living room documentary tour

The Defenestration building in San Francisco

2006-08-09T09:11:00.000-07:00

While in San Francisco I was walking around SOMA one day and stumbled upon this building with furniture sticking out of it from every window and from the bricks themselves. (It's at 6th & Howard) The building is empty and there is a sign on it that says it's for sale. There is also a plaque that indicates that an artist, Brian Goggin made an installation out of the building and was supported by the Rockerfeller Foundation, among others. . It's called "the defenestration." Defenestration means to throw something or someone out of a window.

Here is the artist statement from the website:

"By orchestrating everyday materials, via assemblage and juxtaposition, I create works that make the improbable appear plausible. The resulting pieces, in effect, take on an identity, a personal history, until they seem complete and believable. Apparent animations evolve which are at once dream-like yet familiar, unleashing a hidden life in commonplace objects."

The Albany Landfill

2006-06-28T20:44:00.000-07:00

The Albany Landfill (June 2006), a short photo essay

I first visited the Albany landfill in July 2004. Someone who worked at the Long Haul Infoshop in Berkeley mentioned it as one of the most inspiring public spaces they had ever seen. We visited the area during the making of the documentary and ended up using some footage in the final version of the project.

Although when we first encountered the landfill we were under the impression that the magnificant pieces of art found throughout the space had been created by anonymous artists who found inspiration in the freedom allowed by the isolation of the area, we later found out that there was a larger history to the landfill that we did not know.

In fact, the land had first become occupied by homeless people who were pushed out of Emryville in the 1980s. Some of these people took to living here and building semi-permanent dwellings and other structures. Some of them were the ones that began constructing art out of the trash that was there. With time other artists came along and began constructing pieces. At some point (in the 90s) the homeless people who had been living on the Albany Bulb/Landfill were evicted, although some of the art remains intact. We were unable to include this information in the documentary because we did not find out this more detailed version of the history until we were in Syracuse, New York, during the tour. Don Mitchell, a cultural geographer at Syracuse University informed us of the hidden history of this place.

In the documentary, we feature the albany landfill at the end, as a way to contrast the possibilities and limitations of outdoor public spaces with indoor ones, like infoshops. On the one hand, in an outdoor public space like this, it seems that certain social groups are less likely to dominate the space. It can have a feeling of being more genuinely open. At the same time, it is subject to city control. But the thing about the landfill is that it seems so unrestricted. The art is not censored or painted over or taken down. At least not so far. We've been hearing for over a year that the landfill is in threat of being demolished for commercial development. We aren't sure where this stands right now. I'm glad that I got a chance to see it again, if nothing else.

me and stirling at the landfill (june 2006)

All of the following were taken june 2006:

Pictures from previous visits: (much of this artwork is no longer around)

one of my favorite pieces, now gone. (summer 2004.)

there were a few of these concrete slabs with stencils of well-known activists. The other one I remember is Malcom X. Notice that Goldman was given a mustache by a later visitor to the landfill. I am pretty sure that these are still around, and have been at least since 2004. (summer 2005)

i don't think this is here anymore, but maybe i just didn't see it this time. (summer 2005)

summer 2005.

The famous "castle." It's been heavily graffitied over since I last saw it in March 2006. (july 2006)

july 2006. There are several panels of these paintings by the same artist that line a path along the waterway. Some of them have been heavily altered by affects of weathering since I first saw them in 2004.

another of my favorites. this was taken in summer 2004 and is no longer around.

summer 2004. this huge gate with statues was made entirely out of some sort of foam material. it isn't around as far as i could tell.

This is the center where everything opens out and there is a continually rotating array of trash sculpture. This was taken in july 2005.

Also, an entire documentary was made about the landfill. It's called Bums' Paradise. The website can be found here: http://www.bumsparadise.com/index.html. I haven't seen it yet but am interested in doing so.

Farmers Thrown off Land at the South Central Farm

2006-06-14T15:15:00.000-07:00

Well, it seems like the end of the fight for the Los Angeles South Central Urban Farm might be over soon.

Here is the latest from the Los Angeles Daily News:

The end for South Central Farm?
BY BRENT HOPKINS, Staff Writer

Not legal challenges, not folk singers' entreaties, not even a last-minute infusion of $10 million could save the South Central Farm.

Sheriff's deputies moved in before dawn Tuesday to evict the farmers from the 14-acre plot, a rare swath of green in the otherwise industrial belt between Alameda Street and Long Beach Avenue. Seeking to prolong the multiyear land dispute, protesters chained themselves to pipes inside.

Actress Daryl Hannah, environmental activist John Quigley and a few other demonstrators secured themselves above the fray in a walnut tree. Supporters poured in, chanting and waving signs, as county Sheriff's Department deputies and Los Angeles Police Department officers bearing clubs and shotguns surrounded protesters, making arrests.

"This is the end, my friend," said Tezozomoc, one of the farmers' representatives, quoting a line from Jim Morrison. "But we don't know yet. This is just another chapter."

A chapter in the struggle that dates back to the mid-1990s, one involving celebrities and community activists, political pressure and complex land deals. Developer Ralph Horowitz bought the site two decades ago, lost it to the city through eminent domain, then bought it back for the price the city paid him. In the interim, the sizable site became used by more than 350 families to farm peppers, cilantro, squash and indigenous herbs.

But after Horowitz regained the property with the intent to transform the rows of corn and cactus into a commercial project, the farmers sat on tenuous ground. They fired off 61 claims to block development, all rejected by the court, and requested a temporary restraining order, also turned down.

They enlisted the help of high-profile supporters such as Hannah, folk music icon Joan Baez, musician Ben Harper and his wife, actress Laura Dern.

And they relentlessly lobbied Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to use his clout to keep the site open. Through various sources, his office was able to wrangle $6 million in donations, well short of the $16.3 million Horowitz originally requested to sell the site.

Last week, the Annenberg Foundation announced a surprise offer of $10 million in cash and an agreement to finance the remaining $6 million.

But Horowitz, reportedly furious about being cast as the villain by farm supporters, rejected the offer and demanded the farmers removal. At 5 a.m. Tuesday, 65 helmeted deputies of the Sheriff's Department's Civil Management Unit moved in, with the LAPD and Los Angeles Fire Department assisting.

Authorities cut through the chain-link fence around the farm and extricated the demonstrators who'd locked themselves inside. Then came an earthmover to level off the ground for a fire engine. The truck pulled inside and extended its ladder, eventually plucking the remaining protesters from the tree shortly after noon.

The LAPD arrested 27 people on suspicion of failing to disperse, and sheriff's deputies arrested an additional 17, including Hannah, on suspicion of failing to obey a court order and obstructing a peace officer.

The scene was chaotic, but largely peaceful. There were demonstrators accusing the authorities of breaking apart the community. Then there were counterdemonstrators accusing the farmers of breaking apart the community. Then came the guitar players, then the drummers.

Armed with an ear-splitting whistle and a pot she banged with a rock, farmer Andrea Rodriguez angrily defended the site she's come to rely on.

"We want to go back to Mother Earth, get nutrition for our families," she said in Spanish. "We will struggle. We won't go. We are all together and we will not leave. We're just farmers, we don't have money, but we're still important."

Repeated attempts to reach Horowitz at his office were unsuccessful, though he told The Associated Press that he found the farmers to be ungrateful and wanted his land back. Though Dan Stormer, an attorney for the farmers, said they'll have one more day in court in July to try to claim ownership of the land, Horowitz has already said he will not sell to the farmers or their supporters.

A few hours after the evictions, Villaraigosa spoke with Horowitz on the telephone and reiterated his support for the Annenberg Foundation's $16 million offer.

But Horowitz said the property was worth even more money, Villaraigosa told reporters later. Horowitz also told the mayor he felt personally vilified by the farmers and wouldn't sell until he evicted every single person from the land.

"I told him that from my vantage point, this is a more than fair offer. This is an opportunity for us to have an urban garden in the city that wants to be the greenest big city in America," Villaraigosa said. "And he said, well, that was nice but he wasn't accepting."

While running for mayor, Villaraigosa pledged to help save the farm and, once in office, assigned Deputy Mayor Larry Frank to seek private donations to help the farmers buy the land from Horowitz.

But the price was a moving target, the mayor said, going from about an estimated $6 million to $10 million to $12 million to the final price tag of $16 million.

The mayor and allies had a hard time raising funds to buy the land because many potential donors felt the land wasn't worth the price.

"I understand a businessman's need to invest and make a profit. I also have a high respect for and will defend property rights," Villaraigosa said. "But I also believe that we are called upon by a sense of community and civic duty to do the just and right thing. I had hoped that the landowner would have heeded that call."

The Tour is Over... but the blog will live

2006-06-09T15:32:00.000-07:00

Hello to all of our readers. Our tour is over. We had a great time traversing the country, looking at each region/city/neighborhood with questions of the politics of place at the forefront of our minds.

We saw the same patterns of gentrification/revitalization of urban areas everywhere that we went, being played out in slightly different ways depending on the place. We saw public housing being torn down to make room for supposedly "mixed income live/work spaces." (starting in the mid- 500,000s) We saw banners lining the downtowns "live! work! play!" We saw parts of the country that were more neglected and in states of decay than we had thought possible in this country and were shocked at how obviously race and class played into these scenarios. We saw how easily history and public memory can be erased when physical places are destroyed and replaced with something new.

We saw people talking about the importance of place everywhere we went. We saw clear regional differences that do still exist in this country, despite the image of homogeneity that some people might have. There is a clear division between east and west coast, between coast and no coast, between the urban east coasters and the rest of the country.

We saw grassroots urban food production and the attempt to make cities greener and more sustainable in every city. We saw temporary and (semi)permanent physical spaces that encouraged critical thought/discussion and the opportunity for non-commercial, non-city-sponsored activities to occur. We saw art taking back sidewalks, abandoned buildings, and corporate billboards. Everywhere we went, we met people who were actively engaged in critiquing the dominant society and working on projects to create compassion and sustainability now.

We screened the film almost 30 times and only had to cancel one screening, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, when no one showed up to Internationalist Books. Getting in the car wreck on our way back from Lawrence, Kansas put a big damper on the way that we ended the trip. I spent about 2 weeks in bed recovering from a concusion and with back pain. I feel pretty much better now, although not 100%.

We had talked about continuing the blog as a forum for us to put up our thoughts about place politics in our daily lives. I am in San Francisco for the summer and might have some things to say about being here. Courtney will be in Denver, teaching kids at a summer camp and hopefully she will chime in sometimes too. Also, we have plans to make a revised (and better quality, technically speaking) shorter version of the documentary to be broadcast on Freespeech TV. We will be working on that in August, so if you are interested in finding out more about this project please get in touch with us. info@livingroomdocumentary.org

Thanks, Liz

Update: LA's South Central Urban Farm

2006-06-09T14:06:00.000-07:00

This article about the South Central Urban Farm appeared in today's New York Times. To learn about the battle against eviction that is going on, or to donate money so that the land the farm is on can be saved, you can go to their website:

http://www.southcentralfarmers.com/index.php

Also, some of the people who are camping out on the farm in order to stop the eviction have set up a blog documenting their efforts here:

http://savethegarden.blogspot.com/

Hollywood Stars Shine Down on Protest to Preserve an Urban Farm

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: June 9, 2006
LOS ANGELES, June 8 —
Daryl Hannah and John Quigley spoke from a walnut tree last month.
Children gawked. Grown-ups gawked. And several television camera crews gawked, their lenses pointed upward to capture her every move.
"Hi guys," Ms. Hannah called down cheerfully from a narrow plank wedged among the limbs.

Ms. Hannah, who has played an android, a mermaid and a 50-foot woman in the movies, was pulling a stunt, but not for the pictures. She was trying to save a farm, in this case the South Central Farm. Schools in Los Angeles are deteriorating. Gang warfare has increased in some areas. Many people can scarcely afford homes.

But for a certain set of celebrity environmental activists, it is the farm, and the threat of a developer's bulldozer clearing away the cactuses, corn, squash, medicinal herbs and other plantings of mostly Latino squatters on a nearly 14-acre verdant area surrounded by a patchwork of warehouses, that commands their intervention.

