I hope to eventually get more information but I decided to write this up while The Loft story still has a little bit of momentum. My theory last time that typing up what I got from my conversation with Steve would possibly spur others to get in touch did pan out but not exactly the way I’d described it. Rex actually messaged me the moment I started typing the last chapter up as opposed to after I’d shared it – kind of like an invisible brain wave serendipity thing.
It seems like Rex and his partners primarily moved into the building because they needed offices for their magazine but it also doubled as a living space. Using the property as an event space for parties would have been a third concern but I doubt it was too far from anybody’s mind. What young artist would look at two floors and 10,000 square feet worth of space and not imagine throwing a rager?
Nobody’s given me an exact figure for rent but I’m sure it was relatively low. In the 1990’s Downtown San Diego was full of porn theaters, SROs and cheap hotels known as “flophouses”. The Museum of Death was still in the Gaslamp Quarter and the area toward 12th and Imperial had Sushi Performance Art and The ReinCarnation Project. Ironically the moment developers started calling this area the “East Village” roughly coincided with when a lot of it’s art spaces were being displaced by Petco Park.
[I actually just heard back about the rent and it’s pretty amazing. 600 a month for all 10,000 sq. ft. on two floors and the first six months for free. That wasn’t the initial offer but something Edhlund was able to get through renegotiation.]
Rex was able to tell me that the building had originally housed a location of West Coast retail and pharmacy chain Owl Drug with a third floor bowling alley and a fourth floor archery range during World War II. By the time him and his partners moved in the fourth floor had already been converted to a boxing gym. The second floor had been used as storage.
Before moving into The Loft Edhlund ran a store in North Park called The Store That Cannot Be Named. It sold underground comics, clothing, art books, spray paint caps for graffiti art and had a screen printing studio in the back. Ironically I had come across that name somewhere while digging around for clues on what I eventually found out was The Loft and assumed they literally didn’t want to mention a store’s name because of a legal or copyright dispute – I never would have guessed it was actually related to what I was searching for.
The store was on 30th Street next to legendary leather bar Wolfs and open in 1992.
https://dangerfactory.com/pages/about-this-thing
The magazine was called Sin until a legal dispute over that name necessitated changing it to Hypno. I read somewhere that it was the first print magazine in the world to be entirely edited on computers and have no reason to doubt that’s true. It made such a splash that Larry Flynt Publishing began distributing it almost immediately allowing it to reach the then-vital newsstand market.
The magazine was definitely ahead of it’s time covering a mix of underground music, comic books, both fine and street art, alternative cinema and things like car clubs and club kid fashion contests. They were the first to cover Shepard Fairey and the mix of graffiti and design work he was doing with Obey Giant. Sin, which started in 1992, and Hypno were no doubt influences on The Beastie Boys’ Grand Royal magazine launched in 1993 and the art publication Juxtapoz that began in 1994.
Here’s a reproduction of a 1995 article from Fairey’s website.
https://obeygiant.com/articles/hypno-magazine-things-october-1995/
A popular theme and style inspiration on the magazine and lots of art, music and comics of the ‘90s is the aesthetics of lounge/exotica music, tiki bars and Hot Rod/Kustom Kar design. I have a theory that waves in the tastes of young artists/hipsters are influenced by the die-off of older generations and the proliferation of their knick knacks in thrift stores. By the early to mid 2000s the hot thing was 1970s decor with owls and mushrooms.
Me and Francois used to play a game to kill time at San Francisco house parties called “find the owl” – it didn’t matter that we’d never met the hosts and knew nothing about them – we could always count on at least one being on display.
The Hypno guys were in cahoots with Fantagraphics and a lot of other small press comics people that were coming to San Diego for the Comic Con. When Daniel Clowes and Peter Bagge did the Hateball tour together in 1993 The Loft hosted an after party for it and put on another soirée for Comic-Con that Summer. By 1994 there was considerable buzz around repeating the tradition and planned events for Roger Corman’s film studio and Danzig’s Verotik imprint wound up being lumped in and contributing to the growing snowball.
I may have mentioned this night in passing in at least one of the previous chapters but for the sake of expediency I will attach Edhlund’s account here:
Most of the stories around this celebration center on Glen Danzig as the combination of his diminutive stature and outsized masculine bravado seem to bring something out of people. One person said he was standing on his tiptoes to take pictures with fans which might be possible but the rumor of a drunken scofflaw challenging him to an arm wrestling match seems unlikely in light of the confirmed reality that he was accompanied by an intimidating bodyguard.
