so a short recap of dragon, heres a couple of things that converged in 2012:

First, my dear friends and neighbors hat makers TS I love you asked me to make a sign for them, and ended up doing a photoshoot at the collapsible institue

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later in the year, with many more awesome friends and artists who put up the Peralta Junction in West Oakland, among other things, I got to once again… paint…

all in all, we got to practice what I see as an unavoidable moment in the near future, where we take this carnaval on the road…. fingers crossed.

took a little while to catch the digital breath… still.

6 months July 13th and 14th later we brought the play to Counterpulse in san francisco directed by Ezra Nepon. At our performances, we’ve used the live version to spark discussions on water infrastructure, river restoration, and political opportunities to create new cultures of water and connect to international water struggles (aka The Water Wars).

in the spring We were working on adapting the stage play by July Cole into a screenplay and shooting The Gold Fish film in the mission and around the bay area. The film will reach an even broader audience, and is meant to become a centerpiece of education, community science, and water activism by the ever-growing Water Underground.

This film is informative… but it is far from a documentary about water.
We are talking about an underwater casino owned by an evil water Tycoon where Miss Coho has to gamble her eggs to try and win River passage. The whole ecosystem is somehow working for slave wages in this place and we heard whisper of a gang of Water Nymphs who are underground union organizers even amongst the ranks of Army Choir of Engineers… oh… did we forget to mention this is a MUSICAL?
The film will be shot in HD and run 40 minutes, following a three act structure. Rife with double entendre and stunning visuals, the Gold Fish engages the audience with the politics of water and dam removal using memorable characters, camp humor and show tunes.

Gold Fish work sample. from sarolta jane cump on Vimeo.

We’ve been doing lots of local fundraising to do initial sound recording and set building and now have kicked off our grassroots fundraising campaign for production costs. We dive into filming next week for 3 days and again for a weekend in mid-June. On top of several fundraising events we are producing around the bay area this year, we are running an Indie Go Go Campaign to fund the film.

The water underground is a loosely organized network of individuals. We depend on our community to spread the word and to help us raise our modest goal for this very serious undertaking.
Every drop counts. every email forwarded to your own community counts. If all you can do is let other folks who might be interested in the film know about our campaign… that is a huge thing by itself. just by visiting the page, helps get the attention we need… Everyone on this planet is impacted by water politics in some way or another.
if you can, we do appreciate ANY size donation. Every drop counts.

for more information:
www.indiegogo.com/TheGoldFish indiegogo campaign
saroltajanecump.com/news.htm directors website
and yes…. the Water Underground is on facecrack <3

Download a screen ready PDF of the original zine here

At the global poker table the stakes are getting exponentially higher. Heart rates escalating, blood pressures elevated, and perspiration is desperately trying to force itself out of clogged pores. Reckless betting schemes have become the norm here and we can see a growing dependency on the all-or-nothing paradigm to trigger the fleeting sensation of delirious euphoria.

We,ve learned to wield that objectivity thing around like a knife at the butcher shop , it does not strike as odd when things get a little bloody. We have been chopping, packaging and labeling items in our world and then, like commodities, traded on the free market. valued in color coded chips of which we never seem to run out, knife in hand, local anesthetic in the other, we can always carve more.

Deranged scientists, we watch the amplitude registering on the instruments attached to our own temples and make what we think are educated guesses, the effects of which we receive as royal decrees from faraway lands. We have no hand, we have no mind, we have no say in the rules of the game. Ladies and gentlemen, if you will please place your bets, the house is ready to deal another round of shock.

Let us dig way deep, back to before the artist formerly known as prince had his song about the last party of the millennium recontextualized by the joke formerly known as the Y2K bug. Before the union of ex-slave-trading real-estate sharks had its public image cleansed by bombing the wits out of some ex-colonizers on a technically and tactonically separate landmass. Before the so called new world got schooled by the oldschool-wannabe world, we humans have come up with spools and spoils of ancient civilizations based around predicting, manipulating or otherwise controlling the destructive powers of nature. Some methods got embodied in specialized tools, Some uses expanded into rituals. Some personified into deities and gods. All, without fail eventually met their sad demise in the bleached out pages of our history and science books and in the polished surfaces of our museum display cases and our computer and TV screens.

