Categories
Misc

Is TED progressive? No. Should you go? Definitely.

(Image from tedxrochester.org)

I used to run PeoplePoweredRochester.com. Since that website is defunct, I’m importing some older posts over here. (Here’s the link to the original)

The TED brand of conference is resolutely “apolitical”, to its great demerit. Robber barons rub shoulders with scientists and marvel at technocratic attempts to fix the problems that they themselves caused. Tales of people-powered organizing are only entertained once in a while, and only when the countries affected are safely exotic and far away.

There’s one in Rochester soon. You should go.

Seriously! Here’s an application form.

Here’s why:

The short version:  There will be smart, passionate, and powerful people there. You want to meet them, befriend them, and build alliances. After all, TEDxRochester is quite a different beast from the flagship event.

The longer version:

The speakers at TEDx aren’t the point – instead, you want to mingle with the attendees. Luckily for you, the organizers have spent hours and hours cultivating a guest list of interesting, driven, or powerful people. Young professionals, entrepreneurs, hip young pastors, etc. You want to meet those people. You want to meet them because they’re the competent, passionate people that make amazing members or allies.

As organizers and activists, we fail when we live solely in our own bubble. That’s a fairly anodyne, even boring statement. Let’s take it a step further, though: “As organizers, we need to be engaged in – and even help build – local civic society.”

There are a few reasons why organizers should have a stake in building even apolitical civic society:

  1. As citizens organize any kind of group, including neighborhood or charity groups, they become comfortable with participating, funding, and leading. You’ll benefit from those skills and assumptions becoming the norm.
  2. Already existing local groups make your life as an organizer so much easier – you can partner with them on projects, or engage with them to try to convince them of your values.
  3. A strong civic society broadens the pool of engaged citizens. Engaged citizens are exactly the sort of people you want to recruit.

In short, a civic society is a society in which you can participate. It’s a framework to work in and generates organizations worth partnering with.

So apply!
http://www.tedxrochester.org/register/

More info:

There are, confusingly, two separate TED-branded conferences in Rochester every year – TEDxRochester and TEDxFlourCity. TEDxRochester is the one I’m discussing at the moment – it’s the one with the application up.

TED is the flagship conference in California. It was so successful that local volunteers organize TED-branded events across the country.

Categories
Left

Raw Notes from Rochester Red and Black’s Building a Revolutionary Anarchism

(A friend asked me to post this because his site is down)

Yesterday, Rochester Red and Black hosted a lecture titled “Building a Revolutionary Anarchism”. It was quite interesting!

Read on for a quick description of the event and my copious notes.

The lecturer, Rochester local Colin O’Malley, had spent the last seven weeks traveling the country giving this talk, and now ended his tour repeating it to a friendly local audience.

I counted at least 28 people there (not including the speaker). Nine expressed interest in joining Red and Black after the talk – a real coup for the organization!

A written version of this argument is here.Colin’s updates from the road are here. There’ll be a real report on the talk soon. For now, here’s the audio of the presentation and my detailed notes: (For your convenience, I frequently put the approximate time in the notes, so you can fast forward the audio clip to the correct time)

