Originally, the city's northeast shoreline extended only to what is today Taylor and Francisco streets. The area largely known today as North Beach was an actual beach, filled in with soil years ago.
This neighborhood, particularly on Broadway east of Columbus, was infamous until fairly recently as home to many of the city's striptease clubs. In the 19th century, the area was the locale of the infamous Barbary Coast. Many of the sex-related businesses seen in Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry movies, Paul Schrader's Hardcore and TV's The Streets of San Francisco have been converted to other, more mainstream uses. The Condor Club, on the corner of Columbus and Broadway, was opened in 1964 as America's first topless bar. It later became a lobster restaurant, then a New-Orleans seafood/jazz bar; now, again, it is a topless bar. The Lusty Lady, a peep-show establishment, is notable as the world's only worker cooperative strip club. The Broadway strip was also home to the Mabuhay Gardens, the Stone and On Broadway nightclubs, which were important venues in the punk rock scene of the late 1970s to mid-1980s. By the late 1990s, however, the economic facts of life asserted themselves and the area's diverse nightlife became limited to those places that could afford to stay in business.

The gorgeous Queen Anne-style house shown on the masthead of this site is the O’Brien House on Moultrie Point. It overlooks the Matanzas River just south of the mouth of Moultrie Creek. Built in 1885, it is the second structure to be built of poured concrete in the St. Augustine area. The first was Villa Zorayda in downtown St. Augustine.

Today the house is restored to its early glory, but for many years it was sadly neglected. Even in its worst days, it gracefully watched over the water traffic up and down the Intracoastal Waterway - the only way you can really experience all its beauty. This photo was taken from a kayak sitting just south of the dock.

In 1995, before the house was renovated, David Nolan wrote “The Houses of St. Augustine” which includes many photos of the house’s architectural details [the photography was beautifully done by Ken Barrett - not quite a cousin]. Even neglected, it’s beauty shows.

The book recounts an incident in 1980 when exterminators discovered a note from Lewis Ogden O’Brien in a vent. Lewis was the oldest son of Henry Stanton O’Brien and 12 years old at the time he wrote the note. He stated as of his birthday - May 15, 1885 - his father was building the house as a winter home. Lewis stated, “I write this so that perhaps 100 years or more from now people will know who had this house built.”

The Combined Oral Contraceptive Pill (COCP), often referred to as the birth-control pill, or simply "the Pill", is a combination of an estrogen (oestrogen) and a progestin (progestogen), taken by mouth to inhibit normal female fertility. On October 15, 1951, a young Mexican chemistry student Luis E. Miramontes, working under the direction of Carl Djerassi and the director of the Mexican chemical company Syntex, George Rosenkranz, was the first person to synthesise the compound used to produce the (first) combined oral contraceptive pill. Combined oral contraceptives were then developed by Gregory Goodwin Pincus, John Rock, and Min Chueh Chang. They were first approved for contraceptive use in the United States in 1960, and are still a popular form of birth control. They are currently used by more than 100 million women worldwide and by almost 12 million women in the United States. Usage varies widely by country, age, education, and marital status: one quarter of women aged 16–49 in Great Britain currently use the Pill (combined pill or minipill), compared to only 1% of women in Japan.

ground·swell (gro̵und′swel′)
noun
a violent swelling or rolling of the ocean, caused by a distant storm or earthquake
a rapidly growing wave of popular sentiment, opinion, etc.

The Calaveras Grape Stomp, produced by the Calaveras Winegrape Alliance has grown to become one of the most anticipated events in the region, drawing large, loud crowds and scores of stomp teams, many festooned in original costume.

Last year, stomp goers witnessed another fierce competition between teams vying for the title of Calaveras Grape Stomp Champion. Stomp teams are composed of two persons, one inside a half barrel filled with 25 pounds of grapes, another outside the barrel reaching in to ensure a smooth flow of juice out the drain spout. It’s a sticky business for all concerned.

The results are weighed and heat winners and wildcard teams advance to the championship rounds. Last year the winners received original hand-made goblets, cash and other prizes. Prizes are also awarded for best costumes.

If you know & love "Night of the Living Dead" (who doesn't?) then you REALLY gotta hear this - one of Squirmy's true lyrical masterpieces.... "They're coming to get you Barbara..."

This was the very first dance tune Drink & Food wrote. emDay had sampled Vincent Price's original with the crackle-box and we were digging on the musical cues and Carolyn Craig saying "Darling, the only ghoul in the house is you" so we decided to write a house tune incorporating some of our favorite samples.

Although she had no prior criminal record, 14-year-old Shaquanda Cotton was sentenced in 2006 to up to seven years in correctional detention for shoving a teacher's aide in the small town of Paris in East Texas. Another 14-year-old girl was sentenced by the same judge to probation after she was convicted of the serious crime of arson. Shaquanda is Black and the other girl is White. Shaquanda was imprisoned at the Ron Jackson State Juvenile Correctional Complex in Brownwood, Texas, under an indeterminate sentence that could have lasted until her 21st birthday. Fortunately she was released in March 2007, having spent a year behind bars, after a wave of protests from civil rights groups prompted officials to intervene. Shaquanda's case is just one of many reflecting the racial inequity in America's juvenile justice system, which funnels low-income children of color into the Cradle to Prison Pipeline and unnecessary detention.

Gamers Have Sex More Often!

It's official - women who play video games have sex more often! Gametart, the UK's largest online games rental company, carried out the survey throughout January to see how the recent influx of the likes of Pink PSPs and DS Lites would affect gamers' sex lives across the country.

