Sometime after the murders, the building had been the site of a major fire in one of the main rooms upstairs which thankfully had been put out before the whole building itself had been destroyed. Because the entire building was an ancient wooden tinderbox, it always felt like an accident just waiting to happen. But thankfully, it never did happen on our watch.

Since only one room upstairs had been damaged by fire, that was the only room in the building that had been totally remodeled since the building was built. It was remodeled in the veil of the horrible looking 1970s with pukey beiges and shit browns, complete with a friggin' wet bar! The only good thing about the remodel was that it got its own bathroom. The bad thing was that the plumbing job for that bathroom was really bad, so it was continuously a problem due to constant leaks.

When we finally signed the lease on the building, the papers gave two dates. One was the "Date of Commencement" which was February 1, 1985, and the actual lease date, was on March 1, 1985. So for the sake of brevity, we will say March 1, 1985 is SCUD's real birthdate.

When we finally got into the place, it was pretty much a stinking shithole. It was a shambles and desperately needed a lot of work. The three communal bathrooms had no sinks, no toilets and no bathtubs or showers. There were no hot water heaters, absolutely nothing except just a lot of holes in the walls where the windows should have been and nearly a foot of brown rancid water. And this was all upstairs.

There had originally been 20 very small rooms known as efficiency apartments or SRO aka Single Room Occupancy. We ended up taking minor walls down in order to expand each of the rooms and make them into actual living apartments, each complete with kitchen. Once the construction and remodel was finally completed, there were nine apartments. We still had the communal bathrooms, but they at least were fully functional.

The storefronts and spaces within the main floor of the building were immediately filled with other artists who needed cheap studio space. There was a woman named Terry who made pottery and another artist by the name of Alfred who was a local painter who had also designed an album cover for the L.A punk band X.

Some of us had met up at a New Years Eve party 1984/1985. At that party, it was decided that an artist co-op was desperately needed, a place where artists could work, live and pay cheap rent while living in the city. Once the building had been found, we needed to come up with a legal entity which we called "The Western Wall, Incorporated". We signed a three year lease and by the middle of March 1985, people began to quickly fill up the new vacant apartments upstairs and to begin their new lives living as The Subterranean Cooperative of Urban Dreamers, aka SCUD.

The photograph is of SCUD two years in, shortly after the Free Mars cafe opened. Harbor Properties decided to put a For Sale on the side of the building - circa 1987.