Punk had swept the San Francisco Art Institute. In our performance art classes, we were jolted to attention at 10 in the morning by the naked, slashed and bleeding buttocks of the Kipper Kids “Hot Crossed Buns”;  Karen Finley’s experiments with a variety of food smeared all over her body while she incanted desperate pleas to the art gods above; David Hockney holding court in the painting studios and Robert Mapplethorpe in the photography studios. 

Our gallery openings were greatly enhanced by the various art students who formed punk bands- The ReadyMades, The Avengers, The Mutants. Mayhem as always too much booze, not enough food, too many crazed art students.

Thanks to my constant dance training and long, muscular, lanky body, I was working til late at night in those days as a showgirl in North Beach, my “after school job”;  and one night my friend Dan Savage of the Avengers and his girlfriend picked me up after work at 2 AM to take me to the spooky, empty, South of Market warehouse district for a party at the Tubes loft, playfully named “Art For Art’s Sake”. This was a name which us ironic dilettantish art students could really relate to, since none of us were selling our work yet.

Its 2 AM, I am happy to be off work, coked up. I’m wearing my 70’s plum denim wide legged disco pants and a tube top, with tall platform wedges, my waist length hair pulled back with a rose, and am relaxing at the records table, where all the records were put out for everyone to choose what to dance to next. Back then, no one had party DJ’s it was all DIY.

I’m rummaging through the records, trying to choose what to play, dig my elbow into the ribs of the guy standing on my right. I’m holding David Bowie “Pin Ups” in my left hand, and Aretha Franklin’s “Greatest Hits” in my right hand. Who can decide between such great artists?