“It’s been 20 years since Y2K and the world is still going even if it’s burning,” begins the Facebook event page for Distort Midwest, a two-day release party at the end of February for a compilation tape of heartland hardcore. “We’re fucking bored out here in the land of milk and honey with our mundane jobs and weekend benders. Long live this decadence from here until the apocalypse!”
During the house’s tenure as a DIY space, around 20 tenants passed through it. They established a distinctive culture built on inclusivity, accountability, mutual support, and free-spirited rebellion—against internal obstacles as much as external oppressions. In the parallel universe where Rancho Huevos might put together a political platform, it would make the Bernie Sanders campaign seem quaint. Though the politics of the house’s community evolved constantly, it stood for the abolition of policing and mass incarceration, for the humanity of all people regardless of immigration status, for sex workers’ rights—basically for a long list of positions questioning the power of the nation-state and even its right to exist.
During Rancho’s life as an underground show space, renters made most of the repairs and alterations themselves. They fixed a collapsed kitchen floor and enlisted the help of a tenant’s parents to upgrade the electrical system. In Rancho’s early years, it had no working outlets in the basement, so to host a show the organizers had to run an extension cord downstairs through a vent from the kitchen. Circumstances forced the upgrade in the late 2000s, when half the house lost power.
Daggers EP by No Slogan
Before Rancho, Cabay had lived across the street from No Slogan’s practice space at 21st and Damen. “Chris would always be late,” Hernandez says, laughing. “He would sometimes just not bother to show up because he was too tired. So our drummer at the time, Danny, kept calling him huevón . . . which just means big, heavy balls, and therefore you’re lazy. It just kind of morphed into ‘huevos,’ and then he became Chris Huevos. When he moved, we decided that, since it was a little house in the middle of the street—kind of an outpost with nothing around it—we’ll just call it ‘Rancho.’”
Unexpected negotiations come with the territory at a punk house, but they’re just part of what makes it tough to live in one. Hosting all-ages DIY shows—which Rancho’s residents did as often as two or three times per week—requires flexibility and generosity of spirit. You have to surrender to whatever your guests (especially intoxicated ones) might do to your home, and if you’re smart you’ll prepare for any crises they could create. You might be confronted with teen girls passing out alone in dark corners, your friends brawling with strangers over an inflammatory remark, or someone you only vaguely recognize stealing all your makeup from the bedroom you thought you’d locked.
