2018 marks the third year that Oakland-based punk band, SWMRS, has celebrated Uncool Halloween. Named after their record label, Uncool Records, and a song off of their album Drive North, Uncool Halloween has been a treat for Bay Area fans and Halloween enthusiasts alike. This year, Uncool Halloween III was Harry Potter themed, with floating candles and dragons decorating Berkeley’s UC Theater. October 27, 2018, was a night to remember full of great music, creative costumes, and an awesome lineup of Small Crush, Destroy Boys, Beach Goons, Mt. Eddy, Bleached, and SWMRS.
I look forward to this show in particular each year because SWMRS is one of my favorite bands and was definitely the most influential for me. Listening to SWMRS was a major gateway for me into the world of punk rock, small shows, and truly loving where I come from.
Today, the media tends to circulate around Southern California, Los Angeles in particular. So many people move to LA to pursue their dreams, lured in by the promises of fame, celebrity, and connections. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and I do not have anything against those who move to LA for those reasons. Many people move, work hard, and manage to make it big after relocating. However, growing up surrounded by this mentality caused me to feel like I couldn’t do anything in my Northern California hometown. I liked living in the Bay Area, but I never saw it as a place where I could truly network and grow, because it seemed like all of the big voices were in Los Angeles. At the beginning of high school, I set my sights on LA. I hoped that moving there for college would give me the excuse to get out as soon as possible.
Then, I started listening to SWMRS. Little did I know this band would open lots of doors in my life. Listening to Drive North for the first time was a unique experience for me. I realized that I had never really heard much music that showed this kind of love for the Bay Area and Northern California. The title track, “Drive North” has the repeating lyrics “I hate LA” and highlights the positives of the Bay Area. “D’You Have a Car?” mentions the city of Oakland, California, and the historic Berkeley punk venue 924 Gilman. This album quickly became the background music for everything that my friends and I did in high school, and we marked our calendar for every show that SWMRS played in Northern California.
By going to these smaller shows over the years, I began to discover more and more bands that were incredibly talented and also based around the Bay. I soon uncovered the punk rock scene, which was pretty much unbeknownst to me, save for a few popular Green Day songs (“Good Riddance” has been played at every graduation that I’ve attended). Realizing that there was this whole world of music that had been flourishing around me for years gave me something to be invested in. I began to feel really lucky that I lived in the North Bay, and that I could just jump in the car and spend the night in San Francisco or Berkeley listening to live music and having fun with my friends.
This new enthusiasm for the Bay Area made me question wanting to leave. The weather was nice, there was great food, lots of interesting things to do, a great music scene, and big cities full of people to connect with. If I liked it here so much, why would I leave? I no longer saw Southern California as somewhere that I had to be to make things work. So when it came time to decide on a college, I chose to move to San Francisco. The more I looked into it, the more I felt like I belonged there. Music was not the only reason that I decided to stay, but it was definitely the start of it all.
Now, I couldn’t be more happy with my choice. In school, I’m working on my education and pursuing my career, and I can do it all while still staying in the Bay Area. Remaining in touch with music and running Fog To Smog has given me something fun to invest myself in. It has allowed me to become more involved with and learn more about music, which I’ll always be happy doing. My vision of the near future is much different now than what it was four years ago, but this change was most certainly for the better.
This post was written by Emma Fong (Instagram: @emmafong_)