In 1990, on a dark night south of Market Street in San Francisco, prior to SoMa being consumed by half-baked loft developments-more live/pose than live/work-it was easy to see that the budding rave scene unfolding in abandoned warehouses was something significant, something capable of being a defining cultural phenomenon for, actually, several generations.
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Because everyone was involved: aging queers, young dykes, college jocks, doll-faced 408-ers, middle-aged academics, single mothers, brooding filmmakers, La Raza activists, zenithing restaurateurs and art-curious kids from the sticks, like myself, all hypnotized by the thrum of bass through our helium-glazed bellies and a thick spritz of ketamine-clouded perspiration. In Santa Fe too, with or without mind-altering substances and Marshall stacks, the best events and the richest cultures are inexplicable blends of age, gender, race, cultural history and even economic latitude.
Which is why, at a cocktail party last week, where I had occasion to swill vodka-laced gazpacho in shot glasses in precisely such company, with the notable addition of a large and mindful bodyguard on the state payroll, I was shocked to be assaulted by a wee cabal of, er, mature artists harping on mine and, apparently, SFR's tendency to promote young artists at the detriment of publicity and acknowledgement due those who've, well, paid their dues.
"But we're not losing older, established artists by the boatload," I countered, feeling behind me for a weapon but only managing to stick my finger into the tuna paté. "We're not focusing on young artists right now because it's all we care about, or because they describe the totality of the vibrant culture here, we're doing it because they're leaving and it's a crisis. It takes all stripes actively interlocking to create a truly remarkable and sustainable community." Though, to be honest, I probably stammered and mumbled as I said something similar, but less eloquent and with more gazpacho pouring over my lip. If, rather than collecting a double helping of meat-on-a-stick and a pocket full of olives, I'd instead gathered my wits, I might have gone on, "You already own homes and have careers and retirement plans or basements full of psilocybin or some kind of savings. Plus, I'm no teenager, but if more age range isn't preferable to less, why'd you invite me?" If I'd been not only witty, but clairvoyant, I could have said, "Next Monday, the New Mexican is going to publish the results of a study showing that 26 percent of high school graduates here are likely to attend college out of state, compared to 16 percent in other Western states." Now, obviously, if we don't have a healthy, active and engaged older generation then we have no mentors and the culture stagnates. But if we have no one to be mentored, all we have is a retirement community. I mean, no one's chasing out the entrenched middle-aged and elder population, right?
Or are they? A few days later, at another party-this time a farewell soirée for a couple who've just sold their beautiful, gorgeously renovated, modern-ish home in Santa Fe and are packing it all in to go live in an entire, massive brick schoolhouse with 25' ceilings and elegantly crafted archways and walls of windows in New York, because the cost of living isn't really any higher and it appears to be a strategically superior decision for their health as creative professionals-I got to talking to a neighbor of mine who, after years, is also considering moving, at least out of the city limits. It turns out that he owns an empty lot next to his existing house and he's been planning to build his dream home there, almost-maybe-affordable because, in the great northern New Mexico tradition, he'd do most of the construction himself or with friends, saving many thousands of dollars on labor. However, high impact fees and the well-intentioned, but gone awry, toilet retro-fit program will eat up those savings before he ever turns a spade or sets a brick. Those fees, meant to curb rampant development, have become just another line-item for major developers, passed on to purchasers, but a major stumbling block for a modest family looking to build their own home on a city lot they invested in 10 or more years ago and are still scraping up the money to start construction on.
Last Friday night at Sunrise Springs, when Donkey Gallery cohort and artist David Leigh spoke about his participation in the SFR-sponsored, multi-city arts event, BLOC-BUSTA, he said it was rewarding to meet people in the course of the project with a history of being engaged in their communities, because-from his perspective-motivated organizers tended to stick around Santa Fe, whereas they're much more transient in Albuquerque, coming through for school and then drifting off toward new horizons and broader possibilities. But after watching several Albuquerque spaces-Bivouac, Trevor Lucero Studio and Factory on Fifth, in addition to Donkey-blossom over the past year while Skeleton Art closed its doors and No Man's Land instigator Pat Kikut took a teaching position in Wyoming, the Paramount signed off for one final stage dive, and the actions and whisperings of exodus reached abundance on the casual cocktail circuit, one could be forgiven for being less than certain about who's more transient than who.
Still, for a brief moment, shortly after Leigh's comments and over on Second Street, committed local organizer Alia Munn gamely announced raft after raft of otherworldly design at the Home Grown Fashion Show to a teeming audience that numbered close to 500-modern primitive fire dancers, retro-punk rockers, bicycle hooligans, frolicking children, barrio neighbors, beer-swilling construction workers, middle-aged dykes, teen-aged queers, aged world-travellers, vegan hippies, inner-city DJs, topless and painted hallucinatory muses and frustrated critics from the sticks, like myself, all feeling the thrum of familiar beats course through our pulses, quickened in the damp air, buzzing with applause, laughter and the easy possibility of a community that could do this over and over again-and I didn't have to know where anyone was going to be this time next year.
