Famous to 15 People At webzine98, San Francisco's Web geeks were in their element By Michael Van Vleet Someone once said that the best way to get away with something is to just act as if you have a right to be where you are. One group of criminals, for example, supposedly walked into an office and walked away with all its furniture because they wore jumpsuits. The uniform helps. With this in mind, I'm wearing what I imagine to be journalistic garb: an ugly green semi-plaid jacket and a tan derby hat from a thrift store. Nearby on a South-of-Market street, meanwhile, walks a well-dressed young man with two giant white rat-tails sticking out of his head. We're both on our way to the Transmission Theater and webzine98, a Nov. 14 promotional party for independent Web publishers. Inside the Transmission, it looks like the half-hour before a high school dance, when only the computer club has showed up. At this dance, though, there are glowing monitors connected to the Web site webzine98.com and a surf band tuning up onstage. These geeks, their awkward standoffishness aside, also sport the currently requisite amount of dyed hair. Three of the event's organizers are making last-minute preparations. Maxi's Molly Steenson -- in a form-fitting dress imprinted with the image of Buddha -- helps Fucker's Betty Ray and Srini Kumar of Unamerican Activities (please see correction). Together with three others, Kumar says, they are the "God Complex," and they put the bulk of webzine98 together in less than a month. For Kumar, the self-proclaimed "Hindu Elvis," webzine98 is a pet project fueled by self-promotion and catch phrases galore: Promotional material proclaims that THE WEB IS NOT A GIANT SHOPPING MALL and YOU ARE NOT AN EYEBALL! Furthermore, attendees should DRINK THE SWEET NECTAR OF FREEDOM and EMPOWER YOURSELF AND PUBLISH! Kumar says the event was his idea, "but it's a good thing other people came in. It would look conspicuous otherwise, since Unamerican is the only Web site making money." At 6 p.m. sharp Kumar kicks off webzine98 with a thundering set by his band, the Aquamen. He contorts behind his microphone like Joe Cocker; an Unamerican sticker, "Fuck Work," is prominently displayed on a Yamaha keyboard. There are more stickers on the Unamerican Activities table, including "This Cubicle Is So Fucking Small" and "My Macintosh Rules." James Squeaky, Kumar's business partner, holds up another: "Corporate Websites Suck." This, he says, "is tonight's unofficial sticker," and later it'll be stuck to leather jackets, pants, and across a woman's chest. Across the room there's a gentleman in an Adobe shirt. He introduces himself as "the CEO of Adobe," and when met with skepticism instructs his assistant to say the same. When pressed, however, he says he's a "Web Evangelist" and provides proof with a business card. The man, Daniel Brown, is here to hype Photoshop, his company's trademark product. Upstairs he's got a laptop and a projection screen reading "Will Perform Amazing Photoshop Tricks For Beer." He adds that Adobe has sponsored webzine98 with a $1,500 donation. "I hope more people turn up for this thing," he says, frowning. By the front door sit representatives of Green Witch, a free music Web site. They're giving away T-shirts and showing off their site on computers that aren't equipped with speakers. Not everyone working the room at webzine98 works exclusively on the Web. Larry-bob, of Holy Titclamps fame -- if publishing a relatively well-known print zine can be called fame -- is here and says that "in the future, everyone will be famous to 15 people." Nearby is Michael Sugarbaker, editor of Gazebo. He says he's here for "celebrity spotting" and recounts a list of sightings: Carl Steadman of Suck, R.U. Sirius of Mondo 2000, Derek Powazek of The Fray. When it's pointed out that so-called "Web celebs" are only really celebrities to a small group, he answers: "Depends on your threshold for celebrity." Some of those "celebrities" will be interviewed onstage starting at 7 p.m.: Among others, Fucker's Ray will interview Owen Thomas of Ditherati, and Maxi's Steenson will talk with John Halcyon Styn of Cocky Bastard -- who turns out to be the guy with the rat-tails. Offstage, informal interviews are easy to come by; at this level of celebrity, rhetoric flows when approached by a reporter. Or when presented with a soapbox. Onstage, R. U. Sirius is talking up his latest project, The Revolution, to the night's first real applause. "If you go back to what the futurists where saying in the 1970s, how they thought this technology would be used, they said there would be big shopping malls," Sirius says. "But right from the start, like with Usenet, people just took it and did something a lot more interesting." Sirius is being lobbed softball questions. "But do you think independent content is dead, or do you think it's being eclipsed?" he's asked. "No, no, I think as long as young people come along who don't need jobs and aren't prewashed and don't have the pretense of professionalism, we'll have independent content," he answers. Sirius, at least, could never be accused of being prewashed. The Revolution, he says, is his own political party. "For the year 2000, we're lining up as many professional wrestlers as we can," he proclaims. "I'll take up the cloth myself if necessary. We're gonna put the motherfuckers in a hammerlock." The party's foreign policy? "We're going to forget about foreign policy. We're going to go braindead on foreign policy and see if that works." And other issues? "Legalize drugs, prostitution," he says. "No taxes on people who make $100,000 or less a year. Close down the prison-industrial complex. Which basically you do by releasing