Jon Tattrie, author of  “The Hermit of Africville: The Life of Eddie Carvery,” offered to take his cell phone to Eddie Carvery’s protest site in Africville, Nova Scotia so I could interview Eddie from Los Angeles for this story.

After a few minutes on the phone I realized that Eddie is a deeply intelligent, soft spoken man, with a profound sense of social justice.

Eddie’s voice is rarely heard in the corporate or mainstream media. In fact, just a few months before I spoke to Eddie, a Globe and Mail reporter interviewed him about racism in Nova Scotia, but left Eddie’s voice out of the final story.

“They don’t listen to what I got to say because it’s too close to the truth,” said Eddie.

Jon Tattrie is the first journalist to take a serious look at Eddie Carvery and the significance of his 40 year protest against the destruction of his childhood home, Africville.

“I lived in Europe for most of my 20’s and lost touch with Nova Scotia,” said Jon. “When I moved back in 2006 I was startled to see how segregated Halifax is. Black people live out in Preston or in Uniake Square. There is integration in London, England that you don’t see here. Eddie is a hidden protester and I was ready to tell his story.”

I asked Mark Simkins, a photojournalist and filmmaker with deep cultural roots in Nova Scotia, if he would photograph Eddie and Jon for this story. The three men met in Africville one day in June for a photo session. Mark’s photographs appear throughout this story.

Over a period of 9 years from 1962 to 1970, the City of Halifax, Nova Scotia forced people of African and Jamaican descent out of Africville by systematically knocking their waterfront homes down with bulldozers.

Africville was a 200 year old Canadian community originally populated by Jamaicans who moved to Nova Scotia in the 18th century. The British government deeded Mi’Kmaq land on the shoreline of the Bedford Basin to the Jamaicans, who built roads and fortifications for Halifax.

In the 19th century, people of African descent fled slavery in the United States and settled in Africville. The African settlers also contributed to the development of Halifax.

In the 1960’s, using the language of “progress” and “urban renewal” to justify the behaviour, the City of Halifax loaded women and children from Africville into dump trucks and knocked their homes down with bulldozers as they dropped them off with their possessions at condemned houses in other parts of town.

Folks who were not home when the bulldozers arrived lost everything as city workers levelled furnished homes, forcing people into homelessness and destroying generations of keepsakes and heirlooms.

An unidentified victim of the Africville diaspora spoke to a reporter from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1976 about the destruction of her community.

“They brought us in more or less like you would herd in a bunch of cattle. They used their city dump trucks to load up the children and brought them in and set them in the city. This was a complete disgrace. The City disgraced themselves. They were a perfect disgrace to do that. This is the only place in the world that you would send an old workin’ dump truck to move children, mothers and families into a city. We were in a position, there wasn’t anything too much we could do about it. We were threatened. They put threats on our heads. If you don’t move at a certain time we’ll bring out the bulldozers and push ya’s over, push your shacks over. Now if they call them shacks, we call them our castles. It was our homes,” she said.

The destruction of homes in Africville, and the resulting diaspora, was covered extensively in the mainstream media in the 1960’s. Canadians were told by politicians and journalists that the destruction of Africville was “progressive.” Terms like “urban renewal” and “integration” were used to mask the racism and terror.

“Africville, obviously must be redeveloped. Sometimes, some people need to be shown that certain things are not in their own best interests and not in the best interests of their children,” said John Edward Lloyd, the white mayor of Halifax, on television in the early 1960’s.

In 2002, the United Nations declared the destruction of Africville by the City of Halifax to be a human rights violation.

Eddie Carvery refused to leave Africville after the City of Halifax destroyed his family home. Since 1970 he has maintained a presence in Africville, signaling his dissent and educating visitors from all over the world about the Africville diaspora.

Mr. Carvery’s protest is the longest civil rights protest in Canadian history.

“The Hermit of Africville: The Life of Eddie Carvery” by Canadian journalist Jon Tattrie, covers Eddie’s life-long commitment to political activism and his early struggle with alcohol, drugs and violence. The book shows how Eddie healed himself through direct political action to become one of the major civil rights activists of his generation.

“When I first started this protest I was angry,” said Eddie by telephone from the Africville protest site. “I was young. Before the protest I had been involved in bouts of alcoholism and dope. I was messed up. Before I started this protest, I believed that I was worthless. I didn’t believe I was a good guy. I was ready to go to jail for the rest of my life. I was poisoned. I was sick. I had become an alcoholic. I was really breaking all the rules. This protest saved my life because it gave me life. It gave me strength. It gave me principles. It gave me morals. I started to look within myself to find out who I was.”

Eddie’s protest has kept Africville visible in the 21st century. He has established himself as an eternal flame on the Halifax shoreline; a post-modern Odysseus whose quest to return home unfolds at home.

“Somebody was responsible for this genocide that was created in Canada and no one is talking,” said Eddie. “This whole society, my society, is gone. The world I knew has disappeared. There is no trace of it. My ancestors helped build this city. I have no choice but to stay here and protest what they did to us and the community and the society. We had our own society. They created a genocide.”

Jon Tattrie modeled his biography of Eddie Carvery on “The Autobiography of Malcom X: As Told to Alex Haley,” a book that documents how Malcolm X overcame racism, violence, drugs and prison to become an agent of social change in the United States.

“The scale of Eddie’s transformation is very unusual,” said Tattrie by telephone. “Eddie didn’t give up violence, or drink and drugs as a principle. He gave them up because fundamentally he understands they do not work and he knows where they lead. His transformation is authentic and quite deep.”

Eddie overcame his addictions and developed a universal sense of justice by examining himself and reading the work of others. Eddie’s personal transformation is an astonishing triumph of the individual over powerful social forces of racism and violence.

As a boy Eddie endured the abuse of a malevolent teacher named Mrs. Beck. The following passage from “The Hermit of Africville” reveals the horror of  institutionalized racism.

“This is what you must never be like,” Mrs. Beck told the children, indicating the ramshackle wreckage of a failed pupil. She dramatically held up her hand and counted Eddie’s failings on her fingers. “He’s a liar, he stinks, his hair is never clean, his teeth are rotted and falling out, his skin is greasy and dirty and his clothes are grotesque rags.” The children gasped in horror as they swallowed the old witch’s toxic brew. They could not look away from Eddie and his beastly failure. Eddie didn’t stink, he kept clean and his teeth were fine. But still. “Don’t go near him. He’s contagious. You don’t want his disease,” the teacher concluded, dismissing him for another year.”

Education in Halifax was an extension of a racist political system: a child’s nightmare.

Eddie discovered his native intelligence as a young man doing time in an Ontario prison. The educational opportunities were better in an Ontario jail than they were in a school in Halifax. Eddie started reading and writing in prison. He studied math and drafting and earned a credential to work as a sheet metal worker.

“Prison was like a college for Eddie and for a lot of people of his age and background,” said Tattrie. “They often ran into to racism in school and were unable to get past that. Teachers could be tyrannical and destroy a life. For Eddie, prison was a time to step out of the chaos of ordinary life and build something for the future.”

The capacity for discipline and reason that Eddie developed in prison served him well when he started his civil rights protest and embraced self-study, fasting and abstinence as political tools.

“This protest has changed me,” said Eddie. “I’m not the person I used to be no more, thank God. It took a lot of loneliness and thinkin’ and rethinkin’. Then I started to believe in myself as a person. I don’t think I’m that bad of a person anymore. When I first started this protest, I needed to protest because I was in bad shape. I was confused. I was messed up. I wasn’t ready for the City. I ran back out here to Africville. I used to stay out here and work on my addiction.”

“I took to self educatin’ myself. That’s when I started reading different people. Marcus Garvey and political books from Jamaica. I was putting my thoughts together. Not on paper or nothin’. Just in my head. So I could make some sense of myself.”

“Eventually as time went along things started to straighten themselves out. I found I had a worth. A value. I had somethin’ to say. I started feelin’ confident. I started feeling like a human being. I knew then what I had to do. I would have to continue this struggle.”

“Was not only me falling through the cracks on the floor. Guys my age from my community were falling into the same pattern. We weren’t ready to go to the City to live that lifestyle.”

“With me the protest became a lifesaver. This protest made me the person I am today and I don’t regret that. I regret a lot of things I have done in my life but I don’t regret this protest. I thank God for it, because through this protest I found a purpose in life.  I believe what I’m doing is the right thing. I believe that with all my heart.”

Throughout the 20th century the City of Halifax never extended water or sanitation services to the residents of Africville, even though it collected taxes from property owners there.

The City dumped it’s garbage in Africville, poisoning the community with mounds of toxic waste. City hospitals dumped medical waste in Africville; including needles, bloody rags, blankets infected with TB, and body parts.

The City even ran a sewer pipe from the Victorian-era Infectious Diseases Hospital into the Africville water supply, silently serving the people a toxic cocktail.

“Come to find out the dump they gave us in the 50’s was a toxic waste dump,” said Mr. Carvery. “All of the hospitals, the Camp Hill hospital, the Veterans hospital, all the hospitals used to dump their garbage there. There was no sewage, there was body parts and whatever. We had to endure it.”

For decades the story of Africville has been presented in media reports from the perspective of the City of Halifax. The City is portrayed as normal and Africville is made to look like an aberration.

“The people of Africville have been portrayed as kids who were left to their own devices and turned their nice neighborhood into a mess, rather than as adults who were consistently oppressed and invaded by the City over a hundred years,” said Tattrie.

“Look at people like Eddie and the old clips of Leon Steed and Joe Skinner and you realize these are intelligent, educated people who knew what was best for their community and understood why conditions had deteriorated.”

In “The Hermit of Africville,” Tattrie tells the story of Africville from the perspective of the people of Africville.

“I made a deliberate point to center the story in Africville,” said Tattrie. “The official history clearly portrays Halifax as the normal place to be and Africville as the outside.”

Tattrie maintains the Africville point of view by drawing on material garnered from his interviews with Eddie Carvery, Victor Carvery and Rocky Jones. Although Tattrie does not romanticize Africville, he does acknowledge the romance of the place.

