Tag Archives: Local 16

F. X. Crowley

FX died this week. He got a real obit in the Chronicle so he was really somebody. Leader of my Local Union, IATSE Local 16, business manager of another IA Local 119, member of the SF Labor Commission for many years, member of several important San Francisco commissions including the PUC and the Port Commission. It was as a member of the Port Commission that he got the America’s Cup to come to San Francisco Bay in 2013. Pier 27, now the cruise ship terminal which is right down the street where I live, was the center of those activities.

I met FX in 1979. I was working on the pre-Broadway production of Evita at the Orpheum Theatre. The set was primarily a raked stage but there was a small counter raked stage built into a track system that allowed it to moved up and down stage for different scenes. Nowadays, there would be a big electric motor hooked up to some cables to pull the stage up and down but at that time it was Gary Heider and me cranking on a manual winch. One scene had about a dozen people on it and Harold Prince, the director, was unhappy because it wasn’t moving fast enough. Enter FX. He was a college student on summer break from a Southern California school – I don’t remember which, not one of the big ones – and got sent out by the hall to add his muscle to pulling the stage.

I had done stage work with FX’ older brother Joe so I knew he was well connected. Their father was the President of the SF Labor Council at that time.

We got along fine. A couple of years later, I was running the Sound Department for SF Opera and FX got hired to work in the Electric shop. He was a full time stagehand now. We were doing a thing we called archive video where we ‘archived’ each production by making a video tape of the final dress rehearsal. Because the camera did not have a good dynamic range, it was necessary to have an operator move the camera to follow the action. FX was that guy.

The archive video thing turned out to me be more trouble than it was worth and the company stopped it after a couple of years. FX moved on to other work away from the Opera House and I lost track of him.

In 1990, I decided San Francisco wasn’t a good place to bring up my kids, so the family moved to Grass Valley. I found it difficult to get work and so ended up driving back to SF for stage jobs. In fact, I was floundering around when FX called me to see if I might be available. He was working as a dispatcher in the Union office and remembered me.

After about 6 months, I found work in Sacramento and lost touch with FX.

In 2006, through a series of coincidences that will be the subject of another story, I became Business Agent for Local 50 Sacramento, where I had been working. FX was by then BA in San Francisco so we reconnected as colleagues.

He was riding high. The Local had lots of work and he had a great team in place in the office. He had a grand vision for unifying the the Bay Area Stage Locals to provide more leverage with employers. Local 16 was already leading the way with technicians who were among the best in the country. I told him I thought it was a good idea but that there would be many pitfalls, not least of which was turf wars.

By 2008, I was a mess. I had been forced to resign the Sacramento BA job, my marriage was finished and the real estate ventures we had taken on were failing. Bankruptcy was on the table and it seemed that San Francisco would be a better place to continue my career. I got in touch with FX and he was very supportive. He got me work right away. After acouple of months, I knew I was home again and I asked FX if I could regain my status as a Local 16 member.

Without going into all the technical details, he came up with a plan, got all the necessary approvals, and I was a Local 16 man again. Thanks FX!!

FX’s time as the Local 16 BA was not without problems, and, not long after I got re-established, there was a revolt at the ballot box and his office team was broken up. Within a year, FX resigned that job to run for San Francisco Supervisor. He lost by a very small margin in one of the early tests of the ranked voting system.

I only saw him a few times after that. He was always upbeat, a very powerful presence. Whatever it was that he was doing at the time, he was enormously positive about his chances of success. For the last couple of years, I had been hearing rumors of his failing health and I kept thinking I should reach out to him. But I didn’t.

With my shiny new retirement last summer, I was invited to the Local 16 retiree luncheon in December. FX was there and I was able to speak with him. I almost didn’t recognize him as all his hair was gone. He was as forceful and positive as ever, filled with enthusiasm and plans for his job.

What a man! Rest in peace, FX. You left the world better than you found it.

work

I turned down work Sunday night. The circumstances were a little different from usual so I feel a need for some explanation. After Zach was killed, I really pulled my head in as far as the type of work I was doing. Prior to that, I was doing a lot of sound jobs. They were mostly at the Symphony but also around town in hotels. I enjoyed the challenges.

When I came back from Baton Rouge, I had a Soundbox right away but I also did a substitute day for one of the holiday pops shows in the main room at Davies.

I made it through Soundbox without any major problems but during the other job I made some mistakes that would have been uncharacteristic before. My response to this was to reduce the number of jobs I did on sound and concentrate on the substitute house electric job instead. The house electric job required much less initiative and was much more clearly defined.

About a year into this I realized that the spark that I had had for many years in the theater was gone. The desire for knowledge and to provide the best for my employers just wasn’t there any more. This is not to say that I suddenly was doing bad work. Except for the change in emphasis, no one really noticed.

