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):

A lot of interaction took place between riders and motorists, mostly very polite and friendly. One guy in a Metallica tshirt with ipod plugs in his ears rode along calling to every car "Thanks for Waiting!"

The ride leaves from the gathering point at the city's Art Museum in the center. Before we got going a gaunt, possessed hippie wandered through the crowd trying to start a chant of "One Ride, Keep it Together!" and it almost took, but not quite. Someone else got up with a bullhorn and addressed his comments to a different part of the crowd so I have no idea what he had to say. There was a great flyer handed out with 10 advisory points like Corking, Stopping at the top of bridges and hills so people can catch up, CM being different for different people; one point #8 was even that not everyone agrees with these points! very nice...

This guy was rocking out on his drums along the way (we couldn't find a groove together except very briefly once... I with my normal bike and bells)...

and proceeded to cross Cambie Bridge:

then west on Broadway (I think) to take the Burrard Bridge back to downtown:

through the city to the magnificent Stanley Park that juts out on a peninsula at the western edge of central Vancouver, connecting to North Vancouver by the Lions Gate Bridge. It's apparently the habit of big CMs here to ride up to the middle of the bridge and then hang out for a while before turning back, and that's what we did:

entering Stanley Park from downtown.

Near the center of the bridge where we paused.

The apx. 3000 cyclists on the ride are still arriving in the dark tunnel in the distance, while already there is a big party underway all over the bridge. The several dozen cars isolated in the far lane are completely stuck and don't move until we clear the bridge a half hour later...

I had plenty of time to hang from the side of the bridge and take photos... the next few are views from this mid-span point, still an hour or more before sunset:

You can see Stanley Park in front of downtown, and at the water's edge is a pedestrian-and-bike-path combination that Russell and I circumnavigated earlier in the day (next post for the rest of my Vancouver images and thoughts).

Another majestic mountain, this one Mt. Baker, appeared through the summer haze:

In the opposite direction, towards the setting sun, a tanker was steaming our way:

Russell yelled at it to "take the junk back to China!" which got a few nervous giggles... here he is trying to be furtive:

We finally turned around to leave the bridge, but it was a huge bicycle traffic jam and it took a good 20 minutes to get moving:

The locals were all really delighted with the next stretch of the ride, wherein we hurtled down a long winding road through Stanley Park back to downtown, a road that is never available for safe cycling except this one time. Here's Russell, a local luminary, and Finnegan in the trailer, just before we hit the downhill:

Didn't get any pictures as I flew downhill, but when we were leaving downtown and heading east, I turned back to get this one:

We went out to Commercial and then all the way back on Broadway again to catch the last of the bridges we hadn't already crossed, the Granville Bridge. While we were crossing, pausing, bikelifting, etc., the sun finally hit the horizon...

This gal on the big unicycle had to be weary by the end of the ride... I saw her pedaling furiously on many of our long downhills as she has no way to coast...

All in all, a great Critical Mass... along the way an old hippie yelled at passing cyclists: "Enjoy your Carbon tax!"... The BC gov't. is issuing tax credits to all citizens based on a revenue neutral carbon tax they've just started, so folks are getting checks soon for about $100... a lot of confusion and derision among people about it. There's also a fair amount of opposition to the 2010 Winter Olympics that Vancouver is going to hold... Here's a better shot from the Cambie Bridge of False Creek and the Olympic Village being built on its shores (to be turned into condos later):

Lastly, Vancouver and Canada in general, are famous for being polite, and the Critical Mass here definitely confirmed that reputation. People were great! And there were tons of kids on the ride... Here's one who was already growing weary as we entered Stanley Park, and to tell the truth, we were about this tired by the time we finally ended our evening hours later:

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:

The stencil scene here has made Russell very happy, as he's been able to shoot a couple of dozen really nice works. You can check his ever-growing gallery on Stencil Archive. One artist a lot of folks have been telling us about is called "The Dark" and I snapped this of a billboard-size painting he did on a construction site:

Getting around Vancouver has been a delight. The city is pretty spread out, and right now at the end of June it is a lush green urban paradise. Bike boulevards crisscross the city, skirting ridges and valleys to make navigating around by bike very comfortable.

I've been delighted while riding to encounter a steady stream of cyclists on all the various designated bikeways, a huge population of everyday cyclists. The infrastructure is better, but still a ways to go, of course. One thing that's worked nicely is the signal triggers for cyclists that seem to accelerate the signal change to allow us to cross large arteries:

The bike boulevards are named, sometimes by the street, but the one we've been on the most is called "Mosaic" and each of the traffic calming circles in intersections has its own mosaic decoration, quite lovely...

The traffic circles themselves are often green spaces maintained by neighbors too. Here's one at 10th Ave. and the Ontario bikeway:

There are number of smaller bike facilities installed here and there, ramps and side paths. And in one small stretch near the end of False Creek there is the prototype of a new full blown side-path system that is supposed to be more widely implemented in years to come:

We were met soon after arriving by Colin McKenzie, who took us on a long, lovely ride to catch the sunset with drinks at Kits Beach on our first night here. We paused at some scenic spots along the way. Here's Colin peering through a small lighthouse at one of our stops:

After the sun went down he took us over the Burrard Bridge, which we hope we'll revisit later tonight on the big June Critical Mass here:

Some more public art we encountered during our wanders:

Another intervention elsewhere read "Capitalisn't"... kinda funny meme...

Russell found this one on a sidewalk.

