I'm Dead

by Taylor Whitehouse

David Roy McClymonds, a student and freelance writer for local music and skateboard magazines, has died.

The adventuresome, punk rock enthusiast collided with a bus yesterday while skateboarding down a large hill. He was 24 years old.

He was a journalism major at San Francisco State, and did freelance work for Paying and Pain, Low Card and Maximum Rock and Roll. The last of which is well-known to Bay Area punk rockers and musicians.

McClymonds traveled through Europe, and played in punk bands in Spain and Switzerland.

He was once a member of an infamous local band, Dreadknox, which was banned from half of the venues in Sacramento.

He spent a lot of time at rock shows in San Francisco, and moved from Sacramento to the Mission District three years ago.

“I am attracted to the fact that it is a very international city,” McClymonds said in an interview shortly before his death.

When asked why he attended fewer punk rock shows, he spoke of how his interests had shifted with age.

“I don’t have enough angst for punk shows anymore,” he said with a smile. “I expanded and started listening to a lot of other music, and got into other things.”

He also enjoyed cooking, culture and the arts.

His parents, Roy McClymonds and Kimberly Williams, moved to Redlands, Calif. shortly after David’s birth. The family moved to Sacramento when David was three.

McClymonds was born at a hospital in the middle of a corn field in Central Ill. And his grandmother always told him that he was a vegetarian because of this.