Halloween is fast approaching with plenty of spooky fun to choose from. This Saturday, Stay Strange San Diego will host its annual Cemetery Creep — a bike ride that begins at North Park Community Park and ends at Mount Hope Cemetery in southeastern San Diego.
Sam Lopez, curator for the noise music collective Stay Strange San Diego, met with me at Mount Hope Cemetery to discuss the upcoming Cemetery Creep.
"We will meet at 9:30 a.m. at North Park Community Park on Saturday," Lopez said. "We don't wear spandex. I mean, most of the time you see us, we're just a big cloud of black, dressed-in-black riders, and that's how we sort of identify against other types of riders. We're really chill. It's in our name, it's Street Creep. We're not racing, we're creeping, right?"
This will be the fourth Cemetery Creep, and the inspiration for it came during COVID-19.
"When COVID came around, a lot of us were thinking, well, what do we do? You know, we couldn't really go anywhere. So I started riding my bicycle around town for exercise to keep the blood flowing," Lopez recalled. "Then when COVID lifted a little bit, I started inviting friends to come along with me on these bike rides. And so we kind of started this little bike crew called Street Creep San Diego. And it's made up of mostly musicians and artists, but anybody can join. And that's the beauty of it. Everybody's invited."
Sitting beside the Marshall Mausoleum, the final destination of this year's Cemetery Creep, Lopez expressed a deep affection for Mount Hope.
"I've visited cemeteries all over the world — ossuaries, bone houses, forgotten cemeteries — and so finding a cemetery that I really connected with is rare," Lopez said. "And this one I feel really connected to because it's got a trolley running through it, it's got charm. Mount Hope is more like of the people. So maybe that's why I connect with it, 'cause it's of the people."
Although Cemetery Creep is a fun event, the riders respect those buried at Mount Hope.
"That's really important, super, super important," Lopez stated. "We just walked through the cemetery, you and I, and we've noticed that there's gravestones that are toppled over and covered with grass. And I think it's super important for us to remember people. And I think that coming to the cemetery gives it life, which is ironic, right? But being here is just giving life back to people and remembering people who may not be remembered. And that's super important, especially like for myself with, you know, Día de los Muertos. We remember people and that keeps them alive."
But Cemetery Creep is also about celebrating Halloween.
"So this kind of goes back to being a kid," Lopez said. "Remember when we were kids and it was Halloween and you would dress up and you would do a little parade around the blacktop. This is kind of the same idea. We're going to be dressing up, we're going to be on our bikes, and we're going to be highly visible. When we get to the cemetery, we'll do a little cemetery loop and just ride around the cemetery a little bit, and then we'll meet up at one of the mausoleums that we usually meet up (at), and we'll do our creeper treat and give out some candy."
Stay Strange San Diego does more than host an annual bike ride.
"We started in 2013 putting on music shows all over San Diego, everywhere from fight clubs to museums to libraries to Chicano Park," Lopez explained. "We focus mostly on noise music or experimental music because we wanted to find a safe place for people to enjoy this kind of music. So if you see something that says Stay Strange, then you know that it's going to be something that's going to be noise-related or avant-garde or experimental."
The collective's next music event will bring doom percussionist Gong Slayer back to San Diego for a performance at St. Francis Chapel in Balboa Park. But sadly, it is already sold out.
Watch the video below for a mini-tour of Mount Hope Cemetery with Lopez. Find out which famous author is buried there, what patron saint has a statue and why a bunch of tombstones mark graves without bodies.
