We have seen crates evolve from being used to hold milk to store records and even used as stairs. At the top of the hill in Daly City, living among small businesses that offer work uniforms and training gyms, there’s a record store, barbershop, and a t-shirt printing shop sharing a singular space.
Connor, Darryl, and Flash are the leading players of the Sheesh! collective, all started as DJs having a weekly late-night radio show. They all met through their love of music. Years later, that love has translated into their own space to show their love of music and share it with others.
“It’s just part of who we are,” Connor said. “Being DJs, it just made sense, having a shop? Sure we could just sell clothes, but let’s showcase our music taste too.”
They initially started Sheesh! as a DJ collective, which later transpired into a late-night radio show. The weekly Sheesh! Radio episodes could showcase local artists and help other local DJs get their names out in the Bay Area. But, unfortunately, when they started Sheesh Radio in the late 2010s, there weren’t as many spaces for people to showcase their talents as there are today.
“Back in 2016, 2018, there wasn’t any places like that,” Connor said. “A lot of other radio stations that you see have popped up now. There wasn’t that platform. So I feel like D [Darryl] did a really good job at showcasing not only our homies but people that should have eyes on them.”
The inception of the name Sheesh! came from Darryl seeing a Newport cigarette advertisement on the BART train while listening to what might have been a Young Thug song and thinking that “sheesh” would look good in the Newport font, and from there, they have been growing as a group. Darryl was the person who got Connor to get into DJing before the formation of Sheesh! as a group or a record store.
Flash got involved through a mutual friend that he and Darryl share. He made some t-shirts and ended up selling them at an event they threw at F8. Darryl thought it would be the perfect opportunity to have him on the show when he started dabbling in DJing. And from then, when Flash learned they were opening Sheesh as a record store, it was the best way to get involved.
“I found out they were doing the shop, and I was like, ‘Yo, I want to get involved.’ These are some of my best homies,” Flash said.
The roads they took through the landscape of music to come together all started at a different place. For Darryl, it began with the producer duo TNGHT, composed of artists Hudson Mohawke and Lunice. Then, he had a moment where he realized that anyone could incorporate rap and techno music together, which led him on his musical journey.
Flash found his way into DJing just from being an obsessive fan of music. He said he would dig for records and search for sounds related to the music he already enjoys. However, once he saw his friends getting into the mixing side of music and seeing DJ controller sets, the exposure opened his mind more to the idea of being more than just a listener.
“It’s been cool,” Flash said. “The shop has been nice because we all support each other, and we all work together to uplift the shop as a whole and uplift each other. We’ve all put each other in contact with people.”
“We started playing together and then started playing on the radio show,” he said. “I had a bunch of friends that also DJed, so I would help bring them into the radio show and put them on. It’s been a crazy ride, actually.”
DJing was not a thought that initially crossed Connor’s mind. When he originally thought about what it meant to be a DJ, it was paralyzing to him. The idea of having to touch turntables was intimidating to him, but seeing people use equipment like a DJ Controller and CDJs made him realize becoming a DJ is tangible.
At one point, Connor would go to places like Beauty Bar SF and different local venues; he could see people like Darryl put on good hip hop DJ sets, which was a rare occurrence. Seeing people play the music that he actually knew and enjoyed made him see the world of DJing differently, which could actually be done.
“Before, I was like, ‘Oh, it’s like EDM DJs and like techno, dubstep and all of that,’” Connor said. “Then seeing the homies, seeing D doing it with Sheesh and all that, I’m like ‘Damn, this is tight.’”
Transitioning from a mixtape series to a late-night local radio show into a record shop was not a change that any of them anticipated, and it is still very much a work in progress. Nevertheless, Sheesh! Records, as a store, is something that just so happened to happen. Around December of 2020, Connor and Darryl were toying around with the idea of having a brick-and-mortar location.
There was a location right next to the now-closed Family Room, a place they frequented which Connor felt was the perfect location for the Sheesh shop, but the cost did not match what they had in mind. Luckily, they have people around them, like the owner of the shop where they are housed now, Billy, who reached out to them and allowed them to open up shop in March of 2021.
“It’s been cool,” Flash said. “The shop has been nice because we all support each other, and we all work together to uplift the shop as a whole and uplift each other. We’ve all put each other in contact with people.”
It has been approximately six months since their grand opening, and they are all just taking it one day at a time, with each day looking different from the last. However, from opening the shop, the Sheesh! Team has strengthened their relationships and the people they share the space with and garnered new relationships with local artists.
“At the end of the day, community is everything,” Connor said. “We wouldn’t have these parties. We wouldn’t be packing out the place, there wouldn’t be this sense of ‘Okay, we’re doing this for a bigger cause.’ We’re not just doing it for ourselves anymore. There’s a much bigger picture that we’re playing a part of.”
There have been people they have never heard of coming into the shop and looking to work with them. Artists like Baghead, Afterthought, and many other local Bay Area artists help make the work worthwhile. These experiences exceed any expectation this early in the life of Sheesh!.
“It’s really just the connections,” Connor says. “It’s really big. Music, arts, fashion, you name it, we’ve met people in all of that.”
The community they have goes beyond the connections they are making through music and the shop. They have people on their team who make the daily workings at the Sheesh! shop possible. Outside of Connor, Darryl, and Flash, other crew members like David (Coach Dayday), 2Phonez, BertTheClerk, Goon, Pharoah, NATE, and the newest addition, ZM0. And these are all the people who contribute to making Sheesh! what it is today.
When you enter the building, the first thing you come across is the gem, Sheesh! Records. This is one of those spaces people love to be a part of when they arrive. On the right wall, a mural by San Francisco artist and Berkeley student Virgil Warren greets you, while on the opposing wall, there are the Sheesh team’s favorite records hanging up. Initially, They had to bring in some of the records from their own collections to create the store’s inventory.
Recently, the inventory supply has changed. Today, Connor, Darryl, and Flash do not have to bring their personal favorites from their stash to stock the store. Instead, they have been doing more preorders for records and even got a record store day account for when the next one occurs later this year. The community around them even helps them get music into the store.
“I got this old head; he used to be a DJ back in the 90s,” Darryl said. “He just hits me up randomly; ‘Hey, I got 30 crates for you, I got 20 crates for you.’”
Daily, they have their records on the wall, music playing, and people coming in and out from the back of the shop to the front. But every day looks a little bit different. If they are having an event, they get there early, clean up, smoke some weed, and get ready for what will occur. Before all of that, though, Flash sages the entire store to make sure the energy is right.
Not only is the Sheesh! shop helps them to come together, but this also invites people to come by and chill. There’s music playing people shopping for records; overall, it’s a home for everyone to be and relate through the thing they enjoy, music.
“Honestly, it feels like just coming here and just hanging with the homies,” Connor said. “It doesn’t feel like we’re working our job, or we gotta take this shit literally. This is what we be doing. We just have a spot for it.”
There is a strong sense of community if you know people in the Bay Area. Individually, to them, having a community is significant being in such a niche place. Darryl describes San Francisco as a hidden secret, and since they created Sheesh! as a physical place, it’s been a connection for everyone in the Bay.
Sheesh! is a place where anyone who comes in can just exist. There is no sense of egos. Anyone can come in one day and leave out with a community unit they will have for life. Through Sheesh!, Flash has met amazing people who have given him a never-ending circle of gratitude for them and what they do.
“At the end of the day, community is everything,” Connor said. “We wouldn’t have these parties. We wouldn’t be packing out the place, there wouldn’t be this sense of ‘Okay, we’re doing this for a bigger cause.’ We’re not just doing it for ourselves anymore. There’s a much bigger picture that we’re playing a part of.”