November 2013 brought a fresh start for the 1300 block of 31st Avenue in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood.

On the first of the month, Laura Talon and Ben Acevedo moved into 1302, a cute 1918 red-and-white arts-and-crafts bungalow with a fenced-in yard they had bought for $250,000 — a bargain even then in the Bay Area real estate market.

Across the street, Derick Ion Almena and Micah Allison, a couple with three children, had signed a five-year lease to take over the two-story warehouse at the corner of 31st Avenue and International Boulevard. Their rent was $4,500, which they planned to cover by subletting to artists and renting space for parties. Couples would pay $750 a month, individuals $565. They called the space Satya Yuga, an era in Hinduism often referred to as the Golden Age.

Before she had even fully unpacked, Talon, a sound technician who was six months pregnant, was standing outside talking to her doula. Across the street Allison was lugging stuff into the warehouse. Between trips in and out, the three women found themselves chatting amiably on a patch of sidewalk in the hardscrabble flatlands a block from the Fruitvale BART Station.

After a round of introductions, Allison invited Talon to check out the warehouse. Talon was thrilled. Both she and Acevedo had played in rock bands, and underground arts spaces like Satya Yuga were part of what attracted them to Oakland in the first place.

“It was like an unexpected bonus,” Talon said. “We thought, how awesome to have this artist warehouse across the street from us.”

That assessment would change — fast.

Before the Dec. 2 fire that killed 36 people, the most extraordinary thing about the warehouse on 31st Avenue is how ordinary it was. Built in 1930, there was nothing to distinguish it from any of the other concrete industrial structures that have dotted the streets of East Oakland since it emerged as a shipping and industry center after World War I. The lot is 4,032 square feet, and, in 2015, the parcel and building had an assessed value of $43,249. It is owned by a family trust controlled by Chor Ng, who also owns adjacent property at 3071-3073 International Blvd. Her daughter and son, Eva and Kai, manage the properties.

Al Garcia, the longtime owner of Reed Supply Co., a nearby appliance store, remembers playing in the warehouse as a child when it was owned by Dairy Rich as a milk processing and storage facility. The building housed the milk trucks, which would go out on their delivery runs during the day. The empty milk cans would be sent by conveyor belt to the second-story loft.

“When the milk trucks pulled out, me and my brothers would all go ride our bikes in that very warehouse,” Garcia said.

After Dairy Rich came American Emperor, which distributed copper and cast iron pipes out of the building until 1998. But by the 1990s demand for such warehouses in Oakland had waned. The building stood empty for years, and Ng had a hard time leasing it out. The lot next door, which Ng also owned, became a dumping destination, full of stained mattresses, busted couches and broken appliances. Squatters moved in and out. There were a few short-term tenants. Artists and musicians came and went, and parties started popping up there in the 2000s.

Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld, a psychiatrist who specializes in drug addiction and sexuality and who wrote a column in the Chronicle in the 1960s and ’70s under the name Dr. Hip Pocrates, recalled attending packed raves at the warehouse between 2003 and 2006. There was the usual mix of sweat, pulsing beats, ecstasy, methamphetamine and LSD — he described it as “a makeshift hippie house.”

“It was an interesting place, but it seems to me it was pretty rickety there,” he said last week. “Upstairs there were propane tanks, handmade wooden beds, wild art, things like that. Everything looked like it was hand-built.”

That was before Almena and Allison came to the warehouse, which would become known as Ghost Ship. By the time they moved in, in 2013, it was empty again. Any artists, musicians or squatters who had been there over the years in formal or informal arrangements were gone.

The building’s new curators were well-known artists on the Oakland scene — Almena as a photographer and tattoo artist, Allison as a dancer. They had been living in the Oakland hills, where they had been selling marijuana and were known for hosting late-night drum circles.

Almena amassed a small fleet of recreational vehicles — eventually seven, in a variety of sizes and conditions — and parked them on the ground floor of the building. The RVs provided kitchens, secure storage and other comforts, while tenants built out adjacent loft spaces for making art. It felt like a cozy collection of funky little living quarters, residents said. There were narrow lanes weaving through them and talk of naming them, like streets in a village.

Upstairs, Almena and Allison built out residential quarters for their family in the front of the building. The open space in the rear was used for dance and musical performances, parties and other collaborations.

In a Facebook post seeking tenants, Almena wrote: “Seeking all shamanic rattlesnake sexy jungle jazz hobo gunslingers looking for a space to house gear, use studio, develop next level Shaolin discipline after driving your taxi cab late at night, build fusion earth home bomb bunker spelunker shelters, and plant herbaceous colonies in the sun & air.”

Slowly, the spaces filled with filmmakers, musicians, a photographer, several jewelers, a metal sculptor and a man who made tiny houses. It could be delightfully unpredictable, said one former resident who did not want to be identified because she is friends with Almena and Allison’s allies. Residents might come home to an impromptu drum circle, or piano and organ jam sessions. Friendships blossomed among the jewelry makers, mural artists, musicians and poets who gathered for barbecues and holiday meals.

