They were the essence of the creative community — musicians and artists and filmmakers, guitar and keyboard players, radio hosts and sound engineers. One was the teenage son of an Alameda County sheriff’s deputy, one a poet, one an attorney, another a teacher.

The catastrophic fire Dec. 2 at an underground music event in an Oakland warehouse known as the Ghost Ship killed 36 people, the deadliest structure fire in California in more than a century. It stole immeasurable talent, youth and promise, ripping a hole in an eclectic and vibrant world.

Here are some of their stories:

Barrett Clark

A bearded sound engineer, DJ, outdoorsman and “connoisseur of culture,” Barrett Clark was indispensable to countless Bay Area music venues and festivals.

The 35-year-old provided audio tech for nightspots including Bottom of the Hill, Mezzanine and DNA Lounge in San Francisco.

“He could make any band sound great,” said friend Chiyo Nukaga. “He was loved by so many in the music and art community in Oakland and beyond.”

Another friend, Genevieve Griesau, called Clark a “culture maker.” It was people like him, she said, who made living in the Bay Area what it is.

Clark, who grew up in Santa Rosa and lived in Oakland, was mourned by music venues, record shops and bands as well as hundreds of friends and fans.

Those close to him said he treated people around him like family, always helping up-and-coming sound engineers. Friends said they would miss his goofy laugh, which he never held back, and his technical talent.

“Barrett was one of the kindest humans I’ve ever met,” Swedish musician Jens Lekman posted on Facebook. “A patient, caring, romantic gothkid who liked strange, dark music and all the beauty of the world.”

Clark was an active member of and sound engineer for the close-knit Katabatik experimental music community based in Oakland.

He “performed mystical and transcendentally visceral music under many monikers: RPTN, RMS, Sidereal Oscillations, Accenting Shadows, POLAR, among others,” the group said in a statement.

“He was a connoisseur of culture, music, art, philosophy, food, everything,” said his best friend and fellow Katabatik member, Jay Fields.

Fields said he didn’t want to go to the Ghost Ship warehouse event where Clark lost his life. Having been there before, only for brief periods, Fields said he knew it was “a matchbox, a death trap, a disaster waiting to happen.”

Still, he decided to go after finding out that Clark would be the one doing sound. He got there about an hour after the fire started.

“I remember telling an EMT tech in an ambulance that there were people in there,” Fields said. “There were some of us that wanted to walk in ourselves.”

Lynn Schwarz, co-owner of Bottom of the Hill, where Clark worked for nine years, said he was the first person she called for the venue’s most important shows.

“The only thing we always fought with him about was his turning up the bass way too loud,” Schwarz said. “It was a habit from his underground parties, and we always had to say, ‘Barrett! Think about the neighbors!’

“But he would inevitably sneak those faders up! He thought it was hilarious, and so did I, to be truthful.”

Clark often worked live shows for little to no money if the band was one he cared about, said Schwarz, including her own group, Mummyshots. His taste, she said, “tended toward the bizarre and dark,” and he straddled many social arenas such as the goth, noise rock and club scenes. He was also counterculture and believed in civil disobedience for a good cause.

During a Bottom of the Hill memorial for Clark, the staff wore black, Schwarz said, not out of traditional mourning but because it was his favorite color.

“At the end of the night, he was always the last man standing, and he was always the life of the party,” she said. “He really was that cool, and everyone’s favorite person.”

— Kimberly Veklerov, kveklerov@sfchronicle.com

Peter Wadsworth

Peter Wadsworth was a true eclectic — an artist, entrepreneur, computer expert and “walking, talking encyclopedia of knowledge and trivia.”

He was also the only one of the people who died in the fire who had lived in the doomed Ghost Ship warehouse. The rest were guests who’d come for the electronic music show.

Wadsworth, who was 38, had been trying, unsuccessfully, to find other lodging and to move out of the building, friends said. It was not clear if he was attending the show at the time of the fire or if he was simply at home.

“He was a walking catalogue of correct factual knowledge,” said Swan Vega, 33, an artist who also lived at the warehouse-turned-artists-collective. “He was like our Dumbledore — our wise wizard. He was a genius. He was pure intelligence.

“You could catch Pete in the hall,” she said, “and suddenly realize you have been engaging in the most interesting conversation you've had in a month, when you need to go to work.”

A longtime friend, Tammy Tasoff, said Wadsworth was trying to get a marijuana-infused salsa company off the ground, a timely endeavor given the state’s legalization of pot. He was also an artist who created replicas of Egyptian sculptures. And in the past, he worked at a company involved with drones.

Tasoff said she was studying to be a dentist, and that she intended to hire Wadsworth, who was “like my brother,” to be her office manager.

“He was very eclectic and very, very sweet and loving,” she said.

Wadsworth was from Boston, studied psychology at Harvard University and Reed College, and worked for a time as a designer for a small theater company in Boston, according to his Facebook page.

Kierstan Streber, who once shared an apartment in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury with Wadsworth and three others, recalled a “very eccentric, very very intelligent” friend who was “a little unusual.”

She said he had wanted all of his friends and acquaintances, even casual ones, to stay in touch with each other. An email she received from Wadsworth in 2013, and held on to, proved to be telling.

“I’m really surprised no one has shared emergency contact information,” he wrote. “God forbid anything happens to any of us (but) accidents do happen and no one wants to be in a situation where we can’t help when it’s most needed.”

— Steve Rubenstein and Kimberly Veklerov, srubenstein@sfchronicle.com, kveklerov@sfchronicle.com

Michele Sylvan

In her upstairs loft at the Vulcan, in East Oakland, Michele Sylvan was always making clothes — shirts and dresses that she would design, cut out the patterns for, and sew to fit on a dressmaker’s dummy.

