Interview with Scam 'zine creator Erick Lyle

SFBG: The phase “secret history” is in the subtitle of your book and the term “urban archeology” is used to describe it. Did it feel like an archaeological project -- like you were digging up this buried history of the city -- when you were compiling the book?

Erick Lyle: When I moved to San Francisco I was lucky enough to be around a lot of older folks who told me their stories about the city and I fell in love with this place instantly. I feel like I’ve got all those stories filed away in my mind, so that when I’m out, riding my bike around the city, if I’m at a certain intersection, for example, I’ll think, “Oh, this is where that punk club was in 1988, but it’s also where so-and-so broke up with her boyfriend in 1995 and there was that one time when a guy tried to hit me with a 2x4.” But I can see all these layers simultaneously in my mind, and for me, part of the enjoyment of living here for awhile is seeing how these layers fit together over time. It gives an added dimension to, for example, a protest event you might be doing, to understand how that event fits into the longer history of the area.

As far as thinking about it as archeology at the time, I wouldn’t say that we were so self-conscious that we would do generator shows in the street so we could say, “This is history." But if we don’t write this shit down, no one is, it’s not making it in the Chronicle or anywhere else. The things that happen in the doorsteps of the Mission or on the dance floor at the punk club or are spray-painted on the walls: these are the things that make up our lives. That’s the fabric of life in the city.

SFBG: There’s a great anecdote in the book where you start repeatedly sneaking into a dot-com office in the Mission to make yourself sandwiches and drink beer in their fully-stocked kitchen. You eventually stop going there, not because you got kicked out (since nobody noticed that you didn’t belong there), but simply because it was just weird being in that environment. You wrote: “After a while, being somewhere that could be anywhere with people who could be anybody was just too damn creepy.” That seems like an apt metaphor for the direction the city was headed at the time.

EL: Yeah, that was the spirit of that era, and to a certain extent, that continues on today — that era has never completely ended. We face the prospect of becoming the first entirely gentrified city in America. That situation at the dot com place, with all these hip, white kids, with their iPods on, staring at their computer screens eating organic food: that’s what the city is in danger of becoming. Kind of like Seattle. A city where everybody hates the war, but it’s illegal to sit on the sidewalk. Where everybody eats organic peaches, but they hate George Bush. It’s environmentally beautiful, but only the elite can afford to live there.

SFBG: So what do you think of the ongoing Manhattan-ization of downtown San Francisco? There are a lot of mixed feelings, even on the left, because development is now framed as being either “out or up,” tall or sprawl. What do you think?

EL: It’s not true. The “up” that they’re building is ALSO “out.” It’s still all about cars. All these massive condo complexes also have parking garages. If you still wanted to build up, you could be putting housing density along transit corridors, like Market St. or Geary. We could be building denser housing that takes public transportation into account and where there’s not going to be parking garages.

Also, the idea that these luxury condos are going to help solve San Francisco’s housing crisis is false. These condos aren’t built for the people already in this town who need housing. It’s bringing in new wealthier people. And it’s certainly not helping people living on the street. District 6 is really going to be gentrified from within.

SFBG: You’ve been following housing issues in the city for a long time. You’ve been homeless, you’ve lived in SROs. What would be a sensible policy for this city to adopt, regarding homelessness?

EL: The main thing is that housing should not be a commodity. It should not be a source of wealth or speculation or profit. It’s an essential need of life. You could take Market St., for example. You’ve got all these abandoned buildings and all these people sleeping in front of them, so that would suggest a solution right there.

Just to add this, though: Newsom and all these people always say, “It’s not that simple. These people have problems and you can’t just plug them into housing.” That’s true, there needs to be substance abuse programs, as well. We have a mayor who declared that he had an alcohol problem and instantly he received treatment – treatment on demand that simply does not exist in this city for people who live on the street. This is the same guy who demonized people for using welfare checks to allegedly purchase drugs or alcohol! We need more mental health services, too. But people don’t need to go all the way to the streets. There needs to be more affordable housing to keep people from becoming homeless.

SFBG: Or they could take Willie Brown’s famous advice that he told your newspaper The Turd-Filled Donut and just move somewhere else.

EL: Yeah, you could try to get some relocation money from your landlord, and take a subprime loan to buy a house in Stockton or Fresno or somewhere and then have it foreclose on you a few years later!

This interview continues at:

http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision/2008/05/lit_erick_lyle_on_rehab_for_ne.htm