Local Journal
From Foodcoop
June 15th Spiral Gardens has bare-root mulberry trees. I hear the coop is on..
February 20th The sun was thoughtful enough to drive away this morning's rain, but rest assured that the other unpredictables had us running... The food was missing! We were back in business within an hour, but the moral of this story is that when Alex tells me where the food is kept, I listen to her very carefully! Happily, we all made new friends in the ensuing adventure, and learned that the dark side of the MLK building shelters an infinite world of food dungeons. Are they as ignorant of us as we are of them?
The bike trailer which hauled Severine's dumpstered tent up to us was held briefly on suspicion of revolutionary intent. Also, agents of the UCPD were personable, but uptight about our new location in front of their house. They chased us back to the MLK steps at 2:00 or so, probably upset at themselves for having been so indulgent of yesterday's failed attempt by the so-called "UC Regents" to terrorize the Oaks' tree-community. Can we stay in our new space?
Finally, on a scant-earned break, I noticed that currant flowers are in full stink. You can find some at Spiral Gardens. When will the berries ripen?
Will the Local have live plants again this spring?
Love.
December 5th Damn fine lookin local today! So many beautiful things a diversity. Next week shall be the last of the semester...bummer. However, great opportunities to get involved for next semester!
August 29th The cops have seiged the oaks! An army of privately operated Kreig lights on trucks and a herd of supersized cherry pickers are surrounding our friends in the trees right now.
August 22nd
Good news, 'rades!
The guerilla food action yesterday went off beautifully, thanks to the hard work, fun, and presence of all y'all. Can we get it together to do this again for some of the other tent city actions?
The consensus was that having food lured in many fence-sitters and people who might have otherwise dismissed us as one more tableing club or wayward hippies. Highlights were giving away a gratifying amount of food at Sunday's Oaks concert, and giving dollar-free food to all the passers-by. Our own dollars were tense most of the day, but by the end of late evening's epic house-hustle, we were back in black by either 5 or 10 bucks.
I should say another word about the evening hustle, since it rang of humanity's future, and even of our common past:
Three comrades hauled the food up to a nameless Berkeley neighborhood, laid it all out on the sidewalk near a friend's house, and quickly sold half of them to loyal patrons. Then, we each made phone calls, split the veggies onto our individual bikes, and each headed to a different house. N'est-ce pas?
See some of you at the Derby St market tonight, 4:30!
Love, Adam
August 15th
n.b. someone should always bring copies of the permits, otherwise the authorities can menace us. The nice guy from EH+S came by, rattling his sabre.
It should be mentioned that we almost made this our first car-free week. Of course, by the day's end we were only rescued by a car and the Grace of God. We took the bike trailer on BART and border patrol stopped us in a dark hallway for two hours, scanned our recta, and decided something was too dangerous to allow. We were treated to the comedy of the youngest Barf policeman defeatedly and irritatedly reading us the definition of a bicycle. This was admittedly too big a float, at 200 lb of veggies, complete with a twin tower of strawberries. It was more rickshaw than wheel-chariot. Our not-so-young not-police cadet not-escort accompanied us hushedly to the Berkeley station.
August 14th
The Derby St. market.
It seems we don't have the same class interests as the farmers, although most of them are still happy about our friendship, applauding us for playing the work of distribution,
July 11th
There was oversleeping all around. It was a slow start. The Civic Center crew was over an hour late to their usual 8 AM meeting in the last SF train on the Macarthur platform. Nevertheless, once we got there we all wandered around the market a bit, and found a great new tomato hookup in the process. Poli's tayberries were almost at the end of their season, and like our kiwis, the vines sighed the last of their tired sweetness into these bad-ass-berries. Our date guy Gene Magel was back in action after healing a stiched-up leg for a couple of weeks. He's unstoppable.
All this good news conspired in our demise, however, cuz we went crazy and bought 40 lb of dates. Ordinarily extra dates are a great surprise, but since Adam foolishly lost the hand truck last Friday, we had to carry every lead-lined stack of food in our arms, to BART and down the stairs, and so on. The moving stairs weren't moving that day. Anyway, it's kruto cuz we put the art in Bart.
It was beautiful day, when we found Chloe setting up just as we arrived. Suddenly, the stand began to work its magic and throngs of people helped unload the car.
The car, ahh... the car... unlucky 7/11 won us two more parking tickets, this week's winner was the brown rabbit. Let's kill the landlord! Some wise individual had the brilliant idea of stashing the car in some bushes on campus, which should be the protocol from now on. It's camoflagued perfectly among the dry, corporate hedges.
So, to get rid of the car for good: mayoral candidate Running Wolf and Houston of Lothlorian, et al, might be able to loan us the ersatz Food Not Bombs bike trailer to run our many errands. This would be the best of all possible solutions. Otherwise, we'll have to start growing all the food right under the stand (wink, wink)!
Getting the food into people's mouths went really well, with some new people (new to this role, at least) running the stand, lots of friends and surprise-friends-in-common coming by, and another wise comrade catalyzed a series of inspiring political debates about the Cal bureaucracy's renewed love affair with nuclear weapons. At the end of the day, after a snack drop at the Oaks and some quick hustling at friends' houses, we were totally sold out. A rare and pleasant way to end the day, especially in the light of the July 4th disaster. The sad story of last week is that nobody managed to pull in Adam's reigns, and the guy ordered about $300 too much food, which nearly went to waste. He's lost $100 and a hand truck in one week. Maybe we'll fire his ass soon.
Next week is only gonna get better, as tomatoes ripen and corn starts falling into our arms. Tabouleh is on the menu! Let's throw another picnic.
-Adam
