Hey, Ladies (and Gentlemen and Everyone Else)

I had one bitch of a weekend; one in which bike riding brought both danger and some serious oh-yeah-I’m-a-chick-and-I-have-think-differently-about-safety-than-a-guy introspection. It was not sex crime danger, it was pure physically brutal danger. I have bruises all over my right leg (which is weird, because I could swear I fell to my left), including one impressively blue-y green-y purple-y thing below my right hip…where I was kicked? Frankly, I’m not even sure because everything was so hectic and out of control.

[Also, I'm going to ask now that if anyone comments on this blog, please don't discuss any details of that madness on here. Thanks.]

After I found myself on the ground, the first thing I heard from one of the guy riders there with me was, Hey man that’s fucked up, that’s a FEMALE!

…

I know that person meant well, but it made me feel ten times more helpless than I already did. Even writing that gives me knots in my stomach and makes me want to cry out of pure frustration. Was it because I’m a girl that when danger put its face right in mine, I paused instead of bashed? And why do I feel like my reaction was the wrong reaction? Also, is it really less okay to hit a girl (read: weak) than a guy (read: strong)?

These are all such tangled, loaded questions, aren’t they?

I don’t know what to tell you ladies, and I don’t know what to tell you gents, either. It can be a confusing thing, being a chick. I want to be strong, but I hate violence. I want people to think I’m attractive, but I hate the bullshit media-driven images of what is sexy and occassionally feel like I need to emulate it. I don’t want to bash on other chicks because we should all stick together, but goddammit there are some dumb fucking chicks out there that do NOT help matters any. Aargh.

I’m going to leave all of the open questions and confusion alone, and get back to bikes. I’ve had this on the calendar for a while now, but it feels really especially special to me right now: LADIES’ NIGHT. I’m putting together a fantastic playlist (according to me, of course) full of chick voices, and it’s going to be one big celebration of the wacky wildness that is being a chick on a bike. Come on along, won’t you?

Apology

I apologize to myself for not writing recently. And as a motivator to myself, I give me William Carlos Williams, one of my favorite poets:

Apology

Why do I write today?

The beauty of
the terrible faces
of our nonentities
stirs me to it:

colored women
day workers—
old and experienced—
returning home at dusk
in cast off clothing
faces like
old Florentine oak.

Also

the set pieces
of your faces stir me—
leading citizens—
but not in the same way.

It’s Off to Shop We Go, Redux: Or, Why I Hate L.A. Live

[Stick with me folks...at the end of this blog I will provide you with a POSITIVE review of something! Yes! Something I read that I LOVE! I promise there's more to me than a bundle of negative energy...]

I have recently signed a lease with the boyfriend for a space in Glassell Park.  I am leaving downtown to its yuppie gentrification.  Goodbye, empty “loft” units.  Goodbye South Park.

And most importantly, goodbye L.A. Live.  You can go fuck yourself.

And in the spirit of luvving L.A. Live, I come to you today to build upon something I said about L.A. Live in a previous blog (rant):

LA Live, too, functions similarly to [Rick Caruso's and other similar] lifestyle centers – its buildings face inward upon each other around false public spaces, so the crowds moving within the giant entertainment developments rarely crowd the truly accessible streets of downtown L.A.

When I wrote the above, my L.A. Live experience consisted of riding my bike past / around it, marveling at the rapidity with which the hulking monstrosity was being constructed.

Now, however, I have been to L.A. Live as a consumer of its wares and its space. I have suffered through a meal at ESPN Zone (which my parents loved), cowered in front of a live feed of Fall Out Boy on the giant 42 FOOT WIDE screen in the L.A. Live courtyard (which didn’t bother my mom that much, as she is going deaf), and twitched amidst its twinkling flashing dripping blinking strobing lights (which my parents found exciting).* And as my sister’s death grip on my arm grew tighter and tighter, as her frightened desperate need to run screaming from L.A. Live as fast as she possibly could grew more and more palpable (as did mine), and as Fall Out Boy taunted from the giant screen giant speakers “I Don’t Care,” all I could think was:

I HATE L.A. LIVE.

