Rubulad, the creative hive that’s hosted 17 years of epic art parties in Brooklyn, is looking for a new home.  To get there, the gang has embarked on a good old-fashioned Internet barn raising via Kickstarter.  They’re doling out custom piñatas and souvenir panties, along with offering to stage a “pop-up 15-minute Rubulad” in some donors’ homes. (Just don’t let ‘em get you evicted!)

Last year in July, we covered the initial eviction scare as city officials ordered Rubulad’s denizens to vacate the lower level of their building in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood. Sari Rubinstein and Chris Thomas, who run the Rubulad event and community space, explained in a recent email to Laughing Squid that they tried to salvage the situation but are now moving on:

“After a year of architect and contractor visits in an attempt to do the work required to have the Vacate Order lifted from the ground floor, and ultimately getting a $40,000 estimate to install the various remedies to qualify for getting the Order lifted, we followed our lawyer’s advice and surrendered the ground floor.

“During this time we burned through all our savings by paying simultaneous rents (home space + event rental spaces).  We are now fundraising for a new home base. The new home will be Rubulad’s third.

“We’re looking in Brooklyn for a large (6,000+ square ft.) space with an outdoor component, for basically the same model of having resident artists as well as community-based events.”

App developer Jonathan Stark has posted the barcode to his Starbucks coffee card online so that anyone can get free coffee using his account. The card has a Twitter account, which tweets when the card is used or its balance is depleted (a frequent occurrence). Stark has also given instructions on how generous types can replenish the card’s funds online–a spin on the “take-a-penny, leave-a-penny” dish at a convenience store.

Stark notes in his write-up that he is not in any way at all affiliated with Starbucks.

UPDATE: Jonathan provides further clarification that he is not associated with Starbucks.

via Waxy

Snail Mail My Email by artist Ivan Cash is a project to transcribe emails into handwritten letters and mail them to recipients via regular mail, free of charge. After a flood of emails overwhelmed the project, Cash expanded it to include more than 180 volunteer letter writers around the world. Snail Mail My Email is accepting emails for transcription until August 15, 2011.

Type a message to a friend, family member, pet, politician, or lover, and e-mail it to snailmailmyemail@gmail.com. Then sit back and relax while your email is handwritten, sent out, and delivered to the recipient of your choosing, completely free of charge!

photos via Snail Mail My Email

Zaarly is an elegant web and mobile service that allows people to buy goods and services from sellers in their community. Buyers post a request and a price, and a nearby seller fulfills the request (see the Zaarly intro video).

Zaarly puts buyers at the center of transactions by allowing them to make requests for the things they need from people in their own communities. When a buyer posts a request to Zaarly — whether for food delivery, the latest tech gadget or reservations at the hottest restaurant in town — people in their community who have what they are looking for can provide it. Now, whether you are buying groceries, need to find a caterer, want a ticket to a sold-out playoff game or are looking to borrow a flatbed truck for the day, you can use Zaarly to find out if someone close by has what you’re looking for. This two-way, community-powered process provides convenience and flexibility to buyers while allowing sellers to make money fulfilling requests from the people around them.

photo by Andria Lo

A delicate dance between spectator and athlete, a mediation on the properties of the pendulum, and unabashed grin-making installation art piece, Competitive Swinging by Paolo Salvagione, is now up at the Headlands Center for the Arts Gymnasium in Sausalito, CA.

Paolo Salvagione is the principal clock prototype engineer for The Long Now Foundation‘s Clock Of The Long Now, and was also an artist-in-residence at The Headlands Center last year. This year, when he was asked to create a piece for the old gym, he jumped at the chance:

“I had no idea what I would do, I just knew I loved the space. The piece reveled itself slowly. All the ingredients were there in my mind, dreams, childhood playground memories, pendulums. The challenge of a space that big is how to activate it, it was built in 1907. I spent the evening there with bottle of wine and watched the space as the sun set. I noticed period hardware on the ceiling that once held climbing ropes, a common military exercise. From that observation the piece came together. The old basketball court ask for 5 people a side and the building has 5 window on each side. The nature of athletics asked for competition, my sense of humor loved the idea of competitive swinging.

The next challenge was finding the right swings. In 1992 the rules, concerning playground equipment, were changed. The base of a swing had to be light enough not to break skin if a child was hit in the head with it. Hence the super light plastic swings in contemporary playgrounds. I was determined to reference the swings of my youth and decided to recreate the classic wooden swing with a rope instead of a chain. It was also my intent to make the swings perfectly quiet. I wanted to swing in the space in complete silence. There were a few moments where I thought my efforts to get to this swing-of-the-past seemed absurd but when the installation was complete I knew I had made the right decisions. An installation like this only comes to life when populated, with people, with smiles.”

With his work on the Long Now 10k Clock, and also as a former racing bicycle designer, Paolo rides the line between engineering and art. When asked if he is an artist moonlighting as an engineer, or an engineer in artist clothing, he responds:

“The engineering I do with the Long Now Foundation is monument scale art. My discipline informs my art, my art informs my discipline. The two are so tightly wound in my mind that I have a hard time thinking of one without the other. I feel compelled to show people the dimension that they live in but have forgotten about.”

