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The Return of the San Francisco Star Who Lost It All

[SF Gate]

Christopher Owens on homelessness, Girls and the end of the Mission scene

Sometime in 2017, Christopher Owens — the former leader of Girls, one of the most critically acclaimed bands of the 21st century — was riding his motorcycle from his home near the Panhandle to Ocean Beach. As he turned left onto Fulton Street, a woman in an SUV made an illegal turn and took him out. “I flew over the car and got knocked out,” Owens told me from his home in New York last week. “I woke up, and all I could hear was this wailing.”

The woman stood outside her car in tears. Owens somehow found enough adrenaline to get to his feet and approach her. “I gave her a hug, and I was like, ‘It’s OK, you know, we’re all right,’” Owens said. With no health insurance, he chose not to go to the hospital, and he woke up black and blue.

The crash marked the start of a downward spiral in Owens’ life that saw his girlfriend of seven years leave him, a failed attempt to get Girls back together, the death of his old bandmate Chet “JR” White, and a period of homelessness in San Francisco after his camper van was stolen during the pandemic, with his cat and favorite guitar inside.

This week, Owens is releasing his first solo album in nearly a decade, “I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair,” a sad and soaring record that ends with maybe the greatest song he’s ever written.

“I think it’s the best one,” Owens said nervously. “I have a small dilemma when I say that to people, but I think it’s true.”

Born in Florida, Owens grew up traveling throughout Asia and Eastern Europe with his parents, who were members of the Children of God religious cult (which also counts Joaquin Phoenix and Rose McGowan as former members). His brother, Stephen, died of pneumonia, allegedly due to the church’s reluctance to seek medical care. At 16, while in Slovenia, Owens escaped the Children of God and made his way to Texas. In Amarillo, he worked as an assistant to the eccentric millionaire creator of the Cadillac Ranch, Stanley Marsh 3, but struggled with the culture shock of life in Texas.

“My friend got murdered by a high school football team for having a Mohawk,” Owens said. “They killed him because of the way he looked.” (Brian Deneke, a 19-year-old punk rocker, was killed by high school football player Dustin Camp, who ran him over with his Cadillac in 1997. Camp controversially avoided a murder conviction and jail time.)

In 2007, Owens headed to San Francisco and found a city he loved, and that loved him right back, at least for a while.

Owens says that a chance meeting with musician Liza Thorn in Dolores Park introduced him to a group of friends that would soon turn into a scene.

“In Texas, we had to sneak around, but California teens in San Francisco, they just did whatever the f—k they wanted. And everybody was so cool. It was exciting,” Owens said. “I felt at home.”

Owens got a room in a house with friends on 24th and Bartlett in the Mission. “The neighbors had a Prince poster in the doorway. They called it the Prince house,” Owens said. “So we put a Dolly Parton poster in our doorway and called it the Dollhouse.”

One of his roommates, Chet “JR” White, worked as a grill cook at Zuni Cafe. “He could hear me trying to record songs on my four track, really badly,” Owens laughed. “He came in and was like, ‘Hey, I’m an audio engineer.’”

Owens and JR started recording what would become Girls’ critically acclaimed debut, “Album,” a gorgeous lo-fi record with an irresistible sound somewhere between the Beach Boys and Spiritualized. Pitchfork called it a “dizzily powerful piece of work,” and the Guardian heralded it a “modern classic.”

The videos for singles “Lust for Life,” “Laura” and “Hellhole Ratrace” — all shot in and around San Francisco by director Aaron Brown — crystalized a dreamy, carefree, hedonistic time. Balloons. Polaroids. Girls and boys rolling down the grassy banks of Dolores Park, bouncing on beds, drinking through the night and hanging out in the early hours at Silver Crest Donut Shop in the Bayview. Or, as Face magazine described the videos, “a romantic bohemian scene of fluidity, nudity, and excess.”

“We would just hang out in San Francisco after the bars would close, wander around,” Brown told the magazine. ​“Depending on what we were on… we’d stay up a little later, and walk to Fisherman’s Wharf, and hang out with the fishermen in the morning.”

We had a 400-person scene going,” Owens remembered. “It was fun to just walk the Mission, go to the Knockout, go to shows. I really believed it would never end.”

I first saw Girls play around that time at the Swedish American Hall on Market Street. During the all-seated show, a group of a dozen girls in flowing white dresses stood at the edge of the stage, watching the singer’s every move.

Owens’ eyes shine when he talks about 2009 San Francisco. He remembers ordering hot chocolate and brandies at Tosca in North Beach, and drinking at Specs next door. Some nights, he says, everyone would hang out at the beach or the park, with JR bringing the food.

“One night, when we were both really high, I told JR, ‘Think about the song like you think of food. If you put too much of this into it, you’re going to ruin it,’” Owens said.

Girls followed “Album” with the “Broken Dreams Club” EP and their second, ambitious and expansive record, “Father, Son, Holy Ghost.”

The three releases were so acclaimed in the music press that a rumor out there among music nerds claims that Girls have the highest average review score of any band ever on Pitchfork.

“I had heard that,” Owens said. “I think there are some bands above us, but I’m not sure who.”

In October 2011, I saw Girls play a two-night sold-out run at the Great American Music Hall while promoting their second album. The set, complete with a trio of gospel singers and flowers adorning the stage, was a triumphant homecoming for a local band that had made it big — the promotion of the record included playing Coachella, appearing on “Conan” and “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon,” and recording an iconic version of album highlight “Vomit” at a church in Brooklyn for Pitchfork. 

But things were already falling apart. A few months later, Owens announced on Twitter that the band was over. JR hated the idea of touring and would have preferred to cook and build a recording studio, Owens said. I interviewed JR during that period, and he only wanted to talk about the mysterious studio where the album was recorded. Drug use — something that was always part of the Girls mythology — also played a part in the band’s demise. Owens says that band members would come and go, and he couldn’t handle teaching new members all the old songs again. “It just felt like a lot of repeating things,” Owens said.

The scene in the Mission was also moving on, as more and more bands were forced out of San Francisco. “It was a shock to me when I started to see it fall apart,” Owens said. “It got depressing to go around and not know anybody you saw out there. It got lonely.”

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