S1: It's time for Midday Edition on KPBS. Today's arts and culture show takes us back between the 16th and 20th centuries to explore the relationship between Black Americans and the Pacific Ocean. Then we'll go to the Wow Fest plus a book crawl through San Diego. I'm Jade Hyndman with conversations that keep you informed , inspired , and make you think. The Black Pacific Project explores a vast history. Few know about.
S2: The story of the transatlantic slave trade didn't encompass the totality of black people's stories upon the water.
S1: Then Beth Accomando previews the Without Walls festival and Julia Dixon Evans previews an upcoming book crawl. That's ahead on Midday Edition. Black Americans relationship to the Pacific Ocean between the 16th and 20th centuries is the focus of a new exhibit on display at the Central Library in downtown San Diego. It's called Take Me to the Water Histories of the Black Pacific. The mind behind the project is Caroline Collins. She's an assistant professor of social and spatial justice at UC San Diego's Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Professor Collins , welcome to Midday Edition.
S2: Thanks so much for having me , Jade.
S1: So glad to have you here. Okay , so the 16th to 20th century is really a wide passage of time.
S2: It's a very wide passage. And there were times when I was in the archives when I would wonder why to myself , why did I take on such a large scale of time ? But it was really important for me to do so because I wanted visitors to walk away from the exhibit with an understanding of the broad scope of this story. I wanted them to know how long black folks have had this sustained connection to the Pacific Ocean. And then also , I was really thinking about how large the ocean looms in public imagination. And often that period of time from the 16th century to the mid 20th century covers a lot of space about things like the Age of Sail or some of the battles that took place during World War two. These were very momentous times that I felt really shaped how we think about the ocean , in particular the Pacific. Wow.
S1: Wow.
S2: I knew that generally when folks think about black folks and ships , one type of ship generally came to mind , and that's the slave ship. And when they think about black people's relationships to water and large bodies of water , the Atlantic Ocean often came to mind for really important and valid reasons. But I also knew that the story of the transatlantic slave trade didn't encompass the totality of black people's stories upon the water , and that there were other bodies of water , namely the Pacific , that black folks engaged with , and also other watercraft outside of the slave ship. And so black people had really long sustaining ways that related to the ocean and to the Pacific. They were navigators and explorers and soldiers and sailors , often in colonial projects on Spanish and Portuguese ships. They also made livelihoods on the Pacific , fishing or whaling. And they worked on the waterfront docks , carrying cargo across the expanse of the ocean , and black people also surfed and swam and studied the the Pacific. And so those were stories that I wanted to make sure were covered in this exhibit.
S1: And there was surfing even too. Right. Yeah.
S2: Yeah. So the the the exhibit opens with some of the African maritime traditions that really ground a lot of both this exhibit and , and some of the activity that we're talking about. And it builds off of a lot of work that Doctor Kevin Dawson has conducted at UC Merced , and also scholars like Jeffrey Bolster. So thinking about some of the aquatic activity that took place on the western coast of Africa , including surfing , some of the first documented instances of surfing on the west coast of Africa happened in the 1600s and what's now Ghana. But the show also talks about surfing culture here in California and Southern California. Another scholar , Allison Rose Jefferson , has written about Jim Crow , California in these spaces of aquatic leisure that people were able to carve out in places like Bruce's Beach and in areas of Santa Monica. And then also , the show acknowledges folks like Nick Gabaldon , who was is widely regarded as one of the first surfers of black descent here in California. But it also talks about a woman named Carlotta Lye , who was an educator in Hawaii in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And in addition to teaching , she would write home. And in one of her letters to her brother , she was talking about some of the things that she would do on the weekend , and that included dancing , but also going to the ocean and surfing.
S1: And , you know , it's interesting because as you've laid out , black people have this deeply rooted connection in history to to the water from swimming to surfing , fishing And even exploring. Yet there's also the United States history of segregation , which you touched on , and it prevented black people from accessing pools and beaches. And of course , we see the systemic effects of that today. Tell me about that complicated relationship between blackness and water in this country.
