PeterMixt

from a piece penned in 2002, - it gets edited often as facts emerge.

photo credit: Max Hellweg, Rolling Stone Magazine

I had moved to San Francisco after a brief stint in Los Angeles. Coming from Fullerton California, SF in 1972 was amazing. I was like a kid in a candy store but I arrived with a nasty cold and no-where to stay. Fortunately in 1972 there was a fella (F.E. Mitchell) in SF that ran a 'home for wayward boys'.

At 19, I was wayward.

Yes I did graduate from High School but had no marketable skills and/or talents, at least I thought as I had no idea where the A/V Department could take one. The fella that ran this "home" sat me down one day and asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I certainly did not have a clue. I defiantly did not say I wanted to grow up to be a drug addict and get tossed out of bars because of my mouth when I was drunk. But what he did discover was that in High School I had been involved with the A/V department. Go Figure!

 

And strange as it may seem, he knew someone that needed an assistant. My first job in SF was working for a small repair shop fixing the movie projectors in the adult "theaters". Lovely! Well as fate would have it, and don't it usually, one of the "theaters" was located next to the oldest dance bar in town, the Rendezvous. And one day for no good reason, and not yet 21, I marched up the endless stairway that lead to the dance floor and my future. I found two things there that afternoon, the first love of my life, and my first watering hole. Now when I say the first love of my life, I often hear people talk about loves or booze or drugs. Not me, I fell hard for the DJ. Not actually the DJ, but what he was doing. How exciting was that? We became friends that would last almost a decade. Steve N had grown up in the Bay Area and was a wiz on the turn tables plus a local on-air person and I wanted to grow up to be like that.

Well it happened. I followed his lead and he taught me to be a DJ. There was no job there as Steve and Chico Starr held down all the evening spots, but I guess Steve made a deal with the bar manager and I was allowed to come in when no-one else was spinning and practice. It was not too long till Steven told me of another place that had a one night a week opening, and I had been offered the spot. So off I went to the In Touch on Polk St., to spin. I found myself there during my extra time helping another fella I met, Bruce work on sound systems. Bruce built most of the systems in different bars around town. As for Polk Street, I unfortunately blew up the sound system on Easter Sunday and was politely shown the door.

Steven was now involved with a new club he and his roommate had helped open. He offered me one night a week, at a new club that had not yet made it's mark in town. It was located "South of Market", and frankly back then "South of Market" was not where proper boys should be seen. But for one night a week chance to spin, woohoo! Little did I know I was on the ground floor of an establishment that would change the face of fun. The Endup had a discrete quadraphonic sound system built of Cerwin Vega cabinets mounted inversely to the ceiling. The coupling of the sound to the room was amazing. The dance floor and wall behind the dancers was completely lit up, just like the floor of dance club in Saturday Night Fever, only the Endup came years before the movie. The DJ booth was between the door and the dance floor and was the place to hang.

Armistead Maupin wrote a story called, "Tales of the City" where his fictional characters went one afternoon to the "Jockey Shorts Dance Contest" at the Endup. Randy Johnson was the talented fella that was the host of the afternoon fest that packed the club every Sunday. Steven was the man of the hour on the "one liner drop-ins" all done from comedy albums of the time. I offered up the songs the contestants danced too. The three of us had many a fun evening but the color of Sunday would change in time.

Finally Steven moved on to the big time on local FM radio. I moved into the main DJ spot and a new fella took over second chair. Wayne had an idea that might allow the Endup to open a little earlier on Sunday. Seems that he thought it might be a fun thing for all those folks that went to stand up bars on Sunday morning, after all night at the "Troc" to have a place to actually still dance. He had an idea, he just needed a location. Management offered just one bartender that first Sunday morning. After all, who would show up? That first solo bartender sold out the all the bottled water that morning. Seems the crowd drank water. Church was born and my life would never be the same.

The Polk Gulch was a long and narrow hole in the wall with a two story high ceiling. The moment I walked in the room I knew where the DJ booth should be. Dave and his partners built my dream booth in the sky that was suspended above the crowd, in the middle of the room. In that DJ booth I had discovered I could hide down just right and do my drug of choice.

Dance Your Ass Off, was an amazing club I DJed at during the 70s. We had a amazing dance teacher/instructor that taught classes at the club before it opened and she was responsible for my stint in Rolling Stone Magazine. Thank you Karen... come see her website and learn more about Karen Lustgarten.

I was in SF during the Harvey Milk years, and the Dan White riots. My friend Steve was on KCBS-fm at the time and I was in my apartment above Moby Dick (a bar) and the police in riot gear marched up 19th street and tore apart the Elepant Walk Bar on Castro. Harvey's campaingn headquarters had been locaed in a building that 6 years earlier was a afterhours club called the Barn on Market Street.  Today I think it is a hardware store.

We had another friend on the Radio those days - Mike on K101. He later moved to Seattle WA, and after years of constructive public service both on the radio and off, was murdered by an insane roommate. Bruce long passed away... Only a few of the SF DJs from the 70s are still alive.

This goes on, but I gotta tell you that I moved from SF to my parents home in 1982. I need OUT. I had a problem with a little drink and drug. I have been sober and clean since January 31, 1982. I got clean and sober and did sober dance parties in Southern California for years. I'm still involved in charity projects and keep my street in order.

** Now a final and sad note. I was honored to do the Disconet remix of Viola Wills, "If You Could Read My Mind". Viola passed away on 6 May, 2009, aged 69, was an American singer and songwriter who had a string of disco hits in the late 1970s and ’80s.  Click HERE for here website.