SF Punk Archive

SF Punk Archive Archiving the history of the San Francisco punk scene circa 1975-1990. Plus updates on the collection @ the SF Main Public Library.

240 new punk photos from Mindy Bagdon posted on the SFPL's digital site!
03/21/2024

240 new punk photos from Mindy Bagdon posted on the SFPL's digital site!

The San Francisco Punk Archive preserves and showcases materials that document the punk music and culture scene in the San Francisco Bay Area from 1977 to the mid-eighties. The archive contains fliers, posters, zines, photographs, and other ephemera that relate to the bands, venues, shows, and event...

06/28/2023

Avengers and Frightwig members will discuss their experiences of early Bay Area punk with author Jen Larson on June 29.

11/13/2020

From the variety of requests from customers to why you always put the person looking at the 400 year old manuscript in the front row of tables, we learned a lot from Penelope about how lively (and sometimes chaotic) the SF Public Library can get.

Still, her genuine love for people and the job was evident, and it was fascinating to learn more about how libraries work.

If you haven't listened yet, find us everywhere podcasts are available, and on our website at https://killed-by-desk.simplecast.com/.

Secrets of the archives...
11/11/2020

Secrets of the archives...

For a large portion of her career as a singer-songwriter, Penelope Houston did “quit her day job!” For the last 25 years (before retiring earlier this year), she served as a library technician at the San Francisco Public Library, where she was able to navigate the paraprofessional path and exert...

The Archive is mentioned at the end of this article in the current SF Weekly!
02/22/2020

The Archive is mentioned at the end of this article in the current SF Weekly!

The old-school punk band will play all their hits when they come back to San Francisco.

Who can recognize this ephemera from a recently uncovered donation at the SF History Center? It was handed to us with no...
09/16/2019

Who can recognize this ephemera from a recently uncovered donation at the SF History Center? It was handed to us with no history attached... Largely circa 1981. We are most curious about the items on the right and the bottom. And who is Nightworks: Baron Larvae?

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100 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA
94102

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 6pm
Tuesday 9am - 8pm
Wednesday 9am - 8pm
Thursday 9am - 8pm
Friday 12pm - 6pm
Saturday 10am - 6pm
Sunday 12pm - 6pm

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Thanks for your interest in San Francisco’s punk history. The SF Punk Archive is a permanent collection curated by Penelope Houston of the Avengers, and is part of the San Francisco History Center at the San Francisco Public Library.

Our archives are housed in temperature and humidity controlled stacks and made available by request for viewing to researchers and the general public in the securely staffed History Center reference room on the sixth floor of the Main Library. We're collecting material from Northern California circa 1975-1990 that documents punk and it's outlying cultures.

Larger collections include: Avengers/Penelope Houston Cecelia Kuhn/Frightwig Chatterbox Bar Debbie Dub/Starting Fires/Will Shatter Recent donations include: 72 B/W photos circa 1979-82, Elaine Vestal Jack Fan’s Anti-Zine, 1980-81 104 flyers from 1980-89, Irene Barnard A full run of Ivy’s Calendar, Mindagus Bagdon

We are always excited to receive new donations. Here's a an idea of what we are most interested in: Northern California circa 1975-1990 that documents punk and it's outlying cultures. All physical formats, including: photos, audio and visual recordings (most formats), oral histories, original ephemera (flyers, posters, tickets) manuscripts (handwritten lyrics, set-lists, artworks), published materials (articles, books, zines) t-shirts and smaller realia. At the moment we are not collecting digital scans or files. Items accepted into the collection become reference materials for in-library-use only and are not for sale. Please contact us with any questions. Penelope(dot)Houston(at)SFPL(dot)org