I go up to Frisco about once a year, at least. Mostly to check out the often interesting Anarchist Bookfair that happens in Golden Gate Park. Sometimes there are good speakers, sometimes there is good radical literature. Sometimes I don’t care about any of it and mostly settle for the luxury of seeing old friends. There’s absolutely no reason why you, dear reader, should care about any of this but I did take a few pics. Click ahead if you think you must.
Anarchists enjoying the grass and sun. How Bourgeois!
Tourists came by on a bus to safely see the Anarchists. Park Rangers stayed in their vehicles to avoid the odor assault from the unbathed masses, which can be quite brutal.
Rebel Caffeine Fiends promoting their revolutionary agenda. Uh, silver text on white board is hard to read. Plus it reeks of scrapbooking.
Always with the challenging everything. The one good thing about gender based restrooms: woman don’t have to deal with the mess that man-slobs make. I wish I didn’t have to deal with it. Only in Frisco!
A tirade against the Anarcho-Hipster. The main flaw: they are not “just as boring as everyone else”, they are even more so. Plus some of the suggestions for joy might fit in the first category.
I got invited to an after bookfair party at a place that has a functional bidet. Proper!
The next day we headed to Berzerkley for the BASTARD conference, a yearly event featuring workshops and discussions of interest to Anarchists. After the morning sessions it was time for some food. One of the few things the Bay Area does better than Hell A: biscuits with veggie gravy. This plate is the object of my desire on late drunken nights, a craving that always stays within the realm of dreams. One of these days I shall make this dish and truly liberate my desires! Or did I arm them? I forget. I had one of the decent beers on tap to really fuel my passion.
These gravy laden nuggets of desire available at Saturn Cafe.
We headed back to the place the locals call The City for some extra-curricular activities. I spotted this sign on some old Volvo. Only in Frisco! As my comrade Vlad sez, “Frisco has soo much culture.”
Leaders of lil’ car culture, fer sure.
After my lunch of soup in a sourdough bowl (AWESOME!) we checked out the suicide bridge. Locally known as Golden Gate Bridge. It seems everyone is interested in this morbid span, here we see some folks snapping a memento. Did you know that most jumpers die because of the massive damage to their internal organs from the splinters of their rib cage? Brutal!
Do not get any ideas.
With the Bridge Patrol on site, a member of the Viejitos Car Club takes the pose. Ha ha!
Lots 0 wires on Frisco streets. The one picture I really wanted to take but didn’t/couldn’t was of some guy in a T-shirt that read “I (middle finger) LA”, I turned back to follow him but he crossed the street even though cars were flowing against his direction. He got annoyed that they honked at him. Only in Frisco! After I could cross the street on a green light (not all Anarchists disrespect red lights you know) he dashed into a damn Starbucks. Fucking figures.
The pervasive anti-Los Angeles attitude in Frisco, be it from the general population and even more so in the radical tendencies, is pretty funny. They seem to think their snubs somehow affect us, but instead we just like them even more with all that cute and endearing provincialism. It just makes me want to pinch the cute out of a Friscoans cheeks!
Speaking of cute, check out these darling handcrafted beanies to fit on sewer pipe endcaps. How adorable! If only LA took this much care of our shit tubes then maybe we would be close to the awesomeness that is the city of San Frisco. If only.
In the end, we left “The City” (haha!) with our Ugly Angeleno-ness intact. It’s almost a badge of honor to be correlated with the scum of the earth because we chose to live in a misunderstood city, to live in the shadow of its media representation, to live in a wide and culturally diverse city that doesn’t look to Frisco for anything. I almost feel bad for the Bay Area for how irrelevant it seems from down here.
But we still love it.
Here we see some Frisco Cows attacking the Giant Angeleno myth. I’ll check in next year to see how that ferocious battle is going. It’s gonna be an adventure for sure!
Panza out!
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Super hilarious post. Love the die yuppy scum teeshirt updated to die hipster scum teeshirt. Well turned observations about “the City” as well. For me, visiting Frisco from L.A. is kind of like having tea in your kid’s Victorian playhouse in the backyard, toy anarchists included. (If I had a kid, who had a dollhouse. Actually, I don’t even have a backyard.)
ps menso for spam script? I used to think she was calling me a mensch. Not so I guess.
Oh, sorry. I guess it’s mensa.
SF is funny and fun.
No one that lives there actually grew up there or those few are hard to find. They have been priced out by the overall gentrification of the whole area. I read last year this makes it like a ‘singles island.’ Mostly single folks with money stay there until they marry and move to the suburbs.
I feel bad for them in the misdirected hate for LA. They are really just trying so hard not to be us they end up being the epitome of all that is fake and bad in LA, namely like the new comers that don’t know how to act here other than to pretend like the fake, superficial LA everyone not from LA thinks is LA.
The illustration for the Rebel Caffeine Fiends is pretty hilarious but I think the cup might do more damage if it just poured its content on the copper.
Hope you didn’t refer to “Frisco” in front of the natives from “the City”. Its a cardinal sin.
I had the pleasure of living in the City for 3 years. From Highland Park straight to the Tenderloin and then later the Outer Richmond. Those were some good times and I always carry a bit of San Francisco in my heart.
The Muni Maze cables! You should see when the Bus Driver takes the intersection too fast, the bar connecting the back of the bus to the wire in the sky comes flying off and the bus comes to a complete stop as it loses all power. The bus driver ALWAYS gets PISSED, walks off the bus, puts his leather gloves on, and then tries to connect that bar to the skywire again–Trying to thread that wire into the groove on the bar. Meanwhile, the angry bus riders are yelling for him to hurry up…
Frisco luvs you too!
Let me know in advance next time you’re in the neighborhood, I would luv to meet you in person and discover some HR places with you and/or your clan.
Tho I don’t do Anarchy festivals (or SF S&M Festivals) either, so fehggidabouddit!
-Gina Latina
I am from Casa Blanca (knocks down chota war-surplus Cobra choppers), lived in Fresno, Sanjo, and now San Pancho, and what’s this “Frisco” shit? Only yokels and racist bikers call it that. Is that a new twist on the murderous Norte/Sur crap? I caught the local newscaster Joe Vasquez talking that way about Los, and I got on his case. I said it’s like the bourgeois version of the pandilla wars. Try to keep a perspective on cynicism, it comes to us as “trendy”. Young gringos go “Ah ha ha ha!” when I mention Alviso, which is a tiny town near Sanjo, which was, believe it or not an important south bay port at one time. Or maybe it’s the size and because a lot of chicanos live there, I am afraid to ask. Both small towns and large cities have their provincialism. If I were to judge the people of Los Angeles by the vatos that I have met from there your town would be in trouble with me. In 1980 when I worked for original Lowrider Magazine (I designed the logo), I met a photographer from there. The other production vato and I used to indulge in the old US tradition of cracking up at our boss, in this case the publisher, because he was (and is) an asshole. This shutterbug got all huffy about it, kiss-ass that he was. I like Los, it’s the people that make a city, and there are some cool people there just like here. But obviously both places harbor shallow, cynical and abusive outlooks. Grow ass up.