“The Africville Geneology Society has built up Africville as a romantic bucolic paradise outside Halifax, a place where kids ran free and where everyone was your uncle and aunt. The book tries to explain how both of those things are true. How it was a paradise and how it became the run down place that it was when it was destroyed,” said Tattrie.

Eddie’s struggle with alcohol, drugs, and violence, reflects Africville’s struggle to survive the toxic conditions imposed on the community by the City of Halifax, and the trauma caused by the destruction of family homes.

“Eddie’s story mirrors the story of Africville,” said Mr. Tattrie. “He becomes a toxic waste site himself. The drugs and violence mirror what happened to Africville.”

After decades of polluting the community and denying the residents access to running water, sanitation services, decent education, and economic opportunity, the City of Halifax decided to physically destroy Africville and erase the evidence of systemic racism that was piling up.

The City’s attempt to create a blank slate on the shoreline failed. First, Mr. Carvery’s continuous presence in Africville has served to remind people of the dispersion of his people. Second, in 2004 the United Nations sent Mr. Doudou Diene to Canada to report on race relations. Diene found a “colonial mentality” amoung people of British and French descent who regard themselves as “racially superior” to others.

“After 150 years of collusion between the provincial government and the business community, including through abuse of power, neglect, encroachment and invasion of hazardous industrial materials, in 1970 all of the community was forcefully removed without proper compensation,” wrote Mr. Diene in his report on Africville.

The United Nations report identifies human rights violations and encourages the province of Nova Scotia to re-examine Africville and grant reparations to the victims of the diaspora. The United Nations report echoes Mr. Carvery’s life-long demand for reparations and a public inquiry.

“Canada, especially Nova Scotia, is fond of portraying itself as a scenic place where racism has never been a problem,” said Tattrie. “If you learn about Black history in school in Canada it is usually in connection with the underground railroad and Canada’s role in freeing people who where enslaved in the States. You don’t learn about Africville. The destruction of Africville is still not portrayed as a racist decision when it so clearly was. The long term destruction, from putting the industrial sites there, to putting the dump there, to putting the pollution there, to finally demolishing it was clearly a race based decision.”

Eddie will patiently explain the significance of the Africville diaspora to anyone who expresses an interest.

“We had our school, we had our church, we had our stores, we had our art and they decided that our society wasn’t Canadian enough or somethin’ and that they could treat us less human than they would treat other people. They stole our property and everything and they are still gettin’ away with it. Everybody knows what happened.”

Stokley Carmichael, the prime minister of the Black Panther Party, visited Halifax in September, 1968. Carmichael was the guest of Rocky Jones, the founder of Nova Scotia’s Black United Front.

At the time of Stokley Carmichael’s visit the process of destroying Africville had been underway for eight years.

The City of Halifax responded to Carmichael’s visit as if it were under attack. Police waited at the airport for Carmichael and Jones to arrive from Montreal and they shadowed the men as they drove into the city from the airport. Snipers took positions on roof tops across from the Arrows Club on Agricola St. as Carmichael and Jones had dinner with their wives.

“The history of Stokley Carmichael’s visit is not recorded,” said Tattrie. “It was a landmark event and it seemed to take the temperature of racism in Halifax at the time. The same people who made the decision to put snipers on the roof, were making the decisions about Africville. Rocky Jones agreed to talk to me about Carmichael’s visit for the book about Eddie.”

Tattrie’s reporting shows how deeply unsettled the City of Halifax became with a Black Panther leader in town at the same time that Black people were being forced out of their homes.

In a fascinating chapter Tattrie reports that Eddie Carvery went to the Arrows Club that autumn evening to hear what Carmichael had to say. Eddie started his Africville protest less than two years after the Black Panther leader left Halifax, rejecting Carmichael’s call to arms in favour of a non-violent protest.

Verdun Mitchell, the police chief responsible for the military-style response to the Black Panther leader’s visit, committed suicide about a week after Carmichael left the city.

In 1970 Eddie was prompted by his mother to start the Africville protest. His role model was Nelson Mandela.

“I was sittin’ here in Halifax and they had just took our community, our community was gone and we were very hurt about it. Me and my mother were sittin’ up talkin’ about it. My mother was the backbone of this whole protest. When she was in Africville she fought for Africville. She was such a marvelous hard workin’, hard fightin’ woman. She laid it on me because I was going down the wrong road you understand. I was crushed about losing our community and we didn’t know what we could do about it. She suggested to protest.”

“I thought everybody would catch on right fast because there were a lot activists down in the United States and they were protesting the treatment of Blacks,” said Eddie.

“Nelson Mandela started that protest over there in South Africa. It was around that same time that the Black Panther’s movement got started in the United States.”

“My inspiration was Nelson Mandela. If they could fight racism over there in South Africa, if they could fight racism in the United States, then with what happened to us, why can’t we fight racism right here in Halifax?”

“Apparently it’s OK for them to have the attitude they have toward us and we’re supposed to accept it. It’s not OK with me. It’s never been OK with me. My reason for bein’ here is to fight that.”

“If I hadn’t started this fight forty years ago I don’t think people would even be talkin’ about Africville because it would have been long, long forgotten.”

“It is my purpose now to never let it be forgotten because we do have a heritage and we should be proud. Our forefathers worked very, very hard to build what they left for us. Other people said ‘we are going to take this place from you.’ That’s what they did and it’s wrong.”

“I would just love to see people in our community feel like they are part of this great nation, this country. Feel that they are not being ripped off. Feel like a citizen. Those people degraded us and demoted us so much that I think they are still to embarrassed too talk about it. It’s true what they did and it’s sad. I’m a living remnant of it and so is a lot of people that I see.”

“One of the things I wanted to reclaim with this book is Eddie’s dawning political consciousness,” said Tattrie. “The political nature of Eddie’s protest is almost never discussed. He is always portrayed as somebody who wants compensation for something that happened forty years ago, but you only have to talk with him for a minute to understand how deeply political he is and how aware he is of the shrinking Black space.”

“Just as most maps of the world shrink Africa, Eddie’s protest is continually shrunk. White people are writing the history and they didn’t take a lot of detailed notes about what the Black people were doing north of the City.”

At the heart of Eddie’s protest is a concern for the disappearance of Black communities in Nova Scotia.

“We were the biggest Black space in Canada,” said Eddie. “Africville was a fair size. What was once a part of Black cultural history is gone. We had space granted to us, never to be taken from us, but evidently it has been taken from us. We are not part of this great county anymore because of the fact that we don’t even have a Black space left.”

The scope of Eddie’s demands are usually reduced in the press to make it appear as though he is only interested in money, but Eddie’s demands are clear and concise. The recommendation made by the United Nations to Nova Scotia is in line with what Eddie has been demanding for forty years.

Eddie’s demands are:

1. Individual compensation for the victims of the Africville diaspora
2. A public inquiry
3. A public apology

During a February, 2010 meeting in Halifax the current mayor of Halifax, Peter Kelly, complied with one of Eddie’s demands by offering a public apology.

“The repercussions of what happened in Africville linger to this day. They haunt us in the form of lost opportunities for young people who were never nurtured in the rich traditions, culture and heritage of Africville,” said Kelly.

“Thank you for the apology,“ said Eddie as he checked off one of his demands. “Accepted. One down. Two more to go.”

Africville did not go away after the City of Halifax destroyed the homes. People keep the spirit alive in music, film and books.

“When I first learned about Africville I was blown away,” said Toronto filmmaker Neil Donaldson in a telephone interview. “During Black History month we learn about Malcom X and Martin Luther King, which is great, but there is a lot to learn about Black history in Africville and Canada.”

George Dixon, the first world boxing champion, was born in Africville. Portia White, the singer, taught at Africville’s school, before the City tore the building down in the 1950’s.

Duke Ellington used to visit his wife’s family in Africville. Ellington performed at the Lobster Trap, a Halifax nightclub, during one of his visits. Louis Armstrong, Joe Louis, and Marcus Garvey also visited the community.

Joe Sealy released a jazz record entitled “Africville Suite.” Black Union recorded a rap song called “Africville” that takes a hard look at the destruction of the community.

Filmmaker Juanita Peterson made a documentary entitled “Remember Africville.” Neil Donaldson made a film called “Stolen from Africville.”

When the City of Halifax destroyed Africville they destroyed the birthplace of ice hockey, Canada’s national sport.

The Africville Sea Sides was a professional hockey team in the Coloured Hockey League from 1895 to 1925. Sea Sides players developed the slap shot and the body check during winter practice sessions at Tibby’s Pond on the Bedford Basin shoreline.

“Black hockey players in the later half of the 19th century, whose style of play and innovations helped shape the sport, effectively changed the game of hockey forever,” wrote George and Darrel Fosty in their book “Black Ice.”

Pa Carvery, Eddie’s uncle whose Africville home in 1970 was the last one destroyed by the City, played defense for the Sea Sides.

The City of Halifax spent $800,000 to destroy Africville.

Eddie Carvery has a vision of a restored Africville, a “funky cultural mecca” on the waterfront that would attract visitors from all over the world.

“Eddie is consistently portrayed in the media as a homeless guy,” said Tattrie. “Repeatedly called homeless, repeatedly called a squatter. Repeatedly marginalized and portrayed as a guy without ideas who sleeps in the park and is not given credit for what he has done.”

Eddie acknowledges that the media have not treated him or his protest fairly over the years.

“I don’t think the media have been very fair to this side of the protest at all, as a matter of fact,” said Eddie. “Not the City or any newspaper. The Globe up in Toronto went and did this piece and they got everything screwed up because they turned 40 years into 16 years. Statements I made concern’ compensation, they said somethin’ like I was looking for compensation for my grandmother’s property. That’s crap. They know that, yet they put that in the paper.”

In an article entitled “Racism’s long history in quiet East Coast towns” published by the Globe and Mail on May 21, 2010, reporter Les Perraux referred to Eddie as a “squatter” who is “demanding personal compensation” for his grandmother’s property.

Mr. Perraux does not use the word “protest” in the article, nor does he mention Eddie’s demand for a public inquiry. Mr. Perraux does not explain that Eddie is demanding reparations for all victims of the Africville diaspora, a recommendation also made to the Province of Nova Scotia by the United Nations. In his Globe and Mail report, Mr. Perraux shrank the length of Eddie’s protest from 40 to 16 years.