The closing reception for Competitive Swinging will be at the Headlands Center on May 8th, form 12-5pm.

In the meantime, call ahead to the Headlands Center to see the piece yourself.

“No Place Like Here: Marfa, Texas” by Karen Bernstein is a fascinating short documentary about the remote Texas town of Marfa, a refuge for all manner of artists, crafters, and eccentrics. Originally an army fort, Marfa was converted to an artist’s community by American sculptor Donald Judd.

via The Etsy Blog

In “Views of Detroit,” Danish students experiment with using film as a tool for urban planning. Much of the film takes place in the grand abandoned buildings and overgrown greenspaces that dot the city. Interviews with residents offer insight on life in the troubled city as well as some novel and hopeful solutions, including Loveland, a nonprofit which invites you to purchase a square inch of Detroit for a dollar.

The film uses a strongly subjective narrative, with no aim to point out answers to the challenges Detroit is currently facing. However we hope our methodology can inspire planners to include new perspectives from everyday life in their work: creating future cities.

via Wooster Collective

Been missing the soul and mind-stirring combination of gosh-wow spectacle and techno-optimism of the Worlds Fairs of the past, those engines of imagining and realizing a future actually worth fighting through the present to get to?

A bunch of people in Los Angeles–including me, in a minor curatorial role–are feeling that yearning for making a better tomorrow today as well, and will bring back the future with a June 2011 science, art, and technology extravaganza called Re-Evolution.

The spirit of the event is best summed up by its chieftain Kasey McMahon in her interview with Neatorama:

Re Evolution is a large-scale science, technology and art festival in Los Angeles…We are combining love for science, technology and art and a desire to ignite curiosity and interest in the fields. Art and outrageous feats of engineering have a fantastic way of instilling wonder, with Re Evolution we’re looking to create an environment that echoes the pervading sense of optimism for the future that the World’s Fairs of the past seemed to instill. We want to show the beauty, fun, power and possibilities of science and technology and to help people understand how these tools work and how exciting creative applications of them can be….

To ignite the imagination. To instill wonder. To give a techno-optimistic view of the future….By enlivening these subjects, we hope to inspire people to study engineering and science. Wonder inspires curiosity, curiosity drives discovery… Apparently, as a child Carl Sagan attended the 1939 World’s Fair and it was a turning point in his life….Our hope is that by providing accessible, fun, hands-on and creative applications of science and tech that people will get excited about these subjects and about the future.

McMahon herself has been producing delightful projects to prod the geek imagination for a long time, such as the Compubeaver and the self-portrait with cables. The team she’s assembled to execute Re-Evolution includes Poetic Kinetics, who among their other credits in large-scale wonderment built giant boom-forklift driven terra cotta warrior puppets for the 2008 Beijing Olympics; Synn Labs, a gang of wild engineers most recently famous for making OK Go’s Rube Goldberg machine a reality; and such champions of robotic and electronic festival art as Christian Ristow (of various crushing robots fame) and Syd Klinge (maker of dueling giant Tesla Coils and Jacob’s Ladder pipe organs).

The event will push not just spectacle but education, and is teaming with the Hybrid Reality Institute for inspiring salon and lecture content exploring our evolving relationship with technology.

The event is in early planning stages, and is beginning with a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to lock down an appropriately vast and inspiring location in Los Angeles.

photo by Scott Beale

Many of you may be familiar with Ace Junkyard from the pages of this blog. Or perhaps, you know of Ace Junkyard because you arrived one afternoon to help with an event such as the Power Tool Drag Races or Cyclecide Bike Rodeo and ended up waking up several days later, filthy, sunstruck, head stinging with whiskey aftermath, and covered in unidentifiable petroleum substances and clown makeup.

Ah, good times.

Such was the power of the junkyard, a nexus point where makers, doers, thinkers, and those who would never otherwise have a venue for their creations could find hardware, gossip over coffee, store their junk or bring whatever to a final resting place.

Ace Junkyard has now gone to its final resting place, but never fear. Yasmin Mawaz-Khan, a San Francisco Area filmmaker and artist, seeks to immortalize Ace and add it to the pantheon of popular culture by making a film, “Ace In The Hole”.

From the Ace In The Hole Website:

This film is about Ace Junkyard: auto wreckers, artist resource and event space. It’s about its owner Bill Kennedy, and the ways in which communities develop and lives transform in the most unlikely places. On a larger scale, this film addresses a current issue in San Francisco and across the United States: where are all our alternative arts spaces going?

The stereotype of junkyards suggests that they are places for grimy men, stacks of junk and scrapped metal. That is what Ace Auto Wreckers and Dismantlers started out as, but over the years, it grew to include computer parts, random defunct electronics, odd bits and bobs, an artist-in-residence known as Number 3, and in Bill’s words, “the prettiest women that have ever worked in a junkyard.” It provided a creative environment for the freaks and geeks in society who elsewhere are considered outcasts. It created jobs, and provided stability and structure for some that otherwise might have found themselves in unsteady places.

