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And, hey: It's a volunteer-run arts collective. Ask members of any business that fits this profile, and they'll tell you that disagreement and disorganization are signs that a collective is, well, a collective — most often one with very noble, populist, if not terribly well-defined, goals. There are certainly businesses worthy of much more scrutiny — cough, tech companies receiving massive tax breaks in the name of community development — currently shaping San Francisco in much more permanent ways.
So how is it that a little DIY radio station with such good intentions keeps finding itself under siege — whether it's by an outsider or someone among its ranks?
Who's trying to sabotage whom?
It's 7:30 on a Saturday night, and at the corner of 21st and Florida, there's a warm light emanating from the doors at Mutiny Radio. Inside the small, funky space, Christmas lights are strewn near the ceiling, and benches are lined up for a show that will start in half an hour, while the band's instruments and brown-bagged tallboys lie in wait against a front window. A donation jar is propped against a piano. In one corner, a man works on an acrylic painting. His brightly colored portraits of Mutiny Radio DJs already line one wall; his work in progress, incidentally, is of SF Weekly's film critic, former Pirate Cat Radio (and current Radio Valencia) DJ Sherilyn Connelly.
Behind the glass, Spearman is finishing up her show. The local band Strange Hotel is in the studio tonight, promoting its upcoming gig at the Make Out Room. On the sidewalk outside, groups of twentysomethings congregate, smoking cigarettes; inside, friends of the band move furniture to make room for a stage.
When I first contacted Spearman, she called back the next day, on a break from her day job at a tech-related media blog. She's been at Mutiny for about five years, and says she's been doing giveaways for at least a year or two. Asked if she'd ever sold tickets meant for giveaways, she said simply, "No, I haven't."
"Over the years I've developed a relationship with a few different places; Another Planet Entertainment used to work with us a lot," she says. "So it's definitely a bummer that they don't want to work with us now." She does acknowledge that in many cases having "giveaways" from her show simply means posting on Facebook that she has tickets up for grabs, and that they often go to friends.
But she's had the same email address for a long time now, she says — her personal one. And she has no qualms about saying she believes the emails from the mutinyradio.org address sound like Roberts.
"I was at the station in 2011 when the shit hit the fan and we changed from Pirate Cat to Mutiny Radio. There was a point where he was contacting people through our various email addresses; he's always found ways to do that kind of thing," she says tonight, clearly ready to go home before the show starts, and seemingly not overly concerned about the allegations against her. "I just hope this doesn't cast the station in a negative light."
Two days after I go to see Spearman, a smoking gun of sorts — if Craigslist transactions can ever be considered so exciting — lands in my inbox. A man who wishes to remain anonymous has forwarded correspondence between himself and a person who by all appearances is Spearman, showing that he bought tickets off Craigslist from her, through interactions that include her personal email address, for at least four shows throughout the fall of 2014. It includes PayPal records linked to her name.
The man says he attends roughly 120 shows a year, and patronizes scalpers on the street in addition to cruising Craigslist for tickets. Spearman's posts first came to his attention when he saw tickets listed for $20 below the door price; he would reach out, pay via PayPal, and in some cases have tickets waiting for him at will-call in under an hour. In one of their interactions, she tells him, "They may ask what list, so just mention Live Nation under Mutiny Radio if you have to."
By all appearances, Spearman's been caught red-handed, right?
One would think. Confronted with this information, Spearman maintains she had no part in these transactions. She surmises that Roberts hacked into both her personal email and PayPal accounts through his hacking of mutinyradio.org, which is "scary."
"I'm flashing back to when I first started there, and I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen," she says. "But being a part of the station made me learn that I had to have my wits about me, have my guard up, because people are gonna do whatever the hell they want ... I guess selling the station wasn't enough for him and he still has some beef with us after all these years."
She sighs, thinking about the days when Roberts ruled the roost. "It was actually terrifying. The monarch of the station was always there," she says. "Now, with the DJs taking more control over things, it's much more free-form and it has a much more positive energy. If Pam weren't running things, I don't think I would be there. I probably wouldn't be doing radio at all."
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