Paul and I got back from Utah this week. We saw friends and Paul’s family and I even got to drive in the snow after not doing it for over a decade. Verdict: I can still drive in the snow. Go me!
When thinking of my trip I keep stumbling across this image in my head:
The place where all the cars are parked used to be a venue called DV8. It was a double venue with a bigger venue up stairs and a smaller venue downstairs with a bar in between. Apparently it burnt down a few years ago. I can’t imagine how many shows I went to at DV8. I remember seeing NOFX, Green Day, being amazed with Cinder Block’s vocals in Tilt upstairs and being dragged backstage during an Unwritten Law show. I imagine the rocks that rim the lot were the same sturdy rocks that lined the downstairs I saw Weston, boysetfire, Discount, had my nose broken at the Swingn’ Utters, and was the merch girl for Paul’s band Homesick when they opened for Citizen Fish and The Parasites and I watched the merch people from all the other bands dance along to Homesick. That made me really happy to see.
It is strange to think that it is filled in and gone forever. It still lives on in my head. Paul and I had one of our first “dates” there. We went to see a show that neither of really cared about. For some reason we sat backwards on a couch with our legs up the rock wall singing Dead Milkmen songs and making fun of the bands that I can’t even remember who they were. Wow, I hadn’t thought of that in years. I also haven’t thought about another one of our other first dates involved us watching a video that his friend had made of a Queers shows in 1995. It shows Paul meeting a future band made for the first time and It also shows glimpses of me in a bootlegged Operation Ivy shirt with my sister. In 1997 it seems so weird to look back at the space we shared 2 years prior, I’d love to see that video today.
When I took this picture I asked them to stand in line like they were waiting for a show or were selling zines or demanding that the sparechangers gave them jokes in exchange for their pocket coins. These were people I went to shows with 14 years ago: Dave (who was in the Grubs who also opened for that Citizen Fish show) Paul (duh) and Brandon (Sickboy records) it was kind if surreal. Especially because we met up with other Dave at a new placed called the Beerhive who was also in Homesick and happens to be my very favorite genius drop-out.
I’d like to think that the ghosts of us still haunt the place whether the Mormon Church buys up the property in hopes to make its own little Vatican or not. And SLPX? It was a way of saying Salt Lake Punx. I don’t know, it made sense at the time.
Alex Wrekk 