Toys for the Big Boys

Scott Miller* drops to his knees and takes a slow, cautious look around. The only sound is his heavy breathing and the crickets chirping in the night air. He continues to creep stealthily through the terrain, blending into the inky background thanks to his camouflage battle dress uniform. A twig snaps somewhere behind him. His muscles tense as he slowly puts his hand on the trigger of his gun and whirls around, holding it at arms length. He finds himself face-to-face with three men, also dressed in camouflage, holding assault rifles pointed directly at him.

For a single moment, all is silent. Then they open fire on Miller, sending him to the ground screaming in pain. One of the enemies laughs and kicks the body half-heartedly. "Damn, man, good job," he says, holding out a hand to help Miller up. "We've been tracking you for almost an hour."

Miller is a member of Bad Karma, a team consisting of roughly 10 guys who play airsoft on a regular basis. Airsoft is the evolution of paintball, an excuse for grown men to dress up and play army on the weekends. Gone are the days when all toy guns were required to be painted neon green and orange. Airsoft guns are highly detailed replicas of authentic firearms. Right down to their weight, airsoft guns look and feel exactly like the real thing. Rather than shooting paintballs and making a mess of the genuine military uniforms worn while playing, airsoft guns shoot 6-millimeter plastic bb's. The only marks these bad boys leave are angry red welts on the skin and bruises on the ego.

"It's an honor sport; it's on you to call yourself out," says 34-year-old Adam Root, leader of the SF Recon team and owner of the Orchid Bay Airsoft Arena. "It's not about winning, it's about having fun using tactics and strategies. Paintball has that 'gotta win' mentality; airsoft is 'gotta have fun' mentality."

Similar to paintball, players compete in mock combat, but with much more attention to theatrics and role-playing. Players usually act out scenarios, like rescuing a hostage from an enemy POW camp. SF Recon holds training sessions to teach their team close-quarter combat techniques, cribbed from real military training schools. For airsoft players, it's all about the drama, kind of like Dungeons and Dragons for military enthusiasts.

Kevin Ash, second in command of SF Recon says it's easy to get caught up in the moment. "In the back of your mind, you know they are BB guns, but when you're in the thick of it and you see this squad of guys come up on you with guns that look real, you get a little bit of fear," he says. "But that's part of it. It builds up the adrenaline, then you get hit and you say, 'Damn it, that was cool.'"

Many players return week after week for a hobby some consider dangerous or just downright geeky because of the adrenaline rush.

Sean Hughes creeps slowly through an enemy house. His boots step silently, his legs quaking with fear and anticipation. He pauses to wipe the sweat from his eyes. His gun raised and ready, he kicks open a door and bursts into the room. His opponent, crouched behind a file cabinet, jumps up in surprise, reaching for his pistol. Hughes yells "Surrender!" while keeping his firearm trained on the enemy. The beaten man drops his weapon and walks off the field with defeat evident on his face.

"The adrenaline, it's something that you begin to crave after a while," admits 25-year-old Carlos Stein* with a laugh. Stein co-founded Bad Karma with longtime friend Jim Malone* when the two were in high school. "You get to shoot your friends without the serious consequences of taking a hit to the forehead and being retarded for the rest of your life," he says. "And they might call us retarded for coming out to a place we?re not supposed to be and playing, but so be it."

Bad Karma is considered an "outlaw" team. They play illegally, usually starting their games after midnight on private property and in constant fear of getting caught by the police. Largely based in Santa Clara, this outlaw team has had more than their share of close calls with the law.

"We've had run-ins before, but they haven't ever caught us," Stein says. "We had just begun the game, Jim was on the roof and all of a sudden, we hear the call from Jim, 'Cop, cop, cop,' over the radio. Everyone starts sprinting away, scattering. I'm out on the grass when I see Jim jump off the fucking roof, a feat to this day I still don't fully understand.?

Malone runs across the rooftop of the elementary school and leaps off without hesitation. His ankle twists on impact, and he takes a brief moment to groan in pain before he takes off running, the cops close behind him. His heart pounds and his ankle screams in pain, but he keeps running through the nearby woods, losing the police in the night.

Playing illegally is looked down upon in the larger airsoft community. "It bothers me because it's bad publicity. It ruins the game for the rest of us," says Ash, a legit player.

"It gives us a bad name, and not only that, it's unsafe," Hughes says. "I've never been involved in an illegal game and I never will be."