As my parents soaked in the ESPN Zone cultural experience, my sister and I whispered possible L.A. Live culture jams. “Banner drop?” I suggested. “Zombie invasion?” she added. And as if on cue, my mother (who had not been listening to me and my sister), watching a table of law students do Irish car bombs, said “I read in the LA Times that there is an LAPD substation here because the police are concerned about drunkenness and other vices associated with the types of businesses at L.A. Live.” My sister and I deflated. And all I could think was:

I REALLY FUCKING HATE L.A. LIVE.

That’s not totally true – it wasn’t the only thing I could think.  Also flashing through my brain was something about how the LAPD substation was another perfect example of state (The State) resources protecting and fostering capitalism (by ejecting arresting criminalizing anything that might disturb or discourage consumer’s happy-go-lucky money-spending experiences at L.A. Live).  But mostly it was:

GODDAMMIT L.A. LIVE SUCKS ASS.

So I twittered:

L.A. Live has its own LAPD substaion. How to fuck LAPD + L.A. Live at same time? I wonder if my tweet is being monitored as TERRORISM? 7:26 PM Dec 16th from TwitterBerry

And for good measure, just to see if I was being monitored, I twittered:

Terrorism at L.A. Live. 7:40 PM Dec 16th from TwitterBerry

Anyways, regaling you with the above tale was mainly just to illustrate the point that I got the chance to take a good long look at the L.A. Live quote-unquote public space that night.**  And truly, it looks just like the fucking website (and the picture above): a giant insanity-filled courtyard. I didn’t venture anywhere other than the giant courtyard, although there must be more to it. The courtyard was enough, thank you very much.

And, after that night, my analysis remains the same: although there are no barriers as such – theoretically, anyone wandering around the streets of South Park could wander down 11th into said courtyard – the design of L.A. Live itself provides a barrier, an obvious delineation between the public streets and this policed consumer space.  The false shiny hard spendy surfaces, the drinking eating shopping hordes staring into onto upon around the courtyard through the panopticon windows, even the type of material used as sidewalk surface differentiates the space from the streets and sidewalks of the city.  You remember what a city is right?  Where people are supposed encounter one another, where one can experience people that are the same that are different that are suspiciously similar that are nothing like each other?

Christopher Hawthorne wrote a pretty darn good review of L.A. Live, from an architectural critic’s perspective.  Although my quote with which I opened this blog comes from a slightly different perspective (architecture and planning as fostering socio-economic xenophobia) than Hawthorne’s (we need public space for all the nice yuppies in the nice lofts to foster nice gentrification of no man’s land), I leave you with the following quotes from his review (and a recommendation that you read his review, despite its orientation):

-  Los Angeles, city of enclaves, is methodically, unapologetically building itself one more.

-  When we trap the energy of an urban crowd inside this sort of self-contained world, and when we allow developers and their architects to heighten the differences between that world and the streets around it so dramatically, we help keep the rest of our blocks underused and, as pieces of the city, undernourished.

-  I have written before about how the plaza, which sits entirely on property owned by the developer, creates an impressive stage-set version of a public square….[The problem is] that it actively discourages any of the activities we traditionally associate with the use of collective space in a city: talking, reading, sitting under a tree, even pausing with a friend for a cup of coffee.

I also leave you with a request:  In light of the LAPD presence, what can I (WE) do?  I have ideas – a bloc banner drop action, perhaps (clown bloc, zombie bloc, pillow fight bloc, dance party bloc, zoo animal bloc, etc., with the bloc distracting people from the banner drop and scattering as soon as the banner is dropped) – but more suggestions are always welcome.

So that, dear readers, is why I hate L.A. Live.  And this, dear readers is something that I love!  I happened upon a blog on the Just Seeds website about a photography book – Big Box Reuse – focusing what communities do with big box retail spaces after the retailer has closed up shop and left the giant eyesores behind:  Hooray for creative adaptive reuse of shitty architecture and the people who appreciate it!

*I love you, mom.

