A sickly man, sweaty and feverish, approaches the security check at the gate of a stadium event. He was a ride-hailing driver of mine, and he caught the alien-designed bug that I planted. Unwittingly part of the plan, he passes security with no problem and heads into the stadium.
Inside the stadium, children hear the choral music. Is it real or are they hallucinating the song? The children all appear euphoric, and ready to act. One particular child has already put their thumbs into the eyes of their parent. They are all part of the plan.
A short, pale-white skinned being walks in his spaceship (or a multi-dimensional room) full of alien technology. His skin looks shark-like. I am sitting in this room with another human, who yells to Alex “hurry up and get in here!” Alex is on the other side of a portal that swirls green and blue. He walks through, and I momentarily see that there is a normal looking earth apartment on the other side.
Alex is very excited about his latest idea, which includes a collection of water in different compartments. He’s dropping something on small ropes into the sections of water while the other person looks at the alien, throws his thumb my way, and says something in the alien’s language.
I realize that the alien has been on earth, disguised as a small person. The other guy must be telling him that it is OK that I am here. And it is. I feel cold, calm, collected, and calculating. I have no guilt or second guessing for why I am there. I am totally complicit and in on the plan to destroy humanity.
Over 10 years after CELLspace closed, the huge metal mural from the art warehouse’s facade is celebrated with a gallery at The Midway
By Allie Skalnik, for MissionLocal (Aug. 26, 2025)
When an artists’ warehouse in the Mission closed its doors for the last time in 2012, almost everything was accounted for.
The artists who had made the space at 18th and Bryant streets their safe haven since 1996 hauled out their supplies, equipment and art pieces. All that was left at the end of their slow goodbye was a massive metal installation: A set of eight 10-foot-tall panels covering the facade of the warehouse.
Stitched together photo of the Metal Mural with the Stencilada exhibit, c. 2010 (photo: Jane Verma)
Jane Verma, one of the creators of the piece, calls it a “metal mural.” She said it was important to her that it didn’t gather dust in a storage container because of what it represented.
“Because it was on the facade, it was a signal to anyone walking by that there was something interesting going on here,” said Verma. The metal mural on the former CELLspace building facade. Photo courtesy of Jane Verma.
That warehouse at 2050 Bryant St. was called CELLspace (the prefix stood for Collectively Explorative Learning Labs), and it embodied a dream that’s been dying in San Francisco, said CELLspace co-founder Jonathan Youtt.
CELLspace, he said, was “an open call to anyone and everyone that wanted to come together to create a spot where all arts could exist under one roof.”
In its heyday, the warehouse was a place of boundless creativity. Former CELLspace artists speak of the building reverently. The front entrance led into a gallery before opening up into a 4,000-square-foot main hall. High ceilings and a main stage for performances made it like a “cathedral” for Youtt.
In this grand warehouse, anything could be brought to fruition. More than 50 artists paid a monthly fee of around $75 for unlimited access to glassblowing, sewing machines, metalworking, a wood shop and an audio-visual studio.
Nestled amid studio spaces and machinery was a community kitchen, and a few CELLspace employees rented space to live in the warehouse, in a small loft soundproofed against the din of the active makerspace.
But rather than a siloed artist community, CELLspace was intricately embedded in the community. The warehouse hosted everything from an after-school program to raves. It served as neutral ground between rival Mission gangs, and hosted weekly roller-skating and B-boy/B-girl events.
A popular event could easily draw 500 people, said Youtt.
But it couldn’t last. When he moved to San Francisco in 1992, Youtt’s monthly rent was around $300, which he made in less than a week, freeing up time for art.
By 2012, the CELLspace model, with low monthly fees and daring projects, was too expensive. They couldn’t renew their lease.
Elliott C. Nathan is the gallery director at The Midway, a venue for live music and art exhibitions near Cesar Chavez and Illinois.
He is responsible for organizing the Midway’s CELLspace gallery, a collection of more than 20 items from former CELLspace artists. He knows first-hand how difficult being an artist in the city is.
