Search For Weird #1+2 by Krusty Wheatfield

This is the second installment (#1+2) of a forthcoming zine series chronicling Vale’s adventures in cultural spelunking. This issue focuses on how Vale started Search and Destroy Magazine, the first publication to document the emerging San Francisco punk movement.

V. Vale was born of a Japanese showgirl mother (“Three Taka Sisters”) and an actor father (As Chairman Mao in “The Chairman”; Fujito in “King of Marvin Gardens”). As a foster child, he lived with a Polish family in Peoria; his Japanese uncle in Fresno; and a black family in Whittier, California (The Hodnetts). Then from ages 7-17 he lived with his mom in a Seventh-day Adventist small town (like being in a cult). He was accepted to Harvard but attended U.C. Berkeley, was an early member of Blue Cheer, published “Search & Destroy” 1977-79, and since 1980 has published RE/Search from the same address (almost 40 years). He self-identifies as a historian-anthropologist and cultural ethnographer; his motto is “Search For Weird”.