5lowershop flux pronounced "flowershop". i received a garbled invite via strange channels (kcaz_the_chat_engine), to help build a 100 watt rf amp at this place. i was given an address and vague directions of how to get there, being "get off at 24th and mission". further instructions and a time to arrive were supposedly in transit, but never arrived. monday came, and our local crazy russian invited me out to sf while he toured around a couple of other crazy russians from the east coast. having nothing better to do, i agreed, thinking i could check my email in the city and make my way to the 5lowershop when the time came. immediately after arriving in the city, i realized that i'd lost the sheet of paper with the address written on it (and later figured out it must have disappeared sometime the previous night during the confusion at the forgotten_party and crazy_liz). oh well, i said, i'll just wait for that email then.. touring the russians was it's own fun little mini_adventure, and we ended up in the mission about dinner_time. not having received any information at all, we decided to call on indymedia, who we figured must have some idea where this place was, being, after all, indymedia. they didn't. i resolved to ask the next likely person on the street if they knew where the 5lowershop was. we get up to balmy ally, and i see a guy on a bicycle, in dreadlocks, putting up fliers. "ah", i say to myself, "this man looks likely". i approach him (i should at this point point out that i'm dressed all in white except my silver "space jacket"), and ask, and he gives me an incredulous look and spits back a defensive "why do you want to know?". i tell him what's up, and he relaxes, gives me directions to the best of his ability ("it's over that hill, right next to the xxx xxx"). apparently a bus stops right next to it. ah, that sounds easy enough.. i write it all down, he comments that when i first walked up to him, he thought i was going to ask if i knew where i could get some crack or something like that, and that he still thought it was amazing that i thought to ask him.. we eat dinner, i ask a guy at a bus stop which bus i actually need to take, and then i'm off on my own, about nine o'clock, heading off to an unknown part of san francisco to find a well hidden warehouse. the bus ride is a churning roller coaster ride, and i am reminded of complaints about muni drivers that made the news several years ago. the bus careens down the middle of narrow two way streets, ignores most traffic signs.. it's the sort of thing that one would describe by making references to white knuckles, if i hadn't been so amazed by the driver's mysterious ability to not hit any of the obstacles in his path.. i get out at the predestined stop, and walk, trancelike, directly towards the 5lowershop, even though i can't see it. it's like i somehow know it's there. and sure enough, a warehouse covered in graffiti, circuit boards etched into the door, looms up the horizon. i ring the bell, and am greeted by a man wearing a fake fur and other absurd clothing.. i ask if this was the 5lowershop, and without uttering a word, he thrusts a bottle of cold_duck into my hands and beckons me to follow him. i enter, and am immediately overwhelmed and giddy. i get this feeling everytime i enter a new "autonomous zone", like cz, spaz, etc. there are machines on my left and signs of warehouse living everywhere.. the place doesn't have any doors, and few internal walls. they mostly use curtains, drapes, and rugs, which divide the space up well and at the same time make it very difficult to navigate for strangers to navigate. i tell them who i'm looking for, introductions are made.. (at this point i want to go to bed, so i'll finish later) 040411 ... flux the people living here are your usual warehouse denizens. many wear dreads, nearly all look like they looted their clothing from the thrift stores in the mission. they point towards a huge mass of tangled electronics in the corner, and say my friend usually hangs out there. he's not there currently. i look around some more. the "room" i'm in currently is rather large, and seems to be divided into several smaller sections at the periphery. i get the feeling later that these little subdivisions are sort of like people's personal "rooms", where they sleep and whatnot. the majority of the larger room seems broken up into two groups of couches that face towards separate televisions. one is attached to a support pole in the center, and the other is next to the flap through which i entered. broken electronics, photographs, paintings, graffiti, and other "art" decorate the entire space, so that every surface is busy, but nothing really fits together. i ask if anyone knows where my friend *might* be. after seeming to realize finally that i have absolutely no idea of how to make my way around this place, i get a tour towards the kitchen. walk through a hallway, where a couple of public computers are set up, bathrooms, through another couple of sets of curtains (later i'm told that the tiny space between sets of curtains i'm in has been declared a "room" itself), into the kitchen. smells of food and baking, cake, a rather large spice rack, fridge covered in stickers.. and so on.. my friend is their, preparing a butternut squash and a sweet potato for dinner.. i ask him if i'm late or what, and he says no, you're right on time, the third person involved just showed up, and we probably wouldn't have done any work without him.. and so somehow i've arrived at the right time, too.. the oven turns out to be unplugged, and not just unplugged, but it's just got a pair of wires coming out the rear. my friend (let's call him X and the other guy Y) now displays his knowledge of all things electrical, and manages to plug the oven directly into the circuit breaker somehow, over the next ten minutes.. while i'm waiting, i sit on the floor against the spice rack and chat lightly with the other residents.. i notice that there are two large holes in the walls, looking outside, half filled with windows of somewhat broken glass. in the back yard are several busses, also somewhat covered in graffiti. the kitchen is fairly small, and i start to wonder how many people actually live here. i can't get a clear answer from anyone.. one person says none, seeing as they were supposedly evicted almost a year ago when the landlord decided to knock the whole place down and build up something nicer, but never really seemed to carry through with the plan.. they stilled paid rent, though, month by month.. finally the oven was working, and we went back to the workbenches by the piles of electronics to start working.. they show me the plans, the circuit board we're going to lay everything out on, and all the components.. it's a fairly simple design, but it's still much more complicated than any physical circuit i've ever built. my first job is to file down the hole in the middle where the transistor is supposed to fit, so that it actually sits snugly. then we start soldering.. when it becomes apparent that they expect me to take shifts, i tell them i've never soldered anything that had to function.. which doesn't seem to be a problem. they show me, and it's really quite simple. yeehaw!.. the night moves on, and parts are slowly added.. i get other duties, like building an inductor, searching for bits of wire and other parts in the piles of junk electronics behind us, drilling and tapping holes in a heatsink for the transistor, and finding suitable junk to act as a spacer between the heatsink and the circuitboard. it mostly moves smoothly. autechre and aphex twin blare from the room next door, and at one point my conversation is interrupted by the overpowered orgasm of a macintosh booting up. a fellow walks by and i find out that the night previous 5lowershop had gone over four pirate radio stations in the bay area, including kcaz. ah, the wonders of the internet. so i solder well, i think, for my first time. Y is stoned now after the man with the cold duck smoked him out, but he has no problem taking things over when i go to do the more mechanical parts of the project.. and after several hours, about three in the morning, we're done, and it's time to test out the new board. the amount of useful electronics in this realm that X has accumulated is astounding.. a box that can put out up to 15 amps between 1 and 20 volts.. the amp is designed to be run at 28 volts, but we manage to get about 70 watts out of it anyway. nice. right on target. it's much to late now to make my way back to berkeley, so they find me a place to sleep in one of the busses.. seems they use these to travel to places like mutant_fest and to start spontaneous parties elsewhere.. i set the alarm for 630 (i've got to be at work by 8) and sleep the night away.. and take off the next morning before anyone else is up. and i start to reflect that i'd very much like to live in a place such as this, if i wasn't already at cz. and now i know how to build an rf amp. 040411 what's it to you? who go blather from