The fabulous season of short-lived sunshine is finally upon us and never too late as this month is jam-packed with amazing events to get you out doors, away from your computer or television, and having fun with your fellow community members.  The Wigg Party has put together a list of some of the best events this month and, trust us, cutting it down to five was no easy feat. Hope you can make it out to all of these wonderful events.  We’ll see you with our “wiggs” on!

Divisadero Art Walk | Thursday, September 2  from 5-9pm |  Most of you already know about this wonderful event.  Get drunk roaming up and down Divis (hint: there are also several shops off the beaten path) while you view local artists awesome work.  A variety of bars, restaurants, coffee houses and retailers will be offering promotional discounts throughout the evening.  In the past the party has flooded the street until the wee hours.  Now they want us to take it inside by 9pm.  If not as much fun, at least reasonable, since we don’t want to ruin the event for the nearby neighbors that suffer our quarterly sloshed revelry.  The recent update from those who organize the event reads:

We do ask that you enjoy yourselves responsibly,safely and with respect for the neighbors that live in the area. There will lots of lively art to enjoy, but at 9pm, we ask that you pick a spot, and head inside to finish your night. We want this event to continue to showcase the fantastic art and merchants of our street, and we need your help to keep our street clean of litter, and to keep the late night noise inside, and not impact our neighbors who have been so supportive of this fun event.

The Wigg Party Party | Thursday, September 9 from 7:30 – 11pm |  Many of you may have been following us on facebook or run into us at various community events.  Now is your chance to hear about all of the work that we’ve been up to and get involved yourself.  The Wigg Party Party is an SF-style blend of backyard community meeting and social networking event.  We gather at 7:30pm to network and socialize with friends and neighbors.  At 8pm we have a quick meeting to discuss Wigg Party and community happening.  Around 9pm we socialize again with drinks and lively conversation.  By 11pm we head out on foot and bike parade to chalk The Wiggle with our guerrilla art and tags.  The meeting happens as always at the Sunshine Castle (1571 Fulton Street @ Lyon).

Park(ing) Day | Friday, September, 17  All Day |  Park(ing) Day is an annual experiment in the activism of reclaiming public space.  Groups such as Rebar, SPUR and other forward-thinking urban design groups encourage you to get out and occupy a metered car space.  Fill the meter with some change and create a park or garden installation.  Ideas range from the simple placement of chairs and potted plants to the more elaborate lawn games and design projects. For more general information visit the website.  You can register your local action as well as get information and useful tips at the Park(ing) Day DIY Network.  You can also learn more about how Park(ing) Day got started here in SF.  Not quite up to doing your own park installation but want to get involved, email clint@wiggparty.org.

Sunday Streets – Western Addition | Sunday, September 19  from 10am – 3pm | We’ve all been waiting for Sunday Streets to hit the Western Addition.  You see our count-down timer in the upper right on our webpage?  Any idea how excited we are? There will be open streets to bike, skate and walk through all the way from the Panhandle to Japantown.  View the full route here. The Wigg Party will be focusing our activities on the streets of Grove and Baker. We’ll have live music, cooking workshops, a bike maintenance booth, and art supplies for the little ones (as well as adults).  It’s too fun to miss, but it won’t happen on it’s own.  To make this event a success we need volunteers to run activity booths, entertain the crowds and make sure all goes according to plan.  We would love to have more bands, artists, cooks and volunteers for our booths. Email clint@wiggparty.org if you are interested in getting involved or can contribute supplies (bike tools, sound equipment, furniture, cooking equipment, craft supplies, etc.).

Tour de Fat | Saturday, September 25  from 11am – 5pm |  This year at the new location of Lindley Meadows in GG Park, the Tour de Fat is an SF biker’s surrealist dream come true.  Just check out photos from 2008.  The SFBC has a stellar record of throwing great events for cyclist all over the city, but this one is in collaboration with the New Belgium Brewing Company.  Come get your funky bike grove on and enjoy some wind powered microbrews.  Proceeds go to support the SFBC and the Bay Area Ridge Trails Council.  The morning will kick off with a parade through the park (ride at 10am, registration at 9am) and then the afternoon festivities at Lindley Meadows.  Knowing SFBC there will probably be an after party to wrap up a great day of biking.  Learn even more about the event on the SFBC event page.

Hope that is enough to keep you busy.  Let’s get out there and be the change – one community event at a time!

It has been a little while since we posted something on here. One of the challenges of writing a blog is coming up with high quality material on the reg. One way around this is to just make a habit of posting a bunch of nonsensical drivel about pigeons eating pizza or stupid street art like some neighborhood blogs (*cough* Mission Mission *cough*). However, we like to keep our work meaningful. Sometimes we even produce meaningful pieces for other sites, because we like to spread the love like that. And just because it’s on another site doesn’t mean it can’t be shared with our loving growing community.

A little while back I wrote a piece for an art project called i live here: SF. The concept is pretty fantastic: Julie Michelle is a photographer who wants to chronicle the stories of people living in this city from their perspective. People write their story, Julie takes some awesome photos and everybody wins. So without further ado, here is the piece that I wrote.

Holding Court

Like everyone else, I was destined to end up in San Francisco. Sure, the same is true for all people in all places at all times – that’s just the nature of reality. But only the people of San Francisco are readily aware of this particular grace, and, what’s more, are willing to lengthily explain to you how it was pre-ordained in their astrological birth chart.

I guess you could say it was in the stars for me; while my college professors (and mother) implored me to consider a more traditional graduate program in philosophy or religion, I never once considered applying to anything besides the Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. The plan: pit stop in San Francisco for a couple of years to grab a masters degree and then off to some fancy institution to study neuroscience, solve the mind/body problem (hint: the problem is the solution), and collect my Nobel prize. However, my new school quickly altered my perspective, not just on my life’s path, but on my new city as well. Continue Reading.

