I'm heading back home tomorrow morning, but I've had a wonderful time out in the Bay Area this weekend. First of all, shoutouts to @eramdam for hosting me while I've been out here. He graciously offered me his couch which saved me from needing a hotel room, and in return I transported us around all weekend, as we did some SF sightseeing, drove down to Santa Cruz (I make a point of driving Highway 1 along the coast if I can swing it during visits to the Bay), and of course to Oakland on Sunday for the Cohost wake/meetup/whatever. Speaking of…

The meet was a roaring success. We ended up having somewhere around 40-45 chosters, far more than the 15 Damien had gotten RSVPs for. I got to meet some people I recognized from Online, but most of the folks there were new names to me - a common refrain from many of the people there. I really relished the opportunity to meet new people and chat with some of the people I had been rebugging and liking on the website. It was quite hot out, but thankfully we managed to set up in the shade (mostly). There was lots of water (sparkling and otherwise), some fruit, and curry pizza. A choster who I met named Diane brought a portable speaker and played Compost entries in the background while we all hung out, traded stories, and made plenty of jokes. Nicky Flowers, another one of the organizers, brought a big roll of paper and sharpies so people could add their own posts to Cohost 2, which, to everyone's surprise, turned out to be some sort of… paper-based social network.

Anyway - at some point, Nicky is intending to scan or photograph all the uh, paper chosts? (p'chosts? poasts? i don't know) and put them all up on cohost2.org, a site which as far as I know doesn't exist yet.

And then today, for my final day, I decided to go do my own thing and hit up SFMOMA for the first time in many years. I was thrilled to find that my favorite art installation of all time, Ragnar Kjartansson's The Visitors. I was honestly so taken aback by finding it here again (as it was when I last saw it in 2017) that I was in tears. Really, I was having a lot of feelings being here in general - SFMOMA is a place I find to be absolutely magical, and this visit was no different. Fuckin' love art, man. I also very much enjoyed works by Yayoi Kusama, whose colorful dot-filled artwork and installations were quite magical in their own right. I ended the day by wandering around Little Italy, hanging out in the park, and eating some pizza at a nearby pizzeria.

I can't wait to come back. Hopefully when another meeting of the eggbugs happens (which it supposedly will, according to multiple of the folks there… here's hoping!)

…and now to try to get some sleep before my 6AM flight home. Yeesh.

Cohost may be closed for business, but I'm really looking forward to all the blogs and new websites (league and otherwise) that may come out of its closure. I'm following a few dozen of your RSS feeds now, and also need to make sure to double back and add everyone's 88x31's, too.

In other news, I'm currently in SF hanging out with @eramdam and planning to be at the Oakland post-host meetup/wake! I think I may be seeing a few of you there :)

Also! It's time for Bandcamp Friday once again. I had considered trying to get another release out for this one, but with all the cohost-shutdown activity, I've been a little distracted.

Please do check out my stuff at Bandcamp if you get a chance, though :) I recently released an EP called Garage Hearts; here's a neat visualizer I made for it using GLSL and Vizzy.io.

(If this doesn't render in your reader, you can go to YouTube to watch!)

Also shout out to Russhdown by Chaia Eran, which I'm currently using as my post composer until I come up with something a bit more custom for myself.