Prep

Preparation was the first, and perhaps most obvious, place where the two types of DJing vastly differed.

Preparing for Contra requires hours of sorting new tracks, creating mixes, adding hot cues, fixing beat grids, and analyzing song structure. Once the tracks are all analyzed and annotated, I can then create a playlist of mixes and start practicing them.

For Lindy, on the other hand, I can sit down and prepare a basic set in a few hours right before the dance. Sorting any new tracks still needs to be done, but otherwise I mostly don’t have to do any work other than possibly adding a cue point to let me know where to start a track on the rare version where the beginning doesn’t work (ie. live recordings with lots of chatter or applause before and after), and even that isn’t really necessary.

For Contra I normally make a play list with all my mixes in an order that I think will work well, then shuffle that around on the day of the event depending on the dance picked by the caller. For Lindy I chose to make a crate (which differs from a playlist in that there can’t be duplicate tracks and there is no order to the tracks) instead, pull in about 50 tracks (far more than I’d need, especially when trading songs with another DJ) and largely pull from those just to make selection quicker, while still dipping into the rest of my library on occasion when nothing I’d pre-selected fits the current vibe.

Nerves

When a dancer asks if I get nervous before DJing for contra I confidently say “no”. Not out of some toxic sense of bravado or machismo (I hope), or because I think I’m particularly good at it and don’t need to worry (I’m not, and I do), but because I know I’m going to make mistakes and I’m okay with that.

Instead of being nervous I tend to go into problem solving mode:

• “How did I get the dancers 8 beats off the phrase?”
• “Can I jump back to an earlier point in the song to give us more time without it sounding bad?”
• “I haven’t practiced this mix enough, focus on the cue out point coming up.”
• etc.

This apparently isn’t the case when I DJ Lindy. The first time, I was immediately a nervous wreck. This is likely particular to me, of course, but it was still an interesting difference that I wasn’t expecting given how much more technically difficult Contra DJing is. I knew intellectually that the technical side of doing a mix (ie. beat matching, harmonic mixing, transitioning between tunes, etc.) isn’t the important part of DJing, the finesse of picking tracks that the crowd will like is what matters. A DJ who just plays a few contra songs, but chooses them well is a much better crowd pleaser than one who does impressive mixing but picks bad songs. However, when it came right down to it I was still surprised by how much more nerve wracking it was when that’s the only thing you’re being judged on.

At some point I remembered that it’s just a dance and if one of them is bad or doesn’t work, we’ll move on and play another song. If I can’t find something, playing something at random is fine too (not ideal, but fine). Once I accepted this I almost immediately started picking songs quicker and not having to rely on picking something random at the last minute after all. It’s much easier to focus on what will be good when you’re not worried about whether it will be perfect. After that we were able to cover for each other and play off each other, and it made the evening much more enjoyable. If one of us killed the floor, the other would try a different style and bring it back. Doug covered for me, and I was even able to cover for Doug once or twice and revive a somewhat empty floor! None of this is something I’d have to deal with in Contra where my mixes are pre-selected, practiced, and where I’m picking from a much smaller selection of tunes.

Playing to the Dancers

While Lindy may not require the technical skills used when mixing tunes in the same way that Contra does, the dancers also aren’t pre-lined-up as they would be with a Contra or Square dance. If you play a tune no one likes at Contra most everyone is stuck with it for 7 minutes or so until the caller wraps up the dance. The dance may fall a part entirely if the tune is too fast or doesn’t have clear enough phrasing for the dancers or caller to follow along, but generally speaking as long as the track sort of works the dancers will dance to it—and they’ll probably enjoy themselves. There are also fewer dances in an evening, so I suspect dancers feel more compelled to dance every single dance.

With Lindy that’s not the case. Many dancers will wait to hear if your track selection is one that they like before venturing out onto the dance floor, and even those that aren’t deliberately checking the music may not be as inclined to break off their conversations with a friend to go ask someone to dance if the track doesn’t immediately catch their interest.

There is also a several minute break between each tune in a contra dance where the caller teaches the next pre-choreographed dance. This means that if two back-to-back mixes have nothing to do with each other, or sound completely different, no one notices as long as you’ve picked a mix that goes well with the dance. Whereas with Lindy only a few seconds elapse between songs, just enough time for someone to thank their partner and go ask the next person to dance. This means that you have to consider the previous track when selecting the next one: a leap from fast balboa to slow blues is going to be jarring for the dancers and they may choose not to dance. Changing the style requires either gradually shifting between the two over several tracks, or maybe giving a slightly longer pause between songs to let the dancers get the previous style out of their ears and bodies.

Similarly there is a big difference in what music really gets the dancers blood pumping, though I suspect this is specific to these two venues and not to the type of social dancing as a whole.

With the contra venue I DJ for it’s mostly a younger crowd and they’re mostly used to hearing a hand full of local old-time string bands and the occasional high energy (but still traditional) New England style dance band. The contra chestnuts are an important part of the dances history, and sometimes you play them, but they don’t get many people excited.

This means that I can do two things if the energy is feeling low: I can play a track by a band they normally wouldn’t be able to hear that’s a bit more modern sounding, or otherwise has something different and interesting about it, or I can mix in a pop tune they’re familiar with. This is almost like a cheat code: if the energy is low, play a song they know and they’ll get excited and raise the energy of the floor.

With Lindy it’s not quite as simple as that. The reliable floor savers for Lindy are mostly old chestnuts by some of the jazz greats. Modern swing is sometimes played, but sparingly, and pop songs are a definite “no”. People come to the dance expecting a certain style, and they’re unhappy if you don’t stick to it. You have to work within the constraints of the genre, and picking floor savers is much more subtle work that requires carefully watching the dancers and seeing what will make them take to the dance floor on any particular night.

The act of watching the floor and adjusting the set as necessary may be obvious to club DJs and other social dance DJs, but to me it was a new experience, and one that I initially found somewhat paralyzing. For the first few tracks, my friend Doug had to cover for me and play as if he were the solo DJ while I flailed trying to find a track that I thought would work. I hadn’t fully internalized until that moment that in a Contra dance the DJ is picking the music to match the dance, but in Lindy Hop the dancers are picking the dance to match the music, and this may include not dancing entirely! I let the perfect become the enemy of the good and Doug had to pick several tracks in a row even though in theory we were trading songs 1 for 1.

Genre and Form

Sometime after the half I had mostly gotten over my nerves, and most of the newbies had drifted off home. I felt more comfortable trying a few experimental tracks that targeted primarily the more experienced late-night crowd: one a fast blues dance recorded at a legendary local Blues club, and the other two folksy tracks by bands that mostly play contra dances.

I was a bit nervous about these tracks as I didn’t know how they’d be received at this particular dance where the DJs play almost exclusively 30s and 40s jazz and the most modern bands that get any air time tend to be emulating the style of the jazz greats. Luckily they all went over well and filled the dance floor! A few people switched to blues dancing for “Sweet Betty”, while others continued with Lindy. Even better, for “Rhinoceros for Sue” the head DJ for the organization (who schedules everyone else, and therefore was the person to try and impress during the evening) went out on the floor to do some Balboa and came over afterwards and asked me what the track was!

I mention this because this is both a similarity and a difference from Contra. Techno-contra¹ excluded, I largely can’t play anything for a contra dance that’s not in strict 32-bar “AABB” form. I can layer a modern beat or a pop song over a traditional contra tune, or maybe even find pop tunes that more or less stick to contra form and play it alone, but the form has to be there for the dancers (and some callers) to be comfortable.

With Lindy the freedom to play tracks with a wider variety of forms, so long as they respect the history of the dance, was a nice change of pace. That said, mostly it still needs to have a swung beat and I’m more at the mercy of what the dancers like (which is a narrower subset of music in the Lindy scene in my experience, as previously mentioned), so maybe this is more of a similarity than a difference.

Conclusion

Like learning to dance both lead and follow roles (in Lindy), or from either side of the minor set (in Contra): having done two different forms of DJing will, I suspect, make me a better DJ for either type of dance. I really enjoyed DJing for Lindy and was delighted when the head DJ asked if I’d like to start doing it regularly, hopefully I’ll be able to do it more often going forward!

If you’re curious about the set Doug and I ended up playing, the final set list for the evening can be found on Musicbrainz.

Introduction

This document defines common Vorbis comments and Matroska tags related to Contra, Square and other traditional called folk dances. Their use is also recommended (and identical) in other specifications that re-use Vorbis comments such as OGG/Opus Tag Definitions, and FLAC tags. The same names may be used in other metadata containers such as APE or ID3 but their use in these systems is not defined in this document.

Terminology

The key words “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, “REQUIRED”, “SHALL”, “SHALL NOT”, “SHOULD”, “SHOULD NOT”, “RECOMMENDED”, “NOT RECOMMENDED”, “MAY”, and “OPTIONAL” in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.

Namespace

For use in Vorbis Comments, each tag defined in this document will use the CONTRA: namespace to differentiate it from similar tags that may already exist. For use in Matroska tags each tag name will be identical except that it will be prefixed with “CONTRA_” instead of “CONTRA:” as “:” is not a valid character in Matroska tags (and no concept of namespacing exists there). This is true regardless of the dance form being used (ie. if the recording is of a square dance, the CONTRA: namespace or CONTRA_ prefix is still used).

Tags

CONTRA:CALLER

The name of the caller heard in the track for recordings that include calls.

CONTRA:TITLE

The name of the dance in recordings that include calls. For example, “Scrubbies”.

CONTRA:CHOREOGRAPHER

The name of the dance author in recordings that include calls. For example, “David Smukler”. The special value “[traditional]” SHOULD be used for traditional dances where no known choreographer exists. For dances that are a variation on a previous dance the choreographers SHOULD be listed in reverse chronological order, with the author of the variant as the first author.

CONTRA:UNSYNCEDDANCE

The moves of the dance, a single time through, in a plain text format. No exact style is specified but the dance author, choreographer, difficulty, or any callers notes SHOULD NOT be included and should instead be read from the appropriate tags.

CONTRA:NOTES

Any caller or listener provided notes (ie. “Beginner friendly dance” or “When teaching the A1 part, have the Larks cross over first…”, etc.)

CONTRA:ROLES

The role terms used in the dance for recordings that include calls. For example: “Larks/Robins” or “Positional”. No specific format is defined.

CONTRA:LICENSE

Like the LICENSE field defined in vorbis/v-comment or the LICENSE tag defined in draft-ietf-cellar-tags the but for the license of the dance instead of the recording.

CONTRA:POTATOES

The number of beats (not bars) of introduction before the first time through the dance begins (whether they are traditional bluegrass-style potatoes or an introductory phrase). This MAY be used in conjunction with CONTRA:START.

CONTRA:START

The start time (in milliseconds) of the first time through the dance (where the dancers would start moving, not where the caller would start calling). This MAY be used in conjunction with CONTRA:POTATOES.

CONTRA:TIMES

The number of complete times through the dance excluding any intros, potatoes, or outros. The exact definition will depend on the type of dance, for contras it should be complete 64 beat (32 bar) phrases.

CONTRA:CROOKED

Whether the dance is crooked (ie. not in perfect dance form) or not. This key MUST always be the value “TRUE” or “FALSE”.

