Safe Spaces: Sailor Poon's Converted Tour Bus

The environments we inhabit and the spaces we create for ourselves inform and shape us just as we go about shaping and decorating them. “Safe Spaces” is a new series meant to explore that relationship, by visiting female and female-identifying creators and doers in the spaces and places nearest and dearest to them.

All-grrrl, punk-influenced, “post-sincerity,” local Austin band Sailor Poon gets around.

Whether it’s crossing the state of Texas, performing around the local Austin scene, roadtripping out to NOLA, or making the short drive to their recent appearance at the inaugural Sound on Sound Fest, the six piece performs a sound best captured live.

The transitory nature of their most powerful platform — the stage  — necessitates a certain level of mobility. While the band practices at the home of member Mariah Stevens-Ross, they hit the road in an airport-shuttle-cum-tour-bus dubbed “Cream Puff” by bus driver/owner Cheraya Esters, Sailor Poon’s drummer.

Cheraya came to acquire the bus, capable of running on both vegetable oil and male tears, in January of this year. When she purchased it from William Kennedy of Reptar, it was impounded and covered in tags — though not yet graffitied with the “Cream Puff” signifier that would become its namesake. That was just one of several renovations she undertook to make the bus Sailor Poon’s own.

Cheraya also removed the standard bus chairs, outfitted the interior with steel and wood cabinets and added an appropriate “white rockstar futon” inside. The result is an open “floor plan” that can currently fit all six members and (most) their instruments.

Cream Puff is now all set to see Sailor Poon through their next tour out to New York and the Northeast. In the future, the band hopes to add a studio/living space, a full kitchen, and a sleeping area.