He also found a community garden while I was doing my reading yesterday:

Here's Spartacus Books, our hosts and also their new store... neither Russell nor I drew many people to our Talks, but the store moved recently and apparently a lot of folks don't know the new location. Also, the collective has been so busy with setting up the new store, it's not clear they had much time to publicize our appearances, though it did show up on a lot of local email lists. In any case, I had a very good conversation with the folks who DID show up, and sold out of books too, so I'm happy with that.

A couple of the folks who showed up were Amy from Momentum Magazine, and Karl Anderson, who has relocated here from Portland. Here we are having a drink the day before, along with Mia who is also working on Momentum...

Gary Fisher was in town too, so after the Nowtopia talk last night he and I and Karl and Amy and Russell tooled around False Creek and saw various public art installations, chatting all the while... on our way home, Russell and I stopped for pizza and while gobbling it up, a crowd of about 75 bicyclists suddenly rode by on Commercial Street, laughing and talking. We caught up with them and found out it was the regular last Thursday of the month Midnight Mass... we rode along for a bit, I had a chat with someone named Mark about 3D plotting of urban environments, and then we turned back towards our abode, calling it a night at 1 a.m.... Tonight is Critical Mass!

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:

Keeping independent bookstores alive is increasingly a Nowtopian endeavor all by itself! So many of the outposts of free information and culture that I've visited on this tour are maintained by volunteers, or lowly-paid, dedicated book-and-idea lovers. A hearty thanks to all of them. Kristi and the others at Left Bank were very generous and gave me a super warm welcome. As they're having their 35th birthday and are grandfathered into their space in the heart of the tourist zone of Seattle, they deserve all the support we can send them...

One of the fellows who heard me on the radio and approached me at Elliott Bay handed me a Farmers Market Guide to the state of Washington. Another Nowtopian initiative, the state is full of fresh, local produce at Farmers Markets. I asked about what was happening in Seattle, and some folks piped up to talk about the P-patch community garden initiative, and sure enough, I'd noticed one on my way cycling in from Beacon Hill.

I loved cycling on the ridge top of Beacon Hill: far to the west the snow-capped Olympic mountains on the other side of Puget Sound; to the east the snow-capped mountains of the Cascades. To the south, Mt. Rainier, another massive and impressive mountain. Here's a shot of it as we drove away across the floating bridge of I-90 in Lake Washington:

Our gracious host Ruth and her charming 6-year-old Grace, took us on a couple of car tours of the city. We went to the U-dub area, named after the Univ. of Washington campus that is its center, and found a long wall that had been the center of street artists' efforts a year earlier. I liked this panel the best, though there were a couple of interesting ones:

During that stenciling party I blogged in the previous entry, Ruth made a stencil saying "Total Destruction--Only Solution?" and it reminded me again of how peculiarly apocalyptic the spirit is here in the Northwest. Or maybe it's not so peculiar, but does seem to have some kind of hold on a lot of people we've met, some combination of despair, depression, and resignation, undergirded by a misanthropic instinct regarding "everyone else". (A funny aside is that the fellow who first coined the Total Destruction, Only Solution tag, followed it elsewhere with a second installment: "Total Construction? Only Pollution").

There is a deep alienation at the root of this despair, and it's really the basic alienation imposed by commodity fetishism, in which we human subjects are reduced to objects, while the world around us is given power and animation and subjectivity. So humans are just stupid, or lumps, or bamboozled, but in any case, incapable of reinventing the world (the world we already made into this mess), since the Machine, or Civilization, or the Spectacle, is the agent of history and we humans are spectators, or victims, or hapless enthusiasts of our own alienation. No wonder so many people get depressed up here with that as an underlying frame of reference! And there is also the basic mystery of life's meaning, an existential dilemma that is difficult to answer if giving meaning to life and our activities in the world is precluded by a philosophical predisposition to mistrust human action and human desire as flawed, duped, cancerous, and even the point of origin for our collective unhappiness. To paraphrase a copy of Green Anarchy ("an anti-civilization journal of theory and action") I browsed yesterday, we have to eliminate language and time to be able to experience a true life... sheesh! It's pretty amazing that John Zerzan and his friends can keep their energies up to fling us into the same philosophical cul-de-sac over and over, issue after issue, year after year. The sad part is how many people unconsciously adopt the meme they've been selling all this time, that the only solution is total destruction. The quickest path to this bleak vision is still, after a half century, dropping the Big One.

On a happier note, and not a pollyanna-ish happiness either, I find that my Nowtopia Talks are regularly leaving inspiration and enthusiasm in their wake. Even though I offer a total critique of my own, it doesn't leave people numb and depressed, feeling that there's nothing they can do. On the contrary, it is precisely constructed to activate our subjectivities, to reconnect us to the basic power of life and love and creativity that we all have. If we can find a political voice, and continue to expand our social networks on the basis of this revivified subjectivity and passion (and practical, useful work), I'm quite sure we can seriously challenge the direction of the larger society from below...

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)...

I had to participate for a change, so I made my usual comment into a stencil, and Russell graciously did the painting, since I cannot manipulate a spray can to do what I want:

4 Full Njoymnt

Not Full Mploymnt

Here's the iconic image of Russell's Stencil Nation book and project:

And lastly, this mysterious image was at the other end of the lot... no mouth to look into, but what the hell...

