All I Want for Christmas Are Unregulated Chinese Peptides
A weekend inside San Francisco's extremely online underground
Editor’s Note: You’re reading the first Core Memory piece by Kylie Robison. And we’re excited to say that there shall be many more.
Kylie started writing for Business Insider in 2021 and caught the tech world’s attention right away. She moved from BI to Fortune, The Verge and then Wired and always demonstrated a knack for finding stories that others had missed and writing them with style.
Kylie will be writing, podcasting and making videos across our various platforms. We cannot think of a better new voice for our audience and cannot wait to see what she does.
It takes considerable effort to get San Francisco techies into formal wear. It takes something approaching divine intervention to get them into a church.
Such a miracle occurred last Saturday night at The Star of the Sea Church. Inside you could find booze, a selection of plattered room temperature meats, and hundreds of folding chairs supporting the city’s extremely online sect. We were there to watch a debate hosted by the Hamilton Society, a club that has sparred over topics like “Christianity will destroy the West“ and this night’s topic, “Gene editing is an ethical necessity.”
“Dress code is strictly formal: suit and tie for men, equivalent for ladies,” the Luma invite for the event read. “Ties are not optional.”
I decided to stop by because, well, I wanted to see these people argue about eugenics. I also had a bit of time to kill before heading to a Chinese peptide rave, but more on that later.
This past weekend was particularly frenetic, even by San Francisco standards. On Friday night, I went to a startup’s shark-themed rodeo (which featured an endless Guinness tap) followed by a brief jaunt to a black-tie affair at a tech billionaire’s Sea Cliff mansion. Texts were flying all weekend about where to go next: the a16z New Media party, a winter soiree at AI wunderkind Leopold Aschenbrenner’s house and probably other things I wasn’t cool enough to hear about.
The debate venue was built 131 years ago to serve the city’s growing Catholic population. While it served a different kind of congregation on Saturday night, the classic iconography was a reminder of his Holiness. A gilded portrait of Jesus on his knees stood stage right. White roses in terracotta vases flanked him on both sides. A portrait of Mother Mary was displayed in the middle. (The Bible remains unclear on her thoughts about gene editing.) A gentleman sitting in front of me told his friend: “With age, your neuroplasticity goes down. I’m retarded now.” The ceremony began.
The Chairman appeared. Members of the Hamilton Society were introduced. One of them declared that the room smelled really good. We pledged allegiance to the flag and were then taught how to agree with an argument by stomping our feet loudly, and disagree by hissing. Then, we all voted: is gene editing an ethical necessity? Many voted yes, I voted no, and very few abstained.
Unfortunately, this was my cue to leave. I couldn’t miss one second of the next event. I ran home for an outfit change from my floor-length dress to a bedazzled top. It was time to learn about Chinese peptides.
PEPTIDES
This next event had two parts: a tour of a lab that sells peptides, and a rave two floors below.
“It will not be appropriate for you to talk about what you’re working on, discuss Landian techno-accelerationism, or share your thoughts on the AI-industrial spending complex and its’ [sic] ponzinomics once the music is playing,” the Luma invite read. “Instead, we ask very little except that [you] put your phone down, dance, and have a good time.”
This party was located at Frontier Tower, a 16-floor co-working space filled with scientists, technologists, and artists placed just on the edge of the Tenderloin. The venue’s website compares the fall of the Berlin Wall and the impact it had on Berlin’s culture to how this group is seizing empty office spaces to “redefine urban living.” Just outside of the tower’s entrance, the real urban community on 6th and Market lay in various crumpled positions on the cold sidewalk, some seemingly enjoying the start of their opioid-induced high.
I made my way to the 8th floor where I met a group of excited party goers waiting to be ushered through the lab. We nabbed beers from a refrigerator located in a nearby bathroom that I was told was usually reserved for lab materials. One particularly amped up attendee had brought a notepad, lest she forget any important nuggets on proper peptide injection.
