My dad just dug this handy guide to Bay Area collectives out of some long-buried filing cabinet. It looks to have been printed in 1980. I note with some amusement and some sadness that several pages of the booklet are taken up by a critique and rebuttal of itself. For some obsessive-compulsive reason I decided to scan the whole thing, so if you'd like to find out where you could have purchased collectively produced bagels in 1980, or if you want to know where Lilith, A Woman's Theater was located, feel free to click here for the full set of scans.
(Look, they've got it at Bolerium for $15 bucks!)
5 comments:
Interesting that this is so anarchist-influenced, from the Malatesta quote to the citation of Voline's Unknown revolution, which, while a useful book, seems completely irrelevant.
The multi-page bullshit session on-what, the revolutionary potential of the directory of collectives? is completely bizarre. While self-criticism is a good thing, this kind of stuff is unbelievable. I can't imagine thinking that publishing that was a good thing.
Well, the good thing about that section is it provides a pretty striking peek into the worries of that particular crowd at that particular moment. It reminds me of how, well, human we all are.
for a historian it's gold, but from an editors point of view it's terrible. it belongs in a newsletter, not in their directory! and from my personal point of view, its a lot of hand-wringing "am I (are we) radical enough?" which exemplifies the worst of that era. (this is from a quick skim of it, not a close read).
thanks, Felix! I particularly like the background essays written by a few of the collectives.
Highlights:
Unlimited Taxi's claim to 'visual resistence' for their vehicles' paint jobs
Heartwood's summary of the formation (and dissolution) of a collective 'trade school' -"The administrators and academic teachers were mostly the same people, and their refusal to do a share of the physical maintanence work precipitated an unbreachable split."
[Inkworks came out of that!]
Broom and Board's inability to cut through the theory and describe what they actually do...until the second page.
Jargon-a-plenty from the Uprising Baking Collective: "right-on politics" in a place where you can "rap" about banning the bomb. Sounds like my mom came to visit.
That introductory schtick (of who-we-are and what-it-means-to-have-a-directory) is of course riduculous and the space could've been much better served by summarizing these essays.
All in all, exciting to see many of these groups still around...
J
ps - oh my god, i just found that final section! What surprises me most about it (as I'm all-too-familiar with hearing personal insecurities aired in public forums) is that it was originally written as a letter to the publishing collective, from one of its own members.
ah, the joys of meetings, meetings, meetings...
thanks again, felix, for this and the blog as a whole.
Thanks Judy. It sounds like you know a bit about these various collectives. Were you by chance a member of any of them? Or maybe your mom was? I remember my folks taking me to a little collective grocery that used to be on lower Park Blvd. I haven't dug up the name of it though.
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