Printmaking as claiming space

Amze Emmons has posted a write-up over at Printeresting of the recent Queer Communities in Print portfolio exchange that was exhibited at Adobe Books Backroom Gallery in conjunction with the SGC International conference in San Francisco. Check out the photos! 

Participants included Felipe Baeza, Anima Metalica D.J., BOKA (April Katz and JoAnn Boehmer), Emmy Bright, Ian Cozzens, Jill Fitterer, Thea Gahr/Collectiva Cordyceps, Jennifer Hughes, Graham Kolbeins, Delia Kovac, Jaime Knight, Chucha Marquez, Dutes Miller & Stan Shellabarger, Heidi Ratanavanich & Eileen Shumate, Patrick Reed, Gavin Rouille, Nicholas Shick, Miriam Klein Stahl, Corinne Teed, Mary Tremonte, Lena Wolff, and Meg Turner. You can take a closer look at my piece, 'Socialites', here. 

New broadside for Queer Communities in Print

I letterpress printed a broadside for the Queer Communities in Print portfolio exchange at the upcoming 2014 SGC International Conference in San Francisco. A limited number are available for purchase at Big Cartel, and you can view the prints made by all the exchange participants at an exhibit starting March 20 at Adobe Books Backroom Gallery. 

'Socialites' is a short story that revolves around an anachronistic trip to the Vatican by the publicly rich. The piece captures their humanoid sort of disconnect, their simultaneous ignorance and omnipotence, and the naive way in which they're debauched. There is an aesthetic tension between Xerox and fine press (partly because of a bad lockup after a long night at the press!), and between a Futurist/Constructivist geometry and the medieval feel of colors like brown, red, black, and white. Collaged strips of found paper invoke light: sun-bleached cardstock, the gray haze of the photocopier bed, and rows of embossed circles like dressing-room vanity lights. 'Socialites' will also be featured in my short story collection forthcoming from Brooklyn Arts Press.

Broadsides on display this Friday at JRS

I'm moving to Iowa this fall to study at UI Center for the Book, and so am getting ready to say goodbye—for now—to the Bay. If you're in the area this Friday, June 29, come say hi/bye at James Rowland Shop in Berkeley, where, for one night only, they'll be showing a collection of broadsides I letterpress printed. Each one features an original short story or poem, is printed on re-purposed office supplies, and will be selling for cheap! The show, titled             SH IFTS, will be up from 7-10 pm, and there will be pizza and drinks! James Rowland Shop is located at 2447 Dwight Way at Telegraph. 

San Pablo Avenue

The following essay was written for a collaborative Occupy Oakland poster that's part of a group art show now hanging in Rise Above Gallery.

1.

San Pablo Avenue is an arterial that either begins or ends in downtown Oakland. It is one of the oldest existing roads in the East Bay, and was named Camino de la Contra Costa by Spanish colonists. In the pre-freeway US, it served as the fastest way to get up and down the opposite coast and was called the Lincoln Highway, and then US 40. Long-haul motorist amenities cropped up around this time, and portions of the street began to feel a bit like Vegas. You still see the leftover motels from these days: clustered just north of downtown are the Moor, the Twin Peaks, the Silver Dollar, the Isabella. Some of these are abandoned and others now serve as residential hotels. They’re so era-inappropriate, they look like they could vanish any day.

2. 

Despite the building of Interstates 880 and 980, San Pablo remains a street that is there to move cars, and thus a kind of terrifying place to be outside of one. It may no longer be a highway, but it’s still used to rapidly traverse long distances. It was built that way, and so it remains, despite the large volume of pedestrians who frequent the street.

The thing about the Interstate system is this: in order to compensate for the enormous divides it has caused in our cities—the increased distances and fortress-like walls—it should serve as a quarantine of sorts. It should free us from the drudging onslaught of traffic. A culture that cared about people would have recognized and dealt with this problem decades ago. But we’re not a culture that cares about people.

While it's important to make sure everyone can get where they need to go, freedom of automobility should not have such a negative impact on those who are in less of a hurry. In the early part of the 20^th century, a streetcar ran between Richmond and Oakland on San Pablo. It soon suffered the sinister demise all US streetcar systems did. Years later, the 72 bus line was put in place after an MTC study found that it would be cheaper than installing light rail. 

