It is hard for me to balance the mundane and the sublime. Or, maybe I should say: When I catch a glimpse of a big idea in my head, I lose interest in reporting factual information. And in explaining the big idea, I have trouble figuring out my first move.
And, I don’t know if this indicates any real attention-span problems, but one idea triggers another in rapid succession. It might be easier for me to describe one of these ‘chains’ as an example.
What is the future of Architecture? Is it the brutal modernism of glass block towers, or is it something more humane? When I was reading thet book about getting rid of dams, I tried to imagine some of the little towns, and I fell back on both my memories of actual places with a good relationship to water and the places in my dreams.
Specifically, I used to work in the Georgetown neighborhood of DC. Most of that place is soulless. It remains interesting to the extent that the rich residents can control policy and keep big development out of their back yards. This is a double-edged sword: Public transit and parking are both problematic, which is a disadvantage to the people who work there. The main drag is not particularly quaint anymore, so everything breaks down into leafy residential areas and barren consumerscapes. The interesting part is that a few places in Georgetown bridge the public and private realms in a graceful way: The C&O canal cuts through the old industrial district, and some good choices were made to integrate this feature, taking the textures of a canal town and updating them. But don’t be fooled: if the canal were not part of a national park, it surely would have been torn out long ago. This bothers me.
All the necessary elements of a working town can be full of muscular grace, or they can be abandoned moonscapes. Railroads come to mind. I was sorely disappointed when the rail yards between Arlington and Alexandria were converted to big box stores - you know the kind - with the chain restaurants orbiting them at the edge of the parking lot. Sure, they landscaped the edges, but they also nixed the proposed subway station. I guess they was never any danger of that place being developed in a sensible way. But could you imagine? They could have extended the street grid from Alexandria or created a little nucleus like planting a seed. But Planning with a capital ‘P’ is all about big parcels.
I would enjoy more canals. Not because I think we will be forced to go back to donkey power and barge traffic, but because channels of flowing water create an interesting sort of connectivity. When I walk somewhere in Georgetown, prefer to walk along the canal and avoid the busy streets. I don’t expect to eliminate traffic altogether, but I have always thought that places in the city where people go would benefit from hiding the traffic and emphasizing human interactions.
In “Watershed”, Grossman emphasized how dams alter the ecology of rivers, by blocking the spawning of fish and the distribution of sediments. I agree in principle, but I think it is possible to respect the flow of rivers and still create pleasing diversions. And I prefer small scale manipulations for aesthetic effect. As I read, I could picture little towns with rivers running down the middle. Some places have taken the idea and exploited it commercially. Turning the interface of land and water into a circus of commercialism. Even though it seems like a public place, you may learn to your chagrin that it has its own security force. And, they don’t want you loitering around of taking photographs. There is another good book “Ladders” that explores the rampaging of suburbia and the absurd urban development schemes that are due to shortsighted land use policies.
Beautiful places are a quality of life issue. They are a feature of the landscape, and therefore, something that rich and poor can enjoy equally. Maybe rich people resent this - I completely understand the urge to wall yourself off in your own private Versailles. But in the world of tomorrow that we are likely to have, this defection from the public hurts everybody.
Posted in urban-studies, DC-roaming, books | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:31:00 GMT
Posted in photos, DC-roaming | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Tue, 06 May 2008 16:27:00 GMT
These photos are from the alley behind the bank on 18th and Columbia. It was a summer day, and I think those clouds are the outlying edges of a major hurricane that didn’t strike us. It was July 22nd, so you can check for yourself.
I was just walking along when I saw the late afternoon light, and the deep blue sky, and the vast expanse of brick curving along the back wall of the bank. There were a lot of disappointing shots of the bricked-in drive-through window. Technically, these photos were taken in the disused drive-through. There is a PVC drainpipe to add even more abstract charm. I must be drawn to that big bland scale right in the middle of such urban chaos. It’s something out of an art museum - something a pretentious artist would try to pass off at least. “100 Foot Curved Brick Wall”.
