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ANARCHIST_BOOK_FAIR
March 14, 2010
April 21, 2010
The San Francisco Anarchist Book
Fair is an old favorite of mine,
occuring annually, without fail in Someone writing in a local
the SF County Fairgrounds building newspaper a few years back made
in Golden Gate park, and always a the point that the supposedly
fine collection of underground mainstream, above ground book
crazies of various stripes. festival is very flaky, often
skipping years when they don't
This year did not get their act together.
disappoint, with
it's collection of For reliable
punks scattered organization, you
around the lawn out need a collective
front, the blankets of anarchists...
in the courtyard
covered with the Could it be that
wares of gray market there are problems
sellers, the crowded with the profit
room full of stalls motive?
of people running As I strolled up, a busty
tables doing book and woman in purple mini-skirt
zine sales (among other was setting up a tall
things). structure made out of taped
together cardboard boxes, a
cardboard pen a human could
stand inside of. There were
a few small holes poked in
the sides. It was labeled in
marking pen "PEEP SHOW".
One of them had a hardcover
edition of "Making Do" by
Paul Goodman from 1960. I picked up recent
editions of the old
I couldn't turn up any editions reliable zines
of Emma Goldman, though. "Comet Bus" and
"Doris", plus a
Slingshot organizer,
marked down to $3.
The bathrooms, nominally
men's and women's, had been
re-christened unisex with We apparently had just
signs in ballpoint pen. missed the pieing in the
face of the author of an
A young woman in dark anti-vegetarian book.
urban combat wear She's out there on
turned down my offer the web, whining for
of a paper towel from sympathy (which she may
my back pocket. or may not deserve)...
"No thanks, I'll wipe
them on my pants." My first impression--
from a KPFA interview--
Hipster posturing: is that she's a nut job
I *saw* you check (and no, I'm not a
the empty paper vegetarian).
towel dispenser.
Agriculture is destroying
the planet, you see,
therefore eating vegetables
is bad. Her figures for
top soil degradation made
it sound like the planet
should be down to it's
molten core by now.
To make sure we got seats for
the Kim Stanley Robinson talk,
we arrived a few talks early, ANARCHIC_ROBINSON
and also heard:
o A substitute speaker that had me
wondering who he thought he was talking
to: he had a lot of angry slogans and
abstract rants, but was very light on any
background factual material. Either the The description
audience disagrees, and isn't likely to "preaching to the choir"
find this persuasive, or the audience doesn't cover it. What
agrees, and won't be enlightened by choir would feel inspired
anything said. by such sermons?
o A fellow with an interesting accent But then, this *was*
(Swiss?) who spoke calmly and engagingly a substitute speaker.
about labor organizing, making some The intended speaker
interesting points along the way, such discovered he'd been
as the claim that while national unions placed on the "no
were always corrupt, local unions were fly" list, and was
often useful and effective. therefore unable to
attend.
On the other hand, if I caught his
drift, he seems to think that we're all (Land of the
supposed to move to fly-over states to free, eh?)
reach out to the Real People. I have
my doubts there are many real people
left out there... it's getting very
close to a land of robot agriculture.
How many robots
does it take to
elect a Senator?
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