As of 9am, I haven’t voted yet. The polls open at 7, and I meant to show up early, but I did not wake up in time to line up that early… I got there precisely at 7 to find the line snaked around the block.
As I half-suspected, first thing in the morning is no longer the appropriate time for me to vote. Since I don’t have a specific place I need to be, I shouldn’t delay anyone who does. My hope is that, line the crowd on the 42 bus - favored by Dupont and K Street office workers living in fancy Mr. Pleasant townhouses - everyone will be gone by 10. At the very least the line will be back down to manageable size. I brought a granola bar something to read while I waited, but once I had the issue framed in terms of inconveniencing people that wouldn’t be back home in time to vote tonight, waiting to take advantage of the lull was a no-brainer. And my polls are just a block away - I can check back often to sample the progress of the line.
After the first overcrowding disappointment, I doubled back to the little coffee shop to sit and write. I miss the morning staff, especially one woman who would banter with me in half-English, half-Spanish. But there was no banter today, because it was all she could to to tend to the line. These construction workers in front of me were incredibly indecisive - or maybe I thought they were done ordering when they hadn’t even started yet. Between the inane radio-DJ chatter over the speakers and the conversations of the other patrons, it was not an environment conducive to writing. But I filled a page with one or two quick ideas, then went for another survey of the voting queue.
It was the same length an hour after opening! Who knew I had so many neighbors? - the voting precinct is about a four-block radius, and some of the other voting locations seem like a very short walk from my place. How come I never meet all these people in daily life? I was looking for the precise end of the line when I bumped into someone I actually did know. My new ping-pong partner Leah. She had me fooled for a second. “I didn’t know you voted here!” She never changed her address after splitting with her husband, so based on that address, she was in the right place. Does this strike anybody else as a weakness in our system? All that nomadic mobility? The state-by-state demographics are always in flux. A system based on fierce state loyalty is probably cheating us out of fair representation.
Everyone Was Gone At 10…
Well, not… everyone. But, the line to sign in was entirely inside the lobby of the building when I arrived at 9:45. I was back home before 10.
Posted in politics, urban-studies | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Tue, 04 Nov 2008 13:56:00 GMT
I was sitting very close to this seat. I was riding home from Dupont on Monday night and caught one of the ‘Airport Bus’ style 42s, with a little group of four seats facing together like a booth at a fast food place. To capture it in one photograph would have been very difficult - I needed the flash to illuminate the graffiti, but as you can see, it caused a lot of glare on the vinyl. I have here a composite image. It took some fussing.
How is that for poetry?
Posted in urban-studies, DC-roaming | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:54:00 GMT
The other day I noticed that I was trying to read a lot of heavy books, so instead of carry them around everywhere I go, I picked through my shelves for something portable. There is not a shortage of such books in my apartment.
I came up with “The Good City And The Good Life” by Daniel Kemmis, at one time the mayor of Missoula, Montana. It was published in 1995, I probably received this copy for free from a publisher, and I’ve been meaning to get around to it for the last 13 years, I swear!
Add this to my other recent excursions in the genre: Kevin Lynch’s “The Image Of The City”, and the works of Christopher Alexander and Jane Jacobs.
Posted in books, urban-studies | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:22:00 GMT
I was amused to see this discarded radiator on the curb next to a trash can. I stopped to pull out my camera and look for some good angles. Don’t you just love the play of two styles in the verticals of both objects?
As I snapped a few photos, a group of people passed by… I don’t know if I was upset that they were getting in my way, but I deliberately snapped a photo of people passing in front of me, as if to say “You can see what I’m doing here! Cross at your own risk!” - It would be difficult to identify the people in this image anyhow, so I’m going to skip the release forms this time. But there you have it: The only photo I took of people in an entire week, they’re moving in the frame, and it came out just fine. Check out the shirt. That’s hot.
As an aside - I walked past this scene later, and the radiator was ‘still there’, but it was painted pink. I hadn’t even loaded the photo off my camera yet, so I started to doubt my memory of the radiator I saw being white instead. Now this raises a question in my mind: Did the same radiator get painted pink by some art pranksters, or are we (some renovator) disposing of all our radiators one at a time? Scrap metal can fetch a good price these days - I even read that Eastern Kentucky doesn’t have a problem with abandoned appliances anymore.
Posted in photos, urban-studies | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:45:00 GMT
This is what you would see at the end of my alley - where it emerges on Ontario Road between Columbia Road and Euclid Street. There used to be a photographer in one of the shops right there. I don’t think he’s still around, but I believe he was involved in the creation of this mural.