I don’t inject peptides, but my friend who works in AI does, and she swears it helps with her bum knee. These molecules have become quite the thing here in the city! Essentially, peptides are chains of amino acids strung together (a tripeptide has three amino acids, a pentapeptide has five amino acids… you get the point). The peptide company hosting the event sells different combinations that it claims offer benefits such as accelerating “healing in tendons” and “increased collagen production.” One type of peptide you may be familiar with is Ozempic.
Since some of these peptides aren’t FDA approved, many people in San Francisco have been getting vials from dealers in China. My friend uses BPC-157 for her knee, which the FDA has specifically restricted access to. All of this interest in peptides seems to stem from the popularity of Ozempic and the city’s rich history of biohacking enthusiasts — which I don’t need to explain to you. Didn’t you watch Ashlee interview Bryan Johnson during the latter’s shroom trip?
While I’m not injecting them myself, I do appreciate a good science-themed party. As we waited for the lab tour, we investigated a long silver-draped table which displayed an assortment of props: crystals, peptide vials, molecular diagrams, a binocular microscope, toy molecules. Boxes labeled “WOLVERINE STACK” and “POWERHOUSE STACK” sat in the center. I briefly considered buying some to inject just for the story. [Where’s the commitment? - Ed.]
Finally, we were ushered through the lab’s door into a long, dark hallway. There were three offices set up as demonstration areas: one scientist taught you what a peptide is, the next explained how to inject it properly, and the third showed you how to take your own blood for testing purposes.
We were one of the first groups inside the lab. We sipped our beers and listened intently. It’s completely safe to inject peptides, the first demonstrator told us, and pretty difficult to fuck up. These kinds of molecules are similar to what our bodies naturally produce and will break down over time, so there’s generally lower risk, she explained.
We shuffled to the injection site. The studious notetaker immediately asked if we could inject peptides like NOW! The lab worker’s face contorted in subtle horror. No, absolutely not, he said.
The technician passed around capped needles and explained how to safely dilute the powdered peptide in a vial with bacteriostatic water. Each step was written on a white board: calculate your dose, translate into syringe units, and reconstitute. Beer cans stacked up in the biomedical waste bin nearby.
I cut out of class early and went to check out the next demonstration—just in time, apparently, because I walked up to a woman poking a needle into a vein (her own). I had no idea blood made me that woozy until I watched it pour out of her body and drain into a long tube. As I turned my head away, a neighbor giggled at my incoming nausea.
RAVE
Attendees covered in sparkles and donned in light-up accessories started to trickle into the 6th floor. The DJ mixed electronic tracks while the structures of different chemical compounds swirled on a screen behind him.
I wasn’t here just for the story. It was actually my friend-from-the-internet’s birthday. Chairman Birb, as she’s known on social media, sported holographic pants and a sash that read “Birthed to mog.” The last time I got to hang with Birb was at a party for her friend’s press-on manicure product that contained an NFC chip. Despite being based in New York, she’s quintessentially SF, down to her own peptide stack.
Once my friends arrived, I was excited to show them the lab tour. We dashed upstairs just in time to watch the technician at the peptide injection demonstration actually inject himself, which he claimed was the only time that night he’d be doing such a thing. I asked him afterwards where the blood lady had gone. You can only draw your own blood so many times in one night, he explained.
At this point, I’d been dashing around San Francisco for 48 hours straight. Exhaustion hit. Still, we danced. Someone came up to my friend and asked if he wanted any molly. A pair in front of the DJ were making out aggressively. Knee-high boots stomped and swayed around us. I partied until I couldn’t anymore, then slipped into a driverless taxi and headed home.
[Update, December 18: Corrected to reflect that the NFC nail product belongs to a friend, not Birb. And many, not most, voted for gene editing as an ethical necessity according to two members of the Hamilton Society.]
I've needed to know so much more about the peptide rave, thank you for this.
t minus 13 days until i move to san francisco and i cant wait to deal with all this debauchery oh yay.
banger.