RICHMOND — Burnt Ramen, an underground venue that served as a sanctuary for East Bay punks and metalheads, recently went up in flames, a poetic ending for a venue shuttered following the Ghost Ship fire of 2016.
Michael Malin, the venue’s owner who is known in the community as Mykee Ramen, purchased 111 Espee Ave. in 1998 for $100,000. He soon began living in the 5,458-square-foot structure, which formerly housed a brewery and produce store, and turned it into a hub for punk gatherings.
A fire in the early hours of Jan. 12 largely gutted the place, but Malin said Burnt Ramen’s heyday had long been over.
“This place was the people, the community,” Malin said. “It’s been dead for a while. It’s been dead since Ghost Ship died and the city killed it.”
After nearly two decades of hosting underground concerts, Burnt Ramen saw its doors padlocked in 2016 when a team of city inspectors and officials found the building to be in violation of numerous health and safety codes.
Malin largely blames former Richmond Mayor Tom Butt for the venue’s demise. A tip from Butt to city staff prompted the inspection. The former mayor’s motivation, Butt said, was to avoid Richmond experiencing its very own Ghost Ship warehouse fire.
The warehouse in Oakland was a do-it-yourself art space. After a fire in 2016 claimed 36 lives, a ripple effect of heartbreak spread across the arts scene and prompted city officials to crack down on similar underground spaces, such as Burnt Ramen.
Malin lost friends in the blaze and was still mourning their loss when he was notified of the inspection that would eventually shutter his building.
While Butt said he’s sorry to learn of the fire at Burnt Ramen, asserting “nobody deserves that and I hope he’s able to come out of it OK,” the former mayor is unapologetic about alerting city staff about the building’s unsafe conditions.
“If he wants to blame me for getting it red tagged, I have no problem with that,” Butt said. “Staff inspected the building and found that it was a dangerous property. They did what they should have done and red tagged it. That’s their job.”
The response by area punks to the closure was swift.
On Dec. 20, 2016, just days after the building was red-tagged, a group of Burnt Ramen supporters, with their colored hair, studded and distressed clothing, tattoos and piercings, marched to City Hall and implored councilmembers to help keep the space open and their friends housed.
At the time, Malin was living out of his van. Other tenants, his friends, were also forced to relocate. Many have left the area altogether in the years since, Malin said.
“I thought, let’s bring back the good times, let’s do this,” Malin said. “I also didn’t want to see the mayor win. That was part of it. Now it’s like whatever, you can’t fight the city.”
The magic of Burnt Ramen had to be experienced to be understood, said Dan Abbott, a former West Contra Costa resident and musician who performed in the space with his band in the 1990s and early 2000s. Abbott was also among the crew behind the feature length documentary, “Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk.”
During the turn of the millennia, many Bay Area youths felt left behind by the region’s shift toward high paying tech jobs and a rising surveillance state, Abbott said. And aspiring East Bay rockers, especially those under 21, had few places to hone their skills.
Burnt Ramen provided a solution.
“Burnt Ramen was a place where you could feel free and away from prying eyes. You could lock the door of your warehouse and have an evening that belongs to people that were there,” Abbott said.
Unlike other underground spaces, Burnt Ramen managed to avoid getting swiftly shut down throughout the years. Malin said the police were rarely called and neighbors hardly ever complained.
The exterior and interior of the building were covered in art. Posters, memorabilia of the building’s past uses and other random objects hung from the walls.
Skaters made use of a ramp in one of the rooms, a low platform acted as the perfect stage for bands to perform, and space still remained for mosh pits.
“There was a sense of playing for your friends, even if you didn’t specifically know their names,” Abbott said. “You were part of the experience. A good show like that is like a cult that lasts one night. You walk out and it’s over but you carry a little piece with you.”
Following Burnt Ramen’s closure, Malin has turned to building and repairing bikes out of his workshop in Oakland to get by, but he’s long held onto the hope that he’d be able to fix his building on Espee Avenue and move back in.
The ultimate vision, he said, would be to restore it as a live-work space for artists with dorm-style bedrooms, a rooftop garden and solar farm.
What’s delayed even paired down versions of that vision from coming to fruition is unclear. Malin points the finger at city planning staff and changing demands for getting the building up to code.
City records paint a different picture in which Malin struggled to find the necessary experts to develop plans for repairing the building or settle on acceptable workaround plans to move forward.
After years of back and forth with city staff, Malin felt like finally cutting his losses and listed the property for sale for $400,000 in 2024. He’s struggled to find a buyer, given that the building is red-tagged, and the fire will likely only complicate that plan further, he said.
The sale price has since been cut to $299,000, according to a listing on Zillow. Malin is also seeking donations through a GoFundMe campaign which notes demolition could cost around $100,000.
“It’s been the end of an era,” Malin said. “Everyone else has moved along and I’m still here cleaning up this stuff. You just have to walk away from it all.”
In the minds of people like Abbott, though, the music will live on.
“People that feel about arts and music passionately enough are going to make it happen,” said Abbott, who gave credit to Malin for maintaining the music venue for so long. “If you’re interested in a thing and looking for it, you will find it or it will find you eventually. There’s underground culture happening everywhere.”