Otherwise shy and reserved, “She wasn’t reserved about the clothing she made,” recalled a former neighbor named Joshua who declined to give his last name. He said he knew Sylvan as “Colette,” not Michele.

He also knew her as “the type of person who didn’t say much but when she did it was always something cool and often something very profound.”

Sylvan, 37, lived for several years at the Vulcan Lofts with her partner, Wolfgang Renner, 61. They entertained and loved to dance, said Joshua, “and if there was an event, they came dressed to the nines.”

Which is presumably how they arrived at the Ghost Ship warehouse. Both Sylvan and Renner were killed in the fire and were among the last victims identified.

They had been a couple since at least 2001, when Joshua met them in San Francisco. He lost track of them until they were reunited, living just a few doors apart at the Vulcan,

“She was a wonderful person, one of the best tenants I’ve had in my 15 years of managing property,” said Elecia Holland, who manages the Vulcan. “She was a quirky artist and there is not one person I have met who had a bad thing to say about her.”

This would be true of anyone who was ever on the receiving end of one of her massages, which may have been how she made her living, Joshua said.

“As a massage therapist, she was the best one I ever had,” he said. “She was magic.”

Sylvan also liked to sing, and Holland said she wrote songs. Joshua, a photographer, once did a photo shoot of Sylvan modeling her clothes, but he never heard her discuss clients or marketing.

“She was pretty private about her stuff,” he said. “It never came up who she sold to. She was just always working on it.”

One thing he is sure of: “She never made the same thing twice.”

— Sam Whiting, swhiting@sfchronicle.com dd

Nicole Siegrist

Fierce.

It was the word friends kept repeating in describing Nicole Siegrist.

Fiercely individual. Fiercely creative. Fiercely opinionated.

Siegrist, 29, who went by the name Denalda Nicole Renae, was “a force of life for sure,” said Michelle Campbell, founder of Mixtape Artist Management in Oakland, which represented the performer.

Siegrist, who played the synthesizer and the Omnichord, and her musical partner, Ben Runnels, performed under the name Introflirt, creating a sound they called “croonwave,” a combination of modern electronica and 1940s music.

Runnels, who went by Charlie Prowler, also died in the fire.

“Their songs invited listeners to celebrate their individuality and both Ben and Nicole exhibited fierce individuality and creativity both on and off the stage,” Mixtape said in a statement.

Siegrist, who lived in Oakland, would transform herself for shows, friends said — perhaps blue hair and colorful clothes one night and black clothes, blond hair and exotic makeup another.

“She would have probably been the ultimate pop star,” Campbell said. “You never knew what you were going to get when she went onstage.”

Siegrist, a native of Lincoln, Neb., worked at Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater, where she had a “huge group of friends,” said her manager Brendan Dreaper.

The theater’s big marquee paid tribute this week to “our own Denalda.”

She was a vital part of the community around the Grand Lake, a fixture at nearby Colonial Donuts, and someone who fought for a better world, her friends said.

“Denalda was loving and goofy and sharp, always there for you with encouragement, her infectious smile and a hug that you never wanted to end,” said her housemate, Todd, who declined to give his last name. “She was as strong and fierce as she was loving, and stood up for herself and others against sexism, patriarchy, racism and homophobia.”

Dylan Gallagher, a musician also represented by Mixtape, said, “It’s more than a loss. It’s frustrating, as weird as that sounds.” Because they had so much potential, he said.

The pair had gone to the Ghost Ship with five friends, “to have fun, dancing, supporting another band,” said Siegrest’s mother, Carol Cidlik, in an online post to friends and family.

They “had no fear,” she said. Four of the seven perished, including Donna Kellogg and Travis Hough.

— Jill Tucker, jtucker@sfchronicle.com

Joseph Matlock

Joseph “Joey” Matlock was what some in the music industry call a lifer.

It means Matlock, also known as Joey Casio, didn’t care if masses of people listened to him or bought his records or came to his shows. It was simply in his blood and in his soul.

“He would do his music, do his art, no matter what,” said Calvin Johnson, founder of the record label K, where Matlock recorded some of his singles. “There was never a wide interest in what he did, but it didn’t seem to bother him.”

While he wasn’t famous, Matlock was a punk and electronic music legend within certain circles in Oakland and back in his former home of Olympia, Wash., where K is based, Johnson said.

“He’s a real institution around here,” he said.

Matlock, who was 36 and lived in Oakland, had been scheduled to perform at the event at the Ghost Ship warehouse under the name Obsidian Blade.

Instead, five days later, his parents attended a tribute to their son, with 120 people sharing stories and crying together. People spoke of how Matlock helped them or how his music changed their lives.

“He worked through the years to survive, but the music was clearly his passion,” said his father, John Matlock. “He wasn’t out trying to become famous or be the world’s definition of a financial success.”

The elder Matlock said he didn’t always relate to his son’s music.

“But I have every bit of it on my computer,” he said. “We were comfortable and excited about Joey being whoever he wanted to be.”

One song especially summed up his life, his father said, one that ended with the lyrics, “Share the cup, spare the sword.”

Matlock always put others first, sharing his music or the coat off his back, his father said. And he was a peacemaker.

“That was Joey’s life,” he said.

Matlock’s friends expressed similar sentiments.

“He was almost a mystical creature walking through the world,” said Janina Angel Bath.

Matlock was definitely “very punk,” playing punk venues and punk shows, Johnson said. He even lived for a decade or so in the Red House in Olympia, a punk living space.

But his music more recently was based in the techno and electronic realms.

Earlier in his career, music critics described him as a musician who could “make a school dance into a rave party,” and a “snobby nightclub into a love fest.”

Tall and gangly, he was a “beautiful alien,” “a punk in the truest sense” and a “digital hypnotist,” others wrote.

