:: THE STORIES :: THE SHOWS :: CONTRIBUTORS ::

Beth Loudmouth: I loved taking the bus up Market Street, getting off and skateboarding through the empty financial district and then through Chinatown to get to the club. I enjoyed those nighttime skateboard rides a lot.

Shows at the Purple Onion just felt so... cozy. Tom always ran out of beer. We’d go down the street and buy 40 oz. beers and come back in the club with our own booze. He didn’t even care.

The first few years I found the chaos Tom created extremely funny. He had this awesome old jukebox with his singles in it. Early in the night before the show started he’d blast it and sort of sway around near the jukebox with his eyes closed, dancing and getting his groove on.

Michael Lucas: Favorite memories were Tom Guido, the bands. What else was there, other than a line for beer that drove many people across the street to have a few rounds at Mr. Bing’s between (and during) bands.

Jay Loudmouth: Going to the PO was more like going to a party. When it got too crowded, or the line for a beer was too long, or the beer ran out, you could run across the street to Mr. Bings and Bruce would set you up right away. Mr. Bing’s was an extension of the PO experience for me.

Jon von: The atmosphere of having the whole gang there, it was, apart from the Chatterbox, the only place I’ve ever felt like it was just a bunch of friends getting together to have fun.

Carolyn Keddy: I liked the feel of the place. It was a like a big clubhouse. I liked that you went down those stairs to get in. People didn’t just wander in, they purposefully had to decide to walk down the stairs. The jukebox. The metallic curtain behind the stage. The booths. Tom’s MCing. And of course, the bands. Tom did have good musical taste. 

Dulcinea Gonzalez: The Purple Onion felt like our very own “clubhouse”: a 60s-style underground space where there were no normals... Just about everyone that hung out was in a band or a serious garage/punk nerd. Shit always seemed vaguely illegal. The actual bar itself was filled with whatever beer Tom could carry on his skateboard from the local liquor store. The shortage of beer often led a lot of us to sneakily alley-drinking around the club or having to slog over to Mr. Bings for cocktails, but that’s another story.

Jay Hinman: Tom didn’t book anything except for the underground and the unloved. His definition of “garage rock” was wide, so bands like Monoshock could play with Henry’s Dress (which they did), or a surf band could play with some touring thug-rock band. Because it was the 1990s, there were quite a few excellent bands of that ilk on labels like Goner, Rip Off, Bag of Hammers, In The Red and others who came through town, and while they might have gotten gigs elsewhere, seeing them with like-minded, well-curated garage punk bands was a nice testimonial to Tom’s good taste.

Tina Lucchesi: The 100% Anarchy. Complete chaos. The sound was always fucked up. Maybe there would be a mic or two for band. The best was when he’d stop the bands if they were playing too long he’d get on the mic and yell “OK don’t be a stage hog, your turn is up!” The jukebox was killer and was always blaring distorted on fucking 10.

Dulcinea Gonzalez: I remember one night I had just given Tom a copy of a new-at-the-time Loudmouths single. Just a few minutes later he spewed out some weird and shitty insult to me, so I walked back over to him, grabbed the record, broke it to bits and threw all the pieces at him. This kind of shit was indicative of the volatile rock-n-roll psychosis that one might get swept up during any given PO night.

Tina Lucchesi: The shitty flat warm beer from last weekends shows or no booze at all. No toilet paper in women’s room.

Carolyn Keddy: The bathrooms sucked. Tom locking himself in that room next to the bar and refusing to pay bands.

Jay Hinman: Parking in North Beach has always been awful. The beer selection was poor. Other than that, the place was great.

Michael Lucas: The only thing to drink was crappy beer, and since Tom had a hard time keeping employees, there was usually only one person pouring, resulting in aforementioned long lines to get a beverage.

Jay Loudmouth: Always running out of beer around the time the last band went on. Tom would run up to the liquor store on a skateboard and skate back to the PO with beer to sell. I recall him skating past Mr. Bings yelling “Skating with a case, skating with a case!”

Jon von: The disorganization of everything!

Beth Loudmouth: What we made playing there usually sucked! Obviously none of us were in it for the money, ha ha.

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