Racism, Fear and Laundry

Just found myself in the middle of a super awkward racist encounter. I went to drop some clothes off at the dry cleaner, which is run by an older Chinese lady who works alone. She's had multiple scary encounters with guys who have parked outside and watched her count money, ask when she's closing, etc.--casing the joint. One was waiting outside when I came in.

She tells me he's been waiting there since 1:30pm. She's nervous. I try to calm her down, advise her to call the cops. As we're talking, a dad walks in with a toddler in a stroller, asking how much the cost is per shirt. The lady freezes up. He asks her some totally normal questions, she doesn't answer. She asks him if he's come in before, he says no. She says she thinks he has. He says he and his wife have just moved to the neighborhood.

He's black. She's scared. I try to make conversation with him, keep things relaxed, but no dice. She takes the shirts, and tersely requests that, next time, he not block the shop with the stroller, and she will bring his shirts outside to him. He leaves, wondering what the hell just happened.

Once he's gone, she says she thinks that the man waiting in the car might have called the man with the stroller. She was worried she was going to be in a hold up. I explain to her, no, he was just a dad with his kid. I realize that she is probably scared of all the black men in our neighborhood at this point.

Thoughts while packing and sorting out clothes...

For years, I got almost all of my clothes through thrift shops and swaps, which encouraged me to dress like a bit of a lunatic. If you want to dress like a perfectly unremarkable clone, it's not a simple task in the randomness and magic that is the secondary market for clothes. Charity shops in wealthy areas can conjure up Alexander McQueen silk trousers for less than a pair of jeans and solid silver jewelry hiding under nothing more than a thin layer of tarnish. The serendipity of discovery meets the challenge of repurposing and re-inhabiting the excess and extraordinary.

(Let's not forget, this is really fun. I assume you've heard this song by now?)

I'm thinking about all of this because of an excellent segment on Fresh Air, in which Terry Gross interviewed Elizabeth Cline, the author of Overdressed. This conversation reminded me of how little I used to buy new, and how much delight I've had searching through the goodies of the world in surprising places like Buffalo Exchange, consignment stores, vintage fairs, Etsy and Ebay holes. Even with a guided search through the seemingly infinite offerings online, it's easier to find what you're looking for if you're a bit flexible. And it's always easier to pull it off if you've cultivated your own voice.

One has to learn how to dress. It's a mode of expression, done with things. Things are made. Garments have a life of their own, but they are a product of human effort, and worthy of respect. They say something, not only about the wearer but about the world we live in and the pathways of goods and trade that whirl around us and shape our world through agriculture, labor, manufacture, the creation of value...

The new great things to find in a vintage store tomorrow are being bought today. These are the garments that will bring history forward into new contexts, reconnect people to the daily lives of their parents or grandparents, and remind us that the past is always with us. However, they are in a vast sea of things being made in mind boggling amounts, a mighty gyre that is spinning to fathomless depths even as we casually wave to friends over sales racks. We can talk about feeling guilty, or sad, or we can think more deeply about how we connect to the world around us and people nowhere near us.

Planet Money's t-shirt project is finally getting some legs under it. People are talking about Bangladesh, how people end up crushed to death under collapsed buildings in the midst of working to change their economic prospects. This phase of development and change has happened in so many countries, including the USA, Britain, and countless other places. Eventually, most of us opt to outsource work that is still done with hands, and thus expensive, or tedious, or dangerous--or all of the above.

The answers are not just, "Buy American!" "Boycott China!" "Buy organic!" or anything as narrow and simplistic as those commands. Big picture trends are knit together out of everyday patterns, impelled by our lack of awareness about impulses and consequences. Trade is not inherently poisonous, but deliberate ignorance usually is. 

Vegan leather is often PVC, which is horrendous for the environment. Silk biodegrades and is quasi-magical in its properties, but its creation nearly always involves the torture (to death) of worms. Quality cotton is grown around the world, but debating its price requires a confrontation with farm subsidies and livelihoods. Leather comes from animals, but mostly from creatures we slaughter to feed our meat habit. The contradictions and tensions are endless, and solutions are generally not simple.

Navigating this terrain is a careful balancing act, always in motion. We have to commit to questioning what we encounter and why, and what we can support--or not--and changes that we are shaped by as well as shaping. We can't see the whole picture at once, which is no surprise when the subject at hand involves vast companies, global networks of trade and a retail pace that intensifies in its momentum daily.

Responsible consumer behavior is a matter of starting where we are, and deciding to engage with our choices rather than make them blindly. Ask why something is so cheap. Analyze where it's come from. Think about where that thing is going to live, after you've thought about its life with you.

Darning a sock shouldn't be a lost art. That simple dance with needle and thread can be the first step toward appreciating the fine work someone's two hands put into the beautiful things that envelop us in the human world.

