When a horrific fire tore through the Ghost Ship warehouse, killing 36, I was living mere blocks from the inferno site. I had recently gone to an underground party in a warehouse next door in Fruitvale. Like many artists’ warehouses, the space had a simple, spare layout: a pseudo-ramp leading up to a landing; a narrow, crowded walkway serving as the entrance and the exit; a hot, cramped smoking area with unfinished stairs; and a main room — one big open space with DJ decks and a couch against a makeshift wall.
I know these warehouses. It was in one of these spaces, years ago, that I met two of the fire’s victims, Amanda Allen Kershaw and Chelsea “Cherushii” Dolan, in a dark room filled with people dancing and DJs throwing down hard. My path also crossed with that of another victim, Jonathan Bernbaum, at the Otherworld warehouse in Oakland (sadly, it was demolished last summer). Johnny Igaz and Brandon “Chase” Wittenauer (a.k.a. Nex Iuguolo), also lost to the fire, I met not at a warehouse or at an underground party, but at the Oakland bar Lounge 3411. When something like this happens in the kind of space that you and your friends frequent, it makes you think.
I have some comfort in knowing that all these people died doing what they love. Yet for those who — like me — were reared in the Bay Area’s music scene, the Ghost Ship fire hits too close to home.
Warehouses like Ghost Ship are the backbone of Oakland’s artistic community, both as creative spaces and living quarters. My friends who’d lived there knew it was a fire hazard, but the haphazard warehouse was still a steal by the Bay Area’s terrible real estate standards. “Finding another spot was harder than just dealing with it,” one former Ghost Ship resident told me. Another told me they still slept with earplugs in each night to cover up the chaos of the building.
Contrary to the way the media has painted the warehouse’s atmosphere, it was a very positive and loving place. We went to Ghost Ship and other warehouse parties to connect through music, dance and feel accepted. The 36 beautiful humans who lost their lives were living, sharing their craft, their work and their souls. If we focus on just that, perhaps we can find a tiny bit of comfort amid this senseless tragedy.
Perhaps you did not have a personal connection to this particular location or the people involved. But if you have ever been touched by the Bay Area music scene, then you’ve shared a smile and a hug — or the dance floor — with many of these folks. And you know that this could’ve happened to you, to me — to any of us.
Please join us in remembering those we’ve lost: they were videographers, performers, artists, teachers, DJs, filmmakers, musicians, sons, daughters, fathers, mothers and lovers — not squatters “illegally” living in a warehouse. They were professionals whose promising lives were cut short. They were resilient and full of creativity, passion and love — the epitome of Oakland.
I leave you with the words of Arthur O’Shaughnessy from his poem Ode.
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams; —
World losers and world forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
