[Noisebridge-discuss] The Not-So-Great Glass Elevator / banning me

Tue Jul 9 02:09:28 UTC 2013

I think discussion about what happens at Noisebridge and information concerning consensus items is very much on-topic for Noisebridge-discuss.

Jeffrey

On Jul 8, 2013, at 6:25 PM, hep <dis at gruntle.org> wrote:

> This is srsly like the fifth time you have emailed the list to say you are never coming back. Can we plz keep room mate drama off this list? 
> 
> -hep 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 5:41 PM, gl at mortr@mp <glamortramp at riseup.net> wrote:
> I accidentally sent this to Noisebridge ANNOUNCE the first time, instead
> of Discuss. Please delete the Announce posting, whoever's able to do so.
> 
> Dear Noisebridge & others,
> 
> Tony Longshanks LeTigre here with what I intend to be my final message to
> this mailing list. I unsubscribed my Gmail account from NB-Discuss earlier
> this year but left my Riseup subscribed in Digest mode. Not once in the
> past few months have I so much as glanced at the Digest, but now I hear
> I'm on the agenda to be banned from Noisebridge at tomorrow night's
> meeting. The crime, according to rumor, is my now-infamous mishap with the
> Noisebridge elevator that happened back in May. I feel the need to correct
> a little misinfo that's been going around re: said incident. But first,
> let me say what an honor it is to be deemed important enough to warrant an
> agenda item at the Tuesday night meeting. What a shame I probably won't be
> able to attend! For what it's worth, I am fully in favor of being banned,
> & in fact I have already to a large extent banned myself from Noisebridge
> by ceasing to work & spend any time there, as a couple people may have
> noticed.
> 
> Truth is, I don't wish to attend the meeting, or spend time at NB any
> more, because my recent experiences there, on the few occasions when I've
> stopped by, have been largely negative & repellent. Leif & others seem to
> have taken on the role of "the management" & are banning people right &
> left (including a number of my friends & now myself), patrolling the
> space, & otherwise making an Orwellian mockery of this supposedly
> "anarchist" hackerspace. If what I hear is true---& I hope it's lies &
> distortions---it sounds as though those in power have done away with
> consensus in favor of majority-rule democracy, have resorted to dredging
> up decade-old emails to justify slamming the door on people they don't
> like, & are attacking the kitchen with renewed force in hopes of closing
> it down & thereby doing away with the needy parasites that it attracts.
> Like many people who consider themselves anarcho-something-or-other, I
> have a strong principled dislike for police & authority figures---whether
> actual uniformed law enforcers, or just ordinary citizens with an
> unfortunate penchant for holding power & control over other humans.
> 
> Now, moving on to the elevator debacle. First of all, I never at any time
> LIVED, nor intended to live, in the 1st floor elevator compartment of 2169
> Mission. I pity the poor urchin who would consider that stuffy,
> junk-filled cubicle a desirable, or even possible, living space. For a
> couple weeks back in April/May of this year I was forced to store my
> clothes & other stuff in that compartment for lack of any other option.
> Yes, I knew I wasn't supposed to, but I felt that I had helped NB & its
> hangers-on enough in the past to justify this breach of etiquette, &
> anyway it was only a temporary stopgap til I found more suitable storage
> space. One afternoon/evening in early May I was in the cubicle arranging
> my things in preparation to move it all to a better spot I'd found.
> Normally I left the elevator door open so as not to be locked in the
> compartment if the elevator moved to a different floor, but in this case I
> knew it would take me a block of time to properly sort through all my
> crap, & I didn't want to monopolize the elevator if others needed to use
> it. So I closed the elevator door, locking myself in with a flashlight, &
> got to work. "What are the chances the elevator will have a meltdown
> during the one hour that I'm in here?" I asked myself (rhetorically).
> 
> To my amazed chagrin, that is exactly what happened. The elevator left the
> 1st floor & didn't come back. Eventually I figured out someone must have
> taken it offline. I decided there was nothing to do but wait for it to
> come back in service; in the meantime, I continued sorting & packing,
> until my flashlight went dead. Then, since I was tired, it was nighttime &
> I figured the elevator wouldn't be fixed until the next morning, I went to
> sleep as best I could in that cramped space. This is the one & only time I
> ever slept in that compartment, mind you, rumors to the contrary. When I
> woke 10 hours or so later, there was still no sign of the elevator
> returning to normal operations. Now, for the first time, I started to
> worry. I had minimal food & no water with me. I thought of the guy I'd
> heard about who had recently been crushed by the BART elevator after
> deciding to sleep on top of it. I tried to remain calm & occupied myself
> by going through all my belongings a second time, then a third....why the
> Hell wasn't anybody fixing the goddamned elevator? At a certain point I
> really started to freak out. After I'd spent more than 24 hours locked in
> that space, I was becoming seriously dehydrated. With a surge of
> adrenaline I grabbed a thick board & started pounding on the walls of the
> cubicle, hoping to attract attention. Then I smashed the glass diamond
> window in the elevator door & tried to reach through & somehow get the
> door to open from the outside. No luck, that thing's hydraulic, you'd have
