Meet Tom Alder, longtime volunteer at Bound Together Anarchist Collective Bookstore on Haight, who took the time to discuss what this cool venue is all about.
KL: What brought the original collective members together around books?
Tom Alder: The bookstore was originally started as a community bookstore project in 1976 at the corner of Hayes and Ashbury. A lot of the people who were involved came out of the muralist movement, small press publications, and poetry circles. It was started as an all-volunteer collective, and it still is to this day.
Then as new people got involved, some of us were or considered ourselves anarchists and wanted anarchist literature on the shelves. At the time that I got involved there wasn’t very much.
KL: What does it mean to be a collective to you?
TA: We work it, we own it, we manage it. So there’s really no bosses. There are definitely different degrees of experience, but it’s an attempt to operate a place democratically rather than top to bottom.
KL: How do anarchists run a bookstore like this one?
TA: It has its ups and downs. Sometimes we get a relatively small group of people that do weekly shifts, and that really helps with keeping the hours consistent. When we reopened after the pandemic, we only had four people doing shifts. I think it was very different in the ‘80s and ‘90s because there were more people involved that actually lived in this community, and that helped us in terms of staffing the place.
KL: What about the Prisoner’s Literature Project? Do you have a favorite story about how doing that affected somebody’s life?
TA: I actually started the Prisoner’s Literature Project, but originally it was oriented towards gays in prison. It was inspired by the gay community news which came out of Boston and they did prisoner penpal letters oriented towards gays in prison. They also sent books to prisons, so I wrote to them, got some information and started soliciting books from progressive publishers.
At that time the war on drugs was expanding, and then the AIDS epidemic started to emerge, so we started adding AIDS information pamphlets in with all our packages so that there was some information within the prison system. People started to ask us for books, sometimes they were people we knew. Over the course of time, it became for whomever was behind bars.
We’ve gotten a lot of letters. We have people come in who have been in prison and gotten books and they always thank us. They often say it really made a difference. Some people learned to read and write this way. One guy in a penitentiary was a gay prisoner in the early ‘80s and he had written to us because he got permission from the warden to actually bring in gay titles into the prison library. That was the first time there were those kinds of titles in their libraries. And I always thought that was … I like that.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
HSV: Hey guys! Haight Street Voice. I’m at the Bound Together Anarchist Collective Bookstore on Haight and we’re gonna interview Tom, and Kenna Lindsay is here! And Tom! Hey Tom, thanks for doing this. We dig you!
(To Kenna) If you wanna just start asking him questions …
KL: Oh sure!
Thanks for joining us today Tom.(quietly)
HSV: Gotta go loud!
KL: I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us today. My first question for you is, why a bookstore? What brought the original collective members together around books?
Tom Alder: The bookstore was originally started as a community bookstore project. It opened up as a storefront in 1976 at the corner of Hayes and Ashbury on the other side of the Panhandle. A lot of the people who were involved, apparently some of them came out of the muralist movement, there was a big kind of political mural movement in San Francisco. And then it seems there were also people who were involved with small press publications and also coming out of poetry circles. We carried a lot of small press publications and there was a longstanding poetry series here at the bookstore. It was started as an all-volunteer collective, and it still is to this day.
Then as new people got involved, including myself and a few other people, we wanted — some of us were or considered ourselves anarchists and wanted anarchist literature on the shelves, which at the time that I got involved there wasn’t very much. There was actually a lot of Mao-ist literature at the time.
HSV: (panning to guy with bags overflowing) Alright! We’ve got books coming in, folks! See this?!
TA: Let’s put ‘em over here.
HSV: That’s awesome! See! Books comin’ in — in real time!
Donor: I got a lot more coming!
TA: Alright, so this was a bookstore in 1976. I imagine the planning started some time before that. I wasn’t involved at that time. But it was during the hey-day of cooperatives and collectives in San Francisco. There were food coops and collectives, there were arts collectives — there were all kinds of collectives at that time. Actually if you look at the directory of collectives at that time that was put out, I think there was listings for maybe 160 cooperatives and collectives in the Bay Area.
KL: That’s very cool!
What does it mean to be a collective to you?
TA: Well, a collective basically means that we work it, we own it, we manage it. So there’s really no bosses. I mean, there are definitely different degrees of experience in terms of how long people have been involved and stuff like that, but it’s an attempt to operate a place democratically rather than top to bottom.
KL: Awesome. Thank you for explaining it for me! For people in other places that are reading or watching online that don’t have access to a collective bookstore in their community, how do anarchists run a beautiful organized bookstore like this one? I know a lot of people when they hear the word “anarchy” might think of something like a Mad Max movie, and that’s certainly not what I’m seeing here today! So if you could talk a little bit about what it’s like to run this establishment.