For the past few years the scene here, in an area the city now officially calls South Los Angeles, has played out as one of those intermittent urban dramas not quite at the forefront of the public (read: media) consciousness but not quite fading away either.

This time the celebrity-tinged vigil might pay off with a Hollywood ending. The Annenberg Foundation on Wednesday pledged an unspecified sum — the developer had asked for about $16 million — to the Trust for Public Land, a conservation group, to buy the land and preserve it.

"The monetary issue is now off the table," Dan Stormer, a lawyer for the farm, said Wednesday night after getting word, setting off cheers and song among the farmers.
Cut. Wrap.

Well, hold on. The developer who owns the land, Ralph Horowitz, has not sent word on whether he will accept the deal. He did not answer telephone messages on Thursday.

A cliffhanger.

Ms. Hannah said the cause has drawn so much star power because more is at stake than the fate of what organizers call "the largest urban farm in the country." The farm, she said, has come to symbolize a lost way of life, a joining of community against the urban tide.

"It represents possibility on so many different levels," she said, descending the tree to terra firma, where Joan Baez has strummed the guitar, Danny Glover has walked among the crops and Ed Begley Jr., Martin Sheen and others have taken their turns before the cameras.
"It's great for community," Ms. Hannah added, the howl and clanging of nearby trains breaking the idyllic air. "And one thing responsible for the breakdown of society is a lack of community."

It's also a bitter fight over real estate that shows even the bleakest stretches here are not spared. The farm emerged after the 1992 riots when the city, which had bought the land from a developer six years before, leased it to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank and allowed the farmers, who organizers say now number some 350, to move in and grow crops.

Most are Mexican and Central American immigrants who raise the crops, divided into plots by mazelike fencing, for food. Some of them, the LA Weekly has reported, left for other community gardens over complaints of browbeating from the farm leadership, which the leadership has denied.

Josefina Medina has grown fava beans, flowers, nopales — a kind of cactus pear — and other plants for more than five years, hoping to instill in her children and grandchildren a sense of nature and the agrarian culture of her native Puebla, Mexico.

"Smog is at a very high level here and many children suffer from asthma," Ms. Medina said at a candlelight vigil at the farm. "This farm cleans the air while teaching our children about their roots, that our ancestors grew these kinds of plants."

In 2003, Mr. Horowitz, the original owner, exercised his right — after legal maneuvering with the city — to buy the land back. Since then, he has battled with the farmers and their lawyers to get them off the land. Local news accounts in the past year have quoted him as planning a warehouse there.

Things came to a peak in late May when an option for the Trust for Public Land to buy the property expired, with the group having raised only about half of the $16 million purchase price. That intensified hand-wringing among city officials, advocates for the farmers and representatives of nonprofit organizations, who reached out to Mr. Horowitz to negotiate further.

To put public pressure on preserving the farm, organizers enlisted celebrities, including Julia Butterfly Hill, an environmental activist known for sitting in a redwood for two years in the late 1990's to protest clear-cutting.

Ms. Hill climbed the walnut tree and set up camp and called a friend, Ms. Hannah, who pledged to stay on the farm, sometimes in the tree, sometimes in a tent, until its future was secure. Other recent visitors included Mimi Kennedy of the television series "Dharma & Greg" and Alicia Silverstone from the movie "Clueless." Leonardo DiCaprio sent a letter of support from a movie set in Africa.

"It's very exciting," Ms. Hannah said of the newest turn in the story, "but we are keeping our fingers crossed."

photos of the crash

2006-05-26T09:59:00.000-07:00

Here are a few photos of the car taken the day after the wreck, when we went to the towing place to collect the rest of our stuff that was still in the car.

notice the windshield caving in. that's where my head slammed into during the rollover.

notice the way that the roof is smashed in on the right hand side.

Notice that the glass from the two windows on the right is completely gone. It was completely gone from the back windshield as well.

All of the wheels looked like this. Sorry for the blurriness of the photo.

Crash on the Highway

2006-05-14T17:27:00.000-07:00

when we were spinning around in the car and i realized that there really wasn't a thing i could do to correct the situation, i'd already over corrected--maybe a metaphor for my life--so i closed my eyes as we hurdled toward a reflective post and into the ditch. we hit the ground and the car immediatly flopped over onto the roof. we were upside down and i just froze. if liz hadn't made moves to get out of the car as fast as she had i suppose i would have stayed there, shocked, until fear overwhelmed me to get out.

i unbuckled my seat belt and opened the driver's door--the only door still able to open. i crawled out over the crumbled glass and stood up to walk around to the passenger side to help liz out, as if there were just child locks on the door or something. when i got around to the other side of the car i realized the gravity of the situation. it was entirely smashed into the ground and the windsheild was dangling into the passenger area. i started calling liz's name frantically--i hadn't seen that she had crawled out right after me and made her way up to the highway. i ran around to the car and looked in to see how i could help her, but she was gone. i spun around to find her in the surrounding night lit up by the head lights that were still on and the orange blinking construction sign just up the highway.

a van stopped after we ran up to the guard rail to flag them down. two older men, one 80 and one about 50, ran to us and yelled to see if we were okay. we said that we were and then they called 9-11 on their phone. the oldest man tried to call from my cell phone that i pulled from my bag after wrenching the bag from the back seat of the car. he couldn't figure out how to turn it on and i was so shook up i didn't really know how to show him.

as they were calling i went back to the smoking car, leaned in through the driver's side to put it in park and turn it off. i shut off the head lights and everything about the asthetics of the situation changed. it was now quiet and dark. the only noticable light left was the blinking orange of the road work sign. liz was sitting down against the guard rail, shaking. when i walked over to her i stopped right abover her. she said: we shouldn't have driven home at night. i replied: the worst thing that could happen did and we're okay. but we weren't okay. we had just been too close to violently dying.

the silence of the scene was broken by sirens. i don't think i've ever taken so much comfort in that sound. as what had happened was recorded by authorities and we were checked out the meaning of the wreck became heavy on my mind, more real. i could walk around, i was pacing, and liz was stationary next to the guard rail. the paramedics came twice to make sure she was okay and so after the second round of examination she made her way into the sheriff's car to be out of the cold and into some quiet. her head wouldn't stop spinning.

i walked around picking up our lives from the ground, dust still settling back into it. there were so many buttons everywhere. little dots of color amidst bright fabrics, bottles of gifts, books, clothes, packs, food, tapes, money, and little drops of blood from liz's cut hand.

the sheriff drove us to a the super 8 of hayes, KS after i packed our stuff into the back seat of the car and it was towed off to five star auto repair. the sheriff was nice, but quiet. i'm sure he'd had to do this a million times. liz told him every place we'd been and how we were just five hours from home. we took baths when we got up to the room. liz first. me second. i smoked a cigarette as i layed in the water and tried not to sob. we layed in bed both trying to sleep a little, but i could hear liz jerk around and i was jerking into being awake ever so often too. the only thing i could see when i closed my eyes was the car spinning and in my imanginations of it i tried to figure a way to fix it.

A Horrible Car Wreck- The end of our Tour

2006-05-14T13:28:00.000-07:00

We had a great screening and time in Columbia, MO and Lawrence, KS. We were really excited to get home to Denver though, so we decided to drive through the night from Lawrence to Denver (an 8 to 9 hour drive). We haven't really been driving at night for the entire tour and I hate driving at night, but we were both really awake and figured we wouldn't be able to really sleep on Thursday night anyway. So, right after the screening, we packed up and got back onto I-70 heading west. Everything went fine for a couple of hours.

Hays, Kansas
We stopped to get gas here. Courtney got coffee and I got a red bull. We were just pulling onto the highway and picking up speed. The next thing I knew Courtney was screaming and the car was swerving uncontrollably. I had no idea what was going on, I thought that maybe the car just lost control completely. Then we did a couple of 360s. The whole time I wasn't panicked, I was just wondering "When is the car going to stop moving and please don't let the crash be too bad." The car kept spinning out of control for a few more seconds and then we were off the road and smashed into a grassy ditch and the car flipped over and it was upside down and so were we.

I remember hitting my head really hard into the front windshield. Redbull on my jeans. Realizing that there was no way I was going to be able to get out my side of the car because it was smashed into the ground. Trying to undo a seatbelt while upside down. Courtney frantically asking me if I could get out. I undid the belt and got out her side of the car and there was smoke everywhere and I told her that we had to get away from the car. My main thought was that maybe the car was going to explode so we just had to get away from it. We ran along the side of the highway and waved down someone immediately. Some older white men in a white van. I saw a lot of blood on my hand but I had no idea where I was bleeding - nothing really hurt. I realized that my hand was cut up. Courtney got in the car and turned it off (it was still running). We got our purses and miraculously my cell phone was right outside the wreckage. I saw the smashed red bull can. It was crumpled.

Courtney told me that a deer was standing in the road and she had tried to swerve to avoid it and lost control. She barely even moved the steering wheel. We were in a rollover car wreck. I didn't see my life flash before my eyes, or a white light, or have any epiphanies. The cops and the ambulance came. The paramedics cleaned my hand and bandaged it and asked if I wanted to go to the hospital. I said no and they left. Right after they left my neck started hurting and my head and I felt like I couldn't do anything except lay down. I think my body was in a state of shock. I was shaking uncontrollably as Courtney and the cop started getting all of our belongings (our lives, three months) out of the car. All of our stuff was ok. I tried to sit up and everything was spinning out of control. The cops called the ambulance back and they looked at my head and neck and asked me some questions and they said they thought I would be ok but really sore. I didn't go to the hospital again. Which I'm really happy about because I didn't need to and the bills would have been horrible. I sat in the cop car and watched them get all of our stuff.

While sitting in the cop car I looked down and noticed that a lot of my hair was falling out and realized that I had cut my head on the windshield. I called a few people but then my phone went dead. The tow truck flipped the car and most of our stuff was put back into the car. They took it away. The cop dropped us off at a Super 8 Motel. My back hurt a lot. I took some baths and it felt better.

Courtney's mom came and got us the next day at about noon. We went to the auto shop and saw how smashed up the car was. It was literally totalled beyond any hope of repair. It was even more shocking seeing the car the next day and knowing that we were able to just get up and walk away from an accident like that. We are really lucky not to be dead right now. There was a black van in the garage that had gotten into a wreck in the same place on the highway that we did about a week prior. The towguy said that one of the people in that wreck didn't live.

We were five hours away from home. We've been gone three months and not gotten into an accident. What a way to finish this trip. I'm glad that we are both alive.

I have some pictures of the car that I might upload when I get the chance.

The Phoenicia Diner in Upstate New York

2006-05-06T21:04:00.000-07:00

New York, or "the city" as they call it

2006-05-06T20:47:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK : a story of few pictures, because we were doing too much and having too much fun - and there are enough pictures of it already out there in the world anyway.

As we drove in...

going over the bridge

entering brooklyn

There were no signs to warn us, and they gave us a $45 ticket plus this hideous sticker on the car window that had to be scraped off with a razor blade and soapy hot water!

Katie's amazing backyard/garden area.

Katie's apartment, from the outside

Katie's apartment from the inside.

Unfortunately there aren't any more photos-- or they are on my disposable (gasp!) camera. There are no pictures of Coney Island, or Central Park, or Neal's apartment, or all the amazing food we ate (Korean, Indian, pizza, Greek), or Eli, or Jonny the librarian student, or walking around alphabet city, or going to les enfants terribles (an overpriced french bar/cafe in chinatown) or of all the great espresso we drank.

Virginia

2006-05-06T09:29:00.000-07:00

The Virginian countryside and self-portrait

Charlottesville, VA: Screening at Better Than TV

We were late to a screening for the first time. We didn't count on such bad traffic driving from Baltimore to Charlottesville. I guess we kind of forgot about the way that Washington D.C. makes traffic a nightmare for hundreds of miles in every direction. So we got into town at around 7:20 when the screening was supposed to begin at 7pm. Oops. No one really seemed to mind though. There was a good amount of people there (around 15).

The infoshop is called Better Than TV and it is located under the historic Jefferson Theater. It is a nice infoshop. They have a lot of space to work with and it has a very open, airy feel to it. It was interesting because it is located on a really successful pedestrian mall right in the middle of downtown charlottesville. They can afford the space because there is a darkroom that is a separate project that pays part of the rent, and also because there are some vendors on the mall that rent space from them and store their equipment there at night. It's a good location.

