News, Other Stuff

By Natalia M. Vigil

on 06/13/2012

My mother says cities are in my genes. This pull towards urban epicenters comes from the heart. This intellectual desire to understand the intricacies of neighborhoods with names like The Sunset, The Mission, Embarcadero, and Hunter’s Point hits me like chemical wiring. An industrial past spotted with skyscrapers and ocean causes cityscape cravings to emerge from my gut. And pupils sharp enough to see extremes, that are not sheltered from the delight and grief, gentrification and native grasses, the transplants and generations of families that stay like we do, the beauty and horror of the city—this is part of my inheritance.

My great-grandmother left Mexico for Chicago. The “Windy City” was my mother’s city until there was a conference in Seattle. And at this conference was my father, a young man from the Bay Area. And in this Emerald City begins their love story, and eventual decision to settle in San Francisco—my city.

San Francisco has the lowest percentage of children in any U.S. city. Couple that with the highest rent of any city, and it’s not difficult to understand why middle-class families are leaving. It’s important to notice that it’s not just those in the highest income bracket that are left to make up San Francisco, but multitudes of individuals and families that cannot afford to move and those, not unlike my family, that do not want to leave. I’m talking about the girls and boys that grow up here, not businessmen or transplants, and how these statistics encourage fleeing and how this fleeing encourages us to turn our backs on San Francisco. I do not have any children, so I am not immediately facing that challenge. But I do live paycheck to paycheck, and most importantly, I was a little girl in San Francisco and now I am a woman still in love with her city.

It is with this love and commitment that I am writing to bring light to a different type of currency. The currency of relationships. The currency of closeness and kindness. Call it barter or trade if you must. Long before the city of San Francisco, the native people of this land traded abalone, salt, feathers, obsidian, and more. By definition, the terms barter and trade reference an exchange of payment without money. Certainly the currency of relationships exists outside corporations and business, but it also embodies much more. It relies on human elements—trust, and friendship, and ingenuity. For generations, individuals, families, and communities have utilized the currency of relationships as a means of creatively surviving. There have always been working-class and poor people living alongside the middle-class and owning-class.

By Franki Elliot

on 06/11/2012

Franki Elliot is a 20-something author from Chicago and blogs for us every Monday. Curbside published her first book Piano Rats (October 2011). A typewriter is her weapon of choice. For more Franki typewriter stories visit http://frankielliottypewriter.tumblr.com/

Zapata and the Pony

By Charles Bane, Jr.

on 06/08/2012

My God, how we starved. My father talked of Zapata as of Christ but not to be sacrificed. "What was one meal of bread and fish, when a nation calls to multiply freedom like stars?" said the men who waited outside the village church and smoked while the women attended Mass inside

I had never seen him. Was he real? I was not certain. He commanded all the south where our small town lay.

One morning, there was rain. A deep rain that loosed my mother's smile. She stared as though hearing music. "He comes," she said, like a schoolgirl. There was a thunder of horses. I ran to the only road. What king was this in sombrero, with bandoliers across his chest?

Behind him, his apostles and wagons and prisoners on horseback, their hands tied behind their backs. He stopped. The torrent above his eyes. The eyebrows nearly meeting above them like a bridge. The village was streaming from their houses. The boy in Emiliano said to me, "a horse has foaled. There is a pony behind the wagon." He nodded his head in its direction. I ran. The men fired rifles at the clouds.

Charles Bane Jr. is an American Poet. Curbside Splendor published his first book The Chapbook (July 2011) and will publish his second book New Poems (October 2012) via Concepcion Books, a new Curbside imprint.

By Victor David Giron

on 06/06/2012

This weekend June 9 and June 10 the Printers Row Lit Fest happens here in Chicago. It's the Midwest's largest literary fair. There will be panels, readings, and folks selling books outside. We will be at Tent U at the intersection of Dearborn and Polk, at the "Indie Super Tent" sharing space with fellow indie publishers such as Featherproof Books, MAKE Magazine, McSweeney's, and more. Please stop by and say hello.

Also, our authors Michael Czyzniejewski (Chicago Stories) and Franki Elliot (Piano Rats) will be at the fair / with us at various times.

Michael is part of an exciting dual-author interview on Saturday at 10 a.m. (Which the Chicagoist listed as one of the top five events of the weekend. See here). The event is already sold-out, but he'll come by our table at 11 to hang out and sign books, so stop by and meet him.

Franki Elliot is coming by Saturday and Sunday afternoon for a bit with her typewriter to type stories (see Typewriter Stories) for folks at the suggestion of a word or idea. It's fun, she's great, and her book rocks.

Read more about the fair at this article by the Examiner where we're quoted. Hope to see you this weekend.