On July 12th, Slow Food Nation organized a community planting day in San Francisco, with 100 volunteers and several notable Bay Areans. Though it will soon be moved to other locations, there is currently a food garden in front of City Hall for the first time since 1943.

Back then, it was a Victory Garden; today, it’s part of the ongoing urban farming movement and a chance to give the mayor a nice photo-op with a trowel and dirty hands. And what’s a good urban farming photo-op without EBPI? A wasted one. Which is why we were there.

Rubbing elbows with various news crews and media reps, we managed to get up in the face of Gavin Newsom and his soon-to-be wife as they learned how to plant a sprig or two under the knowing tutelage of Alice Waters. “Gavs,” as his gal called him, hammed it up big-time, looking slick and comfortable with his jeans, sunglasses, and oily hair.

Shortly afterwards, a group of young girls found him and one of them ripped into him about something or other, and that’s where things got rough for Gavs. While washing his hands on some cloth for about ten minutes, completely avoiding eye contact, he nodded and muttered “yeah” and “I’ll look into that” and “thanks for letting me know” as the girl (to her friends’ embarrassment) let him have it, providing us with adequate B-roll for Alice Carruthers’ disses towards the mayor’s office.

He had another moment to shine later with a sterling, gravelly speech about the importance of the garden, of health, and of San Francisco’s cutting-edge awesomeness. Alice Waters also spoke, as did Willow Rosenthal of City Slicker Farms and John Bela of the SF Victory Gardens.

Finally, it was up to Alice Waters - but she had some serious competition. Next door, a revival was ready to erupt. Someone from the city had done a remarkably poor job of planning the afternoon, and earlier in the day a jarringly loud man was preaching la revolución through a megaphone not fifty feet away from the festivities. They were asked nicely to take a break until noon, but it was clear they wouldn’t wait any longer.

So Alice Waters, visibly emotional about the event, spoke a few words about inspiration and such, and was soon interrupted by the loudspeaker man. She grasped the opportunity to drop her favorite line, by saying “they’re preaching the revolution next door. Well - we’re preaching our own revolution. The Delicious Revolution!”

Cheers, applause, laughter. Cheesy? Sure. The whole event had a certain “is this all for show?” aspect to it. But a lot of people do care very strongly about urban farms as a means of attacking the food crisis, and it definitely showed. Waters’ Delicious Revolution, as yuppie as the name is, is about instilling a food culture in children as recognition that food is a central aspect to human existence, and also that it can and should taste awesome. Our scouting and shooting schedule will be taking us through various school programs, including (hopefully) Water’s Edible Schoolyard as we introduce the educational element of urban farming into our documentary.

So who knows if Gavsy cares much about the new garden he can now see from his office. He certainly acts like he does. But in either case, it looks good, got people out for a work day, got people talking about it, and will be providing food to the SF Food Bank. Delicious food.

In order for there to be a future to the environmental movement, we must teach the children that taking care of the land and learning to feed yourself is just as important as reading, writing, and arithmetic. - AW