Tarin’s Year in Review: 2016 Bottles of Poison on the Wall
2016 tricked me into thinking it was going to be a good, productive year. I mainly expected two things: I was going to find permanent housing; our country would have a free and fair election. Welp.
Last year I was so optimistic; for my 2015 Year in Review, I wrote about finding my voice, since I had, after all, started writing for the public for the first time in over a decade.
I started 2016 with a bang, taking one of those “deep dives” I never thought I could endeavor to immerse myself in, this one into the landscape surrounding the Ferry Building in San Francisco’s financial district in the weeks leading up to Super Bowl 50. It’s not so much about sports as about local politics, money, and homelessness.
I ended up writing a 6-part series for VICE Sports called The Imperfect Host, and it required reporting outside my range of experience, from making interview appointments with City Hall politicians to walking around in the rain at night looking for people who were sleeping out and willing to talk to strangers.
The parts:
Part 1: In which we learn from the PR chair that Super Bowl City will be nothing like the money-losing America’s Cup, and we visit a Castro district merchant who has more sympathies with the homeless than with homeless policy.
Part 2: We survey the drama at City Hall, including corruption charges, continued demands for justice from the SFPD, a mysterious budget crisis amid massive city wealth, and of course, Mayor Lee’s famous words: “The homeless are going to have to leave.”
Part 3: As swarms of journalists descend on San Francisco—to examine the city’s tent encapments under the freeways and press the homeless people who live there for comment—we look at the facts around homelessness. We visit a Local Homeless Coordinating Board meeting and hear some crumbs from Ed Lee. We meet Rolph and Stephan, who live at a bus stop near the Ferry Building.
Part 4: We endeavor to explain what it’s like to be homeless in San Francisco. Imagine showing up here for the game and losing all your money and ID. Where would you go? Consider this a travel guide, in which we look at rent, food, and quality of life laws—and meet the Invisible Man.
Part 5: We attend another protest outside the gates of Super Bowl City; visit Susan Honey Cunningham as she tends to the tent of a friend in the hospital; and speak to a homeless advocate who is both critical of the shelter system and afraid to speak publicly about it.
Part 6: What effect did Super Bowl City really have on the people, homeless and otherwise, who live and work in the area? What was all that security really good for? And now that the camera crews have packed up, how will the City and those of us it underserves keep moving forward?
In February, my grandfather died, and I flew back to Maryland for a strange visit that found me mostly spending time on my cousins’ couch in an apartment outside Annapolis.
When I got back, I went to Pantheacon, a convention for witches and pagans I attend every year. I wrote about it in an introductory way for Atlas Obscura and with deeper focus on deeper magic for Broadly.
Pantheacon, on Atlas Obscura: The Pagan Approach to #Blacklivesmatter Involves Carefully Crafted Hexes
Pantheacon, on Broadly: Honoring the Dark Goddess with a Coven in an Airport Conference Hotel
In March, shortly before the anniversary of my own eviction, I wrote one of the only things I managed to put on my own Medium blog, a guide to dealing with a landlord who wants you to leave:
On Selling Out: How to Negotiate a Tenant Buyout in San Francisco
In April, my editor at VICE Sports asked me to write about the Golden State Warriors. I started out thinking I was going to talk about how the team moving to San Francisco was going to change, and my stories are partly about that, and mostly about how the changing landscape under Bay Area gentrification is affecting lifelong fans.
But first, I went to my very first basketball game at Oracle, and in line I met a couple travelers from Alaska who’d taken four airplanes just to get to the Warriors-Spurs game.
VICE Sports: “Eskimo Love” and Basketball: Two Native Alaskans Make the Long Trek to a Warriors Game
Also in April, I went to a gun show to take a concealed weapons class at the Cow Palace.
In May, Prince died, and grief struck me low. I went to the Castro Theater to watch “Purple Rain,” which is a terrible movie that still contains some of the best live performances ever to be filmed.
Bitter Empire: Prince, ‘Purple Rain,’ Grief, and Growing Up Weird
June was maybe the busiest month I’ve had since the last month before graduating college. I was working on producing and organizing a family summer camp, and meanwhile, I was caught up in NBA playoffs season, covering the Warriors. So I spent my days making spreadsheets and emailing parents and my nights going to bars all over the Bay Area, meeting fans of every persuasion and learning how to watch—and love—the game.