While the documentary played, Courtney and I walked around the pedestrian mall for a few minutes before deciding to purchase overpriced meager salads and eating on the patio/mall. We listened to college students talk about their plans for the summer then went back to Better Than TV for a Q & A session. After that we went to a nice teahouse and listened to old time music.

We ended up staying with a really nice woman named Julia who works at Better Than TV. While we were driving to her house we noticed a huge smoke cloud, smelled smoke, and then saw firetrucks racing in the direction of her house. We kept driving and the closer we got, the closer the smoke and fire trucks were. It turned out that there was a church on fire literally a couple of blocks from where she lived. We dropped the car off at her house and then walked down to watch the fire with the rest of the neighborhood (see my post about the Cortland, NY fire a few weeks ago). Everyone was out watching the smoke and talking. It was a real neighborhood gathering. Julia, who just recently moved to the neighborhood, actually ended up being able to met several neighbors who she hadn't known before. Word got passed around that it was the church (it had been uncertain what was burning). No one seemed to suspect foul play. The church had only recently been built in the last few years. Luckily no one had been inside when the fire started.

We went out to breakfast at this place called the Bluegrass Grill in the morning with Julia and two other people who work at Better Than TV. I got really pulpy orange juice. Then we drove Julia to work and headed to Richmond, VA.

Richmond, Virginia
I had a brief sojourn in Richmond about 3 years ago, when I moved in with my friends Davin and Neal for a couple of months. While I was there, we didn't really know anyone and mostly just hung out with each other, but got to see all kinds of amazing things. Richmond is a beautiful city with a lot of nice places to just hang out at. There were a few things that I thought Courtney should see, mostly: Hollywood Cemetary, Belle Isle, the 4th St. Cafe, Harrison St. Cafe, 17.5 coffeeshop, Carytown, the Byrd Theater, and The Farmer's market area.

the 17.5 coffeeshop was one of the best coffeeshops ever. It is on one side of the farmer's market square area (which historically, was the market for slave trading) and is very narrow and had a great upstairs with books. It was just a very calm, peaceful place with a great atmosphere and amazing espresso. We decided that the first thing we wanted to do was go get an espresso and then go from there. We walked up and saw the "for rent" sign and my heart sank. Who knows how long it had been gone, but it seemed like the whole area was more "developed" than it had been last time I was there. There were definitely more people around and more shops in the storefronts that had been mostly empty before. At the end of the block was a really fancy looking wine/coffee gourmet bistro place. They had free wifi so we decided to just go in there and get coffee and use the internet.

The "Revitalization" of Richmond? Live, Work, Play?

I picked up the free alternative weekly newspaper (called "Style") inside the restaurant and was amazed with the first story that I encountered upon opening the paper: It was about the revitalization of downtown Richmond and how "urban living" is becoming hip. They were talking in particular about how the traditionally working-class, mostly white neighborhood Oregon Hill, was now "up and coming" - i.e. in the process of being gentrified. They had a couple of stories about former suburbanites that had decided they wanted the edginess of "city-living" - so they bought a huge historic house in Oregon Hill for quite a bit of money (for that neighborhood) and renovated the whole thing. Prices on homes in the area are starting to shoot up and people who had lived there are probably being pushed out already.

It's the same story all over again, in a different city.

This process of gentrifciation, revitalization, pseudo-new urbanism- whatever you want to call it, is happening everywhere. There was also a story about a suburban couple that bought an "urban condo" with great views of the James River. The title of the story is "goodbye suburbs!"
Here are some key excerpts that I found illuminating:
-----------
"While it’s obvious Debra is meticulous, she’s also willing to take risks. And that’s just what the Youngs did when they put a contract on one of the Riverside condos sight unseen. They were the fourth set of buyers to purchase a unit in the building, and they reserved a desirable corner apartment with a view to the west on the ninth floor (there are 10 floors altogether)."

"While the coal trains going by have at times been “a wake-up experience” for Roger, he says he’s getting used to them. “The biggest difference in space for me is the lack of putzing-around areas,” he says. “You’ve got to keep things organized.”

"Where there isn’t a window, there’s a mirror reflecting a window. The sliding glass doors that lead to the balcony are open and a breeze blows in. The occasional coal train rattles by below. It’s city living in a setting unique to Richmond, with old smokestacks in the distance and kayakers maneuvering the rapids below."
----------------

It's interesting how the paper chose to interview these urban settlers about their new homes and their new urban experiences instead of interviewing someone who has lived in downtown Richmond for years about their opinion on the changes that are happening all over the city. I was trying to find out more information about the gentrifiction of Richmond and stumbled upon this website that looks very interesting: http://www.reparationsthecure.org/articles/larry1.shtml

It is one man's narrative about his time living in Oregon Hill and personal experiences and it discusses the history of the Oregon Hill neighborhood, racism, the gentrifiction process and the role of VCU (Virginia Commonwelath University) in changing the neighborhood. It is part of larger website for a group of people in support of reparations.

I also stumbled upon this interesting website/tool called Community Mapping. It can be used to figure out what parts of neighborhoods are most likely to face gentrification, and why. (i.e. what parts of the land are most desirable or valuable, who might want to use it and why). When people have this information, they might be able to actually do something about it.

"Community mapping provides equitable development practitioners with accurate and unique information, effective visual tools, and the ability to understand and share their own experience in the context of their changing environment. Community mapping is powerful because of its capacity to democratize information-both what is recorded and who has access to it. When presented well, maps have the power to convey complicated information and relationships in a straightforward, accessible manner, enabling non-experts to participate meaningfully in community planning and advocacy."

Of course, maps can be used to manipulate information in a way that takes power out of the hands of people living in neighborhoods undergoing rapid change... mapping systems are already used by developers to figure these things out.

Here is the link:

http://www.policylink.org/EDTK/Mapping/Why.html

Interestingly, the people who we hung out with in charlottesville were also talking about how there is a lot of development going on in their neighborhood and how they might start a development watch group. Julia, who we stayed with was even talking about mapping out areas that have been in the process of being developed so that people could at least know what is going on.

The American Visionary Art Museum

2006-05-05T10:05:00.000-07:00

self-portrait at the American Visionary Art Museum (outside of building)

Baltimore, MD, Red Emma's and

the American Visionary Art Museum.

We left Philadelphia and headed to Baltimore, MD, the city where our roommate Hillary went to college. We weren't really sure what to except of Baltimore. I've been there a couple times before but only in a very passing-through kind of way. We had everything set up to show the documentary at Red Emmas, a coffeeshop/bookstore/infoshop place in this really busy commercial district. (the Mount Vernon Neighborhood)

They have an amazing sign of Emma Goldman on the front of the business. It is only about a year old but it looks amazing. They did all kinds of construction themselves and fixed it up really nice. It's the kind of place where people just walking down the street will stop in for a cup of coffee and then maybe look at the information and books on sale and maybe get into a conversation. It seemed really successful, judging by the brief time that we were in the space.

The really cool thing about Red Emma's is that they were very careful about planning their business plan and have set things up so that it is a real worker-run collective and they are even able to pay themselves (the people that work there). We walked around the neighborhood a little bit while the documentary played and got in touch with Hillary's old college friend Caryn, who was nice enough to let us stay with her.

Her girlfriend Leslie and she live together and they told us about a great place to check out while we were in Baltimore, called the American Visionary Art Museum.

The building itself. (notice the construction in the background. more lofts?)

It was the best experience I have ever had in a museum. They have all art produced by self-taught artists that the curators consider "visionary art." It was amazing.

A decorated tree outside the museum.

Here is what they have to say on their website:

"Visionary art as defined for the purposes of the American Visionary Art Museum refers to art produced by self-taught individuals, usually without formal training, whose works arise from an innate personal vision that revels foremost in the creative act itself." The German origin of the word "folk," or volk, suggests "of the people." The term "folk art" can be applied in the broadest sense: it's art of or by the people. At AVAM, we don't define visionary art as "folk art," or even "contemporary folk art," principally because organizations like the National Endowment for the Arts rightfully define folk art as art coming out of a specifically identifiable tradition. Folk art is "learned at the knee" and passed from generation to generation, or through established cultural community traditions, like Hopi Native Americans making Kachina dolls, sailors making macramé, and the Amish making hex signs. The "contemporary folk art" label isn't appropriate for AVAM either, since we like to show works created by self-taught artists who may have lived hundreds of years ago, alongside work that may have been created last year. The exhibition themes we choose to explore are, thus, innately timeless -with the power to inspire human beings in highly personal acts of creation. Unlike folk art, visionary art is entirely spontaneous and individualized.

The current exhibit was called "Race, Class, Gender, (doesn't equal) Character." There were so many amazing pieces by different artists, usually using found, discarded materials. The pieces were usually intensely personal and place-based. We spent three hours in there and didn't even notice the time passing. I can't rave enough about this museum.

There was also this really cool thing that was part of the permanent collection about the Baltimore-based folk art of "screen painting." There would usually be a screenpainter in each neighborhood. It began in 1913 by William Octavec. It is the phenomenon of painting window screens in order to beautify shop windows but still allow air into the building, and also to offer privacy to homes/shops. It took off and became a real tradition in Baltimore. We watched a short documentary about it. Neither of us had ever even heard about this....

The ring I got in the museum gift shop.

Philadelphia

2006-05-02T08:30:00.000-07:00

We got to Philadelphia on Sunday night, leaving the splendor of New York City, (or "THE city" as the call it in New York) behind us. New York was fun. We stayed with our friend Katie, who lives in Brooklyn. We did things like go to Coney Island and Central Park and stuff ourselves with delicious food. There was no screening in New York, although we had intended to do something at Bluestockings, it just didn't work out.

On Sunday night we were supposed to have been doing a screening at the A-Space but then realized that it probably wasn't going to happen considering that Courtney hadn't gotten a response on email from the person setting it up in months (and also we weren't on their calendar on their website ). So we went to my friend Davin's apartment and walked downtown to go to Kingdom of Vegetarians, a famous vegan mockmeat Chinese restaurant. We stuffed ourselves and then walked back to her apartment.

The next day Monday, May 1, was our screening at Temple University. I had been pretty excited about doing something here because the person setting it up was this guy Juris who I contacted on the Space and Place listserv that I'm on. I had asked him a while ago if he thought that he might be able to set something up or knew of a student group that might be interested in sponsoring us. He suggested the Graduate Association of Visual Anthropologists. This was the first time on the entire trip that the people sponsoring us were officially associated with anthropology at all. The response from the people who came was definitely different in a noticable way. It was actually nice to get questions about ethnography and the way that we conducted our "fieldwork" and questions about how we incorporated theory into our documentary.

It was also nice because we got to meet this woman Courtney, a grad student in the visual anthropology department who helped do a lot of the work to help bring us to campus. She showed us around the media lab and showed us her short film that she did while in Tokyo that kind of juxtaposes the craziness of modern everyday life in Tokyo with the traditional art of caligraphy.

The discussion after the screening actually went better than I think it has in a while. People just seemed genuinly interested in our project and they had things to say, opinions to contribute, etc.

It was also nice because we got to see James from the Wooden Shoe, who we interviewed for the movie. He came to the screening and invited us to go get a beer with him afterward. It was nice to talk to him and hear about how the Wooden Shoe has changed over the course of two years and how his thoughts on the project have changed. Hopefully today we'll get a chance to stop by the wooden shoe and take a look at it for ourselves to see how it has changed.

Upstate New York and the beginning of spring

2006-04-30T09:59:00.000-07:00

Upstate New York:
fragments of a region, as told through photos

It's a beautiful region, especially at this time of year. We spent a few days driving around Upstate New York around the Catskills, after screening the documentary at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie and Bard College in Annondale-on-Hudson.

Here are some photos:

At the historic mansion near Bard College (we don't know what it was exactly and there was no signage explaining who it belonged to).

sunset in New Paltz, NY

At an amazingly decorated mexican restaurant in Hudson, NY (supposedly the "next Hamptons").

