Over the weekend, Oakland DIY warehouse space Ghost Ship burst into flames during a party, tragically claiming at least 40 lives. Only roughly 70% of the building has been searched thus far for bodies, and while investigators do not believe the cause of the fire was arson, they have still designated the area as a crime scene. It’s a truly tragic story, and one that hits home for anyone that has ever been involved in a DIY arts scene.
The day after the first, TMZ caught up with Mark Hoppus, whose band Blink-182 came up largely in the California DIY scene before breaking into the mainstream. Asked about whether he and his bandmates ever thought about the fire regulations in the spaces they were playing, Hoppus responded:
“I mean when we were young, we didn’t care, and we probably should have a lot more than we did. It’s really awful when things like this happen. When you put on shows, or are part of a show, you’ve gotta make sure that people are going to be safe… Sadly, when we were very first starting off, I don’t think that we even thought about stuff like that, but there’s been way too many tragedies like this, and I hope that people now are a lot smarter so that when they put on a show, they think about things like this.”
The reporter then asks if up-and-coming bands should be discouraged from playing DIY spaces in the future, which saw Hoppus praising the underground, but still emphasizing the fact that “when you put on a show, you’ve gotta make sure that you do the right stuff and you do it the right way.”
Check out the full interview here.