Safety rules are strictly enforced at Orchid Bay. Violators are removed from the course with no exceptions. "We had one team where these guys were into the sport for the wrong reasons," Root says. "It's the same guys who freeze paintballs, the same guys who punch people in the face at concerts and call it dancing, it's that same mentality. We don't really have a spot for them in the airsoft community."

Root and his fiance Karen Hogan have spent the last two months preparing Orchid Bay for the public. Hogan is one of only four girls on the SF Recon team, though many players attest to noticing a larger female presence at some of the larger games.

"At first I was afraid I was going to get hit and cry," Hogan says, laughing. "I don't like to be the pussy crying in the corner. But for the last month and a half, I've actually been playing and it's so much fun."

"We're getting a lot more female players, which is cool because that's eye candy for the pigs on the field like me," Root says. "Chicks and guns just look cool."

Hogan has taken it a step further by inviting her sons, 15 and 7, to the airsoft games when conditions are safe enough. She says airsoft has been a positive influence in their lives. "What better family activity can you have than to go out, shoot each other and then laugh about it later?" she says. "This is a great sport for parents to bond with their kids. It's something we both have a massive enthusiasm for. I saw a marked improvement in [their] behavior and [their] grades."

The most common reason for playing airsoft is it's a lot of fun, whether played legitimately or outlaw. "You get to escape from your daily boring life for an hour or two with your friends," Stein says. "This is an extension of playing army when you're a little kid, you just don't outgrow it. A lot of people want to grow up. Fuck that. I'd rather not grow up."

*names have been changed to protect privacy

**originally published November 2005 [X]press Mgazine

The Unconventional Conventionalists

"Rocky" goers, a breed of their own

As the witching hour approaches on Saturday night, Bay Area misfits gather outside the Parkway Cinema in Oakland for a taste of their favorite cult movie experience, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." The air is filled with the heavy scent of cloves as bodies clad in fishnets, corsets and black leather line up against the brick wall, eager to be let inside the theater. Two girls dressed in nothing more than bras, panties and tights with bright red-lipsticked V's on their foreheads stand giggling on either arm of a mischievous looking man in a floor-length black trench coat.

He lifts up their hands and yells, "Virgins for sale! I've got two hot virgins here for sale. Buy them both for seven bucks!"

For 10 years, fans have been flocking to see the cast of Barely Legal and their interpretation of the movie's message of acceptance and decadence. The crowds also come to partake in the debauchery. Deflowering the virgins is always a crowd favorite. But most hardcore fans of the show credit the scene's continued popularity with its acceptance of outcasts, individuals Edward Hall refers to as "the people that everyone else thinks are freaks but are actually normal once you get past the clothes and slight craziness."

Kaneda, a longtime supporter of "Rocky" who named himself after a character in the cult anime film "Akira," feels at-home amongst what most of society views as the riff-raff.

"I don't fit in anywhere else, but I fit in here. Everyone else is weird here, so nobody notices me," he says while running a leather whip through his fingers. "Where else can you go at midnight on a Saturday night and not get in trouble? Well, not too much trouble anyway. I mean, they were already spanking people and tying them up earlier."

Whips, flogs and other bondage paraphernalia are commonplace in this glam-meets-goth sexually permissive subculture that somehow has developed around a cheesy '70s science fiction movie. Whatever your poison, there is probably someone else in the crowd to connect with, on both a mental and physical level.

Genevieve Florea, a self-proclaimed "Rocky freak," has been into the movie since she was five. It took a few more years before she understood the message.

"It all surrounds sex, because sex is a fun subject because everyone does it," she says with a laugh. "You know you don't have to be frumpy here. You can actually dress how you want to dress and act how you want to act."

Everyone has their own idea of what Rocky is truly about, but as one audience member remarked right before she entered the theater, "It's all about the group orgies."

*originally published October 2005 by [X]press Magazine

Don't Judge Me for Being Un-American

*originally published October 3005 [X]press Online

What I am about to admit will make me a pariah on campus, so if you see me walking to class, please refrain from throwing soda cans and rotten tomatoes.

I do not vote.

I have actually never voted. In the four years that I have been a legal adult and been able to make my contribution to the system whenever there has been a presidential election, a gubernatorial election, and countless propositions on the ballot, I missed every single one of them.

And when I say miss, I don't mean I forgot or was out of town that day. I made a conscious effort not to exercise my rights as an American.