“He said he’d never stopped protesting since the community was bulldozed,” said Mr. Perraux in an email message. “I have no quibble with that, but the documentation I could find was related to his current camp, so I used that as my starting point for the purposes of the story.”

Rather than corroborate Eddie’s statement that he has been protesting since Africville was destroyed, Mr. Perraux chose to recycle information from Globe archives which shaved 24 years off the protest. He did not include Eddie’s voice in the story.

Jon Tattrie laments the inability of the media to report Eddie’s protest fairly and accurately.

“One doesn’t have to spend much time with Eddie to see that, whatever you think of him as a man or a protester, he is not there for a cash grab, but it is unfortunately nothing new to see the political, racial and spiritual drivers of his protest surgically removed by media reports,” said Tattrie.

Since 1970 Eddie has maintained a continuous presence on the land the City took from his people.

“At first I was evasive and I used to keep out of sight and that went on for the first five years,” said Eddie. “I became more active and I would put my tents up and the City would tear them down. That was like for a couple of years and I graduated to trailers and then it was more difficult for them to remove me.”

“When I first started the protest it was before the park. They built the park around my protest. My protest was caught in the middle. They decided that they would make a law to make it illegal for me to be in the park overnight. I abandoned that protest and reestablished myself outside the gate. I just stayed. The more determined they were to get rid of me, the more determined I was to stay. I became a fixture. Winter. Summer. Spring and Fall. I was here. I wouldn’t move. I guess I got on a lot of people’s nerves because they did quite a bit of mischievous things to me to break my protest.”

“When they first put the highway in they would drive by at two o’clock in the morning and shoot rifle shots off at me. They had a variety of things they used to do to me to make me uncomfortable and to make me afraid. They used to call me all kinds of wicked, racist names.”

Jon Tattrie sees an uncanny resemblance between Eddie and Old Testament prophets.

“Eddie is quite Old Testament,” said Jon. “Old testament prophets are not recognized in their own land, they are flawed humans, who hurt people and make mistakes. At the same time there is something profound about the core of their existence. I think eventually people will see that in Eddie.”

“You don’t spend forty winters and forty summers sleeping in a field if you don’t have a very profound sense of justice. The funny thing about Eddie is the confidence he has and the optimism of his protest despite all of the frustrations. Eddie is confident and almost serene in the justice of his cause. He is not worried about getting recognition in his lifetime or ever. He knows he is right.”

Get a copy of The Hermit of Africville: The Life of Eddie Carvery by Jon Tattrie. You can order by phone at 1-800-646-2879 or from the Nimbus Publishing website.

Visit The Hermit of Africville website and check out Jon’s sources for the book.

Other stories by Jon  Tattrie: A Third Carvery Joins Africville Protest Site, The Africville Explosion, Redemption Songs – Bob Marley, Marcus Garvey and Nova Scotia

Listen to The ongoing battle for compensation. This CBC broadcast features an interview with Eddie Carvery.

Watch an interview with Eddie in Africville.

Watch the documentary “Remember Africville.”

Listen to Black Union’s “Africville” rap, featuring Maestro Fresh Wes & Kaleb Simmons.

Read “Halifax Champion: Black Power in Gloves” by Robert Ashe. Mr Ashe reports that police chief  Verdun Mitchell committed suicide in the days following Stokely Carmichael’s departure from Halifax.

Rolling Stones producer Don Was spoke about “Exile on Main Street” at The Grammy Museum in Los Angeles on June 3, 2010. The 200 seat Clive Davis Theatre was packed to hear the Detroit bassist talk about the music and play raw tracks recorded by the Stones in the early 70’s.

The Stones recorded much of “Exile” in the south of France and Los Angeles. The record’s title refers to Main Street in downtown LA, where Robert Frank shot the Super 8 footage that is the source of “Exile’s” cover art.

The Stones worked with Billy Preston and Dr John at Sunset Sound in Hollywood. Marshall Chess told LA Weekly that he remembers “Happy,” “Casino Boogie,” “Ventilator Blues,” “Torn & Frayed,” and “Loving Cup” being recorded there. Los Angeles gospel singers Venetta Fields and Clydie King sang on “I Just Want To See His Face”, “Let It Loose”, “Shine A Light” and “Tumbling Dice” during the Hollywood sessions.

“Exile” originally appeared in May, 1972. For the rerelease this year, Was was hired by the Stones to review over three hundred hours of tape from multi-track sessions recorded between 1969 and 1972. He produced eleven new songs from the tapes.  Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Mick Taylor joined him in the studio in New York at different times to add vocals and guitar parts on the new tracks.

Don Was talks about the Rolling Stones like a fan and a musicologist. He recalled his student days in the late 60’s and early 70’s when the Stones were perceived as political leaders. He mentioned that the Stone’s music resonates politically in Argentina today.

At one point during the evening, Was formed a cross with his hands and encouraged the audience to imagine a beat at the centre.

“The beauty of the Rolling Stones is that each of the five guys feels the beat in a different place,” he said. “If you want to play along with them it’s like diving into a deep wide bowl with lots of room to land. Charlie plays behind the beat, like Elvin Jones who played with Miles Davis. Bill is back there with him. Mick Taylor is a little bit ahead of Charlie. It’s comfortable, relaxed blues music. The centrifugal force of the rhythm is never lost. The music is loose, lowdown and funky. Muddy Waters used to hit that.“

Was played multi-track recordings of Jagger and Richards experimenting with vocals and lyrics on “Loving Cup.” Other tracks featured Keith Richards working on rhythm parts and Bill Wyman playing bass lines.

“Mick and Keith do a duet on the melody and the Stones live in the space between,” he said. “People don’t like Mick Jagger’s solo records because the duet is absent.”

“I agree,” said David Folkart, an LA musician at the event. “Jagger’s solo records never sound as good as Stones records. Jagger and Richards make a special sound when they play together that doesn’t happen when they play apart.”

Was spoke about the importance of Jagger’s lyrics. “The lyrics are highly evocative and impressionistic. They allow you to project your own life into the music. The songs on “Exile” can be about anything.”

Was maintains that Bill Wyman is one the best bass players of all time. “Bill plays linear melodic lines like James Jamerson. His bass digs in like a guitar. You can tell by his chops that he was listening to a lot of funky people.”

Was said he aspires to be invisible as a producer. “There is something unsavoury about leaving your thumbprint on a record,” he said.

A guy in the audience asked Was if the languid sound of “Exile” was a reflection of the musicians using heroin. Was said he didn’t know if heroin influenced the sound but he explained that cocaine dulls the sense of hearing and joked that when he hears a really bright record he knows what was going on in the recording studio.

Listen to the Don Was talk about “Exile” on NPR.

Read the Don Was bio on the Rolling Stones website.

Exile on Sunset Blvd is an excellent article by Michael Simmons.

See Vicky Sapp’s photograph of Don Was on the soundstage at The Grammy Museum.

Check out the Sunset Sound website.

]]> http://www.transmopolis.com/2010/06/don_was/feed/ 1 http://www.transmopolis.com/2010/05/igor_kenk/ http://www.transmopolis.com/2010/05/igor_kenk/#comments Thu, 20 May 2010 21:30:21 +0000 Michael Jack Lawlor http://www.transmopolis.com/?p=884

Dear Reader,

Igor Kenk was busted on bike theft and drug charges in Toronto, Canada a few years ago. His story has an uncanny ability to stir up a lot of stuff in the culture.

My interest in the story began after I read that he played classical music in his bike shop. I googled the name “Gubaidulina,” read the Wikipedia article about her, and cycled to a record store here in Los Angeles to buy a CD.

There is much more to Igor’s story than crime and music. Kenk: A Graphic Portrait takes a stab at the details by reinventing Igor as comic book anti-hero, foiled in his quest to prepare for the decline and fall of North America. Kenk explores ideas about bicycles, debt and consumerism. The book made me think about the tricky business of recycling images and ideas.

Igor Kenk ran a notorious bike shop on Queen St West in Toronto called the Bicycle Clinic. People hung around the shop to watch him work and hear him talk about the decline and fall of North America.

Igor was known around town as “the stolen bike guy.” The police encouraged people to check his shop when a bike disappeared. He had a reputation for bringing stolen bikes and their owners back together. For a price.

Igor held a second hand license which meant that ownership of a used bike transferred to him fifteen days after he took possession. All he had to do was jot down the name of the seller and the serial number of the bike.

He was arrested in the summer of 2008 and charged with 58 counts of bike theft and drug possession. Police discovered that he was hoarding several thousand bicycles in rented garages around town. Headlines around the world proclaimed Igor to be “the world’s most prolific bicycle thief.”

In December 2009, feeling the pressure of Ontario’s powerful Civil Remedies Act – which enables the government to sell off property perceived to be associated with crime – Igor plead guilty to 10 counts of bicycle theft and 6 drug charges.

Igor lost the Bicycle Clinic property and his trucks in the deal. He served 30 months in jail. Hundreds of bikes were returned to owners, others were given to kids.

Igor has been portrayed in the mainstream media and on blogs as a charismatic street philosopher who played classical music in his shop. He attracted an impressive cross section of people to his enterprise. Cyclists swung by for cheap bikes, parts and repairs. Street people gravitated to the sidewalk scene. Patients from a nearby mental hospital hung around.  Beautiful women elected to stay and watch him fix their bikes.

The music of Sophia Gubaidulina, an experimental Russian pianist, was playing when Jeanne Chung, now Igor’s partner, brought her bike into his shop for repair one summer evening. Chung, a concert pianist and Julliard graduate, recognized the composer and became intrigued by the man working on her bike.

In August 2008, National Post columnist Iris Benaroia, wrote about Igor’s commanding street presence under the headline The Strange Allure of the Bike Guy: Queen West Shop Was My Kind of Place.

“He had a powerful presence. Like most scene-stealers whose magnetism arises from their character, he wasn’t much to look at: stringy hair, saggy money belt, a mechanic’s dirty nails.

