If you thought I was hairy now, check out this image of me taken by David Huang for PoeticDream.com.
If I’m not mistaken, this was taken sometime in November 1998. That’s me slamming for the very first time, at the first poetry slam in downtown San Jose, started by David Huang and Vadim Litvak. It was, at least, the first poetry slam that continued on and is still running today at the Britannia Arms downtown. The venue I’m at in the photo is the now defunct Cafe Babylon. It was a nice place and I wish it was still around.
I’m in the middle of a horrendous stand up routine that lasted two minutes and thirty seconds. For that, I received what I’m pretty sure is the lowest score in SJ Slam history to date: a 6.0 (drop the 1 and the 3, add the 2s). The feature that night, and the first feature I ever saw, was either Mack Dennis (badass) or Alan Kaufman, compiler/editor of the Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. The slam at that time was called the Silicon Valley Poetry Slam, then shortly afterward it became the Metro Silicon Valley Poetry Slam after receiving sponsorship from SJ’s weekly rag, The Metro. I never liked the name as much as I liked the free ads we got from them, so when I took over the slam in 2003 or 4, I dropped the contract and the name and went with San Jose Poetry Slam (sorry, Vadim). That’s one of the few good things I did with the slam, that and move it to a weekly show. Well, sometimes good. Anthony R. Miller’s done a much better job with it since then.
Had I continued slamming in 1998-99, I might have gotten better and made it into the finals (doubtful). The SJ team that came out of that season went on to win the National Poetry Slam team finals, along with co-champs Team San Francisco. I could’ve easily helped San Jose take 33rd!
The Bay Area boom in spoken word and poetry slam that followed that season produced several new poetry slams and hundreds, if not thousands, of new poetry slammers. And it introduced a new school to the old school in slam. I have heard pre-1996 slammers refer to all post-1996 poets as the “new school,” or “assholes.” Well, we are, aren’t we?
Ah, the memories! I remember when Tourettes Without Regrets, the now 450+ crowd infamous circus of hip hop and debauchery, was a glorified open mic/open of about 8 poets and
Most Bay Area slammers don’t realize that there was a single poetry slam held February 1990 in downtown San Jose by my friend William’s friend and writer, Michael Vaughn. From what I’ve been told, that very first poetry slam was a dismal failure and the poets in attendance at that time swore never to allow another poetry slam downtown. Well, they either all died, moved away or changed their minds because our current slam is in its eighth year and counting. San Jose has a pretty rich beat and page poetry history – its slam history is totally catching up. Odd coincidence: Two years ago there was one odd night when our regular venue “accidentally” booked a company party on our slam night and we needed a quick alternate spot to run the show. We called all of the venues downtown, dreading the idea that we may have to cancel the slam. That first venue that hosted the 1990 fiasco slam just happened to be the only one willing to host us 13 years later. It was an omen or something, but it ended up being a great night and we made new slam fans who still come today. That night also introduced San Jose to the powerful words of our feature that night: Corbet Dean.
I know that San Francisco held the first and third National Poetry Slams thanks to Gary Mex Glazner (the godfather of West Coast poetry slam, who’s coming to feature in SJ very soon), but what happened when he left? Did slam continue on consistently in the Bay, or was there a complete drop? Charles Ellik is certainly at least partially responsible for its rebirth in 1998, but he moved here in 1997 (I believe). Who knows the history before this? I anticipate a nice and lengthy comment from Mr. Ellik on this subject (when he has time).
I am fascinated with the gaps in Bay Area poetry slam in the mid-1990s. Does anybody know what went on? I know most of the history from 1998 through today. I’m going to have to interview Gary when he gets in to get a complete timeline.
If you visited a poetry slam in the Bay Area before 1998, please give me all the details you might remember about the venue you visited, who performed and why you were there. Beyond all of this and the Bay, what was touring as a poet like pre-2000? Was there a nation-wide boom in venues and slams?
I know Mr. Phil West and Ms. Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz are working on a project that covers a lot of this information on a global level. I can only imagine what they’ve captured and collected in interviews with poets and organizers. Let’s just say I can’t wait to read, hear and/or experience whatever they put out for public consumption!
