The Nowtopian

August 12, 2008

Pot-purring

Dimitri Orlov, whose book "Reinventing Collapse" I mentioned in the last post, has a very illuminating blog post out explaining the events in George, Abkhazia and South Ossetia in a way that you just can't get from all the propaganda organs we're normally subjected to... I also recommend Asia Times where there's been a lot of good coverage from a variety of angles. Amy Goodman interviews Colonel Gardiner about it yesterday, also interesting, and he said he figured the Russians had planned for a U.S. intervention and had made it clear they'd go all the way to tactical nuclear weapons if the U.S. sent in military units to defend Georgia's assault on South Ossetia. Nothing to worry about! Just keep your eyes on the Olympics!

At 18th and Dolores in front of the cafe where the Google shuttle stops daily, someone has painted this on the ground. Recently Carol Lloyd in the SF Comical wrote about the effect of googlers on SF real estate, which might have given impetus for this...

I realize I have been slipping again, now that I'm back in my daily life in San Francisco. It's not that I wouldn't love to have the time to ponder and post at least weekly, but I'm spending about 40+ hours a week on the Shaping SF wiki, which we've decided to roll out to the public by October 15. (That many hours on computing purposefully makes it reeeeeaaaallly hard to blog... just sayin'.) I'm experiencing some layers of deja vu as I once again plow through all this familiar material that I knew SO well 10 years ago... yep, it's been 10 years since the original version rolled out (slightly more, Jan 98)... I've also been enjoying the new life that comes with Adriana having moved in during the summer. So, all things considered, I'm not as available as I'd like to be for blogging...

Oddly enough I was offered an online radio show, 13 1-hour slots as a pilot program, but it turned out to be one of those "deals" where I would have to find a sponsor, or come up with $7K, neither of which interests me. I'm also facing the prospect of launching a new magazine if I can develop a coherent enough editorial philosophy. Part of me would be delighted to do another magazine, another part of me thinks, "why?"... been there, done that, though not as a "job"... but then I'm still quite happily avoiding anything approaching a regular job, which feels like the basic minimum to me now after so many years of freedom. My income is way down, but my expenses are too, so it's ok so far...

I have a number of local appearances coming up:

This weekend I'll be at the San Francisco Writing for Change Conference, speaking at 11 a.m. on Saturday, on Nowtopia and the writing process that helped bring it about. Next Thursday I'll be presenting at The Abundance League, a charming group of folks who are trying to shift paradigms in ways that I'm enthused about. And then on Saturday the 233rd I'll be giving a labor history tour to some visiting Egyptian labor reps during the day, and giving a Nowtopia reading at 7 pm at Red Hill Books on Bernal Heights.

Continue reading "Pot-purring"

Posted by ccarlsson at 08:44 PM | Comments (0)

July 29, 2008

KulturKampf or Preparation?

I'm finding my email box filling every day with links to interesting Nowtopian initiatives, events, ways of framing things. Not much of it is totally new, but given the context of our rushing moment in history, and reframing it as aspects of an emergent Nowtopia, I'm enjoying it all...

First off, I rode in San Francisco's Critical Mass again, after my longest ever hiatus, 3 months (missed April, Rome in May, Vancouver in June)... It was kind of small after the huge rides in Italy and Canada, but by the time we got rolling it was probably the usual 1000-1500 or so. Funny to arrive at PeeWee Herman Plaza and find only about 100-200 people at a few minutes before six... Anyway, here's a couple of shots of the ride, one in Mission Bay, the other much later on Polk Street. Whoever got in front of this ride did a masterful job of twisting and turning through San Francisco's charming geography, and took us for the first time ever on a wraparound and through the Mission Bay area, still heavily under construction, the blot of suburbia being implanted in the midst of landfill and long-forgotten railroad corruption...

As far as I could tell, the SF ride was its usual bucolic experience for most, a lot of good cheer along the way, much support from bystanders and most motorists, a few contentious moments, but nothing to write about. At least five different sound systems pumping tunes into the ride, so that made for a fairly noisy experience too...

