October 2000 • Rockbites Alternative Daily
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October 2000 • Rockbites Alternative Daily
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Evicted San Francisco musicians hang hope on community 6 October 2000
The musicians are stashing the bulk of the money to help secure a new rehearsal location—which will cost in excess of $3 million according to San Francisco supervisor Gavin Newsom. He mediated talks between Downtown Rehearsal’s owners and the bands, and is now helping the former tenants find a new place to meet, practice, and develop. The nonprofit Popular Noise Foundation, founded in April, is coordinating fundraising activities along with other groups including Save Local Music and Rock Out SF. Popular Noise’s principals include musicians as well as Dot Com heavyweights and local entrepreneurs, among them Noise Pop Festival founder Kevin Arnold, garageband.com founder and former Talking Head Jerry Harrison, Pavement’s Scott Kannberg, Creeper Lagoon’s Sharky Laguana, and Listen.com Editor-in-Chief Nick Tagborn. Kirk Hammett of Metallica and Stephin Jenkins of Third Eye Blind are thinking about organizing benefit concerts. A variety of local businesspersons have come forward with offers to help fund a new rehearsal space. Supervisor Newsom said earlier this year “These people are not being alarmist, the evidence is incontrovertible. If you have no incubator space, the seeds of the community will die off, or go somewhere else. We’ve been the beneficiary of the music community for years and it seems we’re standing on the precipice of losing it.” The essence of the problem is the Bay Area’s spiraling cost of living, and in particular, cost of real estate, fueled by the relentless tech boom. As prices, congestion, and pollution escalate, the impending exodus of musical talent seems from here like a warning bell that the Silicon Valley bubble cannot expand forever. But PNF founder Kevin Arnold says it’s not a case of us versus them. “The Bay Area business community and dot-coms in particular have been accused of killing the local arts, but the gap between those communities is not as wide as many think. We’re longtime fans and participants in local music and we know that we all have a vested interest in seeing the music scene continue to thrive.” | San Francisco Chronicle story | | Popular Noise Foundation | | Save Local Music | | Rock Out SF | | top of page | |
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