“I have always wanted to strive to create something new,” Matlock said in a 2012 interview on the 9th Floor Radio show, “Practice Space.” “I have this belief that maybe is influenced by futurism, that new ideas in aesthetics may also allow for possibilities in new ideas elsewhere in human thought and change of culture.”

That was his life by night. By day, Matlock was a teacher, with a resume that included a California teaching credential and a stint working at a Washington preschool, friends said.

Johnson toured with Matlock during the summer of 2011, sharing hours in the car and playing shows in Fresno, Sacramento, San Jose and Oakland. He was funny and observant of the world around him, and he could convey a lot of meaning with very few words, Johnson said.

And he never had anything negative to say.

“He wasn’t like one of those positive people jumping around being annoyingly positive and stuff,” Johnson said. “As a person, I thought he was genuinely kind and gentle.”

Friends across the country mourned the loss of Matlock, who over the years performed in groups including Scream Club, with Cindy Wonderful, which also recorded with the K label.

“The one thing that makes me feel better about this situation,” she wrote on Facebook, “is knowing that he went out amongst people who cared about him, people he no doubt cared about, doing what he loved to do.

“Its tragic and sad and yet poetic in a way.”

— Jill Tucker, jtucker@sfchronicle.com

Amanda Kershaw

Photographer Amanda Kershaw liked to tell her friends after taking their pictures at underground concerts, “Fridays are for dancing!”

She was fond of photography, of walking around town, of insects and of fighting for the environment. She liked loud music in close quarters. And her black Canon Rebel camera always seemed to be strapped around her neck.

Kershaw had a freelance photography business called Panda Snaps. Her pictures captured the essence of her subjects — a bridegroom nervously straightening his tie, a ballet dancer in mid-leap with legs horizontal, a DJ hovering above a turntable, a sweaty boxer preparing to launch a punch, a closeup of a frosted brown cupcake on a porcelain pedestal • •.

“Photography was her passion,” said her husband, Andrew Kershaw. “She loved it. And she fell in love with San Francisco.”

Amanda Kershaw, who was 34, grew up and attended high school in Chelmsford, Mass., northwest of Boston, and graduated from Bridgewater (Mass.) State University in 2004 with a degree in sociology. She came to San Francisco with her husband on Dec. 2, 2008 — exactly eight years before the fire that took her life.

She soon found work at the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, as an administrator in the entomology department. Before arriving at the museum, she had no particular passion for insects, but she learned to appreciate them, her husband said, and would invite friends on personal tours of the academy’s world-renown insect collection.

“She’d show us all the specimens, and she had a good time doing it,” he said.

Wandering around San Francisco ignited her passion for photography. Her husband bought her a professional camera.

“She never had an interest before that,” he said. “She had no formal training. She was entirely self-taught. But she was able to capture people as their authentic selves. That’s what they always told her, anyway. Then they’d use her pictures on their profiles.”

Her pictures often focused on music and dance shows. Her portfolio included a series of pictures of the hands of DJs floating above enormous control panels full of buttons and switches. She called those shots “gear porn.”

“I’ve always been fascinated by DJ hands,” Amanda Kershaw wrote. “The flick of a fader, the twirl of a knob, the mood of the dance floor at the will of twists and presses. Mixers and turntables are some of the instruments of choice for these nightlife heroes, conjuring beats in the midnight hours and beyond.’’

After leaving the museum in 2011, she worked for five years as a manager at the Trust for Conservation Innovation, an Oakland foundation that provided support and nonprofit status for small environmental groups.

“She was always the first one to show up on the dance floor,” said her husband. “Even if she was the only one. She’d always be there.”

— Steve Rubenstein, srubenstein@sfchronicle.com

Johnny Igaz

When he died, Johnny Igaz was surrounded by what he loved most: music.

Described as a mentor to many and an ally to women and the LGBT community, the 34-year-old Oakland resident and DJ had an undeniable passion for all kinds of music, from hip-hop to techno and house.

“Not only was music a passion, people were a passion,” said Jeremy Bispo, 38, who often worked with Igaz producing shows around the Bay Area. “He was all about community. All about building a safe space for people to be themselves.”

Igaz’s stage name was Nackt — “naked” in German — and he was DJ’ing at the Oakland warehouse where he died.

He grew up in Alameda and attended Alameda High as well as the elite Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in San Francisco.

His younger brother, Paul Igaz, reminisced in a Facebook tribute about the siblings’ time in high school listening to their parents’ Stevie Wonder and Grateful Dead records. He recalled how Johnny developed an appreciation for jazz before heading off to college and honing his skills as a DJ and producer.

“Of course he shaped me in many areas of life beyond music,” Paul Igaz wrote, “but it was in particular his ability to transmit to me his love of music — and through music, an appreciation of a culture of diversity — that ensures that his soul will live within my soul, and the soul of all who know him or his music, eternally.”

For the past three months, Igaz had been working as a music buyer at Green Apple Books in San Francisco’s Richmond District.

“He was a slam dunk of a hire. He had joie de vivre, an incredible knowledge of music and he fit in right away,” said Pete Mulvihill, a co-owner of the bookstore, adding that the staff had been crying in the break room since news of the fire.

It was Igaz’s support for local artists that resonated most with his friends and family. And his desire to bring people together through music.

“He would always play his friend’s tracks when he was DJ’ing, especially if he saw them in the room,” said Hunter Leight, Igaz’s former partner. “He loved being able to provide the experience of hearing your own track on a big system.”

Igaz was a mentor, friend and cheerleader to younger artists, said Leight, a 30-year-old Oakland resident.

Anthony Crupi, a 28-year-old aspiring musician who works at Timeless Coffee Roasters in Oakland, said he saw Igaz the morning of the fire at the cafe. Igaz, who visited the cafe four to five times a week, had promised to help Crupi with his music.

