Archive for April, 2010

The Carrotmob event at Duboce Park Cafe is fast approaching – this Sunday will see hundreds of people in line or hanging in Duboce Park, face painting, general revelry, and all under a beautiful San Francisco clear blue sky! (We’re not ready to make the weather machine public yet. ssshhhh!)

In order to make this event as successful as possible, we need some help from you intrepid Wigg Partiers. First thing to know is that we’d like everyone to wear a wig or some sort of head-cover to help show our solidarity as a group. If you don’t have a wig, we’ll have a few extra and we’ll be making some on Saturday night and at the event on Sunday.

Saturday night we’ll also be making some signs and dispatching some guerrillas to go make some beautiful chalk art around town to promote and direct people to the event. Ski masks optional.

As for the day of, we’re going to need as many photographers and videographers as we can muster. The event is going to be important for us, but so is the way the event appears to people in the future who are trying to figure out what we’re all about. So we need some people to capture the beauty to show people this is why we’re hot.

We’re also going to need a team of 4 or 5 people to do surveys and general engagement with people in line and at Duboce Park. This is our chance to get information about the people we want to connect with and let them know what we’re up to. Also, we’d like to get a few people riding the Wiggle with signs to let people know that the Carrotmob event is going off.

If you’d like to contribute to the effort, either send me an email at morgan@wiggparty.org or just show up at Helen’s Saturday night (check the facebook page for final details). If you can’t help in this way, you can be a MAJOR help by showing up on Sunday from 2-5 and bringing all your friends. It’s definitely going to be the hottest spot in the city… because we say it is!

Here’s an editorial piece that I wrote and performed on NPR a couple of months back. You can listen to the radio broadcast here. Here’s the text:

Where’s your sacred space? For most people, it’s a building where they go to worship with friends and family members, a favorite quiet spot in the wilderness, or perhaps the final resting place of a loved one. For me, it’s a bike route.

The Wiggle, a meandering path through the Lower Haight and Panhandle neighborhoods of San Francisco, has been used by bicyclists for decades to avoid an exhausting climb up and over some of the city’s legendary hills on their way to the Western half of town. Before the advent of bicycling, the indigenous Ohlone people traversed a similar path walking to and from their seasonal villages, and the route even hosted San Francisco’s first Farmers’ Market back in 1943. Today, “Riding the Wiggle” is a bona fide rite of passage for a sprouting alliance of bicyclists and sustainable community activists living in the Western Addition section of San Francisco. For us, the Wiggle is a growing symbol of community identity, site of countless happy run-ins with friends, and a natural saver of energy of the highest order – our own human energy. The Wiggle is literally our connection to the rest of the city, and as we traverse it we carry with us our new values, our radical ideas, and a deepening sense of profound meaning for our lives.

There’s just one problem: » Read more: Where’s Your Sacred Space?

The submissions are in!  Some artists and designers within The Wigg Party have sketched out potential logo designs for the organization and we need your feedback!

Click on the Logo Contest tab above or view the five logo submissions here.

If you want to provide general feedback on multiple designs, leave a comment on the main page.

If you want to vote for a particular logo, click on your favorite design and leave a comment at the bottom of the individual logo page.

It is not too late, if you are still interested in submitting a logo design. Just email Clint (clint@wiggparty.org).

While the name for the bike route going through the Lower Haight has officially been around since the mid-90s (no one can trace the unofficial origin of the name), it seems that the “Wiggle meme” has seen a tangible surge of late. Whether it’s the SF Bike Coalition celebrating the Wiggle in the wake of the partial lift of the Great Bike Injunction of the 00′s or the Wiggle sign being featured on a flyer for the Ride Too CELLspace benefit, the Wiggle is definitely getting major love of late.

The latest sign is the seemingly out-of-nowhere demand for a historical tour of the Wiggle from Think Walks and it’s masterful emcee Joel Pomerantz. » Read more: Walking the Wiggle

I remember the first time I was introduced to the Wiggle. I’d been in San Francisco for about two months when my new roommate Shurry and I went for a walk in the neighborhood. As we turned the corner off of Haight onto Scott, she said “…and this is the Wiggle!”

At the time I didn’t really understand the unmistakable reverence in her voice. It looked like any old street to me. Little did I know that one day I too would speak with the same inflection every time I mentioned the wonderful, glorious, sweat-saving Wiggle. And I challenge you to find anyone who doesn’t do the same (excluding people whose names rhyme with Knob Slanderson).

So what is the Wiggle? » Read more: What is The Wiggle?