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Lizard King

Christopher Gardner From cafe to corporation, this soul is not for sale By Eric Johnson Web-page designer Scott Apathy, former punk rock singer and recovering "killer green bud" connoisseur, went to Campbell's Westmont High School--"in the shadow of the Pruneyard Tower," he says proudly. "We used to joke about which one of us was going to turn out to be the yuppie working in the Tower," he says of his school days. "It's ironic that it wound up being me." As we talk, Apathy is supervising the installation of a new 396-cubic-inch engine in a 1968 Chevy half-ton. Ten years ago, he learned to drive in this truck. Back in high school, Apathy was working at the Fantasy Records store in the Pruneyard Plaza mall. He was into Rocky Horror and Black Flag then; now he's "way into code." In 1990, Apathy went to work for his good friend and bandmate Ephraim Lindenbaum, who had decided to turn his video production company, BPG, into a high-tech marketing outfit. Apathy signed on to build multimedia applications. By the time the World Wide Web was developed, he had already wired Filemaster Pro--which became a key tool in every Web-page-builder's kit--and entered the Internet when Netscape 1.0 and the original HTML release were state of the art. Name: Scott Apathy Age: 28 Occupation: Web-page designer City of Origin: Saratoga How Long Here? 28 years Hobbies and Interests: Rock & roll Favorite Place in the Valley: The Pruneyard in Campbell BPG became a player in the new multimedia marketing game and took over a floor in the building Apathy and his pals used to joke about. Apathy may be living a variation of the Silicon Valley yuppie lifestyle, but he doesn't look like his '80s predecessors. Of course there are no button-down shirts or pinstriped suits in his wardrobe, but there are no golf shirts or Dockers, either. Nevertheless, he admits that his life is now about "knuckling down" and concentrating on the work. Even though he spends his nights "on the floor" at BPG and his days in the Campbell Roasting Company (in the Pruneyard) crunching code on his hotrod laptop (equipped, he brags, with a Ricochet cellular modem), Apathy has not abandoned his rock & roll roots. As the Webmaster of KOME's tricked-out home page, Apathy still gets to party with rock stars. Last month, he shot the band Green Day with a digital camera uplinked live to KOME's page. "Dude," he says, "I just feel lucky." Last month, Apathy launched his own startup with a team from BPG. The new company, Department 9, will continue to build Web pages for corporate clients. They will, Apathy promises, be Web pages with attitude. "There's nothing corporate about me and my boys," he says. "We're more like a rock & roll band." The New Silicon Valley: Suddenly we're cool. It's all about speed. The next generation of movers and shakers. Silicon Valley through the decades. [ San Jose | Metroactive Central | Archives ]