Igaz had asked Crupi to send him demos of his industrial metal music, he said.

“He sincerely valued supporting local artists and building the community we all dream of,” Leight said. “Johnny should be remembered as a lover, a friend, a joker and an artist.”

— Sarah Ravani, sravani@sfchronicle.com

Griffin Madden

It is the rare undergraduate who captures the attention of his instructors, particularly on a big and competitive campus like UC Berkeley.

But Griffin Madden, 23, who graduated in 2015 with a double major in philosophy and Slavic languages, wowed faculty.

“He was probably the most memorable undergraduate student I’ve had in my years of teaching,” said Luba Golburt, an associate professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures.

Golburt had Madden in two classes: 19th century Russian literature and a seminar on the Ukranian writer Nikolai Gogol.

“He had a luminous away about him, a quest for knowledge, and an enthusiasm for learning things,” Golburt said, adding that her colleagues shared the sentiment. “We all remember him very fondly.”

Irina Kogel, who teaches Russian language, had Madden in classes twice at UC Berkeley.

“He was the kind of student you would want to have,” said Kogel, who is now at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. “He was incredibly inquisitive and worked harder than he needed to. He always had a question about something.”

Madden’s passion extended to music of all kinds. He ushered for five years at Cal Performances, where jazz, choral music, classical and world music cross the stage, and had recently won a full-time position as Audience Services Associate.

“Our community is heartbroken at this news,” Matías Tarnopolsky, Cal Performances’ executive and artistic director, said in a message to colleagues. He called Madden a “beloved member of our staff” and said a memorial event would be planned for the spring.

It was Madden’s love of music that led him to the show at the Ghost Ship warehouse.

When Madden, of Berkeley, couldn’t be found in the aftermath of the fire, friends created Facebook posts featuring his smiling face and tousled hair, and sharing their fears and their hopes. “We could all use a little miracle right now,” wrote Kenra Verga.

His girlfriend Saya Tomioka remembered seeing “The Book of Mormon” on Broadway in New York with Madden last year.

“I remember tears swelling my eyes because the city was so beautiful and amidst of all the lights, I got to look at the brightest light of all, my sweetie,” she wrote. “I cried, and we kissed. Some random photographer captured this very moment, this very kiss. ... I never got his name, and he just simply showed us the single beautiful snapshot that he was able to capture.”

Now, Tomioka wrote, “our community mourns,” and she hoped the photographer might somehow find a way to send her the “treasured memory that I’ll always keep in my heart.”

As he prepared to graduate from UC Berkeley last year, Madden won a grant to spend the summer studying Russian at Middlebury College in Vermont.

Kathryn DeWaele, a doctoral student in Russian literature at UC Berkeley, won the same grant, and said she was delighted to discover Madden in her program across the country. She had been a teaching assistant in a class he had taken on the author Vladimir Nabokov.

Madden “wrote really, really well and was a very productive member of the class,” DeWaele said. “He was a really sweet guy.

“This is heartbreaking.”

— Nanette Asimov, nasimov@sfchronicle.com

Hanna Ruax

In photos, Hanna Ruax radiates joy, smiling and laughing.

She dons wire-framed glasses for a selfie, white-blonde hair framing her face. She holds a blue solo cup, dancing at a Brazilian festival in Oakland. She leans into fiancé Alex Ghassan, laughing in his ear, their private joke frozen in time.

Ruax, of Helsinki, Finland, had been living in Oakland since November. She and Ghassan loved music and had gone together to the warehouse show.

It was supposed to be just another night out. They had plans to marry and to go to Europe. But neither made it out alive. She was 32, and he was 35.

“No words,” her father, Yrjö Timonen, posted on Facebook. “Just great sorrow.” And later, a photo of Ruax in a bubblegum pink T-shirt with the caption, “My angel and my princess. Eternal longing and memory.”

Ruax was an entrepreneur, selling upcycled jewelry and styling services under her business, Nannanda. She made earrings out of old bracelets and recycled leather. Bicycle rims, used yarn and reindeer horns were wrangled into wall hangings.

Ruax was a gentle soul but a spirited activist, friends said. She taught yoga and tried to eat vegan. Once, after a Neo-Nazi rally in Finland, she organized a protest against the group. She was against the Dakota Access Pipeline and attended marches supporting peace in Syria.

Her Instagram account was filled with photos of art, graffiti, food and bracelets linked around her tattooed arm. Many were of her dog, a brown and white pup named Onni.

And she loved Ghassan, a filmmaker. The couple had been dating long-distance since last year, when they had met through work. He jokingly called her ‘Young Mumi,’ her rapper nickname. He made her feel beautiful, worthy, talented and precious, she said.

They took his daughters to the Oakland Museum of California and painted each other’s faces for a trip to Children’s Fairyland. Ghassan once shared a photo of Ruax with the caption, “Find someone you love and admire before you die.”

Days before the fire, he surprised her with a gift: a teal bike with a brown wicker basket. She rode it down 10th Street in Oakland, hair blowing in the wind. Their most recent adventure had been to San Francisco, to the Superior Court of California. Ruax wore a loose white blouse and smiled from inside a courtroom.

“Objection your honor,” she wrote as a caption.

It was the last photo she posted.

— Lizzie Johnson, ljohnson@sfchronicle.com

Nick Walrath

After completing highly sought-after clerkships at the U.S. Court of Appeals and the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, attorney Nick Walrath had his choice of law firms to join in the city.

When he signed with the litigation boutique Durie Tangri LLP, “His credentials were as good as anyone you could hope to meet,” said founding partner Ragesh Tangri.