**…and to garner sympathy for my horrifying experience…

Hey – Thanks

There are things to be grateful for, among them organizations and individuals who work to make our silly world a better place. Prime examples of this are the people behind these three events that I highly recommend for this Thanksgiving weekend:

(1) WEDNESDAY – CRANKSGIVING

(2) FRIDAY – THE REALLY, REALLY FREE MARKET

(3) SATURDAY – NORTH EAST LOS ANGELES FOOD NOT BOMBS BENEFIT (WITH FUNDERSTORM!!)

And don’t forget, (Black) Friday is Buy Nothing Day!

Hi Ho, Hi Ho It’s Off to Shop We Go

*As a prologue to my little rant about Rick Caruso’s lifestyle centers, a reminder: With Black Friday fast upon us, remember that it is also Buy Nothing Day 2008. Join in on an action, or create your own, but most of all BUY NOTHING.*

Last Monday I attended (for stupid work reasons) an awards dinner that honored Rick Caruso and The Walt Disney Company for demonstrating “exceptional contributions to positive economic development in the region.” The Beverly Hilton teemed with well-groomed real estate men in dark suits (and the sparkly, sparkly women who love them) discussing the economy, the lack of development financing, and the vision and accomplishments of Rick Caruso.  Sitting at my dinner table listening to the host wax poetic about Caruso and The Walt Disney Corporation, I had the following (grammatically incorrect) twitter outburst:

Ohmigodthisagainsteverythingibelieveinyikes. 9:20 PM Nov 17th from TwitterBerry

Rick Caruso is best known to Los Angelenos for his developments The Grove and Americana at Brand, as well as for briefly considering (but then abondoning the idea of) running for mayor. The city streets ring with lauds and praises of “Carusostyle” – “high-quality shopping malls, which he [Caruso] contends are more akin to retail streets on a par with the great piazzas of Europe” – and institutions and publications from the Urban Land Institute (2) to Los Angeles Magazine (2) emphasize his influence on architecture, design, and the city of L.A generally.

Much like the awards dinner I attended, while Los Angeles Magazine pays tribute to Caruso and his lifestyle centers, it associates Caruso with Disneyland: the editor comments that more people visited The Grove than Disneyland in 2006; the magazine describes Caruso’s lifestyle centers as “open-air facsimiles of storybook Main Streets.”  Although intended to be a positive association in the foregoing contexts, the pairing of Caruso with Disneyland unwittingly highlights what I despise about Caruso’s developments, what makes him and his lifestyle centers “against everything i believe in yikes”: the progressive Disneyfication of city life, of city experience, of human experience.

Quick and dirty look at a European retail street (i.e., why Rick Caruso is insane): Passeig del Born is part of the Born area of the city.  Although I haven’t been there for a couple of years, I have been there many, many times – Bar Rosal, one of my favorite places in Barcelona to sit and sip a coffee or drink a beer and eat green olives, is there – and I have watched it go from a quiet retail street to a trendy high-end fashion retail area. And even as a trendy retail area, it’s a “democratic” space – there is nothing blocking pedestrian access day or night. Cars have very little access, to be sure, as it is part of the old city constructed long before cars, with narrow windy roads and a beautiful emphasis on foot traffic (although Passeig del Born is more of a large open square). However, it is part of the city. To get there, you only have to turn the corner from one street to the next. You do not enter into an obviously defined private area. While people eat and drink at the clusters of outdoor tables, a tide of humanity washes back and forth: beggars, buskers, skaters, grandmothers, university students, natural gas vendors, tourists. One can even enjoy the famous Barcelona graffiti – of which one of my favorite Born examples was a single light blue stenciled word: “fucksion” – (although due to tighter regulation this is sadly a disappearing art form).

Compare this to Caruso’s European-style retail street, The Grove.* Like Disneyland, you park in a designated parking area outside. Like Disneyland, you enter into a sanitized, policed simulation of “real” life.** However, unlike Disneyland, and what makes it more sinister, is that there is no ticket required, no price of admission. This begins to blend the lines between public and private space in dangerous ways, in ways that allow unthinking, uncritical shoppers to prefer the comforts of this entirely undemocratic, not public space to the “vagaries” of true public space – panhandlers, exposure to other “lesser” classes of human beings and/or human activity that challenges the comfortable world these people gather about themselves like protective armor.

