The first weekend I was here, in an attempt to stop feeling like an alien in San Francisco, I went to an artist talk by Lawrence Diggs, aka “Vinegar Man,” aka this guy, at 667Shotwell, which, to my (pleasant) surprise, turned out to be not only somebody’s home, but in fact the home of an artist who I had seen speak the previous day on a previous anti-alien excursion. Small world? No matter, but it felt good to be at a house event, and a comfortable/welcoming one at that.

my car, sans two windows, alongside its former contents, elsewhere on shotwell street

The talk was, in theory, to be about artists revitalizing small towns, or the opportunities that artists had in small towns, or the opportunities small towns saw in artists – perhaps a combination. Lawrence Diggs, as it turned out, relocated several years ago to Roslyn, South Dakota, one of many declining towns of not-very-many-people in the state, and established the International Vinegar Museum and its attendant Festival, an absolutely preposterous enterprise that nonetheless brings much-needed income and bodies to the town. The talk was billed to center on the prospect of artists moving to declining towns and doing something in them; the positive roles that artists could play in these towns, etc. I was interested in seeing this, having recently driven through portions of southwestern South Dakota – namely the Oglala Sioux Nation through the Black Hills to Custer, SD – and noted not only its beauty but also its wrenching poverty; I had also recently read about Scenic, SD, which is apparently still for sale.