Strange Serendipity in San Francisco: Love on Haight

This time last week, something pretty cool happened. The call went out on Shrine's Facebook page, saying he needed some help to paint a store mere blocks from my house. Shrine's work is beautiful, and he created one of my favorite pieces of art at last year's Burning Man. The art car was like a dream, so intricate and gorgeous--it's actually been on this blog before, in a previous post about Burning Man. Here it is:

So I was tremendously excited to go help him make some art happen in my neighborhood. I got the details, and headed his way the next afternoon. Much to my delight, I spotted the project right away: a landmark Victorian, right on the corner of Haight and Masonic. There were lines stencilled all over the outside of the portion that had previously housed a payday check place, and I was given instructions and a pot of paint. I very happily went to work.

While I was intently avoiding blunders in black paint, I started hearing a familiar name. People were looking for Nera. Hmm. I know a lot of people, but I can say with a great degree of certainty that I've only met one Nera. She was a clothing designer I met in Paris, while teaching and performing in the inaugural BellyFusions Festival, years ago. Shortly after our meeting in Paris, we caught up for drinks in London. After that, I spent some crazy years travelling for workshops, moving repeatedly, and was generally pretty bad at keeping in touch.

Imagine my surprise when it turns out that the Nera I had met all that time ago had moved back to San Francisco, not far from the time I also returned, and it was actually her store that I was painting.

There's a lot that I love about this beautiful little city, but serendipity like this seems to be woven into its social fabric. My quest to chase down the magic of a Burning Man art car resulted in a very surprising reunion, and also satisfied my dream of reinvigorating one of our iconic Victorian ladies alongside an artist I admire. As a gentleman said, admiring our work in the rain: "She sure does deserve the love, doesn't she?"

To see more of Shrine's work, go here: http://www.shrineon.com/

Burning Man problems.

Let's Save A Beautiful Expanse of Sacred Land!!

Right now, there are two campaigns on Indiegogo that are raising funds to preserve land that has historical resonance for lots of people. These campaigns are of similar size, in terms of their fundraising goals, and both are noble in their aims. One is still a month away from its deadline; the other is two days shy of the finish line.

This is where the differences start. One campaign has gotten lots of attention on social media sites, and has rapidly become a call to action amongst the geek elite. It's in the top results for Indiegogo campaigns. This is, of course, the effort to buy Tesla's lab building and its land. It has spread like wildfire, and the contributions are already stacking up--this campaign will succeed in its fundraising goals, and it will be a victory for people who long to see Tesla's lasting legacy properly recognised and protected in history.

The other campaign is the effort of the Lakota Sioux to buy 2,000 acres of their sacred land in the Black Hills, to ensure that they will still be able to access it for ceremonial purposes. For years, the land has been owned by a family who have allowed the Lakota access. Now, it will likely be sold for "development", and a major road will cut through it. 

While I've read a number of articles on the tragedy of this land's imminent sale, almost none of them had prominent links to the IndieGoGo campaign where the Lakota group is fundraising. I had to dig to find it myself, and since then I've been trying to share it as widely as I can. There are two days left to contribute to the fundraising effort, going on here:

http://www.indiegogo.com/PeSla-LakotaHeartland

This is a big deal. And it is a goal that is totally possible to reach. It's just much trickier to get the Lakota campaign as much attention as the Tesla one has gotten. As a Tesla geek myself, I can understand why his fundraising has caught on so fast.

And yet--surely the preservation of the sacred lands of an entire nation should be an even more worthy cause to support? It is equally as doable. The story of a charismatic lone wolf is able to inspire action--surely the heritage of a people, and the protection of a rich environment and historical site, should be at least as inspiring. 

Both of these stories are about righting historical injustices, to the extent that we can in the present. However, one of these stories is still alive, in the children of a nation who deserve to live in a world where their cultural heritage is worth saving.

In one of the updates on the campaign, the organiser shares her feelings on the sale of the land:

"When someone asked me today, how would I feel if Pe’ Sla were to be bought by a developer, and destroyed, or paved with a road…. I couldn’t talk for awhile – I couldn’t speak – there was a pain in my chest, and I cried….the person on the phone thought I had hung up 'Hello, hello'. 'Yes, I am here.' How I would feel? How would you feel if your whole way of life was threatened? If a place that was holy and mysterious was covered up by a parking lot? Bethlehem was an amusement park?"

Here is the campaign. Please contribute what you can, and share it on Facebook and Twitter, and wherever else you can.

http://www.indiegogo.com/PeSla-LakotaHeartland

Burning Man, Tickets and Keeping Bitterness at Bay

Fairness is a loaded concept. In the context of an event that is created from scratch by a committed battalion of artists, visionaries, fundraisers and participants, considering the investment of time and energy that veteran Burners have put in, often over the course of many years, to the creation of the Burning Man phenomenon is crucial. And it’s true—a lottery doesn’t care about that. For many of us, heading out to the dusty desert is going home, and leaving that to apparent chance is a weighty thing. But, changes are upon us, lottery or not.

For all that Burners are often radical and open-minded, when it comes to change, they are pretty much the same as everybody else. When the event sold out for the first time in its history last year, there was a generous amount of talk about the death of the event, that 2011 would be the last year it happened, it was forever changed, etc, etc. There were a lot of people and camps that were shocked to find themselves without the tickets they needed for projects that they’d already sunk money into.