“You have to really want it, show up to do the work and be lucky — all together,” he said.
“You know, let me add one more on top of that: Be fucking nice as hell,” said Nathan. Although still possible, being an artist in the city now means making connections, working relentlessly and getting lucky.
In 2016, Mission Localdocumented the process of taking the metal mural being taken down and placed in a truck.
It was moved to The Midway, chosen because it had a similar mission to CELLspace and promised to get the mural displayed in short order — until the eight panels were left outside during renovations, and four of them were stolen. Verma suspected they were taken for their valuable copper.
It wasn’t until earlier this year that The Midway hired metalworkers to rebuild the missing panels.
On Friday, the complete metal mural’s now-permanent residence was unveiled at The Midway at an event that also celebrated the opening of a two-week exhibit celebrating CELLspace.
The gallery included a diverse array of works from CELLspace artists: Metal sculptures, wooden hanging spirals, a massive three-dimensional wave made out of reclaimed fencing, graffiti and acrylic paintings on canvas filled the gallery’s narrow hallway.
Many of these pieces were once displayed at CELLspace, while others were made in the years since its demise.
Youtt, standing in the middle of the bustling gallery on opening night, said that out of the dozens of people in the gallery at that moment, he knew about five. To him, it was an incredible success to be able to reach people never involved with CELLspace. He hopes to keep the spirit of CELLspace alive.
Former CELLspace artists — and friends they dragged along — filled the gallery, reliving the glory days. It was “when creativity mattered more than paying rent,” recalled puppeteer Russell Howze.
CELLspace may be gone, replaced first by market-rate housing dubbed the “Beast on Bryant” and then by the affordable housing Mission activists fought for but, thanks to advocacy from former CELLspace leaders, a small part of the development is still carved out for the arts with a Carnaval arts space.
Next year will be the 30th anniversary of CELLspace and, according to Youtt, the perfect opportunity to bring everyone back together for an event befitting of CELLspace, promising art, entertainment and live events.
There may never be a place like CELLspace again, Verma, Youtt and Howze shared. But that won’t stop them from being excited about the potential in San Francisco today.
“I think that creativity is still there, or it can still be found. [You] just gotta search for it a bit,” said Verma.
Friday, August 22, 2025 6:30 to 9:30pm Exhibit up until September 10 The Midway Gallery 900 Marin St, San Francisco, CA 94124-1217
A little bit of 2050 Bryant Street takes over The Midway Gallery. Join CELLspace artists in celebrating the works, visions, ideas, and futures of a time not so long ago when creativity mattered more than paying rent. After ten years in transition, the Metal Mural from CELL’s facade lives on at The Midway, just like the spirit of all the people that stepped into that hallowed warehouse. In case you forget: “Safety breaks if you got ’em, DIY forever, and arrrrrrrrgh! for all the memories.”
Opening night at The Midway Gallery. (most Photos by Maya Melenchuk – www.mayuchka.com)
Metal Mural artists
Aharon Bourland Hikari Yoshihara Tony Verma Jane Wason Verma Tom Phillips Zulu Hurd Jessica Eberlin
Mural artists
Scott Williams (RIP) Joel Bergner @joelartista Leroy Bermudez (Latinism) with TWICK ICP Icy & Sot (Saman Oskouei and Sasan Oskouei) @icyandsot Peat EYEZ Wollaeger @eyez Hugh D’Andrade @hughillustration Regan Ha-Ha Tamanui @regantamanui Russell Howze @stencil_archive Cy Wagoner John Koleszar @koleszar DIA
Also Showing
Todd Berman @theartdontstop Bob Burnside Richard Bluecloud Castaneda (RIP) Eran Dayan and Roland Blandy @reunioncreative Jon Fischer @feather2pixels Charles Gadeken @charlesgadeken Michael Kushner James Sellier (RIP) spie one
Relix magazine just put together an entertaining recollection of the 1992 H.O.R.D.E. concert tour, with the festival’s founders (the musicians) going on record about how it all began. Love the fact that most of the tour revolved around giving massive love to Col. Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit. I am quite humbled that I got to see the ARU at their genesis, b/c their show was straight up different from much of the live music I was going to!
