Customer Reviews

Bum's Paradise

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This is a beautifully and creatively photographed film, made by "Rabbit", one of its former homeless residents, dramatizing the intriguing and touching intersection of art and life at the Albany Bulb, a former landfill and dump in the city of Albany, California, which lies upon the shores of San Francisco Bay. After the city of ALbany closed the landfill in 1986, it attracted homeless residents, who constructed remarkably whimsical and creative little houses and campsites on this spit of land. One longtime homeless resident even hauled in concrete and began to build a "castle." Using materials both found on the site, and other materials hauled in, the homeless residents (often persons, perhaps mentally disabled, living on the extremely limited funds SSI provides: inadequate to pay for housing and food in the Bay Area) who seem to all possess some artistic flair, continuously expressed themselves creatively both in the structures they built to live in, as well as in paintings and sculptures made upon aspects of the landfill which seemed to offer themselves as uniquely suited for artistic purposes. At one point a few years ago, the city of Albany began to pursue making this area into an official city/state waterfront park, which unfortunately resulted in police evicting all its homeless residents. However, Albany never followed up on this plan, and the park today still remains as the highly unique, inspirational, and whimsically inventive "art park" (my term) that somehow it seems meant to be. Various artists, homeless or not, continue to express themselves in sculpture and painting in this area. My conversation with Albany Police in spring 2010 revealed that the area is once again open to the homeless, as police stated, "We do not enforce no camping rules in the Albany Bulb." This area continues to be a unique experimental ground, both for the new concept of an "art park", and an area where the homeless are left alone and allowed to live and camp. This allows these individuals a measure of dignity and freedom that is very difficult for them to come by anywhere else. Though allowing people to set up domiciles on public land opens up questions and concerns as well, since we have in this nation found no adequate solution for the "homeless question", this film introduces some interesting themes to contemplate as we move forward.