this is what concerns me

I’ve been so busy with preparations for this weekend’s San Francisco Zine Fest events that I haven’t done much to promote them! So here goes!

Tomorrow evening I’m doing my first ever comics reading, at the Cartoon Art Museum starting at 7 p.m. I think I’m third in the line-up, which includes such luminaries as Jonas Madden-Connor, Jamaica Dyer, Jesse Reklaw, Ed Luce, Noah Van Sciver, Eli Bishop (who made the flyer) and John Freaking Porcellino. Food, drink and entertainment for a measly $5 — but tell ‘em you’re poor and you’re in free! I’ll be reading a compilation of Nine Gallons stories, mostly from the nearly finished second issue, which no one has yet seen. Special!

Then on to the County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park for the Zine Fest proper! This weekend I’ll have all the old and less-old comics on hand for con-special low prices, plus some brand new purchase-ables: three-color screenprints, small postcard-sized prints and five different pin-back buttons! All for cheap or potentially free with book purchases. I’m also selling a bunch of original art of various size and quality, priced to move from $2-$75. And! I also contributed this centerfold to Laura Beck’s Fat Zine, which will be making its sassy debut as well.

On Sunday at 2 p.m., I’ll be moderating a panel about small-press journalism in San Francisco with a seriously stellar line-up: Michael Stoll (founder, SF Public Press), Dan Archer (reportage cartoonist and Knight fellow at Stanford), Josh Wilson (proprietor, Independent Arts + Media), Antonio Roman-Alcala (founder, SF Arts + Politics zine), and Mat Honan (Longshot Mag). Bring your tough questions and notepads!

Bonus: I’ll be sharing a table with the lovely and talented Joey Sayers, whose autobiographical Just So You Know series is a goddamn revelation. So if you can make it out (Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.) we’d be more than happy to accommodate your moneys, or at least your companies.

So much to see! Maybe even too much! But I hope not!

I moved from San Francisco to the East Bay last summer, and while I do like Joanna Newsom — and even San Francisco! — I think this is an apt critique of the city and the woman.

San Francisco has a major chip on its shoulder. Anything that comes out of the city (Joanna and Gavin Newsom, for instance) tends to have a cast of staunch, very vocal, overly educated, not necessarily well-informed, yet well-connected supporters who will defend any product of the City by the Bay to the death. So it’s not so much that people like Joanna Newsom, but that they’ve been bullied by those S.F. types into thinking they’ve got something really hot on their hands there.

Truly, I can’t even say “New York” within those 49 square miles lest I be attacked by a roving band of insecure self-described hipsters wearing Williamsburg-like fashions circa 2006/2007. Bitches be crazy with their inferiority and superiority complexes in that place. They probably wouldn’t even attack, they’d just blog about it later like they had, and get tons of likes on Tumblr from all their S.F. friends. Honestly, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of incentive to grow within the positive feedback loop here, and I find it stifling sometimes. Break the cycle, kids!

Anyway, as a side note, I’m great at imitating Newsom’s ‘teething infant’ act; feel free to ask me to do this at a party some time after I’ve had a couple drinks.

I mean Joanna, not Gavin, of course.

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.

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 realize this blog has become a clearinghouse of excuses as of late, but what can I say? It’s in the works, but so are a lot of new comics and, well, you know my priorities.

Speaking of which, this coming weekend, I’ll be exhibiting at the San Francisco Zine Fest at the County Fair Building’s Hall of Flowers in the Inner Sunset. It’s completely free, besides your N-Judah fair or gas, plus the willpower to withstand the Sunset fog, and there will be 100 exhibitors, several interesting workshops and lots of cute 20 and 30 something hipsters with tattoos and expensive cheap-looking clothes. I don’t have the latter two, but I’m still hoping to move some comics (I’m even reprinting some of last year’s stuff, since I now live around the corner from a $.02 copy place). I’m also whipping up some affordably priced watercolors for the occasion, and I might even offer $5 portraits. Plus: free chocolate chip cookie with every purchase.

I think the “Zine” part of this fest is sort of misleading, as the majority of the exhibitors seem to be cartoonists, small publishers or crafters. But I won’t get snarky about my take on how worthwhile it is to make a zine in 2009 considering the love-in poster over there, plus the fact that I’ll be Xeroxing, folding, trimming and stapling more than I’d like to admit over the next few days.

SPX was sweet. The minicomic I made for it will be going up in part on Flickr over the coming days, plus I’ll even leave my apartment for a time to drop some off at the usual spots. They’re a paltry $2 each — even you can afford that in this economy. And because I like self-torture, I’m going to make a new lil’ something for APE, too, so stay tuned for some preview panels maybe.

In other news, I wrote another one of these political cartoon book dealies, this one campaign specific. The yearly book will be out in a few more weeks, and I’m writing a depressing forward on the state of political cartooning for it, so there’s lots to look forward to.

AND ALSO: I’m the new editor of Curbed SF. What-what? Yeah, about that whole leaving the apartment thing… Only to get more coffee.

After all that, I registered too late to get a table at APE. Unfortunately, the state approved my application for a temporary seller’s permit, so I still have to file a tax return after the event — which means I might as well sell something!

So I’m working on a mini about my more noteworthy Food Not Bombs experiences. This was one of them. But there will be more. (Incidentally, a brief Googling after I drew this seagull turned up some really disturbing YouTube videos of the act in progress that I refuse to link to here; I stand disgusted and corrected.)

I did this piece for the Gutenberg, a new little magazine out of the Bay Area. The colors are just for fun/learning Photoshop, though — it’ll be black and white in print.

I originally wanted to cover seed bombs, but apparently those are too mainstream now? I guess I’m out of touch with the youth culture these days.

Either way, worms are cool, too.