Posted in photos, DC-roaming | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 17 Apr 2008 22:11:00 GMT
I continue to read “The Zen Of Fish”. It’s been giving me terrible cravings for sushi. Whole Foods has a Genji Express counter, and that’s the cheapest way to get a sushi snack around here. So that’s what I did. The book is entertaining: It tells a lot of the dirty secrets of sushi. American tastes are different, so if you have something you really like (cough, cough… California rolls), you might find out you can’t get it in Japan. So it’s not authentic, is it? But don’t worry, these things have a way of cross-pollinating. Like Italian pizza. More fattening parts of the fish have become more popular, which makes sushi a lot less healthy than you think. And the book weighs in on topics like: Soak your nigiri in a mixture of soy sauce and wasabi and the chef will be tempted to lop off your head with his kitchen knife, then commit seppuku.
It’s dangerously warm today. I sat out on the astro-turf in Silver Spring balancing my roll combo in one hand and fishing it out with the chopsticks in my other hand. This was when the head honcho from work walked by. He was startled to see me eating with chopsticks. He didn’t even know where to get sushi around here. I smiled and nodded.
Posted in books, gourmand, DC-roaming | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:58:00 GMT
My sister was in town for less than a week. She has moved along, visiting our parents before driving somebody’s car to upstate New York. Let me see if I can pick out some memorable features of her visit.
After failing to meet her at the train station, we had a late dinner with Olga at the Reef.
I had work Thursday, and I got us tickets to see Doug Fine at National Geographic on his book tour for “Farewell My Subaru”. Naturally, I was running late, trying to wrap up every loose end in the office (as I’m sort of doing right now…). Olga got some food from a Japanese restaurant, and I arrived in the rain with about 15 minutes to eat before we had to go. As it happened, we took a cab, which gave us a bit of margin. It seemed like a natural: Doug decided to experiment with living ‘off the grid’ in New Mexico. The similarities between his situation and my sisters were striking, so it hoped it would be informative. I knew it would be entertaining. Of course, beyond some superficial similarities, like solar panels, they are quite different, Doug and my sister. But never mind all that for now. Doug is on a mission to show people they don’t have to make drastic changes to their lifestyles. I figure that is probably true for now.
Friday Vanessa had an agenda. She needed to go shopping. But first, we went to the Textile Museum. An exhibit on Indigo had just opened that day. There were old garments from the collection demonstrating blue dyes in fabric. There were some very modern pieces from artists living in Japan: Noren half-curtains, hanging banners. Some were tie-dyed with white patterning in the deep blue. Others held striated patterns from being scrunched up on a metal drum. We also watched a video that showed the guy with the metal drums, another fellow turning his compost heap of indigo, and some Indians who didn’t feel the need to invest in paddles, but kicked to stir up the dye instead. Upstairs were some hands-on workstations and a smaller exhibit of Bolivian designs. We spent nearly as long in the shop. I was looking at a little book on color palates. I eventually got so bored that I bought a necktie I liked with a Frank Lloyd Wright design. Ah, now if I only had a proper jacket…
The remainder of Friday afternoon was taken up with shopping and coffee. We went to Olsson’s and Reiter’s, looking for more books on how to be green, how to invest green, etc. She also needed a dictionary. Because you can never have enough dictionaries. Somebody left a copy of the latest Charles Perrow book out on a table at Reiter’s and I was very tempted. I read “Normal Accidents” years ago, and this ‘new’ book - I see now that it has been out a full year - is called “The Next Catastrophe”. I was right to refrain from buying - I can get it from work if I want. After books, it was luggage. She looked for a garment bag for her suits, and I stood around reading the Greil Marcus book. Actually, that’s when I started reading it.
I waited too long to write about what we did Friday… I’m forgetting where we ate dinner. Perhaps Friday was the night we ate at Las Canteras, the new-ish Peruvian place on 18th. I’ve only heard good things. I know a Peruvian transplant who says it rocks. There was a lot of raisin/olive/cinnamon. There were bits of beef heart and boiled egg. And, there was potato. It reminded me of the Chilean empanadas at Julias. They also specialize in Cebiche. (I know it with a ‘v’, not a ‘b’ - willful misspellings can be alluring.) We had a white wine that Olga and Vanessa picked out.