I was able to find a photo of him with a bodyguard from 1990 that I selected as the featured image of this entry but have no way of knowing if it’s the same person who accompanied the singer in 1994. My more observant readers will notice that in this image he is unabashedly standing for this photo with universally taller fans and making no attempt to obscure their relative height differences.
I was curious about the earliest days in the building and how Circle of Friends came to be involved. I’ve attached a screenshot of a message below that sheds some light on the connection and what kind of work was required to create functional work and living spaces. I also read in the Union-Tribune article that the property’s actual owner briefly fell under Murshid’s influence but I don’t know if this predated the Hypno staffer’s involvement or if it was a later development.
Edhlund told me that in the year without water they could sometimes manage to get showers in the upstairs boxing gym. Another thing he clarified was that Hypno was the only business officially headquartered in The Loft and near-solely responsible for paying the rent and keeping the lights on. He broke down the relationships with some of the other entities I’d heard associated with the place.
Home Grown Video, the first major amateur pornography company, became involved because they shared a lawyer and interest in the art scene. When Lofties wanted video editing and duplication equipment for creative endeavors Home Grown bought the gear, housed it there and allowed shared use. They also hired roommates who wouldn’t have otherwise come up with rent for freelance work like scanning slides.
Edhlund described it as “symbiotic”.
Global Underground Network, the big rave promoters, was mostly Branden Powers who also called The Loft home for a while. Ideally Branden would be the next person I’d want to get in touch with for stories. Global Underground did run some things out of and hold meetings in the space and Powers also helped with raising money and organizing events like the big Comic-Con party.
John Goff had sent me a newspaper clipping that talked about a label called Lobecandy Records and someone named Gen Kiyooka. Gen evidently took over the second floor space with all the computers after Steve Pagan moved out – an era referred to as “Year 3”. He ran the space as an artist’s collective where anybody could access the equipment in exchange for paying monthly dues.
The recording studio was on the second floor and built by the Hypno guys and members of Crash Worship who lived nearby in the church next to Pokez. It was about halfway done at the time of the ‘94 Comic-Con party as Edhlund’s account mentions using the “shell” as Danzig’s Verotik stripper room. I’m not sure if Circle of Friends provided any of the recording equipment but considering the provenance of the computers and Murshid’s knack for attracting deep pocketed devotees it seems likely.
On the subject of Murshid I was able to find a picture of him after lots of digging. That was mostly the result of him having a primarily pre-internet heyday as opposed to any desire for anonymity – most cult leaders want to have their face on everything. It came from the obituary of the woman who made his wedding cake, seen here on the left, but unfortunately I captured the image without bookmarking the website and can’t recall her name.
Both Steve Pagan and Rex Edhlund talked about The Loft having weekly meetings like any collective punk house. Steve mentioned somebody at these meetings complaining about the associations and collaborations with pornographers and considering Steve’s Zone Smut work and Rex’s positive associations with Home Grown it seems like this had to have been the Circle of Friends folks.
The group most likely worried that breaking bread with a porn company might limit their ability to draw in young spiritual seekers which seems especially ironic considering that every single person that’s mentioned Circle of Friends has thrown out inferences of sex trafficking.
Edhlund said he left The Loft some time in the fourth year which would work out to 1997 according to my timeline. I also read something about Hypno eventually falling prey to a hostile corporate takeover and being published as a hollow mockery of itself with one sellout traitor sticking around. I seem to have misplaced my source on that as well but I think I pretty much got the gist of it – otherwise I’ll change it.
One thing I’ve noticed from my own time living in collectives is that they can be maddeningly ineffective at ejecting their most toxic elements. A full on eviction often requires a unanimous vote and it’s often easier to move out yourself than to try to band everyone against a common enemy. After a few years the members nobody wanted to live with are the one’s in charge as it’s always possible to move in new people who won’t rock the boat.
At The Loft this was undoubtedly Circle of Friends. I’ve been marveling at the seeming improbability that I never encountered this place but I think it comes down to timing – by the time I would have been interested it was called World Evolution Loft and wasn’t particularly interesting. Of course it seems odd that nearly every one of my friends has at least one story from the place but if I’d experienced it myself there never would have been a mystery and without the mystery I never would have written any of this.
That’s pretty much where I’ll leave things. Of course I’m still interested in hearing stories and talking to folks who were actually there but things seem to be winding down and some stories are best told by the people who experienced them. I’ll leave you with one last screenshot from my conversation with Rex:
[link to conclusion]
San Diego 1999 The Loft Part Four : Brass Tacks for Budding Upholsterers
Adventures in the Undiscovered Interior of Underground America 