Former Palisadian’s Currency an Asset in His New Town

Palisades native Joshua Freeman is changing North Fork’s economy one printed note at a time.

With a population of 3,150, North Fork, CA, is a small town that’s not on the main road to anywhere, but it is on the Sierra Scenic Vista Byway and Yosemite National Park is nearby to the north.

When the lumber mill closed down in 1996, so did most of the jobs. Many residents commuting to work in Fresno or Oakhurst often ended up shopping there too, essentially funneling money directly out of North Fork.

“Yeah, the economy is tough and stuff but it’s not all gloom,” Freeman said.  “A lot of experimenting comes out of dire necessity.”   

Located in Madera County, which has the highest number of artists per capita in the country, North Fork is getting creative to address the downturn that has affected Main Streets everywhere.

“One of the defining attributes of North Folk is that we do a lot of self-help community development,” Freeman said. “We don’t necessarily wait for the government or companies to come in and do it for us.”

In one of those endeavors, the 46-year-old computer repairman created a legal tender he dubbed North Fork Shares. Over the course of two months in 2009, two dozen volunteers used a Pilot Letterpress to handprint the shares on yupo paper. Money hasn’t been printed this way for a hundred years, said Freeman. 

“It hasn’t made the next quantum leap but it might this summer,” said Freeman. “. . . I get calls all the time from currency collectors in places like Europe who want to buy it.”

Other cities have their own legal tender such as Madison, WI and Ithaca, NY's so-called Hours, which are recognized by local banks and accepted by the transit system. Like other legitimate currencies, NF Shares aren’t replacing but complementing dollars in the local economy, with one share equaling $12, a half-share equaling $6 and a quarter share worth $3.

The true value of the shares, however, isn’t monetary. Their ability to keep money local and enrich the community at large is their merit.

“Young people need apprenticeship. Old people have skills but don’t have the avenue to teach them. It’s a wonderful way of having people getting real needs met,” Freeman said.

Obtaining the notes is as easy as attending a meeting at North Fork Town Hall’s other incarnation, The Studio, a nonprofit community supported establishment. In addition to NF Share exchange parties, The Studio has recently hosted coffeehouse nights, autism benefits and movie showings with discussions afterward. Music is usually involved.

Freeman likens The Studio to a place closer to his native community of Pacific Palisades, The Great American Food and Beverage Company, a restaurant that operated on Santa Monica Boulevard in the ’70s and gave many performers their breaks in the entertainment industry. 

“All of the wait staff were musicians. They’d get up on stage, perform a song and then go back to waiting tables,” Freeman said. “North Folk seems to be a bit like that at times. When civic organizations and different groups get together, we make music.”  

Professional jazz musicians, blues, gypsy swing, straight-up bluegrass and Brazilian jazz are some of the different sounds the varied residents bring to town meetings. For a small community, North Fork is unusually diverse, partly due to native Mono Indians, who make up 9.4 percent of the town’s population.

“It’s not homogeneous or monolithic,” Freeman said.

With a background as diverse as the people who call North Folk home or the music flowing in The Studio, Freeman wears a lot of hats: former Montessori teacher, website designer and member of numerous bands over the years, including a ska band he started with eight or nine other members called Clothing Optional. He plays saxophone, guitar and hand drums. But he never had dreadlocks, a fact previously reported incorrectly by a major newspaper. He simply had cut his long hair.

“We have a lot of high-hat which is great for smaller spaces. We have a choir in town, a number of artistic gatherings and a benefit for the arts program.”

Freeman attributes his need for diversity to growing up in the Palisades, but the drive for novelty doesn’t end there. With a wide variety of other community developments in the works—such as organizing human chess games or meeting with seven families once a month to have breakfast and make a list of tasks to complete that day together—he hasn’t focused exclusively on the shares.

Despite the benefits the currency provides, there’s been no central accounting on it and Freeman admits it’s been a slow process.

“It’s not that the shares aren’t getting used; it’s not in the forefront of our minds. Even before we did the currency there were a lot of people doing things for each other, other people that need things in town. There are a lot of people thinking about what people need."

Freeman believes that if someone had the interest, a similar program could have a warm reception in Pacific Palisades.  

“ . . . In a situation like Pacific Palisades, you obviously have some chain markets that people use, a handful of restaurants and some small outlets that can be supported because . . . do you really want to drive a half hour when you can get it and get home?”

Some businesses in Palisades, such as former Paliskates, have felt the pressure of the economic downturn. The skate shop would have likely succumbed if a parent of one of the young kids who frequented the local establishment hadn't stepped in to save it.

A similar program in the Palisades could tap into the community’s strengths and have a positive effect on other businesses that have no one stepping forward to rescue them from staggering rents and reduced customers.  

“When you have to work with others, there’s a quality that comes from that, allows for other projects in the community and wonderful things come out of that,” said Freeman.

 “Having interaction with one’s neighbors, being able to make music with one’s community, healing or developing or becoming happier through interacting with other human beings . . . is the antithesis of the cocoon experience of diversion through electronics.”

For others, who aren’t directly experiencing the effects of a recession or are merely content with the status quo, the notion of pursuing a local currency may seem unnecessary. But the benefits hark back to an age before Walmarts and other corporate chains dominated the economic landscape. 

Freeman recalled establishments he enjoyed while growing up in the Palisades before he moved to Oregon at 9 and during subsequent trips to visit family, including a brother who still lives in the area.

“Mr. Lee’s Chinese Food had the most amazing telephone, it was like a giant clamshell,” said Freeman, who added that Mr. Lee allegedly lost his restaurant due to gambling debts. “Hacienda Galvan across from the library was the ultimate Mexican food in my young mind.”

Other favorite destinations included a little hot dog place, now a Bank of America, that had railroad tracks running through it, the hobby shop, the Mayfair Market and Temescal Canyon before the floods in the 1980s forever altered the topography.

“In the late '60s and early '70s, [Pacific Palisades] wasn’t so different from everywhere else in L.A. It wasn’t like you didn’t have wealth, because you did, but it was much more like rural America,” he said.

He’s noticed a slow process of gentrification going on since the days of the Bay Theatre. As in many towns and cities across America, the topography of Main Street has been irreparably changed.   

“It was wonderful having the opportunity to live in Pacific Palisades. The experience I would have had at Pali High or Paul Revere would have been great but when you grow up in an affluent community it colors how you see the world.”

But Freeman is showing that residents have the power to transform their communities into the kind of place they want to live in and they have many avenues to do so.