Saturday, Vanessa had the conference to attend. That’s the day I should have blogged about all this. We met up for dinner at Angles. It seems normal for everybody to eat half their dinner and push the remainder on me. I had spinach salad and seafood gumbo, then ate half of Olga’s sole. Speaking of being green, I like to tell the story of eating with my family at a seafood restaurant outside of Cleveland when I ordered nothing, because I could fill up on all the food other people cast off. Of course, it’s not particularly dignified, but it made a point. Waste not want not.
Sunday I had to work again, and Vanessa had more conference. I stayed late at work, spent some time on my computer, and went home for some rest.
Monday was her last night, so after work I came over to Olga’s. I helped shop for groceries, and then sat around working on my computer (I’m always getting suckered into low productivity when I go over there so this time I was prepared…), then Vanessa made us a dinner of steaks, potatoes, and salad. I got the biggest piece, half of Olga’s, and some bits of Vanessa’s. I was stuffed. Vanessa and I attempted to clean up, but Olga wouldn’t have it. We managed to disobey her to some extent. There was a scheme involving me taking trash to the dumpster.
We forgot all about it, and the next day I realized I had a set of Olga’s keys in my pants pocket. So I had to swing by again on Tuesday to drop those off. After that it was back to normal. I stopped in at the Reef, sat for a while on the first floor before learning that they had finally replaced karaoke with “Rock Band” the video game. That was quite a spectacle. I didn’t participate. It is nice that it demands cooperation, whereas karaoke can be done solo.
Posted in bar-scene, books, DC-roaming, olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 10 Apr 2008 22:27:00 GMT
The weather is crappy today, and it reminded me of another day in December when I took some good photographs…
Well, I guess you can be the judge of that. I really liked my series of Martin Luther King Library from the same day. For a long time I’ve been fascinated by Gallery Place. One of the apocryphal stories from high school was the homeless man who told us “Don’t go to Gallery Place - They’ll steal your shoes!” Sounds like the voice of experience to me. It hasn’t been Chinatown for a while now, despite all the signs in Chinese. Once a long time ago, Aaron and I went to buy fireworks. In 1994 & 95 I worked at the Olsson’s down the street. Heather and I used to get lunch at some of the long gone Chinese restaurants. The MCI Center got built (then renamed), and the Portrait Gallery finally got reopened. So, now there is some new development on the corner: Starbucks was an early pioneer, then came the Multiplex movie theaters, chain restaurants, clothing stores - In other words, Georgetown all over again. The theme-parkization of the inner city.
Above the metro escalators is a postmodern monstrosity not unlike a lotus blossom. The columns supporting it look as Chinese as they can, even though all the Chinese immigrants live in Fairfax or Wheaton now - where all the good Chinese grocery stores are now. The crowning achievement is the AT&T store - not Chinese at all, as far as I can tell - With three jumbotron monitors blaring an endless series of AT&T and Diet Coke commercials. I became obsessed with the spectacle. A little new and old together, but one of the best parts about DC is the underground wires, which get in my way constantly in Silver Spring.
The more I look at these pictures, the more I want a tilt-shift rig. Not that I could use it with the Coolpix. The widest zoom is pretty wide, and it bends all towering verticals. But it could come in handy with the Minolta.
Posted in DC-roaming, photos | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:32:00 GMT
I am still pecking at “The Economics of Attention”. It’s one more book that I find difficult to read because it provokes too many tangents on every page. I am always running off to look at some other thing, or if I’m stuck on a bus, I write down some notes or just stare off into space.
Today is a special appearance at work. (Gee, maybe I should be working instead of writing this…) I wasn’t supposed to be back to work until Friday, but I agreed to cover this shift at the last minute. With a little luck, I’ll be out of here in reasonable time - I’ve got to go downtown to return “Walker” and perhaps find another worthy video to view. But for now I’m guiding the ever-so-clunky wholesale jobber electronic ordering process. This is a dinosaur of an EDI process. I think the wholesaler wants to move us to a newer format - they haven’t applied pressure, but we’re a couple generations behind the curve. That’s going to take some re-programming for the main computer to understand the order confirmations. There have been the typical headaches of interfacing between two reticent programmers, afraid I won’t understand or that it will take too long to explain. And in the meantime, I’m not really getting paid enough to deal with it. Suffice it to say: the actual ordering takes place in DOS. I think it would be a simple matter to update the EDI format, but - and here’s what I wanted to talk about - if it’s done the slightest bit wrong, nobody will willing to guide the debugging. There’s already PC software for ordering. Everybody just assumes that we would do everything on PCs. We don’t. The Unix machine is at the heart of our operation.
