Cyclone Warehouse

Cyclone Warehouse is an underground venue in the Butcher Town area of San Francisco, California, between Potrero Hill and Hunter's Point. Though many art and event venues have been ephemeral, the Cyclone has lasted, and is known for hosting eclectic and extreme underground events, and serves as headquarters to a loose collective of artists and artisans.

The space adjoins a series of other warehouse spaces—a mix of artists studios and small business workshops. The space was founded in 1992 by Troy Shelton, Nicolas Desbons, Todd Martinez, Carlos Alamo, Jeff DenBroeder, and Geordie Stevens, a group of renegade students from the California College of Arts and Crafts. They built the space primarily from "obtainium", or found materials left over from the city's industrial past. Since 1994, the space has been maintained continuously by Bob Stafford, who, with the help of others, made many capital and structural improvements over the years. Stafford is by far the Cyclone Warehouse's longest-running member. Cyclone's penchant for closing off the adjoining cul-de-sac and putting on extralegal public events [1] has kept its existence in a precarious position since its inception. Yet the combination of its discreet location, an understanding community, and sheer moxie has kept the place running solid as a hidden cultural mecca for many years.

Cyclone was able to weather the dot-com boom that turned the live-work housing market upside down and caused an exodus of artists to relocate to the East Bay. Developers were kept at bay because an ordinance kept the area zoned "Heavy Industrial" until 2022. However, it was again threatened by city planning's bridge construction project, which would cross Islais Creek by cutting down the street which was used for events, parking, and storage of unused materials. A discussion of the bridge can be found here: "Bridge Too Near" Eventually, the bridge was constructed, with a marked decline on the quality of life in the neighborhood. However, Cyclone and its neighbor spaces have managed to continue and look forward to growing in the coming years.

Neighbors

Cyclone is one of 15 bays in a larger warehouse southwest of the Illinois and Marin intersection. Some of those neighbors have been "The Cave" (a rock venue in the 1990s run by Beky Bonk), Phase (seminal noise venue), Seemen (robotics artist), Ovarian Trolley (on Candy Ass Records), Who's on Third Studios, The Lodge, and Bay Area Metals (recycling center).

Hosted artists

Cyclone Warehouse has hosted a long list of memorable events. Punk shows, industrial art, house/techno parties, dance performance, theater productions, circus, cabaret, and puppets have all been part of the repertoire:

• T.V. Homicide
• Survival Research Laboratories
• Cyclecide Bike Rodeo [2]
• Mia Zapata Benefit
• Big Top 23
• Captain Ricks Cabaret
• Seven Year Bitch
• Victims Family
• Steel Pole Bath Tub
• Woodpussy
• Idiot Flesh
• Hickey
• All You Can Eat
• Shellac [3]
• Seemen[4]
• Neurosis
• Ovarian Trolley
• The Chasm of Spasms
• The Islais Creek Fair
• Cookie Mongoloid

References

• Wisner, Heather. "Night & Day", SF Weekley. May 19, 1999. Accessed May 15, 2007.
• Tudor, Silke. "Night Crawler", SF Weekley. March 1999. Accessed May 15, 2007.
• Anonymous. "Berkeley Blog" Mention of the Shellac show on the CSUA blog. Accessed May 15, 2007.
• Spelletich, Kalman. "1999 SEEMEN Performances", seemen.org. Accessed May 15, 2007.