Meanwhile, in New York, the dogged cyclists have kept Critical Mass alive in spite of really intense efforts to stop it. As it passed through Times Square a 22-year-old rookie cop (who turns out to be third generation) demonstrated his personal rage towards cyclists with this remarkable, unprovoked attack:

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Posted by ccarlsson at 12:17 PM | Comments (0)

July 24, 2008

History Past and Present

On the Chinatown Labor History tour (part of Laborfest) Charlie Chin, the artist in residence at the Chinese Historical Society, gave an incredibly well composed and articulate walking tour. He didn't cover labor so much as the whole history of Chinese in the U.S. up to the present. One of many tidbits I learned is that these weird bricks sticking out of various buildings (this photo is of the Donaldina Cameron bldg., the old baptist church on Sacramento Street) around town were originally melted in the 1700 degree Fahrenheit firestorm of 1906 and were scavenged and used again in the rebuilding. He had a funny name for the them, but I forget what it was. Here's a couple more images from the tour, a panel of the mural on Stockton highlighting the role of Chinese labor in building the Transcontinental Railroad, Charlie Chin addressing the tour, and a view of one of the first buildings rebuilt in Chinatown after the 1906 quake and fire, this one by a guy who was half Chinese, half Indian from Mendocino. Local merchants put up a mighty fight to keep their property and stay where Chinatown is today, since the local elite made a big effort to remove the Chinese to Hunter's Point, then a Chinese shrimping village. An odd twist of history is that with the new T light rail line on 3rd Street, and its eventual connection to underground stations beneath Chinatown, the settling of Chinese immigrants in Bayview/Hunter's Point is once again accelerating.

Lots of reading lately, all too much of it online... How few hours I've spent sitting with a good book in the past few months? less than 10, not counting the reading I do every night... which just climaxed last night with the completion of the 3rd volume of the amazing series by Sergei Lukyanenko, Night Watch, Day Watch, and Twilight Watch.

"Of all the cafes and restaurants that Assol was crammed with, the only one working was the cafe in the supermarket. A very nice cafe, on the second-floor mezzanine, above the checkouts with an excellent view of the entire hall of the supermarket. It had to be a good place to drink a nice of cup of coffee, mapping out your route for a pleasant stroll as you bought the groceries--doing your "shopping": that terribe word, that monstrous Anglicism that has eaten its way into the Russian language, like a tick boring into its helpless prey."

That kind of aside--which is not the main concern of these fascinating novels about "Others", magicians and werewolves, witches and vampires, Dark Ones and Light Ones in a timeless battle of good and evil, presided over by the Inquisition--points to the deeper sensibilities that the metaphorical novels cut to: a fascinating critical engagement with the actual dilemmas facing modern life. It's all couched in a sometimes hilarious confrontation of police-like bureaucracies, who mostly duke it out in a tightly regulated choreography in spaces invisible to the rest of us "normal" humans, but they all, whether Dark or Light, depend on human energy to feed their extraordinary powers. How they manage their moral choices as individual agents of the Night Watch (Light Others patrolling the bad behavior of Dark Others) or the Day Watch (Dark Others patrolling the bad behavior of Light Others), is the driving theme of the trilogy. I absolutely loved all three books (thanks to Giovanni for recommending them to me!)...

They're set in Russia, and Russia is still very much at the center of world history here at the dawn of the 21st century. In fact, I still favor Asia Times for my daily news these days, with its numerous intelligent analysts, examining politics in China, India, SE Asia, Russia, the Great Game, the Middle East, and more. They reprint stuff from Tom Englehardt pretty often too, and sometimes stuff from Counterpunch. Here's a recent post at Asia Times that I thought very helpful:

Continue reading "History Past and Present"

Posted by ccarlsson at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

July 12, 2008

Strange Loops

LaborFest is happening again, and it's better than ever. Pretty ironic, given the amazing shift in San Francisco's population... In a Chronicle article about the exodus of the "middle class" from San Francisco they printed these numbers:

From 2002 to 2006, the number of households making up to $49,000 per year dropped by 7.4 percent, those earning between $50,000 and $99,999 declined by 4.4 percent, and those bringing home between $100,000 and $149,999 fell by 3.9 percent, according to Census Bureau estimates. In polar opposition, the number of households making between $150,000 and $199,999 surged 52.2 percent and those earning more than $200,000 climbed 40.1 percent.

