Famed cult filmmaker, “Pope of Trash,” and part-time San Francisco resident John Waters will be celebrating the paperback release of his 2014 book Carsick with an intimate, sold-out audience Wednesday at Green Apple Books on the Park (1231 9th Ave). Carsick details Waters's 2012 hitchhiking journey from his hometown of Baltimore to his San Francisco apartment. The book became a hit and spent several weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list.
From the publisher’s website: “John Waters is putting his life on the line. Armed with wit, a pencil-thin mustache, and a cardboard sign that reads 'I'm Not Psycho,' he hitchhikes across America from Baltimore to San Francisco, braving lonely roads and treacherous drivers. But who should we be more worried about, the delicate film director with genteel manners or the unsuspecting travelers transporting the Pope of Trash?”
Throughout his career, which has brought audiences campy cult classics like Pink Flamingos and more mainstream hits like Hairspray, Waters has enjoyed a major San Francisco following. According to Green Apple Books on the Park assistant manager Emily Ballaine, Carsick has been selling steadily at the store since its release. Tickets to the event sold out in just five minutes.
"This is actually the first ticketed event we've had in store,” she said. “We were reluctant to sell tickets at all (our other in-store events have always been free and open to the public.), but when over 1,000 people RSVP'd it became clear that we would have to sell tickets in order to maintain the sort of intimate in-store environment Mr. Waters wanted.”
Photo by Edinburgh International Film Festival/Flickr
With each $25 ticket, attendees will receive a copy of Carsick and an adult beverage. Green Apple decided on a Town Hall format that will “allow attendees to ask John Waters all their burning questions.”
Ballaine called Waters a great advocate of independent bookstores, citing the fact that he's had his fan mail delivered to Atomic Books in Baltimore for years. “So when we asked if he wanted to do something at our new store, where we share space with Le Video, he said yes right away.”
Carsick describes a time-honored- but increasingly rare mode of transport. An internet search for "hitchhiking and decline" turns up several articles about its wane since the mid-1970s. Like this one, where experts cite the rise of the highway system (where hitchhiking's forbidden), horror movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and "the demise of the '60s mentality of love and trust and the belief in community." Or this one pinning it on a publicity campaign by the F.B.I. A 2001 study titled “The Neglected Art of Hitch-hiking: Risk, Trust, and Sustainability” also pointed to a boom in car ownership, which led "to a definition of hitch-hikers as essentially deviant and dangerous."
Interviewers have asked Waters why people don't hitchhike anymore, like in this 2014 article in the San Francisco Chronicle: “I’m hoping to bring it back because there is no such thing almost," said Waters. "I think it's a green idea. It is an adventuresome idea. And it is fun to do it, it is liberating to do it because you don't know what's going to happen."
Photo by Christiaan Triebert/Flickr
If you weren’t one of the lucky (and quick) 150 fans to get a ticket, but would still like to see Waters speak, you won’t have to hitch outside the city. Ballaine told us he’ll be appearing at the Nourse Theater Thursday night for a taping of City Arts and Lectures. He’ll also be returning to the Bay Area in July to host Burger Boogaloo, a music festival put on by indie record label Burger Records.
And if you’d like to read about Waters’s adventures in his own trademark style, Green Apple will have signed copies of Carsick available after Wednesday’s appearance, in store and on their website.