We have been itching for so long to desensitize ourselves to the life juice that flows through these twisted veins. wishing to plow through fields without asking for permission or pondering repercussions we have learned to harvest souls in fine tuned, well oiled war machines. To feast on the gutted charred remains of unmade goals and keep a scalp of trophy skulls we,ve won. Replaced old worlds with fresh new molded plastic models formed in streamlined factories, only to find we’re doomed to raise our own young in this most pathetic of a nest. We,ve conquered, raped and pillaged both the earth and each-other and yet we have only further crossed and tangled our blood lines to a messy knot, minus the occasional blossoming piece of flowery lace. The unforgiving nature of the game is our design, or lack thereof, we are, the self employed tamers of our wild beast selves, Still hungry for more.

On the endless plains and meadows of existence, these psyches of ours have been growing like mushrooms after a passing storm. Our vertically propelled brains, having done a fair job at finding replacements for our receding fur lines and silkysmooth hides, learned to project our internal concepts of hierarchy onto every element of our otherwise wild natural environment. And we have been so meticulous, so elegant in protecting ourselves with our intellect, sheltering our minds with predictable phenomena and scientific explanation, a solid shell around us filters out what used to be a harsh flow of garbled information into but a faint glow of questioning. A mere shadow of a doubt. Now, we find ourselves blindly searching every crack and crevice of this virtual existential entropy reality of ours for some meaning. Anything. A desperate attempt at morphing into some special new identity which will allow us, when the time is right, to step out and bask in the glory of our self defined superiority.
Every year we celebrate annual counts of historical events marked by the placement of the sun, the moon and the stars in the sky. We stake ourselves deep within times shifting sand in the hope of sustaining the inevitable heavy winds of change, our whole industrial empire only a couple of centuries old and already we have outgrown our own restraints. Our technological towers flails in the psychic storms like a question mark at the end of our sentence.

Rush after rush, in giant tidal waves, had flooded the golden wild west hills. Stories of fame and fortunes broken against the cliffs of our capacity to further exploit natural resources and bounced back as doom and gloom. Despair sips into the scarred landscape as the water recedes. leaving an imprint of gorgeous misery in salt crystals and technicolor oil blotches festering in the grimy sun, awaiting a next wave.

And all this time, we have been busy bees, tanning hides and knitting loops, threads of stories weve spun and layers of metaphors we have skillfully weaved into quilts and sewn into intricate garments to be passed down generations. What we have, what is left, what we can ever build upon is what we carefully mended and sneakily saved from times destructive claws. And we are buried oh so deep within it. Context. is a craft. it has been holding together the backbone of cultures. used as social structure support beams. Leftover Pieces from old days picked up and stitched together in a new light. Old themes remixed into new patterns that could someday be used as makeshift guidelines to a fresh breath of life.

From the fabric of society to our community safety net, from the emperors new clothes to the sleeping beauty’s bleeding finger, every magic stalk could be spun to make a sturdy thread, every lock of hair braided into a thick, hefty rope, if nothing else, there will forever be more to recontextualize into gold. Our imagination, in the shadow of our overpowering intellect, has been more than instrumental in constructing this reality. It not only holds the key to understanding how it is that we,ve come to cocoon ourselves in this bizarre virtual world, but might be the only remotely useful tool we have at our disposal to help us knit a semi-solid porthole to the next level.

this here
is an invitation
to contribute to the mapping
of all possible parallel universes
where alternative post-history gods
rule their cryptic pre-mystery heavenly places
and fairytale dustballs collect
on rows
and columns
and stacks of bookcases
of gynormous magical-science books
clasped shut
with heavy brass hooks
borrowed from decommissioned old school jokes
bound with
reactionary, reductionary, revolutionary rods
laced with
exorcised enterprized alchemized gold
dense with
fictional fantastic factoids
that claim to recall
having once upon a time
been told
the full-on story
of how one could strive to calculate
the increasingly improbable odds
that under the right circumstances
in the right kind of environment
such a map
might be able to exploit
some unknown number of loopholes
and trigger the launch sequence
for all the millions and millions of escapist pods
that are already pre-programmed
and fully-equipped
to float us over
to whatever alternative reality
whispers your name in the infinite darkness of space
like a lonely flare
that under possibly falsified pretences
might manage to filter in through your senses
and having double negated all the naysayers
and cut through all the cake layers of auto defenses
ignite some sort of soft prayer
that would low key
a flip switch
on the glorious conveyer belt
of the almighty present tense
and ride that shit!
ride it through the single gridlocked gate
in the otherwise impenetrable fence
this fence that pretty much blockades
any inkling of there
ever being a chance
that one day
one fine day
once upon a time
you just might
let no nothing scare ya
let no nobody stop ya
HELL NO!
never let no repetition
definitely not a dare
sway away your unconditional hope
that you can still get to share
your personally fermented
augmented and distilled
dope-ass definition of
utopia
this here
I do declare
this here is a finalle
an end to end all ends

—–

DOWN TO DIRTY DETAILS
At its original form, WEAVING BLOOD INTO GOLD was imagined as an art installation, standing for a short while, and being used as a backdrop for special performance events during that time period. These events could range from theatrical or musical performances to brainstormy conversations.