To support this worthy endeavor, there will be a rip-snorting, good-time generator of a junkyard-style party to benefit getting this movie made:

“Ace in the Hole” Fundraiser
Date: Saturday, July 10, 2010
Time: 4:00pm – 7:00pm
Location: The Shipyard, 1010 Murray St., Berkeley, CA
Here’s a Facebook Invite for all your Facebookians out there

The benefit will feature a number of veterans from Ace: Los Banos, the Cyclecide Bike Rodeo house band; The Neverwas Haul, a streampunk Victorian exploratory house on wheels; and EX-tra special, for One Afternoon and ONE afternoon only, in homage to the Ace International Speedway, there will be a special exhibition of everybody’s favorite redneck sport, Power Tool Drag Racing!

Bill The Junkman will be in attendance to tell stories, snarl about tweakers, and elegantly sip whiskey from one greasy but well-manicured hand.

Come one, come all, bring your beer money and punk boots, grease up the kids, put the dog in the truck and shell out some cash so the Ace Junkyard story can be told for years to come.

“We got the president of Governors Island to ride the Electric Bubble Bus!” cheered David Koren.

He sounded upbeat. And why wouldn’t he be? Last night marked the end of the fourth-annual Figment Festival in New York City. When Koren, 39, and fellow Burning Man veterans started the commerce-free interactive art party back in 2007, it lasted one day and drew 2,800 people. This year, the three-day celebration lured 23,665 revelers out to Governors Island, a former military base in New York Harbor.

Visitors danced to DJs spinning under giant, wormlike-inflatable sculptures from Disorient, an arts collective that hosts an annual camp at Burning Man.  They hula hooped and had their pictures taken while dressed as the Mona Lisa.  They wandered among dozens of colossal art installations, which ranged from the graceful Living Pavilion, a swaybacked tunnel with grass growing upside-down inside, to Bagel Buns, a hill of bagels with television sets playing “Buns of Steel” videos on a constant loop.

Sandbox wars broke out in the glitter pit, where kids threw handfuls of silver dust at each other until it coated their limbs and hair and parents, too. “It looks like dandruff!” one grownup exclaimed. (“It looks like you just blew a unicorn,” another suggested.)

The weekend’s sleeper hit was Aqua Attack!, a game show presented by The Action Arts League. Staged in two opposing kiddie pools, the competition pitted superheroes against supervillains for a soaking wet, stuffed-animal-slingin’ melee.

And, yes, Leslie Koch, the city official who oversees Governors Island, took a spin on Figment’s first-ever art car: a roving sound system swaddled in fluorescent fabric, crowned with a disco ball and a cut-out city skyline.  (Rumor has it that the Electric Bubble Bus was also lawyer-proof; a sign on the grille read “NO RIDING WITHOUT WAIVER.”)

Hundreds of volunteers pitched in to make the festival work on a $60,000 budget, which came from grants and donations and also covered a second Figment event this summer in Boston.

So what do after your non-commercial event is a raging success, a free-spirited extravaganza in one America’s most expensive and commodified cities?

Said Koren: “I’m NOT going to Disneyland.”

Photo Gallery: Figment 2010

For more information about the Figment festival and how to volunteer: http://figmentproject.org

photos by Jessica Bruder

Creative Growth Art Center Benefit

Saturday May 29th 7:00pm-10:00pm
Rhythmix Cultural Works
2513 Blanding Avenue, Alameda

On May 21st, Tara Evans turned 40 years old. Instead of having a large birthday party, she decided to turn the party into a benefit for the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland… and she has invited the world!

The Creative Growth Art Center has served adult artists with developmental, mental and physical disabilities, providing a stimulating environment for artistic instruction, gallery promotion and personal expression for over 35 years.

Artwork fostered in this unique environment is included in prominent collections and museums worldwide. In June 2008, the Creative Growth Center opened Galerie Impaire in Paris exhibiting the artwork of artists with disabilities, self-taught artists and contemporary artists from around the world.

Their artists have been featured in documentaries, books, and have recently worked on designing for Marc Jacobs.

One of the more well-known artists to come out of Creative Growth Art Center was Judith Scott. “Mistakenly branded in childhood as profoundly retarded, Judith was to spend thirty-five dismal years in institutional custody before the love of her twin sister intervened too obtain her release, setting her on that mythic journey from darkness into light, which would win for her international acclaim as an artist of exceptional talent and originality.”

Tara is holding an Art Sale and Dessert Fest Benefit at Rhythmix Cultural Works 2513 Blanding Avenue in Alameda this Saturday, May 29th, from 7:00pm-10:00pm. There is a $10 donation at the door which includes a raffle ticket. Raffle prizes include gift certificates for the Westin St. Francis Union Square, Andiron Seaside Inn and Cabins near Mendocino, Salsa with Juan, and Bead Inspirations.

The entire event has been a collaborative effort. Over 40 artists from across the US, as far as Ithaca NY, and notables such as Winston Smith have donated paintings, drawings, ceramics, jewelry, textiles, music, independent film tickets, soaps and scents, and various other forms of arts and crafts for the Art Sale. The sale will also include 20 pieces from Creative Growth artists.