3 doors in Hudson, New York.

a strange boarded up building with art covering it in Hudson, NY

Boston, Big Ol' Boston

2006-04-22T21:14:00.000-07:00

This was only the second time I have ever been to Boston. It was a good visit all around--great weather. One of my very good friends, Kevin, lives there now and so I got to visit with him. He lives in Brookline and coincidently another friend of mine, Gabe, was staying there too. I hadn't ever been in that part of Boston and it was much less of a suburb than I would have guessed from what our roomate Hillary describes as the town she grew up in. We stayed with our friend Nick in Somerville, which is a part of town on the other side of the Charles River, north of Cambridge. It is another neighborhood I wouldn't have thought to be so well layed out and accessible to interact in. Boston has really great squares that function fully as public space even though they are often centered on economic exchange. Davis Square in Somerville was one of those places. Maybe I'll try to find a picture and post it later.

But, yeah, getting around was much easier this time and it was really great to see familiar faces in a large city that I didn't know. It was getting a bit tiring not having that familiarity. Though another familiar feeling that I wished I hadn't had to feel in Boston was a feeling of "being erased" as liz would aptly put it. We screened the film at the opening night of the New England Anarchist Book Fair. It was a really well attended and organized event that must have taken a lot of coordination. Yet, it was really startling how much it felt like the presence of Liz and me wasn't of much concern to anyone organzing the screening. Though I had been in communication with a person for quite a while about being a part of the event, it wasn't until we got to Boston and saw a poster for the opening that we realized how much we (liz and i as people) weren't really supposed to take part in the event. Our names weren't on the poster as the filmmakers, nor was there mention that we would be present and ready to facilitate discussion and answer questions if that was what people wanted to happen.

It was weird to see, but then when we got to the community church in copley square it was even weirder to feel uncomfortable setting up a table with our dvds, cds, and t-shirts. People weren't rude at all--they just weren't very welcoming. No introductions from anyone but Scott, the person I was in touch with when trying to coordinate a screening, and even then it wasn't really an introduction as much as a, "Do you know where scott is? Oh, you're scott? Hi. I'm courtney, this is liz. Is there a place we can put this stuff? Oh, here? Thanks." And then I found him again to remind him that we usually did an intro to the film and facilitated a Q & A--that was okay, whatever we wanted to do. So, it was cool. We sat and listened to the speakers and saw people that we recognized from doing interviews, but were shy to just go up and talk to them (though I did have a nice conversation at the end of the night with a person, Roger, that we had interviewed). There was a reception before the film was to start and the night was already running late--so it seemed like we should probably just have a short Q & A, if at all--but it was hard to find someone to talk to about what they wanted to have happen. The film was set up and we were sitting on the stage to introduce the 25th screening of the film. We were really tired at this point and the woman that was MCing for the night needed to pass the hat for all the people coming in from out of town for the book fair. She mentioned a couple people but failed to mention that we had also come from out of town and were on a north american tour--we never expect to get money--but it is weird to be waiting to introduce the film we have been on tour with and not be mentioned at all as being a guest in town. Was it because we solicited the LPC to screen the film in Boston? I don't know, but we weren't note worthy enough, I guess.

So we introduce the film--it plays. There is some concern about it's length because the night started late and the men that were speaking before the reception spoke over time--there was a band of two men that needed to get on stage after the film. While Liz was sitting at our table a random man came over to her TWICE and complained about the length of the film. He kept asking when it would be over--she apologized for being such a burden, but he didn't get the joke. As the movie was ending we realized that we shouldn't do the Q & A--it would take too much time. But, I couldn't see where Scott or the other people I recognized as organizers were through the crowd. I went up to the front and waited for a time that I could get someone's attention to let them know that we didn't think it would be wise to have a Q & A. But, as the credits came on screen the lights promptly went up and I was informed indirectly by a person on stage talking to the audience that we wouldn't really be having a Q & A--there would be a casual one while the band was setting up. No one even came over to where we were sitting and let us know. I don't know why. But it was obvious that the Q & A wasn't going to happen and that was fine. It was just really unthoughtful of the organziers not to at least let us know what they were thinking. Why was the time alotted for us most easily expendable--especially since it was known from the begining of the night that the event was running late?

It made me wonder if it was that important that we came at all and why it wasn't important enough to the organizers that they still hadn't introduced themselves or engaged in any sort of conversation with us about the event or what they were doing or anything, any polite conversation. The person MCing the event came over to the table as we were getting ready to pack up and the band was winding down. I thanked her for working that night and she responded that she was glad to do it--she had noticed only a week before the event that the night was full of white men speaking and she felt they needed to have some other people represented. A good observation, but one that falls pretty short with out her even knowing. We aren't men--Liz and I--but I guess the film isn't a person, even though we were planning to speak. Also, shouldn't it have been in the minds of the organizers even before they started putting the event together that the night shouldn't just be a representative sample of radical white men? She was well meaning--yet she unknowingly erased us. Just another time in the night where we weren't valued enough to be visible, to be thought of as real participants in the kick-off event or the weekend at all. Only while we were packing up our table were we told that we should have a table at the book fair the next day. I guess that is just an aside though. I wish this was more articulate, but I really just wanted to put something out there--a recounting of the nights events--one that maybe portrays how poorly people think out the way they treat people and how it is easy to erase people that are right in front of you. It's easy to not value what you don't have to consider. It's easy to not value people that aren't going to take the energy to be in your face or have the confidence to always assert themselves in every situation--especially if you are a (multi-)privileged person/community that has an oppositional identity that allows one to skirt around issues of privilege as simple as extending common courtesy and as easy to spot as gender privilege. Just because we're not aggressive about our accomplishments, our ideas, our works doesn't mean we don't get to be participants, doesn't mean we don't warrant the respect that a podeum and notes or a mic and a guitar warrants others. Watch out who you erase in your language and your actions, they might be your friends.

Maine, what a beautiful state

2006-04-22T08:05:00.001-07:00

birds on the Maine coast

We screened the documentary in Portland, Maine, at the People's Free Space.

We didn't get to spend much time in Portland, unfortunately, but we took our time getting from Portland to Boston and took highway 1 all the way down. We stopped along the coast a couple of times in a fruitless effort to find the tourist haven of Kennebunkport. I've been intrigued by Kennebunkport since I had a job last summer selling gourmet pizzas at a farmer's market in Denver. The pizzas were "globally" themed and one of them was called the Kennebunkport (it had lobster, pieces of organic white corn, fresh mozzerella, and a white sauce). That pizza actually took first place in the food competition at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival. Anyway, there were millions of signs pointing us toward Kennebunkport but none of them actually led us there until our third try. Actually, I'm still not sure if we really found it, but we found something good enough.

A view off the coast

Man on beach

sand on beach

We stopped by the Maine Diner (as featured on the Today Show! yes, really!) for a semi-authentic experience of Maine. (or maybe just a touristified version) We got fries and iced tea and courtney got crab bisque (or something like that). She said it was some of the best soup she's ever had and that she was going to try to make me a vegetarian version using mushrooms and sherry. Yes, it's hard being a vegetarian on the road. It's especially frustrating not being able to try regional specialities and feeling like I'm missing out all the time. And only being able to eat potato products at cool old diners.

the archetypal lobster traps

the archetypal lobster boats

stay tuned for boston (the city that hates me)

2006-04-22T08:05:00.000-07:00

We screened the documentary in Portland, Maine, at the People's Free Space. We didn't get to spend much time in Portland, unfortunately, but we took our time getting from Portland to Boston and took highway 1 all the way down. We stopped along the coast a couple of times in a fruitless effort to find the tourist haven of Kennebunkport. I've been intrigued by Kennebunkport since I had a job last summer selling gourmet pizzas at a farmer's market in Denver. The pizzas were "globally" themed and one of them was called the Kennebunkport (it had lobster, pieces of organic white corn, fresh mozzerella, and a white sauce). That pizza actually took first place in the food competition at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival. Anyway, there were millions of signs pointing us toward Kennebunkport but none of them actually led us there until our third try.

A view off the coast

Man on beach

sand on beach

We stopped by the Maine Diner (as featured on the Today Show! yes, really!) for a semi-authentic experience of Maine. (or maybe just a touristified version) We got fries and iced tea and courtney got crab bisque (or something like that). She said it was some of the best soup she's ever had and that she was going to try to make me a vegetarian version using mushrooms and sherry. Yes, it's hard being a vegetarian on the road. It's especially frustrating not being able to try regional specialities and feeling like I'm missing out all the time. And only being able to eat potato products at cool old diners.

Montpelier, Vermont April - 18 & 19

2006-04-20T07:43:00.000-07:00

April 17 & 18 Montpelier, VT and Black Sheep Books/The Langdon St. Café

Montpelier is the smallest capitol of any state. It is really small-town seeming. Apparently a guy who lives in Florida owns half the rental property in town. Including the building that black sheep books and the langdon st. cafe rent. He drives up the prices by letting empty storefronts stay empty and doubling people's rent over night.

Here are some thoughts:
The Langdon St. Café and the tempeh reuben and maple-sweetened lemonade. They really capitalize off of the whole maple syrup thing. Very tourism-based economy. Went to Hubbard park, a wild butte with a huge castle-like tower at the top in the middle of a clearing. I could see everything for miles in every direction. There are no skyscrapers in Montpelier.

We stayed with Melissa and Collin, two members of the Black Sheep Book Collective. They lived in a really nice, big townhouse about 20 minutes (walking) from downtown. The view from their balcony was amazing. We had to walk through a graveyard to get to downtown. When we were walking home last night we realized that we could see a million more stars than usual. Montpelier doesn’t seem to light its roads very much.

inside the cafe
The screening was sponsored by Black Sheep Books but happened in the Langdon St. Café. The café is worker-owned and operated and vegetarian. They had really good (reasonably priced) food and drinks.

After our documentary there was another documentary called "Life in a Box" about three men who fall in love while living in an RV (and two of them are in this band called Y'all). It was pretty good.

New Hampshire summed up- birch trees and scrapbooking stores in every town.

Cornell University & Ithaca, NY

2006-04-20T07:25:00.000-07:00

old postcard of the cornell campus

April 15 & 16 Ithaca, NY and Cornell University

We hadn’t planned on going to Ithaca, NY until we got an e-mail from a guy named David Driskell while we were on the west coast. He had received an e-mail on an urban planning listserv that he’s part of, after Ava (the urban planning student in L.A.) sent something out.

He’s part of the city and regional planning department at Cornell University. He is also the chair of the UNESCO program called Growing up in Cities. The Growing up in Cities Program is really cool. They work with urban youth around the world trying to figure out ways for youth to have a greater voice in the way that cities are run and in their own lives. Here is their overview statement: We live in an urbanizing world, in which more and more children and young people live in cities. In industrialized countries, a half to three-quarters of all children live in urban areas; in the developing world, the majority of children and youth will be urban in the next few decades. Yet across a wide range of indicators, cities are failing to meet the needs of young people and their families.
What does the process of urbanization mean in the lives of young people?
From young people’s own perspectives, what makes an urban neighborhood a good place in which to grow up?
Can cities be positive places for young people-places that support and nurture their development as constructive, contributing members of a civil society?
Growing Up in Cities is a global effort to understand and respond to these and other questions, and to help address the issues affecting urban children and youth. It is a collaborative undertaking of the MOST Programme of UNESCO and interdisciplinary teams of municipal officials, urban professionals, and child advocates around the world, working with young people themselves to create communities that are better places in which to grow up-and therefore, better places for us all.

We were so flattered to be invited to Cornell by David. He also invited us to stay at his house with us wife Neema (who also teaches in the planning department at Cornell) and their two children, Mira and Keiren. None of us had realized that it was going to be Easter on the 16th, but everything had been planned and set up, so we decided to do it that day even though it meant not as many people would probably be able to make it to the screening. Staying with them during Easter also meant that we got to watch kids do an easter egg hunt and have an easter dinner with their family and friends (instead of sitting and silently staring at each other in an interstate denny's somehwere, like we probably would have).

Allison from Syracuse had told us about the Ithaca Commons (downtown pedestrian area with shops) and told us to go to the used bookstores and the co-op grocery store. I got two books at the used bookstore: Architecture of Fear and Cradle to Cradle. The Architecture of Fear is about the way that the built environment is a reflection of how scared our society has become (by examining things like gated communities). Cradle to Cradle is an environmentalist book about ending the concept of waste and talking about everyday objects and eco-design type stuff.