  • “The standard talk on this doesn’t really include a talk on Anarchism.” But this one will
  • What is an Anarchist Communist?
    • Communists aren’t Stalin. The basic idea is: “All wealth belongs to all people”
    • “Unlike social democrats who slice off a bit of wealth of the 1% and give it to people so they don’t freak out”
    • On the political side, we’re anti-State. Not anti-government. “Government is how we collectively decide things.” Current government isn’t great, but we can build something different.
    • The state is the coercive apparatus: military, police, prisons. The “legitimacy of violence” of the government. That’s what we’re against.
    • (3:50)
  • We should be revolutionary, not reformist: (4:30)
    • “I don’t think we evolve into that”.
    • Changing our habits, our votes, etc won’t work.
    • (5:20) To me, revolution is that movement when workers are so organized that they say we don’t need bosses anymore .. ..popular assemblies say we don’t need representatives anymore
    • Revolution isn’t necessarily gun-running.
    • Revolution supposes building organizes. It’s not just spontaneous.
  • Outline of how the talk will go:
    • Narrative of how I [Colin] have changed
    • How Argentinian’s organize [so differently!]
    • Big picture
  • Colin’s story (8:15):
    • Buffalo. (Grew up some in Buffalo some in Salt Lake City)
    • Saw the movie “The Take”
    • “My mother lives in a neighborhood where Bethlehem steel was”
    • Bethlehem Steel, GM, and Ford, was most of the economy of Buffalo.
    • (10:15)
    • ‘Cycle of hopelessness’ in Buffalo
    • People in Buffalo to this day … are always looking for a capitalist silver bullet.
      • “Someone will come reopen Bethlehem”
      • People are waiting for a great capitalist hope.
    • I have a friend who grew up in Cambridge. He gave me a movie called “The Take”
      • It’s about the formation of worker cooperatives in Argentina.
      • He gives me the movie and says this is exciting. Cooperatives are cool!
      • When I see that, I had a different reaction:
        • “What’s wrong with my family, my community that forming a cooperative didn’t even occur to us?”
        • “Why isn’t that happening here?”
      • 12:50
      • I’m thinking “oh they must run their meeting differently. They must have slightly different messaging”. I didn’t get that there were doing something fundamentally different.
    • With 0 plan whatsoever, I get an OK from school to do study abroad in Argentina.
      • 14:50
    • Background to why the economy of Argentina exploded:
      • In the late 90′s, Argentina is the model of perfect capitalism.
      • There’s a group called Picateros that show up in rural Argentina. In the context that people die of starvation.
        • Local people would picket/blockade the main road to oil extraction, and held it hostage until they get some wealth.
      • In 2001, it turns out that Argentina isn’t a huge success but instead has a bunch of credit.
      • Default on their loans.
      • Government gets an IMF loan unless they depeg form the dollar
      • BUT FIRST they tell the Rich (who take their money out of the country)
      • Then freeze the banks for everyone else.
      • Mass Uprising.
      • Motto is “they all must go”.
    • Argentina organizing
      • Neighborhood Assemblies show up.
      • Charity, food, anti-eviction
      • As workplaces were shut down, already-unionized workers took over shuttered factories.
      • (23:00)
    • Back to Colin’s story: get to Hotel
      • He comes in as an anarchist with an anti-organizing mindset.
      • In the hotel, there’s a bunch of organizers shooting the shit.
      • One of the things I immediately noticed was there wasn’t nearly the discomfort we have about ideology in this country. People used ideological terms freely without whispering around like they do in the US.
      • The remaining workers cooperatives hadn’t sold themselves or hired a new boss. They were the radical ones.
      • Asked how they took over the hotel and made it a cooperative: “We broke in one night, we took a few rooms, made them livable, and slowly took over”
      • 28:30
      • Woman says: “I was part of a revolutionary anarchist society. We had an understanding that there was a crisis in capitalism, we saw a way to organize around it, so I worked in a hotel for 7 years waiting for that moment”
      • That blew my mind.
        • My idea was that socialists hijack rallies, anarchists throw bricks, or instead have meetings debating whether they should have meetings and make decisions.
    • 32:00
    • The Thought of Malatesta
      • I was like “omg just organize don’t wank around talking theory. What’s the point?”
      • 150 people there at this discussion group to talk about Malatesa.
        • Nice library
        • Few punks.
        • Grandparents and their grandchildren
        • 40, 50, year olds
        • slick fashionistas
      • Everyone is a member of red libertarian and also a member of another organizing group
      • They weren’t talking about “in a post-revolutionary society, should we have currency or not?”
      • Anarchist isn’t just a vision for a future world, it’s a roadmap for struggle.
      • 35:30
      • When Malatesta was organizing in Buenos Aires, what challenges did they face and how did they deal with it?
        • CASE STUDY
      • And what does that mean for where we’re at now?
    • Specifics of how they run things? 37:15
      • “Of all the people you have, how do you come to consensus about what to read/ where to organize?”
        • “We don’t use consensus, and we’re not sure why your American anarchist organizations do”
        • None of the organizations in Argentina use consensus
        • Consensus comes from Quakers in anarchist circles in the 70′s .
        • 39:00
      • “How do you deal with the debate of ‘do we have meetings’ ‘do w make decisions’ or not?” “How do you deal with conflicts between the communist who wants to take over factories vs the primitivist who wants to burn them down?”
        • We don’t. It’s our 12-page paper on aims and principles and if you disagree don’t join.
        • 40:30
