Why is this Squid laughing? My good friend Scott Beale is celebrating the 11th year of his company / passion laughingsquid.com. There's a big party this Saturday at Mighty at the foot of Potrero Hill (where it meets... Outer SOMA??). I get to be Master of Ceremonies (yay!), and there's a great lineup including the one and only Mr Lucky.
There's a list, a calendar, a series of events, a blog, videos, photos... he actually has a great post on the blog about what laughing squid is. It's as impressive as always.
Scott has always been dedicated to fanning the mutant gorgeous flames of underground culture. Like me, he came from a distant planet--his is called Ohio, mine is known as Virginia. From a distance we used to observe this thing called "culture" (which grows incredibly well, thrives in fact, here in San Francisco). We'd also get pieces of culture transported to us through a complicated mechanism called "The Postal System". Anyway, once you get to taste the real thing, once you are in the greenhouse as it were... it's intoxicating, you appreciate being here. You want to cultivate it. You want to document it and to help it propogate.
Anyway, that's my reaction. That was Scott's reaction. He made a documentary. He started a company. He shot video of everything cool & weird he found that was going on. He started an email list and a telephone bulletin board, both of which told people what was UP promoting the promoters, enabling the participants. Oh, and far from least important, he made friends.
I think in the big picture, what it's all about is creating opportunities for interesting events to be populated by interested people. For creativity and hard work to be appreciated. And for dreams to be realized, dammit. There's more to say on this theme. I'll have to save it for another proper and truly Blog-type post. When it's not so late and I don't have a flight to catch in the early AM.
Anyway, to note that Scott didn't do these things all by himself. Danielle, my girlfriend & partner in art and crime for getting close to a decade, was one of Scott's first collaborators in event production and related activities. Others like Pippi & Phil with "The Number", and all the artists and Cacophonists who were the subject of the emails of what was going on. But Scott has always had a knack for organization, design, detail, and --wait for it-- follow-through(!!!) which many have lacked. He can run a fucking business for one thing. That's craziest thing. Look I gotta crash now. More at a later time.
Hope you can make it Saturday night!