We also got to walk through one of the gorges (Ithaca has a lot of amazing gorges with little walkways through them) and saw some waterfalls and it was really cool. Here is an example of what we saw (I got the picture off the internet because I forgot to bring my camera with me).

We were really surprised that about 10 people came to a film-screening on Easter, but they did. We showed it in Sibley Hall.

Sibley Hall

Cornell is an insanely wealthy campus. David told us that they fundraise $300 million dollars a year, (that is not even counting student tuition or fees which are insanely expensive). There are 500 people on the paid staff of Cornell that do nothing but fundraise. Some of them are dedicated to getting money from only a few specific insanely rich people. What do they do with all that money? Sure, the campus is really nice, but it seems like people in the administration must be getting paid really, really well.

And then we went to Montpelier, Vermont... To be continued...

(all pictures in this entry were taken off the internet).

Graveyards as wandering places

2006-04-16T06:11:00.000-07:00

Graveyards are at the same time comforting and so full of ritual and personal meaning that they are erie to me.

I started going to see the grave of my father's dad, Blackie, when I was very young. He had died in the 1970's and so our visits to his grave was one of the ways I could have a physical marker of his life and death. We would go to his grave in the early fall. My Yia Yia used to say that Blackie died "when everything else was dying," so she could never forget when the date of his death was approaching. Going to the graveyard usually meant walking straight to Blackie's grave, feeling some vauge sense of connection and loss and then wandering around the rest of the Greek section of the graveyard looking at names and dates and being surprised at the ages people had passed on.

As my sister and I got older we romanticised the graveyard in Cheyenne, WY (our home town) and I had elementary and middle school friends that would tell stories of going into the graveyard and having regular communications with specific people buried there. I was scared by their stories. I never really wanted the ghosts to talk back to me when we wandered around the head stones. But, I started to greet them and let them know about my day or how I felt being there. I still practice this and initially it has always been a bit awkward, but as I keep talking I don't doubt the feeling that I am being heard.

When Liz and I walked up and down the rows of markers and statues in the New Woodstock graveyard, I thought about how many times I have found a place to sit, talk, walk or explore inside the gates of graveyards in my home towns or towns that I only know from the roadway. I thought about how many times I have read the etchings on a stone and found out they were born on my birthday or died the random day I found myself in that graveyard. Reading those dates and feeling an instant connection with the person marked by them is an involuntary response for me. It allows me to feel full of purpose and respect as I wander above strangers buried in a ground that is regularly broken and remade in ritual.

So few "wandering places" in my life allow me to reflect on who has been there, what has been there, and what memories will stay a part of the place. I wander streets and find my grounding in symbols and cultural artifacts. I wander buildings and am always apprehensive. I wander around parks and squares, using the constructed focal points or meeting places for my grounding. I wander markets, filling my eyes and stomach with my grounding there. But as I walk through graves it is the markers of people, time, place, birth and death. So I had questions: should that information be explicit in more spaces, would people change the way they behave if that was more a part of daily life and the places we navigate? Should that information be more than just a plaque or statue when it exists as a memorial? Is it the enormity of so many plaques and statues in a graveyard that evokes such a sense of individual history? How do we do that, should we do that in other places? --by courtney

Graveyard in Upstate New York - on highway 13

2006-04-15T20:12:00.000-07:00

a Photo Essay of the New Woodstock graveyard in upstate

New York on Highway 13.

(by liz)

i'll leave you with
another self portrait

Clock Tower Apartments Fire in Cortland, NY

2006-04-15T09:53:00.000-07:00

While we were in Syracuse, I was watching the news in my fancy hotel room and there was a story about a huge fire in an old (built in 1820) historic building in Cortland. The building was really old and a historic landmark and included a clock tower. It had at least 3 businesses in the bottom and about 30 students lived in apartments upstairs. Everything was destroyed but no one was killed.

I didn't really notice what city they were talking about on the news but then yesterday we rolled into Cortland and saw a burnt out, collapsed wreckage of a building and I realized that it must have been here.

We decided to stay in Cortland for the night. We walked around Main St. for a little bit and got delicious Lebanese food. We got a motel room at this place that really hasn't been changed at all since the 1960s probably. They had framed letters from their most famous guests (obscure congressmen from the late 1960s and early 1970s thanking the proprietor of the motel and saying how wonderful their sleep was). The old lady that showed us to our room started talking about the big fire: "It's a real tragedy. The clock tower building was just a real landmark in the community. And those students, they lost everything - All of their clothes, their computers, their term papers- everything." While Courtney went to get cash to pay for the motel I walked up to Main Street in search of the Salvation Army thrift store. I didn't find it so I decided to join the crowds and watch the demolition which was really about to begin at that point.

There were crowds of people on each of four corners, standing behind yellow caution tape as firefighters continued hosing down the wreckage and as some demolition machines circled around trying to decide how to begin the process of tearing down the entire structure.

It was like a real community event and everyone came out to watch the old building being torn down. Everyone seemed to know everyone else, even though Cortland isn't exactly a small town. Every time that someone came out of the tavern we were all standing in front of, they said hi to someone outside. "It's a shame that they couldn't save at least part of it." I stood there, watching the building being torn apart. I heard someone talking about how the owners decided to just have it levelled because restoring it at all would have been millions of dollars - and they had to do something quick, because the wreckage was blocking the state highway that goes through town and causing all kinds of delays and trouble.

There was a kid (about 4 years old) with his mom standing behind me, also watching the demolition. The kid kept saying, "We've just got to see them take down the part with all the glass. I know what they're doing, they're trying to figure out where to start... (as the machines paced back and forth). We have to say bye to the building ok?"

There were people on their cellphones frantically calling friends and telling them "They're tearing it down right now, get down here!"

The fact that the whole town seemed to be out to watch the demolition made me think about how important buildings can be to the identity of towns and communities. The building has been around for over 100 years and was one of the most prominent features of the downtown landscape. Now that's gone. No matter what they put up in its place, it won't be the same. It's weird to think about the way that physical features in urban areas can affect communities and the way that people interact with each other and the landscape.

before the fire.

Revolutionary Planning Class

2006-04-13T20:15:00.000-07:00

We met this woman Ava, a radical urban planning student at UCLA, while we were in LA. She told us about the Revolutionary Planning class that was going to happen this semester - Then we found out that Living Room is on the syllabus. Here is the syllabus- it seems really interesting and I thought you all might be interested in finding out about some of the resources that these students are looking at.

This class is really cool too, because it was organized by students and is going to be completely facilitated by students.

Here is the syllabus:

REVOLUTIONARY PLANNING
Syllabus
________________________________________________________________________
Urban Planning 219 Section 2
Room 3343C
Wednesdays 6:00 – 9:00pm
Spring Quarter 2006 Professor: Jacqueline Leavitt
This is a student initiated, and led course. All students enrolled will participate as “student-teachers / teacher-students” to create dialogue, revolutionary space and share collective responsibility to achieve the course goals.
INTRODUCTION
This course arose out of the realization that there is a lack of discussion about revolution and revolutionary visions in planning today. Many of the problems faced by under-privileged communities are dire in nature and have been left to only worsen because of the dominant planning ideologies in place. These ideologies and practices have left planners helpless in our pursuit for social justice and have served to only strengthen the status quo. The vision of this course is to understand and analyze the ways revolutionary thought and implementation can educate us about changing the systems that keep people physically, socially, and economically captive.

Historically, revolution has been a method to create social change in repressive environments. Though there have been successful revolutions and there are currently movements struggling for change, many go unnoticed as the society at large continues to believe that they are irrelevant to the problems we face in the United States.

ABOUT THE COURSE
This course will focus on the issues and ideas that move revolutions. Course readings, lectures and discussions will look at specific revolutionary movements as case studies in order to learn and apply strategies to our context.

GOALS OF THE COURSE
The goal of the course is to build a foundation for understanding and creating a revolutionary planning model by learning about the history of revolutions and analyzing current struggles and experiences around the world. Readings and lectures will foster discussions about practical strategies.

COURSE STRUCTURE
The governance and organization of the course will reflect the ideas we are exploring. Because the course will function as a seminar, the class environment will emphasize a collegial/study group atmosphere of participation. Consequently, punctuality, regular attendance, and volunteerism will be essential in order to ensure a mutually beneficial exchange.

PRODUCTS
All students will be responsible for introducing and facilitating the discussion for at least one class in small groups. Facilitators are required to review all reading responses for that week prior to class (see below)
Each week students will be required to submit short reading responses (one to two paragraphs) and two discussion questions for the group. Write ups must be posted to the online class message board by midnight the Monday before class. As part of the final project, each facilitation group will write a collaborative piece that summarizes their week’s topic. (Specific requirements will be discussed during the first class)

GRADING
40% Weekly Responses (8)
20% Discussion Facilitation (1)
40% Final Report & Presentation (1)
Method of evaluation will be discussed during week one.

READINGS
In addition to the required reader for the course, students are encouraged to share extra readings that they feel are important to a topic. If the reading is not available through the class website, copies of these texts should be brought to class one week prior so that the class can make copies as needed.
REQUIRED READER available at Westwood Copy Center for purchase