Walrath planned to specialize in intellectual property litigation, dealing with patents and copyrights, and do as much pro bono work as he could. He started in November, and he was digging into his first case load when he went out the night of the fire to pursue another interest — the music scene in Oakland, where he lived.

Walrath’s bicycle was found chained outside the Ghost Ship warehouse. He was 31.

“He was a lawyer but he was so much more,” said his mother, Deb Walrath, a Pittsburgh lawyer. “He was fiercely curious, charming and graceful. He was the person that his younger sisters and their friends all looked up to. He was the coolest kid in the room who never acted like he was cool.”

Tangri called him “a very warm caring person who made a deep impression on all of us in a short amount of time.”

Walrath grew up in Point Breeze, an old neighborhood on the east end of Pittsburgh, and attended Taylor Allderdice High School, where he played soccer and lacrosse and was valedictorian in 2003. He pursued a lifelong interest in science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a double major in physics and philosophy and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 2007.

After a year pursuing his PhD in atomic physics at the University of Colorado, he switched interests and earned his JD at New York University School of Law, where he was on the Law Review.

“He was committed to social justice,” said his mother. While working at a consulting firm in New York he met Lexi Abrams-Bourke, and they moved together to Oakland in 2013.

A clerk’s job at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is among the most prestigious positions in the country. But Walrath also wanted to come west because “he liked to explore new places, especially places that had a vibrant art and music scene,” said his mother.

Walrath and Abrams-Bourke briefly moved to San Francisco before returning to Oakland, to a house near Temescal. His younger sisters, Liza and Kate, had also relocated to Oakland, and they regularly got together for Sunday dinner at their big brother’s house.

After working a year at the appellate level, Walrath wanted to round out his education as a clerk in district court. In 2015, he went to work under Judge Jon Tigar, who soon considered Walrath a close friend..

“For all his intellectual gifts, better still were his personal qualities,” Judge Tigar wrote in a note to the court. “Nick was warm, generous, funny, and unassuming. He made everything look easy, but he took his greatest pleasures from the successes of others.”

The night of the fire, Walrath sent a text to Abrams-Bourke.

“Fire. I love you,” it read.

“Above all he was kind to every person he came into contact with,” said his mother. “He radiated warmth and was without an ounce of rancor.”

— Sam Whiting, swhiting@sfchronicle.com

Billy Dixon

Billy Dixon was a guitarist. A keyboard player. A beatboxer. A music producer.

The 35-year-old Oakland resident walked down many musical avenues.

There are “people who make music and people who perform music,” said Terrence Jerod of Hercules, a friend of Dixon’s. “He performed, but he was a musician first. He made music.”

The warehouse show in Oakland was the most natural place in the world for Dixon to be — it was a chance to listen and share with people of a like mind.

“We are having a really hard time,” said an aunt, Wendy Magree. “It’s hard to come to terms with. I just can’t believe I won’t be able to see that smile anymore.”

Dixon made music as a boy growing up in the Cleveland suburb of Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Jon Gunton was blown away by Dixon’s talent the first time he heard him, when he walked into a guitar class when the two were about 11 years old.

“We fell in love with music together as young boys,” said Gunton, who now lives in San Francisco. “He was a super-gifted guy, super musically talented.

“Billy was a one-of-a-kind human,” Gunton said. “It’s unfathomable to me that he’s not around anymore.”

Dixon’s music-making came from his passion to create and be curious, said Aaron Slodoz, a resident of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, who grew up in the same condo complex as Dixon.

As teenagers, the two would often get into trouble skateboarding, riding BMX bikes and making water slides on the hills outside their complex — “stuff that teenage boys would do,” Slodoz said.

After attending Kent State University, Dixon moved to Oakland in 2007 with his girlfriend at the time, Ysabel Hoover.

“One of the best things about Billy is he just had this insatiable appetite for a creative life,” Hoover said.

“I try to think of what Billy would’ve wanted to come out of this,” Slodoz said, “and I know he wouldn’t want people to be sad. He was just this force of positivity and creativity, and above anything, he had a loving spirit.”

— Sarah Ravani, sravani@sfchronicle.com

Edmond Lapine

The first time Bob Lapine saw his son, Edmond Lapine II, perform on video, he was shocked by his appearance.

Edmond’s hair was “all puffed up” and he was wearing makeup as he played the guitar, “like those musicians that highlight their eyebrows,” the elder Lapine said, chuckling softly.

But he looked happy, Bob Lapine said, as he always was when it came to music — whether it was playing it, writing it, listening to it, talking about it or just thinking about it.

That, in turn, made his father happy. It was apparent in Bob Lapine’s trembling voice that whatever brought joy to his only son — his quirky, good-humored, loving son — was enough for him.

As Bob Lapine prepared to make the trek to Oakland from his home in Utah to make peace with his son’s death at age 34, he said, “I resigned myself to knowing that he died doing what he loved: listening to music.”

Edmond Lapine grew up in Utah, bouncing from Ogden to Park City to Salt Lake City, his father said.

Through his youth, music was a constant. He taught himself to play the guitar and joined a few bands. As he grew older, he began spinning records and working as a DJ.

People tended to gravitate toward him, and he was always surrounded by friends who would “get together, jam and go to concerts,” Bob Lapine said.

“When Edmond was in high school, they took a field trip to England,” he said. “My son was the tallest kid in the class and he dyed his hair bright green. I go, ‘Oh, Ed.’ I was so embarrassed. But wherever Ed went, a lot of kids would follow. He went over to England and the teachers said all they had to do was look for Ed and his green hair and there would be everybody else.”

After the fire, friends from near and far — from high school in Utah; from Evergreen State College in Washington, where he graduated with a degree in French and Russian literature in 2008; from the semester he studied in Paris; from the music scene in Olympia, Wash., where he lived before moving to the Bay Area in 2014 — reminisced about his kind spirit, “funky soul” and deep talent.

