…and may well sink the East Bay art scene in its backwash. I began hearing about the fire soon after landing last Sunday, and the horror just kept coming.

At first it was just so very strange to watch the outside media trying to parse the world so many of us live in and find it so unnatural, strange and indecipherable…which is just to say, threatening. The obvious subtext, very reminiscent of the sixties, being YOU are The Other, and these children are telling you so and something else, something about community and creativity and connections besides…

which all got tragically caught out in a Rent Party gone Wrong in Oakland Friday night.

Channel 5 [ [“I’m about to get upset / watchin’ my TV”]* immediately turned up some skanky blonde who claimed she’d lived in Ghost Ship and hated it, but helpfully resurfaced in the wake of the disaster to pour videoed vitriol over the whole scene, to which they, being Network Media, when not making artists look ridiculous or Demonizing the [definitely potentially culpable] Leaseholder,

delighted in rerunning day after day while bodies continued to emerge from the wreckage and

not just any bodies, bad as that was, but many of the best and brightest lights of the local D.I.Y. scene, who’d gathered together that night…for eventual tragedy.

The tragedy beyond the tragedy is the Authorities now felt obliged to orchestrate a massive crackdown on all non-conforming behaviors and endeavors to the absolute extent of their Powers in the name of Public Safety aka covering their own sorry asses, and so quickly

that in fact as early as Tuesday one of Linda’s studio assistants had already been contacted by his landlord asking, given the Obvious Circumstances, for assurances of no residency on the premises, nothing flammable on the property, all improvements up to the doubled-standard of “live-work”

…constraints with which we are all all too familiar from years living in similarly sketchy-by-necessity situations, bedeviled by Building Codes while trying to keep things functional and safe without going bankrupt…

lucky all that time, too, whereas by most accounts the Ghost Ship was pegged in the red in terms of not having their infrastructural shit covered…and unluckily pushed it to fatal detriment, not only for them

as bad to worse this potentially tumbles down on pretty much everybody, regardless of how well they’ve built out their scenes, live-in or not, as Complete Compliance is prohibitively expensive.  But people began to push back on this…

and as the week progressed the City, faced with the predictable consequences of

massive evictions, began to entertain other ideas as

although [un]realistically the ‘living’ parts could probably, by moving beds and breakfasts into squalid apartments renting for ridiculous multiples of warehouse space, be evicted within the time specified, moving a life’s work and material…uh, not very feasible.

That this would surely result in a lot more homeless [and stuff] on the streets of Oakland unless a little slack is cut, unless things can become more flexible and safe, affordably safe, has hopefully given Them food for thought…

Flexibly affordably safe. Now THAT could be the one constructive positive outcome salvaged from the disasters.

By week’s end uncertainty and discord still reigned while

for those fortunate enough to afford the move a lot more competition for warehouse space in Reno, particularly among Burners, may be in the offing.

Better than the alternative, as they say…

Ah, what a week, a terrible thing.

M

*Frank Zappa; “Trouble Comin’ Every Day”, 1966