En route to City Hall the other day, the wind must have been at my back. Because? I got there very early, nearly a half hour before the intermidable Board of Appeals hearing I’d convinced myself was a good idea to attend was slated to begin. A couple options here:
a. Arrive at City Hall early and see how the government is coping with loiterers these days.
b. Lounge about on the wind-swept tundra that the Civic Center often becomes in this uncertain world in which we live.
c. Go to the library.
So thank goodness for the library. Of course, my holds queue is currently stuffed with requests for Joan Didion and David Byrne’s The Bicycle Diaries, but even setting aside its magic book-producing capabilities, consider what the institution of the free library brings to us all. A place to hang or hide or study, mercifully free of commerce, the last place in polite society where you can use someone else’s computer.
Charming people, those libraries. Sadly, along with everything else that is neither money-grubbing nor environmentally harmful, they are on the chopping block of many a local government these days. And though here in San Francisco we’d be able to go make asses of ourselves in any number of community and cultural centers across town, in many places in America if the library closes, it marks the end of any indoors public space not geared towards selling stuff. Or specifically built for the education of children, who get all the breaks.
At any rate, it is a good moment to breathe in the steadfastness of the library, illustrated nicely in the photos of Robert Dawson and on display in our main library through June. Our main library, by the way, has these amazing historical-artistic exhibitions, on view free of charge of course, all the time. Last go-round, it was a round-up of San Francisco restaurant ephemera.
Dawson is showing up later today to do an artist Q&A on what would appear to be a very nice road trip he took all about the country, snapping shots of our book receptacles, public rec rooms, bastions of civilization. I’d like to ask him how big of a late fee balance it is acceptable to carry, in this era of cash-strapped social services and people.
For a more extensive slideshow of Dawson’s libraries, you can go here.
“Public Library: An American Commons”
Through June 12
Artist talk with Robert Dawson:
Tues/12 6 p.m., free
Koret Auditorium
Main Library
100 Larkin, SF