The growing interest that the vibrant LaborFest would indicate is a bit hard to explain. But I'm enjoying it a lot, regardless. I caught a quirky "performance" of the 1901 waterfront strike at Hyde Street Pier this afternoon. Actors played strikers and owners arguing in public with one another, with a bourgeois woman wandering through the crowd denouncing the strikers, and a confused worker asking bystanders what they thought as she tried to figure out who to support. It was very staged, so I'm not sure anyone was actually challenged to think differently, but it did catch something of the personal confrontation that class conflict used to consist more of.

It's spooky though, imagining how the current demographic shift will show up in local politics in coming years. This fall will be telling, I suppose, as there are 7 of 11 seats up for new candidates on the Board of Supervisors. But no compelling reason to support anyone that I've heard of yet... maybe some readers will pitch one or other emerging candidacies...

I saw a great new Ken Loach film "It's a Free World" after conducting my twice-annual Labor History bike tour on July 5. The Laborfest program is chock-full of interesting events and I recommend checking it out. I'm going to a Chinatown Labor History walk tomorrow morning at 10, and there're some May 68 films tomorrow night. Earlier today, also part of LaborFest, I caught a few New Deal films at the Library, which has its own 3-floor exhibit on the New Deal right now. Interesting juxtaposition of New Deal propaganda, putting America to work etc., to the actual work going on across the street in front of City Hall. A new Potemkin Victory Garden has been installed by Slow Food Nation and a bunch of friends:

During the past week I've been lurking around (and helping a bit) the Victory Garden being installed across from City Hall. It's sponsored by Slow Food Nation, the upcoming national convention/party of Slow Food folks in the U.S. (it's an important international movement of course). I spoke about Victory Gardens during my Nowtopia tour, and continue to pump the idea of urban food forests as a more sensible use of our remaining public commons (all that land stupidly covered in asphalt). So I'm very enthusiastic about the temporary Victory Garden in Civic Center, and hope we can shoehorn the enthusiasm it's generating into a more concerted effort for transforming public lands throughout the city. It was a curious juxtaposition though, to see all these folks essentially creating a public works program from below, and then watching films of the massive public works programs pushed from the top during the 1930s. Here's a victory garden photo gallery:

It started on July 6 and 7 with black plastic and pouring soil into these circles of straw... not meant to last too long, clearly!

By July 10 things were shaping up further.

Continue reading "Strange Loops"

Posted by ccarlsson at 07:07 PM | Comments (0)

July 10, 2008

A Belated Conclusion to the Tour

Been home over a week now, and fully immersed in projects that had built up in my absence (two book design jobs, two periodicals), and haven't had much time to come up for air... But the Nowtopia tour ended in Victoria, a town that didn't really thrill me. I'd heard a lot about it in terms of its quaintness, its "Britishness", etc., but overall it was just a small town in Northwestern N. America, big yards, quiet streets, typical modern shopping district to attract tourism, etc. We had a great host in Peter and his family, and he was also our host for the reading at Camas Infoshop, a recently opened anarchist-inspired bookshop on Quadra Street.

We tooled around town a bit too, and came upon this elderly woman's front yard. She was smiling to us from her window as we photographed her signage. The first one is in regard to the Winter Olympics coming in 2010 and some recent regulatory changes, the second is self-evident I hope!

Thanks to a good article written in the local Monday Magazine, we had a decent audience of about 20+ folks. The conversation after the readings turned to our recurrent theme in the northwest: End of Civilization, armed self-defense, that sort of thing... another old draft dodger refugee, now in his 60s (I was told he was an old Trot), argued that it "wasn't time yet" to pick up weapons, vs. a young punk queer anarchist covered in tattoos who urgently insisted that we had to prepare immediately. He also was a fan of Derek Jensen's End Game, which he assured me is much more sophisticated than the Original Sin orientation of John Zerzan... he also insisted that Jensen is not misanthropic and that he is very enthused about First Nations peoples... just not too fond of anyone who is a product of our current world!... hmmm...

