INTERTWINED LIVES
The Ghost Ship attracted an eclectic community of like-minded artists, musicians and supporters
OAKLAND — As the music played and the party swirled around them, Jennifer Kiyomi Tanouye created tiny works of art on painted nails while her friend, Ara Jo, gave haircuts.
Tanouye, a 31-year-old music manager at Shazam, was surrounded by people she knew and supported at a venue she loved — Joseph “Joey Casio” Matlock was there, Micah Danemayer and so many more.
She was with her tribe that Friday night, an interconnected community that came to light this week as authorities slowly identified the bodies of the 36 people who died in Oakland’s Ghost Ship warehouse fire.
They were musicians, fans and artists, mostly in their 20s and 30s, who loved the weird, the surreal and each other. This was no random gathering of people who saw a flier about a party. To many, this was a surrogate family, an eclectic group that had spent many similar nights together, dancing and making music. They knew and admired each other’s work, played gigs together, ran sound and video for each other’s shows.
They were connected in other, unexpected ways. Five were members of the UC Berkeley community,
two worked at Highwire Coffee Roasters and two had worked for the West Contra Costa County School District. Three were transgender women. There were four pairs of lovers, one of which died in each other’s arms as the smoke overcame them, according to authorities. The youngest victim was 17. The oldest was a 61-year-old veteran of the electronic music scene, who years ago lived with the friend of another victim.
“There are so many threads there that connected so many people together,” said local electronic musician Michael Buchanan of Katabatik, an Oakland music collective that lost three members to the fire. “We all knew each other or were one step removed, and there’s obviously a closeknit community there that developed over many years, with a lot of time invested around these things . ... This is much larger than night life or parties or events.”
The connectors
Some had come to see DJ Johnny Igaz, who performed as Nackt — “naked” in German. He was spinning that night, making his return after a brief break from playing shows. Punk electronic musician Joey “Casio” Matlock also was on hand to perform, as was Chelsea Faith Dolan, who’d released two albums and was better known by her stage name, “Cherushii.”
Igaz’s roommate, Ben Runnels, came with Nicole Denalda Siegrist. Together, they made up the twin halves of the synth-pop band Introflirt. They had played often with Travis Hough, who also was at the warehouse that night and used to be in a band with Cherushii.
Cash Askew, who released her debut album “Remain” in 2015, brought Feral Pines, a transgender woman and wicked bass player who was new to the Bay Area.
In the middle of them all was Amanda Allen Kershaw, a photographer and music promoter who shot pictures of Igaz while he performed. She and Igaz planned to drive to the Santa Cruz Mountains together after the party to meet up with friends. There were already two vegan meals waiting for them.
For years, members of this group had built spaces where people could dance, create and feel free to be themselves, according to Kershaw’s friend, Lea Romingquet. Kershaw held a monthly music event called Pulse Generator. But the community was about far more than throwing parties, Romingquet said.
They were each others’ audience and inspiration. They were a tribe, Romingquet explained. When one member got sick or had a death in the family, the rest rallied to raise money or help out. That’s what friends do.
The supporters
Some in the tight-knit community made music. Others helped keep that music alive. Tanouye, the nail artist, was one of them. She had a passion for supporting the Bay Area underground music scene and its artists, a role that became all the more important in recent years as the tech industry pervaded Oakland and San Francisco and rents skyrocketed.
For several years, Tanouye ran the Mission Creek Oakland Music and Arts Festival, expanding the festival across the Bay from San Francisco. She regularly went out of her way to find venues where her friends could play. Once, she booked a gig for her close friend Marcella Gries’ post-punk band aboard a converted bus in San Francisco. The venue was so cool, Gries said, that no one believed it existed. Tanouye also found venues for the children learning music under Gries’ nonprofit, the San Francisco Rock Project.
“She helped the scene keep going,” Gries said.
Adriana Handono, Tanouye’s best friend, had invited her to another party in Oakland the night of the fire. But Tanouye declined, saying she was going to Ghost Ship. When Handono found out about the fire around 12:30 a.m. she was still at the other party. She called Tanouye, but the phone was off, so she texted: “Kiyomi are you OK? I love you” followed by a string of red hearts. Nearby, she heard someone else say they couldn’t find Matlock, either. People started panicking, Handono said. It seemed like everyone knew someone inside the Ghost Ship.
It hit their whole community, Handono said. Cash, Feral, Casio, Chase, Micah — “Those are all my friends.”
The music lovers
Katabatik, a hub for esoteric electronic music, was well represented at the warehouse that night: Matlock — whom K Records Founder Calvin Johnson described as an institution — sound technician Barrett Clark and video projectionist Jonathan Bernbaum.
They were joined by Dolan, a ubiquitous figure in the local electronic music community. As Cherushii, she played everything from friends’ parties to the Folsom Street Fair, bringing with her a huge personality. Her birthday parties were extravagant, multiday celebrations that took guests from one end of the Bay Area to the other, said friend Osby Robles, and she had a blue piano that she lugged with her whenever she moved into a new space.
“She dressed like a rock star, because she was,” said Robles.
Like the rest of the tribe, Dolan did her part to support the local music community. Two months ago she launched a crowdfunding campaign for a fellow San Francisco musician who had his laptops stolen. She and Kershaw also were members of Outpost, a group Igaz organized as “a platform for undervalued musicians/people to gather, play music, and share ideas freely and safely.”
And she volunteered at UC Berkeley’s KALX radio station. So did Vanessa Plotkin, a UC Berkeley junior who was at the Oakland warehouse event with her roommate, fellow student Jennifer Morris. Recent Berkeley graduates David Cline, a music lover, and Griffin Madden, a former KALX DJ, were there, too. All four died in the fire.
Micah Danemayer, another electronic music artist who was performing that night, brought his girlfriend Jennifer Mendiola. He was a vegan with a Rubik’s Cube tattoo whose father said he trailed “weirdness and creativity and love” in his wake. She was a graduate student at UC Merced with one semester to go until she earned her Ph.D. in psychology.
The two moved in together the day of the party. He tried to convince her to stay home and rest, but she insisted on going with him, according to a close friend, Zora Burden.
The fire also took a large toll on the Bay Area’s community of transgender artists. Askew, a 22-year-old woman who performed as part of the goth duo Them are Us Too, went to the warehouse with her transgender friend, Pines, a bass player who moved to Oakland in September. The two had played music together in the past. Em Bohlka, a quiet, 33-year-old writer who had begun taking hormones last year to transition to a woman, was there to meet Donna Kellogg, her former co-worker at Highwire Coffee Roasters.
Bohlka’s wife, Natalie Jahanbani, remembers the text she got that night, about an hour before the flames broke out: “Oh my God, this place is a ... trip,” Bohlka wrote her. “I can’t wait to tell you about it.”
“They were people you don’t meet every day,” Jahanbani said of those who died. “They color in the lines of our world.”