3.

Pedestrians on San Pablo tend to be marginalized—often because of poverty, addiction, physical and mental disabilities, and a dire lack of resources to deal with such issues. These problems are made worse by the street’s hostile landscape: “We don’t give a fuck about you” is (literally) driven home on a daily basis. This sentiment affects every sense and, because it’s mapped onto the environment, is swallowed whole. Intersections, which seem designed to kill those who try to cross them, amp up an already drastic culture of nihilism. People recklessly walk in front of traffic because of a) a complete failure of safe pedestrian crossings and b) low, low stakes for those navigating a landscape that continually reminds them of how little their lives are worth.

San Pablo’s deadly intersections are rampant. One example (which I wrote about in a Letter from Pedestrianica), is where Isabella crosses San Pablo. A recent Transportation for America report states that nearly 7,000 pedestrians have been killed in California in the last decade, the great majority of who were people of color and the elderly. San Pablo and 55^th, in particular, has been named as an intersection where pedestrian safety is neglected. The more marginalized stretches of San Pablo further south, however, are less likely to receive such scrutiny, as those with any civic power would never physically encounter such spaces.

 4.

As the city of Oakland sinks millions of dollars into an incompetent and fascistic police force, thousands of citizens go without their basic needs fulfilled. The California Hotel, located at San Pablo and 35^th, is notable historically for serving as venue for musical legends ranging from Billie Holiday to Sam Cooke, Little Richard to Mahalia Jackson. Today it serves as low-income housing, yet its tenants are in a constant state of uncertainty. The past few years have seen a labyrinthine series of shady financial disasters involving the city and several nonprofits, resulting in threats of building-wide evictions. This past month, the hotel’s storefront was boarded up with a sinister amount of expensive-looking wood. There are asbestos warnings posted, but no one spends this much simply to protect the public’s health—especially when the public is people walking up and down San Pablo. This wood looks like wood somebody bought expecting to make that money back thousand-fold. EBALDC, the development organization who owns the hotel, has already displaced the Howie Harp Multi-Service Center, a resource for the homeless formerly located on San Pablo and 18th. EBALDC’s development plans for the California Hotel claim that 25% of its units will be devoted to “low-income” housing.

Causa Justa, the group who helped organize the California Hotel’s tenants when they were threatened with eviction, has been kicked out of the building to make room for these renovations. They have since moved down the street to an abandoned church, a powder blue building with a rotted plywood ankh where its cross once was. This building is listed for sale with the following perk: COMPLETED ARCHITECTURAL DESIGNS AND ALL CITY-APPROVED PERMITS FOR A 6-STORY CONDO-RETAIL DEVELOPMENT WITH UNDERGROUND PARKING ARE AVAILABLE.

What good is housing when it’s always on the brink of being seized? About as good as a sidewalk that would rather you didn’t walk down it.

5.

There are current efforts to re-imagine the uppermost part of Oakland’s San Pablo—53^rd through 67^th Street—as the San Pablo Arts District. The concept even has its own Wikipedia page. Any time a name is thrust upon a neighborhood like this, though, it’s really hard not to call bullshit. Some generalizations: Historical districts mean an erasure of embarrassing history. Arts districts mean an erasure of anything un-“art”ful. In other words, forget about the neglected and the trampled. Tramplings aren’t pretty and they don’t make money. They aren’t things you can put on a banner and hang from a streetlight.

Rather than create a destination, why not a place to exist? And exist with dignity. Somewhere that honors its history, that respects those who currently populate it and who make it what it is. Somewhere that makes sure each of its residents has a home, that when they leave that home, they know they’re in a place that gives two shits about them, and in case they don’t know, they can leave if they want to, they can get on a reliable train cheaply, and with ease. Somewhere that doesn’t desperately cater to yuppies in an attempt to become their playground. Because there are other ways of re-dreaming a neighborhood besides simply banishing blight.

6.

