Anarchy Shmanarchy

Every year around this time a swarm of anarchists come together for a variety of events, well namely the anarchist bookfair. The bookfair, going on for its eleventh or something year, is an extravangaza of AK press titles on three fifths of the tables, swarms of crusty punks guarding the entry and boring loafing about. In many ways its like hanging out at the mall, but without the movie theatre, and food court. This year the attendance was significantly smaller than last year. Begging the question... "Is anarchy dying?" The answer.... yes.
Some of my friends organized some events that coincided with the dates of the bookfair. The "8 days of Anarchy" started off on tuesday at the weekly bay area reading group held at the long haul. The discussion was a simple one based on people's ideas of anarchism. Most of the discussion centered around problems of abuse in relationships. This tends to happen any time a violent example is brought up, or even semi violent. Eventually someone starts talking about how unprepared we are for abuse in our community, and how terrible it is that people hit each other.... blah blah blah blah blah.
The next event that I went to was a game night at Gilman street. Playing Sabrina at chess was actually pretty fun, mainly because it was relatively quick, but not painless. My uncle Tony is an avid chess player and taught myself and my siblings all how to play chess when we were young. Many of our times together were spent playing the game. Its been sometime since I've played chess mainly I've been focusing on go, poker, and other games. Sabrina beat my pants off, and it made me feel even better when she beat several other dudes. At least I lost to a girl who wins a lot. Eric and I played a game of go which was fun. I hadn't played go in quite some time as well. Eric hosed me in go which was annoying. I did give him a handicap, and he has been reading some go books....
Friday was a derive, (http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/314) Which was pretty fun. Eric and I walked around with a kid from St. Louis named Jennifur. He was one of the more interesting kids that I met over the weekend. He regaled us with tales of being a taxi driver, a bus boy, and living very cheaply in St. Louis. We met up with Aragorn at a chinese vegetarian place, that was run by a cult then wandered into china town. I had to work so I split early.
Saturday night was a fun party at my place. Sasha had everyone dancing, and it was a good time. It was especially fun seeing some out of town friends, such as Anita and Esteban.
Sunday was the BASTARD (Bay Area Students for Theory And Research Development) conference which had some interesting discussions. I particularly liked Mike E's discussion on being involved in martial arts. Some of the things that I enjoyed hearing him talk about was that there seems to be an arc of wanting to get into fights and being non physically confrontational. His place on that arc has swung through out the years. A lot of what he said as well about how physically training with someone will help you get to know them in a way that you usually don't was interesting, along with how martial arts enables you to think in different ways. For example now that I know how to fight people, I actually have a choice as to whether or not I want to be in a fight, rather than being in the default position of always having to avoid the fight because I'd lose it.
That pretty much summed up my 8 days of anarchy. Or rather that's the brief version. Its always rad seeing friends from out of town, picking up the one or two new magazines, or pamphlets, and engaging in ridiculous amounts of slander/gossip with comrades.

Hopefully I'll get to doing weekly fictional installments soon but we'll see. I'm training to fight again. My next fight is on April 14th.