Continue reading "A Belated Conclusion to the Tour"

Posted by ccarlsson at 10:33 AM | Comments (2)

June 29, 2008

Thank You Corkers! Vancouver Critical Mass, June 2008

This is mostly a huge photo gallery, but let me tell you a little about it too... first off, "thank you corkers!" was the surprising refrain we heard throughout the ride as we passed by groups of people corking. Unlike San Francisco, corkers are welcomed by all here, the police don't hassle or ticket them, and the riders are clear that a great service is being provided by those who stop to barricade the roads to allow Critical Mass to pass unimpeded. As it turns out, Vancouverites turn corking into a series of mini-parties, each one attracting a growing number of cyclists who stop to talk, have a beer, share a puff, what have you. It was remarkable! Here are a couple of shots of corkers at work:

Motorists were surprisingly mellow in general (a few exceptions of course, including one report we heard a day later of a brawl between a cyclist and motorist, punching each other on the street, but that's only hearsay)... Here's an angelic rider in conversation with a sheik and his Bollywood star girlfriend (note the corkers jamming the taxi behind them):

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Posted by ccarlsson at 03:32 PM | Comments (10)

June 27, 2008

Exploring Vancouver

I realized soon after arriving that the last time I was in Vancouver was all the way back in 1986 for a conference called "Split Shift: The New Work Writing" when I came up with several Processed World colleagues and we did an early version of the Attitude Adjustment Seminar. In a restaurant downtown I came upon this scrawled graffiti, which echoed that long-ago visit:

Obviously the city has changed enormously since the mid-1980s. I also have another layer of memory from my first "independent" journey as a young fella, in 1973, when I came up here to hang with a high school crush while she visited her boyfriend at Simon Fraser University... that tells ya something, not sure what!!

Anyway, Vancouver is situated in a place that makes it endlessly beautiful to move around and see views of mountains and sea, but it's also weirdly ugly, with an incredible number of Hong Kong-style glass highrise apartments having taken over a lot of the shorelines here. The area known as False Creek is remarkably similar to San Francisco's Mission Creek, huge construction underway, up here they're building the Olympic Village for 2010 Winter Olympics (much teeth gnashing about the waste of resources, and urban history getting bulldozed for the spectacle).

In fact, the building boom here continues what we've seen along the whole trip, Portland, Seattle and here, not to mention home in SF, where the financial crisis and plunging real estate values have not halted the frenzied efforts to build still more condos and offices. Here in Vancouver the sense of real estate opportunity is palpable, what with a spectacular setting, a relatively healthy local economy and a relatively small urban space (under 2 million, compared to Bay Area's 6+ million)... But that's just one part of the story.

Just below where I was taking these photos was a small park with a dozen junkies in full view shooting up.

There is also an intense outdoor drug injection culture that we stumbled onto as we were cruising through alleys looking for stencils. Suddenly we were dodging dozens of folks who were ignoring us entirely, but many of them were in mid-shoot, blood and needles everywhere... really gross! Here's the People's Pigeon Park where a Food Not Bombs-like food table was working.

A short distance away were the alleys full of junkies. On the wall behind this odorific scene were many images, but one odd poster at the top of the right corner caught our eye:

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Posted by ccarlsson at 12:18 PM | Comments (1)

June 26, 2008

Nowtopia vs. Despair in Seattle

I had a great visit to Seattle for lots of reasons, but bicycling wasn't really one of them. I cycled around quite a bit, but it's an unfriendly place for cycling, even though I did see a fair number of folks bicycling. The hills and wide streets full of cars with no shoulder were pretty daunting.

I was luckily invited to appear on Mind Over Matters on KEXP-FM at 7:30 on Sunday June 22, and thanks to that, my readings at Elliott Bay Books that afternoon at 2 and the next evening at Left Bank Books were both well attended, at least a half dozen at each having heard me on the radio. So thanks to Mike McCormick for inviting me, and hopefully I'll soon have a place to link to for the podcast. Elliott Bay Books has an amazing big room adjacent to their cafe in the basement, dedicated to author readings. Here I am signing books at the end of the Talk! Can't say I've too many experiences like this on the tour, sitting down at a table at the end and signing books for over a dozen buyers! so THAT's how it's supposed to work!