TA: Well, it has its ups and downs. I mean, it’s gone through its various stages. Sometimes we get a relatively small group of people that do daily shifts, weekly shifts, and that really helps in terms of stability and keeping the hours consistent. And sometimes, for instance when we reopened after the pandemic we only had 4 people doing shifts, so it kind of goes up and down.
I think it was very different before the internet, and I think it was very different in the ‘80s and ‘90s because I think that there was more stability and there were more people that were involved that actually lived in this community, and that helped us in terms of staffing the place. It seems to be different now. I don’t think that — there seems to be less day-to-day physical presence in projects than there used to be, and that could be for all kinds of reasons, you know?
HSV: Sorry to interject! What keeps you going, what keeps you hanging in here?
TA: Because I think it’s a valuable project and I kind of know that it is just because I see the reactions of people who come in here. Some people — especially from out of town — they’re really excited. I also think there’s a real need for print literature rather than everything on the internet.
To me the bookstore … some people may be into painting or poetry or theater or whatever, but in a way that’s what the bookstore is to me. And if you’re involve in the ordering process and stuff like that it’s kind of cool cuz you can bring in interesting marginal literature. There’s actually kind of a certain art to it. And you meet interesting people.
KL: It sounds like it involves a lot of humor?? in communication to be a part of the collective at Bound Together.
TA: Yeah, we try. (Laughter)
KL: My next question for you is what do you love about the Haight, and San Francisco?
TA: When I first came to San Francisco — well actually I visited San Francisco a number of times …
HSV: Where do you hail from originally?
TA: I lived in Michigan for a long time. I was born in Switzerland, ended up in this country at 5 o 6 years old and then I was in the midwest until 1978. Came out here for the winter and I’m still here.
HSV: So you were here when it IBeam was here and the Nightbreak and the whole music scene was going on …
TA: Yeah. I actually arrived in town — I visited San Francisco before, but I arrived in town the same day that Harvey Milk and Moscone were shot.
BOTH: Wow!
TA: I heard it on the news on my car radio, so now I always remember the day I came. I came here on the day of the City Hall assassinations.
I came to San Francisco because I had heard about it, I had friends who’d moved out here and they said, ‘You should come visit. You’d like this place.”
[book guy leaves] I thought you were doing a documentary or something!
HSV: No you’re totally fine! Haight Street Voice magazine.
Book guy: It’s kind of a mess but I got ‘em all up there.
TA: What’s your name?
BG: Eddie. I feel like I met you before.
TA: I’m sure we have.
Eddie: I’m in the Mission, so (goes on about where he gets his books, etc) So now I don’t have to bother you for another 10 years.
TA: We like being bothered.
HSV: Thank you, man! Peace! Thanks for the books, that’s awesome.
TA: (to Kenna) Where were we?
HSV: Your journey.
KL: We were talking about yeah, you got here …
TA: Yeah, so I ended up here and I never left. I mean what happened was that in the midwest what was left of the ‘60s was rapidly dying the ‘70s, and the anti-war movement had collapsed. The whole counterculture movement was dying. People cut their hair. They went back to business as usual. But out here there was still kind of a bastion, a counterculture bastion.
HSV: Punk rock showed up, I’ll tell you that!
TA: Plus it’s queer-friendly, you know, and stuff like that. I came out for the winter and I’m still here. I got involved in the bookstore and all of that.
KL: That’s awesome. I’m glad you’re still here and we get to be in your ??presence.
What about the Prisoner’s Literature Project. Do you have a favorite story about how doing that affected somebody’s life?
TA: I actually started the Prisoner’s Literature Project, but originally it was oriented towards gays in prison. It was inspired by the gay community news which came out of Boston and they did prisoner penpal letters oriented towards gays in prison. And I think they also sent books to prison, so I wrote to them and asked “How do you do this?” Got some information and started soliciting books from progressive publishers. That’s where it started from.
And then, at that time the war on drugs was expanding, and then the AIDS epidemic started to emerge, so we started adding AIDS information pamphlets in with all our packages, we got them from the SF AIDS Foundation, so that there was some information within the prison system. But then eventually, you know, word got around, people started to ask us for books, sometimes they were people we knew. They were usually in jail cuz of marijuana charges or something like that. So we started — if a friend asked us for books then we would, you know, try and do that. And so eventually over the course of time we no longer focussed on a particular group, it was just for whomever it was behind bars.
