*ZinesFromOuterSpace* This list is on life support

[gl@mortr@mp]

On Thu, August 1, 2013 11:31 am, Sonja Trauss wrote:
> why did you get banned?
>
>

I sent this (forwarded post below) to the general Discuss list a long time
ago, but here it is again. My banning occurred at the same time that a
number of others---many of them friends of mine, like Pirate Mike and
Belle-Star---were also banned from Noisebridge. It has an unfortunate
history of going through these fascist phases. My life is rich & full & my
contentment unscathed---as great a space as Noisebridge is, it's but one
facet of the prism of this City, & I've got lots of other facets to check
out---but I keep getting "so-and-so subscribed to the zine list"
notifications in my inbox, which is what triggered this post. I'm going to
nuke the list next Monday Aug. 5th if no one shows interest in taking it
over. Now then, here is my last post to NB-Discuss which explains the
banning from my perspective. Doubtless you will get other perspectives
from "the opposition" & the chatroom trolls...if you want to swim in that
shark tank. I'm on to far more edifying & enjoyable pursuits, good luck
y'all! +11+

*******************FORWARDED MESSAGE FOLLOWS************

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 (in their
view) 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 with 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. Ronnie & 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 Ronnie 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, & R 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. R & 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+