May 09, 2008
Hurtling around NY
Having a lovely time in New York, as always. I really love this city! I brought my folding bike (and guess what? They're having a Folding Bike ride tomorrow at 2 pm leaving from W. 23rd St., a 10 mile jaunt thru Manhattan and Brooklyn) and I've been loving how it handles and that I can bomb through traffic with such New York-native ease... I think I'm wired for this kind of urban chaos, and being able to weave through impossible traffic, avoid impediments (esp. pedestrians, who are impressively aggressive here), crazy drivers, etc., barely pausing at red lights (drivers actually expect bikes to run lights in front them and they often pause for you...!) It's made me think about the ongoing efforts in SF and everywhere to improve conditions for bicycling and of course I still support that... but somewhere in my mischievous core I actually prefer the utter madness of Manhattan and the total freedom to hurtle and roam anywhere and everywhere, all rules and safety considerations be damned (except to not get hit, of course!)... anyhoo, it's already been a great visit and still almost a week to go.
I rode from Francesca's front door in Bed-Stuy to Columbia University on Wednesday, took exactly one hour, riding as fast as i could all out the whole way, mostly up the West Side Parkway, but suffering the imbecility of clogged bike lanes on 6th Ave and 8th Ave first (commonly blocked by police cars shopping for lunch or delivery trucks). It's about 13-15 miles I think. Here I am on arrival at the front of Columbia (and here's the podcast of my talk there):
On the way back to Brooklyn, I rode through Central Park, which was spectacular, but I'd also had a more leisurely time in the park the day before. Here's a shot of the amazing spring weather on the Great Meadow:
Naturally I'm visiting friends and some of them are interviewees in Nowtopia, so I've gathered some images that fit the tour. Mark Leger is one of my oldest friends and I rode all the way from Columbia back to outer Bushwick in Brooklyn to see him, and have him give me a tour of nearly a dozen community gardens in his near vicinity. Here are a few shots:
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Posted by ccarlsson at 11:07 AM | Comments (0)
May 05, 2008
Nowtopia is for Tortoises!
I had a really good visit to Philadelphia and now I've landed with my daughter in New York for the next 9 days. At Wooden Shoe Books in Philly yesterday, on a spectacularly nice spring afternoon (I never would have gone indoors to hear someone speak!) a little over 20 people turned up to jam into the small space and hear my rap. I am happy that I'll have help in keeping track of questions in the next couple of weeks because as much as I love how great the feedback and questions and comments have been, I just cannot remember much of it after it's over. But it was really gratifying at Wooden Shoe yesterday.
One thing I do remember is another person asking me about how to get from here to there, or how to kind of leap over the gap between the small-ish activities I'm describing and the big changes the Nowtopian analysis implies. Of course I don't have a convincing answer for that. It actually flies in the face of my sense of history. I spoke to it at each of my stops and I was pondering this a bit on the train ride from Philly today. If I'm anywhere near right that there's something new cooking at the base of society, and it might someday recognize itself as movement for the emancipation of all of us from the stupidity of economic logic and a life of pointless, self-defeating work, then it's not something that will happen quickly.
I use the received idea of 'revolution' as a foil, since it's an idea that generally connotes something quick and dramatic, even cataclysmic, in which suddenly life is completely different. I really don't believe in such a vision, which strikes me as fundamentally religious. I can imagine revolutionary moments where authorities fall for one reason or another, but if we haven't been on the path for a good length of time, building trusting relationships and solid communities that can self-manage the complexities of daily life in an open and democratic fashion, it's most likely that some version of how we live now will re-emerge soon after. The Tortoise approach means we accept that we have to take slow, ponderous, deliberate steps more or less all the time, to get where we're going, which is a radically different life in all its nuance and detail. It takes radical patience, the calling card of the (politicized) Tortoise...
Anyway, here are a few photos of Philadelphia:
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Posted by ccarlsson at 08:58 PM | Comments (1)
May 03, 2008
Nowtopian moments in Dystopian America
I'm in Philadelphia, having given a Nowtopia talk at A-Space today, and tomorrow I'll be at Wooden Shoe. Last night in Baltimore I spoke at Red Emma's. I really like Baltimore! It was fun to walk in to Red Emma's and feel such a cozy, welcoming space. The audience wasn't huge last night, about 23 or so, but very intelligent, and full of great questions. In fact, all the audiences so far have been quite attentive and responsive, really rewarding me for showing up. Here's a shot of Red Emma's:
Some years ago I came to Baltimore on the Critical Mass book tour and spoke at Black Planet, a now defunct space, and some of the refugees from that helped form Red Emma's, which is in the city center on Mt. Vernon Hill. The collective seems rather large, 15+ people (?), and all of the folks I met were really smart, engaging, and warm. Such a pleasure to visit a place like this and receive such great hospitality. I even got to stay at a gorgeous old apartment that one of the collective members lives in, overlooking Washington Plaza from huge windows and a lovely balcony.