We’ve gotten a lot of letters. Actually we have people come in now and then who have been in prison and gotten books and they always thanks us. They quite often say it really made a difference. Some people learned to read and write this way cuz they were illiterate when they went to prison. One guy in a penitentiary in Sting Viola??? Was a gay prisoner, this was like in the early ‘80s and he had wrote us. He had gotten permission from the warden to actually bring in gay titles into the prison library.
KL: Wow.
TA: And so we did that and that was the first there was ever those kinds of titles in their libraries. And I always thought that was … I like that.
HSV: Amazing.
KL: That is a really incredible story.
I think you kind of touched on this but my next question was, are there bigger ripples of the way that you think the Prisoner’s Literature Project impact people or impact this neighborhood or culture more broadly?
TA: Well, it’s grown a lot. They now have a storefront in the East Bay where they do the packaging out of, and that worked.?? They have a lot of volunteers. They now get grants, they get donations on a pretty regular basis. Sometimes they get some sizable ones too. So financially speaking, it’s okay. We used to have the problem that we could get the books and we’d package ‘em up but we didn’t have the money for the postal costs. Because we were trying to keep it separate from the bookstore, the financing. That’s no longer a problem.
And then the other things that’s happened — it’s kind of like Food Not Bombs — other people started doing it and now so there’s Books to Prisoners projects all over the United States.
KL: That’s awesome.
HSV: You’re a pioneer!
KL: Absolutely!
TA: Well, there are some other places that have been doing it for a long time too, like Left Bank Books in Seattle and stuff like that. But, you know, it kind of caught on and that’s good, you know?
KL: More people connecting over literature is awesome.
HSV: Yes!
KL: So I notice in the store there’s a lot of zines and other self-published or small publishers that you have available. Do you think that self-publishing or small publishers are an important part of the books that are available to people today?
TA: Yes! And they always have been here cuz we’ve always gotten our books from alternative publishers like Wing Press and Anarchist Publishers ??? Small presses and stuff like that. Yeah, I think it’s very important because you can’t find it in mainstream bookstores.
KL: I’m also biased.??? I agree with you.
What was the first wave of zine culture like when Z-Rock Machine became a thing ?? when I was a kid???? (LOL: Sorry Kenna! Totally have NO IDEA what was said!)
TA: I think a lot of it actually when I think about it, a lot of it probably came out of the Punk scene. We’re talking about late ‘70s early ‘80s.
HSV: V.Vale! Do you know V.Vale?
TA: Yeah.
HSV: Producing those little zines, Search and Destroy.
TA: Yeah. And then there were people like Aaron Cometbus who did Cometbus, which is still coming out today. I think we’ve been carrying his stuff since at least the ‘80s. At least 30 years. And now there’s a resurgence in it, too.
KL: Do you feel like small publishers or small publishing has supported the counterculture movements you’ve seen rise in San Francisco over the years?
TA: Oh yeah, definitely!
KL: Can you speak to any of those that you’ve seen while you’ve been here?
TA: Well, things like Cometbus, especially in terms of documenting the counterculture literary scene and punk culture. But there’s also Fluke publishing, comes out of Phoenix now. There were all kinds of local zines too.
KL: My next question for you is: What does counterculture mean to you?
TA: What does counterculture mean to me? Uh, well … (taps mouse on desk, thinking) …
HSV: In today’s world, with the orange clown at the wheel, the weirdness that we’re in.
TA: It’s kind of similar of being in the counterculture during Nixon and Reagan when the Right Wing was really in your face and seemed to be very ominous. The situation that we’re in now, I mean … it’s kind of unprecedented and I think it’s far more dangerous, you know?
I mean I just think it’s important to have currents of resistance. What will happen, will the world go, I don’t know, nobody knows. Also, I think it helps peoples’ sanity and mental health to see at least some sort of resistance, and hopefully reason and rationale cuz things are just so insane.
KL: Absolutely.
HSV: The timing of the Counterculture Museum coming in — how do you feel about the Counterculture Museum coming in? In April they’re gonna open on the corner of Haight and Ashbury — same people that run The Beat Museum.
TA: Yeah, actually I like The Beat Museum, I’ve been there a number of times. So if the Counterculture Museum is like that …
HSV: A place to hang out and learn.
TA: Yeah.
HSV: Instead of another retail place or a restaurant.
TA: Right.
HSV: What we do need is music though!
TA: Okay!
KL: We’ve got a couple more questions. The next one is: What is the task of counterculture today in the face of all of the things we just talked about. To keep hope, it sounds like?
TA: Yeah. Maybe to carve out some sort of autonomous zone for people.
