Category: City by the Bay

So SFist is all hating on Burning Man. A few of the comments took offense but most seem to agree with their assertion that

Really, is there that much of a difference between Burning Man and Spring Break? All it is a bunch of (mainly) kids going somewhere warm to party and get laid. The only difference is that while Spring Break is made up of meathead frat boys from the Midwest and airhead sorority girls from the South, Burning Man is made up of frustrated liberal art majors and artist types who have to turn it into something that’s just so important and so much better than what mere mortals do so they can make themselves feel that they’re just so much more important and so much better than anyone else.

I’m a little surprised the Burning faithful haven’t risen up in protest. The whole dang festival was born here. Maybe they’ve heard it all before. Or maybe (and I could just be suspicious), the folks who scream loudest about the values of the Playa aren’t the ones that read SFist?

Scott Beale of Laughing Squid and I have talked some about this. In the early ’90s (before my time, right in the middle of his), the San Francisco undergroud art scene and embryonic web community were many of the same people. The hacker ethic fueled not only obvious geek/artist hybrids like the Survival Research Labs but the early Well discussion boards and the founding of Wired Magazine are examples of the same art/technology crosspollination. The dot com boom cleaved the two communities somewhat, with inflated rents displacing artist spaces and the glut of media and cultural opportunities necessitating the need for more obvious and diligent marketing of creative work. When I arrived in 2000, it was quite common to meet a writer with a half-dozen best selling books who didn’t see the need for a web site or think the Internet was all that big a deal.

Things have been turning around and I couldn’t be happier. I love the web and the arts with equal ferocity and believe in celebrating creativity no matter in which half of the brain it begins. It’s not silly but potentially self-destructive to say that artists should fear technology or technologists don’t get true creativity. All of our work can’t help but be enriched by exposure to modes of creation unfamiliar to ours.

I think the return of Webzine could be huge, ushering in a new arts era for San Francisco where technology is seen as ann instrument of artistic endeavor instead of a necessar evil. Here’s hoping…

Pinkman (aka Michael John Maxfield) has been riding a unicycle in a pink unitard throughout the Bay Area over the last decade. I’ve seen in on a few occasions and always thought of him as a fixture here in San Francisco which probably explains why he’s been interviewed by SFist.

Rumor has it he’s moved to New York which certainly can’t be for economic reasons. If it’s true though, our city will be a bit less interesting. And a lot less pink.

This is what I love about San Francisco: It regards everything with a perfect blend of playful zeal and deadly seriousness. Like if you find yourself in the libido arts and need some professional brushing up, you can now attend Whore College on May 4 as part of the San Francisco Sex Worker Festival. For 20$ each or an all day pass of $40, you can learn necessary skills like the legal and health issues of your trade as well as giving excellent oral sex and how to set up a “DIY Webcam.”

I hope you get a diploma. What does it look like? (via SFist).

Anil’s goodbye letter to New York City reminds me of how much I love my adopted home, San Francisco, and how I feel an obligation to it, the same way he does. It’s probably a difficult concept to understand if you are nomadic by nature and never like to stay in one place for too long, or else just see home as bed where you sleep at night and the rest is just work, commuting and the nearest supermarket.

I wonder if there’s a name for this, a name for being so in love with where you live that you feel almost married to it. Doesn’t mean you’re happy there all the time. Like any relationship, sometimes you’re estatic with love and others you’re barely speaking. But you feel bound to each other in some way that is larger than you both, in some way that says, for better or worse, that this is where you belong.

I don’t think you need to live in a huge, expensive metropolis to feel this way about where you live. But you do need to be aware, to appreciate that cities and towns and suburbs and hamlet’s are living things, have their own personalities that hopefully meld with yours. And that cities aren’t simply the neighborhood where you don’t feel to tred but rather the amalgam of all the experiences and lives that dwell there, and despite that swirl of activity, still make you breathe easy and say I’m home.