REVOLUTIONARY PLANNING – Reading Assignments
April 5th WEEK ONE: Course Introduction
Course Overview
Intro Activity - Caminitos
Review Syllabus
Assign groups / topic facilitation
Set the scope and goals of course – Question Matrix
April 12th WEEK TWO: Radical Spaces
Castells, Manuel “The Urban Structure: The debate on the theory of space” The Urban Question: A Marxist Approach p. 113-128
Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. Multitude Penguin. 2005. pp. 63-115
Kohn, Margaret Radical Space: Building the House of the People (2003).
Chapter 2 “Space and Politics” and Chapter 6 “The house of the People” p. 87-109; p.13-26; p. 160-165
Cordingly, Luke. “Can Masdeu: Rise of the Rurbano Revolution” in Belltown Paradise / Making Their Own Plans. Brett Bloom and Ava Bromberg, editors. WhiteWalls, Chicago. 2005. pp. 52-68
Friedman, John. “The City of everyday life: knowledge/power and the problem of representation”. The Prospect of Cities.
The City Repair Project
Harvey, David. Justice, Nature & the Geography of Difference (1996). Chapter 11 “From space to Place and Back Again” p. 207-209 and 291-326
In Class Screening:
Living Room: Space and Place in Infoshop Culture. Liz Simmons and Courtney Kallas
The Take. Director Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis
April 19th- WEEK THREE: Popular Education Organizing Strategies / Education for Liberation. Speaker: Mario Cuellar
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. (Translated by Myra Berman Ramos) Continuum. New York. 1990 (Chapter 1, pp. 27-56) Unpublished selection from annotated bibliography for research paper entitled “Popular Education: Organizing for Revolutionary Social Change in Meso-America.” (Regarding Pedagogy of the Oppressed) by Maureen Purtill. UCLA. Fall 2005 Mc Laren, Peter and Peter Leonard, editors. Paulo Freire: A Critical Encounter. Routledge. London. 1993. (Chapter 9, pp.169-176) Hammond, John L. “Popular Education As Community Organizing in El Salvador”. Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 26, No. 4, Liberation and Pedagogic Empowerment: Identities and Localities: Social Analyses on Gendered Terrain. Jul., 1999 (pp. 69-94)
Recommended Readings in Spanish (available at YRL):
Freire, Paulo. Educación Popular. Realidad Económica, 96 (1990), 39-50
López Palacio, Juan Virgilio. Paulo Freire: sus teorías, sus métodos; la inspiración más cercana del movimiento de educación popular en América Latina. Islas, 41:121 (July-Sept 1999), 140-148. Bibl.
April 26th - WEEK FOUR: Music/Art as an Organizational Tool for Revolution
Finkelstein, Sidney. Art as Humanization. From “The Artistic Expression of Alienation” in Marxism and Alienation: A Symposium, ed. Herbert Aptheker (New York, 1965) pp. 26-30
Fanon, Frantz. “On National Culture”. From Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory. Williams, Patrick, Chrisman, Laura. Columbia University Press New York (1994) pp 36-52.
Wang, Dan S. “New Solidarities: After Ideology and Culture, There is History.” Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. Los Angeles. Volume 1, Issue 4. Fall 2005. http://www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/4/issue4.php?page=wang
Sanchez-Tranquillino, Marcos. Space, Power, and Youth Culture: Mexican-American Graffiti and Chicano Murals in East Los Angeles. 1972-1978. pp 53-87
MacPhee, Joshua I. “The Portable Printing Press” in Stencil Pirates. Soft Skull Press, Brooklyn. 2004 pp.11-19
Holmes, Brian. “Revenge of the Concept: Artistic Exchanges, Networked Resistance” http://ut.yt.t0.or.at/site/index.html p.1-16
Shaeffer, Christoph. “The City is Unwritten: Urban Experiences and Thoughts seen through Park Fiction.” Belltown Paradise / Making Their Own Plans. Brett Bloom and Ava Bromberg, eds. WhiteWalls, Chicago. 2005 pp.39-51
Sholette, Gregory. “Snip…Snip, Bang, Bang: Political Art, Reloaded”. http://artwurl.org p.1-6
Steurer, Erich.“Intervention to Provide Health Care to Homeless People” in WochenKlausur: Sociopolitical Activism in Art. Wolfgang Zinggl, editor. SpringerWeinNewYork. 2003. pp. 19-26
May 3rd - WEEK FIVE: Religion: A Tool for Organizing and Empowering
“Liberation Theology: An Introductory Guide” by Robert McAfee Brown. Westminster/John Knox Press. 1993. Pg. 35-88.
“A Theology of Liberation” by Gustavo Gutierrez. (Orbis, 1988) pg. 54-71.
“Cry of the People: United States Involvement in the Rise of Fascism, Torture and Murder and the Persecution of the Catholic Church in Latin America.” By Penny Lernoux. Doubleday & Company, Inc. (1980) pg. 1-14.
“Patriotism Is Not Enough.” Jesus is Not A Republican: The Religious Rights’ War on America. Peter J. Gomes, edited by Clint Willis and Nate Hardcastle. Thunder’s Mouth Press. (2005). Pg. 157-164.
May 10th -WEEK SIX: Planning, Revolutionary Practice, and the State
Friedmann, John. Planning in the Public Domain: From Knowledge to Action.
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987. pp. 31 – 35.
Morley, Morris and James Petras. “Beyond Developmentalism.” In US Hegemony
Under Siege. London: Verso, 1990. pp. 44 – 59.
Sankara, Thomas, 1999, Women’s Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle, New York, New York: Pathfinder Press pp.1-36
Skocpol, Theda. “Explaining Social Revolutions: Alternatives to Existing Theories.” In
States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and
China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. pp. 3 – 33.
May 17th -WEEK SEVEN: Law and Revolution
Lopez, Gerald. Rebellious Lawyering: One Chicano's Vision of Progressive Law Practice. (New Perspectives on Law, Culture, and Society) Chap 1.
Oscar Zeta Acosta, The Revolt of the Cockroach People. Pp 234-254 and “Afterword” (259-262).
Steven W. Bender., “Direct Democracy and Distrust.” The Relationship Between Language Law Rhetoric and the Language Vigilantism Experience.” Harvard Latino Law Review. Fall 1997. Pp. 145-174
"Race, Reform and Retrenchment: Transformation and Legitimation in Anti Discrimination Law" by Kimberle Williams Crenshaw [Kimberle Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller, and Kendall Thomas’ Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement (New Press, 1996):]
May 24th -WEEK EIGHT: Political Organization and the Revolutionary Left: Case Studies from Cuba; Iran; Porto Alegre, Brazil; and Palestine
Afary, Janet and Anderson, Kevin B. Foucault and the Iranian Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. pp 250-260.
Al-i Ahmad, Jalal. Occidentosis: A Plague from the West. Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1947. pp. 27-44, 78-91, 112-121.
Hanieh,Adam: Jamjoum, Hazeem; Ziadah, Rafeef, 2006, “Challenging the New Apartheid: Reflections on Palestine Solidarity” forthcoming in Left Turn, Spring Edition
Mackey, Sandra. The Iranians. NY: Plume, 1996.
Abers, Rebecca. “Ideas to Practice: The Partido dos Trabalhadores and Particpatory Governance in Brazil.” In Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 23, No. 4, The “Urban Question” in Latin America. Autumn, 1996. pp. 35-53.
Davis, Thomas M. and Brian Loveman eds. “Guerrilla Warfare, Revolutionary Theory, and Revolutionary Movements in Latin America.” In Guerrilla Warfare, by Che
Guevara. 3rd ed. Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1997. pp. 3 - 20.
Guevara, Che. “General Principles of Guerrilla Warfare.” In Guerrilla Warfare ed. by
Thomas Davis and Brian Loveman. Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources
Inc., 1997. pp. 50 – 63.
Creation of the State of Israel. Map
Bishara, Marwan. Palestine/ Israel: Peace or Apartheid. Occupation, Terrorism and the Future. Chpt 7 pp 117-131.
Achcar, Gilbert. “First Reflections on the electoral victory of Hamas.” Jan. 27, 2006
Recommended Readings:
Abers, Rebecca. “Introduction.” In Inventing Local Democracy: Grassroots Politics in
Brazil. London: Lynne Rienner, 2000. pp. 1 – 21.
May 31st - WEEK NINE: Power
Speaker: Gilda Hass - Presentation
June 7th and June 14th - Final Project

Syracuse, New York

2006-04-12T23:29:00.000-07:00

April 12. 2006. The Marx Hotel in Syracuse, NY

I've been looking forward to going to Syracuse University since the beginning of this trip. One of the most people who really influenced my thinking in regard to public place teaches here (and we actually quote him in the documentary). His name is Don Mitchell. He teaches geography at Syracuse and is also the current director of the social justice initiative, which brings films/speakers to campus. He has done a lot of work involving the issues of public space and homelessness and activism. I just found out that he was a recipient of the McArthur Genius Grant! He does this really cool thing called The People's Geography Project. Here is how they describe the project on the website:

What is the People's Geography Project?
The major goal of the People's Geography Project is to popularize and make even more relevant and useful to ordinary people the important, critical ways of understanding the complex geographies of everyday life that geographers have and continue to develop. Our contention is that such knowledge is an important tool not just in learning to cope with constantly developing and transforming relations of power that are deeply geographical, but in learning how to actively transform those relations in the name of social and economic justice.

On an off-chance, I contacted him months ago and asked if he'd be interested in bringing us to campus. He said yes. And now we're here.

We are staying in one of the nicest hotels I've ever stayed in, called the Marx Hotel. (the school is paying for us to stay here for two nights in our own private rooms) On the 16th floor.

The Marx Hotel in Syracuse

We each have our own room. It's 2:30 in the morning and I'm watching the Food Network. I love Rachel Ray! My shower is one of those fancy one's where the water falls from the ceiling, like a waterfall.

The view from my room at night

My amazing fancy room

Me looking out the window

It's really funny that we are staying in a place this fancy. When we first walked into the lobby there was a rich woman at the counter talking to the person who was working and telling him how "wonderful" the hotel beds were and how she was having a Marx Hotel bed delivered to her home next week because it was the best sleep of her life. Thne she was asking if they also sold the linens that they use for their beds to customers. Courtney had to walk away from the counter before she burst out laughing.

I told the man at the counter that we had reservations and he looked us up and seemed really surprised "Well, it looks like your rooms have been taken care of for the next two nights." He was probably wondering how that happened.

The screening went pretty well. It was shown in the Hall of Languages (the building which inspired the Adams Family house) at Syracuse University. People had different questions and comments than we have heard before and seemed really interested in talking about a lot of different things that came up in the documentary. After the screening, Don drove us back to our hotel and dropped us off. It would have been nice to get to spend more time with him but he had to get up early and head to a conference in Berkeley tomorrow. He's arranged for one of his graduate students to show us around Syracuse tomorrow, which will be really nice.

Niagara Falls

2006-04-12T23:19:00.000-07:00

On our way from Toronto to Syracuse, we stopped at Niagara Falls. It was something I've had on my to do list for about 4 years now, so it's nice to be able to cross that off. It was pretty amazing. What wasn't amazing was the price of postcards at the souvenir shop.

A view of the falls, from the U.S. side

hello.

The Eastern Market

2006-04-12T23:00:00.000-07:00

The Eastern Market is Detroit's big farmer's market that happens every Saturday. It's huge! It's a great place to great fresh, locally-grown produce. I visited it last Saturday (April 8) and loved it. There were a lot of people there - it was the most people I saw in one place in Detroit the entire time that I was there.

Post-Market Images

I was amazed at the amount of food that the venders left behind. True, most of it was rotten, but I bet that if you got to the market right as it was closing that you could get tons of good food for free. And that reminds me. As we were walking down the street a man said "hey!" "hey!" I turned around and he came running at me "Here!" he said in an annoyed tone and handed me a purple flowering plant. He walked past and handed the second one to courtney. "Thanks" I said. He didn't respond. He seemed mad for some reason. It was nice I guess. We left them by our bikes and they were gone when we got back from the railroad tracks. oh well.

Here are some pictures of rotting market fruit (one of my favorite photo subjects).

-liz

Detroit, Michigan "the Motor City"

2006-04-09T19:41:00.000-07:00

April 8, 2006. Reflections on Entering the Rust Belt. (liz)

I never gave Detroit much thought before. I never had a desire to visit it, but I never had anything against it either. It was just one of those places that I never really thought about because I didn't hear much of anything about it. It is one of the most interesting cities I've ever been to.

It seems as if one out of every three buildings is either completely abandoned, falling in on itself, a burned out shell, or in some state of disrepair to the point of being uninhabitable. There is more trash lying everywhere than I've ever seen in any other city. Detroit kind of looks like it just got hit with a natural (or unnatural) disaster of some kind. But it didn't. This is just normal life in what is one of the most obviously neglected and poorly maintained cities I've seen.

Detroit used to be one of the wealthiest cities in the U.S. Then the car companies started moving overseas in the late 1960s. Money and jobs started draining out of the city. There were also some riots in the late 60s/early 70s that caused a lot of the people left with resources to leave. I guess it was the typical story of white flight to the suburbs combined with the fact that the city had been so dependent on auto-manufacturing jobs to support its economy. I mean, I just keep thinking of Michael Moore. Now Detroit is the second poorest city in the U.S.

In some ways Detroit is tragically beautiful, in that whole post-apocalyptic, romanticism of decay and abandonment kind of way. There are some amazing buildings that are ending up as beautiful ruins. Especially the old train depot.

Another cool area was the no longer used sunken traintrack that goes through downtown.
Beau (from the Trumbleplex) posing in front of graffiti art

Also, it seems like people are able to make really great, creative uses of space because there is just so much of it that is completely neglected or underutilized. Two of the people we are staying with work at an urban farm in town. We got a tour of that this morning. They run some gardening programs for kids, sell produce to people in the area, and are even doing a bioremediation project with sunflowers that involves using sunflower pulp for tags for the jam and honey they make and sell at farmers markets. (among other things)

The Heidelberg Project
Patrick gave us a little tour of the farm today and then also took us to what I think is quite possibly one of the most amazing places I've ever been. It is something called the Heidelberg Project. This artist has been turning an entire city block into installation art for the last twenty years. He basically is taking some of the abandoned houses in his neighborhood and turning them into huge installation art pieces. One of the houses is covered in different colored polka dots. Another is covered in different numbers. There was one house with stuffed animals covering the entire outside. There was a tree full of shoes, an over full of shoes, a car full of shoes. There was a yard full of old vaccuum cleaners. The way that things are placed and painted is amazing. There were also paintings put up everywhere. It was amazing. The artist who has created all of this stuff is Tyree Guyton. We actually met him today and talked to him a little bit about his work. He was out doing some touch up to some of the art in preparation for a documentary that some people from Paris are doing about the project this week.(picture taken from his website)

Here is there mission statement from the project's website:
The Heidelberg Project is a Detroit community-based non-profit organization that empowers people through art. Our mission is to inspire people to appreciate and use artistic expression as means to enrich and improve their lives, and to beautify and preserve the environments in which they live, work and play. The Heidelberg Project is a non-profit 501c (3) corporation developing innovative ways to use art as a catalyst to halt the decline of the East Side neighborhood by preserving its homes, discouraging crime and offering new hope to its residents.