Current Sponsors and Donations:

Ritual Coffee Roasters
Westin St. Francis Union Square
Andiron Seaside Inn and Cabins near Mendocino
Salsa with Juan
Bead Inspirations
Plumeria Flours
Last Gasp Books – Ron Turner

A list of participating artists can be found on the benefit website.

photo by Nicole Aptekar

Industrial art groups and large scale projects are no strangers to the Bay Area, but it’s not often that several of these groups collaborate on something so large they couldn’t do it alone. Syzygryd is a 2.5 ton interactive, collaborative musical instrument that breathes fire. This Burning Man Honorarium project is being created through the combined efforts of Interpretive Arson, False Profit Labs, Grey Area Foundation for the Arts, and Denmark based Illutron.

Syzygryd is an interactive metal sculpture measuring 60 feet in diameter and 13 feet tall at its highest point. It consists of three giant spiraling metal arms that join into a tornado of cubes in the center of the space. At the outer edges of the sculpture are three touchscreen grid sequencers (think of a giant 4 foot wide Tenori-on) which allow people to visually compose music together. The touchscreens are also connected to DMX controllers which sequence 1.5 kilowatts of LEDs and an array of flame effects, including a 20 foot fire tornado in the center. In short, the music composed by three strangers will be translated into fire, light, and sound.

While Syzygryd is a Burning Man Honorarium project and received partial funding from the Burning Man Organization, it’s not quite enough to build the envisioned art piece. The Syzygryd team will be throwing Syzygy, a Gala Benefit for the Syzygryd Project at CELLspace on Friday, June 4th with live musical and aerial performance as well as a silent auction to help raise additional funds. You’ll also get a chance to get a hands-on preview of the controllers

There is a Kickstarter going to help put the fire in Syzygryd. In addition to helping bring more fire into the art world, you’ll also score some great rewards for your pledge. The goodies range from stickers and t-shirts to a handheld flamethrower and even your own personal Dance Dance Immolation run. After paying for all the plumbing and parts for the flame effects, any additional funds raised past the $8224 goal will be put towards more fuel for the fire during Burning Man.

Most of Syzygryd will be open-sourced. There are currently plans to release the collaborative grid sequencer (written in Processing), the plans for the AVR-based DMX to LED controller and flame effect relays, and Creative Commons licensed sets of sounds for Ableton Live. If the Kickstarter is successful, additional information including the fire tornado CAD drawings, the flame effects ignition system plans, and detailed fuel diagrams will be publicly released.

This multi-disciplinary project is currently in full swing in community spaces across the Bay Area, including NIMBY, Noisebridge, and TechShop. Additional volunteers of all skill levels are always welcome. If you have interest in anything from music or electrical design to lighting, software, or metal fabrication and you want to work on one of the biggest projects at Burning Man this year, send an email to volunteers@syzygryd.com. If you’re a musician, familiar with Ableton Live, check out the MDK to get your music added to the sculpture. For more info on the project you can check out www.syzygryd.com and follow @Syzygryd on Twitter.

photo by Dav Yaginuma

photo by Liz Henry

Ephemerisle, a floating festival of freedom, creativity, and community organized by The Seasteading Institute, takes place July 22-25 on the Sacramento River Delta.

Participants bring their crafts and their ideas to build an eclectic temporary village of boats, rafts, barges, junks, and other floating structures. A large central platform is provided as a common space to come together. Expect music, dance, open mic performances, workshops, spirited discussions, even classes on how to build your own floating platform… and on the last night, a community feast to lead a full evening of celebration.

Jason Sussberg created a mimi documentary on Ephemerisle 2009.

We’re excited to see The Quotidian met the Mission Street Food Project; while both are local to San Francisco, each do something on a cultural level that we’d love to see replicated in other major cities — and both are getting national attention. The Quotidian is a San Francisco phenomenon; they are a ongoing online video documentary project “that highlights how everyday people and actions can have a larger effect on the world”. They recently examined another SF phenom, Mission Street Food Project, which scores killer local chefs to bring high-end San Francisco food to the people and creating happening events (and hot date destinations) in the process, all while giving proceeds to charitable organizations. Their next event is this Thursday, April 1st, and all dining events are cash only. Quotidian did a fabulous documentary on MSF (above) explaining,

The success of these nights has also transformed Mission Street Food into a serious charitable business, as more than $17,000 was donated to local charities during the part-time restaurant’s first 10 months of operation. Mission Burger, a lunchtime burger stand that Myint started inside the Duc Loi Supermarket a couple doors down from Mission Street Food, has also generated more than $2,500 in donations during its first three months of operation.

