Jim Mason's Plan of Action May 10, 20078

" I had not anticipated that the work would present any great difficulites . . ."
- Sir Ernest Shackleton, South pole explorer, 1915

From: jim mason
To: The Residents of the Shipyard
Date: May 10, 2007 5:41 PM
Subject: here's the plan

(written on lovely off-grid juice once again served up by the LAG).

we have talked further with the fire marshall. he is very serious
about enforcement and fines. there is no wiggle room on their
demands. he is saying unequivocally he will write a 2500 dollar fine
tomorrow if his conditions are not met.

furthermore, the more we review what they are asking for, and the
manner in which they have cornered us from all possible directions, it
is clear they have decided they do not want this facility here. we
can speculate as to why they have encouraged and tolerated us for
years, and worked with us to make it legal, but now have hit in the
most brutal of manner. maybe the berkeley bowl across the street is
the cataylst. maybe simply our expansion into the new building.but whatever the case, all professionals are agreeing that berkeley has no interest in working with us further, and we have no possibility for any sort of successful legalization with them. in short, we cannot win here. but that does not mean that we cannot win largely elsewhere.

with such in mind, i am currently negotiating other spaces outside the
city of berkeley where we might quickly move all our shop containers
so that work can continue for the summer build season.
i feel a deep responsibility to all of you to find a soft landing for
our current problem. i am mobilizing all forces to make this happen.
today the best method appears to be to acquire space outside the city
of berkeley, where full container shops, as is, can be transported and
work continue in the new space. move to a place that is already up
and running and the container art use is already established, so
sliding in under an existing situation will likely be ok for at least
the short term.

in other terms, the idea here originally was mobile metal fab
facilities. the full containerized solution to enable the sane
building of insane large impossible art. the model seems to have
found some traction, as there are now 4 replications of it locally.
so maybe the best route is to use all this mobility in potential for
exactly what it was originally intended to do. (i.e. move)
after a night of mullling, i am now convinced we can create a safer
and more secured building situation for the summer by moving full
shops, not piecemeal things in buckets, and not trying to leverage
berkeley into some sort of detante on the new side. all interactions
today are showing they want blood past any point they are going to
compromise on an "interim" use over the summer. put simply, we cannot
use the facility whatsoever after tomorrow. so to work over the
summer, i think we should move the containers asap to a place where we
can continue asap.

i am currently exploring nimby, pacific pipe, boxshop, ace and some
known open buildings as a place we might fast relocate en masse. we
have two trucks. one runs. and we have a forklift that will lift all
this. somewhat like always intended.how we decide to continue for the longer run can be debated in the relative calm of the fall. all options will be open. but for now, my prime goal is to keep the collaborative art/tech juggernaut of the
shipyard together and functional for the summer heroics. and to do so, i think our best option is to go mobile . . . immediately . . .

the adventure will continue. giant machines will save us.
j

Jim Mason