Everybody had this common idea that they had to help Colonel Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit. That was like the secret squirrel agenda of the whole thing. – Dave Frey, Blues Traveller mgr. (via Relix magazine)
My brother Mark and I knocked out bootleg tee shirts for the Atlanta and Carowinds stops of the first H.O.R.D.E. tour. Mark had the art skills, we both did graphic design, and I was working in a screen print shop. We printed a nice pile, only to have undercover cops confiscate them before we even had a chance to sell any! Luckily, I’d pulled several dozen to sell to friends and keep back for the NC show if we sold out, so still had a few to sell and break even on cost.
Mark and I had a fun time making the 1992 lot tee image. We thought up and brainstormed the idea, Mark then drew the monster, and we worked on the lettering together via Mark’s Apple computer (and probably Photoshop 1 or 2 or similar). Then I took the file, via a floppy disk, to the Microsoft machine I had at the screen print shop where I worked, printed the front and back images on vellum paper, taped them up and corrected lines, pulled a rubylith separation for the monster’s color screen, and then burned the two screens.
My screen shop boss, Randy, was very cool about letting us schedule our own prints into the shop’s work flow. I’m not sure if he or Freddie, another amazing screenprinter, pulled the ink on these. I bought the shirts at wholesale cost, and whoever did the labor usually got a shirt. We also always helped each other with our own print runs, so the labor usually got paid back in kind. This shirt had a larger run than usual (I think I printed about 3-4 dozen tees), so Randy may have made us do this after hours. Either way, we were all into putting multiple colors into the one screen to easily make the shirt a 4-color job.
Love this artwork! We didn’t get the correct name of the festival, but must’ve picked the words up from a Widespread Panic mailer. Maybe a Blues Traveller mailer? The correct name is Horizons of Rock Developing Everywhere. Now that I think a bit more, we have just gotten more metal about the idea of a horde monster coming to the Southeast to destroy and slay. 😛 Here’s the back of the 1992 shirt. We spent alot more time on the art and ideas for the first one, only to have most of these shirts get confiscated by the cops. When asked what they’d do with the shirts, they told us they’d give them to a homeless charity in Atlanta. I looked for them in the streets for a month or so after the show.H.O.R.D.E. Festival 1993 shirt. The artwork is simple, so Mark and I must’ve quickly thought this one up.I always made 2-sided shirts, even if there was only a pocket image. Good to have this image to know which bands were in the 1993 festival. I cannot remember which bands I saw at the Atlanta stop of the festival, and this list is for the whole tour (Phish once again headlined the Northeast shows while Panic headlined the Southeast).My stub from the 1992 Lakewood show.My stub from the Carowinds festival in 1992.Here’s the ticket for the 1993 Lakewood show.
If the Pandemic cooperates, Phish will continue their 2021 4.0 tour into the Fall. Starting Aug. 13, the band plays Atlantic City, and then will be at Harveys Casino in Stateline, NV starting Aug. 31. The Fall tour ends with a Halloween run in Las Vegas.
Ask anybody and they know that I love gifiting creative items to unsuspecting people. Over the past 20 or so years, I’ve given away stickers, posters, buttons, stencils, and other fun items. The fist sticker I ever made was the “Creativity Begins Within” for 2000 Burning Man, and I gave them all away. I love the concept of “Free” espoused by the San Francisco Diggers, and Burning Man is onto something with the ideal of giving it for nothing in return.
Then there is the ancient concept of Dana, practiced for centuries, which can be about giving just to feel the goodness of the act while expecting nothing in return.
When I saw that u/churchisweird and his wife were giving away poker chips (with fun band quotes and show details) at all the Phish shows in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, I got excited. A few Phish subredditors had already asked about the Harveys shows in Stateline, but u/churchisweird and his wife weren’t going to the shows.
