San Francisco Perfection

Last Saturday, fried from computer screen adoration (you know, when it’s you and your screen and you’re glued to each others eyes…) I finally broke free. 

It started ominously – a drive to the office to pick up papers at 7am on a Saturday morning.  But Spring was upon us and the views of the bay and city in the morning sun finally had their way with me.  I called Marco to check if he was at the Alemany Farmer’s market.  There’s no better way to start a San Francisco Saturday than at the peoples market (then; today).  But for once, Marco wasn’t going.  As I arrived at our block, I couldn’t turn towards home.  Instead, I found myself continuing to drive and ended up on Geary, racing into the Pacific Ocean.  The day only got better:

• The first peek of the Pacific from Geary, rolling downhill to Loui’s Diner and the Sutro Bath ruins. If I wasn’t in a motoring mood, eggs, steak and hash browns with a view to ochre mud stumps and a raging ocean would have been the call.
• Turn off into the park with the top open to take in the colors and smells of springtime, our brooding gnarled california trees and turning a corner, the sudden view of stoic bison, unreal in their mass and stillness.
• Over the bridge to Old Oakland.  Lemon riccotta pancakes at Cockadoodle Cafe, talk about politics surrounded by refreshing color after (it’s true) mostly white San Francisco.
• Dropping Anirvan back to Berkeley and had to extend the conversation as we often must.  But this time, a Berkeley tradition – sitting on the Shattuck median (an 8 ft mound of dirt and grass) with cars puttering by on either side, under a ‘don’t sit on median’ sign. Berkeley gets plus points for this urban rendition of hanging out in a meadow.
• Driving back into the city with a favorite view of San Francisco (from the Bay Bridge) on display for longer than usual as I crawled through Saturday afternoon traffic.
• Quick dinner at Out the Door under the SF Shopping Center with the girls and Marco to provide the sole, slammingly dressed, male counterpoint. Marco can do orange & pink, together - no more need be said.  For food, the brightest, most unexpected salad I’ve ever eaten, Grapefruit & Jicama salad.
• Mosey on over to 111 Minna for what started a little slow (it was a fundraiser for lawyers after all…) but with a favorite DJ from old times spinning dub and then the live action of Sukhawat Ali Khan and friends, it was raucous.  On this night, the art included Amal’s photographs relaying stories of taxi cab drivers. 
  Maneesh (afore-mentioned DJ) said – ‘reminds you of Azaad days, doesn’t it?’  Minna, now more standard fare as a hipster art and music joint, used to be smaller in the day, and Saturday nights often included a collective of DJs (‘Azaad’) spinning South Asian-influenced dub, beats, hip-hop, trance and drum n bass.  Took me back.  Time for a party.

Sutro Bath Ruins. Photo by: the tahoe guy

Join us in transitioning ASATA to new leadership

ASATA focuses on the challenges of racism, exploitation and communalism. Our actions emphasize our connection to the South Asian community, but our vision of change and solidarity is cross-group and communities. Photo by Eric Mar.

If you’re in the SF Bay Area, have any familial, coincidental or other relationship to South Asia, are politically inclined, understand and engage with the haves and have-nots of power, then join us in taking the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action (ASATA) to it’s next phase.  We’re meeting on Sat Mar 28th at 11am, and then again to continue transition conversations on Apr 7th at 7pm.  If you’re interested in joining, re-joining, re-engaging with a San Francisco Bay Area institution – especially if you’ve got some time to devote to a leadership position - drop me a line at miniATbrainbytesDOTcom  

ASATA, the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action, is a San Francisco Bay Area group working to educate, organize, and empower the Bay Area South Asian communities to end violence, oppression, racism and exploitation within and against our diverse communities.

Upfront Talk

08/31 UPDATED: Here’s the radio feed for the show. (Streaming audio)

Enjoyed speaking with Sandip Roy on Wednesday on immigrants
in the U.S. and my recent trip to Lodi, CA. The show he hosts is called “Upfront” and you can hear it on 91.7FM. For Upfront viewers, here are the key articles to which I referred. You can hear a rebroadcast of the show on Sunday at 3pm

• Veena Dubal and Sunaina Maira’s excellent early piece
• My followup piece on the community.
• ASATA’s web-site with additional articles

A Day in the Life

Ishmael Reed and Esther Dyson co-star in Bay Area afternoon.

An African American produces a play that provides a lens into the internal dynamics of a modern-day Pakistani-American family. The play is directed by the producer’s Jewish wife. A talk about the future stars a tech doyen – a woman. She is accompanied at the talk by another woman – her mother, Verena – a mathematician who has to work to ensure we don’t forget the boy in the family, who, by the way is an accomplished historian and writer. Ishmael Reed and Esther Dyson starred in my Saturday afternoon, casually defying expectations and stereotypes. I did not construct the afternoon – it just happened as it does, in the Bayosphere. Read the rest on my bayosphere blog.

Born into Commerce; Dead at Birth.

Met some great folks the other day. Walked into a home, crowded with pieces of a long life waiting, it turns out, to get out. My hosts, Peter and Juthika Stangl, were moving and their life needed to be off the walls and floors of their Palo Alto home to make sure that others could reimagine their own lives in the space.

First, Peter and Juthika warmed me immediately. In short order I learned more about the foundation they’ve been running for a while now – Shadika – my Saturday blind date for volunteering hours. Not that I did any volunteer work that Saturday, but I did a lot of volunteer basking in the glow of something very very good.

Shadika garners funds from the SF bay area, and delivers it to the door of projects that serve sex workers and their children in Kolkata (the Calcutta of my past). I thought – aha ! isn’t this the same domain as the film ‘born into brothels’ that just won the oscars? So up I piped with (the obviously obvious) tip – why not use the publicity around the film, and screenings of the film, to help fundraise? The depressing answer: we contacted the film maker, but after what seemed like a positive start, we were told, that a deal was made with a distributor, and when the time was right we should talk to the distributor.

I stood aghast. I know I know there are multiple complex politics on who represents, who uses, who gives back to the represented, academic articles, activist tomes, many hours of many peoples lives discussing – but this was just very simply unbelievable. A film made to highlight the plight (and creativity from disaster) of the children of sex workers in Kolkata was not available to those who have worked to serve these people for more than a decade. I can think of many well-meaning ways to explain the mindset of those behind this travesty, or the series of small decisions made, and larger ones never considered, that brought us to this point, but the thing of it remains too hypocritical to comprehend. Perhaps its because I’m immersed in a world where we already understand the implications of default copyright, restrictive distribution agreements, etc. But help me, anyone, to understand how this makes sense.