Becoming a basketball fan wasn’t exactly a New Year’s Resolution for 2016, but I wish it had been on my list, because I HAVE SUCCEEDED.
June 2: I watched the semifinals with all sorts of fans and asked people for their thoughts on the team moving to San Francisco:
VICE Sports: In Oakland, a Team and a City on the Verge of Gentrification
June 22: I went all over the place to watch the first 6 games, and had to bluff for the seventh, since I was in the woods singing with children around the campfire the night the Dubs blew their 3–1 lead.
VICE Sports: How to Watch the Warriors: A Journey Into Fandom and Across the Bay
More important things happened in June, of course, including the massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, the implications and actualities of which rocked marginalized communities around the U.S. With only a couple days to go before camp and with a million words due on my Warriors Finals package, I pitched two very different stories about some of the broader implications of Orlando.
For a story about the employment history of the gunman, my editor told me that her editors wanted a link to George Zimmerman, because Florida, because guns, because headlines, because clicks. I found it:
Complex Life: Omar Mateen, George Zimmerman, and How Wannabe Cops Become Killers
For a story about how prayer helps queer communities and communities of color deal with tragedy, I interviewed four faith leaders, one Christian and the others pagan and interfaith.
The Establishment: Why Prayer Can Be a Powerful Tool for Social Justice
That takes us to July. I got back from a successful camp, and then my parents came into town for a week, and the week after that, my friend whose house I was staying in came to town for a week, and the week after that, I sank into a deep dark hole. Depression is a motherfucker.
I also had to shelve a story that I spent three months reporting, a sprawling feature about a subculture that has its home in Northern California and tendrils around the world. I submitted a draft that wasn’t narrative enough for my editor, and then he got laid off, and then I ran out of steam, and then when I had steam, the new editor killed it. I’m still trying to figure out next steps around this. It was kind of a blow and not one that I could do anything about.
I haven’t written a whole lot since, but here’s what I did put out, none of it paid:
A fun piece for a series of 216 essays, 216 words each, about the early Web:
Websafe 2k16: FIVE STARS (#99CC00)
Is this my first actual “humor” piece? In this essay I make every holiday about patriotism:
The Shocker: Six American Holidays That Are Actually About Our Troops
Also for The Shocker, a blog about sports and other goofy things, I wrote an “NBA Preview” story that’s actually about how walking on the waterfront helped me recover from drug addiction:
TEAM DREAMS: Looking for New Orleans Pelicans Answers With Actual Pelicans
And for a year-end roundup, I wrote (in 200 words) about Peter Thiel, Gawker, free speech, fascism, and Warriors basketball:
Since February 2015, I’ve put out a (mostly) weekly newsletter, thematically about moving around for the last year-and-a-half since I lost my apartment, and also about any number of other things: techsploitation, mental health, gentrification, income inequality, capitalism, sexism, dating, books, cats, weather, witchcraft and spirituality…
But the last one I shipped was in October. I reached a point where my depression took over at the same time that I picked up a part-time copyediting contract that changed my weekly schedule, replacing my writing time with deadlines editing and localizing blurbs.
I will put one more out before the end of the year, even though the deadline is looming.
But I’ve felt like, what do I have to add to the murmur about our inevitable doom, pre- and post-election? I’ve felt like I’m neither pedagogically equipped nor brave enough to write about risk and resistance. How can I pretend my voice would matter; isn’t that solipsism?
I know I should get over this fear; it’s what kept me from writing for a decade. It also doesn’t keep legions of white dudes from publishing every single word they think, though, so I should just fucking try.
So, I guess it’s time to make some resolutions. I’ll get in touch with the editors who, unbelievably (to me), keep soliciting my work. I never seem to reach the square on the game board where the gumption and the time and the ideas intersect, but maybe I should cheat.
Let’s pretend 2017 will be better, if only to trick ourselves into thinking something matters. Sheesh, that’s dark. But I’ve got a flashlight around here somewhere.
I’d love it if you’d sign up for my newsletter, Displacement Blues. You can also find me on Twitter, Facebook, and TarinTowers.com.
