intellectual properties

stellar: full of stars

especially now that this thing publishes to facebook i’m finding it extremely difficult to say anything more personal about the SF Fashion Awards.  part of the problem with proliferating your blog is that people read it.

i do not want to detract from the fact that i fully appreciate and respect what Del Geronimo is doing with this now-annual event: giving props and recognition to designers who create amazing things and get little in return in the way of media or coverage.  and let’s face it:  fashion is a business, and getting public recognition is IMPORTANT — if you want to run it as a business. anyway, please consider everything here constructive criticism. i have a whole mind full of other caveats but i’ll just get on with it:

my personal conflicts around the event, and the award i was nominated for (which i somewhat discussed here), were more or less two-fold:  1. the name of the event implies that all of SF fashion is represented, and 2. because it is done by popular vote, it feels like somewhat of a popularity contest amongst those who do end up represented, instead of some sort of independent panel giving awards based on merit.

the first thing:  to call it “THE SAN FRANCISCO FASHION AWARDS” suggests that the event producer has gone to some length to create an inclusive event that pulls from all the fashion scenes in SF.  it is true that during the nomination phase, ANYONE can be nominated (i think). the problem is that the circles in which the nomination forms and such are distributed are overlapping and insular – i don’t think this is by design, just by lack of coordination and effort. for this event to REALLY encompass all of SF fashion, there would need to be a huge push and a team dedicated to reaching out as far as possible, spreading the word, getting people “on board”. i honestly have no idea how hard Del tries to do this – maybe he does as much as he can, but i’m sorry to say that if that’s true it’s not getting very far.

so what emerges is a list of people nominated of which i pretty much personally know almost everyone (except the models, although i’ve been in shows with most of them too).   even if this were called the “The San Francisco INDEPENDENT Fashion Awards”, this wouldn’t be representative. i read SFINDIEFASHION.COM daily (which is awesome and you should too if you love SF indie fashion), and there are tons and tons of independent fashion designers in SF.  most of designers in the events and fashion shows listed on that site i’ve never heard of.  so the question is are people just not interested, or are they not getting reached? i have no idea. (btw, remember last year? i was in the running for things that made no sense, and said pretty much these same things then.)

on a more personal level:  i am deeply honored and humbled by receiving the award for Best Blogger (especially since i STUDIED WRITING in college and have never had a job as a writer so getting an award for writing somehow makes me feel like that degree in English wasn’t a complete waste of 4 years), but honestly: this blog isn’t about fashion. this is a lifestyle blog. this blog is about my life. fashion has, in recent years, played a larger role in my life, MANY THANKS to all of the people who’ve encouraged me to develop my participation and roles in the fashion scene. if it weren’t for the likes of Danielle@Missing Piece and Miranda Caroligne and Scatha@Miss Velvet Cream and Staz@BadUnklSista encouraging me to push my love of dressing up into something more, a huge part of my life would be so much different than it is, and i am extremely and eternally grateful for that. and while i could argue, if i wanted to, that “fashion” IS a lifestyle, and therefore it makes sense for a lifestyle blog to win a fashion award, still: there are bloggers/writers out there who focus all of their content on fashion, and even some who focus specifically on SF fashion, like sfindiefashion.COM or Fashion Smashion, a snarky blog who thinks they should’ve been nominated for best blog.

so while i am totally humbled and fully appreciate the recognition, i find it a little uncomfortable to stand up proud and say “YES! ME! I’M THE BEST FASHION BLOGGER IN SAN FRANCISCO!” because i honestly don’t believe it’s true. (reagan insists that the award i REALLY won was “most fashionable blogger”, and that i would gladly accept an award for. :=)

on the second point, during the voting period, one of the nominees wrote that she wasn’t going to participate because she felt it was all just a popularity contest. she is an ARTIST (in the truest sense i have ever met in human form) and was not into the idea of “winners” and “losers” in art, or having to “promote yourself” in order to win, instead of just winning on merit. still, she was nominated, and so many of us voted for her because if anyone was going to “WIN” she deserved to win.

i empathized with her feeling, but at the same time – it is what it is and so why not run with it? and so i decided to try to shelve these conflicts and just promote and support what the INTENTION of the event is, despite all the caveats and misgivings. but then when we were there, the day of, i did not see her and felt some guilt/shame that she was standing her ground as an artist and not a player in the scene and to be honest i felt a lot of weirdness around her not being there because i agreed with her, but there i was all dressed up in my fancy dress participating like i didn’t have any conflict. (it turns out, she was there too, i just didn’t see her).