Ever since I read all those suggestions from people who want Olsson’s to open another bookstore in their favorite neighborhood, I’ve been thinking a lot more about the tide of gentrification, and the calculus of locating your business. I forgot, but was reminded recently, that there is a “Business Improvement District” called Adams Morgan. I used to see idealistic youths from an Americorps program cleaning up my street on Saturday mornings, and now there is a program called “Ready To Work” that supplies sweepers in blue jumpsuits. It makes me wonder - Where’s the City? Don’t we pay taxes to the City so that we can have city services? I don’t want to be too naive here, but look at the logo on that garbage can: It’s property of the District Of Columbia.
I know this has to do with the gradual privatization of all things. You will all draw your own personal lines on this issue, and I suppose that’s all for the best, but… I really want the City to do city stuff, not some mutant chamber of commerce thingy. While it may be nice to have someone come along and provide much-needed services, it leaves a weird vacuum of responsibility. One theory I haven’t verified is that the city agreed to this patchwork of corporate neighborhood boosting. That would make some sense. But if they can’t take care of those aspects of running a city, then what are they doing? A government has to be held accountable - and most governments are content to make back-room deals or create arrangements too complex to follow.
Before I go too far off on a tangent…
I looked. And, there really are empty store fronts available in the neighborhood. I’ve been marveling at how long some of them have remained vacant. There once was a Caribou Coffee on 18th, there is a space left empty for years right near the bank. A clothing shop next door to CVS closed recently, and there is the old Vina Fabrics further up Columbia toward 16th. That last one is fascinating - the front is at an angle. It’s two doors down from a bookstore/restaurant called the Potter’s House. The neighborhood seems nice enough to me because I’m used to it - and because it probably looks better now than it ever did.
The north side of Columbia between 16th and 17th is dominated by three big apartment buildings. Places with annoyingly high rent - not luxury, but not affordable either. Places filled with white-collar workers who you might expect to bring a neighborhood some class. It doesn’t seem to work that way, though. I don’t think most of those people contribute anything to their community. As I walk by, I see mystery boxes - an inscrutable cliff face. Some neighborhoods are dominated by front porches, not that I ever see many people wave hello from theirs on my walks around town.
There is no doubt in my mind that humans have become divided against themselves. I don’t know what to call it. I don’t expect people to be activists, out in the street, marching to take back their communities - something about that seems off. But, I’m not seeing enough of the subtle participation that goes along with what we keep calling a community. Maybe I should shoulder some of the blame - I’m alone in a room with a computer and an Internet connection.
It’s just that… I live where I do for an important reason: It is a town where I can go out and see people walking past on the street. Too many cars make a place dreadful I need to be able to bump into strangers, not cruise quickly past unseen by anyone. Within a few days of moving in, I bumped into someone I knew from work and it was like a new dawn: That can’t happen to people who emerge from their houses to get in their cars. The glue of life is being there. But where are you? out on the freeway. You aren’t there, I don’t see you. Our lives cannot intersect.
Much of my city is bedroom community. People travel to other places to work, to shop, or to eat. They are not moving through the world as I do. But this is a two-way street, because I miss much of the opportunities these people have.
Posted in photos, urban-studies, economics | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sat, 28 Jun 2008 00:41:00 GMT
Is there a theme here?
No, not that I can tell - it’s just a bunch of stuff I saw walking in DC…
When customers heard about one of our bookstores closing, some of them made suggestions about where we could open our next store. Some of the suggestions were a block away, and some of them were “Takoma Park” or “National Harbor”. My first reaction was to go look at how much the neighborhood has changed, and explore outward from there.
I did wonder why things are this way. And, by “this way”, I mean: Olsson’s wouldn’t put a store just anywhere. It would seem that every new store has been in brand new buildings for as long as I can remember. Is there an advantage to new buildings? Some of the infrastructure of these buildings left a lot to be desired. The Lansburgh building is some sort of luxury residential hotel; For people with million dollar salaries who don’t know how long they’re going to stay in town. I’ll never know how the magic trick is done: The cheapest possible multistory construction job is finished with the thinnest possible veneer of luxury appointments. And people see “Quality”. In the meantime, laundry suds would occasionally drip from the acoustic tile ceilings onto our CD bins. Not the “attention to detail” that I keep hearing about.
The inevitable redevelopment of every block with the same crap architecture is a clear disincentive to doing anything positive with the land in the interim.
This in turn got me thinking about one of my favorite reasons to take photographs: To document the things that will be lost. With some things, we’re probably better off with just the photograph. An entire block of 5th Street could argue for that.
So I present a handful of views from my Friday afternoon walk: Some memories I cherish, some memories I won’t cherish, the forces threatening to destroy them, and a startling juxtaposition or two.
Posted in urban-studies, DC-roaming, photos, olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:35:00 GMT
When I heard there was a disgruntled bartender giving away free drinks, I came right down…
I love the sound of this, but it’s not entirely accurate.
