Saying goodbye to the AVA’s print edition is a somber occasion, a parting we all knew would come but which still feels too soon.
Everything and everyone we love disappears, of course, if they haven’t already—if not in the doomsday scenarios predicted in these pages, then in the personal apocalypse everyone faces. Like the Niemöller quote, eventually there’s no one for them to come for but us.
But the AVA at the newsstand or in the mailbox is what made it all seem bearable. It’s how we faced and even enjoyed civilization coming to a close. It was our ringside seat as we grumbled and laughed together through the End Days.
The paper helped us digest the times we lived in, and gave us a sense of connection without impinging on our solitude. Community, yes—but at a safe remove.
It was the only thing besides coffee that consistently gave me a boost and a lift in my step, and I will miss it dearly. If in the morning I resembled the bubbling, acrid sourdough starter that lives in the fridge, reading the AVA was the kneading, leavening, and baking process that turned the bitter brew into a tasty treat.
I could watch conflicts no different from those in my own life play out far away with a set cast. The characters and landscape were strange but the stories of struggle and betrayal were as juicy and familiar as Greek myth.
The stories of unlikely allies were heartwarming: young hippies forging friendships with mill workers, and back-to-the-landers gaining respect for the Valley’s old-timers. Welcome reminders that generational (or gender, or cultural) differences can be an opportunity, not just a divide.
But I also relished the paper’s habit of making enemies, and Bruce’s giddy, reckless rush to say something hurtful but undeniably true. It was so contrary to the prevailing culture of fake kindness that it made for refreshing and often riveting reading. “A newspaper should have no friends,” read the masthead, but no other publisher had taken the admonition literally.
The paper was a window as well as a mirror. On screeching subways, breakdancers and mariachi bands competed for spare change and stressed-out commuters stood packed like sardines. Pressed in the crowd, I pored over a smudgy pile of newsprint, licking my lips at the menu for the Boonville senior center and contemplating the slightly crazed Advance Power ads.
It didn’t matter that I was a generation younger than the average AVA reader and I lived as far from Northern California as possible without having to board a plane. It was strangely addictive to get weekly updates on court cases, sewer systems, and potholed roads where country capitalists were just the newest cult carpetbaggers.
It wasn’t just a novelty or escape—though it was pleasant to imagine a different scenery and pace. The writing was engaging and impassioned. That was the bottom line. That’s what kept me renewing my subscription every year.
The quality was head and shoulders above the New York Times, which became an embarrassment long ago, especially for hometown news. “Peace to the palaces, war on the villages” should’ve been their motto, since—in a city still made up of immigrants—they stuck to the message that no one can make it in New York without an Ivy League education and a million bucks.
Strangely, the AVA’s “Valley People” captured the spirit of NYC more accurately than the “Metropolitan” section of Times. The former was packed with the mile markers of life (births and graduations, talent shows and parades, sickness and death), the latter filled with snooty, cutesy references that obscured the beating heart of the city rather than revealing it.
It didn’t hurt that half the AVA staff were Brooklyn-born and -raised, and fifty years after they’d left, their self-involved, social justice-obsessed patter was the same. Their singsong voices were still steeped in Jewish New York, and reflected the grit of the city that never goes away, no matter what anyone says.
Their East Coast memories came out when they got riled up or took off on a sentimental tear. New York was a great place for them to grow up, and I feel the same about my hometown by the Bay: it was a great place to leave. We carry with us the values of where we were raised, but they’re easier to express far away.
It took me ages to discover what other readers may have known all along: that a majority of the AVA’s cranky seniors had been writing for other small, independent newspapers since they were just out of their teens. I recently came into a collection of sixties-era undergrounds, and was surprised to see so many familiar names—Brad Wiley in Leviathan, Larry Bensky in the San Francisco Express Times, Jeffrey Blankfort in the Berkeley Barb, and Jonah Raskin in the Seed.
The funny part was how little each had changed. Qualities I’d ascribed to age had been there all along, whether a single-issue obsession or a tendency to make every story about themselves. I admired their persistence, but worried they were simply unable to stop. Even on their deathbeds, the experience wouldn’t seem real until it saw print.
Like all the AVA contributors, they were cautionary tales, but compelling ones—something we couldn’t all claim. I admired them all: Marilyn Davin, Bruce McEwen, Malcolm Macdonald, Rex Gressett, et al. Especially the shadowy behind-the-scenes duo who maintained both the paper and its editor: the Major, Bruce’s right-hand man and consigliere, and Ling, his left-hand woman and accountant extraordinaire.
I have a massive stack of old undergrounds, so will continue to read reports from some of this same cast, but they’ll be dispatches from the past. I’ll keep up with the great Cockburn and Clancy Sigal and other AVA alum whose books I have on my shelves, along with Charles Adams’ Boontling, an American Lingo, which I have yet to do more than peruse.
The online version of the AVA is a non-starter, though. A luddite I’m not, but I just don’t absorb news or prose well from a screen, and neither does anyone else, as far as I can tell. I certainly can’t read it on the train.
Retaining an online presence while letting the physical disappear is not, in my opinion, a good strategy. I’ve seen it tried many times, and never with positive results. Without print, a publication isn’t truly public and can’t maintain its moral authority. It ceases to be a pleasure, and becomes just part of the nervous electronic feed that we all should get away from rather than increase. Better to go out with guns blazing, I believe.
I don’t blame them for trying, and I wish them success—something they’ve achieved against all odds before.
A few years ago, I wrote to Bruce encouraging him to put contingency plans into place for when he and the Major were incapacitated. That could mean a younger Anderson taking over permanently, or having a pit crew of readers and staff who knew the computer codes, mailing routine, and distribution route, and could jump in to help.
The suggestion didn’t offend him as much as one might expect. When I nominated myself co-editor of a future AVA that was bi-coastal, covering Boonville and New York, he didn’t second the motion. But it was worth a shot.
I’ve enjoyed being part of the paper-paper, writing under various pen names about bookselling and the pandemic. Mostly, though, I’ve enjoyed it—and been fortified by it—as a reader and fan.
Thanks for the memories, to everyone involved.
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