i am not a huge fan of competition myself – it brings out the worst, not the best in me – and i can totally see how as an artist to get into the realm of “winning” – who can “win” art? – feels like a violation of principles. but fine line here was at what point are you being too much of an art snob to accept an award from people who love you as an artist? at what point are you “too cool” to promote yourself, say thank you, open up and accept appreciation, and instead snub those trying to lift you up? i felt like it would be totally and utterly disrespectful to not show up to receive an award given to you out of love, no matter how many issues the implementation might have had.  the intention is about RESPECT, and getting the nominations and votes of your peers is a sign of respect, a sign of love, a sign of recognition, and i think respect is deserved going both directions.

hopefully, as the SF Fashion Awards evolves, the net will be wider cast, the participants will be representative, and maybe the voting system won’t be as janky (or non-existent) and people will respect it more and more cred will be given to the event and the scene and the artists, which is the whole point to begin with. SF fashion gets put down a lot and there’s not a lot of attention for designers who are brilliant and hard working in this city, so i think the event should continue because i think it’s important. it just needs to grow, and there needs to be a diligent effort on the part of the producers and organizers to make it grow in a direction that reaches further than it currently does.

as for the actual fashion SHOW at the fashion awards, the only thing i have to say is: KITTINHAWK: i want you in my closet.

stellar

a full and proper thank you and other extended thoughts coming, but for now…..

paths

there are some blogs written by people i don’t know i’ve been reading for so long it seems a little….strange. one i’ve (and thousands of other people) been reading for like…..7 years? is dooce.com, and while i’ll let you discover for yourself whether it interests you or not, i have often wondered why *I* have been reading (and, admittedly, laughing and crying) along with someone’s life i don’t know for so long, especially after she became, more or less, a mommyblogger. yes, she’s hilarious and a good writer, but so are many, and since her topics have wandered into lands i don’t generally keep up with (babies, housewares, what it’s like being a famous blogger), it’s interesting that i keep reading. she recently linked to her about page, and i think i discovered a little piece of why i might be so drawn.

1. she graduated high school valedictorian 1993 in a conservative place (utah). i graduated high school valedictorian 1994 in conservative place (northern michigan). (i LOVE her note on being valedictorian.) (plus, this means she is only a year older than me? woah.)

2. she went to college from 1993-1997, majored in english. i went to college 1994-1998, majored in english.

3. she was raised Mormon, and “grew up believing that the Mormon Church was true.”
i was raised Free Methodist, and grew up mostly believing my church was true as well. and then she says: “the one skill I learned in college that serves me well now is not how to solve differential equations or how to write a paper deconstructing The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, it’s how to distrust organized religion.” i’ve written somewhere in here before about how comparatively studying religious texts in college pretty much destroyed any faith i might ever have in organized religion.

3. she started her blog in 2001. i started my blog in 2001.

i think that’s where the comparisons end, as i do not have 2 kids and 2 dogs and a husband and a house and make enough money off my blog to both a) not work and b) buy all sorts of things for my house and blog about them.

but still, i think those three things alone give us a lot in common, if you extrapolate a bit. high school in a rural/conservative place the 90s, liberal arts college in the 90s, study of writing and literature, growing up religious and then disconnecting from religious roots, finally ending in braindumping all about these and everything else all over the internet.

my point here is not some sort of weird attempt to make my blog more cool by mentioning my commonalities with the 26th most influential woman in media, cuz like i said, i make nothing off this, and i’m over earning cool points. it was just that clicking through and reading that, first of all, i found those 3 similarities sort of EERIE, especially that they are basically at the same time (are there other bloggers out there with those three things in common, within those years? speak up!), and secondly, it then occurred to me that the reasons i stay, shall we say, “attached” to some blogs are maybe not because of what they write or how they write it, but because i have something more in common with who is writing them.

end random deconstruction.

housekeeping

for some reason i don’t remember when i switched to WordPress a lot of blog posts got categorized as “unpublished” and i just realized there are close to 200 “draft” posts sitting there. in general i often create draft posts about topics that a) i’m not sure i actually want to write about or b) things that are maybe too stupid to publish or c) need some work, and i usually have about a dozen pending drafts queued up and regularly delete them if they never fully develop. i like to be a neat online housekeeper (my inbox is NEVER full and uncategorized!) and so the fact that i have 200 draft posts from the platform switch is driving me nuts. so i’m going through them trying to figure out why they were marked unpublished, and will publish some of the ones that i think are suitable, delete ones that are stupid, and mark private ones that are too personal. so if a bunch of blog posts show up in the RSS feed that seem way out of sync with real-life time, that’s why.