people who are in jail for drugs." The Revolution, he adds, has -- of course -- its own slogans: "Victory Over Horseshit" and "Register the Rabble." Sirius intersperses his political hucksterism with pop-culture hucksterism, claiming that he once recorded with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. "We have a band called Mondo Vanilli," Sirius says. "We met him while he was living in the old Sharon Tate house. He had the band record an album, but then they never released it. They still own it. We had six different bands, but he decided to put all his money into Marilyn Manson." Later, I'll pose Sirius -- given name Ken Goffman -- my own question: "Can you cash checks made out to R. U. Sirius?" He'll laugh and lean in close, his eyes drifting as he breaks from dancing (Woodstock-style) to drum-and-bass. "Yes, actually, I can," he says. "I have an understanding with my bank. But I have to explain it to them every time." Back to the celebrity-spotting: Dave Siegel, of the book Creating Killer Web Sites, underground publisher V. Vale, and again The Fray's Powazek. webzine98 came together, Powazek says, "because Adobe said 'OK, we'll give you money.'" But, he adds, that doesn't amount to shameless capitalism: "Everybody here already knows Photoshop." Betty Ray eagerly expands on that theme. "Everybody is like 'e-commerce, portals, click-throughs' and this whole focus on making money," she says. "It's like 'What have you done to my medium?'" Her statement is reminiscent of something Larry-bob said earlier, just before wandering off for some celebrity-spotting of his own: "I moved [to San Francisco] six years ago because there was all this cultural stuff here that I was missing out on," he'd said. "[But] there's been a bit of a lull lately, due to the rising cost of living." His sentiment is echoed on the sidewalk outside: "Housing crisis? Let them buy LOFT$!" The same people buying LOFT$ in SOMA, one gets the feeling, are the same scourges of the twentysomething-and-hip turning the Web into a GIANT SHOPPING MALL. Back onstage, Kumar is explaining the name chosen by the event's organizers. "One of the reasons I think God Complex is a good name for our group is that when you publish something, it takes a little bit of hubris," he explains. "You're basically saying, 'I matter, listen to me, you should actually pay attention to this.'" Kumar goes on about small business, community, and politics before Eddie Codel, his interviewer, mentions that he recently found a pile of unopened envelopes on the street with domain names visible through their plastic windows. "There were like 300 of these things, unpaid-for domains," he continues, then produces the envelopes and tosses them into the crowd. People scramble as if after cash, hoping to find domain names that were paid for but left unclaimed. The boozing and dancing continue, although not much actual mixing and only sporadic applause for speakers. Until, that is, bud.com's Justin Hall takes to the stage. Hall isn't on the schedule, but his friends are encouraging him, Carl Steadman -- standing out in club-kid hair and bright yellow shoes -- visible among them. The audience awakens as Justin, who himself has selected a retro suit for the evening, begins preaching to the converted like a minister on speed. "You don't need to have a separate production staff, you don't need to have a whole design-iteration process to turn a site over," he says. "You can update a site with your hands, man -- making HTML is so easy! I want you all to understand that if you don't know it, or if you do know that, please go out and tell somebody, because the one thing we should all remember about the Web and the one reason that we're all here, the reason that we've never been paid to work on this thing, is because the Web is so GODDAMN easy! That's why there's a webzine98, because you don't need expensive tools to use it. Someday we will pay you, our sponsor, Adobe, I swear, for all the copies of Photoshop, I SWEAR!" Laughter rich with recognition echoes through the room. No doubt Daniel Brown knows that not only has the crowd tacitly admitted to pirating his software, but Hall has thoroughly usurped the title of Web Evangelist. "There's a word that's so dirty, when you come to personal Webzines, when you come to personal Web sites, or when you come to personal control over the Web, there's a word and a concept that is so dirty, folks, I'm going to share it with you right now," Hall continues. "VENTURE CAPITAL. I'll tell you if you go reaching out for that stuff, I'll tell ya, the only thing worse than reaching out for it is actually getting it, because once you get it, folks, you can never have enough." "The Web LOVES YOU!" he finishes, and the true believers, feeling validated, cheer loudly. Then the moment of revelation fades, and they turn back to their private conversations and free hummus and Adobe promotional CDs. webzine99 and webzine00 (webzine2K?) are already in the works, Kumar says. "It would've been nice to fill the place, but this is version 1.0. ... I feel like the Internet world is not quite ready for such a crazy movement -- the movement for grassroots content creation -- or perhaps that the egalitarian spirit once so dominant in San Francisco has long left this town's multimedia factories." But, he says later, "At webzine I met a lawyer, an accountant, an investor, and a drug connection -- all of whom have volunteered their services to my company! As far as networking goes, the event sure did pay off!" RELATED LINKS webzine98 Fucker Unamerican Activities Green Witch Holy Titclamps Gazebo The Fray Ditherati Maxi Cocky Bastard The Revolution bud.com © 1998 New Times Inc. All rights reserved.