Andalusia Knoll is a Pittsburgh-based activist who is following her "desire to create" and to live by not working a traditional job. Although she does not "work" she is busy with lots of vibrant projects. I spoke with Andalusia about her job-free life, consumption, and the significance of place on one’s lifestyle at last year’s National Conference on Organized Resistance (NCOR) in Washington D.C.

Matt Dineen: You haven’t worked in the past few years. Could talk about that decision and about the kind of lifestyle you live as someone who doesn’t work a regular job?

Andalusia Knoll: Well, I’ve only worked really short-time jobs and I guess I’ve been able to structure my life in a way that I don’t need that much money. There’s a lot of ways you can find to get out of expensive rent situations. Like I used to live in New York City, and I don’t think this is actually an ideal one but, I lived with way too many people in a small apartment and only paid $75 rent. So I didn’t have a job and I dumpstered my food and then was able to do whatever projects I wanted. I guess I got into doing things like this because there is a culture of punk-traveler-squatter people. The downwardly mobile (Laughs). A lot of people who have come from more privileged backgrounds and have rejected that; to survive off as little money as possible.

In recent years I have been able to make it more sustainable. I moved to Pittsburgh which is a city that’s really fucking cheap. If you pay rent, no one pays more than $200. When I first moved there I was paying $100 and it’s not hard to make $100.

MD: Per month?

AK: Right, per month. There are psychology studies and little things that if I had to make the hundred dollars I’d do. I could do like five of these two hour studies or do a survey or something and I’d make that money. Or even random things, like once someone needed me to go on this boat trip of an environmental, sustainable tour of the river and then transcribe it. I got paid a hundred something dollars for that. I think it’s just knowing that you make money somehow, figure out little odd jobs and you can get paid for them. If you do one a month and your rent’s cheap, it’s gonna pay your rent. And I lived down the street from a store that once a week would throw away all their produce so I got all my food there once a week. And I ride my bike everywhere so I don’t have to pay for car insurance and gas or whatever. I mean, I’ve had jobs that I never really liked all that much even if they were interesting. I worked for this Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility and I worked on genetic engineering issues and that was interesting but, you know, it’s a job. I was just able to structure my life in a way that I could have as much free-time as I want and not have an official job.

One thing that’s happened is that I essentially have a job I just don’t get paid for it. I help run a recycled bike cooperative and through that I’ve been able to get really awesome jobs that have been for 6 weeks part-time. One year I got a job that was actually riding the bus around with my bicycle to promote the bicycle racks they had just installed. So through volunteering somewhere I was able to get this really sweet job that paid $10 an hour to sit on the bus and do nothing. Then the next year I got another job that was just as good, also for 6 weeks and also part-time, counting to see if kids wore their bike helmets—just sitting on street corners counting that. Those were the little things that I was able to do to make the $100 for rent.

MD: And you could live off the money from those jobs for awhile?

AK: Right, I could live off that for a really long time. Actually—this is kind of ridiculous—one year I went to Mexico and the Middle East twice and paid rent for half the year and I only spent $1,000 the whole year.

MD: Wow. So you own your own house now?

AK: Yeah. I think this is kind of a new movement in Pittsburgh, but I think it’s been happening in a lot of other cities, like Philadelphia especially. Pittsburgh is a dilapidated city with lots of abandoned houses and a declining population rate. People don’t want to live in Pittsburgh. There are no jobs. Even if I wanted a job I probably couldn’t get one. There are jobs but people don’t move there and a lot of people who graduate college just flee the city. It’s actually a really big university town but hardly anyone stays there. So with a declining population rate your real estate is not going to be very expensive. In fact it’s going to be really, really cheap. So we got a house that’s actually two row homes next to each other and an apartment in the back and all of it only cost $6,000. And with buying the house 5 of us split it so we each had to pay $1,200. One of my roommates made that in a drug study in one week. I won’t tell you how I made it. (Laughs) I don’t think $1,200 is very much to come up with. Like when I go to New York City and talk to my friends that’s like what their rent is for one month. Maybe they don’t pay that, they split it with their roommates, but that’s what their rent is.

Of course when you buy a house like that it’s not gonna work. It’s not totally livable. There was a million things wrong with it and if we needed to pay someone to fix them it would’ve been a lot of money but we were like, "Okay, we need to put a new roof on. Let’s talk to someone who’s a roofer, read a book and we’ll put a roof on." And we did. Pretty much everything—I learned how to do electricity and my roommate learned how to do plumbing. We did it all. We spent at least a few thousand more probably on supplies and all those things, but now we don’t pay rent. In the winter we have a wood-burning stove. That’s our heat. Our house is cold but if the stove’s on you’re sitting next the stove and it’s warm. The rest of the house is cold but we don’t spend $300 for gas a month.

