You sit in a circle and pretend you're brave, taking turns holding the barrel to your head and pressing the trigger. In the traditional rules of Russian roulette, the deadly game of chance, there's one active round (er, bullet) in a revolver with six rounds. The verdict? Horrifying and fascinating all at once. More from Jacobs, angered by her friend’s comments: “It may be that we have become so feckless as a people that we no longer care how things do work, but only what kind of quick, easy outer impression they give.” Fortunately for neighbourhoods, Lyle’s challenging love affair with (and fight for) the Mission proves that some of us aren’t willing to give up hope for our communities.Įrick Lyle, Broken Pencil, book review, On the Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of the City.

However, the flow is also a literary embodiment of the way Lyle and his gang lives–from the security of their own homes, readers will have a simple understanding of the chaos and uncertainty of idealism and street life. The chronology is iffy and sometimes repetitive. The stories weave intricate tales of the neighbourhood and its “untouchables” (to borrow from India’s antiquated caste system), which include immigrants, punks, drug dealers, prostitutes and others that City Hall deems unsavory.ĭespite this stigma, Lyle and his impassioned (and sometimes tragic) friends struggle against the cops and local government to work for a better life: building hope out of temporary art and community centres such as the previously abandoned 949 Market, advocating on behalf of the Mission’s homeless population, fighting mid-’90s gentrification and the dot-com explosion, and making good things happen for free.īoth hindering and bolstering these dispatches is the book’s choppy organization. In the introduction of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs recounts meeting with her city planner friend who, despite thinking Boston’s North End offered “wonderful, cheerful street life,” still believed it to be “the worst slum in the city.”Įrick Lyle’s beloved “slum”–the streets of San Francisco’s Mission neighbourhood–is the setting for the majority of Frequencies, a collection of articles from Lyle’s Turd-Filled Donut street newspaper, Scam magazine and other free publications. Hey! Check it out: I wrote a review of Erick Lyle's collection On the Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of the City, and the famed (and lately much-lauded) NGM of Broken Pencil saw fit to publish it.

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