Archive for January, 2011

The Wigg Party is proud to bring you our very fist Inspiration Night!

This will be you tonight... metaphorically

We know that with all the scary things going on in the world, as we spend our days scratching and clawing for small victories, wondering what, if anything, it all means, we all could use a little inspiration in our lives. Enter Inspiration Night!

Come out to the Residence (718 14th St @ Church) tonight at 7 pm to be caught up in the rapture of the human spirit. There will be poetry, there will be song, there will be story. And permeating the whole event will be that warm fuzzy glow that comes from reveling in being alive and honoring all that has come before us.

$3 well drinks and $1 off beer from 7-9. $3 Trumer Pils (brewed right across the Bay in Berkeley) all night!

See you tonight!

The Wigg Party and Con Brio are teaming up to bring you a night of music, dancing and community at Madrone Art Bar this Wednesday at 9 pm.

Give money to the Wigg Party = Get this CD

This is the Wigg Party’s very first fundraiser. Yes, it’s true – we’ve been operating for over a year on exactly $0! Just imagine what we can accomplish when we have a little bit of money to make use of!

The cover at the door will be $5 and that money is going to go to Con Brio and Madrone. Once inside, you’ll have an opportunity to donate money to the Wigg Party, and in exchange you’ll receive a Con Brio CD, generously donated to the Wigg Party by the band. We’re thinking $8-15 will get you a CD but we’re open to creative offers! All the money we raise will be going towards our upcoming Local Currency program, which we’ll tell you all about on Wednesday night.

So come out to Madrone (500 Divisadero St at Fell) on Wednesday to get your dance on with the Wigg Party!

UPDATE: If you can’t make it to the event but would still like to contribute to the cause, you can use our brand-new PayPal account by clicking the button below!

As we engage with a wide-array of community members in our work to build a broad-based coalition supporting the transformation of the Wiggle over the next year, we hear time and again that pedestrians who live in the area are continually perturbed by the behavior of bicyclists on the Wiggle. While we here at the Wigg Party feel victimized by undue guilt by association (it seems many people allow a bad experience with a single cyclist poison their opinion of all cyclists – blatant “transportationism”), we are beginning to take more seriously the opportunity we have to communicate to our fellow Wigglers about proper bicycle etiquette. Our ultimate goal is to make the “Wiggle cyclist” renowned as the most considerate and polite species of cyclist in all of San Francisco. The first step towards that goal comes in the form of a plea from our own Ian “Earthwind” Heid to our fellow cyclists, that’s been sitting in our inbox since November. Take it away Earthwind!

Who blasts through stops signs faster than wha…!?  I do for one.  But I’m guilty of my number one vice doing it, hypocrisy.  Why am I guilty?  Well, because I believe in traffic laws, safety of streets,  for one for all, etc.  Truly I do.

The aforementioned are all things I believe we can agree on.  Where we all disagree is with automobile owners.  Being one myself (full disclosure) I can’t say I always like bicyclists either.  There needs to be common ground.

we could all learn a thing or two here...

Part of gaining respect on the thoroughfares of any fair city is giving that respect right back.  We as urban and suburban and rural and universal people use it with each other every day for the most mundane interactions, yes?  Why don’t we use it when we are also at our most vunerable (site every study on traffic related deaths ever)?

Another aspect of integrating bicycles and vehicles is pure space.  I understand that fully.  Until that space is defined we need to keep in mind that while many of us use our bikes because we must/can/love to, the same applies to automobile owners (see! hypocrisy.  guilty as charged), and unfortunately for many people it’s the musty option.

So here is what I propose advocates of city bicycling take up as MUST DOS!

LEARN YOUR HAND SIGNALS. – You ever been pissed at someone who didn’t signal their car?  They feel the same, and often they are late or something, so they will run you over for an appointment, which they then will miss.  But you are the one missing out…  If you need help learning to guide your bike while riding with one hand you know the people to ask (hint: SFBC). » Read more: Use Your Brakes: An Opinion on Bicycle Etiquette by Ian “Earthwind” Heid

Another year, another 365 days to wake up and smell the compost. 2010, we hardly knew ye. 2011, we need you to be big for us.

Drawing by Brandon Loving

The turning of the calendar is always a great time to reflect on the past year and to look forward to what’s about to unfold. 2010 was a great year for the Wigg Party. It honestly seems like yesterday we were ringing in the new decade with all our friends at the Sunshine Castle. 2010 brought us the very first Wigg Party Party (February, 10th 2010 – for posterity’s sake), the birth of our self-preservation series of re-skilling events, thousands of pounds of food rescued from the waste stream through our Fresh Produce Share-With-Alls, two Carrotmobs, many a local-food sharing event, 10.10.10, the advent of wig-wearing (pretty sure we invented this), Sunday Streets, (PARK)ing Day, BP/ARCO protests, many moments of merriment and about 100 boxes of chalk applied to our beloved Wiggle. In 2010, the Wigg Party grew from a small group of friends with an idea to a bona fide movement in our little corner of this beautiful city of San Francisco. If 2010 marked the birth of a number of key elements of the growing sustainability movement (Hayes Valley Farm, Underground Farmers’ Market, the Hub SoMa, Fix Fell, Fix Masonic, SFBC’s Connecting the City, SF Urban Agriculture Alliance, I Bike SF, I Helmet SF, SF Bike Party, to name *just* a few!), 2011 will be the year many of these elements get together to figure out how to create some major victories for our city and our society.

Let’s examine. 2010, you brought us so many great things. And yet, when we stack up where we are against where all the people who don’t currently have their heads buried deep in the “grow the economy at all costs” sand say we need to be in order to stave off wholesale environmental and societal destruction, we’ve got a long way to go. Significant progress towards Zero Waste SF? Powerful binding Climate Change resolution? Creation of a sensible energy policy? Transformation of National Agriculture policy? Elimination of SF government red-tape so we can actually make sensible transit and other policy changes here in our own city? Yeah, not so much. Sometimes it feels like we’re trying to take down a giant monster with only a handful of tiny needles and none of us knows acupuncture. Sure, 2010 revealed a number of glimmers of hope for those who were looking for them, but where were the major victories? Where is the big public sign that says we’re seriously serious about this whole planetary crisis thing? If we don’t see some of these major victories in 2011, we at the Wigg Party might have to » Read more: 2011: The Year of Synergy in Sustainable San Francisco