It was a really nice day yesterday (today, too), and when I left work, I went on a walkabout. I worked my way into DC on Georgia Avenue by walking and riding buses. I read my book as I went, and I observed the architecture very carefully. I’m reading “The Design of Future Things”, and I’m receptive to how the urban environment is arranged. I’m having a lot of interesting cinematic images in my head, more ideas at once than I could possibly write down.
When I reached Park Road, I got off and walked over to Wonderland Ballroom. I read at the bar and had a whiskey-and-coke. One of the control analogies in the Norman book is Horse+Rider. It illustrates the concept of loose reigns vs. tight reigns, and he goes on to meditate about how that might be designed into hi-tech devices. Since he’s done a lot of work on cars and airplane cockpits, a lot of his examples tend to devolve into driving. I have one more moment where I think “Oh no! We’re not going to have to drive in the future are we?”. My hopes for the future are to let the machines figure out how to accomplish a lot of the things we want to do. He does allow for this possibility: At one point he suspects that cars will drive us everywhere, and that there will be special parks where people can drive the cars for leisure - just like horseback riding is more relegated now.
A little more ominous is the remark about your horse sometimes having a mind of its own, and someday maybe your car too - deciding it should pull over because you need to eat. And, maybe in the service of a RF billboard or something. We would love to delegate some of the decisions, but delegate them to the marketing flaks who claim to have our best interest in mind? Sorry, no thanks. And then, next I was daydreaming about the nature of animal intelligence as opposed to machines. The dolphin-riders and horse-whisperers. When animals are ready to take a place in our society, what will that be like? We might consider them ‘less than human’, but do you really need to be all human to contribute to the mix, or derive benefits, tangible or intangible? What new levels of working together for mutual benefit are possible?
With all this going on in my mind, I realize that I’m not making any social connections with the people around me. Once I took an online quiz where you answer a series of questions, and it suggests the book you ‘most resemble’. I had some trouble with the binary choices, but I did the best I could, and the result was “Invisible Man”.
An older guy had sat down on the end of the bar, close to where I was. He ordered a beer and a couple of their famed chili cheese hot dogs. He noticed the announcement for “Guitar Hero” that was scheduled for later in the evening. He asked the cute young hipster bartending what that referred to. She left it at “It’s a video game”. But I took it as a conversational opening, and described the Simon-says procedure and the ersatz guitar controller to him. I didn’t belabor the point, but I hinted and the slavery-to-machines angle that’s been bothering me, and mentioned the full band version that some people play. If you ask me, it’s a little like the difference between watching TV alone and watching TV in a group. Many people have argued the merits of group viewing with me. I say it’s neither here nor there: I’ve watched TV with a group, but my commentary on what we were viewing seldom seemed welcome. It’s essentially going to a crowded theater alone. I paid my bill and moved along.
This wasn’t even close to being finished. Who is going to re-read it now?
Posted in urban-studies, DC-roaming, bar-scene, books | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:32:00 GMT
This CNN Interview with Architect Archtectural Historan Joseph Rykwert really caught my attention earlier today. He talks about at least eighteen things that get me excited.
“…if you look at the ways tall buildings come down to the ground, it is always problematic.”
I noticed that. I just love walking down the sidewalk past prefab panels and a 27-foot air vent grating. This has got to do with bad zoning laws, I’m sure. It gets me thinking about streets, and why we bother having them. I almost run to the drawing board to figure out how we’re going to move more cars in and out of the area… But you read my last two posts, didn’t you?
Posted in urban-studies | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sun, 15 Jun 2008 23:53:00 GMT
Looked at one way, automobiles are a virus. The would not exist in the form we know if there were not roads. I still have some questions about how this happened:
Why were railroads developed first? - Well, for one thing, rail roads were invented before locomotives - as an improvement over running carts on the rutted mud trails that passed for roads back then. Before this innovation, you needed pack animals to really haul cargo. (‘Teamsters’ drove the ‘team’ of animals.) And to travel swiftly, you needed a horse. Adding rails didn’t make pack animals obsolete - riding on rails reduced friction. But then, someone realized they could take advantage of machines to pull the load. And the machines they had were stationary. Suddenly it is possible to have cable cars. As with most technology, some minority desperately needed the improvement, and then once the improvement was visible, everybody else came up with new reasons to need it.
But don’t forget efficiency: A mine operator could splurge on a big honkin’ steam engine. The power needed for all the tough jobs was so great that efficiency didn’t seem to matter. The kind of engine that was small enough to fit in your cart but powerful enough to move it just didn’t exist yet. Even the locomotive was a stretch - until efficiency reached a certain point. They had to machine the parts a lot more accurately, and improve on the design a bit. Then it seemed possible. So in the march toward small efficient engines, you reach the locomotive first. Not so small or efficient, but enough power to pull a few train cars.
For a while this means that railroad demand is much greater that car-road demand. Carts are still being pulled by pack teams, and the muddy roads are good enough for hoof and wagon wheel.
