(2021-05-04) Solana Misery And Joy

Mike Solana: Misery and Joy. A honey trap for activists. If you’ve spent any time in San Francisco over the last half-decade you’ve seen a playful honey bear or two — or ten — on the side of a building, or in the window of a coy Victorian.

The project is a love letter to San Francisco, chosen home of Fnnch, the creative mind behind the work, and until about five seconds ago his bears were a beloved symbol of the city

he was harassed by a man named Dogtown Dro and baselessly charged with a variety of totally invented culture war crimes. Dro filmed the altercation and shared it to Instagram, as the entire dialogue was, of course, an exercise in attention grift

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, a loud, colorful Bizarro World version of San Francisco flexed in its bedazzled thong

There was the unmistakable sound of easy, casual laughter. It was Miami Tech Week. People were happy. This was allowed.

A tale of two cities

When he first began the honey bear project, he hoped to get people in the city excited about public space, and to challenge the public’s perception of street art

Dro’s bombastic video went viral, but it was a KQED piece that really focused the honey bear drama, and wove it into a broader call-to-arms narrative neatly summarizing Fnnch’s many political crimes: gentrification, cultural appropriation, and being “a straight, white, former tech worker.”

Why does any of this matter? Americans talk about San Francisco as often as we do because from its inception San Francisco has been a microcosm of America. It was a frontier town. It was a gold rush town.

Onto the invented crimes:

The technology industry, of which KQED was sure to mention Fnnch was once briefly a part, has been accused of pushing poor people out of the city for years. This is a lie popular among the local politicians who are actually responsible for the dramatic spike in our cost of living, and who have almost without exception benefited financially from this dramatic spike.

But it was the claim Fnnch engaged in cultural appropriation that really lit my world up.

The basic idea here is white, straight men are “stealing” culture from minority communities. In the first place, I fundamentally reject the premise. In a healthy society, culture is shared, and anyway, especially today, culture is viral.

First, a brief word from talking rat guy:

Generally speaking, when you hear the word “queer” you can safely assume it has nothing to do with gay people and everything to do with niche, activist bullshit

This is because gay people — just people, it turns out — have all sorts of political opinions

Fnnch was moved by the opportunity to paint for the LGBT Center because he has a deeply personal attachment to the cause of young gay people who need help. Twenty-five years ago his uncle died of HIV.

His work stands out because there’s very little else by way of art in San Francisco. This is because the culture and politics of the city — in terms of housing costs, a fetish for misery, and a local nativism hostile to people from out of town — are hostile to creative young people.

Meanwhile, in a city that loves immigration and building stuff:

the people of Miami, and the people of Florida more broadly, believe in growth. This is absolutely what attracted technologists to the region, which will continue to grow with or without the industry

Culture shapes our local politics, and only then do our local politics accelerate or kill a city’s growth. From there, everything (or nothing).

While San Francisco is a city that likes to talk about the virtue of art, Miami is a city where artists can afford to live. The city is therefore covered in actual art, and where there isn’t art there’s color.

It’s gym culture, it’s plastic surgery.

What we’re talking about here is a kind of shameless materialism.

Cars. Fashion. Fitness. Sex. Who cares? These things are not important. In San Francisco, we value “ideas.” In New York, we value “greatness.” But let’s attempt a little self-awareness. The physical stuff of San Francisco and New York is literally crumbling, which is something most reasonable people, including reasonable people from San Francisco and New York, find alarming. (infrastructure)

Lambo culture isn’t some shameful “other thing” that’s happening in Miami. Lambo culture seems to be the engine driving this entire city forward.

the people of Miami have been overwhelmingly welcoming to the tech community. This is because 1) the people of Miami are overwhelmingly welcoming to pretty much everyone, and 2) success is not a dirty word in Florida.

Are we (SF) the microcosm anymore? Maybe the better question is should we be the microcosm anymore?