Hello,
The new potential space on 8th & Alice by Laney sounds cool. On its face it
seems about the same price per square foot as the Omni (base+projected
NNN). I'd love to check it out.
I realize the landowners of this space are trying to attract
light-industrial hackerspacey folk, ostensibly in an effort to incubate
startups out of Laney, so I'm not sure how the Bay Area Public School might
fit into this scheme as a possible co-tenant, and I guess that concerns me
in a worried-for-the-revolution sort of way.
Call me a sap, but I would like Sudo and the Public School to move
somewhere together. To me that is more important than where we move. I
think it's a more ambitious, radical vision than moving somewhere each on
our own, or even Sudo moving in with a bunch of other hackerspaces.
BAPS and Sudo have truly complementary visions which I think is special. I
also like the idea of creating a big radical space where a variety of
community needs are served - imagine walking in and being able to take a
language or political philosophy class at BAPS, or 3d print at Sudo, or
letterpress / print something at Timeless Infinite Light, or cut a film,
use the darkroom, or hear a talk, or perform, or radically organize? A site
of radical production; a radical space thats a nexus for new ways of
building community, instead of balkanizing it into a diaspora of separate
spaces struggling just to survive and get by. A whole, that is greater than
the sum of its parts kind of thing. A place for a greater kind of
community, not one echo chamber for hackers, and another one across town
for poets. A place that we would one day *own*. Dreaming big.
I'm not married to the Omni, but the 8th & Alice space is envisioned by the
developers seems a little like an adjunct to Laney, with a (however noble)
capitalist vision of incubating tech out of this community... dare I say,
perhaps a kind of after-school program for Laney students sort of vibe? Is
this anything to worry about?
But more to the point, what about BAPS and Sudo not breaking up, wherever
we end up?
Love,
David