BABE AREA

In this Halloween episode of BABE AREA, we report back from our trip to the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose and get into the official legend of Sarah Winchester, the rifle heiress who supposedly built nonstop to escape the ghosts of everyone killed by a Winchester. Then we follow all the mysterious paths our research led us down: San Francisco’s spiritualist scene, Victorian women who used mediumship as a route to empowerment, and the amusement-park playbook that turned one widow’s passion project into America’s most famous haunted house. Plus, Rita’s mic gets possessed in real time.

Happy Halloween!!

SYLLABUS

* Katonah Yoga

* Searching for survivalist tips at the Prelinger Library by Anya Savina

* San Francisco Pole + Dance

* Winchester Mystery House

* Captive of the Labyrinth: Sarah L. Winchester, Heiress to the Rifle Fortune by Mary Jo Ignoffo

* How to Build a Haunted House: The History of a Cultural Obsession by Caitlin Blackwell Baines

* Hearth of Darkness by Matt Blake

* LRB: “Gloomth,” a review of both haunted-house books

* Stambovsky v. Ackley, the “as a matter of law, the house is haunted” case

* Do the Dead Return? A True Story of Startling Seances in San Francisco

* Laura de Force Gordon, trance speaker turned suffragist and lawyer

* San Francisco History Center at SFPL

* IAPSOP: A Review of the Progress of Spiritualism in California (1896) + The Golden Gate (“A Journal of Practical Reform Devoted to the Elevation of Humanity in this Life, and a Search for the Evidences of Life Beyond”)

* Ep. 174: The 19th Century w/ Mandylion Press by Nymphet Alumni Mandylion Press

* The Backety-Back Scenic Railway

* Early Winchester Mystery House flyer, History San Jose

* Preston Castle

* Carson Mansion

* Winchester(2018)

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In this episode of BABE AREA, we’re joined by Elise Schierbeek: writer, media archivist, and film programmer who recently moved to San Francisco from Chicago. Elise takes us inside her day job at the San Francisco Film Preserve, a small nonprofit that organizes, funds, and curates restorations of early cinema alongside labs and restorers around the world. Then Elise and the ladies get into the ethics of restoration, AI "magic," internet folklore, and how an archivist's attention carries into art and everyday life.

Make sure to catch Revision, SFFP’s first-ever festival of rediscovered and restored films, at the Roxy Theater September 24–27!

Some of the themes we explore in this episode…

* Where restoration turns into interpretation, and why “it’s always interpretive, and there’s always loss”

* The trouble with AI upscaling, from the Jaws and Inland Empire controversies to YouTube’s “rare footage” channels and promise to “restore the impossible”

* Why young archivists bring more critical thinking to AI than older generations, and why Vine now lives on as oral tradition

* The fear of the storage unit, and the one box of keepsakes Elise lets herself keep

* Elise’s collage practice built from 16mm educational films: clowns, falling, felled redwoods, and Paradise Lost

* PLUS, insider tea on The Lodgers of Euclid, a 3D motion-capture thriller about an occult motorcycle gang from filmmaker Tanner Masseth, with Elise producing and starring as The Girl!

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SYLLABUS

* Elise Schierbeek + Elise on IG!

* San Francisco Film Preserve Re:Vision Festival of Restoration and Rediscovery

* Tate: Media in Transition Part 01 Introduction November 2015, re-published 2021.

* YouTube’s Sneaky AI ‘Experiment’

* Hito Steyerl: Mean images

* Trevor Paglen Society of the Psyop - images look back

* Becoming Press Cinematics archive + internet cinema anthology

* Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

* Amia Pathways Fellowship

* The Waiting Room

* A/V Geeks

* Topaz Labs “Restore the Impossible”

* FIAF Summer School

* Reuben Dendinger

* Chicago Film Society

* Tanner Masseth

* Onion City Experimental Film Festival

* Video Data Bank

Cover image: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) by by F. W. Murnau.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://babearea.substack.com

In this episode of BABE AREA, Anya and Rita discuss:

* What makes swap parties so fun, and why they feel like such a good refuge from compulsive online shopping

* The joy of sharing stories and clothes with your friends, and an unlikely attempt to make fedoras happen

* PLUS, their recent trip to Guerneville to visit Pond Farm Pottery, the former home and studio of Marguerite Wildenhain — a Bauhaus-trained potter, rule-breaker, and refugee from Nazi Germany

* What makes the Bay Area school of pottery special

* And why we need to bring back RIGOR and DISCIPLINE (so timely for Virgo season)

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SYLLABUS

* Pond Farm Pottery in Guernville, CA

* Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve

* Pottery: Form and Expression by Marguerite Wildenhain

* The Invisible Core: A Potter’s Life and Thoughts by Marguerite Wildenhain

* ...that We Look and See: An Admirer Looks at the Indians by Marguerite Wildenhain

* Centering: In Pottery, Poetry, and the Person by M.C. Richards, Wesleyan University Press

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://babearea.substack.com

In this episode of BABE AREA, we're excited to interview our first-ever guest: Luca Antonucci, co-founder of Colpa Press and the San Francisco Art Book Fair. Luca walks us through his Bay Area inspirations, shares his learnings from building a creative community, and then Luca and the ladies get into fandom, personal obsessions, subculture and counterculture, local history, and working with chance.