Yes I am a registered member of the apathy party. How many of you out there hate my guts right now?

And let me state, remaining apathetic on this campus has been quite a chore. All day long I have to dodge members of the republicans, the democrats, the Palestinians, the Israelis, M.E.C.H.A. , the socialists, Students Against War, and about a million others.

I find it hilarious that every organization is convinced that their cause is the most valid, that their point of vciew is the one we should all subscribe to, and the guys at the table next to them should just rot in hell.

I'm getting tired of being yelled at for not signing a petition, or not grabbing a flyer I know I will just throw away in two seconds.

Hey, me not taking the paper just saved a rainforest somewhere.

Contrary to popular belief, it's not that I don't care about starving children, genocide, or whether or not our president is in fact Satan incarnate. I just don't think arguing about it for hours on end is going to change the situation.

A riot in the quad certainly won't make Bush pull out of Iraq, no matter how clever the signs and chants are. It's not something I'm passionate about, and I'm not about to fake it just because a cause is trendy.

I, unlike seemlingly every other student at SF State, did not become uber political the second I stepped into Malcom X Plaza. I was apathetic when i arrived and remain so to the disgust of both liberal and conservative friends.

I guess I just don't understand the point of detesting someone just because they have a different political affiliation than me. As for not voting, maybe part of it is out of laziness. I don't feel right about putting in my two cents on an issue I know nothing about, yet I don't really do all that much to educate myself.

Now I just need to figure out how to spin the next time my parents get on my case for being "un-American."

Singing the Parking Blues

*originally published September 2005 [X]press Online

When I was warned at orientation not to bring my car to San Francisco State, I laughed.

How did they expect me to survive without my car?

So I ignored the advice of my elders and packed all my worldly possessions in to my little 10-year-old Toyota and moved to the land of fog.

It was the ultimate moving to college cliché, complete with pillows pressed up against the back window.

Soon after moving to San Francisco I experienced yet another familiar tale: The small town girl who gets robbed upon moving to the big bad city. Within a week my back window was shattered, and my brand new stereo was ripped from the front dashboard.

Since the beginning I have learned the hard way that this is not the most car-friendly area. I spend most of my time downtown searching for parking spots on the street to avoid paying $20 and up to park in a lot, only to be slapped with a $50 ticket because I left it there for longer than three hours.

My current debt to the city’s department of parking has just about reached $1250. Every time I see a cop behind me I fear they finally put that warrant out for my arrest.

The school doesn't make it any easier for us either. All of the spots near campus have one, two or four hours maximum time limits.

And this year they’ve found a way to truly kick us when we’re down; I almost cried the first time I set eyes on the row of new parking meters along Holloway.

Those spots were never easy to secure; you usually has to stake one out all day and get into a slap fight with another hopeful student to ensure your car’s place in the world.

But the satisfaction gained in the days of not having to get up close and personal with everyone on the BART shuttle has passed. These days just be prepared to bring a pound of quarters to school.

Or at least enough gum to share with the twenty other people standing in the shuttle aisle so it's less awkward when they fall on top of you at an abrupt stop.

4 out of 5 People Have an STD; the Future Doesn't Have To

Sabina Pfister tightens the tourniquet around the young girl's arm and clucks in sympathy at her discomfort. "This will only hurt for a minute," Pfister murmurs as she disinfects the area with an alcohol swab. She holds the syringe up to the light for a moment before plunging the needle into the reddened skin. Pfister has just injected the girl with herpes.

Pfister works for Quest Women's Clinic, a clinical research center currently studying the vaccination of herpes and human papilloma virus (HPV) for two major pharmaceutical companies.

HPV is a lesser-known sexually transmitted disease which spreads through skin-to-skin contact, so it can't be prevented with condoms. The virus is responsible for 70 percent of cervical cancer cases and 90 percent of genital warts worldwide. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that by the age of 50, at least 80 percent of women will have acquired the infection.

The vaccine to combat herpes contains one piece of the virus, just enough to encourage the immune system to fight off infection. Quest is one of the leading test sites for Glaxo Smith Kline's (GSK) Herpevac vaccine and one of 41 locations in the United States and Canada. The vaccines are currently being tested on healthy women between the ages of 18 and 30 with no history of oral or genital herpes.