What is truly horrifying about this, however, is that it is catching on. Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga – the address of which is even North Mainstreet, one of the streets within the development – further blurs the lines between public and private by including a community cultural center. LA Live, too, functions similarly to these lifestyle centers – its buildings face inward upon each other around false public spaces, so the crowds moving within the giant entertainment developments rarely crowd the truely accessible streets of downtown L.A.***

Okay, I have to stop here – I’m even starting to bore myself. But to wrap up this discussion, I will provide for you three positive actions you can take that are in direct opposition to shopping / participating in this consumer-driven simulacrum of public space:

- Reclaim the Streets. In Recipes for Disaster, CrimethInc. describes the guerrilla action it calls Reclaim the Streets. A group of individuals blocks off an intersection or a part of a city street and uses the area for a street fair, or for enjoyment, interaction, exchange.

- Midnight Ridazz / Midnight Ridazz-style bike rides. A form of reclaiming the streets, most of the rides born of Midnight Ridazz challenge the ideology behind lifestyle shopping centers. Once again I will quote a friend of mine:

Fuck politics!
Fuck appeals to the authorities for more lenient terms of enslavement!
We are forging a new society, right now!
Every Midnight Ridazz ride, every Tren Way ride, every Sins and Sprockets ride, every C.R.A.N.K. MOB ride is a political ride.
Why? Because it’s a public demonstration of collective happiness without consumerism, without structure, without hierarchies. It’s a demonstration that anarchy is possible AND fun.

- Go to the NELA Food Not Bombs benefit this Saturday, November 29.

If you got this far, thank you for reading. If I were the type to cause trouble, I would go cause it now.

*I have only one experience with Americana at Brand: Soon after it opened, the boyfriend and I went to the theater there to see a movie. Gathered just outside its perimeter, guarding the boundary between it and genuine public space, were crowds of Glendale police. The only time I will ever enter Americana at Brand is when I finally get up enough courage to bomb through it on my bike…which absolutely must and will happen soon.

**I’m not going to get into Baudrillard (2) here even though I would like to. I have already blown past tl;dr.

***To the extent the streets of downtown L.A. are truely accessible. Of course, see The City of Quartz for what was for me a life-changing discussion of city space.

Funderstorm Thumb

Funderstorm Thumb

Originally uploaded by Ms. Stephanie

My Funderstorm thumb is healing nicely.

…Although my thumb is pretty ugly. Are all thumbs this ugly, I’ve just never really noticed, or is it just mine?

Don’t answer that.

(This is really just me testing my ability to email pics to my blog.)

And the Funderstorm Raged

California hasn’t experienced a Funderstorm since July 5, 2008*, so when the Funderstorm raged this past Friday, Los Angelenos cheered. They rejoiced. They danced.  They lept into the air…and it was all to celebrate the end of the Funderstorm drought that plagued the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area for 4 long, dry months.

This intrepid urban bicyclist and Funderstorm chaser converged with numerous other likeminded individuals on Artist Gallery near Sunset Junction, the eye of the Funderstorm. Many wore specially-fashioned Funderwear to protect themselves from the inevitable electric excitement surges and fun flooding caused by a Funderstorm.  Due to an astonishing lack of forethought, I neglected to don anything more protective than war paint, and my body suffered the consequences:  although, as recommended by experts to amateur thrill-seeking Funderstorm-chasers, I didn’t fight against the onslaught but became one with the Funderstorm, I nevertheless emerged with the singularly strange wounds of a Funderstorm enthusiast such as a bruised black thumbnail, a glasses gouge between the eyes, and sore shins.

But believe you me, dear reader…There is nothing like a Funderstorm. I wear my bruised black fingernail and glasses gouge with the pride of someone who has seen the heart of a Funderstorm and returned to tell the tale, and I will tell it over and over again! And although the Funderstorm drought may be over, Southern California’s thirst is in no way slaked. We require more.

Thanks to spiraldemon, ipso fatso, and Mr. Rollers for photos of the Funderstorm.

*I was lucky enough to have been present for this last Funderstorm, which occurred in Riverside, California.