Phish redditor u/churchisweird and his wife designed some great chips to give away at 7 different Phish shows! I was inspired to join in on the giveaway fun, and made two more sets for the Harveys NV shows.
I DMd him, told him I loved his idea, and said I’d give away chips for Stateline/Harveys if he wanted to make any. We started chatting, and he told me that he actually bought the chips from an online company (Chiplab). He wouldn’t be making any for Harveys. Along with the chip-making site, he also shared a great Phish resource for word searching songs to get money-themed hits within Phish’s original and cover lyrics.
We both agreed that giving away something to the community we love to be part of was a great idea. The good vibes of the idea kept piling up for me, and I happened to have some free time to poke around on Chiplab. After some trial and error with their simple graphic design interface, I had two chip designs for the two-night run at Harveys. I made sure to use a color and some Phish lyric quotes that u/churchisweird hadn’t used, and I ordered several dozens to get printed for my own free giveaway.
The 2021 Phish Casino Tour poker chip giveaway is complete! Now phans can possibly snag a chip from every run in a gambling town/city, and my two designs make 9 total chances to collect them all… if you’re lucky. 🙂
The chips were delivered this week, and are now ready to hand out to the lucky few in Stateline. I’m quite excited about this and hope that the shows don’t get postponed due to the current Delta wave of the Pandemic. My plan is to dress up as a Phish-themed croupier (ahem, a GROUPier, lol), with a vest, a bow tie, and my funny fish hats, and wander around a bit each day of the show to hand out some chips. I’ll take what’s left to the show each night.
The table is open and ready for play. Put your money where your mouth is and drop some goodness in your pocket. Time to feel that tingle that gifting gives, being present with each moment where a phan smiles, laughs, or wanders off a bit confused. Whatever happens, it’ll be all right….
Adding the Final Touches, and Hanging It Up (Figures 8-9)
The sails, in progress.
Mainsail is on; looking good.
Sternside view of mainsail.
Time to hang it all up.
Somebody had to do it!
Port is left on the ship…
… but never on the table.
FIGURE 8: THE SAILS
At this point, the only steps left are installing the Mainsail and Forward and After Sails. Oh, and the stringing of the two main parts. I chose to make black and white copies of the sails. Clarke’s original inserts are black and white and one-sided (probably to save money in printing and design costs).
Not sure why Clarke drew the FIGURE 8 illustration for the Small Sails. Their installation is straightforward. As for the Mainsail, the lack of structure for the mast caused the Yardarm and Mainsail to keep falling apart. This assembly needed patience and delicate finger work. As I tried to make this assembly, other parts of the MAD Zeppelin kept falling off.
TIP: Be resigned in the fact that you’ll have to adjust parts after stringing the parts up (see below).
FIGURE 4: ATTACH DECK UNIT
Looking at the Deck and Hull Units, one can easily see that the outer edges of each part are mostly tabs and slots. Clarke chose not to include an illustrative figure to show these two parts connecting. We will never know why he thought the super-easy Figure 3 needed to be illustrated when I had major struggles putting the Deck Unit into and on the assembled Hull.
I think one difficulty for me was the fact that I made the color copies of the MAD Zeppelin with basic 20lb copy paper. TIP: At this point, I realized that I should have used a heavier stock of paper that was similar in weight to the paper stock of the original insert.
My copy Zeppelin felt very fragile at this stage of assembly, and it got more delicate and precarious for the final bits of assembly. TIP: I had to make the cuts on the tabs (Tabs P and Q) of the Hull and Deck deeper in order to make these pieces insert in a way that didn’t keep the deck from popping up and out. TIP: As you can see from my photos, I put small pieces of tape over the middle connections of these two parts. They kept popping out as I tried to work the end tabs. Not pretty, but it keeps things together.
Putting the Balloon and Hull Units Together (Figures 1-3)
Here’s the work area.