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Word to the nerd.
This entry was written by , posted on 16 March, 2006 at 10:41 AM, filed under Personal Updates and tagged Bay Area, history, Performance Poetry and Spoken Word, poetry, san francisco, san josé poetry slam. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
Hey Mike…just so you feel a little better about your low score…a guy at Berkeley last night got a -3
SF Slam 95-98 part 1
–The SF ‘street poetry’ scene was alive and healthy the first time I visited here in 95 or so. Cafe Babar, Cafe International, Poetry Above Paradise, La Pena, the Blue Monkey, and many other open mics were full of poets and their small but loyal audiences. I heard that Alan Kaufman ran a show at the DNA Lounge that became legendary for attracting then-unheard of audiences of 150 people.
–At the 95 Nationals, I saw the brilliant SF team in action. That team is still legendary, with members like Beth Lisick, Justin Chin, and Russell Gonzaga. They were talented, young, diverse, stylish and good-looking. They should have been on the Finals Stage, but they had no concept of strategy or keeping their performances under time. At the 96 Nationals, when I was on the Long Beach team, we saw the next SF team in competition. They were also brilliant cool kids who were widely admired in the slam family, and actively thumbed their noses at the whole idea of competition and rules.
–I arrived in NorCal in 97. I’d been running irregular slams down in Long Beach and OC, where in the past I’d featured Gary and the SF Team, so the poets already knew of me. That team collectively dropped their drawers and mooned my entire audience at one slam! The SF street scene at the time was still thriving, though slam was generally seen in an un-positive light, as unsophisticated and pandering.
–Gary was still running the SF slam, though he’d tried to hand it off to other organizers. Unfortunately, no one else wanted the job. So he only ran a series of slams for a couple weeks before each Nationals, just to select a team. They made no pretension of actually being fair in the sense we now think of slam. Rather, it was more like performance art, or a poetry party. One of the shows I went to, Gary wore a Santa Suit and became falling-over drunk and nearly intelligible. Gary was not interested in the drudge work, and instead of organizing fund-raisers, he simply paid for registration and hotels and transportation out of his own pocket. No wonder he was burnt out!
–When I moved here, one of the team members, Hank Hyena, asked if I would like to run a slam at his tiny theater, called the Grasshopper Palace. That was late 98, and photos of one of those first shows appear on David Huang’s site, poeticdream.com. Hank wanted an alternative to Gary’s shows, which were raucous, drunken affairs that barely took the competition seriously. SF was known for sending creative, talented teams to Nationals that scored very poorly because the poets all went overtime or disregarded the rules. Hank wanted to change that, so as to get our talented locals on the Finals stage and get the recognition they deserved. He figured I was a the guy to do things differently.
–I had a very different vision of slam than other organizers at the time. I wanted to create a model where the poets competed co-operatively, using a martial arts philosophy: steel sharpens steel. At most slams at the time, poets actively tried to BEAT the other poets, to compete, and many slams had been started because someone was pissed at someone else and wanted a new venue and their own team. Yes, back then the slammaster did NOT have to compete to be on their own team! You just said you were on, and you were on.
–So in my model, the rules were very strict and applied to everyone, so as to create as unbiased and level a playing-field as possible. Not because I thought I could make slam “fair”, but rather to remove the bias of the slammaster and to encourage diversity of poets and styles. That’s also why, to this day, you rarely hear me read any full-length poems at the slam. I don’t want to condone one style.
–To serve that vision, I went out and promoted the show to all the other poetry “scenes” in SF and Oakland, of which there were many. This was NOT done back then, when most poetry shows were separated by insurmountable walls of gender, class, race, and location. I refused to book local features, and until 99 I only booked touring poets so as to avoid local politics.