The Set

The evening started out with “Push the Button” by an unknown choreographer. I used a mix that I had done previously, Basketball / FIDDLE DISCO! by Countercurrent and Elias Alexander. Like last time I let it run a little long before the caller had signaled the end of the song and had to jump around a bit in a way that was a bit jarring.

I was also a little disappointed with the pairing, as I had previously decided to use something else with this dance that I think would have been much more fun. The callers and I had exchanged sets (dances and music) in advance specifically to make the musical pairings for the dance a little better and so that Rob and Amanda could practice to unfamiliar and, sometimes, more challenging music. Unfortunately Rob was having trouble calling to my original medley, and asked me to change it last minute.

I’m not sure that I will share the set this way again, instead I might send callers samples of things I’ve played in the past, ask if they have any requests (if it’s early enough to do so), but otherwise ask to be treated just like a normal band. I may also ask how experienced the caller is and if they’re comfortable calling to music that may not sound like a traditional contra tunes. At the very least, even if I do send someone the set in advance in the future, I will set a hard deadline for when changes can be requested (and it will not be “the night before”).

Next Amanda called “Al’s Safeway Produce” by Robert Cromartie. I tried something that I knew would be a tiny it harder with this one and did a mix of “Morrison’s” and “Quarry Cross”, both by The Gaslight Tinkers. We got a bit off at one point and wound up off the phrase, but Amanda did a great job of continuing to call and I doubt the dancers noticed that they were perpetually 4 bars behind.

Rob was up again next and called “The Nice Combination” by Gene Hubert. I had originally planned a fun and very high energy mix for this dance, but Amanda had vetoed it saying she just didn’t like the music and that it was too difficult to call to. Since this was another last minute change, I swapped in another medley that I had performed previously: Muscles / Garbage in A by Buddy System and Great Bear, respectively. This one I was excited to do again because I had broken it a bit last time, and I felt that it went much smoother this time around.

Next was Amanda calling “Happy Birthday” by Dean Snipes. This dance is fairly smooth so I played Serenity Knoll and Will Drive All Night, both by Buddy System. I screwed up the mix a little bit by leaving loop running after mixing in to Will Drive All Night, so we ended up jumping back to the beginning of the song. What should have been a build up followed by a high energy part of the next tune turned into a jarring leap back to a low energy intro. Nothing really to learn here, mistakes will happen and I’ll just have to practice more next time.

Afterwards Amanda stepped away and forgot to hand the mic to Rob. I covered by playing a waltz (Salish Sea by The Faux Paws) since we were overdue for a waltz break anyways so we took an unintended late break.

Once Rob found the mic he called “Spring Break” by Nils Fredland. I assumed this would be the second to last dance of the evening given how close we were to the end, so I decided to break out the show stopper I had planned even though the transition from slow waltzing to the highest energy tune of the evening felt a bit iffy. The last time I had played my medley of Griffin Road, Trip to Moscow, and Rasputin by Kingfisher and Boney M. I had failed to get a recording of it, so I was excited to have a live recording this time around. Unfortunately, this one ended up falling apart completely.

Despite having practiced it (and it being a very simple mix), I repeatedly screwed up and am still not entirely sure what I did. Whether it was me getting off during the initial mix in of Rasputin, or me breaking the beat and the phrasing trying to fix it, or me letting it get way too fast to dance to at a point in the song when I should have been riding the tempo, it was just a mess. The dancers got off the music, Rob got off in his calling, and eventually he just decided to end it early while I was still scrambling to get the song under control.

I don’t have much to say about this one other than it kind of killed the energy of the evening and was entirely my fault. Sorry Rob (and dancers)!

Amanda was up again and called “The Eyes Have It” by Becky Hill. This dance is another smoother one, and (if I hadn’t killed the energy on the last one) I had planned to bring the energy down just a touch after the show stopper, so I did a mix of “Waiting for Earl / Calamity” both by Elixir.

Finally, Rob ended the evening with “Simplicity Swing” by Becky Hill. Since I’d just done a low energy dance, relaxing dance, I wanted to bring it back up again so I did Devil / The Druid by Countercurrent. This one did okay, except that Rob and I had a miscommunication about how many times through were remaining and it ended up going a bit long. I’m not sure if it was bad communication on Rob’s part or me just being tired and misunderstanding, so chalk this one up to the night just being full of mistakes and move on. In the end it didn’t really sound bad, it just meant we looped a particular section one or two more times than I would have liked and it got a bit repetitive towards the end.

Sadly, we were way over time at this point and had no time for the traditional closing waltz.

Lesson’s Learned

The main thing I learned from this evening was that I need to have a list of things to discuss with callers up front when I’m working with them for the first time. In the future when working with a caller that I haven’t worked with before I think I’ll do the following:

• Don’t send a set list or practice recordings in advance, only sample recordings from past events.
• Ask if the caller is comfortable calling “off phrase”, and ask how they stay on phrase as a caller (by listening for phrasing, counting beats, a mix of both, etc.)
• Ask about the types of dances they do (all 32-bar contras? Triplets in A.B.C. form, etc.)
• Any special requests? It’s also important to make it clear that requests are fine (from the caller, not the dancers) but that they may or may not be able to be honored and there is a hard cutoff beyond which I will be practicing and unwilling to make changes.
• Ask them to always give at least 3x through before ending the dance if possible (sometimes there will be emergencies where this can’t happen, that’s fine).
• Ask how they do calling over lyrics or if they expect to drop out on most songs.
• Make sure they know that some songs will be non-traditional.
• Ask them how long they like to run dances in this hall (if they’ve called there before).

This is almost certainly an incomplete list, and if any other called social dance DJs want to chime in I’d love to know what you do when working with a caller.

This got me thinking about how I interface with the sound folks / organizers too. A few things I should have a chat about with them include:

• Do you prefer that I run sound off my board, or do you have someone who will run sound?
• Ask if the sound person can record the evening or has an extra place to plug up a multi-track recorder (and check if it’s digital, XLR, pre or post mix, etc.)
• Ask if they have a position in mind for the DJ in the hall and is it near the caller (preferably in the center with visibility across all lines)?
• Any obstructions in the hall that will mess with sound?
• And of course give them my own requirements: 3 power outlets, monitor speaker with 1/4" TRS input, 1 XLR mono input to whatever board they’re using, a mic that doesn’t require phantom power if I’m running sound.

I haven’t run into problems with this yet since I only DJ for a single dance/venue, but it’s worth thinking about. Again, I’d be curious to get other social dance DJs (called or no) opinions on this list; I’m sure I’m missing something important.

Conclusion

Something that I didn’t mention in my thinking about what went wrong above is that the “energy” of the evening felt off almost from the very beginning. None of my song choices were landing the way I wanted them to, I had to shuffle some around in ways where I didn’t really feel like they flowed from one dance to the next, and the dancers in general just didn’t seem as excited as they normally would be.

I felt a bit bummed afterwards, but it’s also important to remember that it really doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, even if the event wasn’t as good as it could have been, dancers still showed up and had a good time. There were still a ton of smiling faces, friends catching up between songs, chatting, and general merriment even if there were some problems. So give yourself a break and do better next time, me.

Links

• The event on Musicbrainz
• Recordings on the Internet Archive

Prep

While I still prepped by marking each time through the dance with whether it looped cleanly or not, this time I (mostly) marked it with a cue instead of a 64 beat loop. I also named the cue based on what other cues I could jump to cleanly from it. For example, if I were on the last time through the dance I would mark if it looped cleanly itself, but also that I could jump backwards 3 times to cue 6 (or whatever the case may be). This way if I’m nearing the end of the dance but the caller is running it a bit longer I can reset without a single 32 bar phrase starting to get repetitive. I can also plan ahead by seeing that cue 6 lets me jump back to cue 8 or 9 afterwards (let’s assume these are the last two cues), which means that if the caller immediately calls 2 more times through I know that I can cleanly jump back to 2 more times without incident. I also mark a handful of things in the music such as if this time through the dance is a big recognizable build up (which I might not want to repeat even if technically it sounds okay), or if I shouldn’t jump back before a cue because the energy is significantly lower and we don’t want to kill the energy that had already been built up on the dance floor. This made it much easier to always follow the callers instructions and not have to scramble to wrap up the song or ask if we can do 4 times through the dance instead of 2 or what not.

The Set

I started out the set with a slowed down mix of “Whelan’s”, “Baghad Gus”, and “Congress Reel” all by Wild Asparagus. This was a medley that I had planned for my previous set but hadn’t managed to use, but it worked quite well to “Whoever is Right is Right” by Jim Hemphill. The only iffy moment I had in this medley was in one of the transitions where I thought I executed it perfectly, only to have the tune I was introducing jump half a beat ahead, breaking the rhythm. I had left the Quantize option on (which locks the two beat grids together even if you’re a little bit off) and unfortunately the beat grid on the song in question was about half a beat off at the point I was doing the intro.

Lesson learned: pay more attention to what options you’ve got selected (and reset them between songs, this would be a problem several times during the evening) and in a song where the beat grid can’t be right through the entire song (ie. because of tempo changes), make sure it’s correct at the point you’re going to mix in.

For the second dance Valerie picked “Made Up Tonight” by Erik Hoffman. This dance is relatively easy and in some ways similar to the previous dance so I decided the dancers could handle a little bit higher tempo and energy level. I did a mix of “Bus Stop!” by The Free Raisins and “Rec Hall” by Kingfisher. This is another mix I had prepared for my previous set and one of the ones I was most excited about performing. Unfortunately I completely broke the transition by just forgetting to bring the volume up on Rec Hall, so I ended up killing the music entirely for a few beats before I realized what was happening and brought it back in. It sounded terrible, and this one the dancers couldn’t help but notice, but Valerie kept calling so they were on beat still when I finally realized what was happening.

Lesson learned: go ahead and beat match and mix in a few bars early, then do the transition by bringing the volume up instead of just hitting play, or just remember to have the volume up first.

At this point Valerie decided to take the evening in a different direction from the modern, improper and becket contras that the Trolley Barn normally asks callers to stick to. She called “The Steps of Waterloo”, a traditional Sicilian circle, which I’ve never seen done at the Trolley Barn before. Since this one is both easy and a bit silly I used “Flying Ice Cream” by Giant Robot Dance which starts out very slow and groovy, then ramps up dramatically in the second half. Once the dance ramped up I mixed it with “The Randomainians” by The Great Bear Trio to make it last a little longer. This was the one mix and dance combo of the night that I was mostly extremely pleased with, when the tempo and energy ramped up half way through the song the dancers cheered and started frantically rushing to try and get to the basket swing in the limited time the (normally too fast) music allowed which was a lot of fun.

Lesson learned: prepare about twice as much music as you think you’ll need for the evening (to be fair, I already knew this, I was just struggling with the preparation for this set and didn’t end up with enough time to finish the other mixes I was considering).

Continuing Valerie’s theme of not doing modern contras she picked “The Hand Jive”, a proper ceilidh, by Colin Towns next. Because this dance is a bit more “fun” and contains some patty-cake like hand games I decided to do a simple but fun mix of “Raccoon” by Wake Up Robin and Disco Snails by Vulfmon and Zachary Barker.

Unfortunately I hadn’t considered that, easy as the hand clapping is, it required Valerie to do a significant amount more calling than she normally would do and never drop out, so picking a song with lyrics was a bad idea. A few people still got a chuckle out of the “Disco Snails” cameo though.

