#summer commune

Come hike with us! 

Five years ago I met C. in a hostel in Panama City. She was working there and I was hanging out, killing time until Carnaval, in no hurry to get to anywhere in particular. A few months later she had moved to San Francisco & I had moved to Los Angeles with Josh. Since then we've been hanging every time I'm in the Bay, but last week we met up in her new home: Mexico City.

C. used to work for a Bay area alt weekly, writing about weed and sex and the queer party scene. When the paper got shut down she started her own magazine and became a freelancer, and when the Bay (she's native) got techy, homogenized, and very expensive, she quit the US and moved down here. Now she lives in a gorgeous house just west of the Condesa, with her roommates: a video artist from Guadalajara and a filmmaker from the US.

We had both lived in New York before Latin America, and we talked about living in the city again. "Not worth it," she said. "And I don't need to be there." 

She realized that she didn't want to be in SF either, a slave to her rent, cobbling together part time jobs at the expense of her own projects. I can relate; I felt the same way. Before I left LA for Indiana last summer, I was juggling 4 part time jobs (including an adjunct position at a private college) and I still wasn't making that much money. Worse, I wasn't writing. And because I wasn't writing, I got kind of depressed. If you're a creative in LA, NY, or San Francisco, it often feels like you have to make a choice between pursuing your art or paying your bills (or living like an adult). Now I'm considering doing what Cat and a lot of her friends in D.F. have done: leaving the US and moving here permanently.  

At the end of 2014, Bloomberg.com reported that "for the first time since 2001, there are not enough rental units in America to meet demand." A few weeks later LA Weekly noted that the cost of housing in LA is double the national average, but that it's even worse if you live in New York. At this point, this is news to exactly no one. But rents are going up all over the country, in Phoenix and in Orlando, not just in Brooklyn and San Francisco.  

Summer Commune began as a response to this trend, at a time when the rent was already "too damn high," and we were hopeful that we could create new, alternative, and affordable creative hubs - our own Berlin, but here in the US. Like Cat, we had decided that we didn't "need to be there." At the time we thought: You can move to New York because publishers live there, or you can set up a Twitter and a tumblr account and connect with them that way. (Josh can attest to all the opportunities to write that he got from people he "knew from the internet.") 

Most people who are part of Summer Commune, and who still live in SF/Vancouver/Brooklyn/wherever do, in fact, think the struggle is "worth it." The internet might be useful for a certain degree of networking, but it can't replace that face to face interaction, running into someone you want to know at a bar, or the verve of being surrounded by an actual community, of living in close proximity to other people engaged in the exact same hustle you are, slowly working their way towards their creative or entrepreneurial goals. Nor can it provide you with all the other perks of city living - all the bars, museums, music, food, diversity, art, and culture that are harder to find in the (more affordable) middle of the country.  

But culturally relevant cities exist all over the world, and Mexico City is definitely one of them. Not only is D.F. cutting edge, it's actually possible to live here on your freelance salary. You can do your creative work and still see art, eat great food, meet cool people, and have a good time, especially if you're earning US dollars. For me, Cat, and the handful of other post-Brooklyn transplants I met last week, the decision to be here is an easy one.

Innovation doesn’t just happen in Silicon Valley, so in the Summer Commune spirit we wanted to showcase Bloomington’s already vibrant tech scene.  Summer Commune isn’t a tech company, though I guess the idea did germinate from a blog post. While we do have a file cabinet full of criticisms about the current state of technology, we find a few things particularly exciting about what happens in the tech world. The tech companies who are having a major impact on the world are the ones who aim for disruption: crowdsourcing capital, freeing information, and making catching a lift uber convenient. Summer Commune shares kinship with these organizations in our desire to radically reimagine and transform our daily lives for the better. 

That famous internet cat already travels across the same communication lines as inflammatory political ideologies. If we want to make sure that our progressive visions for the future are not tuned out, we need to fully understand and build frameworks to amplify the stories that we want to tell. So please join us this week for more conversations around technology and the internet. 