While the idea of donating sales proceeds to charitable causes isn’t necessarily new, what’s impressive about Mission Street Food is that it’s taken place in the dining world, where profit margins are notoriously hard to come by even with the most established restaurants and competition is cutthroat. Mission Street Food has succeeded as a foodie destination and business in spite of (or perhaps because of) its charitable roots, proving that it’s possible to be a successful small local business with a great product while giving back directly to the community in a real, meaningful way.

via Kai Hsing

photo by Flickr user Jaxonista

Real-life superheroes may be this year’s Hollywood darling, but Michigan has had their very own masked vigilante, Captain Jackson for years. The Captain has been patrolling the streets of Downtown Jackson since 1999, spreading his message of civic duty while keeping an eye out for crooks and super-villains. He keeps a website with a schedule of community appearances, safety tips, and even a roster of his allied costume heroes, The Crimefighter Corps. Always ahead of the curve, Captain Jackson has been maintaining a blog since May 2000 called The Captain’s Corner with brilliant entries such as, CALLING ALL GOOD DEED DOERS!, BEING AWARE, and HOW TO BE A CRIMEFIGHTER. In addition, the blog features ground chuck-centric recipes in a section called “Cooking with the Captain”.

Captain Jackson’s career ran into a snag in 2004 when he was charged with “impaired driving”. The local newspaper subsequently ran an article about the incident and published the Captains real life identity. The toll that the  media coverage took on our hero is best outlined in the blog entry, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.  After a two-year hiatus, it seemed that he was back in active-duty at community events and online. In the past year though, there seems to be little to report on this masked man, but we may not have seen the last of Michigan’s own, Captain Jackson.

Muralist Mona Caron (left) working in the Tenderloin with project manager Lisa Ruth Elliot. Photo: Nick Kasimatis.

I once rode the J-Church in San Francisco with my friend, the muralist Mona Caron. When you ride that train, there’s a brief moment where you can see the tail end of Mona’s first public artwork, the Duboce Bikeway Mural, and as she and I passed we chatted about that project — how she did it, where the funding came from, etc. When the other passengers overheard our conversation, realizing she was the artist behind this epic work, the entire car spontaneously burst into applause.

A detail from Windows Into the Tenderloin. Photo: Mona Caron.

For the people that live near or pass Mona’s murals on a regular basis, her work is a gift that keeps on giving. In part that’s due to her technical virtuosity, which puts her in the company of the very best of the mural tradition in this or any country. She has a rare mastery of perspective, anatomy, rendering and color that gives her work an undeniable authenticity as art, that makes you stand up and take notice. But I think the real pleasure people have in her murals, and the thing that brings them back to view and enjoy them again and again, is the radical utopian vision that animates her art.

You can see that utopianism in her newest mural, Windows Into the Tenderloin, which Mona will be dedicating at a party Friday afternoon:

MURAL DEDICATION EVENT
Friday, March 5th, 3:30pm
Corner of Jones & Golden Gate
Everyone welcome!

Located on the corner of Jones and Golden Gate in the heart of the Tenderloin, the piece is an honest picture of the neighborhood, created in part through hours of community input, and enlivened by portraits of the local characters that Mona has befriended over the year and a half she has been working on it.

Photographer unknown.

Photo: Mona Caron.

Photo: Mona Caron.

Photo: Mona Caron.

The finished work uses virtuoso trompe-l’oeil to open windows on the social life of the area, expressing in art the deep social bonds that always exist, even in the most devastated community. Mona doesn’t sugarcoat a tough situation, but she reminds us that in the Tenderloin, just like anywhere else, good things as well as bad things are happening. Crime, drug use and poverty make life more difficult, but social life goes on —people laugh and talk and eat together, raising children and watching out for each other in countless ways.

Elsewhere in the mural, she peels away huge swaths of wall to reveal the natural ecology that stubbornly refuses to die, even as the urban environment masks it, paves it over.

Photo: Mona Caron.

Mona’s work is epic, but it calls our attention back to the little details, the small signs that life continues, refusing to be crushed or defeated, even in the face of poverty, urban decay, racism, environmental degradation. We can call that vision utopian, but it’s also just a fact, a truth that we all know but that is so rarely spoken aloud.

Thanks, Mona, for this great gift to our city and the world!

Check out more of Mona’s amazing murals and artwork on her website: monacaron.com.

(To donate to the Save Defenestration fund, go here. S’ cool, we’ll wait for you to come back.)

Perched on the corner of Sixth and Howard Street and San Francisco, a ruined building provides a magical moment for anyone who thinks to look up. Queen Anne tables gallop off the roof, sideshow murals decorate the ground floor, table lamps light the window ledges, and a sofa makes its bid for freedom. Built by world-renown artist Brian Goggin plus a hoard of volunteers thirteen years ago, Defenestration, this famous example of dedicated whimsy, was only meant to last a year.

Housed in the defunct and decaying Hugo Hotel, Defenestration is to undergo some massive renovation to keep pace with the gentrifying neighborhood. Brian Goggin, artist and the piece’s originator, explains:

The building is owned by the city, but they wanted to tear it down in January. My friend Jeremy Sugarman, brother Patrick Goggin and I negotiated with the Redevelopment agency and the local neighborhood council to keep it up. The Redevelopment Agency agreed provided I make the piece safe and restore it or remove it by the end of April. We have made it safe by removing all the pieces that needed serious structural repair. It is looking sparse and wounded. It needs to have many pieces completely rebuilt. To reach the work to remove and replace it we need equipment – boom lifts and cranes. This takes time, labor and money. But we can raise the money and the resources if it is important to enough of us.