SF Slam 95-98, part 2
–What I created was a culture clash. Poets from the different poetry ghettos did NOT like one another, but I was clueless. Many despised me, a skinny white boy from LA who worked as a Stock Broker during the day and wore silk shirts. So I was careful to keep the slam’s administration transparent, from the rules (which I put on ‘programs’ and passed out), to the selection of judges (lottery), to the weekly rankings (always posted). I started an email list and called it the “SF SLAM UPDATE”
–When the new slam began to blow up, folks became enraged. 35, then 50, then 75 people attended. We moved to the Café Du Nord. 100, 150… Within a couple months, it was the biggest poetry show in SF. I gave away unheard-of amounts of cash money, (Like, $50, WOW!), which was considered vulgar and likely to skew the poetry and performance to pandering to the judges. Some of the “old-school” performance poets from the Chameleon open mic scene would show up and try to disrupt the slams. I was openly criticized.
–I was a much harsher emcee back then, actively clowning poets. The slam was also much rowdier than today’s Berkeley Slam, with a LOT more heckling, experimental writing, and general mayhem. Photos of one of that year’s Semi-Finals are also on poeticdream.com, one of my most memorable nights in poetry, the infamous “Slam On The Lam” when we got collectively booted from the Café Du Nord. It was right about then that I met and worked with David Huang, Vadim Litvak, and started going to events in San Jose. That’s when they started the San Jose Slam.
–The 98 Finals were held at SOMARTS, in SF’s SoMa district. It was the biggest local slam event anyone had ever heard of up to that point. The biggest slam finals. The biggest poetry event in SF that year. Nearly 400 people showed up!!! By then, there was an active behind-the-scene resistance to my influence, and a secret second SF team was being created. The drama, excitement, and hype was incredible. An amazing team was created, with poets from across the spectrum, from SF, Chico, San Jose, Oakland, and Berkeley. They really did NOT like one another!
–The catastrophic events of the 98 team and our spectacular implosion at the 98 Nationals is different tale. One that played out in an excruciatingly public orgy of drama in front of the entire Slam Family. One that I should turn into a novel or screenplay some day. Suffice to say, it was hell. When we returned, no one was speaking to one another. The slam scene was a smoking crater in the ground. I was lucky if 20 people would show up. I own an un-repayable debt to co-host Michelle Marzullo, who never wavered in her support. With her help, I stuck it out, found a new venue (or two or three) and by November of 98, a whole new scene was emerging: a completely new group of poets, a strong flavor of hiphop, and something palpably magical was in the air. The entire Bay Area and NorCal caught the fever, and by the time we held our Team Finals in 99, it was a bigger and more exciting and a whole lot friendlier scene than ever before.
i heard Charles Ellik was Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s love child and he moved to the Bay in hopes of impressing his long lost father.
Lawrence wasn’t sure about his poetry…but he loved the hair.
Re: SF Slam 95-98, part 2
Thank you. Thanks. And much, much appreciated.
To me, it is so marvelous to read such history. A history that may mean little to so many who read it, but I feel it a huge part of my history.
In a sense, I would not be doing what I do today if it hadn’t been for the people you’ve listed. Yourself included, sir.
And what do I do today, you may ask? Much of what I love. Thank you for taking the time to learn me about this, Charles. It means a whole hell of a lot that you wrote this down in my journal.
Thanks again.
Geez! I haven’t heard of a -3 given in years. Are the old days coming back? Is that why I feel so reminiscent?
Neat! A -3!
Now I want a -4!
memoriesssssssssssssssssssssssssss
Re: SF Slam 95-98, part 2
oh, no problem. thanks for the inspiration. i cranked that out in only about an hour.
i try not to live in the past, but i oughtta write all this down somewhere, anyway.
btw, what’s up (!) with this phrase, mr. grammar: “…taking the time to LEARN me about this…” *hmph*
Lawrence
I only talked to L-diddy once, on camara, at his celebration at City Lights Books upon being named SF Poet Lauret. When asked by the cute French TV reporter what he thought of slam, he turned, looked me in the eye, and in a slow and dramatic tone he said, “Slam is the Death Of Poetry!”
He didn’t mention my hair, which was much shorter at the time.
I remember someone caught that on videotape, which you and I then dumped down (audio only) to CD. Does that tape or CD still exist? It would be fun to listen to!
Bryce
Mike, I’m visiting Shane at uDEL and spreading the word about slam here.
Was wondering: Do you have any sort of online gig calendar that I’m missing? If not, that could be a cool thing to add…esp. for planning purposes.
