Old Tricks, New Treats (Bag of Tricks, book 3)

Ruby Dee Philippa’s Old Tricks, New Treats, is book three in the Bag of Tricks trilogy, and revisits the anarchic, intoxicating world of early-1980s San Francisco through a sharp lens of memory and survival. The collection’s first story, “New Little Friend,” stands as an exceptional example of Philippa’s ability to merge vivid realism with emotional depth. Through Babs, a young punk navigating drugs, danger, and fleeting independence, Philippa creates a protagonist who is both flawed and deeply compelling.

The prose is rich in sensory detail. From the “green atop green” of Mill Valley’s hills to the claustrophobic grit of city alleyways, the author contrasts natural beauty with urban decay. This duality mirrors Babs’s own struggle between control and chaos. Philippa’s descriptive prowess extends to the smallest gestures: Babs fumbling a padlock, or the metallic click of a revolver. These are moments that humanize her even in the midst of lawlessness.

What sets Old Tricks, New Treats apart is Philippa’s empathy. While she documents the punk world’s dark realities such as drug abuse, violence, and homelessness, she refuses to reduce her characters to cautionary tales. Instead, she frames their rebellion as a form of self-preservation. The gun lesson scene, where Vietnam veteran Ed teaches Babs how to shoot, becomes symbolic: it’s not just about weapons, but about agency. Babs’s awakening to power, both literal and metaphorical, is one of the story’s most striking achievements.

Philippa also writes with historical authenticity. Readers familiar with the Bay Area’s countercultural history will recognize touchstones like Haight-Ashbury clubs, moonrock highs, and the fractured post-hippie ethos that defined the punk underground. Yet the emotional truth transcends its setting. This is a book about identity, trauma, and the messy ways we claim ownership over our own stories.

In a literary landscape that often sanitizes rebellion or romanticizes addiction, Philippa’s work stands out for its refusal to do either. She crafts her world with a documentarian’s eye and a poet’s heart, grounding every chaotic moment in emotional truth. Readers come away not just with a portrait of the punk generation, but with a meditation on how people reinvent themselves through struggle. Babs’s journey, from fear to fleeting empowerment, encapsulates the resilience of a culture that refused to be erased. Philippa’s achievement lies in turning that defiance into art, giving voice to those who lived on the edge and teaching us, decades later, that survival itself can be an act of rebellion.

Old Tricks, New Treats is more than nostalgia; it’s testimony. Philippa captures not only the sound and fury of an era but also the fragile humanity behind it. Her characters are survivors of their own creation, and her storytelling is gritty, intimate, and unapologetically raw. It ensures that their voices are not forgotten.

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“datePublished”: “2025-10-20”
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