My grandparents went their whole lives believing there was no such thing as a free lunch. These days, I hear a lot about the dying state of the free place while stumbling down Telegraph Avenue, staring bleary-eyed into a screen reading Amazon book reviews[1], waiting in line for another cup of coffee. The people we come into contact with are increasingly hopeless; often unadmittedly[2] apocalyptic. Half of them don’t wave anymore. We search out specific relationships and states of being we can’t put into words, yearning for that which is seemingly untainted by economic “value”. We are still a spectacular society.[3] We sit on fucking plastic Ikea chairs between a rock and a hard place, wondering if the mutual aid analysis of a dinner party is yet passé.[4] At the turn of the century, just as we began to notice our own alienation, they gave us goddamn virtual communities.[5] So instead, our estrangement comes out in mental abstractions, suburban drug use, lying to ourselves, and certain admirable Temporary Autonomous Zones.[6]
Still, when many of us fantasize about the “free”, its in the form of energy drink samples outside university campuses, or very conventional “babes” giving out Camel Filters in a dimly lit nightclub. In this world, giving away soup under the guise of Food Not Bombs is illegal, as is subsisting off the incredible waste of capital. Kids don’t participate in unmediated (free!) activity when they’re nine anymore. Houses rot to death while their inhabitants are forced to the street. Pockets of sanity co-exist within this world, but they’re at high risk. Its getting harder and harder to find free punk shows, free boxes in folks’ front yards, and a place to simply be.
Having subscribed to hella dichotomous ideologies for years, I’ve finally come to terms with a bad taste. Its in my mouth. We go on putting our time and energy into false hope or commodity fetishism[7], or spend it being contentious (publicly). We yearn for the free; the whimsical, unadulterated social relationship. We just need to make sure that when we find them, we’ll cherish them, embrace them, and never let them die. Hell, there is such thing as a free lunch. I’ve had hundreds of ‘em myself. In my neck of the woods, its served everyday at Peoples’ Park around two thirty. If that’s too late, you can table dive at Café Intermezzo, and if you’re too bashful, come over… I’m making hummus. Bring a lemon; they still grow all over Montgomery Street.
[1] That of The Great Good Place, for example.
[2] …which isn’t a word.
[3] The cinematic take on The Society of the Spectacle is a great drinking movie
[4] Q: How many Crimethinc kids does it take to change a lightbulb? A: We were sitting on a rooftop in Duluth, eating dumpstered bagels. Looking out upon the city’s darkness, we knew we changed more than a lightbulb that night; we changed the world.
[5] …they’re free, but at what expense? V-community idea borrowed from “Everything for Everyone, Nothing for the Zapatistas” in the excellent journal Politics is not a Banana.
[6] Read the aptly-titled essay, I guess.
[7] Useless crap can’t exist in a free world.