Lesson learned: make sure to pay attention to how much the caller will have to talk and ask if they plan on dropping out before introducing something with lyrics.

We took our mid-dance waltz break at this point for which I played “Waiting for Landfall” by Julie Vallimont, “Indifference” by the String Beings, and “Norwegian Reinlender / Schottis From Idre” by Wild Asparagus. I’d hoped that some of the dancers would know the schottische for the second part of the medley, but mostly it just confused everybody who kept trying to waltz even though it was no longer a waltz.

Coming back we were running a bit late so I decided to drop the show-stopper for the evening, a mix of “Rainy Night” by The Dam Beavers, “Tween Spirit” by Giant Robot Dance, and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (which, of course, the previous tune is a cover of) by Nirvana. This was paired with “Birminghams” by Gary Nelson.

I played the first two tunes as a normal medley, then when Valerie indicated that she was ready for three times left through the dance I mixed in the actual Nirvana version just for the ending. I was worried this crowd wouldn’t care for it, but when the tune first came in (as “Tween Spirit”) a lot of the dancers started singing along, and when actual Nirvana came in at the end the energy really ramped up and there was a lot of cheering and stomping, so apparently even the younger members of the crowd were still excited about 90s grunge!

The only real problem with this dance is that I had one moment where I had a clean loop that I wanted to repeat but as I did so some of the dancers, knowing what came next in the song, started singing the next verse and then had to stop when the music wasn’t what they expected.

Lesson learned: when doing a pop song don’t do transitions that would break the progression of the song that people are already used to, even if they sound okay.

At this point I realized that I hadn’t prepared enough mixes for the dance and I was more or less out of material. For the next one Valerie asked to do a very short square dance, the “Cumberland Square Eight”. Since it was going to be so short and timing didn’t matter I played “Heather’s Concussion” by The Great Bear Trio without mixing it into a medley.

This tune is itself very short (only three times through) and far too fast for a normal contra, so I slowed it down (though still keeping it too fast) and sped it up slowly through the dance to mess with the dancers. They looked like they had a good time!

This left us with just enough time for a no-walk-through contra. I had nothing else prepared but wanted to send us out on an easy-tempo dance after the various fast shenanigans from the rest of the night, but still have some good energy. I dug around in my library and ended up playing “Apple Blossom” by Great Bear. Since I didn’t have anything to mix this with I just played it through and looped once or twice near the end to keep the high-energy ending going. The dance Valerie picked was an easy ending dance that is unfortunately called “Unnamed Contra” and she didn’t know who wrote it.

We then closed down the evening (very late, much to the chagrin of the organizers) with “Mending” by “The Little Mercies”.

Stuff I Learned

A recap of the things I need to take away from the evening:

• Be thoughtful about resetting all controls, levels, mixing, effects, etc. between tunes. Possibly write down the initial state for each song so that you can re-set the board at a glance.
• Beat match early then use the volume sliders for transitions, don’t just start playing immediately at the entry point (or just remember to turn up the volume as you approach the mix point).
• Consider how much the caller will have to talk in any given dance and how soon they’re dropping out before mixing in vocals.
• For pop songs, don’t violate the order of the verses or breaks that people expect, even if the final result sounds okay. It’s jarring for the dancers who are used to it being a certain way.

And finally: relax and enjoy it! While I spend the entire evening worrying about how the sound dropped out for a moment, or my transition was a beat off and I saw the dancers stumble and catch back up, or whatever other disaster might have befallen, no one remembers any of that. I got a very nice message from the organizer the next day telling me how excited everyone was and how many conversations she’d had with people telling her how much they enjoyed the music!

Other Links

• The set list on MusicBrainz
• Recordings of the evening can be found on the Internet Archive

Week One (Oct 13–19)

Oct 13

I missed the first few days this year and wasn’t able to take advantage of Rule 2: “Early Bird Friday”, so I decided to start my week on Monday and biked over to a new coffee shop in Smyrna, GA: Lume Coffee Co. Unfortunately, it’s just an empty store at the moment with a sign that says that the actual coffee is “coming soon”, so per Rule 3 “Coffee Shop Without Walls” I had my own coffee nearby. Hopefully the actual coffee shop is open before the season is over and I can report back (but given that the shop is an empty shell at the moment, I doubt it).

Oct 19

To close the week out I rode back over to more or less the same area where Lume was (the Smyrna Village Green) to go to the Farmers Market! No coffee today, but one vendor was selling very spicy Ginger Lemonade. While I think the introduction of the ginger changes Lemonade form a summer drink to a fall drink, in the spirit of Rule 6, “Controversial Beverage Rule,” I’ve opened a poll over on fedi to seek adjudication for whether this ride counts!

Poll: https://social.coop/@sam/115406548366036109

Week Two (Oct 20-26)

Oct 26

Rode to Rev Coffee in Smyrna, GA today. This is one of my favorite coffee shops and, best of all, I managed to drag a friend along (they were not happy that the only bike of mine that fit them was a single-speed and there were several hills along the way)! A plain-old-drip-coffee was acquired to make it a Coffeeneuring ride..

Week Three (Oct 27-Nov 02)

Oct 31

I decided to use the “Coffee Shop Without Walls” rule again today and rode over to my polling place. Instead of coffee I took a cup of lemon tea to sip while waiting in line, knowing that the last day of early voting is always the busiest.

Week Four (Oct 10-16)

Nov 16

A friend and I decided to go to the nearby city of Marietta for a coffee today and took the Mountain To River (M2R) trail the ~15 miles round trip (with a few detours) to get there. We ended up at Douceur de France just off the trail.

I decided to splurge a bit and got a Cappuccino which was an excellent change of pace from my usual drip coffee.

This time around, returning to the Trolley Barn, I wanted to see if my DJ skills had improved and try live mixing for the first time. Since I’ve never heard of anyone else DJing a traditional contra dance² I didn’t have a good idea of what I was doing but I worked with the caller, my friend Valerie Young, to plan a set that I thought the dancers would like. The set comprised mostly high energy contra dance bands who play traditional songs in less traditional ways: think the Gaslight Tinkers, Great Bear, and ContraForce. My goal is to be able to tell the caller, “just treat me like a band” so that I can play a medley of two or more songs (as the band would traditionally do), they can request a tempo, energy level or vibe, and signal me when they’d like to end the dance and I’ll get ready to wrap up the mix with a nice ending. I don’t think I quite achieved that goal with this set, but it was close and the dancers had a blast either way, even if occasionally some of them ended up out on the ends when the dance wrapped up due to me not being able to give the caller as many times through as she wanted and still make the ending sound clean.

Prep

I prepped the individual music in this set basically the same way I did last time: in Mixxx I marked each time through the dance (contra has a very specific form) with color-coded loops or hot cues depending on if they looped cleanly or not, and named the mix-in and mix-out points when I decided what song to pair them with.

I try to come up with enough mixes to fill the night, plus a few more that are both high and low energy to have in my back pocket in case the caller is just feeling a certain way that night. This way I hopefully always have something that I’ve practiced which works well for each dance in terms of where bouncy or smooth sections of the song fall. That said, I didn’t do a good job of matching songs to dances in every case this night (I would have liked songs with a harder hit on a few of the petronellas), but overall it worked well.

The Set

The night started out with the dance “Jefferson’s Sixpence” by Ann Fallon to which I played a mix of Gaslight Avenue and Reel du Nord, both by The Gaslight Tinkers. This went okay except that I let the track run a bit far before the caller was ready to stop and had to loop the same section a couple of times to make the mix keep working smoothly, which I felt got a bit boring after a handful of times through the dance. The dancers didn’t seem to notice or mind though and were enthusiastic about the start to the evening.

Please excuse the clipping on the recordings, one of the unfortunate problems with the evening (that we’ll come to later) is that the gain on the main board was up way too high and I didn’t have control over that, so it was clipping most of the night. More on that in the retrospective at the end of this post.

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<figcaption>Gaslight Avenue / Reel du Nord by the Gaslight Tinkers, DJ mix</figcaption>

The second song was a more traditional contra song, a mix of Highland by Wake Up Robin and Fleur de Mandragore by the Free Raisins to the dance “Made Up Tonight” by Erik Hoffman. Due to some technical difficulties with the sound pulled from the main board I didn’t wind up with a recording of this one (or most of the following songs), so let’s just pretend the mix went perfectly and everyone had a good time.

Next the caller picked “Trip to Elsan” by Joe Surdyk and Eric Schreiber. For this I branched out a bit, mixing the (more or less) traditional contra song, Basketball by Countercurrent with FIDDLE DISCO! by Elias Alexander. I had one minor issue with the mix towards the end of FIDDLE DISCO!, a loop that wasn’t really clean but was necessary for the number of times through the dance the caller wanted, but the dancers didn’t seem to notice and they went wild for the modern beats that the tune introduces! This was also the first time I had to re-mix a tune a bit on the fly besides just transitioning between two tunes since FIDDLE DISCO! is crooked and won’t work for contra dancing without (minor) adjustments.

</audio>
<figcaption>Basketball / FIDDLE DISCO! by Countercurrent and Elias Alexander, DJ Mix</figcaption>

The Tuesday night Trolley Barn dance is rather short, so we took a waltz break at this point. I played Here Comes Sunshine by George Paul at the callers request, and Les Yeux Noirs by Burçin since I knew that a number of people from the local Lindy Hop scene were in the crowd. The switch to swing made those dancers happy, even if it confused the waltzers.

Back in the main dance I did a mix of Lafferty’s and Camel Hump by Wild Asparagus to one of my personal favorite contra dances: Tika Tika Timing by Dean Snipes.

Afterwards came what I thought was going to be the second to last song of the evening (we’d been running dances a bit long and were short on time) so I pulled out the show stopper: a medley of Griffin Road and Trip to Moscow, both by Kingfisher, but I added a little contra joke by mixing Rasputin by Boney M in with Trip to Moscow, purely based on the name (but the combo also just worked really well). This one really brought the house down!

I didn’t get a recording of this one, sadly with all the times through, but here was the backup recording I made in advance in case my laptop died during the show or something. The transition sounds like I had a buffer underflow (or just bad timing) on this one, and the mixing is a bit iffy in places, but trust me, it was better live!

</audio>
<figcaption>Griffin Road / Trip to Moscow / Rasputin by Kingfisher and Boney M, DJ mix</figcaption>

At this point one of the organizers said she was having such a good enough time that she offered to let us run a bit over so we added “Vivian’s Catwalk” by Valerie herself to a mix of Muscles / Ride the Wheel by Buddy System and Garbage in A by Great Bear. This went well, except that I had layered the percussion from Garbage in A into Ride the Wheel so that when the transition happened it would have some continuity. Except that I somehow wound up off the beat and had to absolutely scramble to beat match; it sounded terrible, but somehow it didn’t throw Valerie off and once I finally got it beat matched we were still right on time.

For the final tune of the evening Valerie picked “Frock’s Rockin Frolick” by Will Mentor which works great as either a high or low energy dance depending on the caller. To compliment this I brought the energy down a bit with a mix of Brand by Potent Brew and El Bourbon Grande by ContraForce which brought the energy right back up to the high point by its rather loud ending!

Finally we closed the evening down with Ootpik Waltz by Wild Asparagus.