Shane’s gonna talk to the uDEL people, see if they have the money for a gig while you’re on the East Coast. It’s a pretty big school and there might be a good turnout.
Also…kudos on “Sigur Ros” on your links. They’re pretty sick.
See you in mid-April–shane and I are looking forward to seeing you there.
–Petey
That picture
seriously…
miss ya!
I woulda given you at least an 8.5 just for looking that hilarious. nice one.
Thanks for sharing. It’s interesting to see the develpement of the slam..esp. considering thjat things around here are geeting interesting…if not frustrating.
(note my spelling typos and poor punct. just for you.
Re: SF Slam 95-98, part 2
ah, señor charles and mike…loved reading your path down memory lane.
funny thing, mike…i remember that pic of you. i was there. i think it was alan kaufman. it was the first time i read in san jose, i think. i was in newark, ca looking for a reading and i landed there…or maybe….damn that’s almost 10 years ago.
i think the funny thing about 97 and 98 was i was going to those readings/slams and thinking…these suck! i’d hate to be in this. i went with russell gonzaga and watched him in SF finals, and i was, “damn, sucks to be him. glad i am never gonna do that in my life.” (tsk, tsk, tsk)
in 1996, i just got back from texas where everyone in san antonio was debating if my poetry was theater or poetry and if i should be allowed to perform at a poetry festival.
then…i won a slam in san antonio for that same festival, and i was told i needed to memorize my stuff, and i became confused. do you want these to be like theater or don’t you? shit!!
and then a group of latino poets went to austin. and austin…sucked. i hated getting heckled for doing bilingual poetry (that has happened to me in austin, and the chameleon and seattle). wammo wasn’t nice to me; there was a hierarchy; waaa. waaa. waaa. i didn’t see a community of artists; i saw a lot of people want to get drunk, high, and have sex! well…that should’ve kept me, right?
i never wanted to slam again. i thought it was racist and bullshit. (and if you want to go into that…email me or call me…it’s a much deeper conversation than livejournal can handle, honestly) especially since i was at the 98 finals in SF. and there was bickering and name-calling. and i knew people who knew people. it is exactly as charles described it, a mess.
the dopest thing about SF pre-99 was that there were less expectations for poets, less superstars, yet hella dope poets.
pre-99 (and i was in the bay from 95-2002) still felt punk rock to me. poetry in the bay felt like it came from the bay: free flowing. sexual, at times. less boundaries. if felt like poetry of exploration and discovery. it’s not better nor worse than now, but less trying to win over a mass audience (yet…they had hella people dig their work!)
poetry is now much more corporate (when i mean corporate i mean, dollar, dollar bill, y’all..not that people are rolling, but it’s a different focus) in the bay because post-99 was an actual attempt by a coalition of poets and promoters to make money off of it. That was a trip. they took the love-love energy and made a business out of it. that’s an achievement. but as someone who witnessed the transformation, a bit disconcerting because you wonder if that happens to all subcultures: they move from innocence to money. (which isn’t a bad thang because radiohead would not be radiohead without corporate structure, so there!)
pre-99 no one was using the word spoken word. the theatricality of poetry was still challenged as a necessity.
you wanted to do poetry, you went to the chameleon or paradise lounge. down in san jose was the agenda. there was the upper room and la peña, but there was no cohesion.
(i think it is amazing to see how many of the pre-99 poets have been published by presses, and the post-99 poets have not, really.)
I think the schism comes from the page/stage thing, but also the boundaries thing.
i think 99 represents a time where we had A TON of people from out of the area, so if you look at the make up of the teams pre-99 and 99, the majority of the people are not from the Bay at all, which represents the shift that the dot com boom provided.
i think the other thing that led to the big change is how documented the poetry scene has been post-99. gary glazner never really had someone like david huang who gave people instant gratification for their poetry experiences.
i have more to say about that dividing line, but i am tired. especially…san jose, the birth of The Venues, and…i don’t know why i wrote all this. i guess every time i get inspired by Charles. He and I used to talk about this A LOT. i love to witness history and transformation, it gives me hope about cultures evolving. i just hope the bay’s culture keeps on transforming. if all this was created, i can’t wait to see what happens next, and i don’t mean hyphy.