05/12/2003 Entry: "The Zone Is Not A Diet Plan."

With a number of people I know taking trips in and out of the city this week, it's timely that Mark Morford explains how San Francisco is a Bubble. Indeed, it is, though a somewhat beleaguered bubble after repeated skewerings.

As my ex-boyfriend Mark used to say, we live in what Hakim Bey calls a Temporary Autonomous Zone, where the norms and rules, or as others theorize, possibly the fundamental laws of science and the universe, can be altered at will and as needed for those within the zone. (Bear with my explaination; I admit I've never managed to make it all the way through Bey's document.)

I'm skeptical of the supernatural implications of those theories, but it's an interesting social idea nonetheless. A group of people create a space and time together in which they assume complete social control—by definition outside the norms of the culture around them. The particular TAZ I remember from those heady days as a young proto-goth-punk fag in the early-mid nineties is probably gone (or, at least, I've changed enough not to fit within it any longer,) but the idea of it is still there, even if the flavor's changed. New ones have and will continue to form to fill the void. San Francisco (and of course, by extension, I myself) can be saved from being boring; It might just take a little while.

Replies: 2 comments

I'm not so sure about this whole TAZ theory. At least the "A" part; I'm very into "no man [person] is an island" these days, and suspect that no group is either. It seems more like one can't have one without the other. If I recall the early 90s goth TAZ to which you refer (I wasn't a part of it, but I went to a few of your parties), it was formed in direct reaction to, and in its aesthetics directly rebelled against, the sterile world surrounding it. That's not autonomy, it's healthy (but symbiotic) reaction.

Posted by Huntington @ 05/15/2003 09:41 AM PST

Holy fuck, I think I read about your ex-bf in a Wired article many moons ago. The world is too small.

Posted by Jason @ 05/16/2003 02:05 AM PST