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:

After choosing the left turn at this spot, in a few blocks you invariably find yourself amidst a group of cyclists heading south on Broadway:

Portland has been awarded for its bicycle facilities and improvements, and here's a colored bike box, likely to be more widely implemented in lots of cities in the next years:

The keynote speech by Gil Penalosa on Tuesday was quite good, if a bit long. He really went after the transit planning geeks in the audience, including all the Portlanders patting themselves on the back, by emphasizing how limited and inadequate the bike lanes we have are, and comparing the Portland infrastucture to cities in the real major leagues of bicycling, like Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Berlin, etc. I particularly appreciated it since he went through a number of powerpoint slides showing how life improves, accidents fall, health stats get better, and so much more, if you build the infrastructure to accommodate lots of new cyclists. Crucially you need to provide separate bikeways, sidepaths and dedicated roads, so the majority of the potential bicyclists out there who are afraid to ride in big city traffic will venture out and give it a try. Particularly inspiring were his images of Bogota, Colombia where he and his former mayor brother implemented a lot of cycle paths and Bus Rapid Transit to improve the lives of the poorest citizens (the juxtaposition of unpaved, crumbling slums with state-of-the-art tree-lined bikeways, used by people to bring their kids to school, was really great). I was glad his speech was so clear that cycling and carfree advocates have to seek much more profound changes to the urban landscape. He really got his point over by emphasizing the starting point for the discussion is "how do we want to live?" If you provide spaces for cars, you get a lot of cars, if you provide spaces for people and pedestrians and cyclists, you get... public space used by lots of people moving themselves in a variety of ways... ABC... so easy, and yet such a struggle to get even bike advocates in the U.S. to step up to this more aggressive approach.

Anyway, we got to get into the inside-outside politics of San Francisco's past 16 years on our panel on Thursday afternoon. I was the outsider of course, Steve Jones of the Bay Guardian was the forceful moderator (good job Steve!), and Leah Shahum of the Bike Coalition, and Dave Snyder of SPUR presented the point of view of the insiders, while Jason Henderson, geography prof at San Francisco State, gave a useful overview of the bigger political processes underway (neoliberalism, neoconservatism, pragmatic politics, based exclusively on "who shows up at City Hall" either as voters or lobbyists or appointees)... The audience seemed to appreciate our range of views and one guy summed it up in the Q&A when he said he'd come to be entertained and educated and we'd delivered on both. Here's a blurry shot of us in the act:

After the day indoors we headed to a brewpub where we ate and drank for several hours. I had the great pleasure of getting to know better the guys from Toronto, Mike Joy and Shamaz and Andrew (who interviewed me for an upcoming CBC segment). Here they are before sitting down to some great steak dinners, along with Thiago and Meaghan who was one of the awesome volunteers who made the Conference such a pleasure to attend:

Down the deck the San Franciscans were putting heads together with Aaron and Clarence and Elizabeth of StreetFilms, plotting to open a bureau in San Francisco amidst the sloshing beer (Elizabeth made a nice segment on the Depaving Day Monday event, including a short bit from yours truly):

After dinner we went to the closed street where square dancing had been going on, though we arrived after it was over. Not to worry! Mike Joy pulled out his trumpet and started regaling us with tunes, sometimes sounding like Rube Waddell, other times he got us going with some familiar Balkan rhythms. Before we knew it about a dozen of us were whirling around dancing, clapping and hooting along with him, a very sweet impromptu dance party.

I'm definitely looking forward to an invitation or excuse to go to Toronto and continue the great friendships that started here in Portland... the night wound down for me and I had to make the long trek back home, so I went up on the Broadway Bridge under a full moon. Some other cyclists were hanging out there too, admiring the moon...

All in all, a great visit to Portland, a place I could spend lots of time in quite easily...

On the way out of town Friday we pedaled back in to find the City Repair crowd and see some of their altered intersections. As it happens we only found the Sunnyside Piazza, which I'd seen a few years ago, but it's been freshly painted. While there some folks cycled through too, adding to the sense of it being part of a real alteration...

There's a nice fruit tree growing on the corner, too!

We went to find their headquarters and here it is, though no one was home when we went by:

To wrap up the visit to Portland, here are a few extra shots. First, a sensible repurposing of a parking space for bike parking (San Francisco, when will we have these all over town?)

Across from the City Repair HQ on E. Burnside was this prominent handpainted sign:

Which was odd because Portland seems extremely sensible and practical, and not particularly weird at all... then I came upon this sign, which was a gratifying reinforcement of my fantastic steak dinner the night before:

OK, maybe they're a bit weird!

It's very beautiful there, the town of Mt. Hood on the Oregon side of the river and White Salmon on the hilltop on the Washington State side. There is also the White Salmon River pouring in nearby. Michael explained how the economy had crashed a couple of decades ago when the timber industry went into terminal decline, and for five years the area had 30%+ unemployment and folks were leaving in droves. Then the windsurfing phenomenon took off and this spot became of the world's premiere destinations for windsurfers and parasailers... Now it's the backbone of the local economy, and it's all thanks to the relentless wind pouring upriver, countering the river itself rushing westward, leading to a unique area of crazy currents and powerful winds nearly all year long.

Michael took us to see the local elementary school named after his dad, we went by his various job sites as a teenager, and then we went up the White Salmon river to find his old highschool stoner hangout on a bridge. When we got there, we found the path had turned into a muddy creek, and the bridge itself had been destroyed by a fire some time earlier. Here's the ruins of it:

We continued up the river towards Mt. Adams and the Trout Lake valley and found this intact bridge to watch the White Salmon River rush beneath us (and oddly, a Federal Express delivery man and his van, weirdly putting large sticks into the back and then hanging out waiting for us to leave... did he have a dead body to deliver?)....