Saturday afternoon I went downtown. (I was picking out “Walker”, but that wasn’t the end of it…) I left Olsson’s and found Saxby’s coffee shop still open next door. There were lots of people inside, I went to the counter to order coffee and the manager had some crazy story about how he actually closed at three on Saturdays, but he could still make me something. (I glanced back at the room full of people…) So he made me a coconut white mocha. I asked for medium, but he upgraded me free of charge to a large. (Large lattes aren’t so great - they’re just more sugar and milk. It’s the same two shots of espresso. I used to love having barista friends at Starbucks - they made a lot of single shot drinks on a machine that makes two at time, so I often go the odd shot added to my drink instead of tossing it down the drain.)
With my large latte, I took a stroll toward the White House. Nothing interesting to see, really, but along the same bus line that returns me to my house. I walked all the way to Lincoln square - 14th and I streets - before I finished my coffee. I forgot to bring my notebook, and I had an idea, so I was scribbling on a piece of scrap paper in my pocket (folded copy paper with a grocery list on it) on the side of the bus shelter when the bus came. I had a word fall into place in my mind for something I was trying to explain to myself. The word - if you care - was “Template”. The explanation was about originality and living an authentic life… In bed.
But it was also about Art and Life. You’ve heard the phrases “Art imitates Life” and “Life imitates Art”, haven’t you? Well think of them in terms of information: Realism in art is specifically about depicting life as lived - but can only result in very particular examples. Moments frozen in time. Photographs especially have this quality, despite the fashion for manipulation with Photoshop and its ilk. We think we see Truth or the Real in a photograph, but it is in fact only a different way to see that can compliment or mock our apprehension of reality. Let’s face it… We aren’t perfect observers. But then, neither is a camera. Cameras are savants - they have a thing they do best: freezing one moment and one perspective, then enshrining it; embodying it as proof. This is how the Template works. If we ask ourselves “How should I look?”, then we can find an answer in photographs of people. And there are as many answers as there are photos. But selecting one moment and one view - even some large set of those moments and views - to amplify and represent does much violence to the moments and views lost to memory or just ignorance.
Now consider video: I can use moving images of people as a Template for how I should act. Audiences have been attempting this for more than a century. (Whenever anybody says “I’ll be back” in an Austrian accent, I wonder why they don’t just shoot me now.) I’ve read some criticism; some media studies: The things you see on video are produced, then selected in a very special way. Now there is YouTube come to break a lot of that down, but the fact still remains: We walk among the audience. People whose lives are very much different than they would be if they hadn’t seen so many examples. So many of the same examples. So many examples self-consciously synchronizing with each other. So much feedback from Life to Art and back to Life again. And around and around it goes. Now I’m back in “Braindead Megaphone” land again. This is taking me the long way around back to someplace I’ve been before. If you keep hearing it, you probably start peppering your speech with it. You probably begin to affect the manners of the things you see. At the End Of The Day, you’re more moron than you know. (That “End Of The Day” crap is for you, Dad!)
And Now An Incident From Real Life
I knew it was real because it was a lot more boring than a TV show or a Movie.
Coming back uptown on the 42 bus, I filled my scrap paper with jottings, then returned to the Joseph Cornell biography. Traffic started bogging down around Dupont Circle. A police car had the Connecticut Avenue tunnel blocked off so the bus skipped a stop and took the old detour around to the P Street side of the circle. No big deal - I just kept reading my book. Cars were all making tentative moves to change course, often stuck at a diagonal for a few minutes. Occasional views down other streets revealed other police lights off in the distance. The bus couldn’t return to the normal route, so it eventually selected the obvious Massachusetts & Florida detour. Maybe you remember reading my other stories about unexplained bus detours? It’s a recurring theme. The driver has not communicated with anybody - he’s just winging it. Nobody has deemed us worthy of knowing what has caused all the trouble. I don’t have much further to go - I was literally just riding the bus to go a little farther afield and get a little reading done - I could have walked home from any point. I let the bus take me as far around the disturbance as it would, and I saw a lot of fire trucks. I hopped off the bus, pulled out my camera, and went looking for the flames.
