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DARK_COMET

                                             May 26, 2009

  Cometbus #51 --
  "The Lonliness of the Electric Menorah"

  A history of the book and record stores
  of Telegraph Avenue, written by a boy        He's not shy of editorializing,
  from the hood, long since fled to New        and injecting his opinions,
  York: Aaron Cometbus.                        (though thankfully he doesn't
                                               expend too much verbiage on
  The book quite rightly focuses               them).
  on Moe of "Moe's Books" (widely
  acknowledged as one of the
  world's great used book stores),       This is an interesting trend in
  which is what the title refers to.     the Zine world: local histories
                                         written from a punk/anarchist
  One of the oddities of                 perspective.  Myself, I'm
  this history is that                   particularly fond of Erick Lyle's
  "Aaron Cometbus" has a                 documentation of the supremely
  few axes to grind.                     sleazy "25 hour donut shop" that
                                         once graced San Francisco's
  He complains about    But that         Mission Street. See Kyle's book:
  how the bookstores    may not be       "On the Lower Frequencies":
  he's talking about    unusual for
  all held off for      him:                    [ref]
  well over ten years
  before being          THE_BRIGHT_GRAY_LANDS
  willing to carry
  his now (somewhat)                     But in all honesty,
  famous zine.                           I didn't go to Hunt's
                                         Donuts all *that* often--  And there
And he bitches                           it took quite a bit of     are 24 hour
about how Julia                          fortitude to make the      donut places
Vinograd wrote a                         scene there at 3am with    in town that
stupid poem          Myself, I don't     the Latino geezers         have always
attacking punks.     think she           flirting with the black    had much
                     deserves the        street walkers--           better
  For Aaron,         witless sneer                                  donuts.
  this is            "Julia
  evidence that      Stalingrad".                So how many punk points
  hippies are                                    do I deserve for being
  scared of                                      wiling to do this kind
  embracing          VINOGRAD                                                        of scumzoid emersion
  their dark                                     once-in-a-great-while?
  side...                                        Do you stop being a
                                                 yuppie just because you
                                                 do some rather
                                                 condescending slumming
He wonders at how it                             now and then?
took his generation so
long to come into it's                              My love of such
own.                                                things is somewhat
                                                    soured these days by
Was it some flaw in                                 our roomate's current
themselves, or could                                hobby of bringing the
it be that those damn                               local alcoholics home
aging hippies were                                  with her, and giving
*holding them back*?                                them free booze.

But what did he                                     When the drunks were
expect?                                             out on the sidewalk,
                                                    they could qualify as
Does he think the                                   local color, when you
60s freaks were met                                 may be woken up by
with open arms by                                   them ranting in the
The Establishment?                                  next room at 5am, it
                                                    all seems much less
   Does he figure                                   funny.
   Julia Vinograd
   should've
   committed hari
   kiri to free up
   her rent
   controlled
   apartment for
   him?


       Aaron Cometbus quotes the Vinograd poem:

          AGAINST PUNK:
          It is better to light
          one candle
          than to praise the darkness

       His take on this is:

          I thought, that's the problem with hippies.  They can't
          live with themselves when the lights are out.  No wonder
          that they're so angry at us, able to accept the darkness
          and even celebrate it.


                                              SUN_BLAST


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