Vanessa up in flames

Tijuana punk band DFMK were on their way through California for their RnR Spring West Coast tour, when they had to pull over to the side of the road to attend Vanessa’s wounds. Vanessa was the band's beloved white 1997 Ford Econoline cargo van.

“Vanessa started breaking down since day two,” DFMK’s bass player, Marco Martínez, tells the Reader. “We were on our way to Santa Cruz when the van started smoking. We had to stop in San Luis Obispo and cancel our Santa Cruz show. We rented a car and went to Oakland for a scheduled show the following day. We left Vanessa with the roadies for them to take care of her. They didn’t. Instead they got drunk with bottomless mimosas and got kicked out of a bar.”

At the time of the breakdown, Vanessa's passengers included the members of DFMK (Jorge ‘el Cap’ Zepeda, Alejandro ‘el Cota’ Martínez, Alexis ‘el Boti’ Díaz, and Marco Martínez) and three roadies (Pablo Díaz, Miguel Martínez, and Danny Lopez).

“We went back for Vanessa to find out that they couldn’t find a part that she needed, but they were able to do a quick fix that was supposed to last for months. We started our drive toward Portland. Just after a few hours on the road, the differential started leaking oil. We had to detour to Oakland for mechanic friends to check out what was wrong. They told us they had to replace a bunch of parts and that it would cost a lot of money.”

DFMK had to cancel their shows in Oregon and Washington. Instead, they rescheduled all shows to be in the Bay Area and borrowed a smaller van from a friend from Oakland.

“We played six shows and decided to head back to Tijuana with a broken van. The plan was to keep Vanessa running by giving her oil constantly. But two hours south of San Francisco the van caught on fire. We had an extinguisher, because they warned us that it could be a possibility. But the fire spread quickly and the extinguisher didn’t help. We had no choice but to leave all behind and watch Vanessa go up in flames.”

Vanessa burnt to the ground with DFMK’s gear, merchandise, clothes, passports, and money. None of the members were injured, though they were stranded in Modesto for a while. Everyone is safe and back in Tijuana, but heartbroken for their loss.

RIP Vanessa. #TodosSomosVanessa