Hell Hole

Christine Peroxide, Sid Terror, and Erotica Fantasy
crash in the Hell Hole
San Francisco, 1980

1980 photo
2005 Sid Terror

Hell Hole

Sid Terror responds, "That club, The Hell Hole, by the way, wasn't a Chinese grocery store. During the day it was a struggling sandwich place called The Del Monte Deli, located at 339 Eddy Street in the Tenderloin. It was owned by a mother and son (their names escape me) and managed by a guy named Gary White. There was a tiny little 1/3rd sized door hidden next to and behind the jukebox that looked like nothing more than a broom hutch. Once you crouched down and entered it, you turned a narrow corner and went down the stairs to the basement. The history lesson I got the first time Gary showed it to me, was that the basement had been a speakeasy during alcohol prohibition in the 1920's... In fact, the basement even had secret a back door (with a sliding eye slot in it) that let out into a gated alley. In the 20's, people would come to the door, give the secret knock, and say "Joe sent me" or whatever and have a place to drink illegal booze till dawn. But in the late 1970's when S.F. mayor Diane Feinstein had declared prohibition on punk rock, it had a new purpose. Gary and the people who owned it wanted to call it "The Del Monte Club" but the first time I went down to the basement and looked around, I said "This place is a Hell Hole" and the name stuck. There was no power or P.A. in the basement either... You had to run extension cords down the stairs and across the basement to the stage, lights and amps, then sing through a guitar amp. People were always tripping over the extension cords or unplugging them as a prank, and then you would have a sweaty, pitch-black cellar full of screaming punks.

The Undead was practically the house band at The Hell Hole for months, playing after hours shows on every Friday and Saturday night, with different opening bands each night. We had talked the owners into it, and it was pretty much The Undead's club. It was the most underground, dirty, illegal place I'd ever been in and I loved it. We even used to sleep down in that nasty basement. (I'll attach a picture to prove it). It started out bottom of the barrel, but after a couple months we really built it up and all the "hip" scenesters began coming there too.

Mayor Diane Feinstein, at that time, was trying to stamp out punk rock as an undesirable element that might keep the tourists dollars away from "picturesque San Francisco". To run a punk club within the city limits you needed a cabaret licence, or you couldn't have live music or even a jukebox. The payola downtown to get this licence was set so high, punk promoters couldn't afford it. But amazingly, the hardcore S&M gay clubs and bath houses could always get the license. Reason... Most gay men in San Francisco voted AND were affluent professionals. That is how Feinstein brought their votes and stayed in office, by catering to them and granting cabaret and liquor licenses. Which is what our record with the song "Frisco" was about. Screw these punk kids, they are too young to vote, they are an eyesore, and they don't have any jobs or money, so close down their punk clubs. Yet she let hardcore gay fisting clubs flourish without being bothered. The story behind the story, unknown to us at the time, was that with all the drug use and unprotected sex going on in those clubs, she is probably more to blame for letting AIDS and HIV get a foothold in this country than anyone. YEARS she let it go on, and then dragged her feet stopping those activities, because she didn't want to lose the gay votes. (Which almost got her impeached and they needed a special election and recount, you'll remember). But that is another story, we were talking about the Hell Hole...

Anyway, The Undead were in enough demand that we would sometimes do two or three different shows, at different places in one day. It wasn't unusual for us to do 4-5 shows a weekend all over Northern San Francisco. One night, September 13th, 1980, there were a couple big shows... One at the Mabuhay Gardens, PACKED, and also we were, I think, playing a big show (Fear or X or someone headlined) at 10th Street Hall that Paul Rat was promoting, ALSO PACKED. Afterwards everyone was going to this illegal after-hours underground show at The Hell Hole. We were headlining the Hell Hole gig and The Dead Kennedys were opening. Now, a lot of people don't know this today, but it was fairly well known by the bands then... Jello Biafra could be ruthless when it came to other local bands he saw as competition, and he REALLY hated the idea of us headlining over him. I kinda felt bad for the rest of the guys in the DK's, for having to put up with him, they were all cool. As much as Biafra whined and bitched though, the deal had been made and was not going to be changed. It was really petty rockstar bullshit. So, The Dead Kennedy's are down in that Hell Hole basement doing their set, when the SFPD and a load of squad cars and paddy wagons mysteriously pull up en mass outside and start in the door. Jello Biafra spouts off some contrived crap about police oppression or whatever, then abandons the microphone and runs out the secret back door. Then, he scrambles up a conveniently pre-placed ladder and hides on the roof. The only reason that I know this is because my girlfriend at the time, Christine Peroxide, saw him climb the ladder. She climbed it too, before he could pull it up after himself.

Meanwhile, the crowd is mostly trapped down in the basement with only one way out (they don't know about the secret alley door, remember) and that was up the stairs into the arms of the waiting SFPD riot squad. An interesting post-script to this story is that at least four people reported that they saw Biafra make a phone call from the pay phone outside just before he went onstage. The rumor was that he had called the police himself and reported the club so that he could be the "rebel punk hero" spouting at them over the microphone, make his escape, the club would be closed down AND he still wouldn't have to actually open for us. The upshot is that regardless of who called the cops, between 50 and 75 people were arrested that night, most of them minors that they collared on curfew charges - including half of my band, Larry Conquest and Bob Noxious. Needless to say, we didn't headline. Larry had to call his parents to pick him up from jail, and they made him quit the band, so, we lost him for good. We had to scramble to find a bass player, because we had a big show at Victoria Theater with Society Dog and Flipper the next night. Christine Peroxide ended up filling in on bass for that one show. The only reason she could (and hadn't been arrested too) is because she had been hiding on the roof where she saw Biafra run. Anyway, that was the last show at The Hell Hole, with the fines and the court appearances, the owners never recovered.

Back to the Biafra thing - he later used his influence and a lot of bullshit to help get our records banned and keep us from being booked at certain clubs. He only let off on it a bit after one night at The Elite Club (AKA The Fillmore West) that I cornered him backstage. He had come up to smooze (like he did to every touring band) THE MISFITS, who The Undead were doing a show with. I had filled them in on Biafra's tactics ahead of time, but they had already heard about much of it. I trapped him in The Misfits dressing room and let him have it verbally, then telling him to "C'mon, hit me first so I can mutilate you, you Colorado hippie throwback" but he was too chickenshit to do anything face to face. When Jerry, Doyle and Glen started with the "Do it, Sid! Just hit him!" catcalls, he ran out of there. Soon after, Biafra began badmouthing The Misfits, calling them violent Nazi's and trying to get their records banned too. Go figure. It was the mid-1980's before Jello Biafra gave me any kind of an apology and we buried the hatchet.