The longstanding businesses up and down San Pablo need to be respected, despite their lack of boutique-able appeal: Scend's, the Oaks Club, the Bank Club and Wally’s Cafe, Victory Furniture, Seng Son Marble Granite, and others. Many of these businesses are owned by people of color with deep-reaching roots in the East Bay. They may not get the glossy attention and city backing that ventures like the weirdly named Popuphood do, but the only meaningful way to revive San Pablo is a plan that doesn’t ensure their obsolescence. Oakland, rather than force-feeding condos or jewelry stores, needs to make sure its citizens’ basic needs are met. The arts will flourish organically once the lower levels of Maslow’s pyramid are put in place.

San Pablo Avenue consists of neighborhoods, not playgrounds. And despite its blight, the street is not a wasteland. Rather, it’s full of life; the cars that zoom on through are the deadest, dullest part of the whole equation. Why throw ourselves in front of them to make them stop? 

WE ARE THE THERE Tonight at Rise Above!

Oakland's Rise Above Gallery shows off the work of Miriam Klein Stahl this month, and the opening is tonight from 6-9. It includes collaborations with Gabby Miller and Scott McPherson, as well as the Together Occupy project. Together Occupy began with a design by Miriam, which she silkscreened with her class. Then Gabby coordinated the printing of variations on it with me at Mills College and again with Blake Riley at Arion Press. Now a variety of artist have used the poster's blank space to produce a series of imaginary propaganda collaborations. 

My own collaboration focuses on San Pablo Avenue, and includes a fold-out essay in pencil. The essay touches briefly on the street's history (it was once the East Bay's main coastal highway) and talks about what it means when we say places are being re-envisioned (i.e., gentrified). It looks at the current state of San Pablo, focusing on its walkability, along the lines of a Letter from Pedestrianica. Read the essay's here!

Cartoonist in Residence!

I'm the November Cartoonist in Residence at San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum! Which means I'll be there this Saturday, Nov. 5, holding court at a drawing table from 1-3 pm. I'll have some comics and zines for sale, and will display the just-finished originals from an illustrated essay memorializing the legendary drugstore, Super Longs. I also hope to get going on some doodles for an interview I did with fiction writer, Jincy Willett. The Cartoon Art Museum is located at 655 Mission Street, between New Montgomery and Third. 

Pity (in the City) Party feat. Isaac Babel & Jules Renard

For a long time, I’ve wanted a writing residency. It’s embarrassing, but I’ve sunk a lot of money and time into applying for the things, without any real results. The last year I spent living in a windowless apartment in Oakland, my nature starvation reaching epic levels. Still, though, I managed to stay inspired and produce a lot of material. I even used my tomb-like surroundings as a setting for a short story, “Windowless Room, Silverless Fish,” which appears in the latest issue of Interrobang?!.

But besides the toll the natural disconnect took on my mental health, I also worried my writing process was being affected. I read Isaac Babel’s “The Awakening,” a memoir-ish short story where the young Babel spends a summer skipping violin lessons to try to learn how to swim. His efforts are mostly unsuccessful, and he’s told by the gentile “water god,” Nikitich, that his ignorance of nature is going to hamper his dreams of being a writer. Nikitich asks him,

“What’s that tree?”

I didn’t know.

“What’s growing on that bush?”

“What bird is that singing?”

I knew none of the answers. The names of trees and birds, their division into species, where birds fly away to, on which side the sun rises, when the dew falls thickest—all these things were unknown to me.

“And you dare to write! A man who doesn’t live in nature, as a stone does or an animal, will never in all his life write two worthwhile lines. Your landscapes are like descriptions of stage props…” 

It wasn’t the comparison to stage props that worried me so much—I’m into the intersection of the natural and artificial. I just felt like there was this essential element, this green-glowing life force I was neglecting. Still there was one fairly large tree on my block, and as luck would have it, it stood just outside the ventilation system’s intake. My desk was right up next to the vent, and at the height of the tree’s blossoming, I could smell it. There was something weirdly liberating about this, the constraint of every sense except one, and I felt like I was experiencing the tree in this way few others had access to.