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SYLLABUS

* Mondo Vision: A Pictorial Survey of Mondo 2000 by Colpa Press

* SF Rave Flyers 1991-1993, LA Rave Flyers 1991-1994, Detroit Rave Flyers 1993-1999

* Music from the Hearts of Space Guide by Anna Turner & Stephen Hill

* Cinematic Graphics Manual Vol. 1 by Luca Antonucci & David Kasprzak

* Vertical Hold by Luca Antonucci

* Off-Screen by Luca Antonucci (this is the “rooms without characters” book he references)

* Daily Double: Bay Meadows in Photographs — text by William Bostwick

* Tropic of Cancer by Ben Peterson

* The Basement Tapes (Vinegar Syndrome × Colpa Press)

* Basement VHS Fest — August 30, 4 Star Theatre

* From Counterculture to Cyberculture by Fred Turner

* RE/Search Publications, founded by V. Vale

* San Francisco Art Book Fair

* Input by Matt Wolf (Pre-Echo Press) — the Marion Stokes TV-archive book

* Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story — the HBO doc about the public-access host

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://babearea.substack.com

In this episode of BABE AREA, Anya recaps her trip to Russian River, Rita shares learnings from co-organizing The World Is Not Enough and tips for surviving this eclipse season. Plus, we share our notes from a recent trip to Bolinas — a Marin County town that once was a hotbed for countercultural artists and poets and a home to Richard Brautigan, an author whose 1967 poem inspired several generations of technocrats including Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei. Plus, we recite delightfully quaint Bolinas sheriff calls, dive into the enduring influence of Bolinas on “#vanlife,” “cabin porn,” and other millennial lifestyle trends, and MUCH MUCH MORE.

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SYLLABUS

* The Way of Tarot by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Marianne Costa

* The Wild Unknown Tarot deck by Kim Krans

* On the Mesa: An Anthology of Bolinas Writing ed. Joel Weishaus

* The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard

* Shelter: 40th Anniversary Edition by Lloyd Kahn

* Cabin Porn by Zach Klein

* Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan by William Hjortsberg

* Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan

* All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace by Richard Brautigan

* All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011) dir. Adam Curtis

* Machines of Loving Grace by Dario Amodei

* From Counterculture to Cyberculture by Fred Turner

* Rebels with a Cause (2012) dir. Nancy Kelly & Kenji Yamamoto, narrated by Frances McDormand

* Bolinas Hearsay News

* Marin County Sheriff Calls (recommended by the Bolinas legend Molly Young)

Cover image: Driftwood house of Richard and Karen Knoebber and their 3 young kids. Read more here: Short-Lived Community of Driftwood Shacks on a Northern California Beach by Lloyd Kahn.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://babearea.substack.com

In this episode of BABE AREA, your local besties Anya Savina & Rita Popova examine the most recent additions to the Bay Area cinematic universe — Backrooms (set in Santa Clara) & I Love Boosters (set in Oakland) — and their connections to Marxism, Carl Jung, & RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Then, the ladies reminisce about their recent girls’ trip to Fort Ross, an iconic Russian settlement on the Sonoma coast. Anya walks us through a day in the life of an 1812 Russian-American Company employee that involves killing 200 otters, while Rita recaps a trauma-fueled romantic escapade and its unlikely repercussions: a rock opera that took Russian boomers by storm & the very first Californian nun.

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SYLLABUS

SF Filmmaker and Booster Group Drop Celebrity-Filled ‘Comeback City’ Video

National Park Service officials make difficult decision about Alcatraz coyote

The Paranoid Style w/ Anika Jade Levy by Nymphet Alumni

Boots Riley, Marx Brother by Emily Nussbaum

Cafe Aquatica in Jenner, CA

Fort Ross and the Russian-American Company by Robin Joy Wellman

Settlement Ross, 1841, by Ilya Voznesensky

The Kashaya Pomo and Their Relations with the Russian-American Company at Fort Ross by Eric Hirschman (Fort Ross Conservancy)

Juno and Avos (opera)

Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust, translated by Lydia Davis

No Rooms of Their Own: Women Writers of Early California, 1849–1869 edited by Ida Rae Egli

Cover image: The Tanforan Mall in San Bruno, CA by Michael Phillips

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://babearea.substack.com

In the first official BABE AREA episode, Anya Savina and Rita Popova, best friends and SF-based BABES, cover:

* The book of the year, Lena Dunham’s Famesick

* Lena’s SF book tour event crowd fits (aka archival Rachel Comey showdown)

* Lore drop about our early experiences with online fame

* Paula Yates as design inspiration

* Coward/striver millennial archetype + boatneck ban for straight guys

* Dollhouses, interior decoration, sets, & mommy issues

* Essential rehab packing list

* Body horror, nightmare vacations, & Ehlers-Danlos pyramid scheme

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SYLLABUS

Danielle Steele mansion (plus Vogue article about her daughter’s wedding) + iconic desk

Paula Yates and Michael Hutchence on Big Breakfast

You’ll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again by Julia Phillips

Hell In A Handbag by Jibz Cameron

C-Word episode about Judy Garland

BEFORE BABE AREA | Lost tapes

Episode 1 (East Bay perfume scene)

Episode 2 (Marin modernism)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://babearea.substack.com