S2: Yeah , that's part of the reason why , even though I'm looking at this large geographic space , the Pacific , I'm specifically looking at the what's now the US Pacific. So I'm looking at California , Oregon , Washington , Alaska and Hawaii. And you're correct. Um , generally in the American Pacific , there were times where the powers that be would work to keep black folks away from the water , especially in terms of leisure and play and being able to express themselves and their autonomy in that way. So even though in places like California , for example , Or , um , segregation was not the land. Uh , it was not legal on in certain beaches. Discrimination was still practiced openly. Uh , people would still harass beachgoers and fishers. Uh , and and that was why there were folks like Charles and , uh , and Willa Bruce who did create spaces like Bruce's Beach in Manhattan Beach , where they had a building that people could come and rent bathing suits , and they would have get togethers and they would go out into the water. There were people who were buying homes in this area. Um , and the way that , uh , their white neighbors ended up retaliating against this really growing , thriving black beach enclave was to push the government of , uh , Manhattan Beach to snatch the the property through eminent domain. And so you do see these instances of black folks , um , having their abilities to engage with the water curbed in the US. But there are also all of these ways that people chose to go to the water , whether it was to seek work there , whether it was through leisure and play , whether it was to seek new adventure. There were all of these ways that people took to the water and to the Pacific , specifically in order to start new lives for themselves or also just engage in all kinds of mundane activities like playing and fishing and surfing.
S1: You know , I mean , I want to give people a real sense of how black black people's relationship with the Pacific evolved.
S2: So in the 1500s , black mariners began journeying into the Pacific. They went into the Pacific for all kinds of different reasons. During this early colonial period , uh , free and enslaved black crew were on , uh , Spanish and Portuguese expeditions. Many of them were working in labor gangs and other unarmed service. But there were thousands who also served as armed auxiliary. Uh , you had black conquistadors who , uh , for their service , could gain things like land and stipend , um , types of limited stature for their service. If they were enslaved , they generally could obtain freedom , uh , and free status for this service. Um , but there were also black conquistadors who risked some of those benefits by fighting against colonial powers. Um , uh , Matthew Russell calls these folks counter conquistadors. Um , sometimes they join native societies or even establish their own maroon maroon communities. Um , some of those , those folks who were traveling the Pacific during that time , um , and coming out of the Iberian Peninsula , some of them were arriving to places like Spain and Portugal from African ports , because at this time it's expanding maritime world that's carrying sailors to all of these new continents and new beginnings. Some of them , though , were also Iberian born and often of mixed race parentage. If that was the case.
S1: The the counter conquistadors struck me. And , you know , it's one part of history a lot of people don't know about. And that is the relationship and even the trading between African explorers and indigenous people and what is now the U.S.. So what did you find out there ? Yeah.
S2: You know , one of the sub stories of the exhibit is thinking about how folks gained freedom by taking to the sea. And in that story , one of the the people that that I look at is Anthony Allen. And so he's an example of someone who ended up finding refuge in a native society of what's now the US Pacific. So he was born into slavery in New York in 1774 , and when he was around 24 , he fled bondage. He self emancipated by taking to the sea. And at first he was traveling all along the east coast and in other points abroad. But he ended up settling in what he called at the time , the Sandwich Islands , but the Kingdom of Hawaii around 1810. And so at that time he was embraced by the people of the Kingdom of Hawaii. He became an advisor to Kamehameha the first um he , um , a high priest , granted him about six acres of beachfront land in Waikiki , and he later writes about this story and how he ended up there , and how he ended up with two Hawaiian wives , as was the customs , which what he says in this letter , he's actually writing to the son of his former enslaver who had heard about Alan and his exploits speak through missionary networks. And so Allen talks about how he operated the successful businesses. He ended up having a boarding house there on his land , as well as Honolulu's first hospital for American seamen. And so its story is one that illustrates some of the ways that black folks navigated the Pacific , including indigenous communities of the Pacific at times. Yes , being part and parcel of a lot of colonial activity that led to indigenous land and water dispossession. But also the times there were instances where these black sailors and other folks going into the Pacific regions were finding refuge in indigenous societies as well. Wow.
S1: Wow.