      • “Okay, I walked into your library. You handed me a book. You give away papers. Where do you get all your money?”
        • Dues!
        • Shantytown debate and vote on doubling dues.
        • 44:15
        • Our money works better pooled.
        • People in shantytowns had a vote on what to do with their collective budget.
      • The difference between anarchists here and there is that they make no bones about making an organization.
      • Whereas in the US we call ad-hoc things organizations.
      • 48:00
  • (Break for questions and comments)
    • Q: Are there low-hanging fruit efforts in Rochester that could really use organization?
      • A: I’ll get to that.
      • The notion of business entrepreneurialism is not “what’s the next great project?” instead of “what should I join?”
    • Q: What’s the relation between workers coops and political organizations?
      • That’s my next thing I talk about!
      • You’re totally right! I skipped from workers coops to revolutionary political entities
      • Pretty all the major (true) cooperatives I ran into said “a cooperative isn’t the point. It’s a tool to class struggle”
      • 53:00
    • Q: But I like cooperatives!
      • remember they’re a means to an end and sometimes don’t work
    • Q: What was the educational background of the people in Argentina?
      • All over the map.
      • The way we organize is that we ask people to be very intellectual.
      • I never ran into people saying that the poor/working class couldn’t understand intellectual ideology.
    • Q: Can you talk more about people trusting others with their dues money?
      • Lets talk about this at the end.
    • 60:00
  • Especifismo is the core of the organizing model
    • “The theory of the role of revolutionary organization”
    • Breakdown into 3 pieces:
    1. Anarchists should have their own explicitly anarchist organization built along the unity of theory and practice.
    2. That anarchist organization shouldn’t rest on that theory and practice, but instead should work to develop a relevant theory and practice to that movement today.
      • “I’m a member of an anarchist organization, we had theories and views, we applied them to the economy and figured out where it would be going.”
    3. Social Insertion
      • Revolutionaries in South America have worked on the view that there are 2 different sorts of movements necessary for revolution. And they’re quite different.
        • One: Revolutionary Anarchist organization. Unity of theory and practice. Document of uniting principles. By it’s nature, it’s a small organization because it expects a lot from people. A lot of people won’t join it.
        • Two: Social Movement. Massive broad-based organization that derives it’s power from numbers and the unity along an action. It’s only relevant if it attempts to incorporate everyone in a particular grouping. The social movement must incorporate a lot of ideas that aren’t ours.
        • 68:00
      • The revolutionary anarchist organization should embed itself in social movements. The members of the organization should be actively engaged in social movements.
        • This sounds Leninist! But it’s not!
        • Leninists do this:
          • Try to take over leadership
          • Showing up, try to take over leadership, don’t, then poach all the revolutionaries from it
          • Disrupt the social movement that isn’t a recruiting competitor to us
        • Anarchists do this:
          • We should engage as members of social movements genuinely
            • Capturing leadership doesn’t work because your members won’t follow you.
          • “Engage in productive ways as people who have something to offer”
          • Engage in the battle of ideas. Try to change people’s minds.
            • Don’t leave if you don’t get your way.
            • Maybe you were right, and they’ll see it and trust you more.
            • Maybe you were wrong, and you’ll learn.
    • Why social movements need anarchists
      • Anarchists in the US have over the last 50 years been on the sidelines spitballing
      • There’s a long-term tendency of social movements to succumb to the hegemonic ideas of the society.
        • Typically, mass movements have been started by good organizers with revolutionary ideas, community buy-in, etc.
        • What they do, typically, is (because Saul Alinsky said “don’t talk about ideology”) only message.
        • New members come in because of the message. The new organizing core is ideologically adrift. They hit roadblocks and then do “common sense”.
        • Drift down to centrist (non-revolutionary) strategies.
        • Social movement organizations have a basis in class struggle. Need revolutionaries to remind them.
    • Why anarchists need social movements
      • Anarchists in this country suck at organizing.
        • 83:60
        • (Colin “I’ve seen this all over the country”)
        • “If I meet some mcdonalds workers who need help with a fight, there are very few anarchists who I could point them to”
        • The organizations who anarchists sling shit at, can turn out people much better than we can.
        • Lovely Warren is offering nothing, but has connections and can turn so many more people than we can.
        • We need theories and models that are actually connected to reality.
        • We’re “interesting philosophy club” 86:00
      • What happens at the moment right after say the George Zimmerman trial, when you need a response but don’t have the strength to do anything?
        • Random anarchist: “Let’s stop having babies!”
        • How the hell would that be a meaningful response to Trayvon Martin’s mother?
    • 89:30
    • Especifismo history:
      • An idea out of Uruguay in the 80′s.
      • Why? Anarchists had a ton of power then. (General strikes, armed insurrection, anarchist labor unions). Then they were crushed anyways.
      • Those not fighting the dictatorship thought a lot for 20 years about how to win next time.
      • 92:30
      • Not silly infoshop anarchists, but revolutionary anarchists that almost won, writing about how not to lose to fascism next time.
  • 95:00 end

