The Be Space

This is Baltimore Avenue, with its century-old trolley tracks and it 10-year old bike lanes. In some ways it has drasticly changed since 1989, when I arrived in the neighborhood, but the memories remain clear as a bell. You see the row of four buildings, which are (L to R):

The A Space. A is for Anarchist, and I'm a founding member, now restoring its tin ceiling, and a former resident. We started it in 1991 and it's an event venue for the community and it's home of Books Through Bars, which sends free books to prisoners by the ton.

Sandy's house. Sandy will not sell it, nor paint it, nor rent out the storefront. She's just a nice lady who has been here since the 1960s.

Mariposa Food Co-op (current location, since 1972). The new place is costing more to get ready than was expected, but the final construction push begins next week and it's slated for opening this fall.

Vientianne Restaurant. The Laotian owner & family started a pirate eatery in their side yard about a dozen years ago, and it quickly became the most popular in this part of the city. After the city closed it down, they catered & did take-out from the front door, and finally they were approached by an intelligent realtor as the ideal tenant of this building. Popular as all heck again, but not as cheap as under "The Blue Tarp."

Next is an empty lot, formerly the end of a bolt & chain factory. the rest of the site is a lovely community garden, but this small lot has chemical tanks under the ground, so the garden didn't want it. Its side wall has a mitten-shaped growth of vines, along with the print of a disappeared billboard and a long-forgotten amateur mural. This lot is called the Be Space by longtime residents because it was once colonized by a group called Everybody's Kitchen, who drove all over the country in an old school bus, cooking food and giving it away wherever they parked. They parked in front of A Space about 20 years ago and soon irritated Everybody by sitting all over the sidewalk and being boorish, and seeming like they would never leave. In the Be Space (their satire on the A Space) featured living room furniture and a canvas awning. After about a month of growing displeasure, the whole neighborhood (including most of the anarchists) organized for their departure, and off they went, saying that they finally secured a new battery just hours before a super-sized tow truck came to drag them off. They were an unwashed lesson on how to abuse hospitality and preach radicalism stupidly to a neighborhood full of radicals.

The sidewalk is filled with people because it's the day of the monthly Dollar Stroll, and the Laotians are selling skewered chicken & tofu for a buck. Seven blocks of the avenue fill up with outsiders once a month on the first Thursday, and here there are again.

One has to live in the same place for a long time before even the disused lots have stories popping up from their soil.