#Vats #punk #SanFracisco #SquattersFederation #history

"How a once-famous San Francisco building spiraled into pure anarchy

For a few years in the early 1980s, hundreds of punk rockers called the former Hamm's Brewery building home.

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In the lobby of the 11-story tower at 1550 Bryant St., a small cafe serves office workers snacks, coffee and … cans of Hamm’s beer. Fifty years earlier, the site was home to Hamm’s California headquarters, whose story is recounted on a series of placards on the lobby walls. But after the pale lager stopped flowing in the mid 1970s, the derelict brew tanks in an adjoined building at 145 Florida St. housed something unexpected: a community of punk rockers.

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Known simply as the Vats, the concrete seven-story building served as a quasi-permitted living and practice space for more than 100 young punks, plus other 'mixed use' tenants like a dominatrix studio and a cannabis advocacy group. Formerly used to store the beer, each cylindrical 'vat' was huge — depending on the source, up to 40 feet long. The band MDC (short for Millions of Dead Cops) held court from the top floor, where they stayed rent free in exchange for keeping a semblance of order amid the punk rock ethos.

'We were throwing around the word anarchy a lot. Anarchy was just trying to take care of yourself and try to govern yourself and look out for yourself. Self-management, that type of anarchy,' Dave Dictor, vocalist of the band MDC, told SFGATE.

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By late December 1983, the San Francisco Examiner reported that a group of real estate investors had secured a $3 million federal loan to transform the site into a mixed-use complex of offices and showrooms that obviously didn’t include shooting ranges, dominatrix studios or punk rockers. The building that housed the Vats was to become a parking structure for the complex. But first, the punks had to be evicted."

https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/strangest-200-dollar-apartments-sf-history-20381556.php