Stuff I Learned

• Either ask to do sound yourself, or don’t be afraid to ask the sound person if something sounds wrong (I didn’t want to be rude, so I didn’t ask, but they didn’t realize it was clipping all night and I’m sure they would have fixed it had I mentioned it!),
• I meant to both record my set on my laptop (no caller) but also record the main outputs from the board with a portable recorder (with caller), and ended up with only a few of the songs actually recorded. You have to actually remember to start recording…
• Prep endings better, if there are no clean loops near the end of the song, prepare a different ending or get better at covering the bad loop with effects or something. I had a few times where the caller asked for “3 more times” or “2 more times” and I had to say “uhhh, how does 1 or 3 sound?” or something along those lines. This was fine with my friend Valerie, but isn’t going to make you any other callers favorite band to work with.
• The jog wheels on the Traktor Kontrol S4 MK3 aren’t big enough. Do I do anything that technically means I need bigger jog wheels? No. Would I feel better about having them? Yes. Unfortunately the only controller that meets all my requirements and has bigger job wheels is the Rane Performer, and that’s way out of my price range (and will likely remain so forever), so maybe this is a “learn to get over it” type situation.
• Don’t just assume the waltz breaks don’t matter, they’re still part of your set and should be selected with care (the tempo was way too fast too, gotta pay more attention to the waltzes in general).

Other Links

• The event on MusicBrainz
• Some (non-live) practice recordings are available on Balfolk.social
• The few live recordings that we got can be found on the Internet Archive

Let’s get my overall impressions of the software out of the way up front: it’s absolutely great and I recommend it over the commercial alternatives for DJs of all stripes (except maybe Radio DJs, it’s not really for automatically scheduling radio programs, but people seem to love it for that use case anyways, but maybe that’s because it’s the closest thing that’s free?). This is one of the very few Open Source pieces of software that I can say is just good, and not just “yah, it’s not as good as commercial stuff, but for moral and ideological reasons I choose to make some sacrifices to use it”. No, Mixxx is actually just good, full stop.

My Use Case

My use case for Mixxx is two fold. The first is for DJing for social dances (Lindy Hop and Blues). This case is simple enough that I know DJs who just use two media players tied to different outputs (headphones and mains) and call that good enough: you preview tracks and build a potential playlist in the headphone software, then when a dance ends you drag the next one that you’ve cued up into the software playing on the mains and call it a day. The requirements for social dance DJing are such that this is perfectly fine, but having headphone cueing and waveform visualization is nice, so Mixxx adds what it can here even though something much less complicated than full DJ software would also be okay. I don’t even really need a controller here unless the dance doesn’t provide a sound board, in which case Mixxx also would let you use a small controller to provide software fade outs, which is a nice benefit.

My second use case is also for a social dance, but for one with slightly more complicated requirements. Contra dancing is traditionally always done with a live band, and the dance itself is more structured than improvisational dances like Lindy. A caller tells the dancers what moves to do in time with the music slightly ahead of the beat. They let the dance run as long as they like while the band plays a tune with a specific structure that fits the choreography of the dance. Bands traditionally switch tunes half way through a dance, and dances last until the caller signals when they should end (normally with 2 or 3 more times remaining through the dance).

There are contras that use recorded music, but they suffer from a few problems:

• Recorded music is often meant for a CD, so it is ~3 minutes instead of the 7–12 needed for a dance,
• the band needs to be able to respond to the caller and the caller needs to be able to respond to the band, this isn’t possible with recordings obviously,
• not being limited by dancers skill, bands sometimes make their recorded music much faster or slower than is appropriate for dancing,
• and recorded music is often “crooked”, meaning that it doesn’t strictly fit into the requirements for a contra dance (musicians often prefer to do something more interesting if they’re playing a tune for a recording and not for a dance).

Mixxx is perfect for this use case! Just like any DJ I can mix several tracks together (though the music does end so that people can find a new partner, this isn’t a full evenings set where music never stops like a club DJ would do), I can loop and play sections of the track over again to make it fit the contra structure (even if the original track didn’t), I can skip over between times through the dance that would break the timing, I can speed up or slow down a recorded tune to make it fit the dance better, and I can even keep a tune going until the caller signals how many more times through they want then mix in a nice ending for them.

Mixxx is absolutely perfect for this, and makes for a much more enjoyable dance than you’d get having the caller play music off their phone. It also means you can dance to the most well-known high-energy contra dance bands whenever you want instead of hiring the same handful of low-energy local bands every week (with apologies to those bands, it’s nice to have live music, but it’s also great to be able to get the big touring bands even if you can’t afford to hire them regularly)!

P.S. I don’t do “techno contra” (contra to pop music and rave lighting, it has nothing to do with actual techno music except that it might sometimes use that too), but Mixxx is good for that as well.

Good Stuff

• One of the best UI’s in any software (with the caveat that you probably have to be sighted to use it, as far as I can tell there are no accessibility features, see the problems section below).
• Absolutely rock solid audio handling (on Linux/Pipewire, can’t speak for other stuff)
• Great controller support. Keeping old controllers running that would otherwise be relegated to the landfill is one of the best things about Mixxx. That said, this one has some caveats:
  • the quality of the built-in mappings varies greatly, to say nothing of the user-provided mappings on the forums,
  • and the manual is very incomplete so it’s a bit hard to research what controllers work well and have solid mappings.

Bad Stuff

These are personal notes and while they are public, they are not meant to be an angry take-down of the developers or their process (who may have good reasons for doing the things they do that I disagree with). There’s a reason I’m not sending these on the forums.

I’m going to avoid “my favorite feature is missing”, even if it’s a major problem for me. Most of these are with the development process (plus one serious bug and the usual complaints about developers not taking accessibility seriously), but on the other hand, the software overall is very stable and good, so I suppose I shouldn’t critique a process that seems to be resulting in robust well-made software. If you are not a software developer, most of these probably won’t matter all that much and can be safely ignored.

I don’t contribute to the C++ side because I hate C++ and everything about developing with it, so be aware that most of this is me being hypocritical since it’s not like I’m helping (though also most of the complaints are about stuff they turn down anyways, so maybe it’s fine to complain while not doing it myself).

Anyways, this is all starting to sound defensive, so I’ll leave it at that and just get to the list. The point is: if you feel the need to reach out to me to tell me about how right/wrong/whatever this list is: don’t.

• The homepage is terrible (seriously, on the website you get what looks like a stock image of code on a terminal… there is literally not even a screenshot of the actual software, I imagine most people who aren’t developers see the website and never bother downloading the software; why would they?).
• Lack of accessibility features / disinterest from the developers. This seems like the kind of thing that we as software developers should always prioritize whether we like it or not. Their official response seems to be “we don’t use screen readers, therefore we shouldn’t have to try” and/or “maybe it will be easier with the Mixxx 3.0 interface”, which may very well be true but doesn’t help you if you use a screen reader now and it seems extremely problematic and unfair to ask users of accessibility software to wait for some nebulous future time to maybe be able to use the software. The best time to add accessibility features was yesterday, but if not, today will have to do. Stop putting it off until 3.0 (even if you have to re-write them all for 3.0). This is the closest I will come to demanding labor from developers doing this for free, I am aware of the vaguely problematic nature of that, but this really is the basics and everyone ignores it for ableism related reasons and it drives me up the wall (okay, rant over).
• As of 2.5.2 there is no hotplug for controllers, plus if it is unplugged it often results in a segfault which is pathologically bad behavior (see #14358)
• Development of a lot of new features that involve theming is stalled due to the maintainers wanting to write a new theme engine first which probably wont' be released until 3.0. Lots of small relatively easy fixes are put on the back burner for this reason (or at least, that’s what it looks like from reading through issues, I’m not sure what the reality of the situation is or if they’d accept PRs from other contributors).
• Extremely difficult to get code review if you do submit a contribution, plus they nitpick to death and every reviewer has their own criteria, one will tell you one thing, then one will demand you undo it. Asking for nits to be fixed is fine, we want to make good software, but what we don’t want is demanding that they be fixed immediately in a giant PR, or demanding that other semi-related features be fixed before your PR can be merged, etc. and then refusing to merge because of a small nit that could easily be fixed later and where it wouldn’t be a huge problem if it never did get fixed.
• There is talk of adding AI features. Absolutely fuck every single asshole who thinks this is okay. Hopefully these people never get their PRs merged, but it doesn’t sound like there’s a ton of pushback except from me, so I suspect I’m fighting a losing battle here and will at some point have to stop using their software. This really needs someone who can talk people around and explain why this will hurt the software, the planet, and the people utilizing it, but I’m not that person. I’m just angry at how dumb everything to do with AI is and that’s not a helpful way to bring people around to doing the right thing.

This year in addition to Biketober I’ve decided to try the, unrelated, annual Coffeeneuring Challenge. If you’re not familiar with the challenge, the idea is pretty simple: between October 6th and November 18th you ride your bike to 7 different coffee (or other approved beverage) locations, with some minor limits on distance and how often a coffee place qualifies. For a full list of “rules” you can see this years post: “Coffeeneuring Challenge 2024: The Year of Small Wins”.

We’re a little ways into the challenge already, so this post will be how I document my rides for this year going forward! Let’s start with a few I’ve already done. For the purpose of the rules I’ll be starting my weeks on Monday, because that’s just how weeks work and this ridiculous notion that Sunday is both the “weekend” but also somehow the start of the week needs to be abolished.

Week One (Oct 05–06)

Oct 5th

Per rule 2: “Soft Launch Saturday” I completed my first ride of the joint Biketober/Coffeeneuring season! I was on my way back from a meeting at the Little Five Points Community Center and decided that I’d make a detour to stop at Taco Cantina for a Horchata de arroz. Per rule 6 (“Controversial Beverage Rule”) this was adjudicated in the Court of Coffeneuring Public Opinion on fedi and now only awaits a final ruling by the Coffeneuring Challenge Committee and the Intern.

The overall ride was rather uneventful, but also highlights the major mobility gap in Cobb County, GA. The first four or so miles are from my house to the Cumberland Transfer Center which is the only place in the county that you can catch a rapid bus into Atlanta. I’m lucky enough to be close to the bus station, otherwise I would have to catch another bus to get there which, on the weekend, runs about once an hour. Not an ideal situation: trying to catch a transfer involving two buses that both run once an hour. If you bike, as I did, you can follow the Spring Road Trail and the Mountain to River Trail (M2R) all the way to the transfer center. While this is great in theory because it gets you off the 4 lane road where people regularly do 60mph, the road that the trail is next to is really more of a stroad so every retail establishment along the road has cars pulling out or in who aren’t looking for cyclists and it can be a rather harrowing ride.

Once you catch the bus and arrive at Arts Center Station the transit system improves a tiny bit. Transferring to the train is free and requires one transfer to the blue line which will take you to Inman Park/Reynoldstown Station. As I left the station I was surprised to find a small cycle path that I didn’t know about, Poplar Court Northeast, that cuts through the park to Euclid Ave right next to the Community Center!

The total distance round trip came out to 8.18 miles. A partial GPX trace for this ride can be found here.

Oct 6th

The next day I went out for a group ride. To get a few extra miles in this Biketober I decided to ride to Knight Park where the group was meeting at instead of taking the bus. The total distance to the park was 10.26 miles, mostly along Atlanta Road. This may have been one of the stupider cycling decisions I’ve made in a while; in theory there is a bike path being built alongside the road, but there are major gaps with no plans to fill them in as well and no good way to get off the road at points, especially when crossing bridges.

