Intro to the Anarchy of Me

…the first in an occasional series of blogs in which I locate, develop, and harness my anarchism.

After briefly considering traveling to the Slabs, to hear some bands play at the Range*, the BF and I chose bikes and anarchy for our Saturday (…duh, right?).  We rode to the Southern California Library of Social Studies for the Anarcho Cafe 2012 – and although we missed Occupy LA’s update on the General Strike planning, and although the security culture conversation was unfocused and extremely basic, I’m glad we went.  I’m glad we went because I need regular reminders that there are thoughtful energetic idealists in Los Angeles, fighting against the dominant narratives and social structures that are just so goddam difficult to fight against.

The truth is, I’m a tourist in the anarchist activist world, but I’m not going to give myself too much of a hard time about it – because if I do, I’ll go crazy.  I’m learning, seeking out perspectives, trying to understand how I can fit in and participate, looking for strategies to support myself and the people I love long term and to be engaged.  Baby steps.  I’m taking them.

Keith McHenry, one of the co-founders of Food Not Bombs, has seemingly taken no baby steps in his life, just giant leaps.  Of course I know that’s not true and that everything starts with baby steps, but shit on a shingle, that guy has been involved in a lot.  Food Not Bombs, Indy Media, a couple of San Francisco pirate radio stations, etc.  Really good stuff.  I should have asked him HOW.  How the fuck do you do that and have money for a roof over your head, medical care, etc.?  HOW.  Anyways, he seemed like a very nice guy, almost childlike, who has had and continues to have really great ideas that he acts on with great success and with positive impact on other people.

Actually, despite my comment about baby steps, it has been a pretty long trip getting to where I am in my belief system.  In my early 20s I still parroted my father’s conservative views, because they were all I knew.  I read Oil! by Upton Sinclair at age 22 or so and made my English professor’s eyes twinkle with mirth when I expressed slightly shocked confusion at the communist (I think I used the word “extreme”) wordview expressed in the pages.  I mean, the book is pro-IWW!  My brain didn’t know how to handle it.  Now, 15-16-ish years later, I credit that English class with helping me move away from the me created by my father and toward the me created by me.  Incidentally, a lot of activists, not only anarchists, deride higher education as part of the problem not the solution – as constructing cookie-cutter neoliberals (in the sense Chomsky uses it in Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and the Global Order) to carry the current world order into future.  And although I completely understand the argument, and I do agree to a large extent, I can’t agree completely – I have to credit my university education as helping me find my voice outside of the upper middle class “comfort” in which I was raised, and in which I always felt distrust even though I couldn’t explain why when I was younger.  Well done, UC system.

So.  Despite not walking away from Anarcho Cafe 2012 learning anything earth-shatteringly new and different yesterday, I was reminded of the simple important fact that there are others out there.  Community is so important.  It is waaaay too easy to get sucked into the daily grind, where it gets a little lonely and I forget that there are others out there.  So in that respect, yesterday was glorious.  AND I rode my bike with my BF and good friend, which always feels good, and which I have not been doing often enough.  I plan to remedy that sharpish.  And really, riding a bike in Los Angeles is just pure fucking existential anarchy, so. There’s that.

One thing I did come away with yesterday was a flyer about the FOOD IS A RIGHT day of action on April 1, 2012.  I remember when that terrible witch Jan Perry (watch) introduced an ordinance (that later passed) of the type being protested by the Food is a Right Day of action – my mind reeled.  To base an ordinance that forbids groups from feeding the homeless on the rationale that doing so is bad for the homeless people’s health is pretty goddam disingenuous.

My Intro End Notes:

–  I’m currently reading the aforementioned Profit Over People, and I’m about to read the new CrimethInc. book, Work.  (I’m also reading a fiction book so pulp that it barely requires brain energy to read, but what the fuck.  It’s necessary sometimes.)

–  Stimulator is one of my favorite resources, with his serious conversations always liberally spiced with levity…the levity often being at cops’ expense.  Ha.

–  Now that I’m back to writing (yay), I will get into the meat of anarchism more, in upcoming posts.  Don’t you worry.

 

 

*Something like twelve cop cars showed up to the show at the Range.  A friend whose band played said that the cops read about the bands playing there online so they thought it was a music festival…but that doesn’t really explain why the cops felt they needed to be there.  Goddammit, I hate cops.  More about that in another post.

Midnight Ridazz Camp, Burning Man 2009

Midnight Ridazz Camp will have a bar this year, grills and boils, with a big party worthy of Ridazz:

THURSDAY, 5 – 8

The LADIES OF MIDNIGHT RIDAZZ CAMP want you to DRINK THEIR JUICES and PARTY IN THEIR PANTS!

Ms. Stephanie will pour out her Blood, Sweat, and Tears for you to a “this-ain’t-no-rave-bar-bitchezz” soundtrack of her choice, and The Raquel will open her pants up WIDE to all comers! Come have fun with the Midnight Ridazz. We ride bikezz. We’re evolved muthafuckazz.

(Author’s note: The reference to being evolved is because the theme of Burning Man this year is evolution.)

Bar description (goddammit, I’m proud of myself):

I have constructed a bar for the camp – 72″ x 31″ bar top that we covered in black formica laminate, I painted the front and sides of the bar base a glossy red with the Midnight Ridazz logo in black on the front (the same logo we used to cut the burn barrels).

A 20’x10′ carport carport shade structure will act as the roof and the walls of the bar. 4 old rims will be fashioned into chandeliers (with real candles, of course – SAFETY THIRD), spoke cards and pictures of Ridazz Camp ridazz and their close ridazz friends will adorn the walls, and christmas lights and one funky old-ass lamp will provide the ambient night lighting.

Top all of that off with tables made from wooden spools scattered around and seating galore, and a sound system to scream out our NOT-YOUR-RAVER’S-BAR soundtrack, and we are going to have one fucking rad camp bar – one that Midnight Ridazz can be seriously proud of.

ON TOP OF THAT, the bar will be open to the entirety of Black Rock City at least one night (perhaps more, depending on the mountain of booze I amass) during which everyone will be invited to stop by the bar and drink the Midnight Ridazz juices: Blood (vodka + cran), Sweat (Whiskey + lemonade), or Tears (rum + grapefruit), OR Vomit (a mix of all three).

Burning Man. IF YOU HAVEN’T BEEN, YOU DON’T KNOW.

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.

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.