Spaces like this are the only way we have any sort of viable arts scene where anyone is making any money. There is virtually [no other] option for a thriving performance space in this city without occupying these spaces. [They also] offer the most support of trans and genderqueer folks. That’s a large part of what last night should have been about, what it started out about. That group of people is totally sidelined in the dominant nightlife culture of a gentrifying Oakland.

–Juliet Gordon, 26, who fronts the pop band The Classical, was a denizen of the Ghost Ship, as the warehouse was known to local artists and musicians, as quoted in the SFChronicle