Help Rachel Carns Buy Her Punk House, Home of 25 Years

Our friend Rachel may be losing her home of nearly 25 years. This all happened very quickly—just last month she came home to find, out of nowhere, an eviction notice on the door: TERMINATION DATE DECEMBER 31, 2024. But we are hoping to turn this devastating upset into a life-changing opportunity: with your help, she could actually have an opportunity to buy the house! Time is short, and we are calling all friends/fans/fam to come together to not only help Rachel navigate this time of uncertainty and buy her longtime home, but also to save the house itself, an aging punk landmark, the kind of house that made Olympia a cheap-rent haven for broke punks with big dreams who changed culture in basements, the kind of house that current-day "development" loves to tear down and replace with soulless overpriced multiplex crap. It goes without saying that this is also the kind of house that needs a LOT of repairs (estimated 50k+) to qualify for a loan. Rachel is working with a realtor, and the landlord is giving Rachel first dibs on buying the house. Things are in motion to make this happen, but nothing is certain, and every dollar counts. By organizing this GoFundMe I hope to help ease for Rachel the financial shock of suddenly carrying a mortgage (likely 2-3x her current housing costs), the accompanying taxes and insurance, and most importantly to help her fund the looming 50k+ in structural repairs. With your help, this could really happen. Let's make it happen!

Some of you know Rachel from seeing her around. Hello, eyebrows! Hello queer boldness! Hello legs! Others of you know her from her many beloved bands (Kicking Giant, The Need, The King Cobra, Nudity, too many others to list). Or maybe you're a fan of Magic Kombucha, the first batches brewed in the kitchen of this very same house and served to homies at dinner parties and secret cafes before it became the celebrated bubbly it is today—a human-sized self-sustaining small biz that, in line with Rachel's punk life ethic, gives local musicians and artists flexible self-driven part time work while keeping the booch affordable for the people. Whether you know her or not, Rachel's artwork and its signature style are instantly recognizable, as she designed literally hundreds of album covers, posters and t-shirts for your fave west coast art/punk/queer bands from the mid-90s thru the 2010s (including a couple years as in-house designer for Kill Rock Stars) as well as art stuffs for small punk biz, queer-run art galleries, DIY punk/rock venues nationwide, and the list goes on. Maybe you were lucky enough to see the all-too-prescient sci-fi queer/trans rock opera The Transfused, a full year in the making, which Rachel co-wrote with many comrades and which brought the local LGBTQ+ community together (again by the hundreds!) for a series of electrifying and unforgettable performances. Or maybe Rachel set up a show for your band. If so, she probably made a killer flyer and worked the door and brought you all home and partied with you in the kitchen and set you up on couches and futons and made coffee and pancakes in the morning. Or maybe you were a guest at one of Rachel's lavish dinner parties, or her legendary 50th birthday role-play party, or maybe you stopped by that one weird Xmas when she opened her door for anyone who had nowhere to go. Or maybe you are one of the 30+ brilliant people who've shared the house with her—artists, queers, musicians, painters, chefs, scientists, witches, weirdos, 25 years of vibrant bad-assery passing through and leaving your mark—was it really not that long ago that rent was less than $200 each?? I'm not crying, YOU'RE crying... There is nostalgia here, yes, but more so an instinct to preserve a legacy, to help keep this house with all its rich queer punk history not a distant memory but one that continues to build stories and memories that matter for our community, for our people.

If you have been a fan of Rachel, or you just see her around and like her, or you appreciate that she’s a balls-out lifelong weirdo/queerdo, or you love her booch or her ass or her food or her drumming or her eyebrows, or you want to support what’s left of DIY artists and musicians living in Oly, or you are rich, or you are not rich but you’re someone who likes to help a pal out, or you hate the idea of yet another punk house vanishing, or you stayed there on tour and remember it fondly, or or or or or... Please donate what you can and spread the word / re-post. Let's help Rachel buy her house. Thank you, we love you!

In solidarity,

Rachel’s friend Tamala