But he had excellent blue eyes, was energetic, very male and thus attractive. When he spoke, his prophetic gaze never wavered; his bewitching eyes felt as though they could cleave into my mind. He would be difficult to lie to, and gifted at manipulating others. I could just tell. He reminded me of the deceased white supremacist Wolfgang Droege whom I had more than one long conversation with. (I’m wholeheartedly not suggesting Kenk shared Droege’s foul ideology, just pointing out the intensity of their presences.)”

The Toronto Star reported that the police were charmed by Igor when they arrested him. “You would love talking to him,” says police Const. Aaron Dennis, who monitored Kenk for years before helping arrest him last summer and again last Sunday. “Honestly, he’s a very interesting guy.”

Not everyone was charmed. Many people in the cycling community resented Igor’s business practices and were frustrated over the years by police indifference.

“He’s easily the most hated man in Toronto,” said filmmaker Alex Jansen, in a New York Times article published after the arrest.

Storytellers could not resist the mix of Igor’s charm and menace. Details of his past emerged in corporate media reports, on blogs, and in documentaries.

Before he moved to Canada, Igor lived behind the Iron Curtain in Yugoslavia, now Slovenia. He trained as a martial artist and worked as a police officer. There were rumours he might be KGB.

He warned people who came into his orbit on Queen St West that global economic collapse was on the way. He maintained that people living in North American had grown weak from consumerism and credit card debt.

Igor pointed to a fossil fuel apocalypse on the horizon that would make cars obsolete and bicycles essential. In a post-apocalyptic world Igor would emerge as an urban bike lord. His patch of land on Queen St West became known as Planet Igor.

Igor fixed bikes and negotiated deals deep into the night on the sidewalk in front of his shop. As gentrification transformed the neighborhood, affluent homeowners began to resent the blight of his odd hours, chalk signs, bicycle parts, and entourage.

Igor built ideas into his service. A bike was not just a bike, it was a solution to environmental pollution, over consumption and economic collapse. He did not just recycle bikes and parts, he tried to teach folks who would listen, how to live.

Igor created one of the most effective identity systems in the city. He turned the bicycle shop experience inside out by recycling used bikes and parts and turning the street into a mechanics studio. His powerful do-it-yourself brand unsettled the landed gentry.

Even so, Igor’s surreal identity system evolved organically in relation to the community he served and exploited. Bicycle wheels floated above the storefront. Tire tubes hung in the entrance way. Hand-made signs educated the consumer.

“To the potential patrons. Since May 1992 this anarchic bicycle cave has served thousands of often happy cyclists. Bike and repairs are priced below anybody’s attempts. You will get the most for your change if you check the market and describe what are you hoping for.”

Kenk: A Graphic Portrait, published by Pop Sandbox, takes the mytholgy of Igor Kenk to the next level. The book shows Igor growing up behind the Iron Curtain in the 60’s and 70’s, landing in Toronto in the 80’s and working the Planet Igor mojo in the 90’s and 00’s. Kenk turns Igor into a comic book anti-hero foiled in his quest to transcend the patterns of consumption that govern North America.

Igor’s voice dominates the book. Filmmakers Alex Jansen and Jason Gilmore shot extensive video footage of Igor in the months leading up to his arrest. Journalist Richard Poplak, serving as Igor’s amanuensis, transposed Igor’s speech from the footage to the page. “It’s 100 per cent his words.” said Poplak in Toronto’s Now magazine.

We watch Igor work on bikes, haul junk to the scrapyard, talk about the “old communist shithole” and share ideas about debt and consumerism.

Kenk features original reporting – recycled below – about Igor’s life behind the Iron Curtain.

We learn that Igor was a math prodigy as a child. At nine he had a “meltdown” and his math suffered. He  shifted his attention to chess, which he mastered. His chess teacher taught him that “all moves are wrong. You must choose move that is least wrong.”

Igor recalls that he was brainwashed in the police academy but learned to “knock the shit” in judo. We discover that he values emotional intelligence over IQ.

A recurring theme in the book is Monkey Factor, an existential characteristic preserved or depleted according to the behaviour of individuals and societies. Igor’s Monkey Factor is rooted in the biology of social Darwinism but enhanced to include a sense of karma and personal responsibility.

“The goal is maintaining Monkey Factor. That’s the final goal. Stay alive and keep smiling. According to my calculus you can only be happy if you are struggling. However, struggling because YOU want to. Not because anybody else wants you to,”  he says.

North America is doomed when it comes to Monkey Factor. “Game is over. We’re all a bunch of depressed losers. Toothless. Soft and plush. Monkey factor is goner. Non-existent.”

On Planet Igor personal debt is a sign of low Monkey Factor. People that consume more than they produce lack Monkey Factor. There is no Monkey Factor in cosmetic surgery. Igor maintains that not getting arrested each day is “guarateed Monkey Factor.” The stuff in his basement is “seriously high Monkey Factor.”

“I’m just a pro monkey,” he says.

At times Nick Marinkovich’s illustrations are stunning. An image of Trinity Bellwoods Park in Toronto, light pouring through the trees onto an empty path, is one of the few places in the book where you can imagine riding a bike. A full page illustration of Igor wearing his iconic IM Tired t-shirt with a tangle of bikes rising in the background illustrates the anti-hero’s gnarly spirit.

“When I was in Slovenia researching Kenk’s background, I came across a style of underground art there called FV, which has a gorgeously grizzled punk DIY aesthetic. Thus, the photocopier became the medium through which my illustrator, Nick Marinkovich, would doctor the images,” said Richard Poplak, in an interview with Torontoist.com.

The book concludes with a powerful illustration of Igor based on a photographic portrait taken by Laura Jane Petelko at Igor’s home in Yorkville on the day he was released from Toronto’s Don Jail, after serving nearly a year and a half behind bars.

Laura Jane Petelko is a Toronto-based wedding and portrait photographer. She has documented over five hundred weddings and her work has appeared in galleries across Canada. She was hired by Pop Sandbox to photograph Igor at his home in Yorkville on the day of his release from prison.

“When I was called out to do the job I wasn’t told what I was doing,” said Petelko during a telephone interview. “I was given top secret instructions because he was getting out of jail and I was to photograph him as soon as he got out.”

“When I got to Igor’s house the filmmakers told me that Igor doesn’t sit still or maintain eye contact that he is very animated and he doesn’t listen and you won’t be able to get a portrait. The experience I had was just exactly the opposite,” said Petelko.

“I found some great light. He was very quiet and serene and intense so I got dozens of these shots which were apparently impossible to get out of him. “

“I was given the impression that he was a really, really difficult guy, that you couldn’t get a picture of him. But he had this very serene energy going.”

The illustration of Igor that appears at the end of Kenk is a significantly modified version of the photograph Laura Jane Petelko took on the day Igor was released from jail. The illustration is prefaced with the following caption: “On March 5, 2010, after nearly 15 months behind bars, Igor Kenk walked from the Don Jail a free man.”

A comparison of the original photograph (below left) with  the illustration (below right) demonstrates the power of photo manipulation to distort historical events.

Laura Jane’s original photograph (below left) documents Igor’s demeanor on the day he was released from prison. Her portrait shows a complex mixture of vulnerability, emotion and intelligence.

Nick Marinkovich’s illustration (below right) conform’s to the style of the comic book – and an undeclared editorial agenda – at the expense of the integrity of the photographic moment. Nick has doctored the photo to darken Igor’s features and heighten contrast. Blackened are the eyes, facial lines, pores and mouth. Grey has been added to the beard. The image has been scratched and cut. The eyes have an unholy glow. The total effect is gnarly, menacing and sinister, the opposite of Laura Jane’s original photograph.

Although the illustration provides a dramatic punch at the end of the comic book, the distortion of the historical event becomes problematic when it is presented as journalism.

“This is an in-depth, very serious journalistic profile — much like the sort you see in expensive magazines — except with lots and lots and lots of pictures,” said Richard Poplak, in an article published on his blog entitled Working the Kenks Out: Redux.

Richard Poplak has been marketing the book as journalism in interviews published by the Globe and Mail, National Post, Now magazine, and CBC television. Nick Marinkovich’s illustration appeared on the cover of Toronto’s Now magazine the week of the book launch.

In North America and Europe, tampering with photographs can put a serious dent in a journalist’s career. The National Press Photographers Association, in it’s code of ethics, prohibits the practice: “Do not manipulate images or add or alter sound in any way that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects.” The Canadian Association of Journalists similarly forbids photo manipulation in it’s code, and advises journalists to “not alter images so that they mislead the public.”

Social and political concerns arise when people are made to appear sinister and malevolent in the media by darkening their features. The issue is compounded when the person who is stereotyped is an immigrant who speaks English as a second language.

The behind-the-Iron-Curtain punk style of Kenk: A Graphic Portrait looks cool as a comic book, but the editorial decision to demonize Igor on the day of his release from prison revs up the Igor as mirror-of-society engine.

Igor’s high profile arrest drew attention to the complicity of cyclists in the business of recycling stolen bikes and parts. Kenk: A Graphic Portrait draws attention to the capacity for journalists and publishers to recycle stereotypes and sell them back to the general public as journalism.

A closer look at the illustration shows that the letters THIEF appear to have been burned and etched into Igor’s beard, a classic example of subliminal messaging, demonization and branding.

The image marked number 1 below is a detail from the lower third of Laura Jane Petelko’s original photograph. In number 2 below, a detail from the lower third of Nick Marinkovich’s illustration, the letters THIEF can be seen. In number 3 below, the letters have been highlighted to show what’s going on.

Journalists distort newsworthy events and raise the opacity level on truth when photo manipulation and subliminal messaging techniques are used to tell stories. Seeding Igor’s beard with secret messages makes me question the journalistic integrity of the book.

Fortunately, there is a wonderful tradition of radical transparency in comics reportage. Artists like Josh Nuefeld in A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge and Joe Sacco in Footnotes in Gaza make themselves visible in the stories they are telling.

In Footnotes in Gaza, for example, you are with Joe Sacco in his apartment in Rafah as he drinks coffee and smokes Cleopatra cigarettes with Abed, his Palestinian guide. You watch them build a huge chart that cross references the testimony of eye witnesses with historical events. There is a layer of transparency in the comic book that encourages readers to think about how and why information is being communicated.