In Trout Lake Valley we passed a big herb farm growing echinacea and various teas, under the beautiful Mount Adams:

We paused for lunch, and enjoyed the clear mountain air, the thousands of blooming wildflowers along the way, and the spectacular snow-capped mountains dominating the area. Here's Mt. Adams up close:

It was reminiscent for me of travelling in the Rockies, the Sierra, even a bit of the Alps, but finally we were in the Cascades, in a long valley carved between large volcanic mountains by the enormous Columbia River and its tributaries. On the southern end of this same area is Mt. Hood, viewed here from the porch on Michael's mother's house, and then the view up the Gorge from the same spot:

And finally, here's Mt. Hood in its glory:

I enjoyed the appearance enormously. A good discussion followed, lots of pointed questions and interesting thoughts from the 50+ people who jammed in to hear it. Earlier in the day the Carfree Conference started out with a public event of depaving:

It was an inspiring scene, dozens of folks sweating to break up the asphalt and transform a corner from a parking lot into a garden, or at least a space in which a garden will be planted. Here's a few shots of the energetic crowd, many hands making easier work:

Even Superman came to help!

That was Monday. I was also getting my bike repaired after hitting a curb full on during my ride home Sunday night (thank you North Portland Bike Works for a quick and inexpensive job!), not re-injuring my back by pure luck (I have some deep bruises on my arm and leg) and not really damaging my bike much either. Whew! a close call...

On Tuesday I headed down to the conference but passed up the workshops in favor of sitting in the hall and schmoozing, selling books and license plates, and mostly meeting and greeting...had a lovely time! Already the night before I'd gotten to hang out a bit with Thiago Benicchio from Sao Paolo (we knew of each other beforehand so we were looking for each other) and Justin Hyatt from Budapest via Prague (we'd also been in contact during the past two years)... two really wonderful guys. I renewed my acquaintance with some of the good folks at People Power in Santa Cruz, met some interesting folks from Guadalajara, Mexico, the good people from StreetFilms, chatted with my table mates from Bicycle City, who are trying to launch a new kind of carfree urban development model, and lots of other folks too...At the adjacent table was Elaine, maker of beautiful shoulder bags from recycled materials (we were given one, each is unique, as registered attendees), and once again I was reminded of a missing chapter in Nowtopia, that of the DIY recycled-materials clothing makers, like Serpica Naro in Milan, or also this other woman, "Skye Blue Can Sew," that I saw later in front of City Hall during the art and music show and the Sprockettes.

City Hall held a big carfree postcard art show, and beer and wine flowed freely, while outside bands played, art was painted, a tall bike was being welded together, and the obligatory car piñata was bashed. The emcee blithely announced "we're distributing ulocks and heavy chains--please take them across the street. Start with the SUVs, then the Vans, then the luxury cars..." and everyone took a moment to realize what he was saying. It was hilarious.

We snuck off to enjoy some local herbal alteration, and not too long after we returned the Sprockettes came on for their second set. They're provocative and cute and funny and pretty tightly choreographed, very enjoyable to watch!

After all that it was another long ride back to the Northeast of Portland. Today was a day off, so we went with Michael Med-o up to his hometown of White Salmon... snow-capped photos in the next post.

I did a reading to a small, much older crowd than usual at Tsunami Books, a cool shop somewhat away from the town center. Here's a photo, and also Scott, the proprietor who graciously hosted me on the local university's commencement day, and has his own beautiful garden on the side of the bookstore.

I enjoyed presenting at Tsunami though did find it a bit weird how the crowd of 11 people consisted of 10 men, 1 female, and at least 8 or 9 over 45... quite a contrast to other appearances. But anyway, Kathy Ging was the most loquacious of the audience members and she told a couple of interesting stories: first about helping start a Community Skill Bank in Ashland a couple of dozen years ago and how it functioned; and secondly she started a concept (and website) called Liberated Salad. It's pretty cool!

Kathy also set us up with Sue Supriano (host of Steppin' Out of Babylon radio show), who kindly gave us a place to sleep and the following morning a walking tour of Maitrea, a nearby ecovillage and intentional community.

I thought it curious when she explained that she'd moved to Eugene from Berkeley because of global warming and peak oil. I guess there's a sense that people will take better care of themselves in Eugene than in the metropolitan Bay Area, but I actually imagine the opposite. I think we'll do pretty well at reinventing urban life and cohabitation as we need to in the Bay Area... but of course I'm quite optimistic!

Eugene feels like an oasis in many respects. The streets are very wooded, there are lovely gardens both private and public, lots of parkland, the river runs through the city and is graced with parks and bikeways on both sides and several bike/ped bridges connecting the two sides. We bombed around town on our bikes, and came upon this odd sign, implying a level of social monitoring I haven't encountered elsewhere!

We especially enjoyed the walk over to Maitrea, a real Nowtopian outpost, with Sue. Here's a bunch of photos:

A lot of the architecture was really interesting around the half block site. There are various dome structures made of wood and cardboard, several straw bale houses and benches, and as we were leaving we passed this important resource, "Waste Stream Alley".

I spoke with a guy strumming his guitar about the work and the community and he spoke well of it. Apparently it's gotten a lot more tightly organized in the past year, one report indicating it is through the assertion of more direction from the titular land owners who are part of the community. I don't know if I would enjoy being part of such a place, but in terms of the physical "plant" it was really beautiful and inspiring!

From Eugene we made our way to Portland, and made it in time to join the Zoobombers, crowds of bicyclists who take the train to the Zoo at the top of the hill and then "bomb" downhill into central Portland in about 10 minutes. It's a lot like an amusement park ride, but you can do it on your own bike (I did!) and you're in a crowd of cyclists, much like a Critical Mass, but too precarious to talk or share the experience much, having to focus on navigating the crowds and the curves and the speed to make it down. Once down, most of the group immediately entered the tram station to take the train back to the top, but we headed home to the northeast of Portland.

Now that we've been here a few days, there are lot more stories to tell, but I'll put them in the next post.

