girl eat machine.

true or false?

If my interests were mapped as sounds, urban planning and urban design would be a hum, constantly underlying all the booms, pops, and trills of my daily focus. Think of them as the sound of a kettle full of boiling water, heard from the next room. Every now and then, the steam builds just enough and the hum turns to a whistling scream. Time to pay attention.

Visualization of Aural Fixation

Today’s whistle came from the pot of social critic James Howard Kunstler(, who apparently has a podcast). I broke the spine of his book Geography of Nowhere this morning and was struck by a passage only a few pages into his book: a description of the suburban life of teenagers. We’ve all heard this one before, but Kunstler’s passage is poignant for two reasons:

One: It is intimate. Most descriptions of the ‘burbs are clinical lamets by talking heads, citing the most recent story on teen depression before cutting to a commercial break. Kunstler’s prose is personal and therefore the opposite.
Two: Although we have all heard the tales of youthful woe before, there is something fascinating about the fact that even when we tell these stories from a personal point of view, we use the same language.

Maybe that’s just what happens when people tell stories: language is limited, storytelling is learned, so of course when we translate our lives into narratives there will be some overlap…Or maybe it’s that suburbia really has replicated itself as an “experience,” reproducing similar life lines, isolation, community, whatever irregardless of actual Place.

Dunno. Now I’m just inspired to make a word cloud or chart out of personal narratives of Ex-Suburban Teens to see what patterns form. Comparing only a recent narrative I wrote with Kunstler’s, we can expect to see a lot of references to cars, drivers licenses, rock and roll, basement hideaways, and waiting.

read Kunstler’s words

Sakura Matsuri (aka ‘Japanese Street Festival’) – April 10, 2010 – Washington, DC.

Okay, so technically this image was taken after the Festival (Sculpture Garden, National Mall), but the same day should count for something. (Pictured above, a friend, Danielle, sunlit with strangers.)

Street Festivals, a phenomena worth musing over. Not to put it too tritely, but there’s something refreshingly “old school” about reclaiming the streets. People mill about, dazed and sated with the hum of the swarm — it’s a magnet of activity because as a venue, the Street holds potential for those with commercial, noncommercial interests alike. Lacking public squares with the capacity to hold the horde, Streets provide space that serves to both contain Festival elements (sword-swallowing, food stands, old cars, musical stages…) and keep the crowd moving thanks to associations/structure of the road (thoughts of cars, movement, transportation, lanes…).

So why don’t we use the Streets as our public space more often? Are they only good as occasional fairgrounds — that is, are they only good for these sorts of large-scale pre-planned festivals which themselves are only good once in a blue moon? What are the dangers of using the Streets more often? No, really: it has to be more complicated than Angry Drivers, right? DC may have a good deal of public space that could make reliance on Streets unnecessary…but what about less architecturally fortunate places?

Are we thinking creatively enough about our space, or not?

FOUND:
The face of DC, just past the White House. Even the bricks found it hard to resist a smile on such a beautiful day.

via Jeff Jarvis:

I. We have a right to connect.

II. We have the right to speak.

III. We have the right to assemble.

IV. We have the right to act.

V. We have the right to control our data.

VI. We have the right to control our identity.

VII. What is public is a public good.

VIII. All bits are created equal.

IX. The internet shall be operated openly.

In so many words (1,000 of them?), this is what I was up to this weekend instead of writing in my blog/dying eggs/etc.…

More to come. Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for Clover…

It’s always nice to know that you have readers. That’s why I value the spam bots that visit my site: they’re loyal. Bots come to this site and comment religiously, and why? Because I appeal to their demographic. Yep, you too can capture the hearts of spam bots everywhere by following these simple steps:

1. Start a blog/website.

2. Use a word like “viagra” or “enhancement” at least once.

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If you’re thinking, What about viagra? The answer is this short post on viagra equivalents to serve by candle light. Guess you could say that I asked for it….