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Posted by ccarlsson at 08:05 PM | Comments (0)
May 02, 2008
Layering History
On my way down from Penn State to Frederick, Maryland a couple of days ago I had extra time and took the opportunity to pass through the Antietem battlefield (Civil War) and then to pay my respects to the birthplace of the U.S. military-industrial complex at Harper's Ferry. It sits at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenendoah Rivers, close to the place where West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland all come together, and not far from Pennsylvania either. It is beautiful springtime here in the east, a bit chilly some days, but mostly warming up rapidly, dogwood and azaleas in full bloom everywhere. Here's a photo of a small row of trees on the campus of Pleasant Valley elementary school not far from Harper's Ferry. I've seen incredible numbers of these trees in bloom everywhere, open road and in suburbs...
Before I got to Harper's Ferry, the first site of a U.S. arsenal (founded at the suggestion of George Washington), the place where they made the rifles and hardware that accompanied Lewis & Clark on their epic journey through across the continent in 1803, I passed quickly through the Antietem battlefield. It's set on grassy rolling hills and is littered with signage put up by the then-aptly named War Department in 1896 as part of an effort to establish an outdoor classroom of war knowledge. I was a big Civil War freak when I was a child, so it still resonates a bit for me, though nowhere near as strongly as it did in my youth. I climbed a stone tower, also built in the 1890s, and took this photo down what was known as "Bloody Lane"... in the three-day battle in September 1862, this stretch was fought over with great intensity, leading to the trench between the two fences being filled with bodies.
A later exhibit established by the National Park service is called "I Hate Cannons" and quotes a battlefield surgeon who had to handle the thousands of casualties caused by frontal charges into the maws of full firing artillery.
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Posted by ccarlsson at 09:31 AM | Comments (1)
April 30, 2008
Dancing in the Streets!
Before taking off on this lengthy tour, I had a couple of experiences back in San Francisco that underscore why I live there, and that deserve to be more widely known. Firstly, Deep has been staging “Flash Dances” for the past two years, about 10 or more times now. I absolutely LOVE these. The sound system starts pumping at a pre-arranged time and 50-100 people start boogeying in a public spot, sometimes a corner or a plaza or a park. The one on April 19 was at 24th Street BART plaza and it produced its usual euphoria and magic, luring in dozens of passersby, connecting alienated drug dealers and middle-aged Latino men to a mixed-race crowd of 20- and 30-somethings, all shaking their booties to a bunch of funk and pop standards going back 30 years. The chance to dance in a crowd of strangers with such a high degree of trust and good will is just an unmatchable experience. I can’t stop smiling and laughing as I cut it loose, swirling around with friends and strangers alike…
Then, a week later, on Sunday April 27, a collective birthday party was thrown by Rupa (of the April Fishes) along with Mona, LisaRuth, and a bunch of others… the magical treat followed a brunch on her doorstep near 25th and Castro when Brass Menazeri started playing their fantastic blend of Balkan standards and speedy dance tunes, with a full brass complement to go with a couple of really great drummers, keeping the beat throughout. We boogied down 24th street past Mona’s new mural, up Church past a previous one and down into Dolores Park where it was wall-to-wall sunbathers and convivialists… what a day!
Here's Rupa discovering herself and the April Fishes in Mona's new mural on 24th Street:
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Posted by ccarlsson at 06:50 AM | Comments (0)
April 15, 2008
Fake Numbers and Real Limits
My blogging is lagging, and not because I'm gagging, or even lollygagging, just too much going on at once. My book rollout for Nowtopia was last Wednesday and I'm now in the flow of the my "tour" which leaves SF on April 28, but continues later tonight at SmackDab and next Thursday at Modern Times. You can check out the podcast of my rollout reading if you can't join me at one of my tour stops.
Golden Gate Bridge from Twin Peaks, April 2008.