The group ride itself ended up being 10.36 miles, only 0.1 more than the commute, but was a much more enjoyable ride through Westside Park, Atlanta’s largest public park. At the end we stopped off at The Whelan for a bite and a drink! I went with a local Märzen; it’s not a coffee, but Oktoberfest beers seems like good Coffeeneuring drinks to me (though it did not come in the traditional Maß, which is always disappointing). During the winter proper this pub also serves mulled wine, so maybe I’ll stop back by for one of my last rides if they start serving it in time.

The total ride distance (after checking out an open streets festival and a partial ride home) came out to 24.35 miles. A partial GPX trace for this ride can be found here.

Week Two (Oct 07–13)

Oct 10th

I rode down to meet a friend at Viking Alchemist Meadery, an easy few miles along the M2R trail I mentioned before. I’d never had mead before so the bartender kindly let me try a few samples before deciding what I wanted. It’s not my favorite drink, but a few of the more sour ones were quite nice and a 4 year aged one that I can’t afford (but which he let me take a small sip of) was very nice and it felt like a good Coffeeneuring style drink to me!

I arrived a bit early and they weren’t open yet, so I explored a bit and ended up with a total ride of 5.72 miles. The GPX trace can be found here.

Oct 12th

A few days later the nearby city of Marietta, GA was having their annual Chalktoberfest celebration, two days of street art, beers, and a square that’s actually usable by people, not just cars! I took a ride up the M2R trail in the other direction this time to hand out some fliers encouraging people to vote for the Cobb County Mobility SPLOST which will fund a mix of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lines and bicycle path improvements in Cobb. On the way back I stopped at Pie Bar and had my first cup of actual coffee! The city of Smyrna was also having its birthday celebration on the same day so I ended up also going back and forth between home and the Smyrna downtown area several times to hear the various concerts. This year featured “Letters to Cleo” and “The Roots” as well as a number of local bands!

Overall ride length ended up being 18.66 miles and a GPX of the main M2R portion can be found here.

Week 3 (Oct 14-20)

Oct 15th

It’s October 15th and that means it’s the first day of early voting in Georgia! I took a ride over to the Smyrna Community Center to see what the line was like and was pleased to see that a lot more people than I’ve ever seen during early voting were already queued up (~1 hour wait time according to one of the poll workers).

Nextdoor to the Community Center is the library, so I stopped by there as well and on a whim picked up a copy of “Everyday Utopia” by Kristen R. Ghodsee and “The Contradictions” by Sophie Yanow. I’ve never heard of Yanow, but the book had a bicycle on the cover so that seemed like a good enough reason to grab it. I’ve had Ghodsee’s “Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence” on my “To Read” list for a while, and wasn’t aware that my library had any of her books, so I was excited to learn about “Everyday Utopia”.

Right up the street is Café Lucia so I also stopped for a coffee to complete today’s Coffeeneuring outing. I was pleased to see that they had several fliers with information about the MSPLOST tax on the ballot on their bulletin board that were put out by someone else; sometimes it’s easy to think you’re the only person who cares about public transit, so it’s nice to remember that other people are out there fighting for this as well.

The total ride came out to 3.24 miles, and a GPX is available here.

Oct 16th

My ride today involved several errands on the way to the coffee shop. I first stopped by an auto parts store to drop off some used engine oil from my motorcycle, then biked over to the library to return “The Contradictions” (it was much shorter than I realized and was fun, despite comics not really being my thing).

The line looked shorter at the community center (15 minutes as opposed to the hour it would have taken yesterday) so I went in to cast my vote; the big ticket items for me were Harris for president, of course, but also the previously mentioned MSPLOST and a local Democratic Socialist running in GA HD 42. This is all more-or-less on the way to Rev Coffee where I stopped off to use the wifi and get a little work done. As always, the coffee was excellent, but the bike parking was inadequate and cramped.

Oct 19th

Though only two rides per week count as Coffeeneuring rides (per rule 4), I rode up to Marietta for the monthly Cobb4Transit group ride and wanted to mention some of the work they’re doing. One of the things I like about this group ride is that it specifically focuses on riding a mix of safe streets, and streets where bicycle infrastructure could exist but has been neglected. It’s as much an education about the political situation in Marietta as it is about the ride itself. This is another of those group rides where getting to it without a car was longer than the actual ride for me, but we got to stop by one of my favorite coffee shops, Cool Beans afterwards.

As I was getting ready to ride back to Smyrna, a van owned by the Cobb County Library system pulled up and opened up a pop-up library! I had no idea the county library had a bookmobile and was very excited to see them out in the square loaning out books.

The total distance ended up being 20 miles and the GPX trace can be found here.

Week 4 (Oct 21-27)

Oct 24th

This was just a short ride down to Rose Garden Park to pick up a yard sign from Gabriel Sanchez who’s running for state house for district 42. With two weeks to go until election day, the campaign needs all the help it can get so despite the fact that I couldn’t stay for the political canvasing I decided to at least stop by and put up a yard sign. On the way back I stopped off at Rev Coffee again. Since I did three rides last week (and only two can count), we’ll say that last week’s Rev trip was just a bonus ride.

Oct 26th

Today in the Smyrna town square was the annual “Crafts and Drafts” festival. I was populating the Cobb4Transit and Freedom from Traffic table most of the day, so I biked over and got a coffee (in the morning) and a beer in the afternoon. The Smyrna downtown area, on occasions like this when it’s free from cars, makes a great Coffee Shop Without Walls, per rule 3!

Final Push

Oct 30th

I’ve already hit the Coffeeneuring goal of 7 places for the month, but wanted to do one last update to wrap up Biketober and mention my longest ride! Wednesday the 30th I rode the Silver Comet Trail from my home in Smyrna, GA out to the Alabama border near the hamlet of Esom Hill.

I had originally planned on doing my first century into Anniston, AL but after a late start and a few mechanical issues I hadn’t made it very far by lunch time, so I stopped at the Tara Drummond Trailhead near Dallas, GA for a coffee and some lunch. With all the delays it was almost dark by the time I got to the border and I didn’t have much water left so I filled my bottle from a volunteer fire house in Esom Hill and then turned back for some campsites I’d passed earlier in the day near Rockmart, GA called Camp Comet. This put me at around 85 miles for the day instead of my desired 100, but meant I had a guaranteed good place to sleep and the promise of coffee in Rockmart the next morning!

Oct 31st

I stopped off at a trailside shop in the morning to re-fill my water, then went into Rockmart for a coffee. Continuing on back I also stopped off in Powder Springs at Skint Chestnut Brewing Company for lunch and a beer, as well as a different coffee shop in Dallas so I feel like I got my Coffeeneuring fix in this trip!

The total distance ridden over both days ended up being 135.37 miles, and I had a blast camping for the first time in a long time! This year was the 10 year anniversary of my Appalachian Trail thru-hike and due to a mix of financial constraints, prior job constraints, and social constraints I’ve barely done any camping or long distance hiking since then. Even if it was only 2 days it felt great to get outside and do some miles again!

Wrap Up

I ended up visiting well over 7 new places this month (though I only blogged about some of them), so I’m well situated for the end of the Coffeeneuring season! For biketober the official results aren’t in yet, but I came in second place for my team with 350 miles covered over the month, and having ridden at least a small ride every day of the month!

Without use of constructs, you will unravel few mysteries.

Without knowledge of mysteries, your constructs will fail.

Find the strength to pursue both, for these are our prayers.

And to that end, welcome comfort, for without it, you cannot stay strong.

Becky Chambers has always been known for her political science fiction. Whether it’s criticisms of the overly-bureaucratic and often classist, but ultimately well-meaning, Galactic Commons (read “Space EU”) in her Wayfarers series or the “working class” astronauts of To Be Taught, If Fortunate, the politics are always close to the surface in her stories. Unlike these previous novels which perform the classic sci-fi trick of using the future to reflect on the present, Monk & Robot is her first explicitly solar punk speculative fiction series. Instead of exporting our current society across the galaxy, the Monk & Robot books ask what our current society could become with a prod in the right direction. The only hint we see of the present day are memories of the “factory age”, long ago, and worries about repeating it.

The two novellas, A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy are, like her other novels, unabashedly anarchist and queer. Where they differ from the high-tech, space-opera anarchism of Record of a Spaceborn Few is in the level of technology embraced by the Pangan society. With the notable exception of one of the main characters, the robot Splendid Speckled Mosscap (it/its), we see very little technology beyond what we humans of the 21st century could create. There are no space ships, phasers, or warp drive. Instead, the most advanced pieces of technology we see are mobile phones (albeit repairable ones that are “designed to last a lifetime”, a far cry from the planned obsolescence of today), the mention of communication satellites, and the occasional solar panel or bio-plastic 3D printer. This relative lack of technology, coupled with the way the cities and towns of Panga (the small moon on which the stories are set) live in harmony with the natural world, has led some to use the story as a way to explore ideas of anarcho-primitivism through the lens of Wild-Built. However, with the exception of one seaside community that spurns all technology beyond simple tools, this comparison does not seem apt.

The main character of Wild-Built is the tea monk—a roving therapist with the job description “listen to people, give tea”—Sibling Dex (they/them). Dex finds themself unsatisfied with their work and questioning their value to society. They set out to solve their meaning crisis in the way monks in literature have done for generations: by climbing a mountain (quite literally, in Dex’s case). However, upon returning from the mountain and their low-tech lifestyle with their new friend Mosscap in tow, they make it quite clear that anarco-primitivism does not accurately reflect their views:

The thing about fucking off to the woods is that unless you are a very particular, very rare sort of person, it does not take long to understand why people left said woods in the first place. Houses were invented for excellent reasons, as were shoes, plumbing, pillows, heaters, washing machines, paint, lamps, soap, refrigeration, and all the other countless trappings humans struggle to imagine life without.

The anarcho-primitivist sees technology and industrialization as the cause of our current climate collapse, but Sibling Dex is critical of this view while simultaneously turning a critical eye on the technology itself if it would jeopardize a sustainable world.

the moment they pedaled their wagon out of the wilderness and onto the highway, Dex felt the indescribable relief of switching back to the flip side of that equation—the side in which humans had made existence as comfortable as technology would sustainably allow.

Emphasis mine. This is similar to the view taken by another group over 200 years ago in pre-Industrial England. Becky Chambers’ vision of a de-growth future, and the broader de-growth movement, should instead be seen through the lens of their ideas instead: the 19ᵗʰ century textile workers and followers of General Ludd.

The Luddites are remembered in pop culture only through the capitalist propaganda that sought to discredit their uprising, and this also leads to frequent comparisons with anarco-primitivists or assertions that the Luddites wished to return to a pre-industrial world. But unlike the anarco-primitivists with their critique of civilization and industry, the Luddites—on the whole—weren’t anti-industrialist at all. Quite the contrary, they were often skilled machinists who made improvements and fixes to the engines and frames they would later smash.

In his book Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech Brian Merchant describes the source of their ire:

Machinery, or technology, gets painted as the main target of the Luddites’ hatred and attacks, but the ultimate source of their rage was the factory system that those machines made possible. It was not the gig mill alone, nor the wide frames or power looms—it was the specific mode of domination over workers that the factory created that they felt such deep trepidation and anger toward.

