The name likely hearkens back to the Robert Louis Stevenson (edit: Robert, not Robery) story of the same name in which (minor spoiler warning) a group gathers regularly composed of men who want to end their lives but lack the minerals to do it, so they arrange murders based on the deal of a deck of cards. Really wonderful story, really, part of his "New Arabian Nights," which you can find online here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/839

"The "leave no trace" mantra of Burning Man was borrowed from the Suicide Club and the philosophy of Warne."

That's really cool to learn exactly where the LNT philosophy came from. I suppose something like it would have been established eventually but that idea is a core part of Burning Man and in burner lifestyles in general.

http://www.nonsensenyc.com/about/

There's usually a handful of interesting events going on around the city and will often lead you to strange new places (in a good way).

"When I moved to Frisco (g’head – take that one on!) in 1976 [...] the hippies I met back then [...] all told me the same thing: “Party’s over kid, ya missed it.” Well, they were full of crap on that one. The story of this town as with all towns is one of constant change."

At least in terms of anything measurable I can find, SF's music scene seems to be holding its own, relative to other cities:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=San+Francisco+...

I hear this all the time from people who have nothing to do with the movements that are happening right now. San Francisco has changed, Burning Man has sold out, activist art is dead, blah blah blah.

Meanwhile insiders don't give a shit, because they're making the culture you're waxing nostalgic about. It's a culture of doing and claiming nobody is doing something is just another excuse not to do something yourself. You don't know what art is happening in San Francisco because you've made yourself an outsider by not participating. People aren't going to go out of their way to include you: why would they? You're not one of the doers.

So what art is happening in San Francisco right now?

Soma from FLG is on pier 14 for the next two years. Fallen Cosmos is on Pier 70 this weekend. The bay lights folks just finished funding what they need to make that installation permanent. That's three things that came to mind, a bunch of other stuff is on the horizon.

Illegal stuff?

I am not going to talk about that on HN. That would be a pretty rude thing to do to folks involved with them.

Oakland's great though too, and the center of gravity is definitely not just hanging around in the west bay. Many of the people doing things live in Oakland and are doing them in Oakland. FIGMENT totally burst into reality in Oakland and the art murmurs over there are holding down real regular community art gatherings. The mayor just had her inaguration at AmSteel! I'm thrilled to see art being a thing that happens in the Bay Area beyond some parts of SF. We should all be happy about that.

If you want more, do more. Make your own show.

And yes, I know too many artists who are fleeing the city. It seems every day I hear another friend is giving up trying to stay in SF.

It's past time for this bubble to burst, it needs to happen soon.

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1. Some SF-based electronic music producers are doing a lot of travel to get sounds recorded from all over the world. From what I can tell, this scene is being driven more by Europe, though.

2. Algorithmic music, live-coded music, partially randomly generated music, are all taking off. DJs running Overtone[1] are becoming more common. A lot of the music this produces is stuff I find really unsettling. But there's a growing scene for it. This has actually stayed pretty separated from the BM scene so it's of particular interest to me.

3. A lot of people are working on reproducing electronic music sounds using acoustic or non-digital means.

4. Burning-man-style metal fire art is getting way complex. Increasing expertise in safely working with propane means more intricately-tubed metal fire designs, sometimes with more moving parts. Some people are trying stuff with alcohol fuels (alcohol mixed with other stuff allows colored flame). A lot of this stuff is controlled with Arduino.

5. Wooden burnable art is mostly just getting bigger, but there's also lot of people doing more intricate stuff because of there being more available laser wood cutters.

6. Arduino combined with a lot of cheaply manufactured parts from China means a lot of neat digital visual stuff, especially with LEDs but sometimes with loopback sound devices, microphones, other sensors (even medical sensors).

7. 8-bit music is making a resurgence as old video game systems become repurposed.

8. Erotic art, BDSM in particular, is huge in SF right now. Say what you want about whether it's art or not, but a lot of people go to actually see it as art. I like the aesthetic (even on people I'm not attracted to).

9. Body modification. Sensory body mods are a big thing. Different styles of tattoos and piercings.

10. Sacred geometry seems to be trending in painting. I'm not as connected to that scene though.

11. Graffiti is falling to the wayside in favor of stencils/stickers.

12. Zines getting big again (and generally way too uninformed and political for me to bother).

13. Projected visual art with uneven projection surfaces is getting to be a thing. Rock opera/projected video is not a thing yet but I want it to be more.

[1] http://overtone.github.io/

http://www.sfstation.com/arts/

http://www.sfgate.com/art/