SPACE
We imagine the venue would become a sort of vortex, where the art should come to life as backdrop of a new world. Though this is very reminiscent of your ordinary art show, we hope to avoid both the clinical neutral white walls of an art gallery and the bureaucracy and hipsteria the Art world carries with it. We imagine a space repurposed for this particular event, nothing is confirmed as of yet, suggestions are very welcome.

CONTENT
This is a creative venture, some cross between an art show or a theatrical production. Contribution in the medium of your choice will be welcomed under the appropriate context. The Collapsible Institute would like to encourage participants to consider the use, misuse and abuse of technology a key element and tool in this exploration. The process of creating the piece, the styles and themes it uses and the medium in which it is presented should be part of the language that helps tell the story of how this piece came to exist in this alternative collapsible world.

TIMELINE
Considering the subject matter, the show would be an ongoing struggle to stay current and present with our rapidly collapsing reality and the Collapsible Institute is, by definition, dedicated to continuing to expand this venture into that thing we call ‘the future’ for as long as its relevant.
This invitation is officially issued in the winter of 2010. We would like to use the cold season to incubate and brainstorm ideas and align all necessary elements needed for the production. We imagine that with the addition of operative contributors, schedules will have to change,but we hope to birth this project somewhere immediately after the spring equinox of 2011.

STRUCTURE
This project is by definition a weave of personal angles on the same theme and so the Collapsible Institute is excited about the concept of collaborative ventures, remixed repetitions and mix-matched portions. feedback loops, counter references and any loose connections that would tie the thing together. We are thus inevitably initiating here a sort of collective, a loosely organized localized network if you will, which we can loosely define as Optional Feedback. We would like to value diverse autonomous angles as a key for weaving a strong network, which means sharing is relevant primarily for the sake of coordination and synchronization, and only secondly as a synergetic collaborative tool.

The institute would love to assist in coordinating convenient times for contributors who are interested in sharing their input to do so, we expect that some portions of the show might need to be more tightly woven together than others before the work feels like it stands as a whole.

If you have the inkling of being a part of this project, with or without the certainty of exactly what and how you can contribute, please communicate this interest to us by filling up this form insert, and the Collapsible Institute will keep you included and updated on the project’s progress.

TO JOIN THIS VENTURE
email you name and thoughts on these matters to
protopostcollapsible (at) gmail (.dot) com
tell us your desired media of contribution, your level of self sufficiency, autonomy and privacy needs in your venture
we would love to hear from you

watch a slightly long and heavy video of the whole thing

The zebra theme I’ve been working with for quite a few years now, finally finished a new border piece with the visuals and writing all complementing eachother

Out of respect to physical tangible reality
I waited til it was over to move this experience onto the digital world, both in text and in words.
I held back from even taking pictures, only gave in to the urge once of twice. If the presence of a camera can serve to dissociate the mind from the present moment, then the constant presence of so many cameras takes the whole event out of the context of a real meaningful organic experience making it exponentially less amazing to be one of those who are not holding a lens, and therefore impossible to experience as social reality, but only as some schmoozy disconnected photoshoot scenario.

I would propose here to us, what I would propose to any event space or organizer aiming at providing a healthy direct experience: let’s discourage cameras. Healthy food is not enough, the body has to be present to receive it. Let us discourage living through the dissociating power of the lens. No need to ban them, just make it clear, that the event is about the experience, and we would like to empower people to reclaim their autonomy of imagery. Take one picture if you need to remember a moment. Make sure youre not intruding, respect peoples refusal to participate in your experiment. But unless you feel like you have some special authority, and Im not just talking from the ‘organizers’ Im talking from some divine entity or something, please stop attacking our people with your flashing jedi sword while they are trying to eat.