“There’s a huge community of people that love him all over the country, and we’ve all been in contact the last few days, sharing stories and pictures and hugs,” said Madeleine Woodhead Nutting, 26, a former partner of Edmond Lapine’s. “Saturday was the worst day of a lot of our lives.”

She said many stories being shared among friends are about “how he would come out and support people, see them play their music, be in the front dancing, even if he didn’t know them that well.

“He was a really wonderful partner, and I’m by no means the only one deeply influenced by his generosity and enthusiasm and humor.”

David Adelson, owner of 20 Buck Spin record label in Olympia, said Edmond Lapine “was the kind of guy who would be willing to be friends with everybody.” When he became friends with Lapine at their day jobs at a computer shop in Olympia, Adelson said, it was of little concern that he was into heavy metal while Lapine was into indie rock.

In the quiet morning hours before their co-workers arrived, they still bonded over their mutual love of music.

“Even though he liked a lot of different stuff and I liked a lot of different stuff, there was overlap, and I could always tell that he would steer our conversations about music to where that overlap existed so we could relate to each other,” Adelson said. “I always appreciated that about him.”

Like many others who died in the fire, Edmond Lapine subsidized his passion for music by working day jobs, his father said, at a bakery and then at an art-gallery cafe.

“Who would have known that walking in there, he would never walk out?” Bob Lapine said. “And all the others? You look at their faces. They look to me like good kids.

“It’s unfair,” he continued. “Edmond was smart. He just enjoyed music and he found a love of music and he surrounded himself with people who loved music. But he died too young. I’ll never know what he would have been.”

— Vivian Ho, vho@sfchronicle.com

Draven McGill

Draven McGill and Julian Granados were nearly inseparable.

They had all their classes together at San Francisco’s Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, and after school or on weekends they would raid the refrigerator at Julian’s house — getting into trouble for emptying the contents.

Julian’s lip quivered as he recounted exploits with his best friend, while grappling for words to adequately describe the 17-year-old boy he would never see again.

“He was always there to talk to,” Julian said. “He wouldn’t put you down.”

The two had met under less-than-friendly circumstances. Julian threw a binder at Draven during freshman-year Spanish class, drawing blood. Instead of becoming enemies, they became fast friends.

Draven, who lived in Dublin, was a member of the elite public high school’s vocal department as well as the Pacific Boychoir Academy. He was also the son of a deputy for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, which is charged with recovering and examining the bodies at the tragic fire scene.

His father, Phil McGill, works for the Dublin Police Department, which is staffed by the county sheriff’s office, and he previously worked in the coroner’s bureau.

“That makes this much more personal,” said Sheriff’s Sgt. Ray Kelly, describing the shock that went through the family-like office when he and his colleagues learned of Draven’s death. “We were like, ‘You gotta be kidding.’ This hit us, too. It’s hit every cross-section of society here in the Bay Area and all over the world.”

Draven’s great aunt, Merlena Moore, visited the burned-out warehouse holding flowers.

“He was a sweet, loving young man taken from this earth too early,” she said. “I just had to do something, had to give something.”

The first day of class after the fire, students and teachers arrived at the School of the Arts and wrapped each other in tearful hugs. Draven, a baritone in the choir, was “down to earth and he was really willing to try anything,” said his friend, Kai Thomas.

He was impatient and lived in the moment, Kai said, always up for an adventure. Despite his training in classical music, Draven was a fan of rapper Biggie Smalls as well as EDM, or electronic dance music.

It was not surprising he would attend the Oakland show, the other boys said. He was there with two friends, both of whom survived after a dangerous escape down crumbling stairs.

One of the two, classmate Faelan Westhead, said it started out as a beautiful night on the second floor of the Ghost Ship warehouse. The three friends were sitting on couches, and the music was slow and experimental, he said. There were antique pianos scattered around the large room and several attendees would occasionally start playing music on one of them.

The room started to fill with what they thought was mist from a fog machine and then, within seconds, they realized it was smoke. As fear spread among those in the room, Faelen said he looked over at Draven. His friend’s face was calm, even peaceful — an expression in sharp contrast to the growing panic that surrounded them. It was the last time he saw him.

The lights went out, Faelan said, so he and his other friend headed for the crumbling stairway. “We had to jump,” he said. The teen wasn’t sure how many people tried to follow them down. While that seemed at the time like the wrong thing to do, he said, he went anyway.

“I was really sure I was going to die down there,” Faelan said. “I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or closed.”

Faelan and several other students struggled to absorb that they would never see their friend again.

“It’s rough,” said Gabriel Bibliowicz, also a baritone in the vocal program and student body president. “Every memory we have of him is so much bigger now.”

Friends smiled as they remembered how he arrived at the school as a freshman, his voice high-pitched and still untouched by puberty. They joked about that, years later, but Draven wasn’t bothered by it.

“He didn’t care about other people’s opinions,” Julian said.

His friend Kai said, “You always think it happens to someone else. Here I am having to talk about one of my friends.”

— Jill Tucker, jtucker@sfchronicle.com

Jonathan Bernbaum

Jonathan Bernbaum wanted to blow people’s minds.

Whether he was performing as a VJ at a club — creating a visual experience mixing lights, colors and images — or debating his friends, the 34-year-old Berkeley native and Oakland resident didn’t care for understatement.

A 2004 graduate of Brandeis University in Massachusetts and 2008 graduate of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, Bernbaum went on to be an intern at Pixar Animation Studios before focusing fully on his VJ work, most recently doing shows for the Australian electronic duo Knife Party and traveling around the world on tours with various groups.

