..:: world of bryan ::..

“we are still in Eden; the wall that shuts us out of the garden
is our own ignorance and folly.”

Henry David Thoreau

Looking for my resume?
or my DJ bio?

My name is Bryan Hughes [More Photos] and I have lived in the Bay Area since 1985 and in San Francisco since 1989. I left my home in Mountain Home, Idaho at the age of 17 to come to the California College of Arts and Crafts on a full tuition scholarship. Growing up in a loving, but lower middle class family whom I love dearly, this was the only way I was going to make it out of the rural town of 5,000 tucked between the mountains and the high plain desert.

I graduated in 1989 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Industrial Design. A year before I graduated, I found myself working as a programmer, writing software for a company in San Francisco. Turns out I was a natural at it.

So here I was programming computers in my Junior year in college and becoming quiet obsessed with it. I was definitely a natural at it, and it was creating somewhat of a conundrum - questioning the past three years of my life pursuing a career that in one afternoon I realized I did not want. So I finished my last year at the California College of Arts and Crafts and continued on my path with computers and technology.

Well, to make a long story even longer, I have been blessed to have already lived several lifetimes. At the age of 23, I started working for a new startup in Sausalito called Sense8 with Eric Gullichsen and Pat Gelband. Two brilliant engineers who were one of the first to implement real-time 3D immersive graphics on consumer level computers. In other words, they had invented one of the first commercially viable Virtual Reality systems. I came on board, writing many of the low-level device drivers for all the sensory input devices, head mount displays as well as building worlds. After a short while, I found myself being invited around the world to give lectures on Virtual Reality. These included Linz, Austria; Hamburg, Germany; East Berlin, Germany (1 year after the wall fell); Amsterdam, Holland; Rio De Janeiro, Brazil; New York, Toronto and Mexico. It was am amazing part of my life where I quickly became friends with notable people such as Timothy Leary and Terrence McKenna who were also lecturing on similar topics.

From these experiences, in the same year, I founded a 501(c)(3) organization called the Renaissance Foundation which was dedicated to exposing underprivileged children to advanced technologies such as Virtual Reality - the goal was to offer half day workshops where the children would spend part of the day building their world either from scratch or pre made objects (depending on their skill). After which, we would load their world into the Virtual Reality system and allow them to play and fly around the world they built. The mission was simply - to touch and inspire these underprivileged children so that they would be empowered to rise out of the environment that would likely keep them from achieving their potential.

More on that part of my life later...

Today, I have settled into being a techno geek working for another startup here in San Francisco called Bridgestream. This is my sixth one. I have worked with WebMD, Shutterfly, Spoke Software, Friendster and founded MTC3 Enterprises. For anyone who is interested, I am a Software and Database Architect specializing in social networking, massively large databases, Java and building enterprise systems. I have been involved in starting so many companies that I suspect the next one will be my own. I am happy to say, that it is on the drawing board, called Simdeo. More on my professional life...

I have a few projects that are near and dear to my heart that I am involved in, check out projects to find out more about them.

One of my many hobbies is music, for which I am obsessed with. I have recently been building out my own home music studio and working on producing my own music. Check out sounds to hear my mixes and some of my early attempts at making my own music.

For the past 10 years, I have been a DJ here in San Francisco. In 1992, with my partner DJ Jim Hopkins (Twitch Records, San Francisco) I started two local independent record labels ZoeMagik Records and sister label City of Tribes Records. I was pretty much the driving force in signing and releasing underground artists such as Young American Primitive, Tasti Box, Daisy Glow, Single Cell Orchestra, and Essa3 on ZoeMagik; Bringing San Francisco to the forefront of the underground dance community.

Shortly after the launch of ZoeMagik, and the incredible reception by the European underground, Jim and I launched City of Tribes Records. I was also closely involved in San Francisco’s early rave scene in 1991 with the productions of ToonTown.

I got my big break DJing New Years Eve 1993 at Product (1015 Folsom, SF). For the following three years, I teamed with Lewis Walden (Sugar, San Francisco) and continued playing every Saturday night at 1015. Working with other friends, I also started an underground Friday night party called Revolution as well as Tribal (Stud, SF) on Thursday nights.

I must admit, one of my more notable moments as a DJ was when I opened for Paul Oakenfold and Mark Lewis at Illuminaughty, Burningman 2000.

From 2001 through 2004, I was also part of a DJ tag team duo called Gryder and Hughes with my partner Keith Gryder, spinning at some of the larger more notable parties and clubs around San Francisco. I have several of our mixes still available under sounds.

I have been a regular at some of San Francisco’s most notable underground parties and clubs such as Sanctuary (525 Harrison, SF), Palladium (525 Harrison, SF), Sundance (Guerneville), Metropolis (Barnveld, SF), Fifes (Guerneville), Bump (Cat Club, SF), X-Men (715 Harrison, SF), Powerhouse (SF) and Sweet (Cell Space, SF)! Other recent venues have also included Qool (111 Minna, SF) and Cool Down.

I have been pretty quiet his past year as a DJ, focusing more on building my studio and producing music.

Not to mention restoring Monasteries in Nepal.