With that permeating feeling of glitz, we may have put the finishing touches on an over-stimulating social scene that is already a challenging feat, even to some of us deep within it. One can only imagine, that whatever connections we may have made with neighborhood folks who are not directly in our usual circle of friends, to come check an alternative experience out, we have failed to provide a warm welcoming environment to absorb them into. Which, I myself, would consider is our most important goal, and (to let us off the hook here) also the most challenging goal. To breach the borders of our collectively familiar circle of hipsters, and provide an alternative that is based on something beyond a photo op, beyond the party. I dont want to say I am sick of parties, but I did not join this project simply to celebrate our ingenuity as a community to gain access to these resources, I am looking for a transforming experience, I am looking for a change in attitude.

That said. I am the first one to carry the blame. Stuck with my head deep in the computer, I made a flyer. I thought I facilitated the planting of the seed with a spanish translation on the flyer, with imagery that I hope did not get perceived as offensive.

Though who knows, I can see it re-contextualized. The farmers out in the field in this image are people of color. Thats not intentional on my side. Searching for ‘farmer’ images online will find you the obvious proportionate racial factor that is not only a result of the reality of how food is grown in our world, but more so, once again, points to the romantic subjectivity of the hands that point the lens. All this thought into the image, but never did I walk around the block to distribute it to people in the neighborhood that I’ve lived in for years now.

The seed has been planted, and though the sprout seems different than what I thought we were planting, seedlings often are this way. They gotta come out punching in order to survive that first impact. Let it grow into that original intention. It may not change the world like we hoped, but it is possible that the world is not ready to be changed. The silly romantic optimist in me wants to believe that lessons will be learned. That the core organizing group would grow more diverse with time to represent a more diverse community that is being served. That the hipsteria, like most social ailments, is a question of collective attitude, not of any particular individuals, and that it can be easily fixed with intention and practice over time. That’s the side of me that worked hours to make this little information poster a reality with the hope that it will inform and inspire that process. The side that researched histories, layed out maps and synthesized mission statements into paragraphes, while knowing fully well that hipsteria is easily capable of swallowing all that and spitting out the pieces on myspace and facebook pages, without a mention of why this is supposed to be different. Thats the side of me that will continue thinking of ways to make the next iteration be better than this one, oh…Silly me.

The unsustainable world we live in today is (and has been for some time now) crumbling infront of our eyes. Though most will agree it’s about damn time… we also know that there is a great deal of work that is needed in order to construct a new one from the rubble.

The Proto Post Collapsible Institute is specializing in the art of controlled mental demolition and it’s repercussions in the physical world. We are therefore interested in creating ideologies and systems that allow things to pack down and migrate to better pastures, not necessarily in the scenario of a disaster, but also to avoid the necessity for such scenario to occur.

this is our treatment room / recording studio in east oakland at the 5th ave. marina:

this is wehere most critical thinking of the project takes place.

Though we respect the heart felt intensity of anti-civilization ideology, we do not subscribe to the rejection of modern civilization as a whole. If nothing else, we see the unsustainable modern world as a good lesson, and we believe, with no disrespect to the millions who have been carrying the burden of this world, there are simple and quick steps that we can take, to rewrite this catastrophic scenario into a minor detour on our road to some utopian un-futuristic present moment.

We have therefore been researching the hybrid intersection of vagabond and beduin culture with modern bike messanger and backpacker lifestyles, to assist us in the difficult transition to this much simpler existence. We have come up with some of our own solution, and are still researching others who have made incredible advances in these fields.

Please contact us if you would like to join forces in the research department of this project, or if you have resources you would like to donate or trade and are interested in learning more about our specific products and services. email: azulah (at) gmail (dot) com

Some examples of our ideas

This all became an obsession around 2001 when, disillusioned from the fact that Y2K didnt make not a dent in the machines back, I’ve become annoyed by the everpresent gap between the wild human imagination and the intense evasion of looking the present moment in the eye. There was no mission to jupiter. There was no mission to anywhere. The one mission to the moon, with it’s image of neil armstrong marking his plot of land on the moon was as faded and unrealistic as ever. If could have easily been special effected in the pixar studio. We were obviously regressing.

Not that anyone ever expected any of that to be true. Not at all. They always say that science fiction clears the way for science to come and pave the road, but nobody ever assumes that reality would follow fiction to the note. We might not have explored any other planets, but our cellphones do seem mildly reminiscent of StarTreck communication devices, and on that note, people do actually carry tazers on their person, and those can kill or shock another human being no problem. They havn’t started feeding us tofu made out of processed humans, instead they feed us cows that eat other cows… rings a bell? The gap was indeed closing.