Anyway, events have conspired since then to offer me a sort of impromptu writing residency. I moved into an apartment with windows—and an office. I also lost my job, resulting in my getting unemployment benefits, which feels like I’ve received some sort of art grant. I also have more time to go out into nature and walk around; yesterday I spent a couple hours on the eerie paths of San Francisco’s Glen Canyon Park. There were informational signs there, and I came away learning a new word, chert, which I can’t define much beyond the fact that it’s a type of rock. Still, though, maybe Nikitich would be proud.

I’ve been reading Jules Renard’s Journal, and he writes, “It is in the heart of the city that one writes the most inspired pages about the country.” Maybe what he means is that precision isn’t so much necessary in describing nature, but rather surrender, a concession to its (decreasingly) sprawling mysteries. Is this something that’s better understood from the enclosure of the city?

Babel’s great ending to “The Awakening” seems to suggest so:

The moonlight congealed on bushes unknown to me, on trees that had no name. Some anonymous bird emitted a whistle and was extinguished, perhaps by sleep. What bird was it? What was it called? Does dew fall in the evening? Where is the constellation of the Great Bear? On what side does the sun rise?

Rant.3

Oooooo, BART’s in trouble. The San Francisco Bay Area subway system has long been my archenemy. It’s not that I have anything against mass transit—I’m dependent on it and sincerely wish we had more of it. It’s just that BART is both ridiculously low functioning and outright hostile to its riders. Their draconian move last week to quash protests by turning off cell phones is no surprise to me, nor is their indignant defense of their actions. This is just business as usual for BART, and it’s time they are held accountable. Now that they are—finally—under fire, while we’re at it, can I air out a couple complaints?

1. They shoot their passengers. Repeatedly. And get away with it. Repeatedly. Most of this list is quibbles, so I’m just going to get this one out of the way at the start. In 2009, BART police shot an unarmed young man execution-style while he was face down on the platform. They more recently shot a drunk old man and refuse to release any details about the incident. I think it’s generous to say that BART cops are ill equipped to deal with the public, yet they continue to carry around guns. 

2. They shut down at midnight. Even on weekends. It’s a wide bay to cross, and there are no carless ways to traverse it late at night besides a $50 cab or an hourly, limited bus. So if you go across the Bay for the evening, you’d better make sure you’re on that train by 12. Again, even on weekends. This leaves people no option but to drunkenly drive long distances when the bars close down. It would be interesting to see if there was any decrease in accidents involving drunk drivers if the trains started running a couple hours later. BART’s overly defensive excuse for their limited hours is that they need to close down to clean the train cars.

3. Those cars they spend four hours cleaning every night? Yeah, they’re carpeted. At least I think that’s carpet under that thick layer of black crust. Their seats are upholstered (somebody needs to let the bedbugs know about this) and when impacted, they release huge clouds of ancient dust. This supposed plushness is one of BART’s attempts to be something snootier than a mass-transit system. BART, if you need a consultant, you know where to find me. Let me start with this shocker: In high-traffic situations, non-wipeable surfaces are really hard to maintain.

4. Another BART luxury is the LED signs they have in their stations. These scrolling signs will tell you to keep an eye on your backpack and to alert BART police if you see suspicious activity (suspicious activity such as, say, BART police?). They also let you know when the next Giants game is and what’s currently playing at the opera. Only rarely, though, will you catch a glimpse of when your train is due. Just one more clue that the system’s engineers either didn’t give a fuck or didn’t have the practical knowledge of one who frequents public transit.

5. Their bathrooms are closed. At probably 80% of their stations, BART has decided to stop maintaining their bathrooms. Their reason, according to their LED signs: you guessed it, security. This means that after riding a 45-minute train, you might have to end up pissing on their luxurious carpet.

Now that BART has joined the likes of Visa and the Church of Scientology as targets of Anonymous, I’m hoping for some validation. I mean, I’ve spent years complaining to my loved ones about BART’s general shittiness. My dream is that the spotlight they’re now in will grow more and more unflattering, and their management will one day soon be forced into disarming BART police, running later, ensuring the public they won’t again infringe on first-amendment rights, and re-opening their damn bathrooms!