S2: So much of U.S. history starts at the eastern seaboard right again for important , valid reasons. But I think that there's all kinds of opportunities and questions and examinations that open up when we change our focus and expand focus to also look at the Pacific coast. And when we look at these ways that black folks have engaged with the Pacific , we're able to one just get a broader , better , more accurate version of history and all the different ways that black folks have ended up here. We're able to move outside of not just the dominant transatlantic slave narrative , but also the Great Migration narrative , which is a very important narrative. It's how my own family ended up in California from the 1930s and 40s and early 50s. But we're also able to see the ways that black folks were able to engage with other colonial projects , including Spanish California and Mexican California , and also with indigenous communities. And in doing that , we can start to have a broader understanding of race relations. So much of the way that traditional US forms of racial construction , the way we understand how race gets made in the US , is generally along the lines of this black white dichotomy. And we are not able to think about all of the more complex ways that people with black skin have engaged in the world. And so this gives us an ability to kind of think past that concept as being our natural default , and looking at other ways that blackness has been made and understood in the past and hopefully could be in the present , in the future as well.
S1: I've been speaking with Caroline Collins. She's an assistant professor of social and spatial justice at UC San Diego's Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Her exhibit , Take Me to the Water Histories of the Black Pacific , is on display now through May 18th at the San Diego Central Library. Professor Collins , thank you so much for your insight and for joining us today.
S2: Oh , thanks so much. It was a pleasure.
S1: Coming up on Midday Edition , we'll preview La Jolla Playhouse's Without Walls Festival , also known as the Wow Fest , where you can actually see a show performed on treadmills.
S3: And while we run , we're going to try and serve some audience members a three course meal. We're going to try and submit a grant application live on stage with all the supporting documentation attached.
S1: Hear more about that experience after the break. Welcome back to KPBS Midday Edition I'm Jade Hindman. La Jolla Playhouse kicks off its annual Wow or Without Walls festival today. It's a four day celebration of immersive , interactive and non-traditional theater from local , national and international artists , and it's all on the campus of UC San Diego. KPBS arts reporter Beth Accomando spoke with two of the artists. UC San Diego Professor Sharrock , who composed the music for Green Memories , and Hugo Williams of the Australian collective Pony Cam that's presenting Burnout Paradise. Sharrock.
S4: Sharrock. You wear many hats. You are a faculty member at the UC San Diego Department of Music. You are also the associate director of the Qualcomm Institute on campus , and you are the composer of Green Memories , which will be running at the Wow Festival this year. So explain what Green Memories is and what people can expect from it.
S5: Green memories is a surround experience. It's an immersive experience when they come in , they'll come into a new space. This new space is equipped with 32 channels of audio with three channels of video. So it's somewhat surround video. They'll come. Some people will have a chance to sit down and enjoy a very meditative , relaxed feel. We'll have chairs available as well , but they'll experience a fully immersive sound around them and visuals. And the piece is really meant for people to have a moment to relax and meditate on our position on earth and our connection to the Earth and our ecology.
S4: As you mentioned , it does have a very meditative feel , and it very much takes you out of all the kind of buzz and bustle of the world. But since this is for radio , explain a little bit of what the visuals look like and what that feeling is of being immersed in those images.
S5: The visuals that are created by Memo Acton , a colleague at the Visual Arts Department , or originally live recording of various elements that have been processed and created somewhat algorithmically and then processed with AI techniques. And some of these images are very slow moving waves , like perhaps like water. There. We've been talking about it in terms of what this represents. We have the water , we have the fire , we have the waves , we have the earth , the four elements. And you'll see very slow moving graphics that come from real recordings. So at the same time , you can think of them as machine generated , while there are also very real and you could connect to them as real life motions of various elements and visuals will move around them.
S4: And we talked about how this does have a sort of relaxation to it , but there is a poem within this piece that initially does not present itself in English , and it adds another layer of meeting which is not quite as relaxing or calming as the visuals and the the other sounds , the music.