What I was looking for in this experiment, as I do with this whole project, is to redirect the attention we give to fiction back into reality, which is to say, direct experience of the Present Moment. if I can dance back and forth along the line in the hope that the illusion would blur the seperation, even just for a minute, and if that drives me crazy, so be it, I am determined that the present can prove its superiority given a fair try.

At some point, of course, I got tired of the dance, of tracking the distance between the future and the past. I got distracted by the destruction of our natural habitat and studied more narratives of direct actions against that trend. In the end though, those go hand in hand with science fiction. As time goes by and things speed up, it seems there isnt much difference between hollywood and the hightech industry and oil corporations and the military industrial complex. They all suck the living juice out of the present moment with promises of using those in the future to fix a problem they created in the past… The idea of a deciding moment is as old as religion and and as extensive as science or the world economy, It can be contextualized in almost any system that uses time as a basic assumption. We project our ideology back into the past and use that to try to determine a course as far into the future as possible, but the whole thing is just a subversion to what is going on in the present. It is therefore all fiction, all a spectacle that is designed to capture our attention, and I do mean all of it.

Here is a slightly more poetic interpertation of our general environmental crises then the one unfolding in the news and triggering my response below.

I am reading about all the officials and accompanying activists that are meeting in copenhagen for a climate summit. The US rejects the idea of owing a debt for its share of the climate disaster, pointing out that we didnt know, nobody supposedly knew, that emissions were harmful. Thats to be expected. But then you read a lot of talk about numbers, scientist say 350 CO2 parts per million in the atmosphere equals 2c degrees increase, the US is offering to reduce 17% of 2005 CO2 emissions levels which equals 4% of 1990 CO2 emissions levels, which US Presideng Clinton did indeed sign a commitment to reduce by 20% by 2020 in Kioto, but, of course the US Senate refused to ratify into law.

Combine all this jumbled information: Having been informed, and let us remember that this did mean that at the end of long negotiations with scientist and politicians arguing about the facts and possible scenarios, an American president put their signature on the treaty that did not make it’s way into law. After that moment in history, the US spent the next 15 years between 1990 and 2005 basically ceasing the moment, gaining further ‘advantage’ over all other nations being bound by the treaty, doing almost the exact opposite: we have increased our emissions 5 fold. No one can deny that we did not know about the consequences during those 15 years. Doesnt matter how stupid the monkey sitting at the white house during that time was. Lets put a price tag on that crime.

If nothing else, the 2012 movie plot line can stand in here to represent the widespread world view of the upperclass of the developed world. This is a world where tickets can be bought to get out of the mess we created with the mere pricetag of a billion dollars, the rest of us will go through some genetic testing or the obstacle course of natural selection, that would allow everyone to rejoice in our inclusive human nature.

So whats missing from this whole cop15 scenario? maybe the realization that no nation state based system is going to solve this crisis. The US, as a state apparatus, is not willing to compromise because it would mean the end of it’s world market dominance, and it’s internal class system dominance, which will eventually lead to it’s dissolution. It would rather bet on some controlled demolition scenario that is a soft version of the 2012 movie plot. The negotiations here are not between equals. and I dont think looking at GDP differences is enough, neither is average income and emissions per capita. The missing factor is the internal class disparity multiplier that would tell you how close the heart of the person sitting at the negotiation table is to the suffering of climate refugees, both in the world at large, or in their country.

The US made it through Katrina with mild bruises. The upper class remained untouched, possibly even made off with some extra cash for overpriced reconstruction projects. The world that they are suggesting is one where nature steps in where terrorist and rouge states left off. Where the lower classes have to work to pay for the empire apparatus to provide basic protections from the climate to sustain their life. In their script, if we enter into this world slowly and with caution, there is a good chance they can maintain control. Basically, they want to save the planet, but only if they can still maintain their power and privilege. Good luck. I suspect mother nature has a different idea of how things will go down. Further, I suspect that the rest of humanity is in the process of writing another script. One where the earth crust shifts in a way that leaves everyone standing on the red carpet that leads to the luxury escape pods floating in mid air, desperately holding to a virtual reality recreating the now distant memory of the good old status quo.