Igor made a surprise appearance in Toronto at the launch party for Kenk. He wore an orange IM Tired t-shirt, like the one he wears in the book. “Igor Kenk” the comic book anti-hero was back in action, blurring the distinction between comics, journalism and reality.

He stepped off the page, so to speak, into a room of people gathered to celebrate his recycled words and images.

Books with Igor’s image on the cover were stacked on tables. Stills of Igor from video footage hung in frames on the walls.

Simply by showing up in his IM Tired t-shirt, Igor reclaimed his recycled thoughts.

“The bar was full of excited whispers – ‘Igor’s here!’ – and before you knew it, Kenk was raised to celebrity status, getting his hand shaken at every turn. By midnight he was leading the dance floor, with the circle around him growing ever bigger, while gyrating young ladies fought over his attention,” said MV in the comments section of Dude Where’s My Bike on the Now magazine website.

People familiar with Igor’s alternative ideas about sustainable urban transportation dropped by to see how he was doing.

“Igor views bicycles as the perfect machine,” said Toronto cyclist and writer Jo Fergus, in an email message. “They can be used and maintained indefinitely, with minimal impact on the environment. He believes that the best bikes were built before 1995 and that those bikes could be maintained indefinitely. However to develop and share the knowledge required to repair, repurpose, and maintain those existing bikes, would be disadvantageous to the bike retailers and manufacturers who prefer to see newer bikes sold, rather than older parts being machined and maintained.”

Other people were not comfortable with Igor’s presence at the party. “It was weird. It was wrong. Was he being valorized? I felt unsettled that he was there,” said Eric Kamphof, in Now magazine.

Readers asked Igor to sign copies of the book, innocently endowing him with the enviable status of author at a publication party. Afterall, Hermes, the cunning god of border crossings, is also the patron of writers and thieves.

“We almost came to blows,” said Richard Poplak, on the Now magazine website.

Ironically, Igor’s thoughts about bicycles reach a wider audience now that he is off the street.

“If you have brain, you will open yourself to my methods. To start with, you will have a good bicycle to ride. For no money,” writes Igor in Kenk. “The bicycles are an idea. A tool.”

I lived in Toronto in the 90’s and rode my bicycle everywhere. In 1991 my bicycle was stolen on College St. At the time, I was studying at the University of Toronto and my bike was my primary means of transportation. Without a ride, my studies were at risk. I had to get a new bike fast. I was so busy I didn’t have time to get angry about the theft.

I bought an Iron Horse X2100 at a bike shop on Bloor St in the Annex. I’m still riding that bike twenty years later. I work on it myself at place called the Bicycle Kitchen, a co-op in East Hollywood. Sometimes I take it across the street to a shop called Orange 20.

On weekends back in the 90’s, I worked at the Book Cellar on Yorkville Ave. The redbrick storefront had a large round window that served as a portal to the street outside. One evening a van stopped in front of the store and two guys armed with crowbars jumped out. Within seconds they broke the lock on a bike fastened to a tree, threw it in the van and drove away.

Another time I leaned my bike against the bookstore’s brick wall and went inside for a moment. Within seconds I glimpsed a guy riding away on my bicycle. I ran after him, knocked him down and reclaimed my bike.

Over the years at the Book Cellar I encountered book thieves armed with Exacto knives and iron bars. These guys were volatile and unpredictable. They stole new books and sold them to second hand stores for cash.

One evening at Carleton and Parliment I watched a deeply troubled couple take turns pounding a bicycle lock with a hammer.  Eventually the lock broke and they wheeled the bike away. As they walked along Carlton St the man pointed to a table that someone had dumped upside down on the sidewalk. “Your legs are as skinny as those table legs,” he said. “Then go fuck the table,” she replied.

My copy of the book fell apart after a few days. The complimentary Monkey Factor cut-out page at the end of Chapter 8 is hanging on by a thread. This thing cost $27.95 Canadian. Caveat emptor.

Visit the Kenk: A Graphic Portrait website.

Watch the Pop Sandbox video treatment of Igor.

Get a copy of Kenk: A Graphic Portrait from Ben McNally Books in Toronto.

See more of Laura Jane Patelko’s photography on her website and other images from her photo shoot with Igor.

Watch CBC coverage of Igor and the book launch party.

Read Dude Where’s My Bike, the article in Now magazine and MV’s comments.

Read Jo Fergus’s account of Igor’s appearance at the launch party: http://thumbshift.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/launch/. You can read other reports by Jo about Igor at http://KenksKarma.com. Jo’s writing about urban transportation and cycling can be found at http://ThumbShift.wordpress.com.

Read Kenk Crashes the Party on the Now magazine website.

Read Herb’s account of Igor’s appearance at the launch.

Check out photos of people rifling through Igor’s stuff on Queen St. in Toronto.

Read The Legal Meaning of Private Property Part 1, Pulat Yunusov’s essay about the reach of the Civil Remedies Act.

Read The Strange Allure of the Bike Guy: Queen West Shop Was My Kind of Place  by Iris Benaroia on the  Centre For Local Research into Public Space website. To launch the PDF, scroll down to the August 2, 2008 item under “News articles.”

Read Richard Poplak: Igor Kenk, fumetti and experimental journalism.

French Director Claude Miller was honoured during the 14th annual City of Lights City of Angels (COL COA) film festival at the Director’s Guild in Hollywood on Thursday April 22, 2010.

“Adults wage war on children,” said Miller, whose remarks were translated by Katherine Vallin, after a screening of La Petite voleuse (The Little Thief). “How can a child defend himself against a dangerous or toxic parent? The child discovers that his only weapon or defence is imagination and it is through imagination that he protects himself.”

Miller has explored childhood and adolescence throughout his long career. “Experiences in youth are formative and profound,” he said. “Very often my characters are young. I am fascinated by how children deal with adults. Adults are very, very difficult people.”

In the The Little Thief, Janine Castang has been abandoned by her mother and steals compulsively in defiance of the depressing town where she lives. Janine uses violence, theft and sexuality to forge an identity in a world of emotionally calcified adults.

After she is caught stealing from the church, Janine is banished from the community and sent to a reform school where children’s faces are marked by anxiety.

Janine establishes her personality at the reformatory through an act of violence. Cinematographer Dominique Chapuis rendered this transitional scene using a plaette of soft greys and pear greens. As Janine reaps the psychological and sexual rewards of her transgressions cool greys are replaced by warm earth tones.

Janine progresses from petty theft to stealing affection from girls in the reformatory. Education evolves out of erotic love as a girlfriend teaches her the principles of photography and how to manipulate darkness and light. We watch Janine progress from thief to artist using the only resource she has: her imagination.

Miller explained that Igmar Bergman and Alfred Hitchcock had a profound influence on his filmaking style.

“Bergman was doing scary films but not thrillers,” he said. “He was a great director of anxiety and fear.”

Miller told the audieince that the British painter Francis Bacon, the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz and the French surrealist philosopher George Baitalle have also influenced his work.

In Je suis huereux que ma mere soit vivante (I Am Glad My Mother is Alive) Thomas is broken emotionally and psychologically when his mother abandons him in childhood. The film follows the traumatized child into adolescence and a boarding school where he is broken again.

Thomas reunites with his mother in adulthood and finds himself drowning in the waters where sons and lovers swim. When a video appears on television showing Mississippi blues musician R.L. Burnside playing Bad Luck City the young man asks his mother to dance. When Thomas is broken a third time the consequences are tragic.

Miller mentioned that Juex Interdits (Forbidden Games), a film by director René Clément, had a powerful impact on him when he was young. Forbidden Games is a portrait of girl traumatized by the death of her family during World War II.

Tet du Turk

Director Pascal Elbe spoke to the audience after the American premiere of Tet du Turk (Turk’s Head), a complex film that looks at issues related to crime and immigration in a housing project on the outskirts of a French city. In French, the term for “outskirt” or “suburb” is banlieues.

Banlieues films have emerged as an identifiable genre in French cinema. Mathieu Kassovitz’s independently produced La Haine is considered a classic. Luc Bresson’s District B13 and District 13: Ultimatum movies represent the commercialization of the genre.

In conversation Elbe distanced himself from Bresson and told the audience that his influences are primarily American, especially the films of Martin Scorcese. Elbe explained that the Academy Award winning film Crash inspired him to weave multiple narratives together in a film dealing with contemporary issues.

Cinematographer Jean-Francois Heggin references the cinematography of urban American films like The Departed, Crash, and Heat. Although the style of the film is familiar, the cinematography does not feel like a parody.

Immigration is presented as a serious issue in the film, as families struggle to survive on temporary visas in dangerous neighborhoods deprived of social services because doctors, police and other professionals are afraid of being attacked, were they to enter.

Other Films

A l’origine (In the Beginning), starring Francois Cluzet, is a film about a con artist who impersonates an executive from a construction company by forging corporate symbols and stationary. Phillipe, the protagonist, is an anti-designer who understands the tremendous amount of energy and resources that can be harnessed when people believe in an idea suggested by a logo.

Fais-moi plaisir! (Please, Please Me!) is a romantic comedy starring Emmanuel Mouret and Judith Godreche. The characters  comically deploy psychoanalytic theory as they parry with one another in the game of love.

Gainsbourg: Je T’aime Moi Mon Plus is a challenging mix of animation, cinematography and music that interprets the life of Serge Gainsbourg.

The festival ran from April 19-25, 2010.

Visit the City of Light City of Angels (COL COA) – A Week of French Film Premieres website.

Read more about Claude Miller.

Watch Charlotte Gainsbourg and Claude Miller on French TV in 1985.

Read about banlieue cinema on the Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe website.

Check out Reframing Difference: Beur and Banlieue Filmmaking in France by Carrie Tarr.

Listen to Bad Luck City by R. L. Burnside.

At first glance the Hayes Valley area of San Francisco feels like a small town overflowing with hipsters, cafes, trendy boutiques, and art galleries. The atmosphere is breezy and fun, a welcome change from the congestion of Union Square, which is only seven streetcar minutes away.

Boutiques like Timbuk2 where people participate in the design of their messenger bags and True Sake, which specializes in the Japanese drink, lend the old school San Francisco neighborhood a contemporary edge.