This echo’s a quote from A Prayer for the Crown-Shy when Sibling Dex gets into a sectarian debate with Mx. Avery who argues the anarco-primitivist position against Dex’s more mainstream (for the world of Panga) views. Dex says:

“I’d say there’s no harm in any sort of construct so long as said construct has been proven to do no harm.”

Sound familiar? This mirrors the Luddist critique of the industrial revolution in a startlingly succinct manner. It was not civilization, or the machines themselves, which the Luddites eschewed, it was the factory model they enabled. Even the name used for Panga’s troubled past, the “factory age”, seems chosen to reflect the shift in working conditions the Luddites were trying to avert. There is no harm in the robot Mosscap, nor in the power loom, but the use to which they were put by the factories caused great harm never the less (for the workers in both cases, but I doubt the power looms experienced the hardship of robots, even if both are objects according to Mosscap itself). While Mx. Avery, chooses to eschew all post-industrial machines, Dex chooses instead to evaluate each machine based only on whether it is used to do harm.

This is the difference, in essence, between anarco-primitivism and what we might call “new Luddism”. The anarco-primitivist may see the gig economy forcing workers into long hours for little pay that is governed by obtuse algorithms or AI designed to make the company the most money at their expense and say “the cause of this is industrialization and civilization”. Or the casual news consumer may read the headline “The Robots Are Coming For Our Jobs!” and blame the robots. Chambers asserts that neither of these things are the problem. As Merchant put it:

If the Luddites have taught us anything, it’s that robots aren’t taking our jobs. Our bosses are.

Or, as Chambers puts it:

when extractive factories stayed open all twenty hours of the day without a single pair of human hands at work in them—despite the desperate need for those same hands to find some sort, any sort of employment … We had bastardized constructs to the point that it was killing us.

In both cases we are the problem and we should think critically about new technologies based on how they affect people. Do they provide comfort without harm, or harm for the sake of comfort?

It’s a common criticism of Solar Punk as a literary and artistic movement that it does not address the period of change between the future world and today. From the Pangan culture and religion we can infer that technology is embraced only in so far as it serves humanity and the environment, and that this wasn’t always so. What we don’t know is what cultural or political calamity might have happened to change and unify the minds of Panga’s various peoples. Chambers doesn’t tell us how the people of Panga reacted after the Awakening, when the robots woke up and went on strike, or what the path from their factory age to the thoughtful, low-tech world of the novellas was. Perhaps it required something similar to the World War III that sparked the fully automated luxury space Communism of the Star Trek future, or the uninhabitable earth that led to the anarchist Exodan society in Chambers' Wayfarers series, or perhaps it was a peaceful and gradual transition: we just don’t know. Panga’s factory age may or may not have been ended by Enoch’s hammer, but even if their future wasn’t created by the actions of Luddites it is still a reflection of what could be if we embrace Luddist thinking about technology. By contrast the Luddite revolution of 1812, the brutal way the workers were put down, and the resulting society that we’ve inherited today provide us a warning from the past about what can happen if we don’t.

Want to read any of the books in this article? Don’t support the factory owners, support the Luddites and robot workers of the world! Check if your local library has them first, and if not get them on my bookshop to support me and your local bookstore at the same time! The other bookshop.org links in this article are also affiliate links.

If you think others should read these books, consider donating a copy to a Little Free Library in Cobb County, GA by purchasing them through this wish list! All purchases from this list go in Little Free Libraries around the Smyrna and Marietta, GA areas.

The State of the Art

I’ve long held that software being open source¹ is necessary, but not sufficient. Using copyright and contract law to enshrine the freedom to use your software instead of its normal purpose to ensure privatization is a brilliant move, but licenses like the popular Apache, BSD, or MIT licenses are easily abused by large companies to extract value from free labor that they would otherwise have to pay workers for. Further more, when a company chooses to violate the license outright, there is no reasonable mechanism for enforcement in a judicial environment where the license abuser most likely has the resources to bankrupt the software author and continue using their software as they see fit.

The so called “copyleft” licenses that have arisen from the Free Software movement such as the popular GPL license attempt to fix some of these problems by requiring any changes made to the software also be released under the same license. In this way companies that benefit financially from their use of the software must give back to the community in some way, preventing them from using their power to close off the commons and become landlords.

Furthermore, After a recent ruling in a U.S. state court in SFC v. Vizio, groups like the Software Freedom Conservancy are now considered third party beneficiaries to the license, allowing them to enforce license compliance on behalf of the authors. While this does not completely solve the power imbalance between large companies like Vizio who are known to abuse open source software and the authors who have more limited resources, it does level the playing field somewhat since non-profits like the SFC have a bigger platform on which to fundraise and can retain lawyers for much longer than an individual could.

Unfortunately, this still allows companies to make massive profits while not paying anything back to the workers who created the software.

A New Software Commons

A commons is a finite resource that is managed by a group for the collective benefit of the group. In our current society many (maybe even “most”) of us are only familiar with this concept through the “tragedy of the commons” which states that rational actors will act in self interest to exploit the commons for profit, eventually exhausting the limited resource.

Ostrom’s law, named after economist Elinor Ostrom and stated by Lee Anne Fennell, says:

A resource arrangement that works in practice can work in theory.

This rather flippant statement challenges the “tragedy” argument by pointing out that there are many historical examples of sustainable commons. Ostrom studied these examples and argued that the initial economic model behind the “tragedy” concept is flawed. This led to the identification of 8 criteria that should be met in a successfully managed commons.

What would it take to build a software commons that could be sustainably managed by a diverse community of individuals and software projects? And what would it take for that commons to not be exploitable for corporate interests? Let’s go through each of the 8 criteria and find out.

Clear Boundaries

1. Define clear group boundaries.

Who gets to use the finite resource held in common and what are the limits of the group? At first blush software commons fail this rule to an extreme degree by allowing anyone, whether they contribute anything or not, to use the software. However, this makes the fatal assumption that the resource being held in common is the software itself, but software is information that can be copied ad infinitum. To quote Stewart Brand: “information wants to be free”.

The only limit to the software life span is how long it continues to be maintained, updated, and improved: In a software commons the resource isn't the software, it's contributor time and attention.

Most open source software is developed as a hobby—a side project—that takes a back seat the moment something comes up with work, or when the author gets burned out from being asked for things with no one else around to help. One way to do this is by compensating them fairly for their labor, a concept that many large open source consumers seem to struggle with. The goal of building a sustainable software commons then boils down to: how are you going to pay for it?

Local Governance

2. Match rules governing use of common goods to local needs and conditions.

Probably the best known formulation of the “tragedy of the commons” comes from an 1833 pamphlet by economist William Forster Lloyd. In it Lloyd describes cow herders grazing their cattle on common land. Because the land is not privatized, he surmises, herders are incentivized to put more cattle on the land to turn a bigger profit. When one neighbor does this, the others must as well to remain competitive. This cycle will continue until the land has been used up.

What this model fails to consider is that the herders can communicate with one another and come to an agreement about how best to manage the land and that, more importantly, they all have an incentive to do so. Furthermore, external rules may also apply to the system. For example, the communal grazing land in England at the time was governed by a law that no herder could graze more cattle on common land than they had the ability to overwinter, keeping the number of grazing cattle to a sustainable level.

Open source communities have many mechanisms for communication and rule making, but only one way of ensuring that other projects in the ecosystem also meet those needs: the software license. This means that our license should be govern the group boundaries mentioned in the previous section as well as the externalities of how non-contributors and external actors use the software. Software licenses should directly determine how we get paid up front without allowing large companies to take advantage of the output of the workers labor or requiring each project to negotiate (or beg) for donations separately.

Furthermore, because different software products will command different prices, we want to avoid a rush-to-the-bottom where software in the commons must compete on price, lowering the amount for everyone. To avoid this, the price should be set as a general rule across the board for all software that agrees to become part of the commons. If we make this price a percentage of the revenue that companies earn from their products using the software, and that percentage remains fixed no matter how many individual projects they use from the commons, the value of the commons will go up as the number of useful projects in it goes up. This also lets us command a higher than usual cost for our labor because the company is paying for use of the entire commons, not each individual piece of software. This in turn further encourages them to use other software in the commons and spread the payment to those projects as well.

Finally, if a project has no revenue yet: they don’t owe anything to the projects on which they’re building, allowing anyone to get started with your project for free until they do start generating revenue (if that is the intent). This keeps your project open and available for individuals and other commons projects!

Democratic Process

3. Ensure that those affected by the rules can participate in modifying the rules.

Software licenses are mostly fixed and static, but the cost of labor is not. This means that if the license is also to govern how software is paid for we need a mechanism for changing that price. As the commons becomes more valuable (more people contribute software to it), the price of that software should rise to match. However, if one centralized organization that maintains the license were to set the cost of the software it would place them in an extreme position of power over the license users, discouraging them from contributing to the commons.

Instead the software projects themselves must set the price and exceptions to that price collaboratively.

Self-governance

4. Make sure the rule-making rights of community members are respected by outside authorities.

The license is already part of an external legal framework enforced by outside authorities. It acts as a contract between the software community, the users, and any third party developers who are not active in the main project community.

Most licenses only cover how others can use and modify the software, but do not make mention of internal project governance. Projects may make use of some form of democracy or they may use the controversial “Beneficial Dictator for Life” (BDFL) model in which a single individual controls all decisions about money, development, etc. Either way there are generally no provisions to stop one or more strong personalities from coming in and changing how the project is governed.

Baking democratic decision making into the license itself allows projects that are not large enough to have other legal frameworks such as a business vehicle with articles of incorporation and bylaws to legally enforce that the rights of community members are respected.

Other projects such as the experimental Cross License Collaborative model take a similar approach to mixing the license with governance. It may be possible to write a license that indicates the right to some form of democratic decision making so that existing models like the cross license model can be used in conjunction with the fiscal parts of the license.

Monitoring

5. Develop a system, carried out by community members, for monitoring members’ behavior.

You may have noticed that in the previous section we started discussing democracy among individual project members whereas previously we had been discussing a confederation of projects as a group making decisions about a shared license together.

The fact of the matter is that the commons must be maintained at every level. Individual software communities must make their own decisions as they see fit, but projects must also manage shared resources and infrastructure democratically.

At both levels we need a way to make sure that everyone else is playing by the agreed upon rules. Putting such a system in the license gives it legal teeth and creates a contract between individual projects that use the license whether they depend on each other or not, ensuring that everyone both has a say in the rules, and in enforcing them.

Graduated Sanctions

6. Use graduated sanctions for rule violators.

Sanctions are always tough. No one wants to be a cop — or, if they do, you probably don’t want them as a member of your project. Jumping straight to the nuclear option of banning or taking legal action against those who make minor license violations is bad for the commons as whole, because this means less chance for generating revenue and fewer contributors. Taking legal action is also expensive and, for smaller violations that don’t involve recuperating lost revenue, is likely not worth pursuing. Instead we want to try and bring people back into the fold by deciding on a set of rules and sanctions collectively that gradually increase with the level of the offence.

As with the previous sections, the license should reference these sanctions so that, in the worst case, there are legal protections for everyone involved.

