Family Not A Group: On Brewing the Bay Area's Creative Spirit
San Francisco artist, Afterthought, turned his music into "Communal Nectar" at Drake's Dealership in Oakland
You’ve probably heard about the San Francisco Bay Area’s struggles of late. Nationally, talks of a doom loop and Gotham City are rampant. Locally, it’s even worse: turn on the news and all you’ll see is an apocalyptic portrayal of the region, rife with car break-ins (bipping), highway shootings and businesses fleeing from the region’s once-prosperous commercial centers. (For the record, these claims are largely exaggerated).
Perhaps nothing encapsulates the Bay’s outward failings more than when TikTok food influencer Keith Lee visited the region, only to cancel his trip a few days later with a farewell post to his more than 16 million followers that stated: “I don’t believe the Bay is a place for tourists right now… the people of the Bay are just focused on surviving.”
True as those words may be — and as much as I’ll admit as a Bay Area lifer that we do, indeed, have a towering list of social problems that Godzilla himself couldn’t topple — there’s another side to this played-out narrative, a side that less people talk about: one that involves the deep healing and intense communing taking place.
Though not as sexy for the corporate-minded to broadcast, there is a thriving grassroots arts scene here that traces back to the far-gone lineages of Black Panthers, hippies and freewheeling vagabonds. There’s a reason the Bay has been a fertile soil for birthing everything from the Free Speech Movement to sideshows. It’s both rich and dysfunctional; wildly fast-paced and mountainously serene; a desirable utopia for some and a modern hellscape for others. I would know — I spent the majority of my youth growing up in the city where Google was founded. For better or worse, the world’s most influential tech products — including the internet browser you are likely using to read the words I am typing on a laptop engineered 8.4 miles down the road from where I’m sitting — have often sprouted from right here along the Bay’s marshy shores.
But the thing about operating at the epicenter of intense capitalism and entrepreneurial pressure is that it breeds genuine resistance — and a desire to sip on communal nectar with other like-minded creatives and maquisards.
When it comes to the revolutionary act of sustaining a rapidly gentrifying community through arts, very few homegrown, DIY groups have held down the fort and waved the flag for locally-bred dreamers in the way that San Francisco’s Family Not A Group has. A human collage of visual artists, producers, photographers, rappers, food critics, DJs, filmmakers and beer connoisseurs, the collective popped onto my radar nearly two years ago when my colleague, Pendarvis Harshaw, wrote about their rise in the underground circuit of Frisco performers.
Since then, I’ve literally seen them doing it all, in every direction, with everyone — and always in a sincerely beneficial, purposeful, everybody-eats kind of way.
On Friday night, I slid through downtown Oakland to meet up with one of the crew’s founders, Afterthought, where he hosted an intimate live-band performance of his debut album, Communal Healing, while celebrating the release of “Communal Nectar,” a collaborative beer made in partnership with the brewers at Drake’s Dealership.
Afterthought is, what one would call, a real one. The type of dude who, if you know how a scene ebbs and flows, is “everywhere like air” (ala Earl Stevens). It seems that he and his group of homies are behind, or at least adjacent to, many of my favorite events around the Bay — from film releases to chicken wing throwdowns. Family Not A Group. The name says it all. And their ethos, in real-world practice, communicates just as much.
The beer is peachy and summery, with a light, “accessible” profile, as Afterthought put it, for those who might not be as familiar with craft beers, which tend be hoppier and full-bodied. Aft worked with the brewmaster by sharing flavor ideas inspired by his friends who “usually drink malt liquor and Coronas.” FWIW, I enjoyed the juicy, hazy-style nectar and ordered a few. “If you don’t like it, you can throw it in my face. Actually, please don’t do that,” he joked after announcing the beer to the crowd. Currently, the beer is available on-site at the Oakland Broadway location.
To hear more from Afterthought about his mission to preserve the Bay Area’s artistic identity, and to listen to a live acoustic performance from his album, check out this KQED Forum episode that aired on NPR’s Northern California airwaves at the end of last year as part of the Best Bay Area Music of 2023.
Until then, keep sipping on whatever community energy you need to sustain through these times, and show love to the artists in your area; especially the ones who quench your sense of wholeness and possibility.
Exactly what the young new communities need. Supporting each other on attending events in your area.
It is a sad reminder about the situation in the Bay Area, but can turn around into a happy ending.
Loved the article, bravo Alitan!
I hate that I missed this