The art is not just art for art's sake but is intended to draw attention to Detroit neighborhoods that are being so neglected.

Something else about the artist from the webiste:
"Guyton's cityscape art gallery has changed the city blocks on which it is located and those nearby from deserted combat zones to places where people stop and stare. Part of the fascination surrounding Guyton's works, perhaps, is that they are forever changing due to weather or the environment, or through the artists whims. And Guyton has linked his neighborhood to the rest of the city, the state of Michigan, the country, and the world."

"As we become more and more connected globally, we need to remind ourselves that the sense of community is rooted in a sensitivity to a particular place. "

The Trumbleplex
We're staying at the Trumbleplex, a collectively owned and operated house that has been around for about 15 years. It is huge and old and beautiful. It is kind of falling apart in places but it is one of the most beauitful houses I've ever been in. They also have a theater/performance space in the back of their house where they have a couple of events each week usually. They also have a huge plot of land next door where they have a huge garden and they have chickens and a turkey too.

The amazing Turkey

Oh, and we showed the movie at the CCNDC:

and this band, Broadcast Live, played after we showed it:

And then we went to Toronto...

Three Rivers, Michigan

2006-04-09T19:40:00.000-07:00

an old farmhouse on the drive through Michigan...

A Photo Essay: The Riviera Theater on Main Street in Three Rivers, Michigan

We stopped in Three Rivers, Michigan on our way from Chicago to Detroit. The town is just south of Kalamazoo and is really small (I think the population is around 7,000). When we got to town we went to Main St. in search of a coffee shop (no luck) and this old theater sign immediately caught my eye.

I also noticed this interesting little detail on another building on Main Street.

Three Rivers was a nice break after Chicago's hustle and bustle.

Chicago's Cabrini Green Projects, Mixed Income Housing, Luxury Lofts and an Urban Garden

2006-04-09T19:04:00.000-07:00

Chicago - April 4, 2006 - liz

Some General First Impressions

My reactions to Chicago are varied. I love it but don’t feel very comfortable… I never thought that it would be like this at all. It seems so huge and spread out. It sprawls outward in a way that reminds me of L.A., but with a less density of people. Chicago feels like the definition of urban. Lots of things going on, constant stimulation, millions of people walking around.

Things seem tense among different groups of people. I feel a lot of hostility that I haven’t really felt while being in other cities, just from strangers walking down the street. I don't know if this hostility that I am perceiving is directed toward me or if it just exists in general. Or maybe it doesn't even exist. Maybe a lot of it has to do with ethnicity. Chicago seems very segregated compared to most of the other places that we've been. There are different sections of town that are occupied by specific groups of people and that other groups of people don't go into very often. In some ways this is good because it allows different cultures of people to keep their cultures alive - You definitely couldn't say that Chicago is a city of assimilation. And it's interesting, going to different parts of the city and being completely surprised each time because they are so different from each other. I keep comparing Chicago to New York City, and that seems to be the most apt comparison, at least from what I have experienced personally in both places.

I wonder why it seems like Chicago gets ignored compared to big cities on either the west or east coasts. Maybe it has to do with being in the middle of the country.

Today we got up early. I was tired like I have been everyday, in a way where I feel like I’d be content to just keep sleeping all day. But I got up, drank coffee, took a shower and then we left the house for the day, by around 9:30 am. We walked over to the Washington St. Blue Line stop and took the train to Division, where we got off and started walking, what ended up to be a pretty far walk to the Chicago City Farm.

Chicago City Farm. (more urban agriculture)

We met this person Greg, last night at the Mess Hall screening, who works for them. He told us to stop by and he’d show us around and give us a little tour. I have to admit that after going to the LA South Central Urban Farm, my expectations were really high. We ended up walking all the way to downtown practically, before running right into the farm, which was actually quite small (at least when I mentally compared it to the South Central Urban Farm).

The Urban Farm with downtown in the distance.

There were about five people there planting turnip seeds. One of the women came over and was talking to us a little bit about the project and the resource center and other stuff. Apparently, this guy named Ken Dunn started the city farm about 30 years ago and it started out as a philosophy dissertation project, where he paid some guys to collect recyclable cans. That small experiment turned into a huge project, called the Resource Center. People from all over the city can come get all kinds of excess materials that are dropped off, for incredibly cheap. You can get a gallon of paint for 25 cents. They basically do what they can to reduce needless consumption and waste.

The City Farm is one project of the Resource Center. They have a plot of land that the city lets them use for free and they grow organic vegetables on it. Local chefs for gourmet restaurants around Chicago buy most of the produce. They also have a little vegetable stand so that people from the neighborhood can buy fresh organic produce. It seemed like a really cool project that the people working on were really excited about. The only thing about the City Farm is that the land they use is owned by the city and the city retains the right to take that land away from them at any point - So it's not a very secure or stable situation.

Public Housing, Cabrini Green Projects, Luxury Lofts?

A good example of a Cabrini Green Projects building (now vacant)

Another interesting thing about the whole experience was that we ended up walking by these huge, drab old hi-rise project buildings that the city is in the process of having demolished.

Cabrini Green Building that has been vacated... maybe.

A close up of an old Cabrini Green building.

It is part of the city of Chicago's "Plan for Transformation." It is the largest demolition of public housing in U.S. history. Some of them have already been torn down, some of them still have people living in them, some of them are kind of half and half. These projects were the infamous Cabrini Green Projects, which were really well-known for the horrible conditions were during the 80s and 90s. There city was very neglectful of maintaining the housing at all and conditions deteriorated more and more, as the economy of the city became more depressed. At one point the projects were home to 15,000 people in Chicago. Although living conditions were pretty dismal (horrible violence, deteriorating buildings, burst pipes, rat infestations, etc.) people still built their lives and communities here. Therefore, the fact that the city is destroying them all is not exactly great news to all of the people that used to live there. Where are they going? We heard from a lot of people that the city decided to move all of these people out and doesn't exactly have a good plan for where to put all of the people now. I'm assuming that most of them won't be able to live so close to downtown anymore- and I wonder if public housing will ever match the level that it was while these places still existed.

Apparently a big part of the "Plan for Transformation" is to advocate for mixed income housing. People of all different income levels living together. In Chicago, one of the first developments to replace Cabrini Green was North Town Village. It only has 261 units but a certain amount of them are reserved for people elligible for public housing. I'm not sure how many.

While we were standing in the farm looking out at the city skyline, we just started looking around and did a 360. We realized that we could see all of the following at different intersections:

The farm and Courtney with downtown in the distance,

the Cabrini Green Projects,

recently cleared lots,

a developer’s sign advertising soon to be townhouses starting in the $200’s,

and an older placeless-looking strip mall (Starbuck’s, Blockbuster, Radioshack, etc.).

It just seemed like we were able to view this whole cycle of the way that places and people are affected by policy, architecture, popular trends in identity formation, etc. It just all kind of crystallized together at that moment and seemed to make sense.

Especially when considering many of the other things that we have been noticing in different cities, with the trend toward pseudo-new urbanism, which seems to be mostly about encouraging consumerism and making people with money comfortable, at the expense of most other things.

This seems to be something that keeps coming up all over the country in every city that we end up in --- and it also seems like something that people aren’t exactly cognizant about (the fact that it seems to be happening all over the place in a similar fashion). They seem to think that it is isolated to their own city or experience, when it is actually something that is happening all over--- the takeover of the inner city, the "downtowns," by more privileged groups of people than have chosen to live there in decades. The inner city has only started to regain population in the last 15 years, whereas previously it had been losing population for decades.

Why did it become cool for white, economically privileged people to move back in to the city in these commodified versions of authenticity that so many of these newly constructed "lofts" and "live/work" spaces seem to offer? i.e. manufactured authenticity and charm and history. Artificial historic context.

Because people feel like they don’t know who they are and they are trying to get that back by buying a commodified version of authentic identity? And the people who really do have historical, place and community-based (i.e. not just manufactured) ties to the downtowns get shoved out and dispersed, and the communities are displaced and the places destroyed.

I mean who wants to live in the suburbs? It makes sense that people aren't happy with the places that they have been given to live in and that they would want something different. It's just too bad that this desire for something less fabricated is being met by a hyper-fabricated form of architecture and living- And that less powerful groups of people are being pushed out - denied space, and disappeared.

A bit about the place and people we stayed with
In Chicago, we stayed with Shawnecee, Drew and Nick. They live in a neighborhood of Chicago called Logan Square. Shawnecee goes to film/video school at Columbia College and helped set up a screening of the documentary there. She works at the Columbia Documentary Center and so we got to check that out. It seems like a great place. I wish I had been able to do something like that at school. Our dvd is now in their library archive.

We got to Chicago late in the day on Sunday and went straight to the Chicago Vegetarian Diner. The food was pretty good (I got a vegan philly steak) but we were all really rushed because we realized all of a sudden that Stirling was going to have barely any time to get to the airport for his flight that was leaving at 9:50 p.m. Luckily he realized that his flight was leaving from Midway, not O’Hare as he had originally thought, and then we rushed to the airport on the orange line of the El. There was a huge lighting, thunder and hailstorm while we were on the train and it got delayed a few times. The minutes kept ticking by and I got more and more nervous that he was going to miss the flight, especially since he was going to be flying on standby. Miraculously we made it to the airport at about 8:50 pm. We went to the Frontier counter and the woman working said that it wasn’t too late. I said bye at the security check-in line and was waiting to get change for a $20 bill so that I could take the train back into the city when Stirling came back down the escalator. The pilot decided not to let as many people on the plane as usual because of a weight imbalance and the bad weather.

So Stirling came back to the house in Logan Square and ended up leaving again at 4 in the morning to catch the 6am flight so he could back to school in Boulder on time for his first class on Monday.

Our first day in Chicago, Monday, Courtney and I walked from Logan Square to the rapidly gentrifying Wicker Park part of town. There was the usual mix of cool old buildings, independent cafes, record shops, bookstores, restaurants, soon to be condos, etc. It was a cool part of town and we put up a bunch of fliers around there. It was interesting and different and tons of pedestrian traffic, but also definitely felt like it was in a process of changing to cater to a wealthier group of people.

Picture of condos sign

We searched in vain for an interesting-looking place to get a drink. We ended up at a crappy overpriced place where this was the cheapest beer on the menu.

After that, we headed over to the Mess Hall, where we showed the movie that night.

We had to take the red line really far north. The Mess Hall was a great place to show the documentary, because one of their main focuses is on the importance of place. A woman Salem helped to set everything up for us and she was great. People brought some really good food too-- fancy olives, hummus, cheeses, crackers, beer... Every event at the Mess Hall is completely free - no cash ever gets exchanged in the space. They don't have to pay for rent because the landlord of the space gives it to them for free.

While we were there they had an exhibit up of architectural sketches by middle school students about their ideas of what to do about Chicago's public housing crisis. They drew designs of buildings that they would like to see erected. Another cool thing is that we found out about this newspaper that a lot of the people from Mess Hall work on, called AREA - it's a mix of radical geography, art, and activism.

While the documentary played we went to the shore of Lake Michigan.

The next day we had a screening at Columbia College, hosted by the Documentary Department. After that, we went and hung out at the memorial statue for the martyrs of the Haymarket Riots. The statue was put up by the city.

Pabst Blue Ribbon Factory in Decay

2006-04-08T09:22:00.000-07:00

Prepare for a Photo-Narrative by Liz A selection of photos taken at the derelict old PBR factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

View from the distance (i actually got this photo off of wikipedia).
We drove through Milwaukee on our way to Chicago and noticed that there were a lot of abandoned and falling apart buildings everywhere we looked. We had made plans to stop for lunch here and look for a diner. Those plans were unfulfilled but we found something better... the Pabst Blue Ribbon Factory.

the welcome arch into the factory grounds.
It was kind of an amazing sight--- The architecture was just so beautiful yet it was in such a state of disrepair. Apparently PBR transferred its production to Miller headquarters starting in 1999. I don't know if this means that it is still a union-made beer or not ? I'm also not sure what the plans for this huge old factory are. Maybe they'll demolish it, maybe they'll continue to let it fall in on itself. Maybe one day it will be made into luxury lofts.