It was a good feeling to arrive and see Nowtopia prominently featured in their main window too:

The next night I went to Left Bank Books, who had been very apologetic ahead of time about how small their space is in Pike Market, and how unusual it is for them to even host events in the store. In fact, it was an odd layout, but about 15 folks crammed in and were very enthusiastic and attentive. Here's the store from the outside:

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Posted by ccarlsson at 11:11 AM | Comments (1)

June 22, 2008

DIY is Bigger Than We Think

On the road for nearly two months, I've been talking a lot about Do-It-Yourself (DIY). I was up horribly early today, Sunday June 22, to be on KEXP radio at 7:30 a.m. in Seattle, and managed to squeeze in a bit about the DIY sensibility that I think embodies a deep rejection of self-referential "expertise" as foisted upon us by corporations, government, and mass media. The simple and relatively mundane examples, like fixing your own bike, or growing your own tomatoes, are important basic steps that anyone can take. But the deeper logic shows up in historic movements that precede our time, like the women's health movement that started back in the late 1960s/early '70s, and led to the legalization of abortion, the proliferation of women's health clinics, the Our Bodies OurSelves book, and a culture of self-care among many women, and one that is available to anyone.

Another vital example, which we now have to reinvent, is the anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s and early 80s. Instead of accepting the arguments of governmental and corporate "experts" that nuclear power was the Answer to all our energy problems, a grassroots movement rejected that in favor of a self-education in alternatives like solar and wind and conservation. Help came from professionals who refused to remain silent and complicit with the corporate agenda, but instead "dropped out" and spoke up against the irrational and self-destructive agenda embodied in nuclear power.

The reversal just announced by Bay Area officials, that they now are NOT going to spray for Light Brown Apple Moth, but will use other methods to try to control the infestation, is a direct product of DIY science at the grassroots of society. Thousands of Bay Area residents informed themselves of what was happening, refused to accept the bland assurances of government officials that the 90% inert ingredients were safe, and figured out a lot of basic info on the risks associated with the gov't. plans. Now they've had to come up with a whole new approach because of the popular revolt.

John Robb over at Global Guerrillas had a post recently which opened my eyes to some developments I only fantasized about:

The "Open Source Ecology" wiki (of which this design is a part of) is yet another example of the many efforts underway to accelerate DIY technology development for Resilient Communities (The RC). As personal fabrication improves, these tinkering efforts will become MUCH more sophisticated at an ever decreasing cost. We (collectively, those of us engaged in decentralized thinking/action) are in the process of reinventing how the global economy is structured at a root level -- good thing we didn't ask permission.

Yesterday I joined Russell Howze, my book tour travelling partner, for an afternoon of DIY stenciling here in Seattle. Below are some photos of our escapade, on a "legal" wall in a parking lot just north of downtown, with a small group of talented artists. (Yesterday Seattle also hosted a Naked Bike Ride and we were entertained by a dozen or more fully painted nude cyclists coming through while we were painting)...

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Posted by ccarlsson at 08:42 AM | Comments (1)

June 21, 2008

Carfree in Portland

The "Towards Carfree Cities" Conference in Portland this past week was quite a fun time for me. I didn't attend very many workshops but I made lot of new friends, saw many old pals too, and generally was in networking nirvana (and I even sold a bunch of books too!) One I went to at the very end was about direct action, street memorials and the ghost bike movement, which was super moving and beautiful. The project brings people together across a lot of populations and cultures, especially in New York where the presenters were from. Another panel I did go to featured Thiago and Eduardo from Sao Paolo and Florianopolis Brazil. They gave a great presentation of how they're at the early stages of growing the awareness and communities that can push the local authorities into redesigning the urban spaces to accommodate cyclists too, and to reduce the total focus on autos. It's made more difficult by the enormous car industry in Brazil, where all the multinational manufacturers have set up shop since 30 years ago. Here's Thiago as he confers with Eduardo on a point, and then the first slide he put up, commenting on the post-dictatorship history of Brazil:

Simultaneous to the Conference was the ongoing zaniness of Pedalpalooza , a month-long Bike Festival. (Just checking their website, I see that yesterday they had a "Kidical Mass" in downtown, where 40 parents and small children took to the streets on bike--a concept they imported from Eugene, where I found a poster for it.)

I bicycled in every day from the far northeast of Portland and took the Broadway Bridge to get to the Conference. The bridge is very bike adapted, with side paths, lovely views of the city, and a well-designed split in the bike paths at the west end to send you into one part of downtown or another: