May 13, 2005

Former hobo, landfill resident rides the rails again in his poetry
- click to read story
John Geluardi, Special to The Chronicle

"There's nothing nobler than to put up with a few inconveniences like snakes and dust
for the sake of absolute freedom." -- From "The Vanishing American Hobo" by Jack Kerouac

Hobo poet James "Jimbow the Hobow" Bailey strode through the waist-high grasses on
the Albany Landfill, a former construction dump, toward the hidden, bayside campsite
where he has lived for six years.

Stateside - for Friday November 12th, 2004
Stateside Film Reviewer, Jennifer Machiorlatti, joins Charity to discuss what’s going on
at this weekend’s Detroit Docs International Film Festival, including two documentaries,
About Baghdad and Bum’s Paradise.
This is an excellent review, so check it out!
Hear The Show - click here

NewsRoom - Thursday November 11th, 2004

A true story heads for a happy ending at screening. Detroit 11.04.04 - by nicole stafford

Unlike Hollywood blockbusters, documentary films tell it like it is. And many, if not most, of these true stories end on a cynical note, again unlike the blockbusters. Bum's Paradise, which depicts the eviction of a homeless community set up in a California landfill, is such a documentary. But the film's Detroit Docs screening, slated for 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 13, at Wayne State University, has a happy ending in the works. In addition to a visit by the movie's director, Tomas McCabe, the narrator of Bum's Paradise and a member of the homeless community depicted, Robert "Rabbit" Barringer, plans to attend the screening where he will reunite with his estranged Michigan family. "We've finally made contact. We called his parents last week," said McCabe, who focused his film on Barringer's life story and experiences. The documentary opens with Barringer reading a letter he wrote, but never sent, to his parents explaining how and why he became homeless. The films ends with a personal message to Barringer's mother. "This kind of bookends the story," McCabe said. "The major point of the film is that many of these people had a home here in the landfill." The homeless residents set up tent dwellings and functioned much like a community before being evicted. "For me, it emphasizes how we're just like everybody else," Barringer said of the film. "We're your neighbors. We have a lot of dignity and we walk tall."

Detroit 11.03.04
Home is where the heart is
Former Detroiter recalls the path to homelessness in new documentary - Click to read story
Detroit native Robert “Rabbit” Barringer lived a carefree life, residing in the one place he figured no one would bother him: a closed landfill on the edge of San Francisco, with a scenic view of the Golden Gate Bridge.
- Rhona Mays

05.05.04
Best of the East Bay 2004
Best Documentary Profile of an East Bay Community
And way to feel good about your own home

Perhaps the East Bay's most diverse community is at the far margin. Filmmaker Tomas McCabe's moving documentary Bums' Paradise takes the viewer right to the social and geographic edge with its intimate portrayal of the "homeless" community that existed on the abandoned Albany landfill for a decade, until a mass eviction to make way for the advent of the Eastshore State Park. By entrusting the camera and much of the narration to one of the residents -- the philosophical, college-educated alcoholic Robert "Rabbit" Beringer -- McCabe provides a rare inside look at what may have been the East Bay's last great hobo jungle. A disparate collection of social misfits -- poets, lovers, addicts, artists, and builders of junk castles -- gather to build a self-reliant alternative community on the outskirts of the mainstream economy in this strange but idyllic setting. The film shows the very human side of faces from which we often look away, and thus makes us feel the acute pain when the police come to drive them out of their homemade piece of paradise by the bay.

03.26.04
Be it ever so humble, a landfill is still home. - click to read story
Documentary tracks the ups and downs of a bare-bones village
– Joseph Gallivan

03.25.04
Once upon a time, on an abandoned landfill on the San Francisco Bay, there was a squalid but utopian homeless community nicknamed Bum's Paradise. Men and women who said "screw this" to income tax taxes, paved roads, postal delivery, and door to door salesmen moved to Bum's Paradise, slept under the stars, and got back to nature the way hippies only dreamed of 30 years ago. Yeah, some of the residents were a little kooky, but kooky characters make for interesting movies. Most of them wrote poetry that rivals anything I've read in Street Roots, and one poem actually had me questioning why I go to work everyday and give all my money to the government, who spends it in all sorts of ways I disapprove of. Anyway, fun times only last for so long before the pigs roll in and bust the party up. And you know how it is trying to tell a bum to move --they're probably going to have a few words for you. Well, that's what this movie is about--bums who had a cool thing going for them until The Man fucked it all up. Now the bums have a chance to tell their side of the story.
– Chas Bowie

03.21.04
Bum’s Paradise documentary comes to Portland, Dignity Village - click to read story
Filmmakers capture the halcyon days of the homeless at Albany Landfill
– Joanne Zuhl

Film Close-Ups with Peter Crimmins – click to hear interview.
02.14.04
Rabbit & Tomas are interviewed by Peter Crimmins on Berkeley's KALX 90.7fm.
Peter did an outstanding job on this 15 minute interview, so check it out!
Re-broadcast 03.10.04 by Hole In The Bucket show
on Portland's KBOO 90.7 fm

Two Men's Trash Paving Paradise
02.11.04
Given safety and leisure time, Bums' Paradise tells us, everyone is creative. The homeless people featured in the documentary, camped at the now-infamous Albany Bulb, are by turns expansive, irascible, and philosophical, and have faces as weathered as their artwork -- paintings executed on rock, sculpture constructed of debris. Video-makers Tomas McCabe and Andrei Rozen take their time exploring the marsh grass and lean-tos of this soulful utopia for the self-medicated, inferring a solution for homelessness everywhere: Give people space and leave them alone. Expulsion from Eden at the hands of jelly-bellied policemen follows the meanderings, scattering the poets and artists to no good end, and this laid-back testament ends on a dying fall ... and, like Genesis, the promise of rebirth.
- Gregg Rickman

Rep Picks – click to read review
10.15.03
Bum's Paradise is thoughtfully directed, featuring an inventive score performed with found objects left at the landfill and the active participation of its subjects.
If you haven't caught Bums' Paradise yet, get to the Red Vic – it's a must-see.

Living Room with Kris Welsh – click to hear interview.
10.02.03
Rabbit & Tomas have a quick 10 minute interview.
First 3 minutes are a song from the film!
So... 7 minute interview.

Moviemaker shines light on the 'Bulb'
Homeless star in film about Albany landfill – click to read story
09.22.03
Over the years, the Albany landfill has been a lot of things to a lot of people. For state officials and active East Bay residents, the brushy waterfront that juts into San Fran...

Film Chronicles Albany Homeless Village – click to read story
05.27.03
Police bust free screening of Bums' Paradise in Albany Landfill.
Over 300 people were turned away!

Beast Blog Bum's Paradise and the Liberation Drive-In – click to read story
06.01.03
Alternate free screening on side of building in downtown Oakland!
Lots of photos.

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