S5: That is correct. The piece is based on a poem by Farouk Farrokhzad , who was a poet in the 50s back in Iran. Just to say one note , all Iranians know that poetry is the most important art form in Iran , and many of the art forms go back to it. And Farouk was this very special character who spoke about the current political , social and ecological problem in extremely simple manner. In this poem , I pity the garden. She seems to be talking about her little garden at the back of her house. And the poem reads no one thinks of the flowers. No one thinks of the fish. No one wants to believe that the garden is dying , that its heart is swollen under the sun , and its mind is slowly draining of green memories. And I should say , she said these. She wrote these in 1959 , and like many of her other poems , we now realize what a visionary she was and how much she saw not only in just ecology , but how our interpersonal relationship and political setting of social settings affected our full ecologies , both social ecologies , but through the or natural ecologies as well. So you hear the absolutely beautiful voice of Azzam Ali singing in a language that she has created. That's actually in the beginning parts. Those words that she says don't come from a certain language. This is a technique that she uses in order to create musical phrases without using any specific language. But at the end , that last poem is sung in English. And you're correct. The idea is that for us to sit through this moment , meditate , relax , but then at the end with these words with we're faced with a rather a startling reality.
S6: No one wants to.
S7: That the God.
S6: Is stopping you.
S4:
S5: I think the Wow Festival ignites so many different aspects of the campus. And I always say , when the Wow Festival comes , it brings campus to life. They connect with a wide variety of audiences. They bring many extraordinary pieces that have many different type of sensitivities. There is something almost for everybody , taken from children to people who are interested in some entertainment to people who are interested in really high art , and the Wow Festival is really trying to bring something that is not usual proscenium like theater type. So I'm very happy that we are collaborating with him , and I'm also extremely delighted that the Qualcomm Institute is one of the sites that they will have a number of pieces performed there.
S4: And is there anything else you want people to know about this presentation at ? Wow.
S5: Well , as a whole , I just want to invite everybody to come to Wow. There is lots and lots to see for this piece , I think. Just leave 20 minutes of your time. The piece is 20 minutes and in and out takes less than half an hour , and I'm hoping people will come at a moment that they want to take a moment to relax and hopefully walk out with a lot of green memories , Even though we talk about that. The difficulty is about the green memories leaving the mind of the garden. But we have to be mindful of our ecology. That's what I really hope that people take out of this little moment that we meditate , we relax , but we also understand our responsibility towards Earth.
S4: All right. Well , I want to thank you very much for talking about green memories in this exciting new space at UCSD.
S5: Thank you very much for the interview. You've always kind and I've always really happy to hear your stories about art. So I'm really pleased that I'm here talking to you.
S4: That was Sharrock. The creator and composer of Green Memories. Now I speak with Hugo Williams of the Australian collective Pony Cam. Their show at the Wow festival is Burnout Paradise. So I asked him to explain what the show's all about.
S3: This is a question I get more often than not , even in the back seats of taxis on the way to and from airports. It's a theatre show or a performance , but but unlike other shows where we pretend to be characters , we're mostly just ourselves , and we kind of set ourselves a challenge at the start of this show. And that challenge is that we're going to run on treadmills for about an hour , and while we run , we're going to try and serve some audience members a three course meal that we hand cook.
S8: Order up.
S3: We're going to try and submit a grant application live on stage with all the supporting documentation attached.
S9: Hey , there's two people who called out about the volunteers before.
S4: Meh.
S3: Meh. It's it's ridiculous. It's the hardest task by an absolute mile. Just trying to get your brain to switch into , like , writing coherent sentences while running it at like , like eight miles an hour. It's just an enormously difficult thing for my brain to do. And then we're also going to make our way through a sort of mega list of tasks , of things that maybe people once told us were good for us , or like things that you have to do on your weekends but you don't like , really want to do. So they just end up being a list of things that you have to get through. So we say we're going to do all of these things. And then also we say we also have to run a personal best running distance each show. And that's kind of the challenge that we set ourselves at the start. And if we fail to run the furthest we can run and do all those tasks.
S9: We will be offering out of our own pockets our audience ticket refund. Refunds.
S4: Refunds. And give us a little background on Poni Cam.
