Nowtopian

I’m in Toronto, having a magical visit, so graciously hosted, so enthusiastically met in so many ways! It started with Toronto Cyclist Union activist (among many hats) Yvonne Bambrick meeting me at the airport and giving me a lucid download about local politics, transit fights, etc. while we bussed into the city. As we emerged from the subway later, Shamez, whom I’d met in Portland earlier this summer and was responsible for luring me here, met us with his rickshaw, ready to bring me straight to the famous Cinecycle where the Pages Bookstore “This Is Not A Reading Series” event was to be held about 15 minutes after my arrival. I was quizzed by Matt Blackett, publisher of Spacing magazine, a really interesting publication here in Toronto.

Here is Shamez bringing me to the door of Cinecycle just in time for my appearance…

The dialogue was pretty one-sided in that Matt threw me a question and I’d just go off, having to remember to pause after a while and get another prompting question. The audience was at least 50-60 people, maybe more, and it was great fun to meet Marc and Martin (?) who run Cinecycle with the incomparable Janet “Bike Girl” Attard. She showered me with gifts at the end of the night, t-shirts, posters, beautiful stencil art and gave me a tour of her impressive studio that is in the big 401 Richmond art building. The Q&A was interesting, but as usual, I’m so adrenalized that I can’t remember specific questions later, just that many people seemed inspired and engaged. One older hippie guy wanted me to suggest what he should do, now that his money bin was running dry, and he didn’t want to go back to a wage-labor gig… What could I say? Get a job! but I tried to be a little more subtle about it… Longer term maybe we can grow Nowtopian initiatives to the point that we can actually sustain ourselves without cash for long or even indefinite periods of time, but clearly it ain’t like that yet!

As an author, much as I’m railing against money and markets, I always have the end-of-the-Talk moment when book sales happen, or not, and yes, it feels good when lots of folks buy the book, which they have done at each of my stops so far. Here I am talking to Theo, a Bike Pirate, while signing books.

This photo is by Yvonne Bambrick, who takes great photos, many more of which are here.

Friday was a crazy day because Aurora R. here had done an incredible job of setting me up with radio interviews. So after staying out until 2 a.m. eating a great steak dinner with Yvonne and Shamez, I slept about 5 hours and got up to start my radio day at 8:30 a.m. with a half hour chat with Guelph Community Radio on their “Wake Up!” show. At 10:20 I was on CIUT, Univ. of Toronto, “The Green Majority”… a half hour chat with Murray Whyte of the Toronto Star by phone led to this interview in the Sunday paper today. Then I went to PROUD-FM radio for all of about 4 minutes with Shawn Proulx, who is a bike enthusiast but didn’t quite know what to do with me, unable to find a box I’d fit in… finally at 5:30 I was on for a half with John Moore on a big drive-time AM radio station CFRB, and we got a half dozen calls mostly from cranky old white guys in the ‘burbs who were adamant that Toronto was built for cars, and would always be a car-centric city, punto final! But Moore is a big cyclist and though he’s not plugged in to the local activist scene, it was interesting to realize that a big-name local drive-time DJ is actually a daily cyclist public transit rider who eschews the car as much as possible…

Another small example of how these Nowtopian sensibilities really are percolating in all kinds of surprising places. By the way, Orion Magazine excerpted a bit from the introductory parts of Nowtopia into a Point of View essay “Building the Anti-Economy” and there are comments piling up there, so feel free to join the discussion! And here’s a charming Nowtopian project that is percolating along quietly in Los Angeles (I’ve learned about a similar effort here in Toronto, the Urban Repair Squad)…

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