Welcome to the official website of Andres Bella—author of The Trip House and creator of Tales of the Russian Embassy. Explore the novel, the history behind the series, and the people and countercultures that continue to inspire his work.
A novel by Andres Bella
The Trip House
San Francisco, 1999. The century is ending, and Antonio is looking for somewhere to belong.
A literary journey through underground DJ culture, friendship, identity, and the legendary Westerfeld House at the edge of a new millennium.
The novel
A city in transition. A generation chasing the future.
Raised in Houston by a Mexican mother and Hungarian father, Antonio has spent much of his life caught between cultures, identities, and expectations. California promises something different—a place where reinvention might actually be possible.
He finds it in San Francisco’s underground DJ scene: warehouse parties, vinyl, psychedelics, friendships forged at four in the morning, and a generation racing toward the millennium as if the future might save them from the past. At the center of it all stands Westerfeld House, the legendary Gothic mansion overlooking Alamo Square.
Inside its rooms, the remnants of San Francisco’s old counterculture collide with a new generation of ravers, artists, seekers, lovers, and outsiders. Antonio believes he has found the freedom he came west to find. But as the nights grow longer and the boundary between escape and self-destruction begins to disappear, the world around him starts to change.
The Trip House is part of a larger series, Tales of the Russian Embassy. Inspired by the many stories surrounding San Francisco’s legendary Westerfeld House—known for a time as the Russian Embassy—the series spans eras from 1889 to the present. From echoes of the Russian Revolution to the hippies, ravers, musicians, and artists who followed, Tales of the Russian Embassy explores the people and cultural movements that shaped San Francisco.
“Because eventually the music ends. The lights come on. And you have to decide what remains when the party is over.”
Westerfeld House · San Francisco
The House Behind the Series
Standing at Fulton and Scott, across from Alamo Square, the William Westerfeld House has watched San Francisco reinvent itself since 1889. The 28-room mansion became known as the “Russian Embassy” after Russian émigrés acquired it in the late 1920s and transformed its ground-floor ballroom into Dark Eyes, a restaurant, speakeasy, nightclub, and social gathering place. Decades later, it briefly operated as the Warner Embassy Bed & Breakfast Inn.
Its rooms have been connected to jazz musician John Handy, historian and former owner Charles Fracchia, underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger, Bobby Beausoleil, and Anton LaVey—figures reflecting the artistic, musical, countercultural, and occult currents that passed through San Francisco. Tales of the Russian Embassy draws its name and inspiration from this extraordinary mansion. Spanning different periods from 1889 to the present, the series explores the stories behind each era—the people, communities, cultural movements, and changing ideas that shaped both the Westerfeld House and San Francisco.
Andres Bella
Writer · Educator · Bay Area storyteller
Author of The Trip House and creator of the Tales of the Russian Embassy series.
Meet the author
Andres Bella
Andres Bella is an educator, administrator, and writer with deep roots in the San Francisco Bay Area. For more than two decades, he has worked in higher education in Oakland, serving communities shaped by many cultures, histories, and paths to belonging.
His fiction explores cultural identity, music, memory, and the places that shape who we become. He is especially interested in the lives unfolding inside history—the artists, immigrants, seekers, outsiders, and communities that give a city its character.
His literary imagination is rooted in a lifelong love of counterculture writing—from the restless journeys of Jack Kerouac and the visionary poetry of Allen Ginsberg and the Beat poets to the gonzo irreverence of Hunter S. Thompson, the dark humor of Kurt Vonnegut, and the psychedelic rebellion of Ken Kesey. Along with many other boundary-pushing voices, these writers helped shape his interest in outsiders, cultural upheaval, and the communities that form beyond convention.
The Trip House draws on the energy and contradictions of San Francisco at the turn of the millennium, when the city’s old counterculture met a new digital generation on dance floors, in shared houses, and in the restless search for something more.
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Available now
Enter The Trip House
Available in eBook, paperback, and hardcover.