Conflict Resolution

7. Provide accessible, low-cost means for dispute resolution.

This is one of the hardest but most important rules to meet. With most software licenses it’s up to the software author or copyright holder to sue in a court of law for license enforcement, but this is beyond the means of most authors, making the license effectively useless against bad actors. The previously mentioned SFC v. Vizio case has made this somewhat better for the GPL specifically, but non-profits like the SFC still don’t have the same resources as the big companies and can’t take every single license enforcement case. This means that we need to cast a wide net in terms of license beneficiaries (those who have standing to sue), and try to build in other mechanisms for enforcement that are easier as mentioned in the previous section.

Almost all software EULAs provided with proprietary software include a forced arbitration clause in which you waive your right to sue. Disputes are then resolved by a less expensive process known as arbitration. In EULAs these clauses exist because arbitration is almost always more friendly to the big business trying to make you give up your rights, but we can borrow aspects of this strategy and use them for good as well.

A software commons should use forced arbitration to its advantage. This could be by performing arbitration with specific organizations that have agreed to act as the arbiters and allowing the commons community to vote on adding or removing those organizations from the list of acceptable ones, or by creating a jury of other projects in the commons that have no connection or dependency on the disputed project to arbitrate disputes. By joining the commons and becoming a beneficiary of the license each project could agree to a sortition system whereby they may be selected to help arbitrate disputes at any time. If, at a later date, they wind up in a dispute with another project or an external entity they would also have the benefit of the decision of a jury chosen by sortition and who’s decision has legal legitimacy thanks to the license.

Confederation and Community

8. Build responsibility for governing the common resource in nested tiers from the lowest level up to the entire interconnected system.

This is one of the easiest rules to apply to software because so much software works this way already. Unfortunately, many people interpret this rule to mean “form hierarchies of power,” but nothing could be further from the truth.

Instead each individual project is a tier that governs its own internal affairs as it sees fit: though hopefully that includes some form of democracy and consent based decision making. These projects are then confederated into a higher tier bound together by the license. Within the larger tier otherwise separate projects may decide to work together as one larger body, maybe as members of the same fiscal host or support organizations. Across these organizations and individual projects unions of otherwise unrelated projects might form where shared interests overlap. These tiers generally resemble the circles of sociocracy, but the exact governance method isn’t important so long as the projects decide together how they will make decisions without coercion or hierarchy.

Putting it all together

To summarize, a sustainable software commons would require a new license or license addendum that provides (at a minimum) the following guarantees:

• A percentage of revenue from dependent projects must be set aside and paid out to its dependencies
• Decisions about payments, sanctions, and inter-project communication must be made democratically
• All members and users of the software must have standing to enforce compliance according to graduated sanctions
• Projects must have the right to self-determination, but may also confederate with other projects to receive the benefits of the commons and help determine the direction of the commons as a whole

I’m aware that most companies would simply refuse to use any software that adopted such a license, and that this is all a bit abstract and may be difficult to do across legal jurisdictions. There are also a huge number of open questions about how exactly such a license would function across projects with a near infinite variety of governance structures, sizes, and tooling. Regardless, as an experiment I think the general idea is worth pursuing.

Want to explore these ideas further? Reach out and let’s collaborate!

I recently attended the inaugural Free and Open Source Software Yearly (FOSSY) conference where I gave a talk in the XMPP track. Though my talk was just a brief technical overview of the XMPP protocol, I also gave some quick ending remarks about why I think it’s the correct choice to use as a universal standardized chat protocol. The closing remarks were written about the XMPP protocol in particular, but they are also a reflection on free and open source software more generally. This post is an adapted form of that closing statement. If you’d like to see the original talk instead, it can be found on the Internet Archive.

Closing Remarks

Before we end, I’d like to take a little detour and make a brief observation on our role and our responsibilities as open source developers, advocates, and users. It may sound, at first, like I’ve veered off the tracks, but bear with me and it will all come back around to Open Source and XMPP in the end.

I recently read Becky Chamber’s “A Psalm for the Wild-Built”. Among the many beautiful and healing observations in the book, one phrase, stood out to me. It was possibly said in jest to make folks like us laugh, and maybe cry in equal measure. It was little more than a brief description of the main character’s mobile phone, but it resonated with me in a powerful way and I hope it will for you too:

“A reliable device, built to last a lifetime, as all computers were.”

Of course, this is clearly not how computers are designed today. Most of the time, I wouldn’t even go so far as to apply the adjective “reliable” to any of the software I use, open source or otherwise. But Utopian thinking isn’t about showing us where we are, or even portraying the world as it could be: it’s about inspiring us to apply our progressive ideals to create change.

Writing software is an inherently political act. While others choose to form hierarchical corporations that restrict access to the products of their workers labor, we choose to share our work freely and build cooperatively with others. That’s why we’re here at FOSSY. Being here is a statement of our values. Even the small, personal project thrown up on a code hosting website and built for no one but the author puts that person in a position of political power: when others use the software, the authors choices affect them. Whether its the choice to support or not support a screen reader, or the choice to use or not use a large framework that will only run on the latest-and-greatest (read: “expensive, unattainable for many”) machines. The author may not have made these choices consciously, but, over time, their effects will be felt by many never the less.

Therefore our primary responsibility as open source developers isn’t to shareholders or board members, or just to our current users and contributors: it’s to all the people who will use it tomorrow (and tomorrow, and tomorrow). Proprietary software stops working when the company behind it goes out of business, or when the operating system or architecture it was designed for becomes to expensive to maintain and starts affecting the bottom line, or when the VC money dries up. Meanwhile, the open source project, even once abandoned, can be updated and re-built a generation from now. It can be made more inclusive, it can be made more reliable, it can be made more portable. Unlike its closed-source alternatives, it’s repairable. When we chose to use or build closed-source software we are choosing convenience over repairability. It’s an understandable and powerful draw, whether we’re a user or a developer. However, when we choose to provide our software freely and build it cooperatively, we are choosing to support the future, and to reject convenience culture and disposable software.

It may be that you disagree with me and think that all software should be, as your license likely states, “provided as-is” without any responsibility on the part of the developer, and that’s fine. However you feel though, by writing the software you are sending a message to many people. Whether you like it or not, some will interpret it one way, some will interpret it another. The next time you open your laptop I hope you’ll think about what message you intend to send, and how it will be perceived. This is the essence of communication.

This is why I choose to use XMPP over the many proprietary or venture capital funded alternatives that come and go every day. However, as someone reminded me in the bar last night, being open source is itself necessary, but not sufficient. Our software will last far longer than its proprietary, or open-source but VC funded counterparts, and the decisions we make will reach much further into the future than even the largest companies can ever hope to achieve. Take pride in that, and build your software to reflect your values: build it to last.

Thank you for your time, and enjoy the rest of the XMPP track, and the rest of the conference.

Special Thanks

Unfortunately I was running over time and ended up skipping the Q&A portion and my last few slides. Unrealized by me at the time, this included a thank you to the organization that sponsored me to be there: Cheogram. Cheogram is a bridge between the XMPP network and the telephone network, allowing you to send text messages and make calls from any XMPP client. They also run the phone company jmp.chat where you can get a phone number or SIM card and associate it with your XMPP account without doing all the work of setting it up yourself. If you end up using them, please consider using my registration code so we can both get a free month, and thanks again to Cheogram for sending me to the conference!

For one free month, my referral code for jmp.chat is BC6ZHFMA

Physical Businesses

DIY Bike Kitchen (Cobb County, GA)

There is a DIY bike shop, Sopo Bike Co-op in Atlanta, but Cobb has historically been very transit-averse and it’s hard to get into Atlanta by bike if you need to get it worked on. Having something local to Cobb could encourage biking and start to change attitudes to biking on the local city councils and among the county commissioners.

Traditional bike shop (anywhere)

I’d like to start a traditional bike shop (people pay us to fix their bike) as a worker owned co-op. I’d do this anywhere, though I think Atlanta needs this more than most cities.

Coffee Shop / Bar (Atlanta, GA)

This one’s a classic. Back when I lived in Austin, TX there was a great co-op brewpub that I loved hanging out in and I’d love to have something similar in Atlanta (or anywhere really).

Farm (NE Georgia)

I’ve always wanted to work on a co-op farm, but am not aware of any close enough to where I live to make it practical. This would probably be more of a co-housing or commune situation, I suspect, but whatever really. I’d do this anywhere, but I’d really like to see a good co-op / regenerative farm started in North East Georgia, the area could really be doing so much better economically than it is if people would work together and to a certain extent it’s still my home and I care about it, so I’d love to start something like this there.

Co-op housing and/or Co-housing (anywhere):

I’ve wanted to live in a co-housing arrangement or co-op housing generally (the distinction isn’t super important here) for a long time, but generally speaking they don’t exist in the South East or are too expensive where they do because they end up being desirable and, in the situation of co-housing, still follow market housing rates. Starting one would be ideal since there’s not a lot of co-op housing here of any description.

DIY Auto Garage (anywhere)

Back when I was living in Austin, TX I was trying to start a DIY auto garage. I don’t like cars, and wish we drove less, but I also recognize that in many places we’re completely dependent on them due to the built environment. As we try to work towards a less car dependent future, we should also encourage people to repair their existing cars instead of buying new ones. Also many people can’t afford to pay for repairs or a new car and having a place to safely work on their car without being harassed by the police or their HOA or similar would be good. I still own the domain https://cornergarage.coop but the effort mostly fell apart when I moved back to Atlanta.

Technology

Internet service provider (Atlanta, GA)

This would probably be a hybrid consumer/employee co-op, or maybe an exclusively consumer run (no employees, just “volunteers” from among the owners which would keep it small and community focused) co-op that creates a mesh network. I own the domain “mesh.coop” and was trying to use it for this for a while, but wasn’t able to find anyone else interested in the idea. It probably makes sense to do this in a specific apartment building to start, not in a neighborhood in the suburbs like where I am. This would probably require that I move back into the city first, which is just not feasible financially.

Internet radio station

I’ve always wanted to start one of these, but I’m aware that most people don’t care about this sort of tech anymore. Something that highlights smaller local bands.

Platform Co-ops

Instant Messaging

A group that runs instant messaging using non-venture-capital funded technologies (probably with Snikket).

Code Hosting

A co-op code hosting site funded and run by its members. Think Codeberg except explicitly a co-op and U.S. based. It’s good to have more co-ops in more diverse locations so that one doesn’t become the defacto centralized place to host code.

Email

I’m a member of one co-op that already does email, but I’ve never managed to make it work and it’s not well integrated with their other offerings (but I’ve also never found a way to contribute where I could usefully help change the situation). Having something specifically focused on hosting email seems like it could be good.

Computer

Random old ThinkPad, whatever’s cheap and repairable

Editor

vim(1), more or less extension-less with only very basic config tweaks so that it feels similar no matter what machine I’m on; shortcuts are only allowed after I’m already familiar with the default way of doing things.

Languages

Go, Rust, and Clojure mostly, Python or Java if you absolutely insist. Whatever else the project is already using. Other languages just for fun, not for serious work.

