A good few years ago now, I was in a
punk crew called Dirty Rotten Bastards. Looking back on it, it was a lot of things. It was stupid, there was a never-ending sensation of being
trashed, and it was also fun. It started out, probably when I was a freshman in highschool. Not D.R.B, but that's when I started to meet the people who we later formed the crew with. Also, that's when I started switching highschools every few months and drinking endlessly.
Eventually, tons and tons of kids formed together on
Pacific Avenue in
Santa Cruz, California and formed D.R.B. I'm going to say it was (roughly) summer of 2003, I think. You know, that entire year is still a bit hazy for me.
And we were
scum. Everytime I see someone
panhandling I end up bitching about it, but I always have to keep myself in check that at one point we were doing that too. We'd always come up with clever ways to weasel money out of people, or at least find ways to make people laugh. Once we dressed this kid up as
Jesus with a white sheet. We staked out in front of the Beach Boardwalk and made a sign that you could be saved for 10 dolars, picture with Jesus for 5 dollars, or get his autograph for a dollar. You can not fathom how many Japanese people took pictures with him and gave us five dollars. We were in
boxed wine heaven that night.
Every night it was pretty much the same. We'd ask people to spare change so we could hire a
ninja to steal
beer for us so we wouldn't have to ask people for money anymore... people found that funny even though we didn't. I still think it would be pretty cool to have a ninja. Anyway - after we had enough for a space bag (boxed wine) or some nasty ice (natural ice, you know) we'd get the goods, and head out towards either to soquel bridge or the ross bridge. We stopped hanging at the soquel bridge because one of our friends, spider died under it. And a while back another guy named Jimmy had died under there and people used to talk about hearing him walking around at night. Another girl we used to hang out with named
Harmony also died, she was a really good person, she died under the ross bridge.
Anyway - We had a huge stack - no! A
mountain! Of boxed wine boxes, pabst boxes and natty ice boxes! It was a most glorious sight to behold. Really - a mountain, I tell you! It stood at least twice as high as me, and I'm 5'6. It was probably the most beautiful thing I've ever seen up until the point where I stopped being an
alcoholic.
In 2003 there was this awesome thing going on in Santa Cruz. There were punk shows almost every night. It was amazing. We saw all kinds of bands. Once we all spit in a hat and the lead singer of the
Angry Samoans wore it on stage. I felt bad because he let me get in for free, and they were one of those old bands that I first started listening to when I first got into punk. We saw the
circle jerks, the new
misfits - I even hung out with Dez (from
black flag) and talked about
south park, and how chef was really cool. We saw
TSOL and
D.I. together and took shots with the lead singer of D.I. and smoked bowls with Jack (frontman of TSOL)... We hung out with
Naked Aggression,
Total Chaos,
The Virus,
The Unseen,
Lower Class Brats, and all of those bands. I still love Naked Aggression, and the only reason I sometimes tolerate the Virus now is my friend was in the band at one point on guitar.
Then this one kid stopped promoting shows for some time - this
UCSC christian punk who ran the underground sound radio show up at the college or wherever. I guess he wasn't making any money back from the shows because everyone would just walk in without paying. Ha. And he didn't even notice.
Now - When did it actually form and become a crew? I'm not quite sure - but I remember when we named it. Up until that point people were calling us the streetlight crew for some reason, even though that - at least I knew, growing up there that there had already been a streetlight crew. In fact, I know most of the streetlight crew and they probably wouldn't be too happy about us stealing their name. There was this kid we hung out with, his name was Dirty, and he was very dirty. He had a mohawk and looked about fifteen. So one kid was like, we could name our crew after you dirty, then one kid was like "how about the dirty rotten bridge crew?" and then another guy chimed in with, "how about the dirty rotten bastards!" And it just kind of took off from there.
I have some fond memories of that time. One is being locked in a cage downtown with Bev (streetname,
mello). I'm still trying to figure out how that happened.
Another time, me and my best friend (still to this day) were trying to find this place called the
limehouse to see
orangeburg massacre and some other bands. We got really lost, and this hot rockabilly guy ended up picking us up and showing us how to get there, and he gave us like ten
strawberry air fresheners and made out with our friend who we secretly called the ugly one.
I met some really cool people, and some really smart people. There was one guy named Greg - he was awesome. He was part of our crew. He worked at
starbucks, they let him have his red mohawk there. Everyday I'd go in and hang out with him and he'd give me all the free drinks I wanted. He said that he planned on giving away more drinks than he actually sold. Later on, I heard that he accomplished that goal.
Ah, but there was never-ending drama. I remember this one time we were all hanging out under the ross bridge, natural ice in all hands. Chelsea, this
psychobilly girl, and Alex this kid with leopard print pants and
bi-hawks were down in the woods next to us, doing what? Fucking, of course. Well... This one chick came walking towards us and asked, "Where's Alex?" Everyone pointed to the woods. A good thirty seconds later we heard a crack and, "
I LOST MY VIRIGINITY TO YOU YOU MOTHER FUCKER!" That's when we decided to back away slowly and stay out of it. We heard some wrestling and then all three of them trampled out of the woods and continued to throw things at each other. I was an innocent bystander, yet I got hit with a chain. Actually, I didn't notice - my boyfriend did.
And fights. We had a lot of those. There was the glorious night we fought the
skinheads. I'm still not sure whether or not we won though. There was also the night where I beat the shit out of this girl... She asked me for a
cigarette, I said I didn't have one. She
spit in my face. We fought, I won and three years later we're good friends. Everytime we meet new people we tell them that story about how we met each other.
We also were constantly trying to fuck with semi-famous people/famous people. Harmony (may she rest in peace) once threatened to kick
Lars Frederiksen in the balls. She was standing outside the
Catalyst (a venue for the expensive and bigger shows) and Lars was inside it. Lars Frederiksen, the man that he is, came out of the building escorted by FIVE bouncers. He seemed really scared of five foot Harmony.
At some point, I'm still not exactly sure of the month or even the year - the D.R.B. crew broke up. My boyfriend, who was the founder/leader of sorts of the crew went back to new york after we broke up. Mello/Bev was put on ankle monitor back home in
Sacramento after her mother found her. Spider and Harmony died, as I said before. Greg moved to
Olympia, one kid went to
San Quentin, Alex moved to
Portland, and I've no idea what happened to anyone else.
I could say so much more. I could write a thousand pages on all the weird shit we used to do. The legal and the illegal. Ah, but fortunately for you you've read the first and probably the last thing ever to be written about D.R.B.