On the way here we passed Mt. Shasta and its lake created by a dam, which provided stark visual evidence of the proclaimed drought here in California. Usually the mountain is covered in deep snow year round...

My week in San Francisco turned out to be surprisingly on topic of this Nowtopia tour. On the first day back I ran into several friends, many of whom were up in arms about the plans of California to start aerial spraying pesticides and pheromones over the Bay Area to control the Light Brown Apple Moth infestation. It's a great example of the kind of counter-expertise and DIY science that's an important backbone of the emerging movements to redesign life. Rather than passively deferring to governmental "experts" (who are in this case clearly serving the narrow interests of certain agribusiness concerns) people with varying degrees of their own scientific skills are organizing, digging up information, and debunking the government's bland safety assurances.

People like to think of San Francisco as a bastion of lunar-tics, or moon-worshippers, and when I snapped this shot I realized it was true!

This past Saturday night was another installment of MAPP (Mission Art & Performance Project) and I made it over to my friend Iris's installation and events at Cocoon on Harrison near 25th. Fifteen different sites open up with art, music, performance, discussion and among all the locations in a radius of about a half mile, centered in 23rd and Folsom, people stroll about, engaging in a very social passeata, meeting each other, chatting, catching up.

I had a lovely time. I was even teased by one group of friends for claiming that I'd already had several great conversations when they wondered if I was automatically adding the conversation I was having with them to the list of "great conversations"! I admitted I would, and defended it outright. We need more public life! Strolling around meeting friends new and old, talking about anything at all, is a vital re-animation of urban life.

At the nearby Taqueria Vallarta, I came up on this band Tierra del Sol playing Rock Mexika. It didn't knock my socks off, but they were spirited and laid down a nice rock beat...

Over at Cocoon I came in, unexpectedly, on a talk being given by Brett Stephens of Native Spaces, a slide show on edible native plants in San Francisco. It was kind of funny, because of course I am a fan of such Nowtopian projects, but I also want to eat well. His talk presented a number of plants that he admitted didn't taste so good, or that were used historically by native people, but in a weird unintended consequence, something about how the information gets presented defeats itself. By emphasizing a diet of weeds and native plants of varying textures and tastes, it implies that this is what people ate long ago, when the reality is that Bay Area dwellers before Europeans had an abundant diet of fish, crustaceons, game, birds, and of course some of these plants and acorn mush...

Anyway I was delighted to find an hour-long talk like this as part of a monthly festival of art and music. Another manifestation of the growing shift of consciousness, the growing interest in basic information on what's edible and local. Similarly, I saw a flyer in the Haight advertising "Urban Permaculture: How to Make the Haight Sustainable", a talk by Kevin Bayuk, a local permaculture designer, on June 12 sponsored by HANC.

After I headed back towards home on MAPP night, I came to Philz, my corner coffee joint, which had been converted to La Peña de Philz and a really impressive young band was cranking out some driving rhythms and playing at a very high level of complexity and competence. I loved them! And they seemed smart and funny and savvy too... Antioquia:

One of the gallery spaces that have popped up on 24th Street lately (to some folks' chagrin, who see it as part of a wave of gentrification sweeping the neighborhood... and it's true in part. But the MAPP is very much an attempt by talented and aware artists to create a new kind of life, a new reinhabitation of the neighborhood that knits together people across a lot of the boundaries that have dominated us for so long)... anyway in that gallery window there was a puppet display which caught my eye, and on closer examination I realized that the cyclist in the diorama had a hand-made version of my yellow "Bicycling Against Oil Wars" signs! very cute!

On June 9 I spoke at a warm-up public discussion on "Take Back the Commons" for an upcoming event called The Big One, an attempt by a number of people to pull together a sprawling public discussion on over a dozen themes, to be held in Golden Gate Park over two days June 21-22 in Sharon Meadow. It was much more interesting than I expected. We had a stimulating conversation about The Commons, and many aspects of how we think about such issues. To a great extent I felt this group was another example of the small-ish, but significant epistemological shift going on, and I think they felt reinforced too, after our shared discussion. If you're in SF on the 21st, check out the Big One in the park, or if not, check out the link that takes you to the WiseEarth group on their topics.

On Tuesday afternoon I went to visit Marina and Maize in Page Street Community Garden, a garden I hadn't seen before. What a sweet garden! What a pleasure to have a leisurely hour with good friends on a hot sunny midweek afternoon! Just what "work" usually keeps most of us from, all the time... A Nowtopian moment for sure!

I got to climb up and get some close-ups of Mona's new mural in Noe Valley:

What a lovely vision of a new, slowed down system of public transit!

Well, I got to hurtle around on my own bicycle again, but in what turned out to be the first of three mini-breakdowns, I was nearly to the top of Twin Peaks for my usual photos from the south peak, when I got a flat.

I walked 40 minutes down to the best worker-run bike coop in town these days, Box Dog Bikes, who fixed my tire in minutes (thank you!).

My "comedy" of accidents continued yesterday morning when I lost the only key to my father's car that I borrowed for this trip, which forced me to get towed to a locksmith and spend $120 to get new keys made!... In what I hope is the third AND FINAL mini-disaster, we gassed up here in Yreka only to have the starter stop starting... so we hope by tomorrow we'll be repaired and on our way in time to make our first gig in Eugene... more later.

By 12:30 or so we started rolling, a straight 25 kilometers south to the beach. It was by far their largest beach ride yet, apx. 1200 riders, and it slowed us down a lot as the front stopped quite often to keep us together. Again it involved stretches on the highway, much to the aggravation of beach goers in cars, halted behind our cheerful throng.

pausing at a fruit stand, stopping at mysterious points

but finally reaching the beach where we swam, played Frisbee, music, and laid around talking and drinking. I again had one great conversation after another as people would glide up and say hello, and another new friendship was started… sooo great!