Just a few blocks away is the United Nations Plaza; home of the San Francisco Symphony, the San Francisco Ballet, the War Memorial Opera House, and the Asian Art Museum. Hayes Valley restaurants such as Absinthe and Cafe Delle Stelle are popular pre-show dining destinations for those who appreciate classical music, opera, and ballet. Hayes Valley has not always enjoyed such a close connection to San Francisco’s cultural life.

For many years the elevated Central Freeway cut Hayes Valley in two, creating a dark urban space that attracted men driving around looking for sex workers and people buying and selling drugs on the street.

Hayes Valley social life, however, was transformed by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake that destroyed parts of the freeway, including the ramps at Franklin and Gough.

After the City decided to tear down what was left of the freeway, people realized that automotive blight was not returning and they started opening cafes and shops in the Valley. The transformation of the neighborhood shows how governments and creative citizens, with the help of natural disaster, can recover from poor urban planning.

Octavia Boulevard, which is like a freeway with traffic lights, emerged from the ruins in the middle of the neighborhood. Hayes Green, a park shared by hipsters drinking soy lattes and hardcore homeless people, completes the redesign of the area.

People line up in the morning fog at the Blue Bottle Coffee Company kiosk on Linden Street. Blue Bottle describes it’s approach to coffee as “artisanal microroasting”. This means that they practice small-batch coffee bean roasting, which is considered impractical in the coffee business, but essential by Blue Bottle and their customers if the ‘chi’ of the coffee is to survive the roast. Blue Bootle is at the cutting edge of the coffee bean roast movement in San Francisco and a must visit for coffee drinkers.

Next to the Blue Bottle is the Dark Garden, a boutique that specializes in fetish and bridal corsets for men and women. For relationships in need of an S&M injection, this is the place to go.

Hayes Valley is named after Colonel Michael Hayes, a pro-slavery Irish immigrant known to solve conflicts by dueling with pistols in 19th century San Francisco. Hayes is responsible for the Victorian building on the corner of Hayes and Laguna that Erich von Stroheim used as a primary location in Greed, his 1923 film. The building is now the home of the popular La Boulange de Hayes, a Parisian-style cafe that opens at 7AM and serves steaming bowls of coffee and milk in the French tradition, as well as freshly baked pastries and breads.

At the heart of the transformation of the area is the Hayes Valley Inn, which was once a run down tenement and drug shooting gallery. Owner Dawn Wiggins renovated the Inn and now it is one of San Francisco’s best kept secrets. The rooms are small and the paper thin walls reveal the sounds of tourists fighting and having sex, an echo perhaps, of the Inn’s earlier days as a tenement and drug den.

People carry luggage up two or three flights of stairs because the building does not have an elevator. Many of the rooms overlook a rumbling air conditioning system that can make getting to sleep before eleven PM difficult. Breezy, the owners dog, adds a friendly touch to the Inn experience. Social media websites report that the dog has deficated on the carpet in the hallways, an act for which the staff do not apologize.

The Inn has Victorian charm and offers a decent breakfast enjoyed by people as morning sunlight pours through bay windows overlooking the street.

Across the street from the Inn is Absinthe, a pricey bistro that is favored by the San Francisco cultural elite prior to performances of the Symphony. At night the lurid green neon Absinthe sign glows on the corner of Hayes and Gough and serves as a landmark for weary travellers making their way back to the Inn after a long day of adventure in the City. For under a hundred dollars a night the Hayes Valley Inn is a great place to crash after a day exploring San Francisco.

Across the street from the Hayes Valley Inn is the Cafe Della Stella, an Italian restaurant in a prime location that gets consistently bad reviews on Yelp.com.  “I went to this place thinking it had to be good, located in the heart of an area that has so many wonderful options. I left wondering how the heck they could stay in business,” writes Eric G.

The location of the Cafe Della Stella is very significant in the history of San Francisco. Minutes after the deadly earthquake on the morning of April 8, 1906 a woman was cooking breakfast for her family at 95 Hayes Street. The chimney in the home had been damaged and the earthquake and sparks from the pan set the home on the fire. The fire spread for miles destroying churchs and colleges and government buildings before joining other fires to create the greatest urban conflagration in the world,  only to be surpassed by the bombing of Dresden during the second World War. Today this famous San Francisco fire is known as the “ham and eggs fire.”

Hayes Valley is an exciting San Francisco neighborhood with a vivid history and lots of cultural attractions.

Hayes Valley Inn
417 Gough St
San Francisco
415-431-9131
hayesvalleyinn.com

Dark Garden
321 Linden St.
415-431-7684
darkgarden.com

True Sake
560 Hayes St
San Francisco
415-355-9555
truesake.com

Caffe Delle Stelle
395 Hayes St
415-252-1110
dellestelle.com

Blue Bottle Coffee Company
315 Linden Street
510-653-3394
bluebottlecoffee.net

Absinthe Brasserie and Bar
398 Hayes St
415-551-1590
absinthe.com

Timbuk2
506 Hayes Street
415-252-9860
timbuk2.com

San Francisco Symphony
Davis Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness Ave
415-864-6000
sfsymphony.org

San Francisco Opera
War Memorial Opera House
301 Van Ness Ave
415-861-4008
sfopera.com

San Francisco Ballet
War Memorial Opera House
301 Van Ness Ave
415-861-5600
sfballet.org

Asian Art Musuem
200 Larkin St
415-581-3600
asianart.org

]]> http://www.transmopolis.com/2010/04/san-francisco-hayes-valley/feed/ 1 http://www.transmopolis.com/2010/03/los-angeles-bicyclists/ http://www.transmopolis.com/2010/03/los-angeles-bicyclists/#comments Thu, 01 Apr 2010 03:05:28 +0000 Michael Jack Lawlor http://www.transmopolis.com/?p=653

A group of cyclists rode to City Hall from the “Bike District” at Heliotrope and Melrose in East Hollywood on Wednesday, February 24 to support a cyclist who was hit by a car while riding to work in downtown Los Angeles. The a driver fled the scene at Second and Figueroa, leaving the cyclist injured on the street calling for help.

The incident was reported extensively on several blogs and news spread fast in the cycling community. Witnesses reported the license plate number to the police but City and District Attorneys decided not to charge the motorist.

“All the parts came together to make an egregious situation,” said cyclist Kenneth Lyons. “You have someone in a Porshe hitting someone on a bicycle and leaving the scene as the cyclist pleads for help. How could anyone do that? Then the police write a report and call it an accident and City and District Attorneys won’t do anything. That’s why people got together for the protest ride.”

To protest the impunity government officials extend to motorists who collide with bicycles, riders followed the route Ed Magos, a city employee and father of two, took to work the day he was hit. The ride was an expression of solidarity with Magos and other cyclists who have been hit by motor vehicles in the city.

“We stopped near the place Ed was hit on Second Ave for a moment of reflection before continuing on to City Hall,” said Lyons.

“The ride was a success in that we were able to raise a lot of awareness around the issue,” said Aurisha Smolarski, Outreach Coordinator at the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition.

On their website, the LACBC reported that LAPD Chief Charlie Beck told the protestors at City Hall that the department recently formed a Bicycle Task Force and is developing a program to educate officers about cyclists rights and the law.

Even so, accidents take a terrible toll on the confidence of cyclists.

“You realize how helpless you are if you are going to ride your bicycle to work. An accident shakes your confidence,” said Lyons.

Although the protest ride made cyclist issues visible at City Hall, Ed Magos has not been on a bicycle since the accident.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful to hail Los Angeles as a bicycle-centrist place like Portland, Oregon. I don’t know if we will ever have that here. Maybe there will be a better day. Maybe the roads will be better. Maybe the laws will be better. Maybe people will be more aware. Maybe cyclists won’t be neglected and left on the street for dead,” said Lyons.

Read the Los Angeles Bicycle Coalition report: Bicyclists Ride for Justice, Chief Beck Hears All About It

See how the The Los Angeles Bicycle Coalition is calling for justice for cyclist victims of hit-and-run accidents covered the story

Check out the USC journalism school coverage: Cops And Cyclists Mending Relationship As City Works Toward Cohesive Bike Plan

When I decided to learn to draw I had no idea I was going to discover a world of boundary crossers and metaphor makers who value negative space and think symphonically. Drawing, I discovered, is more about perceiving relationships than making marks on paper.

Every quest starts somewhere and my quest to learn to draw began at the Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art in Los Angeles. I dropped by one Saturday afternoon for a free drawing class. The instructor spoke to the class about the history of drawing before demonstrating several techniques.  After the presentation a model stepped onto a small stage and disrobed under the spotlights.

I tried to maintain proportion and perceive relationships as I sketched, but the drawings did not look very good and I felt confused and disoriented. My quest had begun.

The instructor recommended a book entitled “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards. That evening I googled the title and discovered that a course with the same name was about to start at the Otis College of Art and Design on Lincoln Blvd.

The instructor for the course at Otis was Linda Jo Russell who appears in the acknowledgments of the book. The author thanks Linda Jo for her “unfaltering devotion to our efforts.” My quest was taking shape.

Linda Jo has been teaching people how to draw for over forty years. She has conducted classes and workshops in the United States, Europe, and Japan. The Otis College of Art and Design on Lincoln Blvd in Los Angeles is her home base.

On the first night of class, without giving us any instruction, Linda Jo sat on a stool and told us to draw her portrait. The process of trying to draw Linda Jo’s portrait involved looking at her and feeling my arm lock as I shifted my gaze to the blank page in front of me. After awhile I managed to sketch a likeness, including an attempt to draw the light reflected in her glasses. When she saw my drawing, Linda Jo asked if her eyes really glared like that. Drawing people can go badly very fast when you don’t know what you are doing.

As the course progressed we engaged in drawing exercises that made us perceive contours and object edges. Linda Jo told us that people often confuse what they already know with what they see.

To curb the conflict between what is seen and what is known, and to bypass internalized symbol systems and predetermined ideas, we performed blind contour drawing exercises. Blind contour drawing involves drawing objects without looking at the paper. Learning to draw, I was beginning to discover, is really about learning to see, which is different from just looking.

“Drawing needs to be taught,” said Russell. “For the most part people need instruction to be able to draw.”