MD: You mentioned this bike cooperative where you volunteer. When people ask you, "What do you do?" is that what you tell them?

AK: I usually give like four things that I do, but that’s the classic thing I say. For occupation I generally write "bike mechanic." That is more or less my job. I do it at least 30 hours a week, every week. So, it’s called Free Ride. It’s a recycled bike cooperative and our focus is to teach people how to fix bikes. But we also have people come and volunteer and they can earn bikes by doing work trade. We also have kids programs where they also take classes and earn a bike. We have bikes that people can borrow and used bikes for sale. That’s actually become a really popular component of our program even though it wasn’t supposed to be originally. With the used bikes, there’s nowhere else people can get them in the city. Otherwise they just wouldn’t get a bike but they know they can get one from us. That will put another person on a bike which is one of our missions. We’ve been selling a lot more used bikes and have made a lot of money.

The shop has $10,000 in the bank right now so we’re pretty financially stable. Even though we’re all-volunteer we realized that we could do commission so if you fix a bike you could get 50 percent on it. So that’s one thing we started to get money from. We also started teaching adult classes that people pay for and I’ve gotten paid for those. I was one of the founders of the bike co-op and, in a way; we have created our own jobs. We’ve actually applied for a grant and if we get this one it’s a position for someone to get paid $45,000, but we’re like, "Ah, no. I think we’ll split it a few ways." Because I don’t think any of us would know what do with $45,000.

But anyway, I guess I tell people I do that and actually it’s amazing because every time I tell someone in Pittsburgh they’re like, "Oh, I’ve heard of it!"

MD: What are the other projects that you’re involved with?

AK: Well, another thing that I work on is doing an Indymedia news show called "Rustbelt Radio." It’s a weekly news magazine, more or less, mostly about Pittsburgh issues but also global issues. So I’m a co-host of the show and also do a lot of the interviews and editing for it. And I also do a books-to-prisoners program and I’m involved in a prisoner art group called the Prison Poster Project. We’re making a portable mural about prisons that’s illustrated by prisoners to be used as an educational tool about issues around the Prison Industrial Complex. We’re working with incarcerated illustrators all across the country.

And…I make zines! Oddly, with zines—if you get copies for free—you can actually make a little money with it. I just sold 75 zines to Microcosm Publishing and I get $75. But if I thought about the hours I spent making them I probably get two cents an hour or something. (Laughs) It’s come to the point where I hardly need money. I make silk-screened posters and am selling them at this conference and I’m just using the money from the posters I made to go to the Prison Poster Project because I don’t really need more money.

MD: What are some of the challenges you face living this lifestyle?

AK: Actually, I think one of the challenges isn’t about me getting by but about people respecting you for work you do when you don’t get paid for it. Like people will ask what I do and I’ll tell them all these things and then they’ll ask, "Oh, what’s your job?" and I’ll say that I don’t have a job or that these are my jobs. Even people in activist communities are just like, "You’re a slacker, blah, blah…" I have a really obsessive personality (laughs) and I work from when I get up until when I go to sleep and am always doing a million things. Not necessarily every thing is activist-oriented but a lot of it is. When you have a job, often, you go to your job. You come home at 5 o’clock or whatever and you hang out. I don’t do that. I work all the time. It really bothers me how people are always putting down the work you do because you don’t get paid for it. So that’s been a challenge but recently with Free Ride people are actually more surprised that we don’t get paid for it. They’re like, "Oh, you don’t get paid for this? That’s weird."

But I guess another thing I grapple with is how right now we’re trying to get paid for it and it’s really weird for me because I don’t need money. I don’t know what to do with money. I could buy some records. I could go out to eat more. And I’m like, well do I really want to play the game of getting grants and all this stuff for things that I would do anyway? It’s weird to think that I would do more things, and I know I would, if I got paid. Like I would work at our bike shop more if I got money for it. But I don’t need money so why would I do that more? To live my life as I do now I don’t need money and I’m happy.

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For more information about Free Ride visit: http://www.freeridepgh.org/

and to listen to Rust Belt Radio visit: http://indypgh.org/features/radio/

Matt Dineen is currently living in Northampton, MA after a one year affair with Madison, WI. He is struggling with the dilemma of following his passion for writing, music, and radical social change with the harsh reality of trying to get by and pay off debt. When he's not filling out job applications at health food stores and restaurants Matt interns at Class Action, a non-profit organization working to bridge the class divide and create justice, equity, and sustainability for all. Email him at: Note: This piece is part of an ongoing series of interviews for TF which Matt will be conducting with people exploring the dilemma of following one’s passions while surviving in a capitalist society.