Flintoids Gather at Charles Chocolates in San Francisco

Traci and I were lucky enough to spend Sunday at a Flint-themed party at Charles Chocolates in San Francisco. Chocolatier and Flint Expatriate Chuck Siegel supplied Faygo, Vernor's, Coney's with Angelo's sauce, a deluxe with olives, and PX-style boneless ribs, not to mention chocolate cake reminiscent of Bill Knapp's. It was amazing. It brought out a great crowd of Flintoids on Florida Street, just around the corner from the office where I wrote "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City." As with most Flint gatherings, we all had a lot in common and quickly discovered that everyone had about a dozen mutual friends from the Vehicle City. A great day with great people with a Flint connection.
 

Erica Firment (a.k.a. The Librarian Avenger), Gordon Young, and Chuck Siegel.

 

 This is a lunch any Flintoid could appreciate.

 

Two-fisted drinkers: Vernor's and Faygo.

 

The various Siegels of Flint and beyond in San Francisco. From left to right, Hannah, Gloria, Chuck, Milt, Susie, Jake, Leah, Shabana, and Ed.

Erica Firment, Librarian Avengers, and Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City

Erica Firment, a Flint Expatriate who lives near me in San Francisco, has been publishing a popular website called Librarian Avengers since 1997. She's a smart, compelling writer with a lot of attitude, as befits someone from the Vehicle City. She just posted an essay that combines her thoughts on growing up in Flint with a review of Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City. Leave it to a Flintoid to capture the essence of a book about Flint, and to say out loud what a lot of readers might be wondering about me:

The book is called Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City. Gordon writes about life in Flint and San Francisco, often through a lens of real estate. He has gone through the process of trying to buy houses in both cities, a testament to his tenacity and possibly some kind of undiagnosed brain injury. Anyway, you should read it because it’s awesome and it says many of the things that should be said about Flint. The ending is really strong, and I found myself saying “hell yes” out loud a few times. Leaving Flint seems to have given him the perspective he needed to make some peace with the goddamned place.

Flint Portraits: Erica Firment

If you're not a librarian, a website called Librarian Avengers might not sound wildly appealing, but don't be fooled. Flint's own Erica Firment created the site in 1997 and it's filled with her humor and insight into everything from equality pants to drug screening to rogue sheep. It's so popular The New York Times has taken notice:

With so much of the job involving technology and with a focus now on finding and sharing information beyond just what is available in books, a new type of librarian is emerging — the kind that, according to the Web site Librarian Avengers, is “looking to put the ‘hep cat’ in cataloguing.”

Erica now lives in San Francisco, where she's a user experience designer for Second Life, but she makes frequent trips back to Flint, which allows her to weigh in on some on the vital issues affecting the city:

"Friends, we need to have a little talk. Judging from some of your emails, many of you are Woefully Ignorant of one of the most important debates going on the world today. I refer to the fight between Flint-style coneys and Detroit-style coneys. Apparently there is a place claiming to be "Angelo's" located in shiny Ann Arbor (a yuppie Detroit suburb with delusions of grandeur) selling some vile mockery of a coney dog. I'm here to tell you that this is WRONG. Coneys belong to Flint. Flint invented coneys. Specifically, coneys belong to a little place called Angelo's."