Walking down Dolores ‘street’ from 16th towards the park the other day
I was confronted by a certain realization which I’ve had many times before, surely you had it too
San francisco, just like so many american styled cities, does not put pedestrians at the center.
big deal! I know… but bare with me here… I have a point… or hopefully… more like a circle.

As usual, I wanted to be the center of attention, so I hopped onto the grass on the median. This is very literally a hop, as it is for some reason almost a full foot raise from the fairly hectic river of cars that is flowing on both sides, and yet it has no pedestrian access points in it’s siding , it has no paths and of couse no benches or any other human friendly infrastructure. It is obviously there, for the visual effect only. a nice backdrop to look at. A useless historic relic.

I crossed 17th in the middle of the intersection, which felt somewhat unusual, eventhough I’ve done the same in so many other cities around the globe, here I was a human in the middle of the river of cars, and had no excuse to why I wasn’t happy with my very literally side-lined mentality of the side-walk, why did I, an engine-free human, care to stand in the center of an intersection and see the expanse of sky open to the horizon in all four directions.

Dolores, is indeed a boulevard, not just a street. in so many other places in the world, including New York City, there is a prevailing culture of allowing for parks in the centers of boulevards where people can walk or just hang out. Some cities are big on roundabouts and squares that are somtimes big enough for little parks, some cities go to the trouble of accomodating humans with diagonal crosswalks, which usually happens in shopping or business areas where pedestrian traffic serves the city machine, and yet here in san francisco, and all over the US, you sometimes find yourself in an intersection where in order to accommodate traffic needs, you have to cross the street 3 times in a U shape in order to make it to the other side, or dutifully ask for attention by pressing a button. And here in our precious little neighborhood, this center divider is obviously a destination only for those dog owners who don’t have the time or inclination or making the trip all the way to the park.

I got down to 18th street, where I was tempted to cross over to the west side of the boulevard, where the sidewalk by the fenced up tennis courts would eventually open up into the ‘vast’ two city blocks green expanse on the hillside that is dollores park and I would be free at last. This park would allow me to finally escape this oppressive car culture for a hot minute. The way so many of us who live here in this neighborhood do on a regular basis. A square shaped perimeter of ‘natural’ existence where were allowed to breath freely for a minute, no horns, no traffic lights, no immediate scent of burning gasoline and engine oil. To walk in non-straight lines. pheeeewwww…. what a vicroty.

The park is a destination, and I dont just mean Dolores park being my personal destination at that particular moment, I mean we city dwellers think of parks as destinations for an immediate escape. we are used to the oppressive city culture that inhabits public spaces and city streets, and we are used to going to little squares where we can just be, hopefully with some nature around us, maybe we can even socialize, even if just for a minute before we return to the city scape. Dolores is the most sizeable park in the mission valley, there are smaller ones like Garfield, Potrero Del soul, or close by Douboce park. Most other examples in san francisco are the tops of hills which exemplify the idea of the green space as an endpoint rather than a route. Golden Gate park, of course, a big green rectangle, is a very big exception, but even more so, the PanHandle proves to be the most poingniant one, showing the viability of this alternative thought pattern, of green routes. Both are the result of long drawn struggles of humans residing in those neighborhoods to maintain continous safe green paths where engine free transportation is prioritized over the usually prevailing engine-centered culture.

I’ve always found it amusing, (or depressing, depending on cynicism levels) that the bikeride, or walk from the ocean back to the mission, narrows from the vast green expanse of Golden Gate park to the long trail through the PanHandle and then, very symbolically, that safety zone, ends with the image of no other than the highest institution of the state machine control mechanism, the main hub of private ownership of engine based transportation, otherwise known as the DMV.

Oak and Fell both offer amazing traffic death traps on the way up and down the wiggle, and so do any of the complex 6 way stoplight intersections that Market street lines the way with. From there, there is the option of doing a detour through Dolores park, either on church or straight down through Dolores all the way. Though for some reason there are zero bike paths on any of the streets surrounding the park. Dolores itself has a sidewalk big enough to park a truck on, and each side of the boulevard offers two lanes of traffic plus a third for parking. But no bike paths… hmmm?

I heisitantly stepped into the middle of 18th street, which is a very hectic intersection, connecting the mission and the Castro and managed to resist the urge to also cross over to the park side, I kept walking on the center divider of the bullevard, between the river of cars that now separated me from the view of the green hill.