Most of us eventually headed home on the train (2-3 km behind us) but several hundred camped out overnight. On the train we filled the first car with about 25 bikes and riders but apparently the official rule is only 8 per car.

The conductor came out to scold us, at first mildly, then his petty authoritarianism got the best of him and he berated the entire car. A few people had gotten on at the second stop, and the conductor thought—even though we’d bought two tix each, one for our bodies and one for our bikes—that we should stand up for the “regular” people. One woman took offense and explained that if she needed a seat she was sure she could get one and he didn’t need to hassle the cyclists (she was not one). He snapped at her “Shut up! It’s not your business!” and she went absolutely ballistic, completely unwilling to eat shit from a petty tyrant on a local train. He actually told the assembled passengers that this train “wasn’t theirs” to which all responded loudly that “yes it was!” (a public train system after all). But the woman who he’d yelled at put on an incredible performance—just what you imagine a really angry Italian woman who is sure of herself and has been insulted might do—an avalanche of invective and argument, enthusiastically supported by the rest of the (mostly cyclist) passengers. The conductor angrily retreated to his front cabin, slamming the door and never reappearing. It was hilarious theater (thanks to Rosa for translating for me in situ).

I love Rome and Ciemmona! I’ll definitely be back!

The black t-shirt referring to $100 barrel oil, a celebration because the party is over, was done by the folks from Lyon, who held a short celebration on a freezing cold Jan. 5 08 at a long-abandoned gas station in Lyon, France.

Here also is a graffiti freshly painted along the freeway from the Cieemona ride:

I visited SNIA four years ago with Mona and Francesca and it was great to come back again, reconnect with Giuso, and see it in its full glory right before Ciemmona. I’d visited after midnight too on Thursday and seen Anthony the watchmaker’s wild creation—an impossible contraption of drums and tubes towed by a lone bicycle, capable of painting bike symbols on the street. Giuso and Pietro were both working on their Tall Bikes that night too, rushing to finish them in time for Friday night’s opening ride.

The gathering began around 4 on Saturday, and people were flowing in for an hour longer. Some came prepared, like this friend, whose name has disappeared for me, who made me several delicious Mojitos from her handlebars:

Others found other things to do while waiting:

The Big Ride finally commenced about 5 o’clock on Saturday and right away we were riding on fresh yellow paint, everyone’s tires picking up their own signature.

But it wasn't too far before we overtook Anthony and his wonder, stalled after a minor malfunction:

Other people were stenciling the road ahead, keeping the spirit going along the entire ride, including getting a few down on the freeways that we surprisingly took.

On we went, back in the direction of SNIA on via Prenestina, which is connected to a local freeway. By the time I came up, the ride was doubling back on to the highway. Roman CMers had talked about taking the freeway before but this was the first time they did it. (The ride in Toronto did it this past weekend too)

Thus commenced a hilarious 1-hour-long gridlock on the freeway system as we looped quite a distance, only to pull the same maneuver a second time in a new spot—hundreds of cars completely stuck, motorists milling about on the road (almost like a scene from Godard’s Weekend!), police often helplessly embedded in the same traffic nightmare. The few times I saw police directly speaking with cyclists they seemed quite cheerful and understanding, surprisingly.

Most people took it with good cheer or resignation, but you could understand the severe exasperation that plenty of folks were experiencing.

One thing quite different in Rome from San Francisco is the ability and persistence of scooters, motorcycles and even occasional cars to drive into the middle of the Critical Mass flow and then aggressively move forward to try to go all the way through it—as though it were just another typical traffic situation in Rome. Quite frustrating from a CM point of view, bad enough when it’s the police barreling up behind you on motorcycles, but totally unacceptable when it’s just an impatient shithead on his motorbike. Anyway, the Friday night ride wasn’t corked too well, but Saturday at the Big One, people did a much better job. Dozens of cars and motorized scooters or motorcycles got surrounded and blocked again and again. In fact I only saw about four or five spots where tempers got really hot—one just as we left Piazza del Popolo and a guy melted down under the reciprocal taunting (the trash talking here can be really intense) and accelerated about 5 feet, grazing a cyclist before 30 others closed in on him (and his girlfriend on back was not happy either) so he angrily turned his motorcycle off and sat resigned and fuming. Surprising! No blows, no fisticuffs all day, not even any shoving! I went back and forth from front to back a lot so usually if things are getting out of hand in SF, it’s happening ¾ to all the way back, but I didn’t see anything. A lot of successful defusings, talking-downs, negotiations and conversations… a lot!

A Belgian woman I met on the beach ride on Sunday, Sylvan, described an experience she had on Friday night (she speaks perfect Italian, lived in Rome five years and it was her 30th birthday so she’d come back to celebrate in Rome with Ciemmona): An elderly man, blocked in his car, was pleading that he was just trying to go shopping for food. They talked a bit, she trying to explain he could proceed soon, and she asked him if he remembered the “old pre-supermarket days” when a greengrocer was on the ground floor of almost every apartment building? Of course! He wished it were still so, then he wouldn’t have to drive a distance to buy food. He then reminisced about getting around Rome on horseback, so she invited him to join Critical Mass next time on a horse!

