Deep in the heart of Brooklyn

I like to pay attention to people, their quirks and characteristics. I use visual, spatial, and responsive cues to make decisions about how I interact with people. One of the reasons that NYC is so difficult for me is that there is no time to actually pay attention in a way that is useful for me because there is such a barrage of people. And by barrage I literally mean that people are used as the ammunition in some sort of trebuchet device hidden in the middle of each of these blocks of row houses. It just isn't right to use humans as weapons this way.

If I were moving to town I would have a really rough time. The anarchist group here is very scattered geographically, very cliquish, and my initial contact with a resident exemplified a lot of the characteristics I hate, an academic know-it-all who seemed to know everyone I would like to meet in the area and then proceeded to talk shit about his meeting with me to them afterward. Blah. There is a reason that NYC doesn't really affect the anarchist world at large in proportion to its size. It is just too easy to eat away at yourself from the inside here. Too easy to stare at your own reflection or have to spend all of your time dodging the barrage of people that greet you everyday when you open your front door.

Here is an image from the bathroom at the cafe I spoke at in Montpelier VT.



I did spend an enjoyable evening at the Autonomedia warehouse on Wednesday. The ruse was that I am going to help them look at some technical problems but the payoff is the closest thing I believe I will find in the area to a mix of interesting people I can find at least potentially politically interesting. What is amazing is exactly how many projects are in some way connected to Autonomedia. Just during my visit... Anarchy magazine, Fifth Estate, Perspectives, Cometbus, Institute for Anarchist Studies, Bindlestick Family Circus, Openflows, etc, etc. This doesn't even count any of the projects they are connected to because of their publishing! A truly amazing amount of creative & productive energy in that room.

At one point Jim actually used the term entrism to describe their collectives relationship to certain anarchist publications (although in his defense he was saying that they weren't exhibiting it) which was refreshing for me. How often do you (or I) get to hear anyone use the word entrism in a sentence? The other area that is well represented by the people at Autonomedia that doesn't exist in such great amount in most of the rest of the country is a truly multi-media skill set. Documentary filmmaking, Electronic music, and print work were all under discussion at different points in the evening. I am envious at having such a group to work with. With such different points of reference and cascading energy to feed off of, I can imagine why it is still worthwhile to do engage in such a financially and emotionally draining project as book publishing.

Then there are the books. I have yet to meet anyone in NYC who has the amount of space that Autonomedia has (2 floors of warehouse space, one a warehouse the other a living space). The living floor is 1200 sq ft of 14 ft tall bookshelves with ladders and everything. 10's of thousands of books if not a cool 100. This is what 30 years publishing without space constraints can bring you...

As for their technical problems? They are both starting the process of moving a Slashcode application to Drupal and having issue with their Zencart implementation. Neither should surprise you as being thorny (although for very different reasons) problems that require a not-particularly-common skill set particularly among the radical set.

• Posted: 21/07/06 09:26AM
• Category: General

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