The old way of waiting until the last minute to get tickets sorted was over. Ticket prices climbed and climbed as sales knocked through the tiered price scale. When the event sold out, immediately the cry went up that people didn’t have tickets they desperately needed. And this revealed, I think, that lots would have to change in the future. Among other things, budgets for essential tickets needed to be allocated, and enlarged, before thousands of dollars were spent on projects.

And scalpers. For years, people have been saying how “commercialized” Burning Man has been becoming—and most of these people have never been, and really have no idea what they are talking about. Commercializing Burning Man is a tough notion, what with the near-complete absence of commerce in the place. There are no official sponsors, no advertisements. There is increasing demand from first-timers, however. A lot of these are would-be tourists, adventurous frat-boys and festival enthusiasts who want to head out to the desert on a lark.

Demand is now greater than supply. There is a limit on how many people can be on-site for Burning Man each year; the calls for more tickets to be released smacks of ignorance regarding the delicate desert environment that sustains the festival. Contrast the leave-no-trace ethos of Burning Man with the filth, destruction and thousands of abandoned tents after each Glastonbury Festival—Burning Man needs to be about leaving a small footprint, otherwise the event will lose its permit. So there’s a cap on total numbers of attendees.

And the question has now become: How can Burning Man tickets be distributed to the community that makes the event happen, and how can those tickets be kept out of the hands of scalpers?

The truth is, for Burning Man, more than for any other festival, who goes really does matter. For all of the first-timers, there needs to be a weighty balance of patient veteran Burners who make sure that the virgins learn how things work; that those baby Burners are respectful of the environment, and don’t bring loads of trash to throw on burn piles. Veteran Burners know what it takes to build a camp, assemble an art installation, organize a clean-up crew and look out for each other’s safety in an extreme environment. They set the tone of the community, among all of those having their first transformative excursion.

In this game of chance, the lottery has probably gone some way to keep tickets out of the hands of scalpers, who really would make Burning Man only a game for the wealthy. The first-come, first-served method doesn’t work for an event that has proved it will sell out—scalpers, whose business revolves around getting tickets faster and in greater quantities than any average attendee of the event, will win that game every time. And that would destroy the event. Truly.

Because, you know what? For all that a lottery doesn’t care about your years of investment in the event, a scalper sure as hell doesn’t, and scalpers won’t care for a price many times higher than the face value of the ticket. And, the price of scalped tickets aggressively selects for a demographic that is less concerned with living light on the land; Burning Man becomes a luxury safari in this scenario.

If Burning Man attendance is determined solely by the market (read: scalpers), it will be an ecological nightmare. This is to say nothing of the content of the community itself; as a friend noted, “I fear this year might end up being a lot of people in RVs waiting around all week for the event to show up.” We really need for the people that make the event to be there.

So, I propose a few solutions. The first, and perhaps least palatable, is that those with extra tickets should prioritize veteran Burners over first-timers. Period. While I have lots of friends I would love to have out there with me in the Black Rock Desert, I wouldn’t want to have them out there for a big, touristey shitshow. I’ve heard people say that, in the past few years, there seems to be more and more first-timers and fewer veterans. Quite frankly, we need the veterans. We need people who prioritize the hard-won glories of building a city in the desert over the comforts of an RV. We need the crazy luminaries who throw thousands of their own dollars into constructing monumental art in which we are all immersed. These same people keep the fire burning year round, holding regional events and installing art in new homes after their desert glory. They positively change the world around them by being steadfast, and they have earned priority in this ticket scrum.

Secondly, everyone needs to commit to linking the right people to the right resources. If you don’t have spare tickets, your job isn’t over. Right now, the likeliest scenario is that extra tickets are around you, as are people who need them. Keep your ear to the ground, and stay true to keeping tickets in the community. Out of tens of thousands of tickets sold this week, I have only seen about one hundred listed opportunistically on StubHub. While those few are disheartening, they are few. The rest of the allocated tickets are likely in the hands of family and friends, who are also likely faced with some tough choices about who gets to go. While this may be hard or seem unfair, it’s probably better that people with an actual interest in the event are tasked with helping get people through the gate.

Thirdly, if you don’t have a ticket this week, don’t give up. Register for Burning Man’s secondary sale system (STEP), and try to get a ticket in the March sale. Don’t give into pessimism—the dust has not yet settled, and however disappointing and suspenseful this process has been, bear in mind that it’s not over.

Finally, we need to reassess how we approach big projects and planning—and entitlement. Let’s not spend our time crying about chickens we counted before they hatched. Instead, let’s figure out how to get manpower to projects that need it, and let those with tickets be mightily invigorated to do something great for Black Rock City. Because if you have a ticket right now, you now have the responsibility to do something awesome and contribute. Big time. Starting now. Build something. Collaborate with projects that are underway. Think about your investment in the community. Rethink how much of your budget is about your own comfort, and reallocate resources to making this city spring up in all its fantastic glory. This event literally is only what we make it.

Faux Neverland

Getting ready to Peter Pan around the wilds of San Francisco.