“He liked being the oddball — doing foreign accents, staring contests — he’d take people out of their comfort zone,” said a friend from Brandeis, Storey Clayton, who was on the same debate team as Bernbaum. “And I think he developed that into his craft.”

Bernbaum didn’t need to be in a tournament to put on a lively debate with friends, Clayton said.

“Unlike most people, he didn’t need to adapt or put on a persona,” Clayton said. “He was sort of in full-throttle debate mode all the time.”

As a VJ, said friend and fellow Oakland Katabatik collective member Jay Fields, Bernbaum “created alternate realities.”

“Someone who may only listen to mainstream music could take in his work and walk away devastated, stunned,” Fields said. “It’d make them inspired and see things differently.”

As faculty advisor for the Berkeley High School Jacket, Rick Ayers saw the roots of Bernbaum’s passion in his three years on the newspaper before he graduated in 2000.

“Jonathan was an ace reporter,” said Ayers. “Super passionate. Obsessed with getting scoops and a good story. He was driven.”

Ayers, a University of San Francisco education professor and the author of “An Empty Seat in Class: Teaching and Learning after the Death of a Student,” believed Bernbaum would become a journalist or an academic, especially after he joined the debate team at Brandeis.

Instead, Bernbaum turned to art and found his community.

“One of the most kickass people I know has left this life for the next,” wrote a high school friend, Rena, in a Facebook tribute.

“Jon died doing what he loved,” she wrote. “Making his art and bringing joy and smiles to people who needed exactly that. My heart aches that he is gone but I am so happy that his last moments were spent performing his art. An art he was respected for and flown all over the world to perform.”

Nabila Lester was one of his dearest friends. They were classmates at Berkeley High, and again at the University of Southern California’s film production program.

“I have to learn how to function without him,” said Lester.

A filmmaker, she travels the world for work, as Bernbaum did. But they always stayed connected. In the weeks before the fire, they rendezvoused in Berkeley for Indian food, then worked it off by running around their old high school track at midnight.

“He just was an absolutely fearless human being,” she said. “Committed to his art and sharing it with people.”

— Kimberly Veklerov and Nanette Asimov, kveklerov@sfchronicle.com, nasimov@sfchronicle.com

Chelsea Dolan

Chelsea Faith Dolan was a vision of energy, music and creativity.

She made electronic music under the stage name of Cherushii, which she picked up during a trip to Japan at age 15. She hosted an underground radio program. She played eclectic electronic keyboard music. She performed at the Folsom Street Fair. She was a DJ, an audio remixer and a producer of dance music shows.

She also liked ice cream.

For Dolan, a 33-year-old resident of San Francisco, performing unusual music in unusual places — like the warehouse engulfed by the fire — was her calling.

This summer, her smiling face was featured on the cover of “Reader,” an alternative newspaper in Chicago, that declared her an “unsung woman of electronic music.” It called her a “house experimentalist of San Francisco.”

In the accompanying magazine story, Dolan said electronic music was not an easy field for women.

“Lack of recognition is so discouraging,” she said. “In a culture as supposedly forward-thinking as electronic music, women are still so often invisible.”

According to her mother, Colleen Dolan of San Rafael, she discovered as a toddler that she had a knack for music and for composing and playing melodies on the piano. She studied classical piano at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music before branching out into avant-garde electronic piano.

She also scooped ice cream for years at Fairfax Scoop, a boutique shop. The store created a small shrine in her memory in the front window.

“Chelsea Faith has always been an extraordinary person, full of exuberant joy,” her mother said. “Her personality, intelligence, clothes, music and kindness were legendary.”

She performed in the band Easy Street and hosted a radio show on KALX, the UC Berkeley station. She performed frequently outside the Bay Area, particularly in Chicago and Berlin. Last year she released an album titled “Far Away, So Close,” and she had just completed recording another Cherushii album, which has yet to be released.

“I hope one of her producer friends will make sure that happens,” her mother said. “Nothing Chelsea Faith did was ordinary. She was an adventurer, she was stellar in every way, and she will always be the star of our hearts.”

— Steve Rubenstein, srubenstein@sfchronicle.com

Alex Vega

Alex Vega loved working on cars, but he never got the chance to get under the hood of his silver Mazda Miata convertible.

It was found parked at the San Bruno BART Station after the fire, which killed Vega, 22, and his girlfriend, 20-year-old Michela Gregory.

When he wasn’t captivated by imported cars, Vega pursued the arts, from urban graffiti and painting to electronic music, which led him to the event at the Ghost Ship warehouse.

“That was our baby Alex,” said his older brother, Daniel Vega. “He was just a purveyor of the arts. Very artistic. That’s what he did.”

The brothers kept a tight bond. Alex liked cars, and Daniel is a mechanic.

San Bruno police officers arrived at the family’s home in the middle of the night, three days after the fire, advising the family to call the coroner’s office immediately, Daniel Vega said.

They did. His brother’s identity had been confirmed through fingerprints.

Alex Vega lived with his family in San Bruno, where he kept busy with two jobs. He worked as a valet at UCSF during the day, and at night at Duggan’s Serra Mortuary in Daly City.

But his interests and hobbies ranged. He liked spray painting, drawing on canvasses, fashion, design, photography. The list goes on, his brother said.

“He was an old soul. He loved older things,” said Daniel Vega, who is 36. Even if they weren’t brothers, he said, “he would be my best friend.”

Daniel Vega said he still has a doodle Alex drew for him on a napkin while celebrating his birthday at Joe’s Crab Shack several years ago.

After spending days anxiously waiting for news at an Alameda County Sheriff’s Office substation, the family was able to mourn.

“Now that we know,” Daniel Vega said, “it’s still somber, but at least we know where he’s at.”