Instructions for today.
The Balloon Unit.
INTRO
When the 1965 Worst From MAD No. 8 copy arrived in the mail, I went over to the copier machine at work to make copies of Bob Clark’s MAD Zeppelin insert. I didn’t put much thought into how to make copies. Fortunately, Clarke made all the parts one-sided with perforations that could be folded over to make a second side. I quickly realized that I would have to push the spine of the MAD down a bit to get the parts closest to the gutter to lie flat for the copy.
Yikes! This pushing caused some of the die-cut parts to partially come unattached. There goes a possible grade-reducing defect. Even with moderate pushing, the color copies had a perspective”smear” near the gutter at the magazine’s spine. This can easily be seen in the photo showing most of the Zeppelin’s Balloon Unit (Clarke chose to capitalize the word Zeppelin and its smaller parts throughout his instructions). Look at both parts labelled Tab A and you can see the difference.
I wondered if this would cause the MAD Zeppelin assembly to be a bit off. Since the Balloon was Figure 1 of Clarke’s instructions, I hoped it wouldn’t come out too bad. As we shall see, another part caused the biggest headache, and it wasn’t smeared in the gutter.
Thus brewed a perfect storm for a geek collector. First, I went online to see if anyone had posted scans of the parts. I also searched for modern photographs of Clarke’s Zeppelin totally strung and assembled. I couldn’t find anything online, but did discover a world of paper object and model making. Cool, but, wow, the Internet had zero MAD Zeppelin images or how-tos. Guess that means I’m buying an expensive intact copy of the ’65 Worst From special and making color copies.
Ooooh…. 2004. Blogs were exploding. Flash drives were a rarity. Bush’s wars drug on. And good ole’ Happy Feet was on the webstreams. With the recent backing up and rooting around the site, I realized that I still keep a copy of the old version of this site (I call it 2.0) up and running. That’s Jacqueie Ben-Eliezer in the masthead (RIP), Frank “12 Galaxies” Chu with the sign, and Mr. Leon Rosen looking all mean with the sticky note (that says “Leon has a posse”). There’s also my fun “@bomb” favicon, the secret <3 (did emoticons exist in ’04?) link on the masthead, and links to all the other pages I had running at the time. Once blog tech got easy to install and use, I basically took the same themes and used them as categories on this version (WP v3.0). Guess this is my #TBT post a day late….
Just a teaser for now: Over the past few years I’ve been working with Scott Levkoff making very fun adult-themed puppetry events. This is only a sliver of the fantastic vision that Scott has for interactive play, but I have been a minion for his swamp-god Mr. Nobody (black light puppetry… a dream fulfilled at last!), Mr. Nobody himself (and VERY hungry), as well as animated black-light objects, and part of an “animatronic” puppet fortune-telling bit. It’s always a pleasure to work with Scott, so always hard to say no to his invitations.
Coming up, I will be animating objects/puppets for Scott at ::::Â The first-ever San Francisco Spookeasy Halloween Extravaganza is a new, daring, bold and sophisticated multi-evening experiential destination party that will transform Chinatown’s Great Star Theatre into a scintillating circus-like, madcap seance soiree beckoning back to life ghosts, spirits, and specters from the raucous and rollicking red hot era of 1930’s Burlesque and Barbary Coast Vaudeville in a decadently opulent Max Fleischer-esque “ToonTown” parallel universe’s haunted Prohibition-era Speakeasy.
Sounds fun, right?! More details and pics coming in the following weeks….
Sponsored in part by the Friends of Kezar Triangle
UnEarth-things uses gopher diggings (the loose piles of soil left from gopher town tunneling) to make iconic, recognizable images that resonate with the history of Kezar Triange, what it is now, and what it may become. The basic concept is to work with what the gophers give us, using a “connect the dots” approach with their upward offerings. Like a sketch book, the images’s positioning, size, and motifs are brought about organically, creating a nurturing, nourishing interspecies collaboration.