The struggle to bypass internalized symbol systems and predetermined ideas is often resolved when students discover the ability to perceive negative space. Negative space is the area around an object that shares an edge with the object. “Negative space is new learning for most people,” said Russell. “Drawing is easy if you can access negative space.”

In class we explored negative space by drawing chairs, boxes, vases, books and candles. “In the beginning when you look at negative space you get a strange feeling. After awhile the brain begins to cooperate and you feel more natural looking at it,” said Russell.

Once you get a feel for negative space you start to see it everywhere. Driving home after class I found myself observing negative space around cars on the freeway and between electrical wires and telephone poles on the street. Awareness of negative space revealed touches of previously unnoticed rhythm and beauty in the clutter of the urban environment.

Linda Jo encouraged us to listen to classical music when drawing because it often helps people bypass internalized symbols and perceive forms as they really are.

We learned to be mindful of measurements and landmarks when drawing a face. All landmarks in a drawing are related to the distance from eye level to the chin. The base of the nose and closing line of the mouth must be located in relation to this basic unit of measurement. Other important measurements include the distance from eye level to the top of the head and to the back of the ear. You start to see triangular relationships everywhere in a drawing when you work with these relationships.

Proportion is critical to the success of a drawing. The nose is at least as wide as the eyes are apart and the mouth is slightly larger. The base of the nose is more than a third but less than a half from eye level to the chin. The central axis of the face always runs through the third eye and the twin peaks of the lip, regardless of foreshortening. Break the width of the eyes into thirds.

Linda Jo introduced sighting techniques that make relationships between angles and proportions easier to see. We explored light-logic in the context of drawing highlight, reflected light, crest shadow and cast shadow.

There seems to be moment during the process of drawing faces when an image comes to life and takes on the imaginative quality of a waking dream. I discovered this phenomenon one time when I was making a copy of a drawing executed in 1889 by Kathe Kollwitz entitled, “Self-Portrait in Profile, Facing Left, II.”

As I drew, I realized that the figure I was making did not look like the one I was trying to copy. I was agitated by what I perceived to be a failure to reproduce what was right in front of me.

I started scrubbing out lines and redrawing, checking back and forth between my drawing and the one I was trying to copy to see if things were synching up. When I drew in this state the drawing became worse.

After awhile I just allowed my own drawing to unfold. When I worked this way I discovered that I was deeply involved in the process of drawing, even though the image did not look like the one I had been trying to copy.

When  I brought the drawings based on the Kathe Kollwitz piece to class  Linda Jo asked me if they represented the same person. “Yes,” I replied they are both copies of the Kathe Kollwitz drawing but one of them looks like the 17^th century English poet John Keats and the other one looks like the 19^th century poet Arthur Rimbaud.”

A few people in the class laughed supportively and murmured hesitant approval. Linda Jo looked at me seriously and said, “We like your drawings Michael, but there are problems with the proportion of the head and the location of the ears.” She pointed out the areas of concern and reexplained the principles that we had been taught the previous week.

Then she told us that a drawing does not have to look exactly like the person or thing being drawn to be a good drawing and she encouraged us to keep developing our drawing skills.

The skills we were learning, she explained, were intended to enable us to understand the principles of drawing not to produce photographs with a pencil. “There something is going on with you,” she said to me smiling.

To draw well, all of the requisite skills must be integrated and available to the artist simultaneously. One evening Russell brought a book to class entitled “A Whole New Mind” by Daniel Pink. “The ability to draw requires that we learn to think symphonically and assimilate new associations and ideas. To put it musically, you must orchestrate,” she said.

Pink uses the term “symphony” to describe the capacity to “synthesize rather than analyze; to see relationships between seemingly unrelated fields; to detect broad patterns rather than to deliver specific answers; and to invent something new by combining elements nobody else thought to pair.” Pink maintains that learning to draw is one of the best ways to understand and develop the aptitude of “symphony.”

Our last assignment was to draw a self portrait. We worked with an elaborate setup involving a mirror, a viewfinder and a lamp. To make the self portrait we had to incorporate all of the skills learned to date.

After setting eye and chin levels, finding the base of the nose and breaking the width of the eyes into thirds, I began to draw. For the next hour I pulled light with my eraser and searched for values by pressing harder with my pencil.  Slowly a likeness began to emerge as I applied the various techniques that Linda Jo had patiently taught us over the summer.

Check out the Los Angeles Acadamy of Figurative Art.

See what’s going on at the Otis College of Art and Design.

Learn more about Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.

Visit Daniel Pink’s website.

Read about Kathe Kollwitz.

On January 19, 2010 Joe Sacco spoke to a standing room only crowd at Skylight Books in Los Angeles about “Footnotes in Gaza”, a journalistic report in comic book form that covers two under-reported atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian civilians on the Gaza Strip in 1956.

Sacco, a cartoonist operating as a journalist, has created an illustrated history with many layers. On one layer Sacco presents a brief history of the Gaza Strip and the historical reality of the atrocities in the refugee camps at Khan Younis and Rafah. “The Israelis claim the Palestinians were resisting but I found no evidence of that,” he said.

Sacco’s reportage draws on hundreds of interviews with Palestinians as well as photographs from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) archives in Gaza City.

Between November 2002 and March 2003 Sacco interviewed older Palestinian men about the atrocities. These interviews are the journalistic basis of the book’s memory layer. Sacco’s panel by panel reconstruction of Palestinian memory invests the objective reality of the killings with emotional and psychological truth.

Using eyewitness testimony he reports in graphic detail how civilians were shot in their homes, against public walls, and on the street. Older Palestinians sometimes confuse wars and events and many are evasive because they fear retribution. A portrait of a civilian society traumatized by war slowly emerges as memories of death and destruction are voiced.

Another narrative layer of the book shows Sacco gathering material for the book he is going to write. Sacco belongs to the autobiographical tradition in American comics and he is a character in the transparent story he his telling. Readers watch him party with journalists in Jerusalem and press Palestinian men in refugee camps for information about the past. Sacco includes the dynamic process of interviewing Palestinians and sifting through their narratives as part of the illustrated story.

Sacco immersed himself in the rhythms of Gaza. We watch him rent an apartment in the Rafah refugee camp, eat glazed chicken in Sea Street restaurants, wait for days at check points and throw himself against a wall to avoid Israeli gunfire.

We are with him in his apartment in Rafah as he drinks coffee and smokes Cleopatra cigarettes with Abed, his Palestinian guide. We watch them build a huge chart that cross references the testimony of eye witnesses with historical events.

Sacco’s treatment of contemporary Gaza adds another layer to the story. Sacco reports that the refugee camps are often indistinguishable from the towns they border. The commercial bustle of Sea Street in Rafah is contrasted with the destruction of Palestinian homes by Israeli bulldozers.

With the lights dimmed at Skylight books, Sacco stood beside projected panels from his book and explained that the atrocities in Gaza are just a footnote to the history of the Suez Canal Crisis and Egypt’s 1956 war against the combined forces of Israel, Britain, and France.

Sacco read part of a speech made by Israeli Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan in 1956. The speech, which also forms a scene in the book, contains an expression of empathy toward the Palestinian people:

“Let us not today cast blame on the murderers. What can we say against their terrible hatred of us? For eight years now they have sat in the refugee camps of Gaza, and have watched how, before their very eyes, we have turned their lands and villages, where they and their forefathers previously dwelled, into our home.”

During a vigorous question and answer period a woman asked Sacco how the Palestinian people responded to his style of comic book journalism. Sacco explained that political cartoons have an important place in the culture of the Palestinian people and he referred the audience to Naji al-Ali, a prolific Palestinian cartoonist who was assassinated in London in the summer of 1987.

Naji al-Ali is the creator of Handala, a ten year old boy in rags who stands barefoot with his back to the viewer. Handala is powerful symbol of Palestinian identity and independence.

Sacco, who wrote the introduction to “A Child in Palestine: The Cartoons of Naji al-Ali,” portrays himself as having earned the respect of his Palestinian friends.

“Joe we like you very much. We don’t want to lose you. The bullets don’t distinguish between us and foreigners,” a friend cautions one night as Israeli bullets snap in air above them.

Sacco brings marginalized people to life in his book and treats them with respect as he tells their story.

With “Footnotes in Gaza” Joe Sacco has transformed the comic book into a compelling journalistic platform that holds those with power accountable for their actions and gives a voice to people who have none.

Learn more about Joe Sacco at Fantagraphics Books.

Listen to a BBC interview with Joe Sacco about “Footnotes to Gaza”.

Visit Skylight Books.

Read about Naji al-Ali on Wikipedia.

“A performance is not a contest but a love affair.” Glenn Gould

The Calder Quartet, whose members are graduates of the renowned Julliard School in Manhattan, performed Mozart’s G-minor Quintet at Zipper Hall in Los Angeles on March 22, 2009.

People adore this particular composition. Mozart evokes suffering and irony in a minor key and then, in a major key, resolves the tragic themes.

Imagine you are in the Los Angeles audience listening closely to the subtleties of the music.

Suddenly the concentrated warmth of the listening experience is broken.

Someone in the balcony has started to cough. He is producing a rattling, phlegmatic sound that mars the beauty of the music.

Several people turn their heads. One of the musicians seems to bristle. The offender surveys the audience from his perch on the balcony and coughs again. He seems to be competing with the musicians for the attention of the audience.

Mozart’s G-minor Quintet has become the soundtrack for the drama of his head cold.

Live musical performances, especially classical and art music concerts, are often delayed, marred, ruined, and spoiled by audience members who cough, hiss, wheeze, and even yell during events.

“I am of the very strong conviction that live performance is sure to ruin the musical experience for everyone,” said Jet Dee, author of “Nailing Shut the Coughin’: GPAADAK the First Step to Improving the Musical Experience.”

(The acronym GPAADAK stands for “Gould Plan for the Abolition of Applause and Demonstrations of All Kinds.”)

Dee, a musician deeply influenced by the ideas of the late Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, maintains that live performances of classical music are in fact anti-musical dilutions of the aesthetic experience.

The signs are everywhere. The aesthetic damage caused by noisy audience members is alluded to in the programs distributed at the Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

“As a courtesy to the musicians and your fellow patrons, please turn off all pagers, mobile phones, watch alarms, or other electronic devices prior to the concert, and refrain from talking, coughing, or unwrapping candy during the performance.”

