Alan Bamberger and I are jogging down Grant Avenue on our way to a First Thursday art opening at the John Berggruen Gallery. Actually, Bamberger—tall, lean, with bushy gray hair—is jogging. He’s got a camera in one hand and a markedup list of 32 galleries we’re scheduled to visit, all within the next three hours, clutched in the other. I’m trailing him, resisting the idea that looking at art should be associated with speed or quantity.

I think it’s a losing battle, though. Along with virtually everything else (including the word virtual), the Internet has completely altered how we buy art, as has the proliferation of international art fairs. The art world has opened up dramatically in the past few years: now just about everyone, anywhere, can be a collector. The art fairs, which have made buying art seem like a trip to the mall, have a good deal to do with this.

Even with the current downturn, a robust economy has helped, as has contemporary art’s democratic use of materials, incorporating everything from dirty bedclothes to dried animal dung to graffiti. Not only is buying art more fun and more connected to people’s lives, but, according to San Francisco gallery owner Catharine Clark, “The art world has become such a spectacle, such a ‘scene,’ that more people want to get in on that. Collecting is not just the terrain of the wealthy.”

As a result, while a decade ago the Bay Area had just 10 or 12 major collectors, there are at least twice that many today.

The group still includes such boldface names as Don and Doris Fisher, Norman and Norah Stone, and Richard and Pamela Kramlich. But there are many new faces— people like Didier Hirsch, who amassed a great collection buying online; Martin Maguss and Mari Iki, who have to watch what they spend; and Robert Mailer Anderson and Nicola Miner, young parents who in the past might have waited till their children were grown to begin buying art.

All this enthusiasm has doubled and tripled prices. That even holds true for photographs, prints, and the work of young artists, the traditional lower-priced starting points for new collectors. It used to be that when someone graduated with an MFA, you could buy a piece of his or her artwork for $5,000. Now it’s closer to $50,000.

And with the ever increasing number of eager art buyers, a once genteel pastime has become a sometimes frenzied dash for objects. Much of the craziness takes place in New York, London, and Beijing, all regular stops on the international art circuit, where the Russian, Chinese, and ubiquitous hedge-fund buyers are pushing art prices higher than anyone ever thought possible.

“Since San Francisco is a bit out of that mainstream,” says local gallery owner Jack Hanley, “it never gets as frantic, on the upside or the downside.” That may be true, but things are changing as quickly here as anywhere else.

The Internet: a new key to the kingdom Take Bamberger, rushing past me now on his way to the Haines Gallery. For years, he was a typical art consultant and author, absorbed in the visceral pleasures of leisurely viewing paintings and prints, photography and sculpture. So why is he sprinting up fi ve fl ights of stairs to spend 10 minutes in rooms full of compelling art?

Because Bamberger is a populist, and a few years ago he became frustrated with the insular nature of the art scene. “I would say to a dealer, ‘Have you been to suchand- such gallery?’, and it might be three blocks away, but he would go, ‘What?’” So Bamberger began using the Internet to bring the fragmented local culture together. Each month, he attends a ridiculous number of gallery openings, photographs the artwork, and posts the images on his website, ArtBusiness.com. Along with brief captions, he estimates there are more than 20,000 images on his site. (See “Reading,” page 102.)

Local sites like Bamberger’s provide something once thought impossible: a near comprehensive look at the art being shown all over San Francisco on most any given day or night. In tandem with international websites, these resources offer any art enthusiast with a computer entrée to a staggering amount of information—including (for a fee) auction results, a major tool in deducing what a piece of art is worth on the open market. This kind of information has historically been controlled by dealers, so for some buyers and collectors, gaining access to it has been like storming the palace gates.

The web offers more than information, of course. These days, it’s not uncommon to purchase art online, too. Some dealers say that both enjoyment and learning are lost when buyers don’t view the artwork in person; others simply lament that fewer people come to see their shows. On the other hand, many local galleries now make almost a third of their sales online, with the money often coming from halfway around the world. Hanley, whose site gets thousands of hits a day, says, “It is still surprising to me that someone will send $20,000 for something he or she only saw on a JPEG.”

International fairs: art for fun and profi t No less surprising is the growing number of people willing to fl y halfway around the world to look at art. Drawing dealers from across the globe, international art fairs are springing up everywhere, from Basel, Switzerland—after almost 40 years, it’s home to the granddaddy of art fairs—to New York, Miami, Madrid, Venice, and, more recently, Moscow, Dubai, Shanghai, and Istanbul. (“You can go along this whole trail now,” says John Berggruen, “just like a pilgrim.”) Thirty years ago, these art fairs felt more like ho-hum trade shows. Now they are lifestyle destinations, as much about good parties as about good art. Families plan vacations around them; museums offer guided trips that blend socializing with education; and juries of respected curators choose which galleries can show work, which keeps the quality high. Hanley calls the fairs “crazy important.”

