400 bands played Pickle Patch apartment
Steve Aoki hosted approximately 400 bands at his small Isla Vista apartment known as the Pickle Patch before he was eventually evicted.
Where this was said
Straight-Edge Philosophy: Ian MacKaye, Minor Threat & Unfucking the World
At 39:18 · chapter starts 34:50
The conversation gets genuinely thoughtful as Dax explains — and Steve enthusiastically confirms — that British punk was fundamentally nihilistic: skinheads, drugs, the 'fuck everyone' energy. [1] — Dax Shepard "Ian's like, hey, we could be punk and rebellious against things that are controlling us, but let's have this attitude of the opposite — unf…" 40:54 Ian MacKaye's genius was to take that same rebellious energy and redirect it: you could still scream, still go to shows, still rage against the machine — but you could do it clean. No drugs, no alcohol, sometimes no sex, and an explicit commitment to building something rather than destroying it. Dax summarizes it as 'unfucking the world.' The movement's more extreme edge included Hare Krishna-aligned bands like Shelter — which Steve loved, even before he knew what Hare Krishna was. Dax draws a direct line from this ethos all the way to Jack Antonoff, who requires a philanthropic component at every show — a strand of punk idealism that has persisted for decades across wildly different genres.
Straight-edge until age 22
Steve Aoki remained straight-edge — no alcohol, no drugs — from his teenage hardcore punk years until approximately age 22, living in Isla Vista amid one of the US's biggest party school scenes.
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