But I did. And all the talk about retirement meant more to me than finding a better way to prepare for a graduation, for example.

So, while I kept in touch with the sound part of my business, I started letting all of that go. I stopped doing jobs on Hal’s crew (although I still work with him as house electrician). I gave up the Soundbox head job to Denise. I settled in to being JJ’s loyal lieutenant, working generally two or three days a week.

Now, the other part of all this is how I get my jobs. Back in, say, 2014 or 2015, I worked a lot at Davies Hall and I would essentially be hired directly by Jim or Rob or Hal. The Union office would sometimes be made aware of those hirings but they played no role in getting me those jobs. When I had holes in my schedule I would make myself available to the Local 16 office and they would often call me with work.

After Zach was killed, that all ended. Once in a while I would get a call, but I was usually already busy so I was able to avoid going to other places. Davies Hall was safe and a known quantity for me. Sometimes I felt bad about doing this because I wanted to support the Local by filling the jobs they needed to fill. But I remembered the mistakes I had made before due to lack of concentration and I didn’t want to jeopardize any more jobs that way. And the spark was gone.

So when the office called me Sunday night for a job today, I said I couldn’t do it. I had already committed to going down to Santa Clara to see Mom and Dad. In years past, I would have changed that. The other issue was operating a big digital sound mixer. I’m out of practice and I said so. If I had the spark, I would have pulled it off. Now, I just don’t want to.

The Local stood by me when I came back to San Francisco and I will be eternally grateful for that. But I have to be cognizant of my own health. I can’t do every job.

SoundBox

Another SoundBox is in the history books. (Or what ever history is kept in nowadays.) We did our two shows Friday night and last night. The theme was family connections and we heard sons and daughters of Symphony musicians playing with each other in various short pieces. Despite – or perhaps because of – that theme, the selections were generally excerpts so musically it wasn’t as interesting as other shows have been.

The one exception was the only piece in the 2nd Act. It was called Sketches of Kazakhstan by Samuel Post. One of the members of the second violin section, Raushan Akhmedyarova, was born in Kazakhstan and her father was a famous musician and composer there. Mr Post took some of Raushan’s father’s themes and expanded them into a very nice piece about 20 minutes long for chamber orchestra.

In SoundBox, I have several responsibilities. One is to set the room acoustic for each piece with the Constellation system. I always try to involve the musicians and artistic staff in this but I also have my own ideas. I have found that it is tempting to put more ‘reverb’ into everything just because we can. In the case of Sketches, the original setting we tried was a preset designed for small string orchestra. As the piece was being rehearsed, though, I felt that a dryer sound would allow the individual instruments, and particularly Raushan’s solo violin, to be heard better. I was very pleased to carry the day on this. I thought it was the highlight of the program.

Simply put, each preset is made up of 5 acoustic parameters. Constellation users can choose among a wide range of settings for each parameter. A relatively small number of presets were created when we first received the system for general, non-SoundBox, use. I am not against using a generic preset if it sounds good, but probably 90% of the pieces presented at SoundBox over the 3+ years we’ve been doing it have been customized for the exact music being played.

The last piece on this month’s program was a father and son affair. Steve Paulson is the Symphony’s principal bassoon. His son, Greg, is a guitarist in a ‘progressive death metal’ band called Arkaik. Greg’s piece was a six minute track of slammed guitars and drums which he and Steve played off of. It was all written out. there was no improvisation. Greg had a seven string guitar through a Marshall cabinet that, oddly, was hard to hear. Steve had a contact mic on his bassoon that I ran through the overhead speakers. Playing back the track was my responsibility, as was setting up the links between my system and the lighting and video systems so everything played in sync. Greg certainly has fast fingers!

After the last three years in which we had a SoundBox set every month from December to April, we are down to only three this season. Our next one is in February and the last will be in April. the room is in use by the Opera from May to November so putting on SoundBox during that time is not possible. Those of us on the Local 16 operating crew understand how expensive it is to put on but we enjoy doing it and look forward to participating in future sets.

Kirk

Kirk Schriel died last Saturday. Kirk was a member of Local 16 and on a job. He collapsed at the mixing board during a show and could not be revived.

I first met Kirk when he was working for ProMedia and I was working for the Opera. He was a sassy guy but he knew what he was doing. At that time he was doing the scut work of a big rental sound company. At some point, while I was gone in the foothills, he left ProMedia and started working out of the Union hall. He completed the apprentice program and became a full member.

I was on a job Sunday morning with Hal, who called me to give me the news. Hal was pretty broken up. Kirk had been the best man at his wedding. Hal had talked to him two weeks ago. There had been no warning signs.

I had seen Kirk a few times since I returned to SF but not recently. In the community of big time sound mixers, I am only on the edges, but Kirk was the real deal.

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