HSV: Autonomous zone?
TA: Yeah.
HSV: What do you mean by that?
TA: Autonomous zones can be like anything from spaces punk rock bands play to spaces like this … The Beat Museum … I consider City Lights Books an autonomous zone, you know?
KL: Yes, they have some great stuff in there to choose from.
What advice do you have for us who are first learning about places like Bound Together Books?
TA: Uh … gosh. I don’t know if I can really give any advice! (Laughter)
Support these spaces, you know? And if you get involved, have some patience because, you know, we can’t promise utopia or anything like that. We go through our ups and downs.
KL: And finally, after someone visits Bound Together Books on Haight, where’s the next place that you think they really need to see in the neighborhood.
TA: Where do I send them …
You know, there used to be a lot more places in the past than there is now.
HSV: We’ve still got Amoeba.
TA: Yeah! I do send ‘em there. It depends. If they’re looking for music or something like that I might send them to Amoeba. If they’re looking for books and we don’t have it I send them to the other two bookstores on the street. But quite often I’ll send them to other neighborhoods in the City. Like I refer a lot of people to City Lights. Or Silver Sprocket on Valencia Street.
KL: Love Silver Sprocket.
TA: … which specializes in graphic novels and zines and they’re also very LBGTQ oriented. And sometimes The Beat Museum if they’re interested in Beat stuff, or poetry quite often City Lights cuz they have a poetry room upstairs. You know, the problem is there’s fewer places to refer people because of what’s happened in San Francisco.
HSV: But I feel like the North Beach and the Haight are still connected in some way, shape or form. Like from the Beats, they came over here and then the Hippies came. In fact I might even interview Coppola, I’m hoping to get an interview with Coppola just talking about those two communities cuz they are connected in spiritual way, if I can say that.
TA: No, I think that’s true!
KL: And my last one is: How can someone support the Prisoners Literary Project?
TA: To support it financially you could support it in terms of helping with the actual mailing out of the packages to prisoners, but they ???? In Berkeley. You can go on their website _____
HSV: Donate books too I would think?
TA: That too. Donate books.
KL: Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us about the bookstore and your work with the Prisoners Literary Project and everything!
HSV: Yeah Tom! And he mails the magazine out to his buddies! (To Kenna) So you’re stuff is going out to Michigan or wherever.
KL: Thank you for working with us!
HSV: She has a columnist! She’s in every edition!
TA: Oh you are, yeah!
Yeah, I always mail ‘em out. I have some friends in Michigan.
HSV: So fun!
TA: And Oregon too. Actually I mail out multiple copies so they can give ‘em to friends who’ve been to San Francisco or they’re interested in the Haight.
HSV: Thanks Tom! Thank a lot!
KL: Yeah!
HSV: Oh, here’s my last one too: What would you like to say to the Haight community in general if you had a big loudspeaker?
TA: I would like people in the community to be more upfront in terms of what’s happening now I’ve been disappointed when I’m going down Haight Street and I haven’t seen a single Palestinian solidarity flier in the window. So, you know, you’re gonna talk about peace and love, don’t forget the whole notion of social justice.
HSV: Thank you.
Can you show me, you were talking about one of the magazines, the comic …
TA: Cometbus.
HSV: Can you show me while we’re still rolling?
TA: Yeah, it’s this one here.
Look him up on the internet sometime. Aaron, he’s from the East Bay. I think he started this when he was in high school and he’s still doing it.
HSV: Wow, that’s really beautiful.
TA: He’s also a great writer! He’s kind of been described as an anthropologist in a punk subculture.
HSV: I gotta check that out!
V.Vale is gonna be in this edition as well.
TA: Alright, yeah!
HSV: Peter Coyote’s in this one, V.Vale, I got Wavy Gravy — I went to his house last week … the old guard.
TA: What about Dave Whittaker?
HSV: Oh, Diamond Dave. I guess I could try and track him down.
TA: He’s in a nursing home. He was in the Western Addition.
[we talk about Diamond Dave]
HSV: What were you saying you wanted to give to the Counterculture Museum? I think it was the posters?
TA: Oh! A series of the Anarchist Book Fair posters, which they’re not all up. I’ve got a bunch of those, so there’s more than that. We organized the Anarchist Book Fair for 17 years.
HSV: Alright, thanks Tom! Always good to see you, man!
TA: Thank you!@
HSV: Really appreciate you! Appreciate your time. Appreciate your efforts.
TA: Tell me how much an ad is, maybe we can do one.
HSV: Cool! Well for you … a 3×5 … okay, we’re talking shop now … (end of video)
