SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE: L.A. IN THE SIXTIES - MIKE DAVIS & JON WEINER

Another monster book, this one clocks in at over 600 pages, but, unlike CRASHED, which I read simultaneously, this one never flags or gets dull. This is perhaps because this book is pretty micro-targeted to my interests. I’ve got a soft spot for LA (which I consider Amerika’s greatest “tier-1” city, and basically a worse version of Mexico City (which is high praise)) and, of course, I lived there for a while. I’m always interested in leftist history, though generally I’m against 60’s hagiography, and now that David Graeber is dead, Mike Davis might be my favorite living intellectual (YT man subcategory. It’s basically him, Chomsky and the other Davis), so this book was right up my alley. Basically, the only problem I have with the book is that it is pro-The Doors, who are perhaps the worst band of all time. But Davis and Weiner actually lived in LA in the 60’s so perhaps I’ll forgive them for that. The scope of this thing is unbelievable. It basically covers all leftist activities in all of Southern California (lots of San Diego stuff) from the early 60’s till about ‘74. Since Berkeley/San Fran/Oakland/The Bay is usually the focus of this sort of hippy-history, Davis/Weiner do touch on what was going on up north (as well as across the country), but they’re set in greater LA. There’s lots of city vs. valley stuff that’s very interesting. So not only do we get the “greatest hits” like the L.A. Panthers (and, of course, the US Organization), Angela Davis, the Chicano movement, the Sunset Strip riots, and the High School walk-outs, we also get a lot about more forgotten movements like Gay Liberation (even when I lived in LA, people did not know about the Black Cat), the Asian-American radicalism of Gidra, the battles over Venice, the LA Free Press, or the Women’s Self-Help clinic. Each of these subjects could and do support books by themselves, what Davis and Weiner are able to do is show the connections and resonances between the movements. For instance, the first gay pride parade, which was not only in LA, it was also the first time the word “pride” was used in this sense, there was a float that read, “in memory of those killed by pigs,” or the way the quasi-historical pan-Africanism of Ron Korenga offered inspiration and a theoretical pathway for the burgeoning Chicano movement and how they thought about race, culture and history. While there's a lot of LA specific things, like the idea of a “Contract City” and the ways that such an institution fucks with a tax base, it certainly would be possible to read this without a deep knowledge of LA. I also think you could dip into the chapters about the movements you are particularly interested in and get a lot out of it. There is just so much history in this. Here’s a short example of some of the throw-away facts I wrote down while reading: Gene Roddenberry was not only a cop, he partial based Spock on LA police chief Parker, the first Renaissance Faire took place in LA as a radio fundraiser in ‘63 and specifically aimed to recreate a “Pre-Capitalist 1580’s village, the parking lot in front of the infamous Jordan Downs was known as “the Pentagon” during the ‘64 riots, the Rand Corporation funded and spread the ideas of Game Theory, including both employing John Nash and developing the famous Prisoner’s dilemma, the first SWAT team was in LA to fight the Panthers, but their first deployment was at a peaceful anti-war march, and the TERF issues that are so prominent now were already at play during a ‘73 West Coast Lesbian Conference. I could go on with this stuff forever. I would say this wasn’t as mind-blowing as Davis’ other LA book, City of Quartz, but if you’re interested in Leftism or American history, you’ve got to read this. If you’re involved in a social movement now, I would also suggest you read it, we keep making the same mistakes and the only way out is going to be a sense of history. Mike Davis, live forever. ‘64 Doors