I've only been out for a few days but already quite a lot has happened so I thought I would send out my first update. I'm going to try to give some titles to sections in case you want to skip around, but I've never been very good at that.
Leaving Kalamazoo
I ended up being a lot less sentimental about leaving Kalamazoo than I had originally expected. There were some sad moments to be sure, but I think the long summer with a fun but monotonous job, and the slow trickle of friends leaving Kalamazoo so that by the end there were only a few friends left, made it easier to pick up and leave. What also made it easier is that I transitioned to a couple of days near Detroit at my friend Ellen's house, so I was still with my best Kalamazoo friend for those two days. All that being said, I was very on edge the whole day, in part because of leaving what had become my home, but also because I hadn't slept much at all the past few nights, and I was very nervous and excited for what was to come. Luckily my time in Novi, the small town outside of Detroit, was a perfect transition where I could be calm and collect myself before I departed.
Journey to Boston
Part of why I was nervous is that as of the day before I got on the bus, I still didn't know where I was going to sleep for the first few days after arriving. I wasn't too nervous because I had several friends who reassured me that if I couldn't figure anything out I could stay with them. But it turns out the beginning of September is the worst time to come visit. September 1st is moving day in Boston, where everyone moves and there is general chaos, but also many of my friends were moving, meaning they were busy with that endeavor. Also labor day weekend is a popular time for people to visit Boston or for people to go out of town, so many people were either not going to be home or already had other friends staying over. This is why all of the couch surfers I talked to were not available, and why it would have been very stressful for me to stay with many of my friends.
I had a half-baked plan when I got on the bus, but by the time I got to Pittsburgh it had fallen through. After a few more phone calls I finally knew where I was going the next day and where I would be sleeping. I was in Pittsburgh because I took a series of three mega buses: Detroit - Pittsburgh - Philadelphia - Boston. Some highlights from the bus trip include: walking a mile with my 85 pound back pack through Pittsburgh to get to a park to hang out during my 4 hour layover and having someone ask me if the little encampment under the bridge belonged to me. The bus from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia was delayed a bit and I arrived in Philadelphia 5 minutes after the Boston bus was suppose to leave. Luckily it had a few problems and hadn't left yet so I made it, but I almost got stranded in Philadelphia at midnight. Otherwise the ride was fairly uneventful and I mostly read or stared out the window (for almost 23 hours).
Bikes Are the Greatest Thing Ever
Most of what I have done in Boston so far has been related to bikes, and I love it. Within five hours of getting off the bus in Boston I was inspecting a bike I had found on craigslist, and within six hours I was riding it around, getting hopelessly lost and making it all the way to the southern part of East Boston (which for those of you who don't know Boston, is this relatively disconnected part of Boston that people hardly ever go to unless they have something specific to do there, or live there). After biking over to the library I started looking up all of the cool bike organizations I could find for Boston, and quickly discovered the Boston Cyclists Union. They do these great Bikes to Market mobile clinics where they set up some stands and have volunteers provide free tune-ups for anyone who comes. (This is similar to the mobile clinic Open Roads does at Bank Street Market in Kalamazoo for those of you who are familiar with that). One of the cool things they do is try to get a broad reach, so instead of going to one Farmer's Market every week, they try to go to all of the markets in the greater Boston area once a month. This is awesome because they can reach a much wider audience, but is difficult because the volunteer schedule is crazy, since markets happen at different time on different days. As a result, they have a hard time getting enough volunteers every time, so when I sent an email to the organizer asking if they still need help he immediately responded with an enthusiastic yes.
I went to my first Bike to Market clinic on Saturday and it was wonderful. First, I really enjoy working on bikes, so it was great to have five hours to just do that work. But also, I still have a lot to learn as far as bike mechanic work goes. The BCU had a master mechanic at the clinic, so I had many opportunities to ask him questions and learn from him. I learned about as much from five hours of working with him as I had from a year of tinkering around HUB (the bike collective at Kalamazoo College). It was also an opportunity for me to fix up the little problems my bike had when I bought it (the fate of buying a bike really cheap off of craigslist), and to top it off, the other mechanics were super friendly, and I even got contact info from two of them to possibly stay at their place if I need to along my way. Another amazing aspect was working with the people who came to get their bikes fixed. Not all of these mobile clinics are in low-income neighborhoods, but this one was. I realized that I really haven't done very much direct work with low-income communities, and when I have it has always been at a distance or as a service that I provide for people. This organization was deeply focused on making the work cooperative. The purpose was to teach basic bicycle maintenance as well as fixing the bike, to improve mobility in the community, and to connect and build community around bicycles. There was a very friendly and tension free atmosphere the whole time even though we had people from many backgrounds interacting with each other. I realize part of having privilege in a situation is to more easily be able to ignore any tension, so perhaps things were not as smooth as they seemed to me, but they certainly felt smoother than any time I have done something similar in Kalamazoo or Portland.
