january 2006

Our Beer Buddhist Sangha reconvened last night, our first post-Drew get together. (We missed you Drew!) The remaining three of us, Mr. A, Mr. R, and moi, met up in the Castro, where we caught the 6 p.m. showing of the documentary, Gay Sex in the Seventies.

As the film moved through it reminiscences of gay men who experienced the liberation of the post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS days, inevitably the film wound its way down to the outbreak of the mysterious "gay cancer". However, instead of ending solely on a mournful note, it also showed a community reacting, organizing, to save itself despite the fear and indifference that signified much of "government" response in the early days of the epidemic.

Post film, we walked down Castro to Nirvana, as we had little hope of getting in to the new Burmese place on Eighteenth. Despite being a second choice, the food and ambience were good, and we spent a long time talking about friends and lovers and clients who had died of AIDS...and since friends and lovers and clients are still getting infected with HIV, are still living and are still dying of AIDS, despite all the new medications and all that we know today, now would be a good time to write a check to the Stop AIDS Project.

...but I have seen "Breakfast on Pluto". It was...lovely, and captivating. It didn't exactly follow the book, but you could say that it followed the "spirit" of the book, even as it went off a different path here and there. I am waiting for the soundtrack to be released, this week, I think. I might even buy it. And I do plan to get around to seeing Brokeback Mountain...some time before the Oscars.

This past Friday's Berkeley Daily Planet had several articles on planning issues related to downtown Berkeley. Downtown Berkeley isn't dead, but it is bleeding reasons to frequent it and it does seem to be going through another one of its existential crises, especially in relation to its relation with whatever plans the University might be fomenting.

What becomes a downtown more? A wonderful little resource like Mod Lang, sadly in the process of relocating to beautiful downtown El Cerrito or yet another gelato/coffee/juice shop?

I work downtown, outlay a large portion of my discretionary consumer spending in Berkeley, and care about having a downtown that can accommodate more than the mostly white, mostly older, mostly well-off folks who seem to frequent the Rep and eat at Downtown and the students, both high school and university, who just want cheap eats and places to hang out on their way to and from class.

I have very little faith that Berkeley is capable of planning it's way of the challenges that its downtown faces, not all of which are caused by its very smart and mostly well-intentioned citizens. It won't be saved by an Arts District and it won't be saved by a open creek or a new, big hotel. More density won't save it, even though I support more opportunities for people to live and work downtown. It might be saved by an expansive imagination and a sense of humour...and some attention to parking...or it might not be saved at all.