> to be the Incredible Hulk. Finally, I managed to punch a hole with the
> board through the drywall. I enlarged it until I could crawl through into
> a dark, cobwebby crawlspace beneath the front staircase. I could hear
> people talking, walking up & down the stairs at intervals of a few
> minutes. I was out of the suffocating cubicle, but still not free. I began
> pounding at the stairs from below wioth the board, then slicing at them
> with a knife. At this point one of the guys from Mi Ranchito below NB in
> the same building came over to investigate all the noise & saw my
> knife-blade sticking through the gap in one of the steps. I don't know if
> he thought I was some insane burglar trying to break into the building, or
> what, but I managed to talk to him through a hole in the wall of the
> entryway. He brought me a bottle of water & called Wei Ho, the property
> owner, & got permission to tear up one of the stairboards so I could crawl
> out. Barely: it was so tight my chest got compressed on the way out, but I
> was free at last!
> 
> I was shaken & wanted to simply disappear, but I knew I had to stick
> around & deal with the consequences of my misadventure. I apologized to
> the Mi Ranchito guy, & to Wei Ho when he & his wife arrived a little while
> later to inspect the carnage. I asked Wei Ho not to blame Noisebridge for
> my poor judgement, took full responsibility for the incident & promised
> him I would fix the broken staircase. I spent the rest of the night
> patching the broken stair as best I could & cleaning up the entryway. My
> stuff remained in the cubicle, & the elevator was still offline, but I
> resolved to get in there, clean everything out & patch up the drywall as
> soon as humanly possible. Some of the hackers upstairs were privy to
> events below by this time & came down to question & shame me. In the event
> it was several more days before the elevator was operating again. (I still
> don't know what happened or why it was taken out of service, I hear
> something about the Department of Health.) I took what was most important
> of my things but left the rest. I lacked the skill to repair drywall &
> knew I should ask someone to help, but I really wanted to forget the whole
> incident. And that was pretty much that. I didn't get too much backlash
> for the event, until recently. That's because the elevator mishap is being
> used by Tom & Leif, I believe, as a scapegoat: the real reason I'm being
> censured at the present time is because I dared to defend one of my
> friends from their attacks.
> 
> It happened Friday night of Pride weekend, June 28. Veronica & I stopped
> at Noisebridge on our way downtown from the Castro. We were in a festive
> mood, which Noisebridge soon soured. Almost immediately we ran into people
> with attitude problems, & the space I'd once loved more than any other in
> San Francisco felt hostile & unfamiliar. Leif & Tom Lowenthal were
> patrolling the space swooping down on people they didn't like, issuing
> citations for bad behavior, threatening to kick people out. They harassed
> Jimmy Flowers---a generous guy & friend of Noisebridge who has been
> bringing in platters of free food several nights a week for a long
> time---until he stormed out of the space in a rage. I hadn't met Tom
> before, so I don't know if he was in an especially belligerent mood that
> night or if that was his normal lovely self, but he was on a rampage &
> didn't know when to quit. He reproached Veronica for eating the snacks
> Jimmy F had brought in, saying the food would be left out on the counter
> all night & attract rats & other vermin, a known problem in the past. His
> tone & attitude were way out of line, & V told him so, asking him to
> address her with respect & as an equal instead of barking orders. This
> enraged Tom further & he demanded she leave immediately & not come back to
> NB until next Tuesday meeting. At this point I stepped in & told him to
> back off, stop barraging the space with negativity & find something
> creative to work on. Tom then realized who I was & invoked the elevator
> incident to demand that I leave the space & never come back. I replied
> that I hardly ever spent time at NB these days anyway & said I'd leave in
> my own good time, not at his command. Tom continued badgering V & I,
> trying to drive us from the space, until even Leif was trying to calm him
> down. Eventually he subsided. V & I both left, separately & of our own
> volition, a short while later.
> 
> So that's that. I can't make the meeting tomorrow. Do what you will. If
> you value a piece of drywall more than me, my contributions & my life,
> then I don't want to be part of your community anyway. There was a time
> when walking up the long staircase of 2169 Mission filled my stomach with
> butterflies & my ears with sublime Cocteau Twins music: I knew I was about
> to enter my favorite spot in the City, surrounded by friends & limitless
> creative potential. It doesn't feel like that any more. Spaces change over
> time, & people do too, & maybe we're just not a good match any more. I
> don't want to be exiled from the space forever---I'd like to stop in from
> time to time, things could change after all & the hostility I sense now
> might dissipate, who knows?---but if that's not an option, my life will go
> on. I will always love the Noisebridge I remember. It was truly a
> life-changing miracle for me when I discovered it in 2011. I hope I get a
> chance to write about it all some day.
> 
> That's about it. Sorry, verbose as usual.
> 
> +11+
> 
> 
> --
> Glam...or tramp?
> 
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> hep
> hepic photography || www.hepic.net
>     dis at gruntle.org || 415 867 9472 
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