Help Me Understand Hipster Runoff.

(Or don’t, I might not actually care.)

So, as you may have surmised from the title of this here blog, I don’t understand Hipster Runoff. One of my friends that I adore very much is a fan. I think. He could be a fan ironically. I should ask.

To me, it looks like an ironic blog making fun of hipsters, but by hipsters, which makes the bloggers somehow meta-hipsters, which then makes them ironic hipster gods, and hipsterdom appears to be headed down an out of control postmodern self-referential irony spiral.

Maybe when they reach the end of the spiral, they will be sucked up into a vortex only to be spit out the other side as Wall Street hedge fund investors.

Causing Trouble: Bike Kill 666

I landed at JFK at 5 a.m. last Friday morning and dragged my bike box behind me toward what would become a mind fuck (in the BEST possible sense of the term) of a weekend.

I headed to Manhattan and Brooklyn for four days to ride through the streets like a maniac, and to wreak havoc as a part of my first Bike Kill (2, 3).

As a new-ish member of the bicycle community (I just had my 1 year anniversary!  Happy anniversary to me!), I hadn’t heard much about Bike Kill.  Most of what I knew came from a couple of youtube videos (2) and hearsay.  A fellow member of my bicycle gang screened B.I.K.E. last New Year’s Eve (which I unfortunately missed in favor of a horrifying evening, but that’s another story). Afterwards I heard very mixed opinions from those who watched the film of the Black Label Bike Club, which puts on Bike Kill, and of Bike Kill itself.  So, I really didn’t know what to expect.  Mayhem?  Hopefully.  Dirty punk rock bike rebellion?  Hopefully.  Happy fun joy party in the streets? Yes, please! Wal-Mart punk?  Hipster fashion show? Fucking hope not. 

I needed my faith in punk rock rebellion renewed, and I decided to place all of my hope in Bike Kill to do it.

And HOLY FUCKING TROUBLE ALMIGHTY I was not disappointed.

We rolled in a little late,

grabbed the requisite beverages, took a leak at the Home Depot, locked up. Wrote on the wall a bit.

I was only on my second good swig from my 5th of vodka when the tuna salad bombardment began. Giant globs of mayonnaisey bird turd mush plopped from the sky. Somewhere in the middle of the screaming, laughing crowd teams of two were riding freak bikes in circles and chugging four packs of beer taped together with duct tape.

The Damned blared out of giant speakers, and, rather bizarrely, certain classroom lights in the public school building behind the melee were on, illuminating elementary school teacher educational wall displays.

A few more swigs into my vodka and the pita / lavosh fight started, the freak bikes that were but seconds ago involved in a race were overturned and abandoned amidst the paste-like mixture of drizzle mud beer pita lavosh spit,

and my boyfriend had a beer clamped tightly between his teeth and a giant foam cock and balls in the attack position.

**********

Mind-fuck. Mind-fuck sensory overload ecstatic whirling dervish explosion primal yawp primordial sextastic violent fun punk rock freak festival of bikes. A true TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE. Where outward anger and rebellion turns in on itself and becomes a celebratory circus, a parade of horribles to the average person on the street, but beautiful chaos to the participants.

I wish I could do a better job describing the hectic energy of freak bikes and freak people at Bike Kill. The constant punk rock soundtrack in the background. The sounds and smells and feels and tastes.

**********

I fell in love with a chopper freak bike, and in my drunken haze tried to make plans to ship it back with me…and then in my drunken haze promptly forgot about it.

I took a couple of brilliant spills on it, though, trying to ride over piles of god knows what: people…clothing…rims…oops a curb…shit, don’t run into the guy with the snapped off ankle…where am I what’s happening?

Of course, there was the tall bike jousting.

Serious shit for some people.

Perhaps less so for others.

And, as Bike Kill has become known for, the fire-y finish.

And then there were the rad-ass people I was with, that made the entire weekend fucking monumental. From the Village Pet Shop and Charcoal Grill to Central Park to Chinatown to Brooklyn to Queens to Coney Island to the Lower East Side to the Upper West Side, from John’s Pizza to dumpster pizza – the Midnight Ridazz made the whole experience amazing.

