The dogs are barking again

I’ve lived in my apartment for a decade now, which is kind of a wild thing to think about. When I moved here, I was still in college, still working a part-time job that was far more taxing than it should have been, and writing almost constantly for a website that some friends of mine launched. There was a great taqueria around the corner that I’d go to at least once a week. It had a four-seat counter and two small tables. It was run by a family, and every time I went in, it was some combination of a grandmother, mother, and two teenage kids working. At a certain point, they knew my exact order as soon as I walked in. It was the first place I ever felt like a regular. Every meal cost $7.

That taqueria is long gone, as are so many other things I remember being charming about my block. Now, when I walk down the street, I see one luxurious condo building after the next, as if someone accidentally copy-pasted them a few too many times. I remember the buildings that used to be there. I remember them being torn down. And every time I walk down the street now, I delight in the upper-class whites in their athleisure wear looking at me with a sideways glance because I have an upside down cross on my shirt or something. “What’s he doing on my street?” is what I know they’re thinking, which is funny for a lot of reasons.

But, despite all those changes, there’s one house that’s impossible to gentrify. I don’t want to blow up their spot, but they are known for selling illicit substances, and while you may ask how I know that, allow me to say this: When you know, you know. During quarantine, I’ve gotten an even better look at their wheelings and dealings. As I sit on my couch, I can hear their assorted customers come through, often shirtless and dirty, screaming as loud as humanly possible for the people in the house with holes in the roof to come out. Early on in quarantine, late on a Saturday night, the cops raided them. Literally a dozen cop cars on my street, spotlights, guys walking around with battering rams and bolt cutters, the whole nine. No one was arrested. And while one may assume it’s some of the on-lookers calling the cops, I also watch the people who live in that house with holes in the roof call the cops on each other, sometimes multiple times a day.

As annoying as they can be, often screaming at their customers, at each other, or, as one guy was a couple weeks back, blasting jazz music while painting pictures on a wooden easel in the middle of the street, they’re a beautiful middle finger to everyone around them. Myself included.

They also have a lot of dogs. Too many dogs. And they bark a lot, usually while a couple of folks from the house are out front screaming at each other. It’s a spectacle, and it’s a reminder of what used to be, for better and for worse. They’re an ugly, disfigured rose in the middle of a patch of nicely paved concrete.

While discussions about “songs of the summer” are largely conversations to be had by editorial staffs at publications that have lost all direction, if I were to pick one, I’d pick the song “26 Dogs” by Spice. Or maybe it’s SPICE—I don’t really know. But their debut record came out a few weeks ago, and from when I first got the promo for it (I still get the occasional cool guy perks here and there), I was instantly hooked.

Though surely to be dismissed by many cooler-than-thou music writers as “hardcore dudes gone indie,” I think the record hits on something that, to my ears, I’ve not heard anyone else really achieve. Yes, these are “hardcore dudes” essentially drawing a circle around sounds that vaguely resemble some amalgam of indie, emo, and post-punk, but I don’t see it as some weird genre experiment. I see it as Bay Area folks making the kind music that used to be synonymous with the Bay Area. The guitar parts feel lonesome and distant, falling somewhere between Blake Schwarzenbach and Lance Hahn, with a violin that’s all distorted and gross and sounds like a wurlitzer with a nasty cough laying over top.

The album’s standout, in my opinion, is “26 Dogs,” a song that sounds like one of those long, languid tracks on the back half of 24 Hour Revenge Therapy. And I don’t say that lightly. I quite genuinely think that, while plenty of people were able to recreate the Jawbreaker songs that were fun, fast, and punk, no one was really able to recreate those dark, languid, morose ones. But Spice does that, and I love them for it.

In the street
No one looks at me the same
I should have known
Just some white boy in blue jeans
Yeah, I should have known
How hopeless this life could really be
Yeah, I should have known
26 dogs are barking at me
26 dogs are barking at me
26 dogs are barking at me
26 dogs are barking at me
At me

When I walk down my street and see the riff-raff hanging out across the street, with their cars double-parked and dogs barking loudly, and the rich folk hurriedly heading into their condos with floor-to-ceiling windows that are, inexplicably, always open, I just hear this song’s riff over and over again in my head. For a summer that feels this chaotic and oppressive and ugly and lonely and alienating, it’s nice to have a soundtrack that actually fits it.

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