shameless plug: vote for me : SF fashion awards

i know i’ve been slacking on the blog posts lately, but please forgive me long enough to VOTE FOR ME in the SF Fashion Awards for Best Blogger. note that when you fill out the poll, you have to hit EACH ORANGE BUTTON. then it shows you the current results!

i also want to plug my dear friends Miranda Caroligne (fashion), Miss Velvet Cream (fashion), Bad Unkl Sista (costumes), Kyle Hailey (photog), Sequoia&Gita (fashion/photog), Missing Piece (fashion show/event producer), Jodie Adele (jewelry), K.Holden (blogger@sflovestory) and most especially, DEL GERONIMO (event producer/photog), who produces this event and i can only assume added my name to the list.

SF Fashion Awards, originally uploaded by wetribe.

am i human, or am i dancer?

this is the best opening paragraph of a blog post i’ve read in a really long time:

“Lately I’ve been spending way too much time thinking about ‘my life’ and ‘the direction my life is going’ and whether I need to ‘reevaluate the direction my life is going’ when the only question I should be asking is ‘am I human or am I dancer?’ because that’s the kind of question where no matter what the answer is it’s always yes.”

it’s awesome in its own right, but especially awesome when that blog post then quickly devolves into a discussion about the inanity of facebook quizzes:

“Anyway, the random Facebook quiz is one of humanity’s great levelers in that anyone who does one automatically looks like a moron, no matter how neat their ‘About Me’ section is.”

which is why i never post the results of any of the ones i take to my profile

things i learned reading the actual paper news today

144 people worldwide have died from swine flu.

every year, 500,000 people die from regular influenza.

i don’t mean to say that we shouldn’t cut a new flu virus off from spreading ASAP, but all this media etc seems a bit overdone given these numbers.

——-

first i read this and thought: hm.  how do i feel about a blogger being arrested because he ranted about taking up arms? seems like you should be able to rant all you want in a free-speech country.

then i read this about the white supremacist who just walked in the Holocaust Museum and shot a guard after ranting all over the internet about ‘blacks and jews’, and that changed my mind.

——

400,000 people die every year from tobacco-related diseases, according to government figures

do you know Obama is a smoker?

i support the new tobacco law. i think it’s smart that Phillip Morris supports it too. fighting against regulations involving public health and/or the environment does not make you competitive. just ask GM.

xplr drxns

i feel that maintaining a consistent blog has forced me to do all of these things. this is why i like blogging. it causes me to explore.

~via, taken from thebarstoolromantic, which i just discovered today, and sadly, just today, it went on hiatus.

deferred

i probably should, not just for your entertainment but for prosperity’s sake, be typing up a long blog post or two about all the wonderful things i’ve been up to for the past several weeks, and i’ve started a couple of times, but for some reason i’m not in the mood these days to spell it all out.  i’m not sure why.  these things seem to come and go in phases. these recent little spurts and twitter are all you’re getting for now.  apologies.

tweet jump

i’m totally guilty of twittering more than blogging these days, for a few reasons, these the most prominent:

1. i can tweet from my phone. i don’t have a PDA. i don’t want a PDA. i don’t really need to be able to read my email and blog everywhere i go. but it’s nice to be able to send out a short tweet now and then from the hills and valleys and streets and trails of my life.

2. my tweets, combined with things i share on google reader and sometimes my flickr uploads, have now become sort of crib notes for things i will probably blog about in longer detail later, which is helpful when i go to reconstruct my past thoughts and experiences for longer entries. and, if i don’t, at least there was some sort of communication about whatever it was. i guess what has happened recently is that twitter+google reader have sort of replaced blogging about external things like politics/news and small events for the time being, but i don’t see it as a total replacement for the longer, more autobiographical parts of my blog. that is just on hiatus for now because….

3. if you’re reading this via RSS feed and aren’t following me on twitter or my facebook friend, you probably don’t know that i’ve once again been suffering from problems with my right trapezius muscle, which makes the entire right side of my upper body hurt. i’ve cut back on typing, at work and not at work, so sitting down to blog hasn’t happened in a while. tweeting 140 characters is a lot less painful than blogging currently.

blogging will resume shortly. hopefully in a few days i can catch up. until then, pls refer to the shorter, hyperlinked windows into my life.