SECOND SATURDAY: R.I.P.

Second Saturday. Through.

Not that I was that crazy about it in the first place.

For those of you living outside of the Sacramento area, the best way to describe the local Second Saturday, erm, happenings is like this:

In your burg, there's probably a bunch of art fart types desperate for patronage/attention/income who can't possibly get enough of all 3. But of course, there's this loftier mission that they come up with of enlightening the poor, unwashed masses to their brilliant creative offerings (at least that's what their spouses and moms tell them) and hopefully collect a few hundred bucks from some insecure yuppie trying to prove to their friends how culturally hip they are by picking up this possible future legend's scrap metal sculpture or brushed acrylic on dumpster-dived drywall painting.

So step number two usually invloves getting the gallery owners to agree on a particular night on a specific week of the month, stock up at Trader Joe's on the French Onion Pita Chips, Australian Cheddar and Cabernet Sauvignon and voila! We have an art walk!

Fuck that shit. I only needed to go out on a couple of these exercises in futility to realize that it is about as rewarding and interesting to me as watching a street person rearrange his or her cans and bottles in his or her shopping cart. No, strike that, the latter activity is much more fun.

For starters, if the organizers behind this event planning think that they are attracting new support for the local art scene, they are dreadfully wrong. It's usually the same old assholes month after month (chiefly comprised of the artists, gallery people and their friends and family, with a few of the usual poseur party people thrown in) showing up at the galleries to hang out and socialize and get shitfaced loaded and remind themselves of how way fuckin' cool and cutting edge they are for being part of the very stink of hipness they are farting into the Sacramento night and you should be so lucky as to be inhaling downwind!

No thanks. I'll wear my gas mask until midnight on Second (or Third) Sunday and pass, thanks much. I'm one of those crazy folks that actually goes out to the gallery or-shudder!-the Crocker once in awhile. And when I'm in that thar big city with the humungous bridges down by the bay, I even take the time to go to the MOMA and check out what's new or even to get a repeat view of the stuff that's been there seemingly forever. I don't need an excuse of forced social interaction in order to take in the work of artists. When you think about it, turning the toil and sacrifice of people into a carnival show is sort of fucked. No, fuck that, it's TOTALLY fucked.

The local metropolitan art walk. It's like a spreading cancer. Click Here, Pilgrim