Early adopters or automobile technology remind me of the computer kit builders of the 1970’s: Not a lot of infrastructure or support - just a loose network of hobbyists. Calling the Internet an “information superhighway” is really apt, because just as the early personal computers weren’t quite ready to surf the Internet, those early autos wouldn’t have fared too well on the Interstate.
My thesis - if it can be said that I actually have one: We built roads with trucking in mind, and automobiles took advantage. I always love the term ‘Motorist’. It suggests that these are people who believe in ‘Motorism’. And, that’s not so far from the truth. One of my friends has been suggesting that I read the Robert Moses biography. Perhaps it will explain Motorism to me.
In one possible scenario, rail does all the long-haul and heavy lifting. Roads are for local deliveries. With the rising price of Diesel fuel, there has been a lot more interest in this model. The railroad companies that were not run out of business may still have a future - but for me the irony is clear: The price of Diesel doesn’t have any effect on the efficiency argument. If trains can haul the same load with less fuel (must be those rails reducing the friction, huh?) then the price of the fuel is irrelevant.
But then, trucking is profligate because it can be. We must tend to value the flexibility as a fixed cost - and it matters less as those variable costs go up. I still can’t understand why cross country trucking would be so popular.
There Seems To Be, um… Something Wrong With My Lifestyle
I enjoy driving. I think I know why other people enjoy it too. But, I can’t see myself driving three-four hours a day to commute to work. Force me to do something, and suddenly it’s not so much fun anymore.
I am also fascinated by highway design and traffic control. If you get me on a roll, I’ll start laying out all sorts of neat interchanges and flyovers.
There’s just something about cruising down that highway, isn’t there? People enjoy that freedom; that individualism; that self-determination… Of course, you know it’s all an illusion, right? You can reach those speeds because we poured so much money into constructing the highway system. We shrank distances, but we’re pretty much at the end of the line. How much faster do you think we’re going to go? Rocket cars for everybody? Think it through. And, anyway, you’re probably stuck in rush-hour traffic on the Beltway.
The big obstacle is in baggage. Cars are perfect for luggage. No need for porters to get you on and off trains; No need to find storage lockers while you go do your thing in that faraway place. And you can still reach your toothbrush, because it’s not being shipped to your destination to meet up with you later.
I figure whatever future you’ve got is going to include a lot less travel. But look on the bright side: that travel will probably be more accommodating. Remember how you could take a lot more luggage on a train than you can on a plane?
Despite the “oil shocks” of the ’70s, my family drove to Ohio and back each summer when I was a kid. We lost nearly three whole days driving out of the one week we spent there. It must have been easier than flying with two kids, a pet and a vanload of luggage (yes, even for one week).
People are still going to want to go places, even if they can’t. I don’t know what we’ll do about this. We are scattered, and some times we don’t want to be scattered. We always just assumed that it would be possible to meet up. So what if that’s not true anymore? Maybe travel will become a luxury good. Maybe most of us will be scraping for tips from a wealthy few who had some reason to come to our neighborhood.
And cities are the key to survival: Not necessarily the megacities you could imagine. You’re more likely to see a pattern of small, dense settlements, not so far apart. Every city has a footprint, much larger than the foundations of its buildings. Cities are organisms that need to eat, breathe, and excrete waste, so just like the animal kingdom, enormous size comes at a cost - and with some ingenuity.
Okay, So You’re Probably Not Convinced About the Virus Thing Yet…
It is not so easy to see it - I look at city streets first: It seems like a plague of automobiles. And, as I mentioned, if you want to carry stuff with you, the subway is not convenient. Between commuters and the locals who appreciate the freedom and convenience, I assume that automobile traffic will plummet with rising fuel costs. This will leave mainly the working vehicles. Deliveries. Their jobs will be easier without all those cars in the way. (Maybe the bikes will become a real menace, though…)
The empirical evidence suggests that as we build more roads (in the misguided attempt to alleviate traffic), traffic increases. Work backwards to crappy little roads with less traffic. It doesn’t go back forever - an original reason to have the roads is for trucking. But with really high fuel prices, I think this logic will break down. New traffic will not leap in. New roads will not have to be built. This suggests automobiles were simply taking advantage of the existing infrastructure.
Why it’s hard to see is because in the intervening years, motorist advocacy drove the roadbuilding agenda. A feedback loop is created. The virus also has tools to alter the host. Use the existing machinery to it’s own advantage; Start managing the factory to produce a more parasite-friendly environment. But that won’t last forever: First there is stasis (death is a kind of stasis), then new facts may come into play. And, cheap energy is one of the things that supports our stasis. It could become really expensive to build and maintain roads. And, the short roads in town will probably survive that reality longer than the long roads out in the country.
Posted in urban-studies, economics | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sun, 15 Jun 2008 22:22:00 GMT