There were no flames. It was all extremely dull. Many streets were blocked off, but they were allowing pedestrians to get fairly close to the scene. Police and fire crews were just standing around their vehicles with nothing to do but wait. The obvious answer is “bomb threat”. But the arrangement of police tape didn’t suggest a single point of danger - leaving me very curious. I listened to other people ask the police and watched other people try to take photographs, all the while bemused by the fact that “being there” is the hardest way to know the truth of what is happening. At least, in this kind of happening. It’s getting to the point where I wouldn’t mind getting blown up so much as long as I knew why. When I approach a real situation, I mainly need to have the relevant information. If it’s risky for me to be there, that’s fine. But it’s my risk analysis. The calculation is up to me. I can’t stand that arbitrary (and inept!) herding you get form the officials. They don’t question their own actions - they’re just “doing their jobs”. It doesn’t inspire confidence that it appears they don’t know the danger either. They hate the feeling of not knowing, just as I do - but they solve the problem with ignorance; they take comfort in their training. I don’t think that’s a winning strategy in the War on Terror. Whatever that’s supposed to mean.
That’s some Information Society we live in: Nobody will tell me what’s happening. There are no official sources. Inevitably, eighteen people ask me if I know why the block is cordoned off, and eventually, one person claims to know that it was a “suspicious package”. But who told him?
Posted in DC-roaming, ontology | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 24 Mar 2008 15:29:00 GMT
Am I reading too many books?
Am I reading too many books at once?
Well, perhaps I just found the right book to read: Richard A. Lanham’s “The Economics Of Attention”. I was at Reiters today - part of a nice day journey of walking and riding buses. I got up earlyish and went to do a load of laundry. When I got back, I wanted to vacuum so I’d have an especially clean surface to fold colthes - but my roommate was still asleep. So I decided it was time to go on an adventure. I’ve been reading “Utopia Parkway” all afternoon, punctuated by a visit to Reiters, a bowl of chili and a glass of beer at Hard Times Cafe in Clarendon, a look at the new configuration of the Courthouse Olsson’s, and another visit to the Dupont Olsson’s. Let’s see thats… Three bookstores and a chili joint. Fabulous.
Lanham says something startling on the very first page of the introduction: Economics is about scarcity, so the notion of an ‘information economy’ is absurd. Information isn’t scarce. But, attention is scarce, so aren’t we really living in an ‘attention economy’?
I can’t go back, can I?
Suddenly it’s so obvious. I’ve been dancing around this idea for the longest time now without noticing it. All that information makes the choice harder - the choice of what to pay attention to.
I can see now how I am taking the information too seriously. Getting exhausted trying to pay attention to all of it - or at least as much as I can.
Mt. Pleasant
The road was closed in front of the apartment building that burned the other day. I’ve been going to a laundromat three doors down. There’s a Bank Of America, a Dollar Store, then the Laundromat. I tried to get up even earlier to avoid crowds, but it worked out okay. That laundromat is long and narrow, making movement difficult. There is always somebody in your way. Happily, I read my book and finished up quick. The dryers are much more modern than the other place I went to (it closed), and everything is in good repair. That place reminds me of the Starbucks complaint: There’s no small. (But who would want it anyway…) The ‘small’ machines are labeled “Double Load”. Which is absurd. Most people seem to be doing about three of those “Double Loads” at a time. I have to be careful not to bring too much - because my bag would never hold enough to fill two machines, and I would feel cheated.
Sorry I’ve got no photos from the fire. I was thinking about how spectacularly unphotogenic the Mt Pleasant Street was today. At sunset it might have provided a dramatic view. The whole place was just so drab. I should have looked for quirky macro closeups of temporary fence or something.