"The Herpevac vaccine is in its third phase and has already been safely tested on over 15,000 women," explains Dr. Jacob Lalezari, director of Quest Research, the parent company of Quest Women's Clinic. "We're trying to do what we can to make it publicly available. After all, 75 percent of people in the U.S. are affected. It doesn't matter if you?re rich, poor, black or white; everyone is susceptible."

Allison Pasciuto has been involved in the study for more than six months. Though she assumed she was not infected, it was still a relief to receive the good news. "When it was time to call for my results, I racked my brain trying to remember if I've ever had a cold sore," she says. "At first I had the irrational fear, you know, "Am I going to get some bizarre disease from this? But the work they're doing at Quest will be so important down the road."

"Our goal is to have 250 people enrolled in the study; we only have 130 right now," says 24-year-old Clinical Research Coordinator Erin Schwartz. "It's difficult to reach the numbers we want. Out of 10 people screened, only four are eligible and the other six already have herpes in some form or another."

The numbers of ineligible test subjects prove Lalezari's point that 90 percent of infected individuals don't even realize they have the virus. "Most of the time it just looks like a little tear in the skin," he says. 'But those little tears are responsible for the fact that everyone has herpes."

The American Social Health Association has established a confidential hotline in partenership with GSK to inform test subjects of their results. Counselors are on-call to help with the startling news. "It's funny how some people react. They've had cold sores their whole lives but they freak out because they're not ok with calling it herpes," Schwartz says. "One woman who tested positive came back to the office and demanded her test results because she wanted to 'sue the bastard' who gave it to her."

Despite the frequency of herpes, Lalezari claims HPV is an even greater threat to sexual health. "HPV is the most common STD in the world," he says. "Close to 80 percent of sexually active adults will contract it in their lifetime and most people don't even know what it is. It's so much worse than herpes. With over 100 different strains, it's the leading cause of cancer death among women around the world."

Luckily, there is some good news on the horizon for sexually active adults. Both GSK and Merck have developed a vaccine to combat the two most deadly strains of the virus. Out of the original study involving 2,300 women, half were given the vaccine and half were given a placebo. At the three-year checkpoint in the group given the placebo, 82 women already had either the infection or pre-cancer, while the group given the vaccine was 100 percent unaffected.

"HPV is a big deal in the U.S., but it's an even bigger deal worldwide," Sarah MacKay, a 30-year-old nurse practitioner at the clinic says. "Here in the U.S. we have way more access to preventative medicine, but the issue with cervical cancer is it's not detected early in other countries. It's exciting to think of a world without HIV, HPV or herpes. Not today, but maybe ten years from now."

Other countries recognize the importance of the HPV vaccine. According to Lalezari, every woman living in Finland between the ages of 16 and 23 is enrolled in the study. "We had to run ads and beg people to participate but they've got the whole country signed up due to universal healthcare," he says. "If this holds up, every young girl will be a candidate for vaccine. Once this gets approved, if we can protect every woman in the right age bracket, we can almost wipe this out."

Quest offers incentives to women enrolled in the studies, such as confidential health care and goody bags of free gifts. "This has been a great experience for me," Pasciuto says. "I would love to do another study with Quest. Everyone at the clinic is really cool, and it's always nice to come and hang out on the couch and talk to Erin and Sarah. It'll almost be sad when its all over."

The rumor around the clinic is the vaccine will be presented to the FDA in one year and hopefully on the market within two. But despite its benefits, there are groups around the country who want this kept under wraps. "You've got the political right-wing lunatics screaming that this vaccine shouldn't be provided because it lowers the threshold of the fear of sex," Lalezari says.

But Schwartz feels vaccinating children at a young age can only help, both with their sexual health and education. "You have to be real as a parent. You can't refuse to protect your children because you don't want them to have sex," she says. "I think it's a great idea to arm them against these scary things young because some day they could have sex with someone dirty who gives them an awful disease."

*originally published September 2005 by [X]press Magazine

Horrible Trends Induce a Wave of Mockery

*originally published Setember 2005

So it’s a week into school and already I’ve noticed some of my favorite characters on campus. These are the people who so noticeably play into their stereotypes that they have provided hours of entertainment for me and my jaded friends, since we apparently have nothing better to do than mock perfect strangers.

The Fashionista.

Let me just preface by saying I am extremely jealous of these girls who come to class every day looking like they belong on a runway, making my own standard uniform of Converse and band t-shirts seem downright juvenile.

However, there are two trends that the more stylish set has been subscribing to recently that drive me crazy.

Number one: Why do girls insist on bringing their tiny dogs to school?