I wanted to complement my book's appearance by noting some useful items in the media, both online and off, that help the larger anti-economy argument that Nowtopia is part of. In the current Harper's magazine, Kevin Phillips writes about the fake numbers that underpin our sense of "economic reality": "Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Know". He gives an overview of how government economics statistics have been jerryrigged and altered quite a few times just since the 1970s, leading to the imaginary economic health much touted by Clinton and Bush during the past 16 years. Turns out unemployment, if measured as it once was, would be closer to 9%, inflation would be running at 12% and GNP and "growth" would have been much worse than reported. Of course the important caveat here is that I don't believe in any of these numbers either! The whole system of measuring wealth and economic activity is so skewed away from any sense of what's meaningful or true as to be quite meaningless anyway. But Phillips, a former Nixon speechwriter and Republican strategist (and more recently, debunker of the Bush Dynasty as a criminal enterprise spanning generations) wants to reclaim economic stats from the funhouse they've been relegated to. One compelling stat he cites is that in order to artifically hold up the illusion of economic growth during two decades of financial chicanery, 15% of "Gross Domestic Product (GDP)" value in 2007 is accounted for by "imputed" income (the benefit one receives from a free checking account, or the imputed income of living in one's own home, or the value of employer-paid life or health insurance premiums).
Phillips' article follows the interesting piece "Faustian Economics: Hell Hath No Limits" by Wendell Berry, in the same issue, which is trying (again) to focus Americans on the reality of limits. Berry has been writing from a radical ecologist position for years now, and often he brings in a quasi-religious tone that really puts me off. He admits as much in this article.
"We are, in short, coming under pressure to understand ourselves as limited creatures in a limited world... I am well aware of what I risk in bringing this language of religion into what is normally a scientific discussion. I do so because I doubt that we can define our present problems adequately, let alone solve them, without some recourse to our cultural heritage."
Much as I loathe the admonitional tone that wants to chastise for living beyond our limits, I can easily understand the basic ecological truth of that point. Berry's article escapes his own rhetorical trap as it proceeds and by the end I was quite happy with it.
Continue reading "Fake Numbers and Real Limits"
Posted by ccarlsson at 03:22 PM | Comments (0)
March 28, 2008
Still Bicycling!
There's something odd afoot and I'm not sure what to make of it...a mini-PR offensive was launched last week that had some contradictory components. Following the shocking death of two racing cyclists in the South Bay hills, run over by a cop or sheriff who fell asleep at the wheel, also badly injuring a third cyclist, most bicyclists felt that maybe, just maybe, the local authorities might start paying attention to how unsafe it is to cycle around here. The Comicle rushed in to the save the day. They published this hilarious article which puts the blame for 2/3 of all bike-car accidents squarely on the shoulders of the bicyclists. The source? Why it's that always objective and reliable California Highway Patrol and local police records. What a joke!
Anyone who has bicycled regularly for any length of time around here has had the experience of seeing a fellow or sister cyclist get doored or driven into or worse, or come upon a cyclist sprawled on the ground, and seen how the police routinely take statements from anyone at the scene EXCEPT other bicyclists! The presumption at all points of contact between cyclists and motorists is that the cyclist is at fault. It's quite difficult to even insert into the record a contrary point of view.
This coming Monday night I'm going to be on a radio show with the Bike Coalition's Leah Shahum, the MTA's Bridget Smith, and anti-bicycling crank Rob Anderson:
On Monday 3/31/08, 7:00pm to 8:00pm, the topic for City Visions Radio (91.7.FM) will be: "Planning for San Francisco's Growing Biking Population" Call in during the show at 415/841-4134 or e-mail us.
I hope you cyclists will call in and demand a thorough and radical alteration of our city streets in favor of safe cycling, traffic calming, and reduced car access wherever possible. It might get weird and even ugly with Anderson on there, since he's the guy who filed the lawsuit that stopped the current bike plan in its tracks, ostensibly because inadequate environmental review was done before it was implemented.
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Posted by ccarlsson at 03:28 PM | Comments (1)
March 18, 2008
Springing Forward
Nowtopia is back from the printer! You can now order copies here, and you can visit the website I put together for it here. I have an ambitious calendar of appearances scheduled already too, so I hope to see everyone out there somewhere! Big opening party at CounterPULSE April 9, 7:30 p.m.
Obviously I'm behind on blogging these days. My birthday passed last week, and I had the pleasure of discovering that I share a birthday with John Ross. John threw a septugenarian poetry slam at Cafe La Boheme at 24th and Mission a week ago. Here he is early in the proceedings:
He writes semi-regularly for the SF Bay Guardian and Counterpunch, and has a manuscript looking for a publisher about Iraq, where he went at the start of the current war to act as a human shield in Mosul. He just sent out a short piece about that, so if you want to get on his email list write him. I interviewed John a year ago about his late 1960s/early 1970s experience with the Mission Tenants Union and the Mission Coalition Organization, incredibly important episodes in San Francisco history that are largely forgotten... hope to get the clips up on the Shaping SF archive collection soon.