S3: Of course. So we're five artists that met at college or university and where we did a we did a theater degree. Um , since that time we've been working for five years , and we make lots of different kind of performances , sometimes in theaters. But mostly we make performances in nontraditional spaces. So we make a work called Paradise Lots with teenagers in car parks. And we also make works that I guess are in love with the idea of of theater as well. A lot of our works , I think , are trying to wrestle with the idea of what we want to make because we're still quite young and why we want to make it , and why we think that's relevant to audiences. So almost all of our works are formally attempting to experiment in that way , like what is the most accessible and an interesting way to talk about why we gather in spaces and share stories together and why is that relevant for anyone , even if they don't feel like they might usually be welcome in those spaces or something like that. If listeners or anyone comes and sees this show , I think what you'll see is , is five people on treadmills trying to work together , but but sometimes talking , while a lot of the time talking over each other , kind of drawing focus in ways that makes it harder. And for us , this is a metaphor of of our lives together as people.
S4: Performing this show , because it is interactive to a degree.
S3: Like , we've made a lot of work which has like a lot of bodily feeling in people where they leave with a lot of like , you know , exuberance and excitement. But this show is , is on another level. It is the closest I think I've seen or felt to what it must be to be a professional athlete. If we complete all of those tasks in the last moment , Audiences are are really like cheering at a level that like real , you know , real guttural screams. The reactions have been quite amazing. I mean , we don't say that people need to get involved , and by no means do audiences need to participate in the show. What we say at the start is like , we're not very good at what we do. We're like , we're running , we got to cook , we got to do these things , so we might ask for help. And if you want to help , we'd love it. At the start , audiences are usually a bit sheepish , which is , of course , the way that any of us would be. And then as it goes on and audiences realize that they're not performing , but they're just helping us with tasks. More and more people get involved. And then as more people get involved , what you see , I think is like a whole community coming together to like , care for us. It creates this beautiful spirit in the room that's really , really lovely. It's quite life affirming , I find very collaborative. And there's a there's a real sense that if we do succeed , it's because of the of the real help that audiences have given. And the spirit of the of the evening , I think is , is largely down to how much an audience wants to give , which is usually quite a lot.
S4: Well , I can't wait to see this show and I'm looking forward to it. So thank you very much for talking about Burnout Paradise. Um.
S3: Um. Thank you. Thank you very much for for having me and asking and asking such lovely questions.
S1: That was Beth Accomando speaking with Hugo Williams of the Australian collective Pony Cam with composer Sharrock. Their shows are a part of La Hoya Playhouse's Without Walls festival , otherwise known as the Wow Fest. It runs today through Sunday on the campus of UC San Diego. Still ahead , Julia Dixon Evans has a preview of this weekend's San Diego Book Crawl.
S10: It's like the best bookstore for that weekend , right ? The whole city feels like the best bookstore. It's really lovely. And all ages and all that is great.
S1: KPBS Midday Edition is back after the break. Welcome back to KPBS midday Edition. I'm Jade Hindman. The 2025 San Diego Book Crawl takes place Saturday through Monday , coinciding with Independent Bookstore Day , and you may be wondering how the book crawl works. Well , participants in the crawl receive a book crawl passport and get it stamped at each location if they make a purchase. Special prizes are available along the way , and author signings and appearances are scheduled at many of the bookstores. This year's crawl features a new addition , Hay Books , which just opened in East Village this month. KPBS arts reporter Julia Dixon Evans recently sat down with Hay Books , Annika Omar and Matthew Hind , along with long standing bookseller John Evans of Camino Books. Let's take a listen.
S11: I want to start with kind of an obvious first question for Annika and Matthew.
S12: Um , all the other bookstores have been really supportive. We're kind of trying some new things. We're going to be a mix of used and new books , which is kind of exciting for us both because I have a background in use books , and Matthew has a background in new books.
S11: I mean , you've both worked in bookstores forever. I'm wondering , Matthew , maybe you can take this one.
S13: And not just bookstore owners and workers , but record store owners and workers. Uh , folks in the restaurants in the neighborhood. People who live in the condos nearby us or apartments. Um , I did not expect the massive outpouring of kindness and support that we have received. And it's I'm very happy to have more. So come visit us and continue to be nice.