The results were surprising.

Of our sample of 200 women, those who played video games on average had sex 4.3 times a week while those who didn't play games only had sex just 3.2 times a week.

Perhaps even more promising for gamers is the fact that many of the women that we interviewed who have only recently started playing games said that they now have sex more often than before.

Gamers have never had it so good!

I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think." The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous, If the meaning of the words "machine" and "think" are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, "Can machines think?" is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words.

The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game." It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart front the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B thus:

C: Will X please tell me the length of his or her hair?

Now suppose X is actually A, then A must answer. It is A's object in the game to try and cause C to make the wrong identification. His answer might therefore be:

"My hair is shingled, and the longest strands are about nine inches long."

In order that tones of voice may not help the interrogator the answers should be written, or better still, typewritten. The ideal arrangement is to have a teleprinter communicating between the two rooms. Alternatively the question and answers can be repeated by an intermediary. The object of the game for the third player (B) is to help the interrogator. The best strategy for her is probably to give truthful answers. She can add such things as "I am the woman, don't listen to him!" to her answers, but it will avail nothing as the man can make similar remarks.

We now ask the question, "What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?" Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, "Can machines think?"

"I am just a Lab Rat" ...before there was Alter Ego/Babylon Representative, there were the Quaadudes. Kali and Harry Zorkfast wrote a tune called "Breakfast of Champions" after the Vonnegut novel of the same title, though our tune was about something completely different: the losers we saw all around us who took too many drugs and drank all the time. Squirmy took the idea and ran with it, and thus the Alter Ego lyric was born. Being into DUB and Reggae in general, we often did down-tempo dubbed out versions especially for parties with Hegs running the venerable Roland DC-30. This is such a version of the classic "Rats on Acid"

ALL TIME CLASSIC: lyrical humorous poitical lyric from Squirmy - "We're gonna grow pot"....
AND B.T.W. - if you are an (honest) law enforcement officer working for the good of your community to help its citizens, then please accept our most sincere apologies - this was written WAY before proposition 284 - the brainchild of Squirm's kooky survivalist anarchist "I'm gonna go out and live in the hills and pan for gold" period....

J.S. Bach's suite for baroque lute in C minor bwv 997.

5 movements:
Fantasia
Fuge
Sarabande
Gigue
Double

Kali and a pair of neumanns

(this is for all the snobs and haters out there... boo hoo, I don't like techno, I don't like rap... boo hoo)

a little friendly advice: "I don't like..." = "I don't know anything about... and am uninterested in learning"

LOVE MUSIC - there is good and bad in ALL styles.

The mighty swamp sound system is about inclusion, diversity, variety, & learning about the things we don't understand.

LIVE DUB
Extended rehearsal version.
Undoctored recording of how the band actually sounds.
Recorded with a single microphone in the middle of the room - no mixing, no effects, no eq.

This is the opening track from the Swamp Sound System debut album.
We used it to open all our live shows for years.
Inspired by Clint's brilliant film.

This is an original arrangement of
a Robert Johnson lyric, done in a style which was very popular in the 1970's. Originally we were doing 'Stones in My Pathway' to this jam, but we decided we like the lyric to "Travellin' Riverside Blues" better, but we kept "Pathwaystones" as the title.
Click Dark is the bad-ass-mo-fo on drums.
note: 'open' drums at the end for all you producers out there...

Johnny Bond's lyric done in a contemporary style with Kali on all instruments.

Another Alter Ego tune from the vaults....

"You better take a step closer, next time, when you try to snuff out my life behind my back - what a beautiful day. I would not want to pass away, my body is strong but the spirit is weak, I'd like to stick around for maybe just another week"

A tricky juxtaposition of samples from Pink Floyd, Ventures, Keith LeBlanc/Tackhead, with original guitar and bass.

"Yeah, it's a true story man..." All of these things happened exactly as described one hot summer of hitch hiking around the American southwest.

The tunes itself was actually crafted in Switzerland with Kali's friend Sven reading the words off of a sheet of paper while Kali worked out the groove. Sven has great English, but between some pronunciation problems and some illegibility, he occasionally asked a question or mis-read something. We had a cassette recorder running just for fun as we were housebound in a dark, cold, Swiss winter. Listening to the recording later, we decided that some of these ad lib's were funny so we included things like, "Hey what's that?" and "No - it was the Santa Fe" - Sven said, "Hey man, it's a true story" in one of the guitar breaks.

Drum & Bass approach but we really shy away from those overly fast BPM's - this is at 137 - the first one of the new group made with sampled broken beats using logic in sync with ableton live.

Billy and Kali were driving the coast on the way to a secret spot we call "Nowhere" - we were talking about surf-speak and decided to write a rap about surfing using as much surf terminology as we could.

One of the original "Drink & Food" tunes recorded by Schweickie and Kali.
The title refers to the origin of the raw material which makes up the ambient electronic part. It has occurred to us more than once that we might change the name - we wouldn't want to be misunderstood as 'doggin' Jimi - an all-time hero, true American Idol - one of the most brilliant, innovative, and influential musicians of the 20th century. Maybe we keep the name and dedicate it to Jimi.....

Classic old school punk rock from the vault: Alter Ego / Babylon Representative from the album "Slush Puppies"

This is a note for note rendition of a tune originally recorded by Eric B. & Rakim.
All of the motifs which were samples in the original have been re-created with guitars.