San Diego vs Tulsa: all-ages shows, plus The Prosthetics at Shelter 6, 09/19/99

One of the big differences I noticed upon moving from Tulsa to San Diego was how different the live music scenes for young people were from one another, shaped a little by geography and a lot by liquor laws.

My understanding of how this works in San Diego amounts to knowing that you can’t really be in a place selling alcoholic beverages unless you are at least 21. No wristbands or hand stamps- if the place is selling beer and you aren’t old enough you just can’t get in. Venues often rely heavily on alcohol sales to stay afloat financially, making alcohol-free events cost prohibitive. Prior to drinking age, San Diegan live music fans are relegated to a specific handful of venues large enough to make ends meet primarily on ticket sales. A lot of the shows I went to early on in San Diego were in some of these all-ages venues like the Che Cafe, Soma, or the Epicentre; halls as large as they were far flung.

Most of them, however, took place in more centrally located 21+ dive bars like Scolari’s Office. Occasionally there would be house shows like the Stockton House, but the closer proximity of  properties here compared to less populous areas (and subsequent noise complaints from nearby neighbors frequently coming with outrageous fines) made these kinds of places short-lived and unreliable.

Tulsa, by contrast, had no bar scene to speak of unless you were in a cover band. Cain’s Ballroom generally hosted bigger acts with radio play a bigger places like IKON tended to do the same while emphasizing goth-flavored dance nights. The Eclipse had a lot of potential as it was big but not too big, and located in a crappy enough neighborhood that people wouldn’t be calling the cops because of the noise, but not crappy enough to be terrifying. I felt it never lived up to that potential though because accusations abounded that the owner had a habit of keeping all the door money for himself, making it a rather irresponsible place to book a small touring act that really would need the gas money. Smaller, more punk-focused clubs like El Pistolero and both iterations of The 401 were far from “legal” operations, and tended to fold within a year and a half (or a month or two) of initially springing up.  With good, proper venues in questionable supply, the scene for smaller, local groups was very DIY and shows took place primarily in homes or VFW halls, YMCAs, and other places you could rent out for an evening. Being situated in the middle of Tornado Alley, basements were a common feature of many old houses and there was always at least one somewhere that was being actively utilizing for musical events.

One regular spot we depended on for years was Shelter 6 in Mohawk Park. A not too far drive north- it was an open, outdoor park shelter that had functioning electrical outlets. There were nothing but trees, large swathes of grassy emptiness, and a somewhat crumbly-on-the-edges, winding road that would eventually take you back to the city proper. You could really crank the volume up there and nobody was around to be bothered by it.

It cost roughly $80 to reserve for the day, but I actually only ever did that once. The rest of the dozen or so shows my friends and I would put on there each non-winter season were just us acting like we owned the place as we caravaned up there, cleared the picnic tables to one side and started setting up the PA system. The park closed at 9pm so that meant shows would start at 5 or 6 in the afternoon go until it was dark, then everyone would clear out before the entry gates closed.

…And they’d get out a little earlier than that if they wanted to make it to a liquor store by the statewide closing time of 9pm (and closed on Sundays!), but the horrors of 3.2 beer and the various draconian liquor laws of Oklahoma are their own little story.

The Prosthetics were a tight little pop punk band I saw a lot of around ’98-’99, and here’s a video my friend Johnny Gabriel shot of them at Shelter 6. I saw them first as a trio of Brian Spratt, Mason Rogoish and Ethan Pierce at The Eclipse, but they quickly added another guitarist, Nathan Reeder, and began playing more of these off the beaten path shows, bringing some rather polished vocal harmonies to the musical landscape. After they split up they kinda fell off my radar, with the exception of Mason who segued immediately into playing heavier music with The Rise and Fall.