I got lots of good stuff. Will try to list some of it, here:
* Recipes for Disaster
* Evasion
* Rolling Thunder, anarchist journal dangerous living (Spring 07)
* 2007 kalendaro (cira japana)
* off the map
* Anarchist Farm
* Patches, stickers, posters, bookmarks, etc.
The best part was that everything was so cheap. Patches for $0.75. Really nice, well-done books for like $8. Very, very cool.
There were hundreds (thousands?) of people kicking it at Golden Gate park, and that building - the 'SF County Fair Building'? - very cool little spot, which was not too big, and not too small. But, I suspect that next year people will be wanting more room.
Lots of people wearing black. Lots of people lookin lots of different. People chillin on the lawns. Dude playing guitar. Dogs. People selling all kinds of stuff. SO MUCH anarchist material. Books. Posters. Movies. Patches. Speakers.
People having fun. Laughin. Lovin. Sharing. Great, great scene.
I threw a sticky-ball at a velcro-board thing and won a free cuticle rub-down with some Carmex-type stuff. That was totally legit.
The fair lasted over this past weekend, March 17/18, and I dropped in on Sunday.
The picture below is from 2006, but it looked exactly like that this year.
Saw Josh Wolf's father speak for a minute - donated a few bucks to the cause. Saw some amusing back and forth over a 'smash the system' guy in the audience trying to lecture the panel about how working for change is futile, so why not just quit, instead? Something like that.
So many funny t-shirts and stickers and buttons.
Got a sticker of a Zapatista-dude/tte playing soccer.
Lots of Palestinian rights stuff. Prisoner's rights. Anti-war League stuff. Couple of the bigger publishing presses/distributors (AK Press, Crimethinc, etc.). Some folks from Berkeley (I think) with lots of info on how to set up a community radio station.
One thing I did not see that I would have liked to have seen was something about the Really Really Free Market. That kinda sucks, because I think that's a totally great phenomenon that started out of anarchism.
I also asked about a book on either:
a) the life of Fred Hampton (this book doesn't seem to exist yet), or
b) the details of social programs the Black Panthers put together that got them in so much trouble with the Federales - you know, feeding the hungry, helping kids cross traffic lights safely - stuff like that. Not sure if this book might exist yet or not.
I also couldn't think of his name at the time, but I wanted to read something by that fired Yale anarchist professor, David Graeber.
I definitely have to take a more active role in the Fair next year.
Tell ya what, as much as I love cities and SF, rolling back out to the burbs was pretty awesome. In SF it was like 50s or colder, damp, wind chill, overcast - as you start heading south towards Palo Alto, the sun starts creeping out until it's just righteous. It's pretty much like driving into Heaven. On 280, that is - 101 sucks so bad, it wouldn't matter what kind of weather you were driving into. :)
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