Bicycles will also be leading me into another few groups in the near future. Jamaica Plane has two bike collectives, Bikes Not Bombs and Community Spokes, each of which has a volunteer night once a week that I plan on attending at least sometimes to help out and meet people. And I just learned about another biking co-op in Allston that I am hoping to get involved with. So it looks like bikes will be my main form of community building in Boston. Which brings me to a suggestion to any of you moving to a new place. I have found that it is really helpful to pick something I like and form communities around that. You meet like minded people very quickly, and even if you don't become friends with them, you may become friends with their friends. My good friend Jenna does this with Ultimate frisbee. I'm not very good at ultimate frisbee and have never found ultimate a great place for me to connect with people, so I'm doing it through bikes, but really there are tons of avenues that you can take, and it's the best way to find the things that will interest you most in a city really quickly.
And let's not forget the greatest thing about a bicycle, it makes it so easy and cheap to get around! Especially in a city like Boston where the farthest trip single trip I would ever want to make on a given day is only about 7 miles, and most trips don't run longer than 3 or 4 mile. Also in a city like Boston where public transit is slow, traffic is slow, and bikes have decent infrastructure but no expectations so they can weave through traffic and run red lights. I can usually get somewhere faster on bike than I could almost any other way, unless I get lost, which has happened many times so far. Yay bikes.
Young Friendly Anarchists
Another community that I have begun connecting with is the anarchist community, which has been really amazing so far. A note to you political science majors out there, the anarchist community does not conform to the standard definition of anarchy, at least not the one I remember learning about. They mainly tend to be anti-capitalist and non-hierarchical in their small groups. If they are anti-governemnt, that certainly doesn't come across in conversations and actions I've seen them partake in. The main goal is to create and open, equitable, sharing community. With that description I think it's easy to see why I am drawn to it. I'm still not sure I really fit in, but I enjoy hanging out with them.
The first group I connected with is Food Not Bombs. FNB is the first group I looked up when I got into Boston. For those of you who don't know about FNB, they are a group that started up in the early 80s as a creative anti-war protest. the idea was to focus less on yelling and sign waving, and more on creating the world they want to see, that is, free food for everyone. The way they operate they by collecting free food (sometime that means dumpstering, sometimes that means having connections with farms and bakeries to get day old goods). Then they cook it and go somewhere public and hand out free meals. Boston apparently has the original chapter and the group here is very organized, does two meals a week, and just got a house dedicated to FNB. One reason I looked them up right away is because they do amazing work and I wanted to get involved. Another is that as many of you know, I am traveling on a small budget, and a free healthy vegan meal is too much to pass up. If you are interested in FNB or want to find one near you, check out http://www.foodnotbombs.net/
One of the really cool things about FNB is that their primary goal is not to feed the homeless. Their goal is to provide food for everyone. Therefore there is nothing wrong with taking food even if you have the means to pay for a meal. There is a donation jar if you feel you are able to pay, but the food is available to everyone for free, that's a part of realizing the vision. This creates another opportunity to interact with lower income communities in a more equitable way than I ever have before. At first I do stand behind the food with gloves and serve it to them, but them I have someone serve me the same food and sit next to everyone else and eat it with them. It's a moment where we are all people doing something very human: eating food.
The organizers are also really friendly people. I went back to the FNB house yesterday to help with clean up, and not only did I walk away with zucchini bread, a beer, a bag of veggies, and many loaves of bread, but also an invitation from someone to crash at their place anytime I would like; an invitation she extended 30 minutes after she met me. This is what I mean by an open sharing community. There are some interesting clashes between some of the older folks when they come to the meals though. One woman got into a bit of a tiff with one of the organizers, and started yelling at her about how she didn't know what she was talking about and how FNB had been around since before she was born. the organizer was asking her not to do something, at which point she told her she can do and say what she wants and said what for me was the quote of the night: "This is an anarchist organization". I realize, especially given my description of the anarchist community, that this is not entirely oxymoronic, but it was still very entertaining at the time.
Some of the bike groups I'm getting involved with also fit into the anarchist community mold. On Saturday, after fixing my bike, I was riding around and my back tube blew up. When I wanted to fix it on Sunday, Wes, my friend who I am staying with right now, recommend this house down the street that runs community bike stuff (it turned out to be community spoke which I mentioned above). He told me where the house was and said to just go around back and let myself in through the back door. When I went, they told me none of the bike people were home, but they still let me into the shop to work on my bike, and after she opened the shop, this woman told me they were having brunch inside and I was welcome to join them when I was done. I tried to fix my bike but it turned out the tire had ripped, so I gave up and went inside to eat and hang out, trying to plan how to get a new tire. After some talk, someone gave me the phone number of one of the bike people who said I was welcome to take a tire from inside the shop for free.
Later, because these communities are usually fairly small and have a lot of overlap, I ran into someone from that house at FNB, as well as one of the organizers for the conference I went to in St. Louis in August.
Building Community
It has been a whirlwind four days. I'm hoping that as my housing situation stabilizes a little and I begin to get my bearings on where I am and what I want to be involved in, I can start to build up my communities. I've had a lot of fun hanging out with friends from my past so far, and look forward to meeting more of them, and I've enjoyed discovering new communities that I hope to get acquainted with.
I hope you all enjoyed your labor day weekends. For those you coming back from LandSea today, welcome back. For those of you who just started school or or about to begin, good luck and have fun. And for the rest of you, I hope you had a wonderful summer and are looking forward to a nice fall (except for the ones in the southern hemisphere, just change that to nice winter and looking forward to spring).
I'll be in touch in a few weeks
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