this is what concerns me

This week and next I’ll be guest-blogging about San Francisco neighborhoods, real estate, transit and other pertinent junk over at Curbed SF. You might remember I was the editor of Curbed SF back in 2008. It’s kind of fun to be back on my old beat, but I’d forgotten how stressful quota blogging is — especially when it comes to the snarky commenters. For as much as I complain about it, I kind of like the self-congratulatory back-patting world of comics a bit better.

A bit!

My story is finally finished! You can check it out at Spot.Us. 4,000 words!? In its hugeness, it looks like the graphic might be breaking their site though — if you can’t get it to work, try this mirror. And let me know what you think! The project is finished, but we’re still looking for the last $70 in funding if we can get it — donations will be open through Friday.

So far I’ve raised $600 for my story about Mid-Market blight and troubles, past and future, at California crowdfunding journalism site Spot.Us. I’m humbled and amazed by the generosity of my friends and strangers — and I’m surprised by the general interest in this topic. The story will be finished in two weeks (hey Newsom, call me back!) but in the meanwhile, I’ve been posting brief updates on the Spot.Us site. My most recent one concerned this little infographic seen here.

When McSweeney’s hired me to write this story for the Panorama, they also hired graphic designer Laura Foxgrover to work up an accompanying infographic that would include my reporting on the individual empty buildings plus a map of the Mid-Market area. I’m working with Laura to update the graphic for Spot.Us and I’ll be paying her 15% of whatever I raise. This is just an unreadable preview of Laura’s most recent draft — we’ll be adding a bunch more info to the map by the time the piece is out.

I finally got my shit together and printed up a new batch of these suckers. These ones have slightly less awesome cover paper, and are a new black and white line art design instead of the old color painting… HOWEVER: I am hand-painting all of them. Still $5! And you can request colors on your order! Apologies for those of you who’ve ordered them in the last couple weeks — yours will be going out ASAP.

I think I’ll publish a second issue even though I swore I’d never do another legal-sized comic again (those things are expensive). This is causing some awkward rewriting but I think it’ll be worth it, as it’s more of the ethics and conflict chapter after the introduction. However! There won’t be a third issue, mainly because the first and second issues are taking a lot of things out of order and a third issue wouldn’t make any sense. Pro tip: don’t ever write slice-of-life comics with delicate, overwrought bell-curve narratives that sorely depend on delicate, overwrought senses of timing without clearly rendered chapter endings and then try to chop them up into self-publishable chunks. (Chances are you haven’t and won’t have this problem but just thought I’d share.) So I’m aiming for #2 to be done for Stumptown if not the Anarchist Book Fair in March! And if no one wants to publish the book then the continuation of the Great Recession into 2010 will have to be enough real-life first-person awful shit for you, I’m sorry.

Also, if you’ve ordered a copy of #1, I’m reprinting a new crop with a new hand-watercolored cover next week, along with a new This is What Concerns Me. I know I’ve been leading you on with promises of new comics these past weeks but they’re happening, they just haven’t become acquainted with my scanner just yet… Yet!

So I didn’t get the Xeric grant to publish Nine Gallons as the 96-page paperback book I’d like to. I’m not sure how I feel about the Kickstarter business plan (especially since I’ve already got a Spot.Us project in the works, and one should only have so many hats on the ground) — so I was wondering what my readers might suggest for a next step? Would you like to see the second chapter of Nine Gallons as a minicomic? (The story is kind of disjointed so this would require some storytelling finesse that I’m not sure I have.) Would you prefer to see the whole book by the end of 2010? And if the latter, um, know anyone with about $2500 they’d be willing to part with to publish it?

This seems like kind of an odd public request, but this book takes on some pretty odd subject matter, and I’d really like to get some feedback as to how salable it may or may not be. And FYI, spoiler alert, I don’t draw myself nude or in underwear at any point in the rest of the book, so take that fact into consideration in your answer.

And then I shall reward you all with some new downer This is What Concerns Mes!

For the last two months I’ve been working on a hefty 2,000 word story about Mid-Market blight in San Francisco for the McSweeney’s San Francisco Panorama newspaper. Early this morning I received word that management had killed the article a few hours before the paper hits the streets. Instead of punching a wall or giving up journalism forever, I’ve decided to try the crowd-funding system at Spot.us to help this story get published after all. I have some interested parties but the extra money certainly won’t hurt; it’ll also give me the opportunity to do some more reporting and dig deeper in what has already proven to be a juicy and unique piece. I’ve already invested dozens of hours by way of city maps, planning documents, and first-person interviews, but I think there’s always more to be done. Also, this way I can include a section on how Dave Eggers himself didn’t want to take out office space on mid-Market because the neighborhood was too troubled. Meta!

I hate the idea of asking for donations, but if this story would interest you personally I would appreciate any small amount you could give. If you think it sounds boring, I don’t want your money! Spend it on some comics instead, okay?

I took the CBEST test today in the first step to becoming a credentialed substitute teacher in California (and Oregon!). That was some embarrassingly easy shit, I tell you what. Though I did enjoy the essay question on “the little everyday things that make [me] happy.” Indoor plumbing! I also finished the test in two hours and ten minutes, which is a little more than half of the time allotted; I was the first person finished in a room of about 30.

My favorite question, though, was in the reading comprehension section. There was a little anecdote about why teachers should dress nicely for work, because if they show up in “dirty jeans and sloppy T-shirts” then students won’t respect them. One of the questions asked what the article’s author had intended for this sloppy teacher example to indicate. One of the options? “That the teacher is a dangerous extremist.” That was hardly the only time I was nearly persuaded to answer jokingly. The Magpie and the Fox fable was simarily enticing. I’m going to make a terrible teacher. I can’t wait!!

You may have seen these in my Shared Items in the sidebar, but if not…

The nice folks at Vegansaurus loaned me their soapbox for a little bit of rant and a little bit of comics talk. And then the Daily Cross Hatch was kind enough to post my Open Letter to SPX, wherein I ask a lot of questions I heard in whispers over the weekend. So basically this post is to alert any of you in case my body washes up in the Bay soon. I’m writing my last will and testament. Who wants my cat?

From this week’s missive. “A metastudy by several U.S. universities applied the Tightwad-Spendthrift scale to romantic relationships and determined that cheap and profligate people can love each other.”

I’m not saying it’s not possible, just highly unlikely, at least from where I’m standing. More from the study itself:

“That is, ‘tightwads,’ who generally spend less than they would ideally like to spend, and ’spendthrifts,’ who generally spend more than they would ideally like to spend, tend to marry each other, consistent with the notion that people are attracted to mates who possess characteristics dissimilar to those they deplore in themselves (Klohnen and Mendelsohn 1998). In spite of this complementary attraction, spendthrift/tightwad differences within a marriage predict conflict over finances, which in turn predict diminished marital well-being.”

I love the heavy parsing on “diminished marital well-being.” But I’m sad to hear that these tightwads are so ashamed and self-hating. I think moderate to extreme cheapness is one of the most attractive traits in a potential mate; I actually become very anxious around people who spend more than they should. But I never would have suspected that this is a rarity. Especially in this economy, amirite?