowing LGBTQ+ people to be ordained ministers in the pulpit.
I actually attended Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary for a semester in 1993 for “Ministry of Word and Sacrament”, a course in liturgical and ritual studies to bolster my compositional and creative forms for performance… I did feel the call to the ministry at that time, but because of the homophobia in the corporate church, I could not be ordained. I left the church for good in 1995 and have never returned to fellowship, although I still consider myself a born-again Christian (I was raised Fundamentalist Evangelical as a “pre-Millennial Dispensationalist”, and converted to Lutheran in the Army in Ansbach, “West” Germany at age 20 when I was baptized and confirmed). I no longer keep my daily office of morning and evening prayer, but I maintain a strong and abiding faith that guides me and leads me by grace through faith in my continual discernment of the leading of the Spirit.