I have seen three in the last week and it just baffles me. Dogs are not fashion accessories. They are living, breathing animals that do not deserve to be carted around in a bag of their own crap.

One girl had her adorable puppy in the required designer carrier bag, but no books. Why is the dog more vital to academic success than say, a pen and paper?

Number two: Those stupid pants that seem to be everywhere. They’re the really baggy knee-length sweat pants that look like a skirt. These are just about the ugliest things I have ever seen. So many girls I’ve talked to agree they’re hideous, so who is buying them?

Maybe I’m just not cool enough to be friends with these uber-trendy people.

The Cigarette Hunter.

Now there have been days when I to have offered complete strangers a quarter to get my nicotine fix. But when I see the same people trying to bum cigarettes in the quad day after day (despite those oh-so-effective “no smoking” notices) I just have to laugh. Accept your addiction and buy your own damn pack.

The Old Person.

Every class I have ever had has at least one. The older student (and at my naïve age of 22, anything older than 30 is old) is the one who sits up front and constantly interrupts the professor to disagree or add their own opinion. This is the person who asks endless (often pointless) questions and speaks incessantly about their own lives, and usually has to be mercifully stopped by the instructor after noticing the glazed over looks in the eyes of the rest of the class. I realize the older generation has a lot of life experience to draw on; but the stories about your kids, jobs and interesting things that have happened to you over the years are not on the midterm. Please shut up and let the teacher tell us what is.

Quad Loungers.

I love watching the hippies in the quad. They make me smile with their dreadlocks and clothes straight out of the sixties, their games of hacky sack and that guy who appears to be surgically attached to his acoustic guitar. I always get nostalgic for an era I wasn’t even alive for when they congregate.

I don’t make the mistake of believing I am above ridicule. I’m sure I fall into some easily-identifiable stereotype of the bitter writer lashing out at the world who scorned me.

But that’s okay. I figure as long as I can take a bit of teasing, I’ll feel free to continue making fun of everyone else.

No Fun in the Sun in the OC

*originally published August 2005 [X]press Online

Leaving the foggy gloom of SF State for my hometown in Orange County this summer made me miss this city so much.

I knew the suburbs were boring, that’s why I wanted to move to the city in the first place, but I never realized just how boring.

Huntington Beach is Pleasantville.

There is no absolutely no crime. The cops there are so bored they actually drive around looking for expired registration stickers (I should know, my first week back I got slammed with a fix-it ticket).

Their favorite thing to do on a Saturday night is chase all the home-for-summer college kids out of all parks, beaches, parking lots and any other public place we might gather to have a good time. We weren't even doing anything illegal (for the most part.) We just needed a place to hang out where we wouldn't be constantly watched over by hovering parents who no longer trusted us even though we never before gave them a reason to worry.

“It’s that damn city! It changed you, I know it did!” they say.

I needed to get away because I was disturbing my parents during their newfound and obnoxiously early bedtime. When did they turn eighty? When did they decide that4p.m. was a good time for dinner and 9p.m. was bedtime?

And then they’re suddenly suspicious of all my friends who they’ve known for years.

Why does coming home suck so much?

Where are all the friends I used to hang out with in high school?

It’s like my clique diminished into just those 3 or 4 people I regularly talk to and I never see anyone else. I was so excited to come back and hang out with everyone from high school and catch up with the friends I still care about, but maybe not enough to call and email them during the school year.

Instead, the majority of people my age have completely disappeared from my hometown, never to be seen again. And the ones I do run into are people I couldn't care less about. I didn’t hang out with those people when we lived in the same area, why should we now make the effort to be friends long distance?

I love my best friends from high school, I really do. But night after night of the same four people doing the same things and having the same conversations is making me go crazy!


Here at SF State I got accustomed to going out at night with groups of twenty people. At home I was lucky if I could gather seven people together to just chill.

And nobody has any motivation to do anything in Huntington Beach. What the hell did we do in high school? I remember so many crazy and exciting stories from our “wacky youth."

Why aren’t we like that anymore?

Here at school, someone is always wandering over, usually inebriated, and starting up a conversation with something like: “Dude, wouldn’t it be cool if we connected a bunch of ‘slip-n-slides’ together in the quad at midnight when the sprinklers go off?” Now that is some quality college-age entertainment.

But back in the OC if I had to endure another night of simply sitting at Denny’s complaining about having nothing to do, I was going to kill myself.