Once in the hands of audience members, however, these programs often become a source of noise as people rifle through pages and roll publications up to tap out beats during concerts.

“I detest audiences. I think they are a force of evil.”  Glenn Gould

In her article, Dee presents plenty of examples of conductors throwing down the baton when they cannot take audience noise and disruption any longer.

Sir Thomas Beecham admonished London audiences in 1934 for talking as he was conducting Fidelio, Beethoven’s only opera. Beecham threatened to restart the overture from the beginning every time someone spoke. In Glasgow in 1936, he turned to the audience during the conclusion of La Boehme and demanded that they “shut up!”

During a performance of Tristan and Isolde in Dallas in 1975 Jon Vickers, a tenor playing the part of Tristan, interrupted his performance of the dying lover to tell the audience to shut up and stop coughing.

In 1993 Alfred Brendal stopped a performance of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata at the Kennedy Centre in Washington and told the audience he would resume the concert when they had finished clearing their throats.

Kurt Masur walked off the stage without saying a word in the middle of a 1998 performance he was conducting with the New York Symphony due to the cacophony of coughing in the audience.

Michael Tilson Thomas left the stage in anger while conducting a symphony by Mahler in Miami that was marred by incessant hacking in the audience.

“I have seen bad behaviour first hand at various concerts,” said Dee.

The program of the last symphonic concert she attended, performed by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in 2008, included Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and Strauss’s Don Juan.

“During the evening, there were three distinct distractions coming from my immediate seating area. A man wearing patent-leather shoes kept rubbing his feet together. A person clothed in polyester had an itch that apparently couldn’t be sufficiently scratched, and some idiotic patron failed to turn off his cell phone which rang in the middle of the performance,” she said.

“All three of these events inevitably occurred within the pianissimos of the second movement of the Bartók Concerto, which is my favourite part. I was most incensed. I don’t really attend concerts much any more.”

Behavioural problems at concerts are legion. Christine Gengaro, assistant professor of music at Los Angeles City College, recalls a time when the hidden side of a companion’s character surfaced in the middle of a show.

“I attended a Hollywood Bowl concert and the person I was with insisted on answering his phone during the concert. He’s screaming – can you hear me? – into the phone. I was mortified. I tried to suggest that he stick his phone where the sun didn’t shine, but he didn’t understand the rules of attending classical concerts. He didn’t care. Needless to say, I never went anywhere with him again.”

Sometimes people just can’t help making noise during a concert.

“I saw Hamlet on Broadway many years ago, right in the middle of the cold and flu season,” said Gengaro. “There was so much nose-blowing, sneezing, and coughing that I was completely distracted from the drama. I wanted to Lysol the entire theater.”

At the Calder Quartet performance in Los Angeles the noise reached a crescendo as the patron exploded in a fit of coughing that involved throwing his head back and forth and mixing the sound of rustling polyester with the sickly sound of phlegm.

After this discordant outbreak a security guard appeared on the balcony and led the man out of the auditorium. The concert continued without interruption and the audience listened with rapt attention to the music.

But more often than not concert halls are sealed shut when the music begins. Ushers and security personnel stand in the hallways outside, leaving musicians and audiences to their fate.

Throughout an April 2009 performance of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique at the Concert Hall in Los Angeles, a man in the audience hollered incomprehensibly at the conductor. Like a fan at a sports event, he seemed to be shouting instructions in attempt to change the direction of the performance.

“Taking action creates more of a disturbance,” said Dee.

“I have seen, and heard, more than my fair share of musical moments ruined, not only due to loud and obnoxious spectators and hangers-on, but also by patrons who were trying to do the right thing by hissing and shushing everyone who dared make a noise,” she said.

“Neither of these extremes is desirable. Both create polarities which, in my opinion, should have no part of the musical environment. Indeed, they create more of a Coliseum-like atmosphere that can really induce all kinds of unwelcome anxieties and emotions in those hearts that are sincere enough to be attempting to convey something from the stage,” said Dee.

“I can honestly say that I do not recall ever feeling better about the quality of a performance because of the presence of an audience.”  Glenn Gould

Gengaro points out the fact that concerts are not performed in a perfect world.

“Musicians understand that certain noises – coughs and sneezes – are inevitable at live events. We try our best as audience members to control our own coughing and sneezing. We’re disappointed when a noise enters at the absolute wrong time – during that crucial rest – but we all understand that life is imperfect.”

However, there are limits to what listeners will endure.

“When someone’s really being a jerk, however, you have to make a choice. Which is going to be less disruptive: the idiot making noise or me telling the idiot to shut up,” Gengaro said.

Audiences have been known to abuse performers with noise.

Roberto Alagna, a tenor, was booed off the stage during a performance of Aida at La Scala opera house in Milan in 2006.

The Los Angeles Time reported audience reaction in April 2009 after the Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman criticized American foreign policy from the Concert Hall stage:

“About 30 or 40 people in the audience walked out, some shouting obscenities. Others remained but booed or yelled for him to shut up and play the piano.”

“There is a very curious and almost sadistic lust for blood that overcomes the concert listener.”  Glenn Gould

The tension between audiences and performers is not restricted to the worlds of classical and art music.

“During various shows by bands and performance artists, there have been audience members who threw things, who yelled loudly to try and disrupt the proceedings, who beat on chairs – in fact, a friend of mine actually had a student’s desk thrown at him on stage by a drunken fool during a concert. I have seen performers pulled, unwittingly, into crowds that seemed to have no respect for their well-being,” said Dee.

Mario, a bartender at the Silver Lake Lounge on Sunset Blvd in Los Angeles has seen people talk right through entire acoustic performances. “People just don’t care,” he said. A sign in the doorway of the lounge reads, “Please don’t chit chat during acoustic performances.” People ignore it.

Jerry Scott, first place winner in the Finger Style Guitar competition in the 2009 Topanga Banjo Fiddle Contest knows how to handle unruly audiences.

“I’ve cut a few gigs short because of audience noise levels. My dream is to perform for an attentive, focused, quiet audience who I can take along with me on my musical journeys,” he said.

Christine Gengaro takes a practical approach to the reality of audience noise.

“I hear the noise, but unless it’s ridiculously loud, it doesn’t distract me. I always tell my students to try practicing now and then with other background noise. It helps hone concentration. And if you’ve ever played an open mic night, you know that you’re going to be competing with waitresses taking orders, and drunk people being rowdy, and other noises. You have to be able to keep focus among those things.”

Audience members, however, are resourceful when it comes to finding ways to interfere with performances.

“People come up to me mid-song and start talking, which of course is a huge disruption,” said Scott.

“I earnestly believe that recording is the best means to experience music,” said Dee.

“I know what I am getting into when I agree to go to a performance. I have no room to really complain. Recently I promised a friend that I will attend his live performance. This will be the second live performance I have attended this year. Hopefully it will be the last.”

Read Nailing Shut the Coughin’: GPAADAK as the First Step to Improving the Musical Experience by Jet Dee.

Explore Christine Gengaro’s insightful essays at Tales from a Whales Belly.

Visit Jerry Scott’s website and listen to his original recordings.

Watch the Calder Quartet perform Mozart’s “Dissonance” Quartet K.465 and other beautiful music.

To learn more about Glenn Gould, visit Glenn Gould: Variations on an Artist, a website maintained by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Chefs Jaime Martin Del Campo and Ramiro Arvizu create menus for La Casita Mexicana that draw on the culinary tradition of Jalisco, their home state.

Mole, a Mexican sauce, is at the heart of the La Casita Mexicana experience. Jamie and Ramiro, following recipes passed down by their grandmothers, prepare at least three types of mole involving dozens of herbs and spices.

Baskets of corn chips covered in warm mole appear on every table at La Casita Mexicana. The moles – tinted red from chile peppers, white from chocolate and green from pumpkin seeds – suggest the colors of the Mexican flag and give guests a taste of the complexities and pleasures of Mexican cuisine.

The chefs are passionate about sharing the flavours of Mexico with others. Jaime and Ramiro frequently travel in Mexico searching for new recipes and ingredients. They regularly demonstrate cooking techniques on Spanish television and appear at festivals all over Los Angeles throughout the year.

As a result, La Casita Mexicana has developed a reputation as the soul of Mexican cooking in LA.

“Mexican cooking is magical. It is a ritual. You have to respect the ingredients. You have to know how to use them, how to treat them, how to combine them. The magic is in the combinations,” said Ramiro.

Jaime and Ramiro, like their grandmothers before them, believe that flavour is influenced by the mood and sensibility of the chef, as well as by the ingredients used.

“When you cook you have to be in a good mood, ” said Jaime.

Tradition warns against the dangers of the evil eye – el mal de ojo – at harvest time and in the kitchen.

“Grandmother would not let anyone touch her corn,” said Ramiro. “If someone looked at her when she was making the tamales she would say that the tamales were not going to cook right and she would make that person touch her.”

Jaime and Ramiro inherited molcajetes from their grandmothers. They often use the molcajetes during cooking workshops they host throughout the year.

The molcajete, a mortar and pestle tool carved out of volcanic rock, is used to grind spices, herbs, and corn. The porous texture of the basalt stone becomes seasoned after years of grinding and produces unpredictable flavours. The personality of the molcajete changes over time.

Jaime and Ramiro encourage people to keep ancestral traditions alive and use the molecajete at home.

La Casita Mexicana is a comfortable space characterized by warm orange and brown earth tones. The walls are decorated with blue fleur de lis that invoke Mexico’s colonial past and symbolize the influence of Spanish gastronomy on Mexican tradition.

An image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, in a heavy wooden frame, hangs on the wall, along with dozens of rave reviews from newspapers and magazines.

The chefs publish special menus at Christmas and Easter, which makes La Casita Mexicana a popular destination for families during holiday seasons.

Located in the south LA suburb of Bell, La Casita Mexicana attracts people from all over Los Angeles.

“We are very lucky,” said Jaime.

La Casita Mexicana
4030 East Gage Ave
Bell, CA 90201

(323) 773-1898

Monday – Sunday
9:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m.
Street parking. No alcohol.