Culture Shock Sunday

“To look at the cross-section of any plan of a big city
is to look at something like the section of a fibrous tumor.”
- Frank Lloyd Wright

Today I drove downtown for the first time since I've been back from California. It made me glad to be greeted by the breathtaking views of Lake Champlain while driving down Main St. Still, things do feel smaller here. It is sort of like my scope just shrank.

But I do not necessarily mean that in a bad way. San Francisco was almost too much for me to handle. Too much rushing, too much money spent, too many dates, too much eating, too much drinking, too much energy spent maintaining my force fields, weaving through crowds, ignoring bums and trying to stay on top of the ever-changing landscape around me.

In Vermont I can relax my force fields, breathe a deep sigh of relief and just...be. But I miss having a cell phone that rings a lot. And I miss having friends to see regularly. And it was nice to be unattached to a computer for 7 whole days, a little scary too.


Tonight at Selene Colburn's work in progress, "The History of the Future Suite" at the FlynnSpace, I saw a dozen or so familiar faces. They were from all sorts of different local places like VCAM, Pure Pop, SpielPalast, the Smittens, Kasini House, the Old Northender and the Flynn Center. Burlington really is a small town.

And right now, a small town is where it is at for me. But I can't help but miss the big town with the arched red bridge, the floating sushi boats, twinkling lights at night and the smell of salt water.

“The screech and mechanical uproar of the big city turns the citified head, fills citified ears - as the song of birds, wind in the trees, animal cries, or as the voices and songs of his loved ones once filled his heart. He is sidewalk-happy.”
- Frank Lloyd Wright

The Future of Alt Weeklies?

As a new member of the alternative weekly newspaper scene, I felt it my duty to sample the alt weeklies available in Northern California: East Bay Express, SF Bay Guardian and SF Weekly while on vacation last week.

Within their pages I found fewer arts & culture articles and fewer features than in our own dear Seven Days. However, I did find a hell of a lot more risque ads for escort services, "massage," and plastic surgery - eat your heart out American Apparel. As a biased observer, I would have to say that we hold up pretty damn well with these Bay Area behemoths, with fewer resources and a whole lot o' VT spunk.

Inside The SF Guardian was an interesting story about the San Francisco Chronicle (SF's equivalent of the Burlington Free Press) and the San Jose Mercury News laying off a quarter of their staff. Ironically, the Chron created a blog to help axed staffers find new jobs. Yes, the blog giveth, and the blog taketh away.

The Bay Area news market is about to be flooded with about 160 out of work reporters, not to mention more over-priced houses as fired journalists default on their mortgages. It is a sad state of affairs when the biggest paper in the area cannot afford to keep its employees and suffers from mysterious financial losses. And odder still, the Chron's online site, SF Gate, flourishes in the midst of these cuts.

Papers are in an awkward stage at the moment. The advent of online media is threatening to wipe out print journalism as we know it and yet, according to this article in the Guardian, paper's online sites such as the Chron's SF Gate have yet to rake in any sort of tangible profit.

"Indeed, SFGate.com is among the most regularly visited newspaper sites in the country, and the model has greatly expanded the paper's readership. But Curley explained that local advertisers "don't necessarily want to reach someone in Zurich who might be interested in reading our political analysis." For most papers, online ads still generate remarkably little revenue." - Paper trail BY G.W. SCHULZ

So what is the future? Are blogs, vlogs, Craig's List and YouTube the future? Are skintennas next? During my time in SF, I had some interesting YouTube discussions that led me to believe that even The Mighty YouTube is struggling with the same financial insecurity beast of burden. They are not sure how to make money off their content yet either. No one is.

Will it all unfold like the first dot-com bubble and its inevitable POP? Will the airy quality of online media amount to miniscule profits and fade into the ether? And if so, what will take its place?

Well, being a vlogger, I have to stay positive and hope for the best. I mean, I look at it this way, where else can we go at this point but up? There is money out there, I can smell it, my Spidey sense is tingling!

There was another article in the SF Weekly about blogger Jeff Wolf who was recently let out of prison after spending 7 months there refusing to give video footage of a G8 protest to the government. Writer Matt Smith joked about the ambiguous lines drawn in the sand between journalism and "bloggerism" which are becoming more and more transparent these days.

Amateur blogger Josh Wolf last week revealed he'd become a professional journalist, in the process helping professional journalist Matt Smith emerge as an amateurish blogger.
- Stern Reprimand, Matt Smith

Cross-overs like this are bound to happen. I didn't go to journalism school but some journalists at WCAX joked to me that no one needs to anymore. If journalists want to be bloggers and vice versa, then which way is up?