That was Colin’s full talk. What follows are the notes from the discussion after the talk.

  • Q/A:
    • Q: How do we get over people being afraid of dues?
      • There’s a big problem with individualism here
      • People need to stop sucking and thinking “I need to agree 100% to join”
      • 0:00 starts here
      • There are a lot of scams out there!
    • Churches
      • Let’s not blame Americans for our failures.
      • People want to bear witness. That leads to not thinking about effectiveness.
    • “Fighting against” vs “Let’s have fun!” Give ‘em hope.
      • Jake Allen: Leninist “heighten the contradictions” is dumb. Let’s talk about victory.
      • Colin: Most people engage with us as ‘lightbulb lefties’. Intellectual. Aha moments. How many people join social justice because it materially makes their lives better? That joy thing is a bit individual. We need to engage people in actual material fights that improve their day-to-day life.
        • When we find real material wins for people.
      • Shenzie: When we win, that’s really fun.
      • Sahar: Ceasar Chavez was a legendary organizer that had 19 years without a victory.
      • Zora: “Culture of resistance”. Meetings suck. It’s hard work to organize. Community picnics etc can be strategic and effective.
        • If we’re all assholes, no one will want to go to a meeting with us because we treat them like shit.
      • Patton Mannix: But living in a bubble sucks! Talk to your neighbors.
      • Colin (respond to Zora): One thing that worked in Buenos Aires. They took over a chunk of the street (with a permit), do a play, then have a stew on. Dance.
        •  Then in the end tear down a stage back and show a meeting.
      • Alykhan: Respond to Zora: Gandhi institute is cool. Show up to community organizations that actually have members.
    • Q: Melissa: How do you deal with people who beg off due to time or money constraints?
      • Crickets
    • Q: I took time off from the left because they suck. Are they good now?
      • Colin: Yeah, they still kind of suck.
      • Colin: Implicit: But yeah Red and Black doesn’t suck.
    • Talking about Red and Black. Jake talking about SDS -> Red and Black.
    • Q: Mara : How can we engage with things like Enough is Enough to help them be better? (not sure I understand)
      • Krauss: I’ve been going to EiE for 3 weeks now. It’s A. mostly PoC, B. trying to organize.
        • It’s discouraging to not see class-struggle politics in EiE.
        • AKA I’m on board with Social Insertion.
    • Q: Root: There needs to be safer spaces.
      • Kat: Go to the R&B consent thing
      • Zora: Single-issue organizations aren’t built in a sustainable way. R&B is good because people can say stuff like “can you actually pull this off?” “are we treating ourselves well?” “how do we make decisions?”
    • Shenzie: Things like EiE or TBTL are good, but imagine a city where each neighborhood associations did all of that.
      • Colin: Let’s self-reflect on Rochester. The anti-organizational impulse in rochester has lead people to only do issue-based groupings, decide that they’ll stay ad-hoc, and not let it structuralize.
        • Some of that kind of organizing using affected people as interesting adornments in our struggle but never allow them to feel ownership.
        • It’s not only that we don’t win, we burn people away from wanting to engage in our work.
        • Our work is completely important and it’s dangerous to treat it as a hobby.
  • I’m interested in Red and Black, how do I get involved?
    • Facebook
    • Talk to a member
    • Read the platform
    • Hang out with us
    • Education committee meets at 1pm next Sunday at Starry Nites
    • Normal meetings are at 7pm on the first Thursday of every month.
Categories
Misc