Defenestration began its official existence with every music maker and dreamer of dreams in the greater Bay Area and beyond come out to celebrate this emblem of joy and teamwork. The party was so colossal and so quintessentially San Francisco that people still talk about it.

Tour buses stop for it, outlets all over the world write about it, it was made by a community, and now it needs the community’s help once more.

We figure that a world famous, huge-scale art piece that is the centerpiece of a recovering neighborhood, built largely by volunteers and roundly supported by a city that really does know how, would certainly be important enough, indeed.

John Law, Suicide Club member, Cacophony Society architect, and co-founder of Burning Man, has this to say about Defenestration:

“Defenestration is the best. Brian Goggin turned a rambling, spacious, partially wrecked four story residential hotel building into ART. Not only ART, but a f**king tourist attraction, to boot. You can almost separate humanity into the proverbial two kinds of people: those who “get” the piece, and those who don’t. Those who “get it” are basically everyone. What I’m trying to say is that Brian did the nearly impossible: he made FINE ART that ALL people could appreciate.

On top of creating a brilliant piece of sculpture, he ALSO buffaloed pretty much everyone in town at the time into helping him throw the greatest street party that I remember in over thirty years in this town as the opener for the piece. The gypsies, punks, goths, machine art kids, ravers, hippies, “serious art types”, art fags, pranksters, rocket scientists, burners (this was before the pathetic appellation “burner” was in popular use), city politicos, business owners and pretty much everyone else came out for the party. Many of them helped put it on. The organizing crew got permits to hang the pieces on the building, close Howard St. for the show and have aerial and fire performances right there in broad daylight in South of Market. Try to do that now.

In 13 years Defenestration has become synonymous with San Francisco to many. Along with the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower, The Cliff House, ChinaTown and Lombard Street, Defenestration is on the tour bus routes and is on display daily as a gift to both locals and visitors to our grand and kooky town.

If there is any plan to convince the Powers That Be to retain this wonderful, goofy, grand sculpture as part of whatever development eventually engulfs the corner of 6th & Howard, we should support it whole heartedly. The facades of several historically important buildings in town have been preserved and incorporated into the new structures that were built within their shells. They could perform a similar engineering feet with Defenestration.

In the mean time, let’s do what we can to support Brian in restoring the piece as the final fate of the building is debated by the City and developers.”

Defenestration is more than just rebellious furniture tacked to a wall. It’s a true icon, a symbol of what we do in this city and what a group of genuinely dedicated and excited individuals can be capable of, given the right impetus. It’s a living, breathing piece of history, something tourist and native alike can marvel at. Stories of its construction abound, from the trapeze artists suspended out the window on opening day to tales of fondly remembered mishap. Eva Galperin, now of the EFF, remembers being a high school student working in the interior:

“My most poignant memory of working on Defenestration – I was working on helping to clear out the building, to get all the plaster dust out. We were having lunch on the roof, and I had forgotten something downstairs. So I come barreling down the stairs, covered in plaster dust, only to realize that there is a 2×4 across the stairs, and I don’t duck *quite* fast enough. Giant scar across my back. I came home, covered in plaster dust still, and across my back the plaster dust was pink. I did, in fact, suffer for my art.”

This author remembers Miss Galperin in class sometime after the incident, bragging about the injury and declaring it the coolest one she had gotten to that point and we should all really come down and see this amazing thing they were building.

Michael Michael, also known as Danger Ranger, co-founder of BurningMan, Cacophonist and raconteur, comments:

Defenestration was one of the first large-scale art projects in San Francisco produced by voluntary collaboration. Many challenges had to be overcome to bring this brilliant idea into reality. Assembling a variety of old furniture and then modifying it into whimsical shapes, clearing massive amounts of debris from an old and long-abandoned building, installing supporting frameworks and lighting, all required heroic effort.

During the several months of installation, there was a convergence of colorful characters from all over the country and the labyrinthian interior of the building itself became a temporary colony of artists working all hours. Donated food and supplies appeared each day to fuel the hard-working crew. This historic project attracted a bunch of unique and creative individuals into what became a community effort that has had lasting effect.

And the incredible block party and circus held at the completion of the project is a legendary event remembered by many.”

Chicken John, showman and erstwhile mayoral candidate, apparently became intoxicated upon hearing the news of Defenestration’s potential demise. When asked for a comment, this is what we could make out:

“Defenestration is the most valuable asset. . .beacon of tolerance and whimsy. . .keeping the idea of San Francisco as a city of Art and Innovation. . . .overflowing with possibility. . . championing unconventional thinking. . .embracing function as form. . .perverted f*ing furniture getting away with murder. . . they move you know. . .a genuine cornerstone of truth in a world gone mad. . .if it was a girl I’d marry it. . . can’t let civic treasure slip away. . . demand you commit to its long life. . .city of arts and innovation. . .the dog loved it. . . doom and cold. . . emptiness. . .pigeons. . .”