Back to Gallery What life was like for Ghost Ship tenants, neighbors 38 1 of 38 Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle 2 of 38 Photo: Brendan Dreaper, Associated Press 3 of 38 Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP 4 of 38 5 of 38 6 of 38 Photo: Courtesy of Bottom of the Hill 7 of 38 Photo: via Facebook 8 of 38 Photo: via Facebook 9 of 38 10 of 38 Photo: Jeremy Danger 11 of 38 Photo: via KQED 12 of 38 Photo: via Facebook 13 of 38 Photo: Photo provided by Dan Vega 14 of 38 Photo: via Facebook 15 of 38 Photo: courtesy Brendan Dreaper 16 of 38 Photo: Terry Ewing, AP 17 of 38 Photo: via Facebook 18 of 38 Photo: courtesy of Josh Howes 19 of 38 Photo: via Facebook 20 of 38 Photo: Courtesy, Family of Edmond Lapine II 21 of 38 Photo: via Facebook 22 of 38 Photo: via Facebook 23 of 38 Photo: Photo courtesy Grace Lovio 24 of 38 Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle 25 of 38 Photo: Courtesy of Anna Mendiola 26 of 38 Photo: via Facebook 27 of 38 Photo: courtesy of Fritz family 28 of 38 Photo: Courtesy Gary Plotkin 29 of 38 Photo: Hand out, Courtesy Elecia Holland 30 of 38 Photo: via Facebook 31 of 38 Photo: Devin Askounis, AP 32 of 38 Photo: Taura Horn 33 of 38 Photo: Hand out, Courtesy Elecia Holland 34 of 38 Photo: via Shazam 35 of 38 Photo: Kathy Vega, Associated Press 36 of 38 37 of 38 Photo: Timothy Archibald 38 of 38 Photo: Wittenauer family











































































“People would borrow from each other and help each other out. In that sense, it was amazing,” said the former resident. “I had some of the best times in my life in that warehouse, among friends.”

It was November when Talon and Acevedo took their tour of the warehouse. Talon, who was still pregnant, could “hardly fit through the narrow passageways leading through the building,” which was already stuffed with possessions weeks after Almena and Allison moved in.

Navigating the back stairway required ducking under power cords. There were rusty nails sticking out of bits of reclaimed wood. Power strips were daisy-chained across the warehouse floor.

“It was power strip to power strip to another power strip to an outlet,” Acevedo said.

They were led upstairs into the space the family was building out as living quarters. There was a large hole in the floor — where Almena and Allison planned to build the now infamous pallet staircase that people attending an electronic music show at Ghost Ship a little more than a week ago were unable to descend to escape the deadly fire. Talon said she remembered feeling nervous that the youngest of Allison’s children was playing near the opening in the floor.

“She didn’t seem concerned at all,” Talon said of Allison.

Acevedo and Talon left the warehouse feeling a lot more apprehensive about their new neighbors than they had been before the visit.

“There was lots of talk of grandiose, non-achievable goals,” Acevedo said. “I remember thinking ‘These people don’t have the means to pull this off.’”

Sure enough, within weeks the activity at the warehouse started to get on their nerves. The place was noisy. Electronic music pounded into the wee hours. People came and went around the clock, smoking and yelling in front of the building. Debris and lumber piled up out front. Late at night, Almena and other residents would go out scavenging in his truck and filled the warehouse with their finds.

“Things went downhill pretty quickly,” Talon said. “We had a baby and jobs and couldn’t sleep. I didn’t see a whole lot of art happening. There were a lot of parties with a lot of wasted people wandering around.”

Acevedo estimates that he and his wife — the couple have since divorced — called police 50 times over 2½ years. There were regular small fires and fights in the building. The police and fire departments were there on a weekly basis, they said.

Garbage and debris piled up. A piano appeared in the front yard. A skeleton was painted on the building. It was not uncommon, said Garcia, the appliance store owner, to see people partying on the roof. The potential impact on his business of 42 years seemed clear.

“I’m looking at this skeleton, and I’m looking at this junk on the sidewalk,” Garcia said. “Does it look good? It doesn’t look good. It is not going to bring me business. Do my customers want to see that? I don’t think so.”

By the fall of 2014, the veneer of a creative utopia that some residents saw upon moving in was showing cracks. The propane tanks used to heat the water for showers ran out frequently. The warehouse was chilly, and residents huddled around electric heaters to keep warm. The power went out often.

Shelley Mack was looking for affordable housing in October 2014 when she stumbled upon a Facebook ad for a collaborative live-work space in Oakland. For Mack, a jewelry maker who works in tech sales, the idea of living with artists and being able to hone her craft among them appealed to her. And the price was right: $565 plus a $700 security deposit and whatever it cost to build out her space.

“It seemed like it was perfect,” she said. “But I found out quickly it was not.”

Mack wrote a letter to Almena cataloging her complaints. Mack detailed worries about possessions that went missing, the inconvenience of so many people using one bathroom, an infestation of fleas probably caused by mice and cats roaming the building — even a resident “dripping blood” in the sitting room.