S11: John , with your store , Camino Books , which you opened in 2019 as Diesel Books. And but you originally started it in 1989 , in the Bay area. So you've navigated a lot of evolution in the books landscape. What has been the most rewarding or joyful part for you of all of this Covid ? Mhm.
S14: Okay. Explain.
S11: Explain.
S10: Because there's no time that you felt more intensely how meaningful and useful and productive and how it contributed to psychological , spiritual and physical health of people than during Covid. So the whole purpose of the bookstore was heightened , highlighted , intensified in a great way , so that there were four of us that we have a store had a store in LA , and in that store we would kind of go nuts every day at 3:00 , just under the strain of it , and we'd get very giddy and crazy. But it was so intense during that period and having to retool to online sales and shipping and outside the doors , not letting anybody in all of that. But , um , it was an incredibly joyful time just to have people so in need of getting what they need , and that you knew that better than any other time.
S11: And you've navigated other big changes to the industry since 1989. I mean , the onset of internet book sales and big box stores.
S10: Yeah , big box stores kind of plunking down wherever there's a nice independent and trying to drive it out of business. That was late 80s , 90s , and then Amazon and other online retailers. And , you know , there's been a series of chains that have come up and gone away. Um , bookstores stay as the top thing that communities want to have in their community. Um , whether they actually support it enough to continue depends. But it's always a top priority as to what a good life is , is to have a bookstore , their local bookstore.
S11:
S10: There's a particularity to the the vision of it that people appreciate because it shows a human hand and not a corporate algorithmic hand. Um , so I think letting your freak flag fly helps. And then I also think we our first Yelp review was pathologically friendly. And and an excellent selection of books. And in a way , that's the best description of our store as we conceive it. You know , it's to be so responsive to people that come in that they get the best book for them that we have in the store that day , at that moment. And that's a perpetual challenge. It's not an easy thing , but it's a very fun thing , an exciting thing.
S11: I want to ask you each about that. Um , like the idea of curation and selecting books and then also how you figure out how to recommend a book to somebody in the store. I think this is what really sets indie brick and mortar stores apart from everything else that's out there. So I'm curious how intentional you are or how you set out to curate a store.
S12: And so it's really interesting to try to figure out , you know , what our neighborhoods going to want and what we want to have to offer. And , um , to sort of balance that with people actually buying the books. Is is a fun thing to figure out. We're still kind of figuring that out.
S13: I mean , I think probably everyone here today faces the same issue as far as curation , but with the books in our own home , we live in the San Diego area. We don't have mansions. That's just the way it goes. We have more books than we have space. So I think we have all practiced this for years.
S11:
S10: So you're providing things from far afield , and you're bringing them into this one place that people can interact with them. And that itself is exciting to people. And each store does that differently. You know , you advocate for certain kinds of things. That depends on what booksellers work there. As to the stock we have , it depends what the customers are interested in. So as trends happen where a particular country or a particular region becomes more interesting , you know , whether it's Africa or Scotland or Central American or South American. So all those things affect all of your choices. It's a complicated , weird sorting that's largely intuitive. Um , and a lot of it's based on what you hear. You're constantly hearing voices of people saying how great this is for this reason , and that stuff and all those things bounce through your sensorium as you're picking things. So , um , but we advocate we're cultural advocates , which , you know , we're a cultural institution , a civic institution , a social institution that's , you know , part street theater and part , um , library and part therapy session. But , um , and so having those things , we tend to think we're wanting to stretch everybody a little more , have beyond what they expect. So people would come into our store and say , I didn't come in and find the book I was specifically looking for , but I found ten I didn't even know existed. And I think that's something that thrills booksellers , that somebody is being exposed and discovering , as they say , discovering the something beyond their imagination. At the moment , keeping the imagination alive is where a church of the imagination , curiosity.
S13: That's wonderful. It reminds me of something that I've heard Annika say a lot , and I'll paraphrase it , and then she'll correct me what I think she says. One of the things about going into a real bookstore , like we're talking about today , little locally owned , independent bookstores , is that you may not find the book that you came in for , but you'll find the book next to that book , and that book will change your life.
S12: It's pretty close. We'll let.