K Street
I selected Clarendon as a destination. It felt like I hadn’t been over there in a while. I could get a gustatory treat like a bowl of Hard Times chili or an inky black espresso from Murky. One of the older buildings has been demolished - no doubt for the inevitable march of hi-rise condominiums. I still marvel at the transformation that place has undergone. I thought it was a wasteland before, but I just wish something more interesting could have been done to it. It’s basically becoming a new kind of wasteland.
Clarendon
At noon I walked into Hard Times and sat at the bar. My waitress was forgetful. I ordered a glass of Magic Hat Number 9, and it turned out there were two sizes. Neither size was a pint. I wanted onion rings with my chili, but I bit my tongue and she suggested a house salad. Much better for me than onion rings. We went over my chili order a few times, and it came out wrong. I asked for Cincinnati with beans, onions, and tomatoes. Her mistakes created a power of suggestion - she eventually read it back right, but I got chopped jalepeno instead of tomato. Then, half way through my cornbread, she warned me that she thought my piece was stale. I hadn’t noticed. But, now that you mention it… She apologized and said she’d bring me another fresh piece. That never arrived. I tried to eat the chili slow, but couldn’t stop myself in time. Although she forgot about the cornbread, she tried to get me to stay longer with a beer on the house. How could I resist? I just kept reading my book.
About this time I start to notice that a lot of people are wearing green. A young woman came in and sat near me at the bar and proceeded to fiddle with her mobile phone. Not so much as a telephone, although she did eventually make some calls. I discovered that her and her friends were on their way to some music festival I couldn’t identify. Girl number two arrived to explain that she was late and her boyfriend was looking for all day parking back in the residential neighborhood because the garage they expected to use is temporarily closed for construction. My guess is that the music festival - at RFK stadium, and therefore on the same subway line as the station on the corner - had something to do with Irish music, and that everyone there would also be wearing green clothing.
But as I walked to Olsson’s, it was uncanny. There are a couple Irish-themed pubs on the way, and every single person was wearing green. Arlington is not DC. I don’t know why I needed to be reminded of that.
That Olsson’s was recently sawed in half. I helped prepare by delabeling books on a return and moving heavy shelves. They decided the cafe was too much trouble, so the landlord agreed to reduce our space (and rent), and find a cafe of their own. They settled on “Corner Bakery”. After spending so many days at that store waiting for my girlfriend who worked there, or attending music or book events, doing late night inventories, or just shopping… Seeing the reduced space is quite depressing. Much of the front is too congested - although I suppose it will prevent thieves from running out the door easily. I’ve been coaching them with equipment problems over the phone, but I failed to realize just how much the cash counter/information desk had been modified. That explained a lot.
Posted in economics, DC-roaming, olssons, books | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sat, 15 Mar 2008 23:21:00 GMT
Lost Fire Truck
I woke up to the sound of a fire truck. I thought I might like to be wearing pants if something was terribly wrong. When I looked out the window again, the fire crew were wandering around their truck, lost. I went to the kitchen to take a look at the alley. When the firemen came walking up the alley, they saw me up on my ‘balcony’ and asked me if I had a fire. “None that I know of”.
They were probably looking for this fire. It was 5:15. I considered jumping in the shower for an early start, but went back to bed instead. Fifteen minutes later my alarm clock went off. There was a mention in the traffic report about road closings for a building fire at 16th and Columbia. That’s when I should have gotten up. It hasn’t exactly ruined my day or anything, but this is a clear case of FAIL whenever anything is slightly different from the routine.
I finally dragged myself out of bed at 7:30 and took that shower I’d been contemplating for a couple hours. I was dreading what I would find out on the bus route. I grabbed a coffee across the street and walked up to see the situation.
And the situation was total gridlock. Whenever anything happens, I think getting close is the way to get answers. But that never actually works. This must have been the core principle at every major disaster. Being there - ‘on the ground’ - is the most exquisite height of ignorance you can occupy. This is also the key complaint I have about mass media - the real story is the part that isn’t obvious at first glance. Journalism seems to be about integrating the disparate aspects; collecting the puzzle pieces. Journalism involves sending a camera crew to check it out, but think of news media as like an octopus: Don’t get too caught up in what one tentacle is poking - reality is distributed. We keep asking for the media to communicate some authentic ‘veracity’ of being there, but a single point of view is confusing. You don’t get much context.
