The land isn't for sale. The land's never been for sale. The land has been taken by the biggest bullies in the lunchroom: The US Government. Now they hold the land hostage and make us pay obscene ransoms just to have access to what belonged to all of us to begin with.
I never sold my land. Did you?
If you, like me, are one of those people who don't want to spend their whole life running on a hamster wheel (aka 'the american dream') to appease bullies with payments of your lunch money just to have the privilege of sitting at your own table and eating your lunch in peace; if you, like me, want to live simply, with less stuff, in community with other artists, in a way that's actively moving our larger culture towards sustainability, and doing work that serves the community and doesn't generate a lot (or maybe any) income, it takes resourceful thinking to secure decent shelter for yourself.
Some non-traditional ways I've sheltered myself have included: squatting in abandoned buildings for the last year ('08-present) (here's a link to a little clip on indymedia of me and my first squat), living on a houseboat on the coast of Brooklyn (2004), camping out while on bike-tours behind churches and schools, and living up on the roof of a Latino musicians collective in an 8x9 blue nylon camping tent I got for $50 off of Ebay (Dec. '06 - Apr. '08).
Other ways I've considered sheltering myself, and may one day try-out include: living in a biodiesel bus or van, living in a low rent housing co-op, camping up the canyon like SYP! mandolinist Ben Abbott, pooling money with other poor people and buying land collectively, or just rambling. In the meantime, here's the tale of the tent:
THE TENT! From mid-December 2006 to mid-May 2008, I lived up on the roof of a Latino musicians collective in a blue, 8' x 9' summer camping tent I got for $50 on Ebay (In May '08 I relocated the tent down to the patio/deck due to neighbor concerns). It's not only been amazing in a "looks-like-base-camp-on-Everest" kind of way, or the "feel like an anthropologist on a wilderness expedition of San Francisco every night" kind of way, but also a "$100 a month rent" kind of way.I haven't modified it too much since I got it - just put a tarp over the "rain flap" (which on a $50 tent is no more than another sheet of blue nylon) to keep the rain out, and I ran an extension cord out of the upstairs bathroom window and through my front door (zippers baby) for electricity. In fact, I'm writing this from inside the glowing dome.
Sometimes it's cold, sometimes it's windy. Sometimes it's VERY windy. The other night we had a pelting rain storm and 70mph winds and my tarp-roof was snapping and flapping like a snare drum ensemble practicing. I pulled all my storm gear on and went out with my duct tape and just started cinching down every inch of excess flappiness like a sea captain roping down sails in a gail. Pretty soon it got down to just about one drummer. Even so, going to sleep was tough - the walls of the tent kept heaving in and out from the heavy wind gusts like as if it were going through seizures. I imagined getting blown in my sleep all the way to Utah and waking up dazed on the front lawn of my parents house, surrounded by a pile of wet clothes and papers and busted tent mess... Or maybe I'd wake up in China...where they'd be making versions of SHAKE YOUR PEACE! for 80% less than I'm making it for. Maybe I'd wake up in Oz... where Dorthy would have giant hairy man legs and a booming baritone busting out of her fabulous red sparkly leotard... wait! That's not Oz! That' s the Castro! And lo, he awoke and found before him the shining city of San Francisco, and it was good. But the cool part about being in Oz is that I can jump in my blue hot air balloon and get taken back to the wilderness at any time baby. This is the hot air balloon from the ground:
It's sort of a half-buried hot air balloon. An emerging balloon. A balloon-rise. Here it is again at night:
This shot reminds me of Crested Butte, Colorado one winter when the town got buried in so much snow that the tops of the trees were no more than round lumps coming out of 13 feet of ground level snow. It was like if you stuck a small piece of broccoli under a huge white linen bed sheet - it was just one seamless flow of soft white with small ripples here and there.
Anyways - the snow made every light, big or small, glow like a yellow christmas light, just like in this picture.
A funny story about that trip though, is that one time in the house we were staying in, all of the bathrooms became occupied at the same time, and I really really had to shit. I couldn't hold it. So I grabbed a chair, dug a path out to the road with it, then ran toward a wall of snow that I knew had an open field underneath it. I dug at the wall of snow until I made a little trail into it. Now it was getting into danger zone. Before I realized I had no toilet paper I'd already hung my ass off one edge of the chair and was squeezing out steamers into the Antarctic landscape. Shortly thereafter I noticed that I hadn't really thought about the fact that you pee when you poo, and was more than amused to find out that I'd just peed all over the inside of my pants, as well as the wooden chair whose top was now turning into an ice-skating rink the size of a 12-inch record. What was even funnier was when I finally did realize that I had no toilet paper. And funnier than that, that these were the only ski pants that I'd brought. And even funnier that I was so supposed to compete in them the next day at the ESPN2 Winter X-Games - which turned out to be the pinnacle of my extreme sports career. Yes, indeed, I was in the Winter X-Games once. First and last time. You might say that career sort of went down the shit hole.... But hey, at least I found that shit hole and filled it that time. Skill ladies and gentleman! I filled the shit hole with skill! One brown steamer on an Arctic expedition signing off.
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