About People-Powered Rochester

What the original header looked like

I used to run PeoplePoweredRochester.com. Since that website is defunct, I’m importing some older posts over here. Below is the text of the about page.

The situation:
The progressive/populist/people-powered movement in Rochester is stronger than many know, but weaker than it can be.

All too often, liberal reformists don’t talk to radical organizers. Electoral-focused progressives are unaware of grassroots associations. Enthusiastic newcomers aren’t matched with experienced activists looking for new blood. All the while, the great bulk of the city is woefully unaware of our presence. The silos of tactics, nominal ideology, and issue area divide and diminish us.

There’s a flourishing ecosystem of different grassroots groups in our neighborhoods. Dedicated and smart people are experimenting with new tactics and organizing models every day. However, these groups often aren’t aware of each other, can’t learn from each other, and don’t work together. There’s a real lack of movement communication and movement consciousness. We’ll need much more of both if we want to succeed.

Our mission in short:
We want the best parts of the political left in Rochester to grow. We want them to strengthen. And we want them to win.

Our initial strategy:
We’re going to build a community online that consists of the broad left in Monroe County. Organizers and onlookers, center-left and radical left, electoral and direct action. As the community grows in numbers and coherence, so will our power. Specifically, as the community grows, we’ll draw more people to get involved in “meatspace”, connect disparate parts of the movement together, and push existing organizations towards excellence and accountability.

Don’t forget applauding great projects as they happen. That’s also really important.

Our proposed tactics:

  • Breaking news
  • Introducing readers to the exciting and positive world of people-powered organizations in Rochester
  • Asking critical questions from a position of respect and kindness
  • Provoking intra-movement discussion and debate
  • Explaining or exploring the context of the different news of the day
  • Sharing best practices

In short, we will be curious, we will be opinionated, and we will be passionate. Enjoy!

Categories
Misc

Conception

(Photo by Flickr user MJM)

I used to run PeoplePoweredRochester.com. Since that website is defunct, I’m importing some older posts over here. Below is the first post on the site

Hi!

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had an idea kicking around my head that just won’t go away.

We need a lefty media/community/discussionspace … thing in Rochester.

It would need to appeal to:

  • Onlookers, and then start getting them involved in local organizing
  • Organizers, and push them towards excellence (and being good to each other)
  • Legacy media and thought leaders, and showcase the strength (and newsworthiness!) of our different efforts

A bloggy/newsy site seems to be the best way to go about it.

