Silliman's Blog

just stop it already.
 

Every single morning there seems to be some new threat like this.

But this is an easy write-in campaign, e-mails for Councilman Rosendahl and City Attorney Delgadillo listed on Beyond Baroque's site. Flood them with appeals!

Philadelphia lost an entire block of beautiful, historical buildings a mere four months ago. The historic commission actually WON in the court to preserve the buildings, but the condo developers covered the fronts of the buildings and in the middle of the night ripped the facades off. And since much of the case the historical commission made was on the facades the judge overturned the ruling for demolition. And so it is, buildings nearly as old as our nation came crashing down for this ugly 50 story high rise for millionaires and billionaires and their horrendous offspring.

CAConrad
PhillySound: new poetry
 

huh?

what do you mean hair or flip...

this is flip huh?

wtf f.,
j
 

I like Beyond Baroque, and have visited it several times in the past twenty years while down in the area. I especially like that you can park your car out front, and easily walk to the ocean, get a swim, then walk back for poetry. I particularly remember a great reading by Philip Lamantia there, circa 1999.

On the other hand, I did experience a serious problem at one reading there. I traveled 450 miles to hear a poet read who was advertised to be reading. The poet was there, but the organizers only allowed him to read a single poem, and then only because he insisted. It was a very poorly supervised and organized operation, that time.

The lease extension issue appears far more complicated than, in Ron's conclusory terms, an "anti-literacy" city attorney wanting to kick it out.

Beyond Baroque pays rent of a dollar a year. It apparently is one of many non-profits that have such deals with L.A. County, for use of public land. Obviously, those are sweet deals, if you've got one.

Apparently, it is unclear when such dollar a year deals were ever authorized by the supervisors or relevant city council,why there is no process regarding how or why such deals ought to be renewed, or why one non-profit organization as opposed to another ought to get it.

The City Attorney apparently has floated the idea of auctioning the deal among non-profits, which I think is stupid. But I don't exactly understand why the people who are incorporated as "Beyond Baroque" should get a sweeheart deal if there is some other similar non-profit group. Shouldn't some criteria be used to evaluate who would best do the job? To just renew the sweetheart lease regardless of any objective criteria or comparison among non-profits would seem to be a give-away of public money on a totally subjective basis.

Of course, this all assumes that public resources (here, property being provided for use at essentially no cost) should be used at all for poetry or any arts. There are cogent arguments why no self-respecting poet would want or accept such support.
 

Not only does Beyond Baroque surpass anything in San Diego, there's nothing in San Diego even for it to surpass.
 

When I lived in LA in the 80s I used to visit Beyond Baroque frequently. I loved the poetry workshop (Bob Flanagan would run it back then) and Viggo Mortensen would drop in sometimes. The bookstore was great. I got dozens of small press poetry books, and the readings and music were excellent. I'll definitely write in and make a call.

Tom King
 

I sent an email earlier today to
Councilman Rosendahl. Tomorrow
during store hours I intend to
call. For personal reasons, I
want to speak to a worker there.
I won't be able to help much, but
I do want to help; but not in the
ways provided online.

Thank you for this.
 

A wildfire came within a mile and a half of Archer City Texas today. The town of 2000 was evacuated. Larry McMurtry's humendous Booked Up book store is there in 4 buildings. The fires are still burning near the town. Booked up was approaching a million books a few years ago, and building 2 was roughly a third poetry which is bigger than most bookstores.
 

In response to Steve F., I feel you're rather deflecting the point here. There might be some reason to have a process for why one group as opposed to another group is granted a lease to use public land if they both want it, but once a group has established itself on a piece of public land for almost three decades the greater danger is if such a process is suddenly invented arbitrarily and the change is rapid. Besides, speaking theoretically, what kind of objective tests would you propose? The volume of public attendance is about the only one I can think of. But let's think this out. One of the other non-profits that will potentially be affected by the city attorney's approach would be the police historical society. So if people aren't visiting the police historical society, the city should hike up the rent, drive them out, and let the YMCA use the building next? I really don't think that's how people would look at it in that case. Also, I'm not sure here, but even if attendance was the objective test I believe Beyond Baroque could show growing public attendance at its events throughout the last decades.

More problematically, talking about it the way you do above wrongly implies that the city isn't benefiting from having a nationally-known literary arts organization in its midst, or that this is some kind of lost income or lost opportunity for the city. All kinds of places, including many private colleges, offer office and presenting space for free to literary presenting organizations. Why do they do that? Because cultural institutions draw people to those locations, raise the hosting group's profile, develop community, create a sense of things happening there, etc., etc. Testing whether that's happening to a sufficient degree is tough to do. Far better to say: Beyond Baroque has been there, they've stayed solvent otherwise (it's not just rent that costs an org money), they've been a good steward of the building, they're active, and they're clearly of value to the community. No question, renew the lease...

Yrs,

Brent
 

Good points, Brent. And I see the the lease was renewed, via an unanimous (11-0) vote.

My post, remember, was in response to Ron's assertion that the dispute between Beyond Baroque and the city/county was all about an "anti-literary" city attorney. As the points both you and I you made show, the issues were decidedly more complex than that.