FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact Info:
Lisa Bryant
415.533.4619
metalisa@yahoo.com



HOME OF DOT-COM REVOLUTION TO BE GIVEN FINAL VALEDICTION

In a mixture of street art and ceremonial burial, former high-tech employees to spread tumbleweeds throughout South Park, giving it a final goodbye, so that the present can be embraced.

San Francisco, CA -- (PRnetwire) -- February 20, 2002 -- On Thursday, February 21st at 6am, the South Park neighborhood of San Francisco, beacon of the internet gold rush that caught the imagination of the business world, the stock market and a generation of idealistic entrepreneurs and techies - only to suffer a spectacular flame-out followed by the enveloping quiet and eerieness of a ghost town - will be given its last rights.

In a ceremony meant to pay last respects to the dead so that the spirit of San Francisco can grow into the future, in the same area that was once home to companies like Organic, BigBook and Vivid, a load of tumbleweeds, dispersed from the belly of a 17-foot truck, will pepper the streets and sidewalks of the now desolate Multimedia Gulch.

"On ER someone always calls the time of death," writes Lisa Seaman, designer and publisher of the website nowhere.com, discussing the fog-like unease that has descended since meteoric burn-up of the dot-com rush. "Here in San Francisco, it's time to call it." Seaman and friends will do exactly that, paying ceremonious last respects to the recent past, and pointing out that the transition into the future is well underway.

Seaman speaks from experience gained from a front-row seat on the meteor itself, in a ride that lasted seven adrenaline-fueled years in a timeline that, in the end, included staff positions with startups like Hotwired, Playnet, Digital Pictures, and Excite-At-Home. Most went bankrupt. One of the Wired magazine originals, Seaman recalls the atmosphere that she and 20 others began in. "It was 1994, and we worked in a red brick building just off South Park. Rave had taken off, Wired was gaining momentum." Now at the other end of the arc, South Park has been for the most plart abandoned, as dot-com euphoria has given way to bankruptcies and unemployment.

San Francisco's national role as a Mecca for individual expression, self-reinvention and idealistic thinking, however, is alive and breathing, and paradigmatic forces are at work underneath the ground of a new generation that has chosen not to flee but to stay and take root. During a time when economic gloom has become the prime image associated with San Francisco during the national recession - particularly the massive drop in tourism dollars - slowly, and without much fanfare, the soul of San Francisco is again beginning to catch hold. "Most people I know are working through the slump by taking a hard look at what they really want to do in life" says Seaman, adding that people are looking in new directions that are less about the money, and more about the ideal of doing something you love.

http://www.nowhere.com

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