History jumps out at me from my rides and walks around the city. Here's a piece of public art gracing the MUNI "barn" at Presidio and Post, a nice 30s aesthetic:
Up on Potrero Hill where I was strolling last weekend, spring has sprung, but I was also surprised to find this memorial stencil on 19th near Vermont Street, a most unlikely place for such a thing:
Some folks I know put a lot of hope into Bhutto's return to the fray in Pakistani democracy, but as usual, I didn't think it was such a big deal. Her martyrdom is sad--she was apparently an interesting person who had once had quite a joie de vivre, but she must have known her odds of surviving were pretty darn low. Tariq Ali, who was both her friend and a fierce critic, wrote several good pieces about her, here's one.
Here's a couple of spring flower shots for all you far-away friends and family yearning for San Francisco at its best:
The ceanothus go crazy at the beginning of spring. Here's one on the slope below McKinley Square on Potrero Hill with such an intense blue-purple color, I don't think the photo can quite capture it.
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Posted by ccarlsson at 03:38 PM | Comments (0)
March 14, 2008
Wiki World
OK, sorry to have been gone so long... a whole month has passed! Sheesh!... up to my eyeballs in a variety of things, especially booking a lot of upcoming appearances. (next Friday March 21 I'll be reading from After The Deluge at Inside Story Time) More later.
There's been a flurry of interesting articles about Wikipedia lately. This is particularly interesting to me since one of the things that's absorbing me these days is the painfully slow creation of a wiki version of Shaping San Francisco (if you want to help, please contact me)... I've been thinking and working for a long time on the notion of an open, living archive of San Francisco history. I'm glad I don't have to answer to the problems besetting Wikipedia, but as we ramp up to our own mini-wiki on local history, we'll probably face some similar issues.
On one hand there's the exciting thought that lots of people will contribute their own recollections, memories, and opinions to our shared history. One idea I'm particularly enthusiastic about is having multiple accounts of events that have happened in our own lifetimes. The best example we'll have of this right away (when we "go public") is about 5 different versions of the White Night Riot (that links to my account, but there are several others in the current Shaping SF, and more to come). But you can imagine that the sky's the limit when it comes to parallel stories, often contradicting each other, just as real history is experienced by multiple people with different points of view.
Posted by ccarlsson at 02:31 PM | Comments (0)
February 16, 2008
In Search of a Public Life
Now that I can get up and down and out and about, pushing and prodding the limits of my prepositional life, I'm SOOO glad it's our semi-usual February summer. I actually made the walk to the top of Bernal Heights with Adriana a couple of days ago, and have been bicycling around town a lot, though quite slowly as befits an old (recently incapacitated) man... The plum and cherry trees are in spectacular bloom. Here's the plum tree outside my window, followed by a cherry tree we found on Bernal...
Taking advantage of our city's beauty, walking around my neighborhood and the nearby hill (more photos of this recent walk at the bottom), but it's all in a much larger context of a decaying society and its current political life. I've been thinking a lot lately about how ardently people are embracing the Obama campaign, what it means. I'm obviously unmoved by it, and find myself scratching my head in my quadrennial puzzlement at the urgency of people's beliefs, their willingness to swallow all this vague rhetoric spooned up by a guy who is bought and paid for by the likes of Goldman Sachs and the Illinois coal industry. A guy who won't rule out nuclear power! and yet is treated as the embodiment of major change... and to be sure, he is a highly symbolic form of change on the surface at least. If everyone's secret wishes come true, he'll actually be a pwogwessive once in office, sweeping aside the neocons in favor of a New Green Deal... it'll still be capitalism, still dominated by corporations, but maybe, just maybe, a bit more humane, a partially restored social fabric and safety net, a creative approach to intractible problems like climate change, carmeggedon, drug wars, imperialism...
Oh, sorry! I got carried away. I think Goldman Sachs and Zbigniew Brzenzski and the many other major backers and advisers from the ruling class who are rallying around Obama may be the wing of capital who see the need for some real reform, after two terms of brazen looting and a foreign policy that has sent the U.S. plummeting over the cliff. The financial system is unravelling, the world market is in for a period of retrenchment, renewed nationalistic protectionism, and probably some kind of global rules on investment and capital flows... or at least, one might presume that's what Obama promises the monied interests behind his blandly passionate and vaguely populist words...
Continue reading "In Search of a Public Life"
Posted by ccarlsson at 10:51 PM | Comments (1)
