Anarchist Book Fair

I went to an anarchist book fair over the weekend.  I wasn't sure exactly what to expect.  Well, no I knew exactly what to expect; books and lots of black tshirts.  As it turned out I wasn't entirely correct.  Black tshirts were there in abundance, I was wearing one myself in a pitiful attempt to fit in and look less like someone who voted for Tony Abbott in the last election.  Books were somewhat thinner on the ground.

The anarchist book fair was held on some council land in Marrickville which is also home to various social, cultural, environmental and artistic organisations many of them with the word "cooperative" in their name somewhere.  What they all had in common was an apparent inability to pay the economic price of their rent.  Reverse Garbage is there which many of my friends tell me is amazing.  They recycle stuff into other stuff.  I fully intend to wander down there the next time I need stuff although if your business model depends absolutely on other people throwing things away are you going to be pleased or disappointed if they stop?

I was meeting Morganne at the book fair for a late breakfast.  Morganne's partner had a stall there selling vegan goodies.  I scored a free cup of chai which was the most impressive thing I encountered at the book fair.  Along the way to breakfast I thought I could browse the book fair and possibly pick up some politically acceptable reading material.  I turned out to be wrong.  .

After observing the traditional social niceties involving greetings and chat Morganne and I entered the book fair and began browsing.  Ten minutes later we were finished.  We browsed back the other way in case we had missed something.  We hadn't, the second bit of browsing only took five minutes.  The last time I looked a book fair was supposed to have books.

OK that last statement was a little unfair, there were some books.  At least two of the stalls had a number of books for sale but precious few and not many that seemed to have been published after 1980.  I guess even anarchists use a book fair as an excuse to clean out all the old crap from their bookshelves that they haven't been able to decently get rid of.  There was one stall selling cookbooks.  Vegan cookbooks, organic cookbooks, cruelty free cookbooks and sometimes all three.  I wasn't quite sure what the connection with anarchy was but I have to admit they were books.

As a sidebar I couldn't help but marvel at how stupendously wealthy our society must be for us to be so precious about what we put in our mouths.  I didn't mention that to the sellers just in case they were anarchists as well as organic, vegan, cruelty free cookbook vendors.

It would appear that most of the creative energy that anarchists of yore had put into writing books was now occupied coming up with snappy slogans for tshirts.  Tshirts were for sale on more stalls than books were.  There was a whole range of slogans to choose from as long as you hated News Corporation.  If you had any other opinions you would pretty much have to go naked.  One stall was selling (among other things, but not books) a map of Australia.  I examined it and was delighted to find my birthplace prominently mentioned which doesn't happen a lot on maps of this size.  Since this map detailed the various nuclear and uranium facilities around the country it is a bit of a mixed blessing.  Again I didn't mention to the nice people that my father may have worked in a uranium extraction related capacity (note to self, find out what my father actually did at Rum Jungle, I've never quite known) while we were living there.  There was also a stall advocating the abolition of money.  I don't know if they were selling anything but I decided to show my support for them by not finding out.

All in all the book fair was a bit of a bust so Morganne and I wandered off to have breakfast.  From my point of view it was a waste of time as my two reasons for going (to buy books and hit on hot anarchist chicks) were both stymied.  There was one extremely attractive young lady assisting Morganne's partner with the vegan stall but I completely ruined any chances I had with her when I let slip that I might enjoy eating meat occasionally.  Apparently not even her dog does that.  I'd like to think that the book fair got better as the day went on (we were rather early) but I suspect that it provided little more than an opportunity for like minded people to sell each other tshirts that they already owned.  Reverse Garbage would be delighted.