The real lifestylists are the liberal yuppies who drive their Mercedes to Fresh Fields and think that their consumerism is making a difference.
Chuck0
L P wrote:
>
> Yes, I live 20 minutes from Berkeley and have many
> stories about it. It's impossible to breathe in
> Berkeley without hurting someone's feelings.
>
> quotation start:
> Once several years ago, I took a girlfriend to a movie
> in Berkeley and made the mistake of buying a box of
> popcorn. We ate our popcorn and I would say that we
> weren't chomping or making a lot of noise but the guy
> in front of me turned around and in a frustrated voice
> asked us to stop eating the popcorn because we were
> intefering with the movie. My date and I looked at
> each other and then ate very carefully and slowly
> so as not to make any noise. Again the person turned
> around and asked in a harsh voice that we move.
> quote end-
> ------------------------
> sigh - Yes, there are a couple people like that in Berkeley, but really not
> too many of them though. I guess I'd say that those are liberals - they are
> probably the constituency that keeps Whole Foods supermarket open. Whole
> Foods has no advantages over other stores - it has dramatically higher
> prices and is famous for union busting, and merely has some produce labeled
> organic. They're the same people responsible for the situation in the
> Berkeley bowl parking lot where one almost gets run over by angry drivers
> fighting over parking spots nearly every time.
> and with regards to lifestylists - hell yes Berkeley is the home of
> lifestyle anarchists. That is half of what it's all about. However, I've
> really come around since I moved here to start to appreciate them a bit
> more. I'm not talking about lifestyle liberals - who would be the
> hypocritical organic food nuts described above, but it is just a fact that
> lots of middle class white people who aren't particularly oppressed just
> could not understand or identify with the notion that the government doesn't
> have such good intentions were it not for their personal drug use or
> feelings of persecution for their aesthetic taste or sexual choices. When I
> first moved here a couple years ago when I was 23, my BF and I were equally
> turned off by the Long Haul 'infoshop' because there are these people who
> smoke marijuana there all day and they had the door locked and wouldn't let
> us in, and no ordinary Oakland person not in the scene would accidentally go
> in there, and it was such a pale comparison to the Black Cat Cafe of
> Seattle. My perspective was largely shaped by writing and helping out with
> Eat the State! in Seattle whose editors Maria Tomchick and Geov Parrish both
> have working class backgrounds in rural areas, and are totally with-it.
> Their newspaper is quite approachable for the not already 'nlightened'
> whereas Slingshot here is directed at people within the anarchist community.
> REcently though, I am spending a lot more time with semi-lifestylist groups
> such as Reclaim the Streets (whose actions I would rarely miss now) and
> critical mass etc - because they are able to get so many more people
> involved and they're fun, and they actually have won things when they ally
> with one cause or the other. The cyclists actually won a bike lane over the
> bay bridge which costs many millions of dollars, not to mention a tremendous
> local infrastructure for bikes.
>
> Here are some pictures of something a week ago that captures about 1/3 of
> the local Berkeley nuts. the hippie with the 'stop the draft' sign is an
> exception to the rule - there aren't many hippies around here. He is the
> 'father of people's park' and he runs for office all the time and is a total
> acid casualty. He thought I was a conservative for my red coat and blue
> shirt. But all of this captures what Berkeley is like - first, notice all
> the white people - Berkeley is pretty expensive so serious political
> activists plus lifestylers tend to be middle class europeans, even though
> the university isn't so at all, nor is the city or region as a whole. Also,
> there is such an amazing concentration of wingnuts and mentally ill people
> here.
> Here is the web site for the SF Mime Troupe's Bay Area Patriot's
> association: http://www.geocities.com/bapasf
> my pictures (and yes, I realize I have a leering and perhaps inappropriate
> focus on mentally ill people burning flags and advocating front yard tipis)
> http://www.gelatinous.com/gallery/danh99
>
> and this is perhaps the most rewarding link to click on of pictures:
> http://monkeydyne.com/photos/pics.phtml?d=bapa
>
> City politics is pretty interesting here because so many of the
> councilmembers are almost deranged such as the mayor here:
> http://www.dailycal.org/article.asp?id=8044
>
> They bicker a lot, and all these crazy people hang out at the council
> meetings. For instance, there is a $6 million k-12 budget shortfall, but
> they spend all their time arguing over whether to ban school field trips to
> a 'science center' near the university because the university has a tritium
> labeling facility - which seriously offers almost zero threat to public
> health. Yet, 6 miles north in Richmond there are a lot of oil refineries and
> chemical plants which have horrible accidents every 3 months or so which
> spew awful acid and smoke over a vast region, mostly populated by not
> european-american or middle class individuals.
>
> Christine
>
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