Essays
Suggestions Based Upon Experiential Data. . .or Blowing it. From the Golden Hind, Sewers and Kennedy Hotel Events
By Gary Warne, John Law, Adrienne Burk, David Warren
Our format has been adopted to insure the minimum of arguing, bickering, amending, censoring, and voting on other people’s ideas, rules, and other volatile subjects. Each person is totally responsible for their fantasy, the logistics of carrying it out, and the rules they want abided. It is up to the members to decide if they want to attend and when, if […]
Carnival Cosmology
Carnival Cosmology
1977 | by Gary Warne
The world is a midway; cities are its sideshows. The only difference between children and adults is that there is no one to take care of us. When we left home it meant we were lost on the midway and, unlike God, the carny boss will only let us ride […]
Commando Raid on the Naval Reserve Fleet
December 25, 1977 | By Gary Warne
Why I Joined the Suicide Club
Why I joined the Suicide Club
February 3, 1977 | By David T. Warren
As the years slip by and I try to align each day with the passing of my life, I find myself on tenuous ground. After forty years of living, dreaming, and working to build the kind of community that I would like to live […]
Evolution into Chaos
1977 Evolution into Chaos: A Chronology
February 3, 1977 | By Gary Warne
This paper is an attempt at describing the succession of stunts, parodies, and put ons that have gathered so much attention for Communiversity and, at the same time, present the ridiculous concept of organizing principles for creating chaos, anarchy and high times. Towards this end it may also be referred to as ROBERTS RULES OF DISORDER. IT is shared […]
The Clown at Midnight
Circa 1974 | By Gary Warne
Imagine you are alone in your living room; It is late, the clock is striking twelve, the moon is full. No one is in the house. The town is asleep. You have been reading, and are startled; you really don't want to answer the door, but someone is knocking on it. You try to go back to reading, but you cannot. The knock comes again. You get up and move towards the sound. You hesitate—and turn the latch. The door swings open... On your porch, in the deep night, its face bleached in moonlight, is a clown, in full costume and gleaming face paint. It is smiling at you. […]
The First Suicide Club Initiation
February 2, 1977 | By John Law
Certain hands, seemingly familiar with the task at hand, were the hands I felt gently guiding me out of the van that I had occupied for the last hour along with six or seven other similarly blindfolded initiates. The cops knew this routine: hand on subjects’ head, other hand solidly gripping the shoulder so as to avoid inflicting a nasty gash. These people weren’t police however, and we weren’t criminals […]
A SUICIDE CLUB INITIATION
April 1978 | By Jayson O. Wecter
The switchboard in the Taraval Police Station in San Francisco lit up with calls on the night of June 18th, 1977. Apparently a long line of people were waiting for a bus, and almost all of them were blindfolded. In the Sunset district — a quiet, residential neighborhood south of Golden Gate Park — such behavior prompts many folks to call the cops. […]
Time and Tinnitus
by D.S. Black
In the years before I moved to Kuwait-on-da-Bay, I read of the existence-daring exploits of the Suicide Club in zines published by punk surrealist G. Sutton Breiding. It inspired me to pick up Robert Louis Stevenson’s New Arabian Nights (in which the namesake story “The Suicide Club” was part of a series), a copy of which I conveniently found in the basement staff lounge of Regenstein Library, […]
The Missing Clown
by Steve Mobia
Gary Warne had been dead for three years and many in the Suicide Club had moved on with their lives — the pranks, street theater, and urban explorations faded into the background of daily life.. But for a few of us, there was a lingering yearning for more. In early October of 1986, I got a call and then later a ride out across the Golden Gate Bridge to Kirby Cove. […]
Why Suicide Club Events Don't Have to be Grand & Elaborate
by Gary Warne
I've heard from several sources that numerous people in the Suicide Club are reluctant to do events because they don't think they can do something as elaborate as certain recent events like the Treasure Hunt & Alien Landing. If any of you have even vaguely felt this way, I'd like to point out two incorrect assumptions you are making. First, events don't have to be anything. […]
Doing Events: A How to Guide
The Suicide Club’s “Doing Events: A How to Guide” circa 1977
Here is a short explanation of how events find their way into the newsletter and what their basic structure is.
The Newsletter. This comes out once a month and is paid for by your dues and compiled by a volunteer editor(s). You can list any event you want in the newsletter. There is no censorship, approval, etc. […]