But Bike Kill, baby. People kept saying that this year would be the last one, and I truly hope that is not the case. Because I’m already dying to go back to that beautiful space we created in the middle of Brooklyn, NYC.

Et tu, bike scene?

There is a dynamic that rears its ugly head occassionally in social interaction that I cannot stomach.  For lack of a better description, let’s call it the Girls Gone Wild phenomenon:  It’s that irritating dynamic that makes chicks think that acting overtly sexual makes them worth more because the guys who witness it treat them like they’re worth more.  And, as we have known since the beginning of time (or at least since Protagoras), man is the measure of all things, then it absolutely must be true:  Girls who take their tops off are just plain ol’ worth more.

Girls who fling off their tops and bras must be more carefree, more fun, more in tune with their sexuality, and less shackled by the chains of society who frown upon harlots and whores, right?  They are rebellious, less inhibited, and perhaps – yes! – even more interesting than those stuffy girls who keep their shirts on.  And of course we want them in our boys’ club – they like to show their tits!

I have always hated the term “false consciousness,” which is what feminists in the 1960s/70s said housewives who enjoyed being housewives suffered from – if only these housewives truly understood patriarchal social structures, then they would see how they were being demeaned, and they would no longer enjoy housewifery.  This attitude strikes me as counterproductive to any real progressive feminist movement – there is no one correct, enlightened feminist perspective.  But, fuck.  I have a hard time avoiding blatant hypocrisy when it comes to the Girls Gone Wild dynamic.  I want to say to the chicks who buy into this dynamic that they are completely buying into something that is dictated by a male-dominated perspective, and that if they understood that, perhaps they would act differently.  Just because it is contrary to what “good” girls in “mainstream” society do (which isn’t even true, really – I went to one frat party in my entire college career, and it lived up to the stereotype from start to finish), doesn’t make it empowering.*  Am I saying they are suffering from something akin to false consciousness?  Perhaps.  Inability to use critical thought, more like it.

And here is where I get to the bike scene.  Et tu, bike scene?  And more than that – et tu, my own bike gang?  It is so disappointing to realize how shortsighted and even naive of me it is to think that a scene that challenges the mainstream in so many ways would challenge mainstream gender politics.  How very silly of me.  But it shouldn’t surprise me – most of the major progressive social movements replicated the dominant gender/power dynamic.  Why should the bike scene be any different?

Sigh.  And so it goes.

I’m going to acknowledge a tension here, because some of you more clever readers will most certainly comment on it: I know that by describing social dynamics as male-dominated, I am perpetuating that domination, and that by describing an action (such as a chick taking her top off) as dictated by a male-dominated social structure I am circumscribing women’s ability to be free and to act as they want.  I am firmlly placing power back into guys’ hands even while saying I don’t want it there.

Well, that’s the challenge, I suppose.  I’m not saying any one particular action is always already going to be a negative thing.  The single most amazing thing would be for women to be able to act overtly sexual without such actions being caught up in the Girls Gone Wild dynamic.  I know it happens, but it’s the exception rather than the rule.

I don’t know how to wrap this up other than to say, I guess I’ll get over it.  I’ll get over it and I’ll try to think of ways to challenge this dynamic and be accepted myself on my own merits – for who I am, for the contribution I make to the bike scene, for helping people have F.U.N.  Of course a part of who I am is my sexuality, so how I express my sexuality will inevitably be a part of it all as well.  And maybe that’s the answer – maybe I need to assess this sort of situation the same way I would want myself to be assessed – not for one aspect of who I am, but as part of a whole.

But you know what?  Fuck that.  I’m still fucking pissed.

*This, of course, depends on one’s definition of empowerment.  If being automatically accepted as a cool chick by guys is empowerment, then I suppose the action is empowering.  When a chick is flung into the limelight because she shows her tits, and the more vocal members of a scene shower her with lauds and honors, that can bestow a huge sense of empowerment.  But why buy into that?  Guys judge each other on a huge range of things – why should women allow themselves to be judged based on what is ultimately only one part of who they are?