The sort of site you pull up in the morning as you drink your coffee. The sort of site you mention to your political friends because you never seem to stop reading it. The site where dedicated organizers hang out, shoot the shit, and interact with enthusiastic newcomers.

But why?

Because we as a broad left won’t win in Rochester until we become stronger. We can become stronger by:

  • Building relationships between leaders of strikingly different organizations.
  • Making sure to celebrate our smaller victories along the way.
  • Recruiting more members and donors.
  • Reaching outside our normal circles.
  • Building a culture of collaboration and respectful questioning.

What is this broad left? It’s composed of groups of different tactics, ideology, and issue focus. They often don’t work well together. That division is bad. It leads to weakness and blind spots. Part of the mission of this site should be to restore the broader flag of “broad left” or “people-powered movement”.

This site can help with all that. Or possibly it will fulfill a different function entirely. The best plan is just to do quality work, and see where it leads.

It’s time.

Categories
Misc

What to do if you’re trying to run Heroes 3 on Wine and the screen flickers

Do this!

  • Run regedit
  • Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Wine
  • Then use Edit -> New Key to make a new folder called Direct3D
  • Inside that folder, make a new String value: DirectDrawRenderer. Set the value to gdi.
  • Voila.
Categories
Misc

National Day of Civic Hacking at RIT was well worth going to

National Day of Civic Hacking at RIT was well worth going to

This weekend I went to a hackathon at RIT. It was awesome.

RIT seems to have a new and thriving Free / Open Source Software movement. 

I met the men (and they do seem to be mostly men there. But it is RIT) who seem to be guiding it the most. They’re generous, interesting people.This weekend I went to a hackathon at RIT. It was awesome.

RIT seems to have a new and thriving Free / Open Source Software movement. 

I met the men (and they do seem to be mostly men there. But it is RIT) who seem to be guiding it the most. They’re generous, interesting people.

As for the actual event – spent a lot of time falling asleep. Met some interesting people. Pair-programmed. But the point was to make friends, and I think I did that.

Categories
Misc

Children’s stories are kind of dark. And that’s a good thing.

Listening to a podcast about Tolkien, I really have to agree with him regarding children. So many adults have this need to shelter children from the evils of the world. Everything light. Nothing more dangerous than a rabbit running away from the mean farmer who won’t let him eat carrots.

This is almost hilariously wrong. Think of all the popular kid stories, and all the popular fairy tales too. They all have dark parts. That’s a good thing.

Living as a child, you’re awash in darkness. Realizing you can lie to your parents – and that means they aren’t omnipotent enough to stave off death. Living in a world where you have few rights. The bullying. The fact that you’re simply just new to life! 

A world where you’re surrounded by giants who order you around.

That isn’t to say we should hand them Nabokov. But look at an example of how Tolkien manages it in the Hobbit. The dwarves think Smaug might’ve found a secret passage, and Gandalf says:

“…it is too small. ‘Five feet high the door and three may walk abreast’ say the runes, but Smaug could not creep into a hole that size, not even when he was a young dragon, certainly not after devouring so many of the dwarves and men of Dale.”

Amazing!

We aren’t lying to children. Never lie to children. It’s an abuse of power and an abuse of trust. Plus, you have no guarantee that as they age you’ll remember to correct yourself and tell them the truth. Smaug did eat all those dwarves and men of Dale. It was a legitimately horrifying experience! 

But, of course, it doesn’t stop at the horror. It’s contained in the mildly amusing image of a big fat dragon. The children are shown a glimpse of horror – and then whisked away before they can dwell on it. The seeds are there, however. The seeds that will grow into maturity.

Categories
Misc

Removing packages installed in Rstudio

I recently switched from Macports to Homebrew. That meant using a new, ‘homebrewed’ version of R, rather than a ‘macported’ one. 

I had problems, and couldn’t find anything too helpful online, so hopefully this will serve as a guide to the next person who runs across this it.

RStudio kept giving me errors about outdated packages, but I couldn’t uninstall them. I followed these instructions, but Rstudio kept saying that the relevant packages couldn’t be found.