Mack, who stayed at Ghost Ship until February 2015, said she had woken multiple times to find the power and heating had gone out. “I can’t stay outside the trailer in the evenings or at night it’s just too cold,” she wrote. “I know you said you had propane torchières, but are they safe indoors?”

The collective — which was renamed Ghost Ship in 2015 — held two “intervention” meetings during her time there to try to get the place back on track. She said Almena and Allison would listen and seem receptive, but nothing was ever done afterward. Mack said she eventually stopped paying rent and was kicked out.

It was “a beautiful yet terrifying place,” said a former resident who wished to remain anonymous. The woman, now 33, lived in Ghost Ship from August 2014 through June 2015. She said she loved the creative spirit of the place, but that numerous concerns were raised and nothing was ever done about it.

“We all knew what we were getting ourselves into,” said the woman. “You wouldn’t believe how many close calls we had for fires, how many times we were without electricity or hot water. But where else are artists supposed to go?”

She recalled one night, in particular, when the police were called because someone had a gun inside the warehouse.

“I kept a fire extinguisher, flashlight and a self-defense weapon close at all times,” she said. “It was a nightmare.”

Some problems weren’t kept within the walls of Ghost Ship.

Around Christmas of 2014, Acevedo and Talon had family visiting from out of town. Acevedo’s father looked outside and saw a man standing in their yard screaming at the house. Talon went outside and saw that it was Almena.

“He was just yelling at the house about my cat peeing in the warehouse,” she said. “He threatened to murder my cat with a crossbow. He said, ‘I’d be doing you a favor. That animal is a problem.’ I was shocked. I didn’t know what to say.”

Stray cats weren’t uncommon in the neighborhood. The idea that their cat had somehow gained entrance to the warehouse and peed on the floor “didn’t make sense,” recalled Acevedo.

“It was tweaker logic — it didn’t add up,” said Acevedo, referring to the erratic behavior often displayed by methamphetamine users.

And beyond the building’s shortcomings, personal problems were piling up for Almena and Allison.

Neighbors and fellow parents from their kids’ school became increasingly worried that the warehouse wasn’t a safe environment for children. One parent who had been friends with the family called the Fire Department, Police Department and Child Protective Services, warning them of the illegal and dangerous conditions in the warehouse, which was never designed or permitted for people to live in. In February 2015, Child Protective Services took the children, and it took Almena and Allison until June to get them back.

Several residents said that the couple were heavy drug users — regularly smoking meth. Almena, who wrote on Facebook about quitting drugs, could be abusive toward his subtenants when high, they said.

“I believe he is clean now, but he would constantly yell at people, go off on poetic tangents meant to confuse and belittle, and he was incredibly manipulative,” said a former tenant who left in June 2015. “Derick would do things like turn off the power until people did his family’s dishes for him.”

Zachary “Zeke” Schultz, a former Ghost Ship resident who eventually opened a gallery around the corner at 3071 International Blvd., a property that is also owned by Ng and that abuts the warehouse, said that he spoke and texted with Kai Ng recently about the dangerous conditions there. He said the landlord knew that upward of 20 people were living there illegally and promised to terminate Almena’s tenancy when his lease expired in 2018.

“He said he was aware of all the problems, but that it had been incredibly hard to lease the space and it wasn’t something he wanted to deal with,” Schultz said.

There is some evidence that the warehouse was on the upswing in the months before the fire. Almena and Allison have their children back. He said on Facebook that he had been drug free for eight months — and had even quit smoking cigarettes. The former resident, who returned recently to visit, said “the space was a lot cleaner than I had ever seen it.”

“Derick, Micah and the kids all seemed like they were doing well and well on the path to recovery,” she said.

Carmen Brita, who moved into Ghost Ship in January 2016 and escaped last week’s fire, said there were three working bathrooms, a shower and hot water. She spent evenings writing or sketching and slept in a lofted area up a staircase fashioned from cross-sections of a tree trunk. She had a kitchen space where she kept a small refrigerator, a futon and a toaster oven.

“From the moment I walked in the door, it was magical,” she said. “It kind of felt like being on a treasure hunt adventure, but also like being in a temple at the same time.”

Almena could be a generous and kind group leader, Brita said, recalling that he encouraged people to take pieces of art from the common area to decorate their own spaces and once tracked down a pottery wheel because he knew she had an interest in ceramics.

“Derick is a complex person,” Brita said. “People want to paint individuals as all good or all bad, and that is not how individuals are.”

Acevedo and Talon sold their house in April of this year — in large part because of Ghost Ship.

“We couldn’t be around that situation any more. I couldn’t have my daughter play in front of the house,” Talon said.

Out of all the problems in the Fruitvale — drug dealing, murders, break-ins, muggings — the warehouse was the biggest for them.

“We tried to stop this, and nobody listened to us,” Talon said. “This is exactly what we were afraid of. People didn’t have to die.”

Chronicle staff writer Kevin Fagan contributed to this report.

J.K. Dineen and Cynthia Dizikes are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com, cdizikes@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen, @cdizikes