How many times have I sat there on the lawn and watched and listened to the cars in the distance, being reminded continously that this is only a temporary escape, and that as soon as I get out of the green zone, car culture, would again be dominant and threaten to kill me if I did not pay enough attention to the traffic rules.

So here I was walking the center island in the car river approaching 19th, this is where dolores goes up the hill and on my bike I usually turn towards the mission, or get on the sidewalk to get into the park. This intersection is less busy, being that 19th street only goes in one direction it is a less viable hub of transportation and therefore there isn’t as much turning happening, cars mostly just zoom by, only sometimes bothering to stop for the occasional human traffic. So before I arrive at my escape destination, I decided to again step into the intersection, one last time, before I cross over.

I stood there in the center for minute and turned around slowly and looked down the four directions. I didn’t feel very welcome there, but I also didn’t necessarily feel very threatened. the intersection is big enough to accomodate multiple vehicles trying to turn at the same time, and you might say, right there in the middle of the street, is where things literally came to a point.

it dawned on me there, that up what would be 19th street stretching into the park, beyond the impressive little bell square with its pruned flowery bushes and large chain perimeter, I was looking at what is also a boulevard, and up there, where cars can technically drive, like the park service and the cops do all the time, Technically can, yes, but not really welcome. Up there, there is the equivalent of a roundabout with a huge palm tree in the center. but down here, on dolores, where I was standing: Nothing but pavement. Out here in the world, even in a boulevard, anything that would inconvenience cars… is BAD. Thats the same mentality that doesnt want to accomodate for people comfortably taking the centerstage of the boulevard. They would be in the way. It would be dangerous. It would slow things down.

The united states doesn’t really do roundabouts, they slow down traffic and therefore aren’t welcome anywhere but very suburban or likewise strictly residential neighborhoods. There, a roundabout is not such a big deal, neither is a boulevard, there is no triumph in walking there, there is probably nowhere to go either. But here in the midst of the dense peninsula of san francisco, the idea that pedestrian culture, or other motor-free travel, would find to be in the center of attention in the street, or god forbid, the layout of the whole city, seems to be a direct confrontation to the machine that is an american city, a machine which based on, and powered by the powers of commerce and consumption, the exchange of products and services, and of course, at the underlying level of this big engine, is… OIL.

This truth is also nothing new. I know. Big news: america is an oil based imperial machine! oh really? But what else dawned on me here, at this point, Is that here I was standing in a place, an intersection, where the potential to reverse the paradime, is absolutely incredible. This park, which exists only by virtue of there having been a cemetery on the grounds until the 1809 quake, has been the staging ground for oh so many demos and marches, which are but temporary rehersals where humans, with or without the consent of the police force, gather under one social ideal or another, and literally take that ideal into the center of the city streets. We’ve all walked these marches and noticed the temporary rush that comes of reclaiming the space that cars inhibit on a regular basis.

There is a place for those temporary explosions of social change struggles that leave an ideological mark on society. But we are now in a very unique time in history where society is in the process of acknowledging it’s need to change by nature of the issue of the machine faltering. Oil and money, and by proxy engine-based culture, are being so deeply implicated in war and destruction and a collapse into depression, which may or may not go as far as to turn the park into a tent city again, but is definitely increasing the pressure to make this city sustainable for it’s human residents.

In this green amphetheatre that is Dolores park,There is, quite literally, a huge crowd of walking and biking humans readily available on any given sunny day. If not as participants, than as allies and spectators. And so if ever there existed a time and a place to translate these concepts into a more sustainable approach, a way to carve a channel for this energy to flow into the physical street, I say the center of the intersection of 19th and dolores would be a first step in that direction, where, dare I say, we can reclaim the streets, and I mean that in a much more ongoing and sustained way than a roving street party can ever hope to achieve, though this kind of spontaneous flashmob action might be a good first step in manifesting an opening ceremony to a more permanent campaign.

So…to initiate the process of reclaiming that space from cars
four of us symbolically sat down and had a little tea party in the middle of the intersection, brainstrormed visions and feasibility of taking this project forward

What Im talking about is NOT a ROUNDABOUT
because a ROUNDABOUT would be too much like beating around the bush
a ROUNDABOUT would be framing it as a car centric project
which is exactly the problem
this issue… of human vs machine
is so deeply rooted in this industrial civilization
that it digs down to the core of the planet
and changes the radiation from the sun we revolve around
this
thing
im visioning
is much more
like a CENTERPIECE
something from which things radiate…