We over here at LaughingSquid did the math, and figured that if 10% of the population of San Francisco proper gave $1.00, Defenestration would rise again to amaze and delight. Skip one hour of metered parking in SF! Buy one coffee one size down! Go through your couch to repair the one in the window! All donation are tax deductible through the very generous machinations of the Black Rock Art Foundation, with a handy dandy Defenestration Donation Page available for all your donating needs.

In Addition, the 1:AM gallery is hosting a fundraiser and admiration party
to help raise funds:

Please join us on Friday, March 5th, from 6-10 pm for a very special opening/fundraising event at the 1:AM Gallery, on the corner of 6th and Howard Streets. The gallery will host a month-long exhibit celebrating Defenestration, including examples of restoration work in progress and artwork for sale. All proceeds from the event and exhibit go directly to the restoration project. Visit www.1AMSF.com for more information and updates. The exhibit will run through April 2, 2010.

If you weren’t around the first time, donate – time, money, and energy. Contribute some senseless beauty to an uptight world. Forward the donation site around. Be active, if this is something you think is wonderful, because when we win and the piece is beautiful again, you can tell people to look up when you pass, and you will be able to say “That there, that art piece over there, I did that, we did that, all of us.”

photos by Florencia Alemán

photo by Audrey Penven

Talk about subcultural mashups!

Newly-opened SOMA coffeeshop Wicked Grounds has created a unique space for itself at the intersection of two highly-fetishized San Francisco lifestyles, coffee drinking and BDSM. Calling itself a “Kinky Café and Boutique” Wicked Grounds offers gourmet food and drinks – including coffee from the acclaimed Ritual Roasters – alongside a selection of fetish toys and accessories. The café also serves as a gallery space, displaying fine erotic photography and painting, and hosts a diverse variety of special events. They even hosted a live Kink.com porn shoot. Keeping the café open the whole time, of course.

Located at the corner of 8th and Folsom (home to the infamous Folsom Street Fair, in the heart of SF’s leather and fetish scene) and open until 2am on Friday and Saturday, Wicked Grounds has quickly become a favored haunt for kinky and kink-curious coffee lovers alike. With a clientele that runs the gamut from Daddies and Dommes to bloggers and Web entrepreneurs, Wicked Grounds is a uniquely San Franciscan third place; sort of a Perpignan Railway Station for the black leather and laptop set.

photo by Audrey Penven

Despite their growing popularity, Wicked Grounds is currently in need of community support to offset unexpected expenses that they incurred trying to open, San Francisco being an often ridiculously bureaucratic city when it comes to permitting and licensing. You can help by making a donation, dropping in for a latte or spreading the word on twitter, Google or Yelp. All donors will receive a gift package, including a limited edition coloring book signed by noted fetish artist Suzanne Rachel Forbes.

Oakland Local is a new non-profit community resource for news and information about Oakland, CA that was recently launched by Susan Mernit.

Our site combines original investigative and feature reporting with community news and information about Oakland non-profit organizations, community groups and engaged citizens.

photo by Todd Lappin (Telstar Logistics)

Uh-oh. Sad news comes via Sfgirlbybay that the monthly flea market held at the former Alameda Naval Air Station has been cancelled for November… and it’s not clear when (or if) the sprawling event will resume.

According to the flea market’s official website, “Proceedings have been commenced for the voluntary dissolution of Antiques By The Bay, Inc. As a result the show scheduled for Nov 1, 2009 will not take place.” Apparently there’s litigation underway between the partners who organize the flea market. Ew.

Alexis Amann & Jonathan Burstein “Don’t Give Up The Ship”

San Francisco Arts Commission’s Community Arts & Education Program (CAE) worked with local businesses in San Francisco to turn storefronts along Market St. between 5th and 8th Streets into temporary art installations. Last night’s “Art in Storefronts – Central Market” reception was teeming with an unlikely mix of art enthusiasts, street musicians, pan-handlers, and giddy teenaged girls (Teen-sensation “Boys Like Girls” was playing next door at the Warfield). Here are some of my photos:

Liz Maher “No One Seems to Care That I Want Roots”

Bayly & Miller “Find Yourself in Natural History”

Phillip Hua “Consider It”

Drone Dungeon Collective

More photos are available in my Flickr set.

The Central Market exhibition runs until January 31st, 2010. The Bayview hosts “Art in Storefronts” starting October 30th and The Mission District jumps on starting November 20th. More information on all of these events can be found at the SF Arts Commission website.

photo by Josh Ellingson

Comedy is truth: While some of us scratch our heads and wonder how an environment for jobs like “social media guru” and pay-per-Tweet advertising can exist, others create scathingly brilliant and hilarious videos about an environment that is so very ripe for parody. As of today, no one’s done it better than Markham Nolan and his public service announcement video The Social Media Guru. It’s also a promo for Xtranormal Beta, text-to-video moviemaking software that we hope will be available for Mac users sooner than later. Still, the truth hurts. Telling us he’ll gladly give us a special offer for advice on our Twitter accounts (translation: “I’ll sit on your Facebook and whack you up the Twitter. Financially.”) Nolan peels back the rich tapestry of bullshit and delivers line after line of painfully familiar, nonsensical promises that the douchiest of exploitative social media consultants seem to be offering. We OH, and we weep.