They can certainly get crazy. San Francisco gallery owner Rena Bransten remembers seeing people in line to get into the Basel fair: “They had their credit cards held out like this.” She waves her arm violently in the air. “It was mind-boggling.” The sheer amount of work on view can be overwhelming. Bay Area collector Jeff Dauber says that when he and his friends Martin Maguss and Mari Iki are at the Miami art fair, they often call each other on their cell phones, shouting, “Art addicts support group—you’ve got to make me stop!” Long time collector Frances Bowes says she avoids fairs that have too big a party scene. Even so, she bought three pieces in Basel recently that she’s convinced she would not have found if she hadn’t attended the fair, because they came from galleries in three different countries.

Some galleries make such a signifi cant percentage of their annual sales at the fairs—up to 60 percent—that they have taken to holding on to work to ship overseas so they can make a good showing. The charges of “hoarding” have only heightened the fairs’ cachet. Some buyers believe that because of the abundance of work at the fairs, anyone, regardless of social standing, will be able to purchase a dream item or two. But that’s not always the case.

“The truth is,” says Todd Hosfelt, a San Francisco gallery owner who generally avoids the fairs, “a lot of stuff has been sold or put on hold before the fair even begins.” Some buyers have gotten wise to this and disguised themselves as service workers to try to get in early, hoping to fi nd the few pieces that haven’t already been claimed. Even at the fairs, though, some art-world rules still apply. Dealers often won’t sell work to just anyone, preferring to “place” their work with somebody whose collection might end up in a museum one day.

Even Bowes—one of the most wellknown, well-respected collectors on the planet—can’t always get what she wants. At one fair a couple of years ago, a dealer refused to sell a work to Bowes’ daughter. “He said, ‘I’ll sell it to your mother.’ So I said, ‘What if I buy it and give it to her?’” But that didn’t work, because the dealer wanted the painting to go into Bowes’ collection, not her daughter’s.

Shop locally: bricks and mortar still apply Practices like these can make it diffi cult, even unappealing, to become a collector. Even longtime local art consultant Mary Zlot, with her access to dealers and key works for clients, concedes, “The art world isn’t egalitarian.” Lacking the money to hire her or her colleagues, what should a post-Internet buyer do? Exactly what art experts have been saying for decades. “If you are really serious and patient,” says Zlot, “over time you can establish relationships with dealers, and next time you might get the painting.”

Or you might not—but some collectors have found wonderful items through long relationships with local dealers. In the Bay Area, despite the loneliness some dealers feel, art galleries are springing up every day as more and more people buy art. You’ll still find expensive, blue-chip art at downtown galleries like Berggruen’s, or in the theater district at places like Christopher- Clark Fine Art. But move beyond downtown, and prices fall from the tens of thousands of dollars to the thousands and hundreds.

Hanley’s gallery, on Valencia Street, has long introduced emerging artists to a wider audience, and he says he is selling more art than ever. Scattered throughout the city is a long-established group of nonprofit galleries—among them Southern Exposure, the Lab, New Langton Arts, SF Camerawork, and Galería de la Raza—that show more affordable, often edgy work. Joining them in recent years are places in the Tenderloin like the Shooting Gallery and White Walls, which, at 4,000 square feet, might be the largest local gallery that shows emerging artists. Then there are the artist-run spaces: Queen’s Nails Annex, Blackbird Space, Artengine. The many neighborhood galleries, like those south of Market (Gallery 16, Aftermodern, 111 Minna Gallery, MM Galleries) and in slowly gentrifying Dogpatch (Ampersand, Ping Pong), cater to those looking to buy art closer to home.

Popping up across the city on the lowest end of the price scale are a half-dozen small galleries that use their space in creative ways to keep prices down. Fifty24SF Gallery sells clothing and other designer items in addition to art, while at Edo Hair Salon you can get a haircut while scouting new paintings. Aimed at promoting a community- and artbased life, these spaces often show only artists who live in the neighborhood, which might include anyone from musicians to clothing or houseware designers. The idea, says Janice Myint, codirector of the Lower Hater Gallery, has grown out of hip-hop culture, which is about fostering an entire lifestyle, not just one aspect of it. Myint says that in galleries like hers, “We’ll chat with all kinds of folks coming in, making connections with different people from the community.” These galleries can seem a far cry from the sedate, white-walled spaces downtown, but that’s the point.

Says Kit Schulte, codirector of MM Galleries, of her venture, “We are writing our own rule book right now.” She could easily be talking about the entire art-collecting world.