— Jenna Lyons, jlyons@sfchronicle.com

Jennifer Mendiola

Jennifer Mendiola could dance like no one else. She had a “little goth flair.”

And next year, she would have been Dr. Mendiola when she received her doctorate in health psychology from UC Merced.

The Sacramento native, who was 35, was considered missing for five days after the fire. That was torture for her husband, Jean-Thierry Mendiola.

“It’s agony to watch him suffer,” said his sister, Anna Mendiola. “He’s so desperate.”

The couple had been married for eight years. They separated a few months ago, but were in marriage counseling in hopes of salvaging the relationship. During the separation, she dated Micah Danemayer, a 28-year-old electronic musician who also died in the fire.

When they were together, she and her husband loved to go to ’80s-themed venues to dance. She was the star.

“Whenever she danced, everyone in the room would stop what they were doing and look at her, because she was the most beautiful thing in the room,” Anna Mendiola said.

For the past few years, Jennifer Mendiola had split time between the couple’s Oakland home and UC Merced, where she was on the verge of completing her studies.

“It’s just horrifying. She was almost finished. She had all her coursework done,” Anna Mendiola said. “You can’t even imagine how tirelessly she worked.”

She hoped to become a professor in health psychology, said a colleague at UC Merced, Ruben Castaneda. She did her undergraduate studies at San Francisco State University and earned her master’s in psychology at California State University Sacramento.

“She was always happy, smiling, bright,” Castaneda said. “She was a great academic, always working really hard on getting research done. She had a very clear path and focus on what she wanted to do.”

He recalled their first year in the graduate program, when they were among a dozen students who had to present a research project to a faculty panel. The intimidation factor was off the charts.

“We were all extremely nervous, but she was kind of the one who kept us together,” Castaneda said. “We held practice sessions with each other. She was kind of there for us and really helped us through that first year.

“We did great,” he said. “Thanks to her, we had plenty of practice before we actually had to stand there and give it.”

As she worked on her doctorate, Mendiola gave talks and wrote papers on topics ranging from social relationships and loneliness to emotion regulation during chemotherapy for breast cancer. She also co-authored an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times on risks faced by Latinos who resist getting flu shots.

In between all that, she found time to travel overseas. This year, she visited Thailand and Istanbul.

“She was fearless,” Anna Mendiola said. “But she didn’t view it that way. She just viewed herself as living life.”

And “she had an amazing sense of style,” her sister-in-law said. “She could go into any thrift store and in minutes find the coolest and most amazing thing to wear there. ... She had that little goth flair, you know?”

A memorial page on Facebook filled up with tributes and photos — showing Jennifer smiling, at parties, decorating a Christmas tree. And there was a message from a friend: “Don’t ever stop dancing!”

— Jenna Lyons and Sarah Ravani, jlyons@sfchronicle.com, sravani@sfchronicle.com

Alex Ghassan

Alex Ghassan was an independent filmmaker praised for his gift of sharing the stories of others — often the weak or oppressed struggling to find their way.

But most importantly, said friends and relatives of the 35-year-old Oakland resident, he was a fatherly figure who offered hope and guidance, not only to his twin daughters but to many artists and young black men looking for direction.

“He inspired a hell of a lot of people, and he still is,” said Mandela Baylis, 26, who shared an apartment with Ghassan while he did freelance work for KQED and the Oakland Museum of California. “He inspired me to be greater with my art and as a man.”

Ghassan attended the Oakland event at the warehouse-turned-art-space with his fiancée, Hanna Ruax. The Finnish citizen also died in the fire.

Originally from New Jersey, Ghassan moved to the Bay Area to pursue his career in film, friends said, and to provide for his 4-year-old daughters, who live with their mother in the New York City area.

Before coming to Oakland, he worked with such noted film producers and artists as Spike Lee, Talib Kweli and Skyzoo, Ghassan’s website notes.

He was recently commissioned by the museum to do a film about a local artist documenting the city’s gentrification, his website says. He was also doing documentary work for KQED.

“Alex was an incredibly talented filmmaker, a passionate supporter of the arts, and, working with our team, had an unrelenting interest in other people’s stories,” said a KQED Arts post on Facebook this week.

For those closest to Ghassan, and likely for his daughters, friends said, he’ll be missed most for the advice and encouragement he offered.

Whether it was sorting out personal problems or helping cook creole food like fish cakes, he was always there to propel people forward.

“I lost someone I looked up to,” said friend and neighbor Kenzie Smith, 33.

— Sarah Ravani and Kurtis Alexander, sravani@sfchronicle.com, kalexander@sfchronicle.com

Feral Pines

Feral Pines was a garage band bass player and art school graduate who was always trailed by a rescue dog.

“A very soft, sensitive, caring person,” said her father, Bruce Fritz of Westport, Conn. “A very gentle soul. Never had a bad word to say about other people.”

Pines, who was 29 and previously went by the name Riley Fritz, was a transgender woman who had moved from out of state to Oakland in September. She was living with friends while raising a rescue dog named Grimma, said her father.

“Always loved animals,” said Bruce Fritz, who noted that as her Eagle Scout project his daughter had built wooden bird houses and placed them around Westport in an attempt to lure back the native kestrel, a member of the falcon family.

Sure enough, the birds returned, attracted to those houses and habitat.

“They were trying to help the population recover,” said the elder Fritz. “It’s always nice to see that it works.”

Pines was born and raised in Westport, an affluent New York City suburb on Long Island Sound. Both of her parents are realtors. She played youth hockey and was a dedicated Cub Scout and Boy Scout, attending scout jamborees as far away as Scotland.

At Staples High School, she hosted a radio show on the campus station, introducing Ska to student listeners. She took up the bass, played in several bands and regularly had a jam going in the garage. She graduated in 2005 and moved to New York City to study print making at th