During his seven and a half months of incarceration — the longest anyone has spent in jail protecting source — bloggers and writers for newspapers hotly debated whether Wolf was a "true" journalist or just a blogger, and thus whether or not he was truly fit for status as a journalistic martyr. Cogniscenti fretted: was Wolf a journalist, or a blogger, or an activist, or an anarchist, or something else? - Stern Reprimand, Matt Smith

Jeff Smith seemed a wee bit irked by this entire affair and you can see him speak about it in his video and blog. Read the comments if you have time, talk about snarky! Smith was accused by many as being sickly jealous of Wolf's marytr-status; well, who wouldn't be?!

Who knows what the future holds for alt weeklies, but for a bit of good fun, check out Jeff Wolf on Stephen Colbert (watch video). Stephen Colbert crossed over from comedy to TV to politics so I suppose anything is possible.

Jon Stewart for president!

PS And at the risk of tooting my own horn, I also noticed in my online perusals of these Bay Area alt weeklies, that not one of them had video content even close to the quality of Stuck in Vermont. Toot, toot!

PPS DAMN! Tooted too soon! I found Matt Petty's most awesome culture vlogs on SF Gate (figures). His videos are beautiful, inspiring and make me want to make art! WOW!

Excitement-Eating in California

"...the Fitzgeralds did not seek ordinary pleasures. they wanted something unusual to happen, some act that they might not even understand. Zelda had never seen a young man who loved excitement, antics, outrageous happenings as much as she did, perhaps more."
- The Women of Montparnasse, The Americans in Paris
by Morrill Cody and Hugh Ford

Zelda Fitzgerald described her youthful, heedless life as excitement-eating. Zelda was a terrible flirt and men like Hemingway got pissed when she didn't deliver.

Zelda was a girl after my own heart, leaving Scott to go to her own set of parties, competing with him for attention and trying to become a ballerina late in life. She ate much excitement, she had her fill and some helpings from other people's plates as well. She was an excitement-glutton.

Let's not think about the fact that she lived out her later, less-excitement-filled years in a loony bin, abandoned by Scott, until she was burnt up in a fire that is. Loony bins lock you into your room at night so if a fire breaks out...Shudder.


After 7 days of excitement-eating in Northern California, I am ready to gobble Pepto Bismo, but also, ready to take on my next set of tasty tasks. Chomp, chomp, You see, things are afoot and it looks like I may be Stuck in Vermont for a good long while. Oh boy! Slurp, munch!

More than anything, I am just so damn happy, and so dang lucky! Lucky to have such lovely and talented and thoughtful friends and happy to have been able to see so many of them in flesh and blood, face to face. I'm not worthy. God, I miss 'em something terrible.

And oooh, the landscapes, the majesty, San Francisco, the Bay Area, they never cease to amaze me, and when you combine 'em with the people, well, YUM: cheese and baked goods and massive renovation in North Berkeley, heavenly meatballs in Piedmont with Robin, crazy views from Sarah's bird's nest in the Fillmore...

...a picnic lunch at Fort Mason overlooking Alcatraz, never ending sushi boats in Japan Town with Danny, the lizard-like shapes of over-lapping freeway overpasses, Hawaiian drinks with Jeff and Robin and an active volcano, a gang of school kids in the Marina...

...the nose-bleed SF hills that leave you worried you might tip over, the red bridge looming on the horizon from Lev's convertible, Market Street after dark falls, Lemondrops underneath the Bay Bridge with Sarah, a sudden burst of bougainvillea (ab0ve with Miss Jackson)...

...lying on the grass outside the De Young with Travis, a drunken meal in the Mission with Renee, Joanne and Jeff, a 50s Brit girl band in a packed club, bubbly in an Albany backyard with strawberries, Sue and Jen, ice cream on a Friday night near Dolores Park and an art show in Margaret's apartment.

Everything is so big and impressive and colorful in California, even a simple mural in a pee-infested alleyway in the Mission leaves an impression on a country mouse like me.

It all makes me feel so small and awe-struck. It is almost too much, too beautiful to be real. California dreaming seems more accurate, reality has no place in those surreal landscapes.

I spent much of my vacation marveling quietly to myself and savoring these awesome fluttery feelings whilst riding on BART trains, the 38 Geary bus or in my friend's Bugs, Minis and Miatas.

My love affair with California is not over yet. I think I saw sides of her that I never knew existed, little corners of her personality that were obscured when I lived inside her gates.

I plan to visit Cali at least once a year, so there VT, you will just have to accept that my heart will always belong to San Fran Sissy. No offense. I love you both equally. And as everyone who carded me noticed, "You look so happy in your license picture!"

"That's right," I said and then I told them the story of my recent move to VT and how shocked I was when the people at the DMV were NICE in Vermont, chatty even, laid back!

