“Hello, 2022 Fell Street…” as the rest ambled back in the direction of their rooms. “Hey guys! Karen’s coming over and she’s bringing the beer!”
The address was somewhat legendary for impromptu parties, after-show hang outs, an occasional hostel for touring bands and late-night kitchen jam sessions but after a quick options discussion in the hallway the plan was to take James’ van out to the beach.
James was a huge sweet kid who had driven out to SF from Georgia accompanied by a band named Space Seed a few months earlier on what should have been a cross-country tour. He would have probably made a better linebacker than bass player, but looked the part of a curly black longhaired Ramone, and had a van. Apparently things got a little ugly in Texas after a couple of the band members stayed up late one night sampling the local brand of bathtub hooch. In this case it was vodka that had been paired with a rough highway shrub called Jimson Weed and left to soak for long enough to produce mild hallucinogenic effects. For the band members in question, probably too long.
When Space Seed finally arrived at the Fell St. flat they were 3 members less, 20 pounds lighter and mostly incoherent. James slept on the floor for about a week until it became more than inconvenient and was discovered some days later setting up a hobo camp in a crawlspace under the house. After putting together a benefit show at a nearby club, enough money was raised for a bus ticket back to Georgia.
James couldn’t drive the van back to Georgia due to his state of mind and because he had parked it in a blackout stupor upon arrival and was unable to find it for the duration of his stay in SF. We stumbled across it one night weeks later while walking a short cut back from Mel’s diner through the science lab parking lot of the Jesuit college, instantly recognizing the hulk from the numerous descriptions James had rattled off in the previous expeditions we had mounted when searching nearby neighborhoods. It was a small miracle the thing hadn’t been towed or stripped for parts.
Armed with a video camera, some Duraflame logs, several pounds of flannel shirts (as was the fashion for most rockers then) and a small bag of fireworks, the mix of house mates and friends piled into the slate grey Chevy.
The van had that perma-funk bouquet, a rarefied odor resulting from hopeful rock star dreams, multiple unkempt bodies, truck stop dinners and gallons of spilled coffee crushed permanently into an orange shag rug for thousands of miles.
A thick fog swirled and pooled around the van and we lurched in the direction of Fort Funston at the western edge of the nation, cresting the hills with headlight beams firing straight out and up and providing zero visibility for the road ahead.
Funston, as it was usually called, was a pre-WWII fortification where huge ominous concrete bunkers were constructed in and around the dunes high above the beaches all along the Bay Area Pacific coastline. Tremendous guns pointing out over the ocean had been mounted on now long rusting turrets above the tree line and a network of passages and rooms ran for miles under the shifting sands. These long paved promenades overlooking the Pacific ocean were once used to store armaments and military supplies built to counter an imagined invasion of American soil, they were considered the West Coasts’ best defense strategy but were rendered useless almost as soon as they were completed when modern warfare transitioned from battleships to aircraft.
The miles of massive lichen covered ruins provided the perfect post-apocalyptic backdrop for hours of creepy beer-fueled adventures, wandering through the perpetually frigid decay of the tombs or trying to scare the wits out of each other. The carnival of world’s end reigned out among the cracked concrete slabs, random fire pits and years of spray paint and trash; lending to the inevitable feeling of doom brought by time, the weather and it’s ultimate equalizing force.
We set up a fire on the beach-facing side of one of the crumbling structures, giant slabs of precisely molded angular concrete that jutted westward and up, where Nike missiles had been mounted for the duration of the Cold War. The shapes created a windbreak and we hunched down between them and the fire, shadows projecting back to the huge bunker and arch behind us. The surf noise that reached up bent in the wind, fog and darkness a few hundred feet over the edge of the dunes below, and the logs sparkled with their chemically infused rainbow across the clearing.
The tunnels and empty rooms were littered with everything from mattresses to hand cranked wash tubs and went on hundreds of feet in different directions, most imagined that all kinds of kooks, bums, freaks and junkies lived (and probably died) in there. As the night wore on and the fire turned to coals different and odd sounds started to reach the group, whether spurred by the imaginations, the drink or by the late night denizens who found refuge in that place for more immediate needs, the conversations became morbid and creepy.
In the midst of a long story about the ghostly souls damned to wander the beaches below, victims of shipwrecks long forgotten, a huge dog lunged from the edge of the foggy night and barked, sparking panicked abandonment of the area and a few startled screams. Later it was discovered that one of the party had fallen backwards and over the sandy cliff edge, tumbling down the 200 feet or so of embankment to the shore below. Crawling down to the wet beach revealed a dark unmoving shape splayed out on the sand just above the tide. As it became more visible they slowed and stopped, looking wordlessly at each other and fearing the worst. After a few tentative steps closer it was clear that it was a seal lion carcass (mostly because of the smell). Further down the beach croaking lazily in a patch of ice plants was the tumbler. Luckily the worst injury was a sprained ankle and the long trek back to James’ van was spent replaying the sudden and exciting events over and over, distorted to include sword wielding pirate ghosts and rabid dogs more hideous than anything Sir Conan Doyle might’ve invented.
Those bunkers have long been sealed shut, giant plates of steel and iron welding them to posts. If you knock with a stick in just the right place you can hear a booming echo. It may have been a murder or drug overdose, maybe something more sinister that finally made the local authorities and Golden Gate Park Assn. remove all access to the catacombs and tunnels all through the Fort Funston area. It was certainly taken for granted by many to have an eerie beach side haunt where drinks, stories and stunts could be swapped and shared. Funston is now overrun with dogs and hang gliding enthusiasts, the new wastewater treatment center dominating the former area where the barracks and crumbling cement structures once housed 16” canons and long range Nike warheads.
