Last night was the anniversary party to end all anniversary parties. Laughing Squid celebrated 10 young years of bringing forth San Francisco’s most freakiest. I bring you this short video that captures a few of the highlights.
As the rainy winter sets in here in San Francisco, two birds of a feather spread their wings. Last week, the much anticipated social browser Flock made it’s debut. This is my first post using Flock to see how she flys. So far, she’s airborne.
The other Flock coming to San Francisco is the beautiful metal sculpture piece pictured here from Burning Man 2001, by longtime artist Michael Christian. Flock (the sculpture) will be coming to the plaza in front of City Hall in mid-November, assuming the Black Rock Arts Foundation can raise enough dinero. You should donate, hint hint. Flock is one of my favorite pieces from all of Burning Man. The legs that rise up from the ground are organic and vine like slowly transforming to an animal shape as it reaches the headless mammalian torso. Possibly a glimpse into our own genetic future?
Hey Scott, so I think Flock officially bridges the gap between the SF Burning Man art scene and the new generation of open source geekdom. Your perception was spot on.
UPDATE: The San Francisco Examiner did a story on Flock coming to SF. I’m happy they chose to use my photo, despite not giving me a credit.
Technorati Tags: flock, blackrockarts, sanfrancisco
The world needs to know that Sparkletack is officially my favorite podcast of the moment. If you live in San Francisco and have wondered about the strange origins of the many things that makes our home quaint, cozy and just weird then listen up. Sparkletack tackles everything you could ever want to know about the origins of SF street names, the Golden Fire Hydrant, the great Emperor Norton, Patty Hearst, the infamous stagecoach robber Black Bart and of course, the Mission Burrito. The cool voice behind Sparkletack very succinctly covers a subject in a gripping storytelling style steeped in mystery and well researched history. Each episode is easy to devour in 20 minutes or less usually and will leave you wondering what will appear on your ipod next week. Give a listen before Sparkletack gets a deal with the History channel or something. It’s that good.
If you live in SF and care about democratizing Internet access, you should attend this free event. Media Alliance is making it happen and Lawrence Lessig is gonna throw down a few words. And check out Awesometown, funny as fuck.
Lawrence Lessig on Wireless in SF: Digital City or Divided City?
When: Monday, October 10 2005 @ 07:00 PM PDT – 10:00PM
Where: 111 Minna Gallery
111 Minna Street
between 2nd and New Montgomery
San Francisco
Description: Join Media Alliance for this dynamic panel discussion on creating universal, affordable Internet access through municipal broadband utilities. Featuring a presentation by Professor Lawrence Lessig and a panel of local community Internet experts, the evening will include Q&A with the audience.
After years of advocacy by MA and other groups, Mayor Newsom announced earlier this year his goal of free wireless Internet access for all San Franciscans. Cities across the country are implementing municipal projects, though with varying degrees of commitment to bridging the digital divide.
This evening will explore the significant opportunities for city-run projects to expand Internet access and usage by under-served communities, and improve cost, service and consumer choice for everyone.
The talk will be followed at 9pm by music from DJ’s Kid Kameleon and Ripley.
Cost: $5, Free for Media Alliance and EFF members
7-9 pm Discussion: Lessig, Panel, Q&A
9-10pm DJ’s Kid Kameleon and Ripley
I met Pam Pam around the old Progressive Nerve Center sometime last year while she was working for Dennis Kucinich’s presidential campaign. She’s an amazing human being that brings SF Peacemakers to life. She and friends and neighbors take back the corner of Sunnydale and Hahn every Friday night. It’s the most notorious block in San Francisco where frequent but little known stories of dead black men are made. Pam Pam brings a moment of peace to where much violence and blood have flowed. This 60 minute video (144MB QT) is Pam Pam’s story of what goes on down there. Get ready, it’s damn powerful. Btw, I didn’t create this video. This is a rip of a DVD that Pam Pam asked me to make available on the ‘net. I just ripped it and uploaded it to the Internet Archive.