Coffee

Rev Coffee Roasters

Park Grounds Coffee

Desktop Environment

Laptop: MATE

Shared shop computer: XFCE

Window Manager:

i3 (this replaces the default MATE or XFCE window managers for me)

Operating System

Desktop: Arch or FreeBSD

Server: FreeBSD or OpenBSD

Phone: LineageOS

Terminal

Emulator: MATE Terminal (or whatever is already installed, it’s fine)

Shell: Bash or tsch, whatever’s already there is fine

Multiplexing: tmux(1)

Websites:

Hugo (but I really don’t like it, other suggestions that are less unnecessarily complicated or that have more readable documentation welcome)

Instant Messaging

Service: Snikket (but really whatever as long as it’s XMPP compatible), IRC on occasion for nostalgias sake but not full time anymore

Android: Cheogram

Desktop: Dino

Phone

Device: Whatever has the smallest screen and runs Android apps (currently some crappy ASUS thing that I don’t recommend)

Provider: jmp.chat (bridges any XMPP account to SMS/Voice calls on the phone network, use my referral code BC6ZHFMA)

Email, Calendar, Contacts

Desktop: Thunderbird, mutt(1)

Phone: K-9 Mail and DavX

MTA: May First Movement Technology Co-op

Feed Reader

Thunderbird, but I very much don’t like it and would love other recommendations, desktop or web based but must be free for at least a hundred or so feeds (so no Newsblur, sadly)

The two parks I’m going to review today are also connected by the M2R trail in addition to the Concord Road Trail, but unlike the previous parks these are linear parks that are integrated directly into the trails!

Since the linear parks aren’t very large and don’t have much in the way of ammenities to talk about, we’ll veer outside of our Smyrna focus and discuss a few other highlights of the Concord Road Trail and the southern portion of the M2R trail, starting with the Chattahoochee River.

Paces Mill

• Amenities: 🏞️ 👟 🥾 🛶 💩 🚲
• Transportation: 🚍 🚴 🚣

The southern terminus of the M2R trail is at the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area’s Paces Mill Unit. In addition to the paved walking and biking trails, the park has several miles of unpaved hiking trail, fishing, and of course the river itself. Dogs are allowed and bags are available near the entrance. If you head north on the paved Rottenwood Creek Trail you’ll eventually connect to the Palisades West Trails, the Bob Callan Trail, and the Akers Mill East Trail, giving you access to one of the largest connected mixed-use trail systems in the Atlanta area!

If, instead, you head out of the park to the south on the M2R trail you’ll quickly turn back north into the urban sprawl of the Atlanta suburbs. In approximately 2km you’ll reach the Cumberland Transfer Center where you can catch a bus to most anywhere in Cobb, or transfer to MARTA in Atlanta-proper. At this point the trail also forks for a more direct route to the Silver Comet Trail using the Silver Comet Cumberland Connector trail. We may take that trail another day, but for now we’ll continue north on the M2R trail. Just a bit further north there are also short connector trails to Cobb Galleria Center (an exhibit hall and convention center) and The Battery, a mixed-use development surrounding the Atlanta Braves baseball stadium.

It’s at this point that the trail turns west along Spring Road where it coincides with the Spring Road Trail that connects to the previously-reviewed Jonquil Park (a total ride of ~3.7km). Shortly thereafter we reach our first actual un-reviewed Smyrna park: the Spring Road Linear Park.

Spring Road Linear Park

• Amenities: 👟 💩
• Transportation: 🚍 🚴

The Spring Road Linear Park stretches 1.1km along the M2R Trail and is easily accessed by both bike (of course) and bus via CobbLinc Route 25.

The park does not have a sign or other markers, but does have several nice pull offs with benches that make a good stop over point on your way home to or from the buses at the Cumberland Transfer Center. If you’re out walking the dog public trash cans and dog-poo bags are available on the east end of the park, but do keep in mind that the main trail is mixed-use so dogs should be kept on one side of the trail to avoid incidents with bikes.

After a short climb the trail turns north again and intersects with the Concord Road Trail and the Atlanta Road Trail. We could veer just off the trail near this point to reach Durham Park, the subject of a future review, but instead we’ll continue west, transitioning to the Concord Road Trail to reach our next park: Concord Road Linear Park.

Concord Road Linear Park

• Amenities: 👟 🔧 📚 💩
• Transportation: 🚍 🚴

The Concord Road Linear Park sits in the middle of the mid-century Smyrna Heights neighborhood and has something special that’s not often found in poorly designed suburban neighborhoods: (limited) mixed-use zoning! A restaurant and bar (currently seafood) sits at the edge of the park along with a bike repair stand and bike parking.

It’s worth commending Smyrna for creating this park at all, it may be small but in addition to the mixed-use zoning it did something that’s also not often seen in the burbs: it removed part of Evelyn Street, disconnecting it from the nearest arterial road! In the war-on-cars this is a small but important victory that creates a quality-of-life improvement for everyone in the neighborhood, whether they bike, walk the dog, or just take a stroll over to the restaurants in the town square without having to be molested by cars.

Silver Comet Concord Road Trail Head

• Amenities: 🚻 🍳 👟 📚
• Transportation: 🚴

In our next review we’ll turn back and continue up the M2R trail to reach a few other parks, but if we were to continue we’d find that the Concord Road Trail continues for another 4km until it terminates at the Silver Comet Trail’s Concord Road Trail Head. This trail head sits at mile marker 2.6 on the Silver Comet Trail, right by the Concord Covered Bridge Historic District.

The Silver Comet will likely be covered in future posts, so for now I’ll leave it there. Thanks for bearing with me while we take a detour away from the City of Smyrna’s parks, next time the majority of the post will be about parks within the city, I promise.

• Smyrna, and Cobb County public libraries and parks,
• Sopo Bicycle Co-op and the Austin Yellow Bike Project,
• and Atlanta Critical Mass.

Dear comrades,

I’m writing to you from my favorite window ledge in the Smyrna Public Library. From my seat in the window I can see a public park with an outdoor amphitheater, a small pond, and the sidewalk across the plaza to the shops in the main town square. Parents with strollers are meandering around the pond while a young couple, obviously on a date, are walking towards the park from a coffee shop in the square. A bicyclist breezes by on the multi-use trail. If you were to follow the cyclist just a little past my line of site, you would encounter a bike trail that, were you to follow it from here to its terminus, would take you all the way to Alabama without you ever having to venture out into automobile traffic.

All of the organizations and groups addressed in this letter share something in common with this tableau, and even with the library window ledge where I’m sitting to write this letter. You all provide an important function in my life, one that I have far too little of: a place to go.

Nathan J. Robinson in his book Why You Should be a Socialist says:

People of my generation often feel very alone. We are isolated and depressed, and we want a world where people don’t just sit alone in their apartments watching Netflix, but have places to go. Places that are free and welcoming, where you don’t have to worry about whether you can afford to stay.

He’s not just talking about physical places, of course. What he’s saying is that we want community and that we want it as a matter of right, not only if we’re wealthy enough. The way we accomplish this is through social infrastructure, and more importantly, free social infrastructure. That’s what you all provide to me and others: social infrastructure; a place to go.

I can hear the criticisms already, “but Sam, free isn’t ever really free; someone has to pay for it at some point!” For the sake of brevity I’ll elide over the taxes, the labor, the co-ops, the non-profits, the donors, the governments, and the laborers who make a thing possible. The important part of what I’m calling “free” is that it’s free at the point of use for those who can least afford it, and that the burden for it is not shouldered by them. Free in this sense means an act of solidarity that allows everyone to benefit from the labor (or dollars) of others.

In a few hours I will head out the door to attend a pay-what-you-can dance. This will be my only regularly-scheduled free social interaction for the week, meaning that many weeks this will be my only social interaction for the week. Without places like this, my life would consist almost entirely of work and sleep: a somewhat dismal existence—though the “sleep” part has its merits.

In the world of software development it’s common to talk about software that’s “free as in beer” (gratis) vs. “free as in freedom” (libre). My definition of “free” above appears at first glance to simply be gratis, ie. “does not cost money”. Places to go, however, must also have a different kind of freedom that’s similar to libre, or the anarchist or communist concepts of free association. The first cooperative principal summarizes it well (although we’re not talking exclusively about co-ops here):

Voluntary and Open Membership

Cooperatives are voluntary organisations, open to all persons able to use their services and willing to accept the responsibilities of membership, without gender, social, racial, political or religious discrimination.

That is to say that free social infrastructure must not only not require money at the point of use, but it must also be a welcoming place for all people: open by default.

Finally, Though most of you, my social infrastructure, are public or not-for-profit organizations, free in this context doesn’t necessarily even mean non-commercial. A good example of commercial social infrastructure that I rather detest, but which none-the-less still meets my definition of “free” is the Mall. I think that it was Eric Klinenberg in his book Palaces for the People (“how social infrastructure can help fight inequality, polarization, and the decline of civic life”) who introduced me to the idea that malls, those great monuments to American Consumerism, can also be free social infrastructure.

If you grew up in the United States, you’re likely familiar with the trope of teenagers hanging out at malls, something that ostensibly keeps them off the streets and out of trouble. In the small town I grew up in, this was indeed a popular past time the moment you were old enough to drive after dark. The mall was a place you could go without being expected to spend any money (though they’d happily take some if you had it), a place you could just exist, a place to go.

On the other end of the age spectrum it’s not uncommon to find the elderly walking the mall as a way to get away from home and get some exercise, or the houseless passing through to get out of the heat or cold for a few minutes. It’s a place to get out and be among people where all are welcome (in theory, anyways; there are plenty of individual malls that go overboard on security guards and gate keeping).

This then is what I mean when I say that you are “free”. Both a place of freedom, and a place where I don’t have to count how many hours I was able to work last week to decide if I can attend. You are a place without a constant stream of transactions, judgements, or borders. You help provide what Robinson calls a “decommodified life”.

My current financial situation and definitions of “free” aside, having places to go is important not for the physical place itself, but for the community building that the place encourages.

In his forward to Creating Cohousing by Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett, Bill McKibben writes:

For fifty years, our economic mission in America, at its core, has been to build bigger houses farther apart from each other. And boy have we succeeded: a nation of starter castles for entry-level monarchs, built at such remove one from the next that the car is unavoidable.

We live in a nation where “knowing our neighbors” means we say hi on occasion if we happen to walk out the door towards our cars at the same time, and where our living spaces isolate us instead of encouraging communities to form. This poor use of space and of the built environment is one of the reasons for the loneliness that Robinson mentions in the quotation at the beginning of this letter. Unlike our neighborhoods and cities, you are built to encourage community, and this is why you are so important. When you can’t walk out your door and feel part of a community, you need to find that elsewhere.

With that rather lengthy explanation out of the way, let me finally get to the purpose of this letter: to say “thank you” and express my love for what you do. When I’m having a bad day, the thought that I’ll be able to attend a Swing Dance later, or a group bike ride, isn’t actually what perks me back up: It’s the thought of doing that with other people. Others who help each other even when they hardly know each other. Others who begin their relationship sharing no more in common than one day a week on the same activity, but who may grow in time to be close friends.

Whether it’s in a park, a bar, a library, or a dance hall it’s a recognition of our shared humanity and the bringing together of vastly different people through a meal, a cause, or a love of the outdoors that bridges divides and creates community. I thank you for doing that for me, and for being there for me on the bad days. I only hope that I can do the same for you.

In Cooperation and Solidarity,
Sam

Update 2023-04-07: Sadly one of the organizations I mentioned in this post has recently stopped being pay-what-you-can. They do still have a tiered structure, and I can’t blame them since I’m sure it was hard to pay the rent, but unfortunately it can’t be a regular weekly event for me anymore so I have updated this post to not mention them by name so as to not advertise incorrect prices. I still whole heartedly endorse them and wish them success, and hope that one day I’ll be able to afford to attend regularly again.