Gauging the future, savoring doughnuts
What would happen if thousands of San Franciscans showed up at the library on a rain-soaked Saturday night and brainstormed about the future of the city until the wee hours of the morning? The French Consulate in San Francisco, SFMOMA and the San Francisco Public Library joined forces to find out. The result was, in a word, crowded.
Night of Ideas, which took place at the Main Library on Feb. 2, was part of a global movement organized by the French government in which citizens in more than 100 cities gather to debate, discuss and philosophize on the metropolises of the future. Saturday night’s capacity event in San Francisco ran until 2 a.m. and included breakout panels led by local thinkers and artists, dance, music, poetry, open-mike spoken word, and $4 doughnuts.
The evening was broken into one-hour segments and required guests to use a program and map to select their itinerary. Each hour featured a variety of hosted breakout sessions in different sections of the library, while the atrium stage (located under the big Library Cards sign) showcased headliners.
Six thousand people attended throughout the night. Many of them were audibly French, and all of them seemed to be gathered in the library’s atrium, seated or standing or leaning over the railings three stories high. I went looking for breathing room.
I found it at the 8 p.m. Litquake-hosted discussion titled “Fiction City.” It took place in the library’s Deaf Services Center. The panel featured authors Meg Elison and Charlie Jane Anders. Together, they pondered whether San Francisco is a utopian or dystopian city (it’s both, apparently) and whether futuristic fantasy writing has the power to change us and our environments. The crowd, eclectic in every way a crowd can be eclectic, nodded in approval at all of the science fiction references that flew over my head. I sneaked out in search of another session.
Upstairs near the braille center, modern dancers dressed all in white performed among the crowds. Later, acrobats would dangle over the atrium. People from the rainy line outside continued to file in well after the free event had begun. Still dripping from the storm, they roamed past live music and breakout panels, past the empanadas table and the silent disco. Despite the storm and the lines, everyone was in a very good mood — even the man trying to maneuver a cello case through thousands of people.
In the echoey atrium discussion on what San Francisco should look like in 2030, Tenderloin Housing Clinic Executive Director Randy Shaw spoke of the need for more housing. Behind the makeshift stage, a man dressed in platform boots and a suit covered in comic book quotes (POW!) prepared his slideshow on Burning Man.
Once they began, each session was standing room only. Guests crowded the back of the Koret Auditorium for a talk on “Resilient City” with KQED’s Michael Krasny and environmental experts, and they sat on the carpeted floor against the Chinese Center’s bookcases for “Media City,” with The Chronicle’s Kevin Fagan, along with Lydia Chavez of Mission Local and Corine Lesnes from Le Monde.
“Sharing City,” “Queer City” and “Equitable City” took place elsewhere. A man led yoga near the computer lab and drama therapy students working with the Neighborly Project offered guests four different “modalities of therapy.”
The non-binary restrooms, still in full public library mode, were covered in signs announcing a 10-minute limit for using the toilet. Few endured the entire seven-hour affair — I sure didn’t. But it was fun to be surrounded by enthusiastic people crowded in the library on a dark and stormy night. One group of women, with perhaps one of the best ideas of the evening, sipped beer and ate Girl Scout cookies at a bank of research desks.
It remains to be seen whether this collective jam session will result in real and positive change for the San Francisco of the future. But its intentions were pure, its panels packed and its doughnuts delicious. The city’s artists and thinkers had united thousands in an egalitarian night of discourse. I walked outside and into the storm, back into the city that we’re all trying to save.
People from the rainy line outside continued to file in well after the free event had begun.