It’s a funny place this world we live in. On the one hand, we have over one billion people who go hungry every single day all over the world – from the refugee camps in Sub-Sahara Africa to the people who sleep on the sidewalks abutting our million dollar homes right here in San Francisco. And yet, on the other hand, through a new program between the Wigg Party and Hayes Valley Farm, we’ve discovered that simply by going around and asking for whatever the farmers don’t want at the end of the Farmers’ Markets, we can divert thousands of pounds of fresh, (sometimes) organic, and (always) delicious food away from the waste stream and onto the plates of smiling, grateful, and gracious people.

The only thing more staggering than the feeling of gratitude and awe that I felt as I was collecting boxes upon boxes of tomatoes, peaches, bell peppers, eggplant, and other fresh delicious food for the first week of the Fresh Produce Free-For-All, was the realization that all of this food that we were so happy to receive would have gone into our landfills or back into compost piles if we hadn’t shown up and asked for it.

First Load: Just Getting Started

Now, it’s not as if I’d never thought about how much food gets wasted before; I’ve heard the statistic that nearly 50% of food grown in the United States goes to waste, enough to feed 200 million adults every day. Nor was the concept of gleaning from the Farmers’ Markets foreign to me; Tree from the Mission’s Free Farm Stand has been doing it for years, not to mention Food Not Bombs, traditional Food Banks, and the legendary Diggers who gave away free food in the Panhandle every single day from 1966-68 (although the Diggers were often known to steal their food). But there was just something about » Read more: Fresh Produce Free-For-All (or How We Got 1000 lbs of Free Food Simply by Asking)

The garage of the Sunshine Castle saw host to the 6th monthly Wigg Party Party last night. The event featured a presentation of our recommendations for the Wiggle section of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition’s Connecting the City campaign, a discussion of our upcoming Carrotmob event, and a surprise guest appearance by none other than Susan King of Livable City to get the Wigg Party jazzed about the upcoming Sunday Streets event on September 19th.

These people are missing their wigs

» Read more: 6th Wigg Party Party Recap

A couple weeks ago we wrote about the different terms we use to talk about this movement we’re creating. If you missed it, you can check it out here. This week, we thought we’d take a closer look at the next buzz word “resilience” and coin a new catchphrase. You can thank us later.

After everyone comes to understand that it’s going to be nearly impossible to take our current lifestyles and make them sustainable, we’re going to focus on making the communities that we live in resilient. A resilient community is one that can survive on its own in the face of extreme challenges. What would happen to your community if the price of oil spiked sharply and the constant caravan of trucks bringing food in suddenly stopped? Where would you get food after the three-day supply in the grocery store ran out? What if an earthquake severed the ancient pipe system bringing fresh water to San Francisco from Hetch Hetchy? Maybe at least then people would stop defecating in fresh water.

Who's got the local adult diaper source?

A resilient community doesn’t have to ask itself these questions because it can provide everything it needs on its own. This is the main focus of the Transition movement and its leader Rob Hopkins, and it’s a noble and achievable goal when you’re talking about a community in rural England. Unfortunately, this goal of resilience is a little bit more difficult to imagine let alone achieve when your scope is a major US city or even a neighborhood like ours is. The fact of the matter is true resilience might be outside of our grasp, and the profound departure from our current way of being that it would require makes it very difficult for us to understand how to even begin to move towards it. Growing a garden, supporting our peri-urban farms, getting our businesses on the right path, setting up a water cistern and learning to sew are all great steps to take, but they won’t solve the problem. Are we urban dwellers doomed to fight a battle we simply can’t win? I don’t think so. Rather, I think we have a leading place in the resilience movement, despite the fact that we will almost certainly fail to make our communities functionally resilient in the near term.

You see, a fully-formed resilient community does feature true foodsheds and watersheds, diverse local » Read more: Resilience is an Attitude

A good friend approached me a few weeks ago to ask if I would contribute a question for a Climate One Connect panel discussion called “Youth Grabbing The Wheel: Speaking Up to Drive Down Carbon,” organized by Climate One at the Commonwealth Club.  The panel members, all student activists under the age of twenty, were presented with questions from various community organizers and activists. 

Heavy with questions and light on answers, I was more than willing to ask the question that has persistently arisen with my work organizing for The Wigg Party.  My question: How does an organization cut through the fog and white noise of various online social networks to effectively communicate with it’s participants and actually reach out to potential members? 

This question will continually arise and I ask patience and forgiveness from those » Read more: A Constant Question of Online Organizing

The fourth monthly Wigg Party Party went off last week, and while it was the quite possibly the most crisp and inspirational meeting to date, there is no doubt that the WPP was upstaged by the first official Wigg Party Late Night Chalk the Wiggle Extravaganza.

bikes + chalk + wigs + modelo = socioreverberation

While the glory certainly went to those intrepid Wigglers who braved the dark streets, oblivious drivers,  and curious after-hour pedestrians (one of whom stole the camera of Media Director Jenny Sherman!), the exhilarating chalk festivities would be entirely without meaning if it were not for the work being done on the daily by the Wigg Party. The reporting of this work formed the real substance of the evening, while the subsequent Party and Chalk Festivities served up more than enough sizzle to carry us through this next month.

Those who made it to the Sunshine Castle by 8:30 pm were treated to a multimedia update of the last month’s work – a slideshow of pictures from the Carrotmob » Read more: 4th Wigg Party Party