S15: It slide.
S11: Okay , that's another question for all of you.
S12: Um , um , there's 14 that are going to be , you know , 14 bookstores that are going to be on the independent bookstore a day crawl in San Diego , and we each have just a little bit of a different view on things , a little bit of a different stock. No one can carry everything , but we each sort of bring something different to the table.
S13: When , uh , when Annika and I worked at different bookstores.
S11: This was verbatim. And the book catapult.
S13: Right ? Indeed. And I thank you very much , Julia. I remember , you know , we were , I think , according to the internet , 1.1 miles away from each other on a straight walk just down 30th. And it was pretty common for us to just say to a patron , hold on a second. I know someone who might have that book. I'm going to make a quick call and we've done that as well with , um , I mean , obviously Mysterious Galaxy focuses on what you might call speculative fiction or some mystery and sci fi , and we're always happy to send people there because , you know , as John said , nobody can have everything. Um , and yeah , I'm not going to list every store and all their specialties , but you get the general impression. It just it's so much easier when you can simply call someone and say , yeah , yeah.
S12: And chances are , one of the bookstores in San Diego is going to have what you need in stock today. And so , you know , spending five minutes and calling around and sending someone to another local bookstore , um , is is such a a privilege here because we do have so many different bookstores. Um , so it's really nice to be friendly and to , you know , send customers on to other bookstores so that they the the money stays local and independent.
S11:
S12: I mean , we all have our neighborhood bookstore that we love and the one that we go to every week , but this way it really gets you to go out and sort of explore San Diego and see some , some different things , um , meet some new booksellers.
S11: And what are some of the special treats this year ? Matthew , you want to take this one ? Sure.
S14:
S13: Well , our friend John at Camino will be hosting this year's. I guess we call them ambassadors. And this year's book crawl ambassadors. The good and the great Dave Eggers. And , John , did you say that's going to be on Sunday at 10:00 ? Yeah.
S10: So he's , um , behind McSweeney's and 826 Valencia. And his book is at the circle that was made into the movie. Um , And so he has , uh , he's taken over the front of our store because he's written 50 books. Yeah. Um. That's crazy , but. So he's coming , and he is , you know , a force and a force for good. Um , and the thing that strikes me about the book crawl is that Independent Bookstore day started. I think it came out of Green Apple as an idea in San Francisco. Um , but the book crawl is its own thing down here. And there are other book crawls throughout the country , but in LA and in in the Bay area. Um , Independent Bookstore Day is , you know , a bigger than usual day. Um , in San Diego , it's like Christmas. And I think part of that has to do. And you could , you know , San Diego better than I do , Monica. But , um , I think it partially has to do with Book con , uh , Comic Con , because I feel like that idea of of going , everybody going and doing this thing in a communal way , celebrating something. And I love that because I like the idea that books are in no sense elitist to the books sense. The books are no sense. There's no snobbishness. That's one of the reasons open up bookstores. No. Aloof , no , you know , pathologically friendly.
S15: Books for everybody. Yeah.
S10: Yeah. And so that gets celebrated to the max in San Diego. I mean , it's just. And people come in and they're meeting people that they've never seen before , and they see the book they're reading and it's just like. Exactly. It's like the best bookstore for that weekend. Right. The whole city feels like the best bookstore. It's really lovely and all ages and all. That's great. And the San Diego Book Festival is is like that , too. There's a great it's small , but it's the sort of celebration of books in this casual , everyday way. You know , we all need them. We all want them. We all love them. Let's celebrate. Them.
S14: Them.
S11: And there are prizes.
S12: Yes , there are prizes. This year there's going to be a patch , a tote bag , which is one of our sponsors , Canterbury Classics , which is a San Diego publisher. Um , did amazing tote bags. There's a pin by , uh , Suzy Garamendi. Um , there's a whole slew of amazing prizes.
S1: That was Annika. Oh , Mark and Matthew Heine of Hay Books , along with John Evans of Camino Books. Speaking with KPBS arts reporter Julia Dixon Evans , the San Diego Book Crawl runs this Saturday through Monday. More information can be found at SD Book crawl.com. That's our show for today. I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
