For cool people under the age of 40, what I am about to say will seem untrue. Not just untrue but violently false. … San Francisco … was once cool.
And not just cool. Perhaps the coolest, most vibrant art scene in the world before it was destroyed by real estate gentrification. As a later day cool and an anthropologist of the scene, I have observed that fragments of this cool—like the ejecta of a great explosion—are scattered around.
Burning Man, The Edwardian Ball, Art Cars, The Cardboard Institute of Technology, the comedy of Robin Williams and Bobcat Goldthwait, The Crucible, Camp Tipsy, Bay to Breakers, Scott Lavkov, Santa Con, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, How Weird, Litquake, Folsom Street Fair and San Francisco Pride were all established within a 15-year period from the late ’70s to the early ’90s and represent the rare survivors of an art scene that was once 100-fold in its brilliance.
The San Francisco art scene was inventive, ingenious, literate, theatrical, political, irreverent, liberated, sexy, edgy and at times literally dangerous in its pursuit of modern adventure—as with the Suicide Club, The Cacophany Society and the flame-throwing battle bots of Survival Research Laboratories. Please, please look up these references.
These energies are badly needed at this time. Which is why I am so pleased to introduce Brett Roncelli, a displaced survivor of that halcyon scene, a living lore master tending the fire at his “cosmic love dome.”
Cincinnatus Hibbard: Your twisted performance personas are prolific, Brett. What are some of the many names that you play under?
Brett Roncelli: “Skanky the Clown,” “Triple T,” “Mustapha Mond” and “Seňor City Zen.”
Tell me about “Skanky.”
A friend put on a party and wanted everyone to come as a clown persona, so I became “Skanky the Clown.” And after that party, Skanky would not leave me. He proliferated. For example, at Christmas, he became “Skanky Claus.” We do a Christmas “scare-oling” bar hop—I have a song book with 35 Christmas carols we have rewritten—such as “Come All Ye Drinkers!”
Tell about the gallery you had in The Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, one of a thousand legal and illegal venues lost to The City.
Yes, Art Attack Gallery. It was a space for local emerging artists. We threw a lot of parties too (grins). When I moved to SF in ’89, you could get a retail space for next to
nothing, and artists were living in beautiful old Victorians throughout The Haight. There were all sorts of weird living situations. I had a buddy that built a shack on the 13th floor roof of a bank in The Mission. Nobody knew it was up there, and we would have weird events on that roof (laughs).
What were some of the art shows you threw?
Well, we had the “upside down show”—where we had constructed a device to turn people upside down to view the upside down art. We had a mobile gallery art bus that we would park opposite the expensive galleries and have art adoptions where we would give away free art.
We had “The In The Dark Show,” where the space was pitch black. Some of the art was meant to be felt blindly, or glow in the dark; you could carry a candle.
That’s very Dada but very populist too—in a good way—anyone would enjoy those shows without educational or price barriers. A fine corrective to the high tone snooze-fests we have in Wine Country.
Learn more. Meet Roncelli and possibly Skanky at ‘Freaky Final Fridays’ at The Forestville Club. forestvilleclub.com.
