An Unexpected Layman By Spencer Viaggi
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s the couple pile into the car, the driver, a bald, middle-aged-looking fellow with a strange accent asks them for their destination. The couple are tourists from Germany, and are headed to one of the most iconic places in San Francisco: The intersection of Haight and Ashbury. As the driver takes off, he will proceed to spend the next several minutes telling them incredible stories of nightlife in San Francisco, amazing his audience. He tells them of the clubs, the bands, and the upcoming Warped Tour and what the people there are like. The German couple are over-the-moon excited, and begin chattering excitedly to each other. Finally, as the car pulls into their location, they ask their driver’s name. The man looks back at them, a pleasant smile twisting its way across his face. “You can call me Julicio, you know?” Julio Tuarez, or DJ Julicio, as he likes to be called, is a disc jockey from far out in the city by the bay, the city that rocks, the city that never sleeps. Yes, I’m still talking about San Francisco. If you got confused, you can blame Gregory Starship’s hit song from their 1985 album Knee Deep in the Hoopla. Julio spends his time either as a freelance taxi driver, a parent to his young daughter, or a DJ. He works at the hottest joints in San Francisco, with loads of bands from all over. People like DJ QBert, Mixmaster Mike, Eeshercut, and The Invisible Scratch Peoples have worked or collaborated with DJ Julicio. DJ Julicio got a relatively late start to the scene in 1996 with a band called Los Morton in Chile. “He got into the group
because he was the youngest brother of one of my best friends, and that was it,” remarked Armando Figueroa, one of his old bandmates in Los Morton. “He came once, and started to come to every rehearsal and we started to play full-time... he’d come on every Thursday when we were practicing, three, four, five times a week, and then he started to enjoy working with us, helping out, rode with me for a while, and then we were like ‘You wanna try something? You wanna be part of the group?’” He paused for a bit and grinned. “Of course, he says yes. And he, you know, went up, up, up…” (Figueroa). Fortunately for him, though the concept of disc jockeys was very new for the people of Chile, he was able to find lots of work at parties every weekend. Eventually, when his band split and relocated, Julicio made his move to San Francisco in order to pursue fame, glory, and “The Big bucks” (Figueroa). However, this move presented some problems for him. San Francisco is fast becoming a fairly gentrified area, with people being evicted left, right and centre for not being able to pay for the exponentially rising cost of housing. This goes double for artists; people like Julicio are freelancers who rely on unreliable means in order to make their living. There is a huge wage gap between artists of all professions, and in music it can get crazy. The difference between the highest and lowestpaid musicians is a staggering $118,800 (Bureau of Labour Statistics). Julicio isn’t making anywhere near these amounts, and in order to survive in San Francisco, he must take up other jobs.
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In addition to DJing for clubs and popular artists, Julicio is a taxi driver for Lyft. “I like Lyft because it’s more human ...you know the CEO, all the guys there, and it’s a cool gig” (Tuarez). Despite the atmosphere there being a lot better than most companies around, albeit for him it is a source of great shame. It is a harsh reminder that work is not always steady, and to remain in San Francisco, finding steady work is crucial. Life in San Francisco is a struggle. Not only must one put up with the hills, the smog, the temperature, and the hippies, the inhabitants have to put up with the cost of living there. The price for everyday things like food, water, and beard trimmers are skyrocketing in the bay area, thanks to the drought and the cost of expensive organic food driving up the prices of regular people food. In fact, the cost of living in San Francisco is over 62% of what it costs to live anywhere else, the second highest in the United States (behind nearby San Jose) (Smartasset). The boom in tech makes it an
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even worse place to live, since affluent Google engineers can afford to pay vast amounts for housing in order to live near the Google headquarters in Mountain View. In other places in the bay area, people who have lived there for generations are being pushed out. This is bad news for someone like Julio Tuarez, who had to give up everything he had in Chile to go to San Francisco for his career. Though, being financially disadvantaged is nothing new to Julio. He did grow up in Chile, which doesn’t have much of a reputation for being a wealthy and prosperous country (A reputation for having a massive coastline, maybe). When he was younger, he had to work weekends at parties and join a band, instead of working on his own. “Difficulties at that time was there wasn’t DJ equipment in Chile or vinyls or nothing like that so, there was, like, the limitations, you know?” He remarked. “But I got creative with, like, old records, you know, taking parts from all different records that I took from my grandma, from Armando, from
“Meeting people and working, you have to maintain skills at what you do, or else they’ll never call you again.”
all of the friends, people came over to my house to aid with chunks of vinyls, I got creative. I never stopped… Until now” (Tuarez). Tuarez is also a family man, and bears the burden of supporting his wife, Mariana, and his daughter, Violeta. Julio and Mariana only recently managed to afford a wedding, around the time of Violeta’s ninth birthday. Violeta lives in Chile most of the time with her biological mother, and only gets to go to San Francisco a few
times a year to see her father. “I think it’s kind of impossible to say what a parent’s love for their child is like without being a parent myself, but, even just when I see in the way that he is with his daughter even the closeness I’ve experienced with her myself and not being her mother, is really special,” remarked his wife. “He definitely suffers a lot not being near [Violeta] every moment during the year, and missing, you know, birthdays and watching her grow by the day to day basis. I know
that he suffers a lot from that, but, it’s been great that year and year she can come for more and more time” (Tuarez). Overall, Julio’s story is typical of a lot of immigrants wishing to pursue the American Dream, it’s relatable to a lot of artists who struggle to get noticed and get adequate pay in order to do what they love, and it’s also relatable to a lot of fathers around the world who have custody issues with their children. He works hard every day, networking and
thinking and writing and tinkering with fine details, and he also must deal with the daily expenses of the second most expensive city in the United States. The ability it takes to facilitate that is truly commendable. As for right now, Julio is working on his career. He’s thinking of getting a manager to contact and work closely with clubs and venues for him to play in, and he is currently actively making music for his portfolio. He hopes to get a record label sometime
soon, but still pays the bills by doing work for Lyft and parties at venues, houses, night clubs, or wherever the need arises for a Disc Jockey. He spends most of his time working at home or hanging out with Armando, but Julio can be seen driving along the sloped streets of San Francisco every day. Keep an eye out.
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urces Cited
Tuarez, Julio. Personal interview. 21 March 2016. ---. Personal interview. April 5, 2016 Tuarez, Mariana. Personal interview. March 29, 2016 Figueroa, Armando. Personal Interview. April 5, 2016 Wallace, Nick. “What Is the True Cost of Living in San Francisco?”SmartAsset.com. Smart Asset, 28 Jan. 2016. Web. 22 Apr. 2016. Torpey, Elka. “Same Occupation, Different Pay: How Wages Vary : Career Outlook: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 15 May 2015. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
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