On Wednesday evening, Social Media Forum: What's Cool & What's Lame About How You Use The Social Internet?  We're having an open forum about social media led by our most recently arrived communer, Carrie. It'll be a casual conversation about how people use social media... over a few beers. At our co-working space from 5-7 at 615 N Fairview St. Later that night we’ll head to The Public Hack at Bloominglabs, Bloomington's own hackerspace to check out their public hack from 7-9. Come build projects, ask questions, teach things, and learn stuff.

On Thursday night at 6pm join us at Ignite Bloominton 12, an event where presenters give impassioned 5 minute talk over 20 slides that automatically advance after 15 seconds. There will be talks about The Stories that Shape our Lives, Cross-Cultural Mis-Communications, and How To Start A Summer Commune. 

And at the end of the week we’re eschewing technology for a good old fashioned campout.

A few years ago my friend Nicole organized an amazing allgirleverything camp out on Lopez Island. She gathered 20 or so of her favorite feminist ladies, most of whom came from the Seattle area, for a weekend of hangin out, drinking whiskey, skinny dipping, cooking together, telling raunchy stories, and, you know, dismantling patriarchy. The usual.

One of those nights we all crowded into the teepee on the goat farm where we were camping and started talking about stuff. Like, kids. Should we have 'em? None of us had yet - we ranged from ages 23 or so to mid-or-late 30s - and as we talked about why that was, why we were reluctant to do so, a definite pattern emerged. To a lot of us, motherhood, even with a supportive partner = isolation. Doing it alone. Social death. The ultimate sacrifice. A lot of us wanted kids, but none of us were so psyched on that trade off.

But we also had this idea: What if we could build a community, a network, of like-minded friends, and all live, if not together, then really close to each other? Not just in the same neighborhood or on the same block, but in the same building? Right next door. A supportive, intentional community. Like a little village, an extended family made up of our friends. Nicole had already managed to have half of the six units in her building rented to her friends. The idea of balancing kids + career + social life seemed a whole lot easier with that appealing set up.

Today in The Atlantic there's a story about a couple who took it a step further and bought a whole house together. One couple just got married and the other is expecting a baby soon.

By forming a household with friends who share our values, we realized we could build an even stronger system of support than we would have in separate homes. The model is not even new; it’s an echo of raising children with the support of an extended family, but with less drama, I expect. [...]

Once the baby arrives, we look forward to being crucial reinforcements for each other during those first several nearly sleepless months and trading off so each couple can have date nights. Living together with another couple also has made it easier to identify and counteract some of the sexist patterns that emerge in many households. Because we discuss chores as a group and work consciously together to establish our household norms and individual responsibilities, there’s less opportunity for traditional gender roles to establish themselves surreptitiously.

Cool.

But let's not forget the obvious financial benefits of this arrangement. In LA (in the city, not the Valley), I'm told that neighborhoods where you can still buy a home for under a mill (in already-gentrifying NE LA) are soon to be a memory. (And imagine adding a hefty mortgage payment to your already weighty student loans.) As someone reluctant to give up city living - and its attendant, rising costs - going communal on home ownership sounds pragmatic, not idealistic.  

Yes, all four of us are on the deed and, yes, we share the 30-year mortgage and food and maintenance expenses...Living together seems to be a great financial move so far. With four adults splitting the mortgage and other costs, it is easier for each of us to save more of our income, which will give us the financial freedom to pay for childcare or reduce our work hours later, when we need more time and money for our families. We can also more easily afford investments in the house itself, like installing solar panels or weather proofing the attic, which will reduce our carbon footprint and save us more money in the long run.

Ok, I'm already mentally-auditioning all the couples I know as possible life-roommates. Would you buy a house with friends???

NK

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Two Couples, One Mortgage by Ari Weisbard

Monday 7PM  //  OPEN MEETING  //  Rachael's Cafe (300 E 3rd St)  // Bring your cool friends to meet our cool friends. 

. Thursday 10PM  //   Summer Commune & The Root Cellar Present: Who Needs You, The Tourniquets & !mindparade   //  The Root Cellar (108 E Kirkwood Ave)