Nicko's Diner is a neighborhood staple in Seminole Heights. A place next to a community baseball field, now in disrepair, with seven-foot high weeds and catch nets flapping in the wind. Across the street are a body shop and a church. The King, Elvis, ate at Nicko's in 1956, in the booth just to the right of the door as you come in.
I find David sitting in the same corner I usually sit at. He has been scanning from his voluminous files of negatives taken over the decades he has been involved with countless arts events in the Bay area. We talk about projects, stories, people, events, places etc., but time permeates the conversation.
Boxes of old photographs of things now gone, significant things in the local history of art that no history museum seems remotely interested in. When their keepers die, they will be dispersed, sold, and/or at landfills.
Museums are concerned with commercial history, the history of developers, media and other corporate interests. Spectacular things, like wars (which are corporate, I know) horrid crimes etc. Artists, far less so.
I have an idea: Form a meatspace web, people who would agree contractually to store historically significant items, never owning them, and to pass them on to others in the network when they can't keep them any longer. A Keepers of History kind of thing. A fragmented constellation of storage spaces for what the museums will not touch.
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