SHARK: An Obituary

A year ago today we came across a Craigslist ad for the coolest thing ever. Advertised as a party bus, we instantly pooled our money to grab this. Full finished with two TVs, a DVD player, a power inverter, a futon, bunk bed, surround sound, air conditioning, and external power chords and it was ready to go. The previous owner had only used it once a year to preform in stunt bike tournaments to raise money for the developmentally disabled. Super nice guy. Was a mechanic and had it serviced often. We named her Shark, since she looked like a shark.

A few weeks later after our first tour, Scott (BWOB) asked to borrow Shark to go play a short run included playing a benefit show with Four Year Strong who got paid $20,000 or something and Stay Sweet Fest in Richmond, VA.  While in Delaware, Scott ran her out of oil… which is like bad….. REALLY BAD. She continued to run but when he brought her back I decided to get her a check up and serviced to make sure everything was going smoothly. I got a call. They had me come in. They sat me down. They gave her just miles to live. Apparently there was knocking metal in the engine.  Knock-knock-knockin’ on heaven’s auto shop. There was no way to know what the problem was without labor enough to effectively total her. I cried that day, wrote a first obituary, and then used her to bring kids to prom. 

Shark ran fine. Then we brought her to Vermont. Then to Montreal. Then to Chicago to Florida and back home. I called bullshit. We rented her out some more, took her on a bunch of smaller runs. Then this tour happened. 

On the way to our first show in Oneonta, we blew a tire on the trailer. We got it fixed up and got to the show on time. After the show, it started snowing real hard. Apple Maps took us down a seasonal road while we rushed to get on the highway before the roads got bad. It was the biggest pain to turn around with the trailer. Then going down a hill the trailer pushed us into a ditch. “This is the tour she goes” Chris proclaimed. 

We made it through Ohio and into Missouri, all the way to OK and 10+ hour drives to San Antonio/New Orleans. On what would be our final day drive of tour to St. Petersburg, FL just as it finished getting dark, we started hearing a loud knocking in the engine. She sounded gross. 

We stopped at Jimmie’s Auto Truck Plaza in Lee, FL. This is where it starts to get weird. This place has a diner, a trucker’s lounge, a convenience store, and a barber shop all in Jimmie’s name. We talked to some lady who gave us sodas and was VERY interested in us being in a band and she helped us get their 24hr service station. A guy comes out a Jimmie’s truck with his girlfriend. He tells us the engine is done. The knocking came from broken rod bearings and damaged crank shaft. I was in denial. I told him it was the fuel filter. I made him prove there was metal in the oil. He looked like that mechanic in Rat Race that Amy Smart and Breckin Meyer. Maybe that;s why I kept yelling at him. We poured in some oil then that bastard charged us $110.

We decided to sell it and get it parted out. A guy came over to us and call Donnie’s down the road about getting it sold. We did. In comes a guy in a FUCKING JIMMIE’S TRUCK. He asks how much we want. We bought it for $3000. Working it was worth way more. We asked for $1000. He said $400. I did a good job convincing him that I knew it’s worth. We got it up to $625.  Joey held strong that he knew what they were doing. Jimmie was trying to fuck us. But no matter the price, we were losing a friend. 

We took her all over this half of the country, drove up the Appalachians, experienced the police confrontations with student protesters in Montreal, fell in love with/in Birmingham, smoked probably pounds of weed, made tons of friends, and played with amazing bands. 

We took everything we could out of her and held a funeral. It was a sad day. I felt on the verge of tears. When our friend Justin came to pick us up, we packed up his van and then said our final good-byes. 

So Shark will be parted out.  Your transmission will exist in some new vehicle, but they won’t know your story. Just like we don’t know your story before. You were a beautiful girl and carried us to places we could never have gotten to with out you.

SHARK IS DEAD. LONG LIVE SHARK. 1996-2013

Horizontal self-governing communities are what most anarchists hold as a desirable form of organization. The state involves a specific governing group that uses coercion as force. Impossible with a horizontal self-governing community. 

I don’t understand what that next set of quotes is saying since you said it’s false then agreed with it in the next sentence. That is not ignoring anything. I understand my money goes to roads and schools. Whether I benefit from school (I don’t/didn’t) or from roads (I do) I still don’t wish to pay taxes.  

Again, in the current economic system, I wish for poorer communities to have the means to empower themselves. So, I wish for them to have schools as a means to climb out of their financial limitations. However, tax money is more often sent to middle class schools while schools in poorer areas are closed or a means for police to identify the troubled members of the community so they can effectively jail them. They are only usually made better due to community organizing and volunteer work. Also, public schools are only effective for a certain minority type of mind and are alienating and intellectual damaging to most everyone else. As for roads, to me it’s not worth contributing to American imperialism.  

To the rest of this whole thing, this is a big idea and I’ll do my best to paint a picture. 

To the jobs being voluntary: (don’t watch the beginning if you are sensitive to gore and violence). This would explain why jobs themselves are a necessity and why you are forced to work somewhere. It’s not that I just think I am being paid unfairly, it’s easily recognizable. It is in most every businesses interest to expand and grow, meaning there is a surplus of money, meaning it is taken from the workers’ labor. 

As for a more appropriate way…. the simple answer is that people will value work when they see the direct effects of it.  When you don’t have to worry about working to live, jobs that aren’t needed with fade out and jobs that are needed will be done because those that are working on it are seeing the direct effects. Spain during the civil war and The Paris Commune are classic examples.

