James Irwin for the Bay Citizen

Episco Disco founder Father Bertie Pearson

Last Saturday, tourists, church-going locals and anyone else who wandered into Grace Cathedral around 6 p.m. were greeted with an odd sight. A flotilla of floral bedsheets, sewn together and held aloft by a bunch of large, round, multicolored balloons, formed a makeshift tent near the back entrance. Artist Adam Wier, 33, and curators Eve Ekman, 30, and Jean Cooney, 32, stood guard, quietly debating the best way to position it above the indoor labyrinth. Every few minutes, one of them would disappear and come back holding more balloons, lifting the tent higher.

Towards the front of the chapel, various bearded young men briskly arranged instruments and amplifiers. By 6:30 p.m., deep, otherworldly noises started to emanate from the darkened area near the church's altar area. It was the discordant, unmistakable racket of sound check. More young men in plaid shirts and young women in heels began to file in. They poked around the tent, which was lit from within by a handful of flashlights like a little kid's slumber party fort, or took a seat in the pews, facing the bands. Some just stayed outside, smoking.

And again and again, in hushed tones, the regular visitors to Grace Cathedral asked each other and the small band of organizers, "What is going on?" Quite often, a tall, young priest wearing a fitted black suit would step up to answer. "It's an art and music event," he repeated patiently, "called Episco Disco."

Begun in the spring of 2009 by Father Bertie Pearson, along with the curatorial team Paradise Now — Ekman and Cooney, a Ph.D candidate at UC Berkeley's School of Social Welfare and independent art curator respectively — the monthly Episco Disco has proved itself to be one of the most interesting nightlife events in San Francisco. With an inspired mix of tres-chic bands, DJs, art installations and a huge church, the first few events had about 40 guests, growing to about a peak of 400 for February's installment.

The event's tone varies wildly, depending on the performers. This past Saturday's line-up —Barn Owl, Danny Paul Grody, Portraits and headliner Daniel Higgs, who is himself a preacher —felt a bit heavy, with Barn Owl bringing a drone sound and Higgs' elegiac voice reaching the rafters. This is not always the case. At past events, the curators have turned the foyer of Grace Cathedral into a bumping dance party courtesy of DJ Bus Station John and brought out-there, synth-heavy, freak-out music from local acts like Bronze and Jonas Reinhardt. The art installations, one-night-only affairs that must be installed and then taken down over the course of one evening, are by definition site specific; successful ones, like Elizabeth Parks Kibbey's suspension of more than a thousand flowers in main hall this past winter, make the most of the vast space.

With such a strange mix of elements, it can be hard to explain what, exactly, Episco is all about. Curator Cooney has a patented answer for this. "The best way I can get it through people's heads," she said, "is by describing Bertie."

An Austin, Texas, native, Pearson's religious education was heavily informed by his mother, an Episcopalian/Buddhist. Like many smart, sensitive kids, Pearson felt like a bit of a social outcast, and he dealt with that in the typical ways of the time: Dungeons & Dragons, punk rock, academic success. By the time he moved to the Bay Area in 1999 to attend UC Berkeley, his musical tastes had broadened — he was listening to hip hop, Kraftwerk, Devo, hardcore and more — and he quickly fell into the local music scene with bands like Shavers and Ghost Orchid. Sporting a veritable uniform of slicked-back hair, porcelain skin and tight black suits and always ready for some memorable onstage theatrics (the word "writhing" came up often), Pearson became a constant presence in S.F. nightlife.

This lifestyle did not exactly scream future man of the cloth, even to his close friends. "The first time that I knew who he was, he was crawling down the bar at Beauty Bar," said Jeffrey Paradise (Fare), with whom Pearson formed a popular electro-pop band, Paradise Boys, around 2002. It wasn't until four years after their first meeting and subsequent shared apartments that Paradise knew where Pearson was going on Sunday mornings. 

"It definitely wasn't cool in our group of friends to be religious...but he was really respectful of me, in how he explained it," Paradise said. "It changed our friendship for the better."

Pearson himself says that he found no contradiction in his interests. He had known since he was a young child that he wanted to be a priest, but fear of an awkward reception of this news — as well as a lack of occasion to discuss religion — kept him from speaking out. "I was really shy about talking about being religious," Pearson said, chewing on a cookie on a recent Monday afternoon. "I didn't want people to think I was a fundamentalist. I worried that people would judge me." Ordained in 2007, he was hired as youth coordinator at the Diocese of California.

James Irwin for the Bay Citizen

Artist Adam Wier's installation in S.F.'s Grace Cathedral

Leap of faith

While the event has no overt religious messaging, Episco Disco was conceived as part of a larger effort to bring more young people through Grace Cathedral's doors. Seeing an opportunity in Pearson's connection to the local arts community, Pearson's boss, Bishop Marc Andrus, instructed him to consider creating events. "The least served of our population — and the least served of most religions — is young adult," Andruss said, defining that group as the late college years through early 30s. "It's often a time when people leave home, away from whatever traditions they might have been a part of...so we decided to put a focus on that." In addition to Episco, Pearson is working on a dinner party, with the menu provided by leftovers from the church's food pantry, to open up an interfaith dialog.

Holding a regular nighttime event for secular crowds obviously carries risk for Grace Cathedral, but the event has gone smoothly, save one major incident. In January, a woman tagged swastikas and other disturbing material in the bathroom and in the chapel. Pearson says that he did consider shutting down Episco after that — "I was really upset" — but Andrus stressed that what was more remarkable was that there was but one instance of vandalism.

And, indeed, it did seem that the event's surroundings exerted a powerful force on the audience. It made for some goofy moments: One man standing on the steps of the church swore in conversation, and then reflexively covered his mouth. Some professed to not know exactly how to party in a church. "I've never actually been inside Grace Cathedral," said Phil Maisel, 28, a photographer. "I did think about taking my hat off." The crowd moved in and out of the pews, sometimes sitting facing the bands, which occupied a darkened spot near the altar, and then sometimes congregating around Wier's homey tent over the labyrinth for some schmoozing. Brown paper bags were furtively passed around, but none flaunted their drinking. After Daniel Higgs did his last few ecstatic yelps, at around 10:30 p.m., Pearson grabbed the mic and, adopting the tone of a carnival barker, wished everyone a good night. People began reluctantly shuffling towards the chilly night air. The sacred and profane, coming together for the evening, parted ways for another month.