After finally leaving the freeways we headed into the center, pausing from time to time to “mass up.” Here’s one of ‘em amidst the ubiquitous ruins, with a bike lift for good measure:

Made it to the Piazza della Repubblica, pausing a bit,

then down and right through a long tunnel sort of like the Stockton Tunnel in SF but better lit and longer, past the Spanish Steps where tourists were mobbing and we altered the sounds and sights for a half hour as we passed through:

Another pause in Piazza del Popolo, our numbers considerably smaller by now, nearly 9 p.m.

Finally up the hill to Pincheto in Villa Burguese Park where a new parking garage is being built (and whre the hardcore have a bicycle picnic every Wednesday night). A huge picnic and party with great food, wine, singing and talking lasted late into the night… It was magic… the best feelings and experiences of Critical Mass multiplied by being in Rome with such a big crowd of interesting, engaged people…

I came to Rome four years ago, but this visit was such a surprise! My great hosts, Paolo and Giusi and their sweet daughters Greta and Viola hosted me in fantastic comfort:

while the huge community of cyclists made me feel like an old friend almost as soon as we said hello: Ilaria, Imma, Giorgia, Rosella, Giulia, Giuso, Livio, three Francesca’s, three or four Federico’s, Luca, Pietro, Piero, Patrizia, Rosabella, Giancarlo, Gianluca, two Chiara’s, Pepino, Fabbiana, Flavio, Uva from Sicily and Ciclofficina Etnea, AnnaLisa and her eco-taxi project, Eleanora, Magdalena, the list goes on and I’m sorry if I forgot anyone—it was really hard to remember everyone’s names in such a short time. Giovanni from the Ciclofficina in Florence, Eric from Campobasso, Romano who gave me all his books and maps on cycling in Rome and Lazio.

(Giorgia and Rotafixa at back left, AnnaLisa and Francesca the librarian in foreground... not sure the name of the fellow on the eco-taxi)

Giulia

Alessio, from whom I borrowed the Ciemmona banner on a previous entry, with me, at SNIA before the Big Ride.

Imma in the middle, with her friend whose name I forgot, at the piazza prior to riding in the Big Critical Mass.

Rotafixa discusses the finer points of Sicily with Uva from Ciclofficina Etnea.

Luca (behind) and Andrea Maccarone who is Italian but lives in Toulouse where he is organizing the 2nd Intergalactic Bikeforum of Popular Ciclofficine (DIY bike shops) on June 13-15.

Then all the Internationals I met, who also gave me such a warm welcome and embrace! The Spaniards, Rebecca and her ferret and a half dozen other Madrileños, whose names I never quite got, one sweet guy originally from Mexico City. Felix, a Brit who helped Paolo with the interview we did for Il Manifesto, who tore off his suit from a corporate conference just minutes before joining the ride. I had a charming conversation with Ūna from Dublin via Catania, Sicily where she’s teaching English and connected with the local cyclists. Anthony, the Irish watchmaker, built an impossible painting machine. Andrea, Olivier and Alvaro from Toulouse (Alvaro originally Mexican too), Sylvan from Belgium, Becky and Geraldine and their posse from Lyon, Eileen from Geneva, ex-pat Andy who is high-end programmer and hacker, William from New York and Florence and perfectly bilingual (he was shooting lots of great video the whole time), Alessio the blogger, Morgan from Vancouver, Adam and Maryann from Hackney in London.

Alvaro from Mexico by way of Toulouse, France.

Rebecca from Madrid, who always had her ferret in her basket or wrapped around her neck, even when dancing to reggae!

Rosa, who lives and works in Ethiopia these days, but is home for the summer, taking a break from a culture with no word for "pollution" and that has basically run out of fresh water. She was the translator for the story of the train in the last entry to follow about the ride home from the beach.

My host, Rotafixa, who makes his own frames, and loaned me one of his amazing, speedy, one-speed bikes. He likes the fixie, but gave me one with coaster brakes (thank you!)...

Sylvan, from Belgium, having her 30th birthday by returning to ride in the Big Critical Mass weekend in Rome, where she spent five years earlier in her life. She tells a great story about corking during the Friday ride, coming in the next post.

Then there was the local couple about my age who hailed me during CM on Friday and asked if I wanted to do an interview with La Repubblica? Of course I said yes, and that very night Cecilia Gentile, the journalist, called and we had lunch on Paolo’s beautiful terrace the next day and the article appeared on Sunday in the national edition! I had a weirdly celebrity-ish time, having three major pieces in different national publications (Il Manifesto, L’Espresso, and La Repubblica), two public presentations of Nowtopia, four video interviews, and maybe 100 people ore more greet me personally during and after the three rides, plus I felt like I was constantly being smiled at and having my photo taken… Very strange! And very fun! Here three of the videographers who I was interviewed by at various times during the three days of cycling and talking:

Eleanora, William, and Magdalena

In just a few days in Rome I have been so welcomed, and so warmly embraced, it’s almost embarrassing, but in fact it has been the thrill of a lifetime! I have more than 50 new friends, and I’m sure there are at least several thousand more whom I will meet eventually. Rome could be a second home, without doubt.

Critical Mass is an unusual prism through which to experience a city. For one thing, it’s always unique in each place it happens, but on the other hand, it’s a eerily familiar experience. Well, I’ll take it from the top, knowing that I have already forgotten way more than I can remember and write down here. I headed out at 5:30 on Friday to find a small group gathering at a nearby “ciclofficina” (the local DIY bikeshops, of which there were four, but as of yesterday at the Ciemmona a fifth one announced itself) but in the dense streets of Monti here in the center of Rome, I could not find them. Luckily I was loaned a cellphone so I made a call, simultaneous to Ilaria calling to see where the hell I was, and she found me a few minutes later. There were already a group of about a dozen Spaniards there, including one fellow from Mexico, and Rebecca with her ferret in her front basket (she later that night danced to pulsing funk and Motown with the sweet animal draped around her shoulders!). The rest of our entourage soon pulled out and 30 of us or so headed towards the gathering point at Piramide. Here’s Ilaria with her sound system in tow.

