Evan Karp Elusive Fundamental

What are you up to these days? Quiet Lightning was just certified as a nonprofit five months ago, so I’m working with the board of directors to convert something grassroots into something larger without compromising its integrity. I’m also (finally!) soliciting sponsorship for Litseen so I can do fewer freelance gigs and focus on my own projects.

SF is... the dream made incarnate dreaming of making a dream machine while consuming the dream.

Where would you have your last meal on earth? My last meal would be pizza because that’s my favorite food, but El Zocalo is my favorite place to eat in SF, so I’d probably have a pizza party with all of my friends and the staff of El Zocalo being served by some of my old college professors.

Why do you love your neighborhood? Although it’s close to everything happening in the Mission, it has a small-town feel and is permeated by an almost ghostlike silence that I find both soothing and conducive to creative expression. The colors, the random benches, the dogs, the spiders. The people! I love everything about Bernal Heights.

What's your favorite SF institution? The Conservatory of Flowers makes me feel like a new organism every time I enter, and Quiet Lightning now does an annual summer reading series there; so maybe my favorite institution is The Greenhouse Effect: the first Monday of every August and September and an October Litquake show.