So I wrote out a whole response to this then realized that this has moved beyond the point of holding me accountable for ignoring class privilege and is moving more into a political economics discussion. We are going to stop responding to this particular conversation. While we are a band with political members and do like talking about these ideas with people, we are not a “political band” and I’m not sure if people like these things in their feeds. Correct me if I’m wrong/validate me if I’m right.

If you desire to talk more about this I can address you privately if you come off anon, or through email.

The basic idea would be that the state shapes the economy based in the interest of the rich. The interest of the rich has played out to be gaining power and influence by accumulating and hoarding resources needed by others. Without the existence of the state, communities would not be prevented from seizing the resources they need to survive. They would be able to self govern and organize resources in a way that best suit their needs. However, that is not the case and we are subjected to a system run by the capitalists. We work the jobs they create, many of which are unneeded and undesirable, in order for them to give us resources unequal to the amount of labor we are giving. This is the simple version. Respond how you wish. Addressing questions is easier than trying to paint a picture.

Your argument of me not contributing anything is both wrong and silly. It’s assuming that taxes are a collective pool of money and not just a war budget and a sorry payment. Also, I am a taxpayer and I pay almost the amount that I would be accepting. My issue with it is that I wish I had a way to just not pay taxes and thus take money from money going to cops or weapons or other things undesirable instead of programs designed to help the disenfranchised.

I mean, a combination of things.  We attempt to book tours that have dates close enough to each other that the amount that we make selling shirts/door money keeps us out of the red.

We rent out our bus to people who allow us to have some start up gas money. We have a good enough local following that if we were to do a kickoff we can make a considerable amount of gas money to tour. We sell stuff online.

We have a small trailer we traded a broken moped for. We have had a bus that was a Craigslist gem. The bus allows us to do tours where we can take the bands we are touring with in the same vehicle which means we aren’t splitting the door money/donations between two vehicles/when we are in the red gas gets split many ways. It was a diesel so it wasn’t deadly on gas.  When we needed the bus fixed, I have a friend who grew up with buses who helps us with maintenance/advice.  We save up money and aren’t afraid to go broke. We have friends in many places due to the various amount of communities we interact with. 

We are very lucky.

Yeah we will post it once we get home from tour.

I don’t see accepting food stamps as inherently anarchist or anti-anarchist. I’m not sure how you are arguing this or how you are defining anarchist… but people using money taken from them by the State to ease a situation that could be easier solved if not for the State’s existence does not seem like an act of submitting.

I had a conversation with a friend who made me think a lot more about this a couple months ago. I have no hard feelings on it. I’m open to criticism. There are certainly valid questions to be raised as to who should accept them… but my situation stands.

I have no means of transportation to get to and from the job I have and am on leave. The job has limited hours and many employees. I just recently moved out of my house and into a new area two weeks before I leave for a month on a trip that is actually cheaper than living at my place. When I get back and have time to get a new job I can. I could have not toured, or I could borrow from/trade with friends, or looked for more work to make money on days off, which I had done. There were better options I suppose!

Feel free to respond with opinions on the issue.

Well, he is currently not on foodstamps but is in the process of reapplying. His parents are not upper middle class, but they do own assets outside of their means. But his parents won’t pay for his groceries and it’s important for his mental health to not live with his family. He is unemployed/looking for work, unable to pay rent. He doesn’t look at it as a way of sticking it to the man or feels like he deserves it. What do you wanna know?

Okay we should have probably released this a while ago, but we leave for tour next week. Here are the dates and locations/approximate/missing dates. If you live in an area that we were missing and want to help us out, send us an email at hotelyear@gmail.com.

Feb 26th: Flywheel Art Space- Easthampton, MA w/Young Enthusiasts

Feb 27th: off

Feb 28th: Hunt Union Waterfront Room @ SUNY- Oneonta, NY w/Far From Proper

March 1st: West End 2153- Ashtabula, OH w/CityCop and Ages

March 2nd: Euro Gyro- Kent, OH w/Runaway Brother

March 3rd: Kobo Live- Columbus, OH

March 4th: house show- Bloomington, IN

March 5th: Fubar- St. Louis, MO

March 6th: Acoustic Rock Coffee House- Lawton, OK w/Andrew the Poet, Piss

March 7th-8th TX Denton/Dallas/Austin/Houston? we’ve got nothing

March 9th: TBA- New Orleans, LA

March 10th-12th Pensacola/Tallahassee/Tampa FL help?

March 13th: 1982 Bar- Gainesville, FL w/Dikembe

March 14th: Shangi Nobby’s- St. Augustine, FL

March 15th: TBA- Orlando, FL w/You Blew It!

March 16th: The Seven Venue-Douglasville, GA

March 17th: God’s Butt- Birmingham, AL

March 18th: Excalibur Vintage & Vinyl- Decatur, AL w/Laura Stevenson + Cash Langdon

March 19th: Asheville/Knoxville help?

March 20th: Lucie Monroe’s Specialty Coffee- Christiansburg, VA 

March 21st: Casa Fiesta- Washington DC

March 22nd: TBA Philadelphia, PA

March 23rd: Glen Cove Moose Club- Glen Cove, NY w/Young English, Tomahawk Chop, No Good News.

Come hang say hi let us sleepover whatevz

thisturbo:

Made…valentines sugar cookies

While Listening To…The Hotel Year: It Never Goes Out

o0o0o0o we get the valentines day edition <3