It began as an enigmatic invitation on Partiful: a launch party for “Long Live SF — a celebration of the city of tomorrow — the first issue of something new,” set for Friday, April 17. What emerged was State of the Art, a bold new zine from a rising cohort of dreamers and makers determined to reignite and reimagine San Francisco. Printed as a 30-page matte-paper pamphlet with deliberate old-school craftsmanship, the publication carries the intimate, tactile spirit of Beatnik-era rebellion, fused with the inventive energy of a modern renaissance.
Attendees entered a nondescript building that opened into an electric, artfully industrial space. More than 500 people had RSVP’d, and the evening pulsed with drinks and D.J. beats well past 1 a.m. Organized by the Y Combinator media team, the two-level warehouse soiree in SOMA carried an underground, countercultural edge.
The debut issue declares San Francisco a “hyperstition,” a potent fusion of legend and magic that, through raw emotion and sharp intelligence, wills its destiny into being. Part graphic zine, part manifesto, and part literary prose, State of the Art blends deliberation, provocation, and soul-stirring vision. Sanjana Friedman serves as its editor and publisher, with design and art direction by Jared Poblete.
Friedman explained that the print edition was available exclusively at the launch event, while the online counterpart, SotaZine, functions as an interactive social project. “We are building a zine,” she said. “We think this is the capital of the world … it deserves a cultural sensibility at its stature.” Friedman expands this philosophy when she writes, “where San Francisco goes, so goes the world.”
The event evoked a nostalgic echo of early-2000s tech energy, yet its collaborators and contributors approached their work with more deliberation. The event was held steps from the Tenderloin, Union Square, and SOMA, neighborhoods that have borne the brunt of what Wolf Tivy describes in his writing below as “entropic decay and corruption,” countered only by “deterministic life.”
San Francisco is the most progressive city in America. It is the city of the future. Relative to raw intelligence and productivity of its population, it is also the most dysfunctionally governed city in America.
The world is a museum of passion projects, the work of visionary individuals determined to stand against the decay of time. In San Francisco, we know this archetype best as the founder.
In this cultural-political moment, State of the Art delivers a bold pushback against radical progressivism that has stifled entrepreneurialism, deepened dysfunction, and driven innovation and capital out of the area. As Jan Sramek argues in “San Francisco Is Not an Island,” the city is not an isolated enclave but the vital core of a larger Northern California megaregion. Problems of housing, transportation, and scaling hardware innovation cannot be solved by or within San Francisco alone; they demand a wider, regional vision.
In words and images, State of the Art emphasizes several call-to-actions, from Greco futurism to civic-minded entrepreneurialism and functional leadership.
As Olivia Marotte describes in her homage to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet, painter, social activist, and cofounder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers:
City Lights lives on. … It is time for a new scene. … New tastemakers in the mold of Ferlinghetti: well-read, civics-minded curators unbound by the orthodoxies of the day.
And in the zine’s closing passage, Tivy issues a direct call to San Francisco’s leadership in their navigation of our 600-page city charter:
But in nature, the arrow of time is not optimistic. It is always towards corruption, death, and decay of potential … irreversible increase of entropy. … Only life stands out against this entropic background.
We can only hope that Mayor Lurie will dare to rise to this mandate and unite us under the banner of visionary counter-entropy.