Here’s why : Rstudio installs packages in a completely separate place than where “normal R” packages are saved. Crazy, right?

So, if you’re trying to uninstall Rstudio packages on a Mac, try this:

.libPaths()

Will show you the different places your library is. Note the last parameter. It might look something like this: ’/Applications/RStudio.app/Contents/Resources/R/library’

ip <- installed.packages()

pkgs.to.remove <- ip[!(ip[,“Priority”] %in% c(“base”, “recommended”)), 1]

sapply(pkgs.to.remove, remove.packages, ’/Applications/RStudio.app/Contents/Resources/R/library’)

Or replace ’/Applications/RStudio.app/Contents/Resources/R/library’ with whatever isn’t the first result from .libPaths().

You might have to repeat steps 2-4 a few times. Enjoy!

Categories
Misc

Visiting the French Road Elementary School Library

The other day I visited my old elementary school’s library.

It. Was. Magical.

Shout out to the public school employees (librarians, teachers, custodians, everyone) who worked so hard to make places like a small library in the outskirts of Rochester a magical place to be.

Categories
Misc

Brighton High School and Sacco and Vanzetti

Now this is just impressive. The AP Art History class at Brighton High School did projects on, among other things, the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial.

Suburban, high-achieving students writing about the injustices done to early 20th-century anarchists.

I love it.

Categories
Misc

The Pittsford Library is kind of ridiculously nice

The Pittsford Library is kind of ridiculously nice. You can’t see it, but they actually have a chandelier!

And anyone, not just Pittsford residents, can go. The best, quietest, and fastest-wifi places are also tables that are meant to be shared. This means they’re great for running into old and new friends, as I learned when I visited last Wednesday and ran into an old high school buddy of mine.

The library is also right next to a great garbage plate place. It doesn’t just do gross hot dogs – you can get chicken breast, real fish, etc. I got chicken breast, finely chopped lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, and all sorts of sauces, then ate my picnic in the shade by the Erie Canal.

A wonderful day. Definitely recommended.

Categories
Misc

Every city should have a public market like Rochester’s

There’s only one place in Rochester where people of all social classes mix. 

I went today with my folks. Ran into two friends I didn’t even know where in Rochester. Wine and olive tasting.

I also noticed, for the first time, this “Edible Wall”, set up by Rochester Teen Court. The premise is great: use gardening as a tool of rehabilitation. The actual product – well, there’s a whole lot of brown and not too much green there.

The public market is definitely a thing worth doing in Rochester.

Categories
Misc

Field Observation 1: Boulder Coffee

In my quest to meet people in Rochester, I’ve been to two different Boulder Coffee locations. One on Park Ave, the other near the Exchange/Ford street bridge.

Boulder has some claim to indie cred. The music is eclectic, and while not indie in genre (A death metal single caused a bit of a stir), it’s clearly not Top-40 drek.

The clientele seems a split of serious “I work here this is my office” type folks (of which I was one), and late-teens to mid-twenties students.

Surprisingly, they had single source Kenyan coffee for only $1.60. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it came from a pre-made tap, and wasn’t french-pressed on the spot, as I was accustomed to during my stay in Missouri.

Furniture was a good mix of faux-antique plush and “let’s get this done” chairs, desks, and stools.

The biggest disappointment, however, was how people in both locations tended to stay isolated and impersonal. They’re not rude, there’s just a large enough space that no one really interacts with each other.

I would go there again, but I’m still on the lookout for a great place that lets me get work done AND meet cool and interesting people.

Categories
Misc

Some things have changed around here

For example, back in 2007, you wouldn’t see a candidate for the Mayoral nomination mix it up with a local reporter on twitter.

That reporter, by the way, has a massive twitter following and her own popular blog.

I remember when the massive blog on the street was a quite different animal.

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Misc

At my little sister’s graduation. Yay shelly!