We hope you watch this video and learn many ways to monetize your Twitter followers.

via edrabbit

The hackerspace Noisebridge is one of San Francisco’s cultural and artistic gems. Its members have contributed a wide variety of art, hacks and local culture.

Noisebridge is a space for sharing, creation, collaboration, research, development, mentoring, and of course, learning. Noisebridge is also more than a physical space, it’s a community with roots extending around the world. We help people build neat and awesome things.

On Friday, October 2nd, these über-makers and geeks are having an open house for their one year anniversary that will show off what they have done and can do. This alone is worth the price of admission, which is free. Things to see include:

The Brain Machine (which you can learn to make at noisebridge)

A Compass Vibro-Anklet (which you can learn to make at noisebridge)

A Makerbot Robot (which can be used at noisebridge)

Also at the event will be the Reverse Engineering Bar with only the geekiest of drinks and music by DIY-band Corpus Callosum and Cally McMorrow, circuit bender of legend.

photo by Scott Beale

In a completely non-ironic and potentially exciting move, KQED and the University of California, Berkeley School of Journalism have snatched $5 million in kindling to start the Bay Area News Project. The money is being fronted by the Hellman Family Foundation to create online (and sideline print) media outlets as a “nonprofit, nonpartisan publicly supported news organization.” The first post on their fledgling Twitter account (@bayareanewsproject) announces that they’ve joined forces with the New York Times and the rumor is that it’ll be basically a New York Times West. The veritable Grey Lady herself said — one day after the NYT’s involvement was announced — opines that it’ll be “the largest and most ambitious of dozens of similar local news operations that have cropped up around the country.”

The venture is set to launch next year, which is really just around the corner in old media time, and to get a good sense of what the various people involved have to say about the scope and intention of the next possible Chron/Gate/Examiner killer, there’s a lot to be gleaned in KQED’s roundtable audio interview from Friday. Forum’s recent episode with host Dave Iverson The Future of News? is worth a listen. The topic of local news coverage here in the heart of technology (and the Hollywood of tech) is nothing if not a morbid topic, and there have been many contenders for the title they’re going to be more than a few rounds in the ring for. They’re hiring for freelancers right now (email: jobs at bayareanewsproject dot org). Although on Iverson’s show, when directly asked by a caller self-identified as a journalist, they said there would be compensation but were not transparent about any pay scale. I guess we’ll have to wait until they choose a name for more details (BANP is a temporary title). But they do tell us that distribution will be through a website, mobile applications, KQED will funnel them through radio and television dissemination, and they’re “exploring” print options with the NYT.

On the show, guests (and members of BANP) include Carl Hall, former representative of the SF Chronicle’s newsroom and commercial departments; Jeff Clarke, president and CEO of KQED; Neil Henry, professor and dean of the UC Berkeley’s J-school and author of 2007′s “American Carnival: Journalism Under Siege in an Age of New Media”; Noelle Leca, chair of the board of directors of KQED; and Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. In all it looks to be a very exciting venture, and we’ve been waiting for that local news wake-up call for decades — after all, we really should be leading the world in a revolution for combining democratized reportage and cutting edge technology. But instead most of us just gnash our teeth, watch the lag, read SFist, SF Appeal and SFBG while going elsewhere for… everything else.

Bay Area News Project is nothing if not ambitious. Will they really be the shock troops for journalism’s revolution as they hope? I’m reminded of when GETV was invited as citizen journalists to the 2006 San Francisco International Film Festival in a groundbreaking step to incorporate indie media with mainstream media. Only to discover in our on-the-spot interview with Graham Leggat that while courting us — no: in fact, bloggers and web TV reporters like us were not going to be granted equal access. Bait and switch, or perhaps yet another case of misunderstanding the medium. In the KQED Forum show, they tell us that BANP wants to “engage, listen, communicate with one another… with professional heart for news gathering and dissemination.” While also bantering that unlike citizen journalism, “truth” is at the heart of professional journalism, hence their preference for pro over citizen reportage — a sentiment many of us might find dismaying, at odds with our experience, and simply old fashioned.

Well, we can take heart that KQED’s Noelle Leca can be quoted as saying (at 37:35, in case we need it later) that Bay Area News Project “is a risk taking venture.” We certainly hope so. And Lillian Hellman was a very interesting and cool woman. BANP, whatever it will be called, could be just the kick in the [body part] that is needed, not just locally but nationally or even internationally. And that would be something to finally be proud of, indeed.

There’s an unusual sign in the window of the former Nob Hill See’s Candies of 1519 Polk Street. Landlord, horse farmer, fountain parker, and “911 Bounty Hunter” John Jenkel explains that the San Francisco candy maker has been evicted due to their contribution to the “Enron-sponsored” 9/11 attacks. The eviction notice places the candy company in a plot involving Warren Buffet.

photo by Laszlo Thoth

Confused? I was too, but I think I’ve figured it out: