Editing NoiseLand

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== NoiseLand ==

This page is for collaboratively buying a large parcel of land in the northern half of California, to be collaboratively and collectively owned and cultivated for sustainable living and farming and generating energy by members of Noisebridge and their ilk.

Because Noisebridge-style openness draws many people from different directions and styles, a collectively owned property would have to be large so that people don't chafe on one another.  Nobody is suggesting getting a house in the city and letting anyone come crash there, although maybe someone could.

Because of the state of the US Economy, now is a good time to buy land [citation needed]

== People interested in NoiseLand ==

* Jake (spaz) - member-level funding and helping craft charter/constitution/plutarchy plus looking for land
* Lizzard - fulfill weekend warrior fantasies of building houses and walls, vegetable gardening, giant compost piles, driving tiny bulldozer. Proximity to SF is important
* Danny O - ?
* Rachel H - mouthy
* Sean C - ?
* Alex G - ?
* Mitch - offering advice and experience
* Olya K - ?
* Frantisek Algoldor Apfelbeck - I want to get involved  especially in the food&beverage hacking, plus other biotech applications
* Ben M - ?
* Rachel M [[User:Rachel|Rachel]] 01:37, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
* Greg R - I have some knowledge of earthen/cob building technique and woodworking abilities with hand tools (such as the axe).  I'm really excited to start building and am in search of a place to help design and build a sustainable community.
* Jenny R - anthropologista extraordinaire. let's build a world!
* Evan M 
* You???

== Proposed Sharing process of NoiseLand ==

Noisebridge operates on NoiseRule, which is "Be Excellent to Each Other" which is an excellent rule because it is infinitely flexible and adjustable by consensus.  Other guidelines will have to be formed in the process of people expressing interest in this idea.  There will be other rules at NoiseLand out of necessity, but rather than behavioral rules these will likely be things like Dont Light Big Fires Next To Buildings.  Practical things. Black Bear Ranch (a similar land project) and Hellarity House (a collective house in Oakland) are referenced below as resources on where to learn how this stuff actually hashes out.

== Buying process of NoiseLand ==

From a financial and practical sense, buying land will be somewhat similar to Noisebridge renting a building in La Mission.  A large amount of cash will have to be paid as a down payment, and then a chunk of cash every month will need to be paid, for 15 or 30 years (or somehow just paying it off, or the previous owner donating the land).  Obviously it can't be NoiseLand if it is owned by an individual or small group of individuals, because that would color everything.

After the loan is secured and cash starts flowing, those who supplied portions of the down payment can begin garnishing the income to pay the back ''according to agreements made before the process started.''

There should be a way for people to buy in to this later, after the initial phase, but that might be tricky to set up.

== Proposed uses and purposes of NoiseLand ==

# A place for people from the Noisebridge community to go to get away from the city
# A place for people from the Noisebridge and NoiseLand community to live and work
# Gardening, Farming, Agriculture, Aquaculture, Mushroom growing, Composting, Worm farming
# A base from which to hunt wild animals and pick wild mushrooms
# Somewhere to build giant projects
# A place to experiment with solar energy collection
# Robot Orange Pickers
# Drugs and wild parties in the woods
# Naked all the time
# All the benefits of owning a giant parcel of land but shared responsibility and cost
# Arts and technology retreat or residency, offering people who are doing work we like a place to focus on that work and food to eat while they do it.
# Experiments in building private and communal use housing.
# A place for brewing, fermenting, distilling; a cellar full of homebrew!
# Research and development lab for tech to address problems faced by rural communities
# Refuge from ZOMBIES (or, you know, other societal collapse)
# HELLA bicycling

== Desirable Attributes of parcel to become NoiseLand ==

Land worth buying will have sufficient LEVEL property, sufficient WATER supply (from a well; it is not permitted to draw from a stream) and reasonable ACCESS by road.  Hunting is a good way to secure food, and many areas have lots of deer in the winter.  Hunting Concessions are covenants signed by property owners permitting people to hunt on their property in exchange for the right to do the same.  Farming requires sunlight, good soil (the right mixture of sand, clay, and organic matter) and WATER.  Mushrooms grow in wooded areas and nearby forest preserves.

Much land in northern California is at high altitudes.  While there is more sunlight at much higher altitudes, it's also much colder and nobody likes that.

It should probably be able to get Internet from the grid, although satellite internet is available but heavily metered and *highly* latent.  Depending upon location a rural WISP could be another option.  (IMO this is unlikely to already exist on land we are looking at and we might need to pay lots of money to run data cables to our land from Town).

Distance from city - geographic, driving time. Distance from medical services. Growing season. Terrain (hilliness, arability, suitability for proposed uses). Water supply. Availability of services (power, internet, sewage, roads/maintenance). Poison oak, or no?

We should consider the neighbors. Are they going to freak out and object to a bunch of technohippies building yurts? Or, the other way around, are they gun nuts growing giant amounts of pot in underground hydroponics setups? 

Price per acre. Collect a few sample prices from different locations to get an idea.

== Location ==
Add possible locations you recommend, whether areas or parcels for sale.<BR>

Red Rock Island: Only $9 million! http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/26/SBCT1MM887.DTL

Jamesburg Earth Station: Under $3 million!  Has a large battery room, heavy power and data connectivity back to the main grid, nuke-proof, zombie resistant, has ~ 100' satellite dish!
[http://news.yahoo.com/video/montereyksbw-18229918/for-sale-nuclear-bomb-proof-space-station-in-carmel-valley-27772945.html]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamesburg_Earth_Station]
[http://www.jamesburgearthstation.com/]

Bid4Assets.com is how California (and other states) auctions off parcels whose taxes are delinquent, county by county.<BR>

[http://www.bid4assets.com/storefront/index.cfm?sfID=619 Yuba county land auctions] Starts: February 11, 2012                     
Ends: February 14, 2012:

[http://www.bid4assets.com/storefront/?sfid=620 Lake county land auctions] Starts: February 18, 2012
Ends: February 21, 2012:

Shasta, CA  February 24th - 27th

Kings, CA  March 15th - 19th

Alameda, CA  March 16th - 19th

Yolo, CA  March 17th - 20th

=== North of SF ===
Asa says: "i seen plots 8+ acres in [http://maps.google.com/maps?q=vacaville&ll=38.184228,-121.723022&spn=1.29964,2.463684&hnear=Vacaville,+Solano,+California&gl=us&t=h&z=9&vpsrc=6 Vacaville] for $80,000"

40 acres @ $75K: http://www.redfin.com/CA/Green-Valley/0-CALLE-MACETA-DE-LOS-FLORES-91390/home/28899069

=== East of SF ===
[http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Media/Slideshow/2011/08/03/9-Worst-Recession-Ghost-Towns-in-America.aspx?index=1 Rio Vista, CA]

<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="float: left;">other counties to look at:</div>

solano or yolo counties

</div>
[http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=Oakland,+CA&daddr=Tuolumne,+California&hl=en&ll=38.350273,-120.761719&spn=2.593283,4.927368&sll=37.860025,-121.127375&sspn=1.227345,2.463684&geocode=FUzZQAIddkq2-CkD7aooi32FgDFnk3U11RW0cQ%3BFVdJRAIdW1fZ-ClRexpVpjGXgDGnIHsily5YZQ&vpsrc=6&mra=ls&t=m&z=8 Tuolumne, California] has been suggested, and it appears as green on the map as Mendocino but slightly closer to San Francisco.  It also has the benefit of being impossible to decipher when spoken, so it's a form of spelling encryption.  [[michael o]] says "there are other spots near and around, including down out by James town going toward wards ferry.  look at a map and check it out, it's beautiful out there and the land is cheap."

It would be really cool to convince all the other hackerspaces that we have an outpost on Jupiter. [http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Jupiter,+Tuolumne,+California Google map of Jupiter, Tuolumne, California]

* The Gualala/Point Arena area is also 3 hours from SF.

* [http://www.redfin.com/CA/Napa/4890-Dry-Creek-Rd-94558/home/21825673 A 40 acre parcel in Napa for $439K]<BR>
** very cool!  Zoned for only 2 units.
* [http://www.redfin.com/CA/Cazadero/23440-Fort-Ross-Rd-95421/home/2479809 another for 495k WITH HEXAGON HOUSE]

=== South of SF ===
* Montara  
* La Honda
** 7a, has water, some buildings. Redwoods + sun. http://www.redfin.com/CA/La-Honda/220-Back-Rd-94020/home/35647321 
* Pescadero
** 8a, $675K, has a well: http://www.redfin.com/CA/Pescadero/5625-Cloverdale-Rd-94060/home/17494431
* San Lorenzo Valley
** 9a, $349K, has a well, some cleared land: http://www.redfin.com/CA/Boulder-Creek/525-Stellar-Way-95006/home/39900980
* Boulder Creek

== NoiseBus ==

Owning land means we can get a Bus, used to shuttle people back and forth from the city.  It can also have bunks in it so people can sleep during the ride, or when the bus is parked at the land it serves as a few bunks and a room.

== Resources and further study: ==
'''Communes, and Communal Living'''
* [http://blackbearranch.org/ Black Bear Ranch] is a commune which was founded in 1968 by a group of people who wanted to go back to the land, get out of the city and start a new life together in the mountains.
* [http://www.oz-farm.com/history.htm Oz Farm] - Farm/commune with geodesic domes, and yurts. [http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~kroll/personal/bridge2_bridge.html Lawrence Kroll's photos of Oz in its heyday]
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop_City Drop City] - Artist commune from 1965. Associated with the "zome" building folks. There are interesting books about its problems -- problems which may sound familiar to Noisebridge people.
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language A Pattern Language] Book about planning, building, design of communities and houses and land use.
* [http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/GVCS_tools Global Village Construction Set] - a modular, DIY, low-cost, high-performance platform that enables fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts. 
* [http://www.planetida.com/ IDA (Idyll Dandy Arts)] is an intentional queer community in the hollows of middle Tennessee. Our 200 acres provide space for ten residents as well as guests, interns, musicians, expansive gardens, and lots of projects.
* Hellarity House <S>is</S> was a house in Oakland where people have lived collectively, paying NO rent, for <S>the past</S> 13 years.  Bills get paid by voluntary contributions.  There are rules but the house operates on Consensus.  ''Visiting or talking to people from this house is a good way to learn about a situation where people live together without the hierarchy of ownership simplifying everything.''  To learn about Hellarity house, visit the internet or talk to Jake (spaz) who is at noisebridge a lot and posts to the discuss list.
* [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz Kibbutz communes]
* [http://www.arcosanti.org/ Arcosanti] is interesting because Paolo Soleri's awesome arcology concept has been trumped by the need of his inner artists for art factory, and serf students to labor away in his sandcast bell mill. They make their income from the sale of the rather beautiful artisanal bells produced onsite. Arcosanti is also interesting in that its founder Paolo has grown older, and either senile or less concerned with the opinions of others, and liberally covers the tour/museum portion of the "Arcology" with fliers for women to pose nude for him to paint, you get your very own signed portrait..

In the same way that Realtors escort you through the house-buying process in the city, Realtors will meet you at giant land parcels for sale, walk around the place with you (and they carry GPS) and help you understand things you may not have thought about in those situations.  There are many large parcels on the market right now for which a Realtor could arrange a tour.

[http://spaz.org/~jake/pix/bolobolo.txt Bolo'bolo (free download)] is a book written in the '80s about how people would live together "within ten years" all over the Earth.

'''Building Material/technology/..'''
*Bamboo Building Manual, developed for Haiti with images to explain rather then words, requires no translation. http://openarchitecturenetwork.org/projects/bamboomanual