Novels from the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s
I wrote Mountain View in the late 90s while living in San Francisco. I recently came across some old photos in a box, taken from the window of the room where I used to write.
I left SF in 2000. All my friends were moving away (mostly to the East Bay or Brooklyn) and the place was really starting to change.
I really do miss 80s/90s SF sometimes! What an incredible time and place.
Miss the N Judah!
Learn more about Mountain View
In Firenze, our hero Kevin takes a latest issues of Thrasher with him to Florence. And since it was the 80s and there was no internet, he reads Thrasher over and over for much of the book.
I was bored. Normally I’d just watch TV or something. I didn’t really know what to do. I’d brought along the latest issues of Thrasher, which I’d already read twice on the plane. What the fuck, I’d read it again.
This issue had Tommy Guerrero on the cover. Looking through the article I got homesick. Tommy was from SF. He was my hero. I’d seen him skate once in Oakland and the dude had blown me away.
I flipped through and read all the ads. Then I read Skarfing Material, my favorite column by Chef-Boy-Am-I-Hungry. If you remember the scene in Rocky where he drinks all those raw eggs, that’d kind of like a Chef-Boy-Am-I-Hungry recipe, except he’d maybe add something to the eggs first, like hot sauce and peanut butter. Each recipe was preceded by an existentialist rambling of some kind. Chef-Boy-Am-I-Hungry had a recipe for a Squid Eyeball Sandwich and Vito’s Vittles. After the nasty dinner with Sr. Gasperi they both sounded pretty good.
Pic via ThrasherMagazine.com
Learn more about Firenze
We took a lot of our design inspiration from album covers, and as you can see Soundgarden’s Louder Than Love was a big reference point. I bought the album on vinyl when it came out in 1989, but it looks like one of my kids “borrowed” it at some point…
This cover is an especially appropriate influence for Kato, which is set in Seattle in the late 90s.
Learn more about Kato
I wrote these stories on a Mac 512 between 1990 and 1994. They were saved on floppy discs and printed out on a dot matrix printer.
I’ve always considered the design of these early Macs to be absolutely iconic. I recently discovered that mine is still in the shed at my parents’ house, yellowed with age.
This little “Maclock” came into my feed the other day. I usually avoid buying this kind of crap but I couldn’t resist this time. It’s surprisingly accurate. And it’s darn cute.
Learn more about Stories
Mountain View is set during the summer of 1988. That same year I walked into The Starving Musician in Santa Clara and bought a Fender Mustang and this Boss DS-1 to use in the garage/punk band I was playing in.
A year later Kurt Cobain would make that same combo famous on Bleach. I managed to see Nirvana in SF at the Kennel Club in 1990 when they came through with Tad and Dickless. Full set here:
Learn more about Mountain View
In Firenze my narrator arrives in Florence Italy in the late 80s “armed only with a skateboard and a poor grasp of the Italian language. What follows is a deadpan comedy about culture shock, family baggage, and growing up by accident in a foreign country.”
Pictured is the Firenze paperback with an early/mid 90s New Deal Danny Sargent (discarded by my brother’s friend) paired with my old Indy trucks and OJIIs. I did most of my skating in the 80s and had wanted to try this whole new double-kick tail thing out.
I recently found some of my old 80s Schmitt Stix decks in my parents’ shed so maybe I’ll post those later.
Learn more about Firenze
Toward the end of Mountain View there is a section describing a short movie I saw in elementary school called Paddle To The Sea.
I’ve been surprised by how many people have commented about the Paddle To The Sea section. Mostly Gen X folks. So maybe the movie was more widespread than I thought. The movie was originally made in 1966 and I probably saw it in second grade in the mid-70s.
Have you seen it? Did it make a big impression on you? I really captured my imagination at the time and I still think it’s pretty great.
The movie is on YouTube:
Learn more about Mountain View
I had a lot of fun working on the cover designs with Geoffrey Bunting. I wanted them to be inspired by and refence some of my favorite punk rock covers from the 80s.
Did you know that Grant Hart of Husker Du designed the cover of Hootenanny?
I was really into Mattel Football (first released in 1977) when I was a kid, and featured it pretty heavily on page 36 of Mountain View. And I still have it today!
Funny thing is, reading it now I realize I was talking about Football II (the green one, released in 1978) which also had reverse. My buddy had that one.
Learn more about Mountain View
The word “Coke” appears 20 times in Mountain View and 17 of those are for the drink.
The Faction is my favorite Bay Area skate punk band. Dark Room with Let’s Go Get Cokes came out in 1985 and I’ve had it in my collection ever since! Steve Caballero rhythm guitar! Artwork by Lance Mountain!
Learn more about Mountain View
