Floorpunch show in San Francisco, 1999.“Nazis had plagued the Bay Area scene for decades.

Floorpunch show in San Francisco, 1999.

“Nazis had plagued the Bay Area scene for decades. There was a time when I was first discovering punk rock that all you heard about was how Nazis completely dominated the SF scene, assaulting people, ruining shows. I was often chased as a young punk by members of a particular Nazi gang that hung out in the Haight, at “Skinhead Hill.” 

When the hardcore scene began to reestablish itself in the early nineties, there was a conscious decision to run out the Nazis and keep them out by any means necessary, most often enforced by the crews around at the time like OBHC, Most Hated Skins, and the U.S. Thugs. There were some very violent years there. 

There was a Nazi gang that OBHC had been warring with for a number of years. Six or seven of them showed up at a Floorpunch / All Bets Off show in ‘99. When they started swinging on kids, Mikey Hood and I and two or three other people took them out with drumkit and mic stand pieces. Floorpunch helped out. Porter dropped a wedge on a Nazis head.That was the last major conflict with Nazis in the Bay Area, as far as hardcore shows were concerned and the nazi gang disbanded shortly after. 

They pop up now and then, the stragglers, but they get shown the door pretty quickly. The Norcal hardcore scene is pretty much Nazi-free, to the point that most kids don’t realize that there was ever a problem with them.”

The above account of these pictures was via Sammy Winston (black jacket and goatee in the first picture, about to club a Nazi), who tragically died in 2015 while heroically rescuing his roommates from a house fire.