At Piramide about 1000 cyclists assembled (this was the local, smaller “normal” ride on Friday night), including a bunch of us internationalistas who had already made it to Rome for the Big One to follow on Saturday. Piero, whom I’d met the night before at the ciclofficina Don Quixote at SNIA (more on SNIA in the next post), was in fine form, juggling with a bunch of friends, and a vehicle called “Ciclo Ludo Muzga Bus” decked out in several drums, getting everyone dancing a bit as we enjoyed the late sun streaming over the Pyramid (stolen from Egypt by the Romans more than 2000 years ago and rebuilt here).

I ran around taking photos of t-shirts (I was also gifted with several to add to my ever expanding collection!) and these older fender stickers to capture the something of the creativity that Critical Mass keeps displaying:

The inventiveness that produces strange hybridized Tallbikes and Longbikes was on full display too. Here are several of the more interesting ones I came upon during the day. Giuso is on this one. He is one of my favorite people of all time! I met him when I came to Rome the first time in 2002 or 03, and they had just started the ciclofficina at SNIA. He’s a very charismatic and smart man, who is in the middle of many initiatives that I would characterize as Nowtopian… for one, he’s an awesome chef and last time when in Rome I ate a meal he prepared while we talked about him wanting to start a Food Not Bombs chapter. I asked him about it this time and he talked about the problems of finding people who would dedicate themselves enough to maintain the continuity, but how they do have several food-related initiatives going on, including a Grupo Acquisitivo (like a CSA) in which they are able to ask the farmers to grow specific things to be ready at specific times of the year. I shot a video of him yesterday at SNIA explaining the amazing history of the place which I hope to post to YouTube for inclusion in a later post. While we were talking during this ride he told me about a new(er) ciclofficina called Lavanderia, which is in a former asylum, and that now there are “crazy” people there working on fixing up bikes for the sane!

Yes there are a half dozen or more of my yellow signs floating around here, always fun for me to come upon one!

This is Piero, who was juggling at the beginning and clowning throughout!

The last one is the tallest, and on it sits Olivier whom I met last night after the “big one”—he turns out to have just gotten out of jail after a sentence of 4 months for trying to give yogurt to French President Sarkozy, a story that I will try to understand better, but apparently it is as simple and preposterous as that.

Here is Betsy from Lyon (I may have gotten her name wrong) and a fellow from Mexico City via Madrid whose name escapes me:

Finally, here are a bunch of photos of the Friday, May 30 Critical Mass in Rome. Afterwards we ended in a Centro Sociale called Acrobax, a former dog-racing track in the southwest of Rome amidst freeways and factories, where we were served a fantastic 3-course dinner for 8 euros, followed by a few hours of sweaty dancing to some talented DJ’s who know how to lay down the funk and keep the booties shakin’! (though it was too dark and I was too drunk to take any photos)

And after a long night of cycling and partying, we headed home, back through the center of the city only to find that the Italian Army had occupied the place, thousands of troops mustering for a middle-of-the-night rehearsal of their big military parade tomorrow, June 2, a big holiday here. So about 20 of us went cycling by thousands of troops and suddenly a particular regiment started waving and cheering at us! Later, Paolo told me he had a equally surreal experience: the military band was playing some well-known Italian song and he and the folks he was cycling home with stopped and danced with the soldiers for a few minutes... hmmmm.... maybe there IS something you can do with the military after all! Anyway, I snapped this dark shot of troops coming in on the bus:

The Big One is next (I already rode in it, but trying to keep the stories separate!)...

Rotafixa introduces the evening:

The audience was split into two wings, one facing and one on the side:

After we ended around 10:30 or later, Rotafixa led a posse down the street to do some guerrilla gardening with plants he'd been collecting for a few days:

He'd made up some lovely little signs that say "Rebellious Flowers" and here you can see how it looked in the light of day today:

I also had a very encouraging meeting with another publisher today, DeriveApprodi, who said they'll prepare a proposal that includes translating the entire book and a modest advance. Yay! And I love their list, and would be really glad to be on it. There are still some even larger publishers that friends are approaching, so I will come back to SF and see what develops and what works best.

After that great evening, Rotafixa took me again on a blistering trip in the lingering rain across Rome to a ciclofficina I visited last time I was in Rome, SNIA. I left my camera behind but hope to return and get some photos before I go. The place is more beautiful than ever, full of insane bicycle constructions (the Rube Goldberg-inspired bike-symbol-painting "vehicle" is a site to behold!) and fantastic people, including Giuso, who I was delighted to meet again, and Adam and Maryann from a DIY bikeshop in London's projects. Tonight is Critical Mass, the local variety, and begins three days of mass bike riding...

In the afternoon yesterday the sun came out for a few hours and I took a walk, wandering around, and came upon some lovely sights--it's impossible NOT to while in Rome if you're willing to follow your nose... Here's a hieroglyphic column topped by some kind of Catholic statuary, but quite a fascinating piece of media in its own right:

It's in the plaza in front of a massive church, San Giovanni in Laterno, in which I took a couple of photos, one to capture its grandeur (it is very impressive) and one because I just didn't realize that 20-foot marble saints might be depicted reading a book of all things!

I just liked this view because it captures the astonishingly common experience here of wandering around and crisscrossing ancient walls and structures that are still in common use.

OK, too many bicycling pictures will come in the next entries... you've been warned!