Unlike the Oakland DMV where you knew that any moment someone might snap, break out of a long line of angry people and start shooting, and that it might be you who pulls the trigger.

"So THAT is why I am smiling! Because VTers are nice." My little VT story. I swear, I told that to about 5 strangers in Cali this trip. Did they care? I think the girl at the Mac counter may have been listening...

More Cali blogs to come, pictures a plenty even if I did manage to resist bringing my video camera. But look at this here, a Castro collision of Junk Thieves and Deadbeats over tea as chronicled by Monsieur Thief.

IS it me or do I look like I am about to EAT him in this pic? I got carried away with my excitement-eating, as usual. Gobble, gobble.

Most importantly of all, the main reason for my trip, to SURPRISE the SHIT outta Jeffrey Raymond at his 40th birthday party as planned by his ultra amazing hubbie Charlie. Well, total success.

After a morning of sky diving, the boys returned to their NEW house (yes, apparently it is still possible to buy a home in SF!?) to a room full of well-wishers. I thought Jeff might screech bloody murder and run down the street screaming (I would have) but no, he did the gracious thing and entered the house to talk/hug/shower love on people.

Jeff is not much for birthdays, surprises, attention or large groups of people. So he did an amazing job of hosting, even after Charlie went to bed. What a swell 40 yr old guy.

I love you Jeffrey! And damn you for looking so young and vibrant and putting the rest of us ol' codgers to shame! Can we sit on a porch and whittle when our excitement-eating days are through!??!

And in closing, a word from Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, which, I must add, takes place in SF and is my current HOT read:

"Well don't dynamite her too much, what do you think of her?"

"Sweet! And you telling me not to dynamite her."
Archer guffawed suddenly without merriment.

.... "Where Bush Street roofed Stockton before slipping downhill to Chinatown, Spade paid his fare and left the taxicab. San Francisco's night-fog, thin, clammy, penetrant, blurred the street."

eBay and Shelburne Museum are Stuck in VT

Got eBay? [30]

Eva Goes to Cali

Well, this week has been mad for a number of reasons which I will not bore you with today. Instead, I will say that if you are my friend and live in California, please call me. You know the #. I am going to be in your fine state for 7 short days and I want to see each and every one of you. Tea, drinks, coffee? You name it!

Who am I kidding? No one in California reads my blog EXCEPT for the most fabulous Junk Thief. I think when we meet in person, angels will sing, buildings will collapse and monkeys will fly out of my butt. Junk thieves and deadbeats, you can never know enough of 'em!

My home in the Fantastic Fillmore will not have a TV or a computer so I will be trolling around for internet access at various unsavory spots. This blog will no doubt, get rather dusty in my absence. Will post if I can.

Will also eat LOTS of sushi, burritos and crepes, visit the hot springs often, NOT buy any more clothes and chill the fuck out. Things have been too crazy here for too long. See you later deadbeat!

Balloon Cowboys are Stuck in VT

VT Balloon and Music Festival [29]

PS Smell the propane and Old Spice ! Mmmmm....

Lani and her Darling Ducklings

Aww, so damn cute!! Lani is bringing ducklings to the Old North End! I swear, this first picture looks like a children's book cover. I'll take it!

We wants a cuddle please! Promise not to squeeze too hard!

Now which is Rosie and which is Fig?!

Kidneys and Pubs are Stuck in VT

Kidney Foundation Pub Crawl [28]

PS Diane and Matt are gonna make you pee yourself. That is how funny they are.

Stuck in VT on VCAM

Stuck in Vermont
VCAM, Channel 15
Mondays @ 8:30pm
Tuesdays @ 9:30am

Oh yes, tune in to your dear ol Channel 15, also known as VCAM for some of the latest episodes of Stuck in Vermont (thanks Bear for the time slots!).

During the month of June you can see May STVT episodes 23-27: Urban Dance Complex, Liminal Engagement, SpielPalast Cabaret, Black Fly Festival and VT City Marathon. What a line up!

My plan is to air the most recent episodes for the following month. This will keep it fresh and up to date. The show is a 1/2 hour with a snazzy new intro by yours truly. The more episodes I do, the more I learn about storytelling and the more I love this state and all the people in it. Shucks!

It could be the sleep deprivation talking (yes, part of the special mixture of Stuck in VT is all nighters - weekly ones) but I really, really love what I do. For the first time in my life!

That transvestite empath in SF at the hole in the wall Russian tea room was right, I did find an artistic job working with aritistic people in my early 30s. I thought she was just blowing smoke up my ass! Hurrah!

PS And some more good news to come, for now, I sit on it...

Fun with Chandeliers

The round barn at Shelburne Museum just got a wee bit swankier. Check out their chandelier show, aptly entitled Chandelirious!, and if you are lucky, you will even meet the chipmunks who call the barn home.