Isn’t Information Supposed to Inform Choices?
So I get there. And, my bus is there too. So I get on. But, he is clearly not going to stay on 16th, so it’s a new adventure. I’m already running late. The bus is going to take a detour, return to the main line and everything will be fine. I even started reading “Utopia Parkway”, but I got distracted by the occasional need to examine the sights of 14th street: The Target is open now, and the building it shares with an assortment of other chain store retailers is typical siege mentality architecture. They don’t call it “Big Box” for nothing. What a lost opportunity.
With a sense of forboding, we are stuck in traffic in front of the Columbia Heights metro station and the new Target. I’m learning much more about Joseph Cornell’s childhood than I am about why my bus can’t take it’s normal route. We crawl up toward the ‘chowk’ - a dense network of small irregular streets at the top of the Heights. Streets a little too narrow for a bus to go down. And because no wireless electronic technologies have been invented to guide bus drivers yet (wait… what?), we turn down (Otis St.?) and get stuck. I’m still reading a book, but some other people are getting restless. We are apparently waiting for a break in traffic to cross a small intersection. The driver is not communicating with us. In fact, he’s not communicating with anybody. Why is that, I wonder?
Okay, now that the information I have is useless, I get to start making choices. Yippee. I was already considering the subway when I saw that bus, but I didn’t have enough information yet. The bus seemed to be doing alright for a while. Some of the bus passengers are not going that far. And some of us are going the whole way. If my bus can’t return to the route, what are the other buses doing? Why won’t someone tell me? I am stuck half way. Only two choices make sense here: I could get to work or I could work from home. But I’m not being offered either. Ideally, someone could have been standing in front of my door to tell me “Don’t bother - just go back inside.” Somebody could have been at the bus stop to say “Where are you going? Forget about the bus - go get on the subway.” (oh, and I want them to say: “Here’s a pass for one free ride today only.”, but I’m too realistic for that one…)
What I emphatically do not want is to sit there waiting for my bus to go and it not going. Just yesterday a driver apologized that he was late for [insert any excuse here]. So? I’ve been waiting for a while now. Why aren’t I riding on the bus that was late before you? Somebody doesn’t understand why I ride public transportation. It’s not because I have a favorite bus I want to be on - It’s because I want to get where I’m going as soon as possible. Today we didn’t achieve that. I abandoned my stranded bus and took a walk. I’m late to work and I’m wandering from Columbia Heights to Petworth. Where I’ll have options again.
My Luck Turns
After forgetting 1) how far it was, and 2) which streets go all the way to Georgia Avenue, I emerged at the Petworth metro. Within a few minutes I was on a 79 Express bus to Silver Spring. But I’m still ‘on the ground’, so completely unaware of what caused it all. Still wishing I had started my day at 5:15 instead.
Posted in DC-roaming, ontology | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 13 Mar 2008 16:01:00 GMT
When I left work Tuesday, the afternoon sky was brilliant, and construction crews were assembling a crane across the street. There’s just something about the angles created by the cranes and the airplane trails… Sometimes a sky like that reminds me of photos of the earth from orbit.
I took a lot of photos to get it right - and I’ve tarted up the exposure and color a bit for presentation. Can you see the men on top awaiting the next segment? The crane on the left has wheels and can drive around on surface streets (with the box girder segments riding on flatbed trucks), but the crane on the right is bolted to the ground and will have a swinging derrick. As I was taking the photos a guy walked up to me and got excited to tell me about the full complement of cranes that would eventually go up. Apparently the second crane is going to help build the third. And here I thought I was about to get a good old-fashioned street hassle.
I, in turn, have been assembling a strange collection of photos that document the transformation of this one block of Silver Spring. Like here.
This was the name painted on one of the cranes:
I had some fun extracting it from the photo and cleaning it up.
Posted in DC-roaming, photos | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:57:00 GMT