Finally put my photos up from LA. They’re mostly pre and post show as I was otherwise occupied trying not to get fried in the frenzy.
Also, some pix from Tuesday night’s protest of the Shar-Pei skinned Governator‘s plan to privatize pensions for nurses, firefighters, police and teachers. Not your average San Francisco protest. Lots of middle age nurses, firefighters police and teachers turned out. And Frank Chu of course. Coincidentally, Ah-nawld today chose to drop the privatizing idea, at least for the time being.
Trolling Flickr, I found this. It’s Gavin Newsom signing a Matt Gonzalez campaign shirt on a student at Lowell High in San Francisco during a recent photo-op.
This is what San Francisco’s City Hall looks like today. Red for Valentine’s day and I imagine the first anniversary of our mayor’s now world famous action.
UPDATE: I was so wrong. The reason City Hall was really red was the Go Red for Women campaign by the American Heart Association. My bad. Red for Valentine’s just made too much sense.
It’s been just over a year since the runoff mayoral election last year in which Matt Gonzalez almost pulled one off against the machine. I can still recall vividly, the Dems scared at the prospect of losing a major city election to a Green, calling on Bill Clinton AND Al Gore to swoop in and stump for Gavin Newsom. Newsom did win, though mostly due to early absentee voters as Matt rocked the city at the polls on election day. The Progressive Voter Project was born as an answer to the absentee problem.
Two books have been published centering around the Gonzalez campaign. The Political Edge, from City Lights Press, is a collection of essays covering different points of view from volunteers of the campaign, local journalists and long-time activists. I’m interviewed by David Rosen for his piece, “130 Parties in 30 Days:” The Matt Gonzalez Mayoral Campaign & the Restructuring of the Culture Industry. He explores the idea that the culture of the campaign is what brought people together. Matt’s cultural identity is something that resonated with many of us thus driving his unprecedented support manifested in the form of spontaneious house parties, raffles, poetry readings, art auctions, rock shows, and yoga benefits to name a few.
The other book is called Go, Matt, Go edited by Nicole Walter. It’s also a collection of essays, blurbs, poetry, manifestos and interviews from many more volunteers of the campaign. Self published and editorially raw, it’s a good window into feeling of those short couple of months. I have a short essay that describes my experiences and emotions of the campaign. Both books are well worth picking up.
This town rawks! I take it for granted some times, but San Francisco really is the center of the universe. Those who don’t live here, just don’t realize it. Friday night, Marc tipped me off to a VIP reception shmoozie thing for Wired magazine’s NextFest event. Jedi mind tricked my way in and immediately was greeted with a martini. Wandered around amongst the futurist tech, taking in the shiny sites and think to myself how this all reminded me of dot-com irrational exuberance. I remember fondly the days of weekly launch parties greased with free flowing alcohol and endless hype. Thanks for the memories, Wired!
The next day, I returned to NextFest to take in most of what I had missed the night before. Unfortunately, the mass of humanity flooding the hall made it next to impossible to get a good look at anything clearly. The demo for ASIMO was impossible as everyone and their kids wanted in to see the humanoid robot walk up and down stairs. I queued up for the robotics panel discussion after, which was moderately interesting despite the obvious shilling for robotic products made by the moderator Colin Angle’s company. Stories of war profiteering by this same moderator by his same company elicited several boos from the audience. The most interesting points were brought up by Rodney Brooks director of MIT’s CS and AI lab and Ken Goldberg, professor and researcher at UC Berkeley. Brooks said that the Jetsonian dream of Rosie the robot is still at least 20-25 years off. Goldberg was the only panelist to give props to robotics as an art form, rather than pure market commodification as others seemed pre-occupied with.
Other highlights of NextFest were this 3D printer which I witnessed creating skulls, the K-bot which is a robotic head that emulates human facial expressions, the Moller Skycar and the directed sound of HyperSonic Sound technology.
Later that night was the Cloud Factory Design Collective’s 6th annual fashion show. Fucking amazing! Ravers can make hella cool threads and show them off in the most creative of ways. More on this once some pix become available. Like I said, this town rawks!
