Vintage Bree: The Communal House orWhat's on Your Bookshelf?

When I first moved to San Francisco in September of 2000, or "Y2K" as some were known to refer to it, I was paying next to nothin' to live in an anarcho-syndicalist communal household in the lovely and rapidly gentrifying neighborhood once known as the Fillmore, now known as Duboce Triangle, and fondly referred to by many of my friends as TriBeSa, the Triangle Behind Safeway. Well, it wasn't really anarcho-sydnicalist, but a watered-down communal post-punk socialist sort of arrangement. Décor included a taxidermied white long haired cat on the mantel and decaying linoleum in the kitchen and dining room. There were four of us in the house, including myself, cute lil gay Spencer, and Émile & Jaqui, a nonmonogamous straight/bi couple who were the longest running denizens in the house. I was paying like $300 a month for a pretty sweet situation, save for the aggravation of living with Jaqui, who was the only housemate I've ever had who I didn't get along with. At one point, late in the game when I'd long since decided to find another living situation, Jaqui derided me in one of our house meetings by suggesting that I must have grown up in a "flophouse" because I put my feet up on the living room ottoman with my shoes on.

But here's why I am compelled to write about this experience: when I first moved in, before the petty battles with Jaqui (because I wasn't clever enough or stylish enough or whatever it was that doomed me never to make the grade with her) the four of us had amused ourselves with an exercise. When I moved in, and set up all my stuff and unpacked my boxes and stocked my bookshelves, we walked around the apartment scoping each others' libraries to see what books we had in common. This was evidently a long-standing tradition when new housemates moved in. It turned out that the only two books each of the four of us owned at that time were The Marx-Engels Reader and Switch Hitters, a book of erotic stories in which gay male authors write dyke fiction and lesbian authors write gay male fiction. So at least we had liberal arts degrees and smut in common. This leads me to wonder what books my readers might have in common with their housemates. If you're interested in investigating your mutual bookshelves and care to leave a comment, please do. In this age of Shelfari and other virtual bookshelves, I challenge you to do the physical work of perusing the real-world library of your housemates or live-in significants and let me know what odd combinations of shared literary enthusiasm you've got.

Doing this exercize now, I see that Astrid and I both own the following books:

Valencia by Michelle Tea
Choir Boy by Charlie Anders
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (although Astrid says her copy might actually belong to DJ).
and, yes, The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by Robert Tucker.

*Edit: 1/18/09: I just discovered that both Astrid and I also own copies of Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich.

Shameless Self-Promotion

I really had some momentum for a while with updating, but it's been several days since my last post, and I've lacked inspiration. I've been working on the blog in the background, though, doing some promo and working on entries to be posted at key times in the near-future.

Has anyone seen my Toothpick Labels around San Francisco yet? I've been sheepishly sticking these 1x4" promos all over sign posts, bike racks, and Muni stops in the Mission, TriBeSa, and the Lower Haight.

I imagine it's a hilarious sight to see me engaged in the petty defacement of public property: I pull a label from the backing, looking around to case the situation, and stick it on as quickly as I can, walking away as nonchalantly as possible. A tiny little adrenaline rush occurs which I attribute to paranoia and the thrill of doing something naughty. I don't know whether this will improve my readership, but it's fun! Definitely let me know if you spot one! I'll be expanding into the upper Haight, Castro, and various other neighborhoods as my schedule allows.

A totally legit way to help me promote my blog, if you're also on Blogger, is to become a public Follower of Toothpick Labeling. Quick and painless, and that way you get updates on my posts directly in your Blogger dashboard, and I get to know who the hell's reading this thing.

And lastly, I'll take this opportunity to remind my loyal readers that, oh yes, the 2008 Wrap is in heavy production mode, and will be posted as soon as possible after the turn of the year. That's a scant couple months away, so do be titillated, by all means! If you're new to Tlab and don't know what this "Wrap" is of which I speak, click onto the 2007 Wrap in the Faves section on the right and get yourself acquainted!

Thanks for being out there, youz.

xo
Bree