After looking on wikipedia (a great resource) I have realized that Pabst Brewing Company makes other beers too, and that PBR is just one of those. They specialize in "nostalgic" beers that have stood the test of time... Maybe this is another attempt to find authenticity through the choice of one's beer... I mean, why do all the hipsters and punks and artists think that PBR, Olympia, Old Style, Schlitz, Black Label, and Colt 45 (all made by Pabst) are "cool." I think it's part of image and identity formation--- oppositional identity formation actually. A way for people to define themselves by contrasting/opposing the mainstream, dominant culture. PBR has always been viewed as kind of the beer of the underdog, or the working class. PBR is more than a beer, it is a symbol for subcultural groups of people. But I have to admit that I like it. There is also the fact that it's cheap and an ice cold PBR can be very satisfying I have to admit.

as we drove into the factory...

the pabst smoke stack

right in the middle of the factory grounds
stirling looking cold. (milwaukee was freezing)

welcome to milwaukee

bricked in windows

interesting brick work...

Madison, Wisconsin

2006-04-03T22:57:00.000-07:00

We got into Madison and dropped Courtney off at the cooperative house where she would be staying at. It was called the Lochlorien Co-op and about 30 people lived there.

We got the tour of the house, which is really more appropriately described as a castle. It was apparently built by an old professor in the beginning, and then over the years it was a frat house, a military barracks, etc before becoming acquired by the co-op network of madison. There are about 20 co-op houses in Madison under this one network. One of them is called the Emma Goldman House. It was really cool because the house was right on the shore of Lake Mendota (I think) and there was a great view.

Stirling and I went to go look for a hotel but driving in Madison was kind of a nightmare and we didn't really know where we were going. We ended up crunched for time before the screening which was set to start at 7:30, so instead we ended up parking by the campus and decided to find a hotel after the screening.

Stirling had agreed that he was going to introduce us that night. His introduction was amazing and included the phrase "and so forth," some professorial pacing, and the statement "they started with the essential question... What is public space?".

BRUTALIST ARCHITECTURE RANT
The people who helped set up the documentary screening told us some interesting stories about the architecture of the building where we were doing the screening, the Mosse Humanities Building. On August 24, 1970, Sterling Hall (in which is housed the Army Math Research Center) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison was destroyed by a homemade bomb in a Vietnam War protest. A researcher was killed. There was also just a ton of political unrest on campus in general during the 60s and 70s. The people we were with said that they had thought the humanities building was a response to the bombing, but Mosse Humanities was built prior to that, but in the midst of a lot of political unrest in general. If anyone has more information about actual building plans for the humanities building that mention plans to squash protest, I'd be interested to hear about it.

So, when they designed this new humanities building, they designed it with the idea of making it "riotproof" or impossible to be taken over by students. The layout inside is confusing and there are a lot of entrances so that it is more difficult to block an entrance.

If nothing else, it is ugly as sin.

I did a bit of online research and discovered that the architectural style of this building is known as BRUTALISM. The Mosse building was designed by Chicago architect Harry Weese. According to Wikipedia, brutalist architecture is often criticized for the following reasons:

Critics argue that this abstract nature of brutalism makes the style unfriendly and uncommunicative, instead of integrating and protective as its proponents intended. For example, the location of the entrance of a brutalist structure is rarely obvious to the visitor.

Brutalism is also criticised as disregarding the social, historic, and architectural environment of its surroundings, making the introduction of such structures in existing developed areas appear very stark, out of place, and alien.

This is definitely the reaction that the building evoked in me when i saw it. I discovered while browsing online, that the university plans to demolish the building within the next decade. Probably to make room for an architectural style that is less obviously alienating and more subtle. Maybe they'll throw in some new urbanism to blend in with the whole State Street shopping (i.e. consuming identity) experience.

While the doc. played I was able to satiate my longing for Chipotle on Madison's historic state street (i.e. typical oldstyle district now being filled with corporate placelessness).

It rained A LOT while we were in Madison and there were pretty much constant grey skies.

- an example of the beautiful tree-lined streets in the university district

One of the people from the co-op where courtney stayed, Henry, showed us around the old warehouse district after we checked out the Madison infoshop on Saturday. There were lots of old interesting buildings.

The "hip" part of town and the cost of getting there

2006-04-03T22:48:00.000-07:00

today liz and i walked to and through a part of the whicker park neighborhood in Chicago. We took Millwaukee Ave down from the Logan square neighborhood where we are staying and spent 30 or so minutes making our way to what looked like a part of town that has been gentrifying for quite some time and now is beginning to become unrecognizable as what it once was. two of the people we are staying with, drew and nick, talked with us this morning about how in the last year or so lofts have just been slapped up by developers. they have replaced/erased the older homes and buildings that were a part of "the built environment"--a term i began to like today--before. it has really struck me how cities are looking more and more a like as liz and i encounter each newly rebuilt section that is dubbed to be the "hip part of town." lofts, lofts, lofts. live/work spaces. boutiques. galleries. lofts. and they all seem to be inaccessible to people that have lived in each new "hip part of town" as it became "hip" and before it was even considered for 'hipness." i know this observation isn't anything new or profound, but it has been illustrated to liz and me over and over again. we have begun to make jokes about how the trends and then we realize how we must look walking around in all that hipness, how we are associated with the newly built environment and how we are a part of the identities it wants to attract and help create--young, creative, urban settlers. it's frustrating. is there anything that can't be coopted and turned into an "experience" or comodity to be consumed? also, cities are getting more and more expensive to travel in: $2.00 to take a train or bus in chicago and no free transfers if you pay cash? $1.50 to take the bus in seattle. $1.25 in san francisco, but transfering was easy...something's got to change or getting around cities is going to become even more privileged, or really just inaccesible. yet again an obvious observation. oh how experience illuminates the obvious.

Flandreau, South Dakota and being back on the ROAD

2006-04-03T10:56:00.000-07:00

March 31, 2006
When we began the drive toward Madison, WI, for our next screening, we decided to stop in South Dakota and spend the night with Courtney's grandparents. I’m sitting in the back of courtney’s car. Stirling is in the passenger seat. We are in Minnesota, driving to Madison, where we need to be by 6:30 for a screening tonight at the University of Wisconsin. We left Denver at 9am yesterday morning and drove straight to Flandreau, South Dakota. The landscape was barren and desolate most of the time. We hit some heavy rain and were driving on poorly-lit (if at all) state highways in Nebraska and South Dakota. Everytime a semi went by, we were momentarily blinded (by the brights they refused to turn off) and the wave of water they sent up to us. It was terrifying. We finally got to Courtney’s grandparents house at around 11pm.
a view of downtown Flandreau

Marlys and Vern (Courtney's grandparents) were really sweet people. There old “farmhouse” has been completely renovated. You’d never know it is over a hundred years old. Every room is wallpapered and full of country knickknacks, porcelain dolls and old family photos.

Marlys set out plates of cold turkey, american cheese, bread, miracle whip, taco flavored Doritos, peanut butter cookies, apples, and diet 7up. She let us know about the ice cream sandwiches in the fridge and showed us the long john pastries she had gotten earlier at the bakery for us to eat for breakfast. She was worried that we weren’t eating anything (I didn’t want to tell her about being a vegetarian) so I ate a peanut butter cookie and Stirling had some chips. I mentioned how full I was from the half of a burrito I had eaten earlier at Taco Johns (disgusting). We talked for a while, mostly her and Courtney talked about family. Then Vern took us downstairs, where he has created a miniature world of hobby trains. It was amazing and huge. He said he’s been collecting and working on them for the past 50 years. He has a hard time finding trees and people that are the right scale. And a hard time working on the wiring because he has to go under the tables and is afraid he might not be able to get back up. Marlys said it must have been nice to have a man on the road with us (little did she know that Stirling doesn’t know how to drive).

We went to bed. Got up at 7:45. Drank sour-tasting coffee and ate a banana and got back on the road. Courtney mailed an application for a teaching position in Seattle at the old post office. We stopped in a small town in Minnesota to find espresso for me. The only thing we could find was a Christian-run coffee shop/ Bible book store. They didn’t have soy milk. I felt like an urban snob for asking. Well actually there was one other option: A lutheran-run cafe. I guess you have to take what you can get.

I had an altercation with people in a grocery store in the town just across the Wisconsin border. An engraged older man made a snide remark to me and stirling that "There are rooms for that kind of thing" - but all we were doing is standing next to each other in an aisle. Then a woman who worked there ran into me on purpose and didn't say anything. But we got good bread and an avacado and mustard and had the most satisfying sandwiches in the world. Also, the rain continued to pour all day and even once we got to Madison.

Missoula, MT

2006-04-03T10:44:00.000-07:00

This was our first screening where we wore lapel microphones. It was nerve-wrecking. The theater was huge - about 20 people came to the screening. It was included in part of the Multicultural Center's spring film series. The last film in the series was the Motorcycle Diaries, so we were kind of up against a lot.

We walked around the campus and found the University Center, a big, ugly, brown 70s building. Courtney got coffee and I got vitamin water. We sat in the mall-like atrium that is the student center, before going to meet michael and ashton at "the source" (the information center). They then took us out for a nice dinner, that was unfortunately rushed and we had to get TO GO.

We walked back to the auditorium and got fitted for the lapel mics. We were both kind of terrified by the mics and the process of speaking into them.

ME

COURTNEY

After the screening we went back to our hotel room at the Campus Inn. The next morning we left and headed up to Alberta (where we would end up being denied entry into the country). Damn you Canada! Here are some pictures of how beautiful upstate Montana was:

We got to the border and turned around, driving straight through the night across Montana, Wyoming and Colorado. We stayed in Colorado for a week before beginning this next leg of our tour.

Turned away at the border

2006-03-28T10:19:00.000-08:00

So, we got turned away at the U.S./Canada border on Thursday. After being waved through at the Vancouver entrypoint without them even asking us for ID, we had out entire car searched at the Montana/Alberta border. They said we couldn't get in because of our "merch" (dvds and t-shirts). We drove all night through Montana and Wyoming to come back to Denver for a few days. Now I'm in Southwest Colorado on a minivacation with Stirling, who was supposed to meet us in Winnipeg. We cancelled Calgary and Winnipeg and Minnesota and are starting the trip back up in Madison, Wisconsin. We leave Thursday. I will post an entry about the screening in Missoula later.

Readers, look below

2006-03-21T16:58:00.000-08:00

There are two new entries below the one on Wallace, Idaho that you shouldn't miss! They are just underneath because we started writing them and saved them as drafts earlier.

Wallace, Idaho

2006-03-20T21:54:00.000-08:00

.We drove from Coeur D'Alene through Idaho and into Montanta today. We were looking for a nice place to stay somewhere between Coeur D'Alene and Missoula. We passed through Walace, ID early in the journey and fell in love with it, but foolishly decided to keep driving in the false belief that somewhere just as cool would come up further down the road. Walace was really cool because all of the old buildings were still there and pretty much intact, in their original styles. .I found a great old sign to take some photos of, in the spirit of adding to my collection of cool old signsSign making was an art and now it is basically gone. Which is really too bad because signs on buildings used to add so much character and personality to buildings and whole towns. Another artform bites the dust.

Here is a picture taken today in the car. Don't ask me why I look so exhausted after falling asleep watching cable tv before midnight.

Now we're in Missoula. I will be posting a photo-narrative about the motel we are staying at tonight, tomorrow.

The Ponderosa Motel: a photo narrative in pieces (by liz s.)

2006-03-20T21:47:00.000-08:00

The Ponderosa Lodge (Missoula, Montana- March 2006) So, we are staying at this amazing 70s motel and I wanted to do a photo essay on it. It just seems like all of the fixtures have been so well-preserved. It is definitely the most unique Motel I have ever stayed in.

View from our balcony, looking toward the other side of the lodge

Courtney in the room

the amazing red telephone

Cool light fixtures above sink in bathroom

the puke green/yellowish bathroom sink

The light/fan switch in the bathroom.

Montana makes me feel like I'm home

2006-03-20T18:08:00.000-08:00

We are staying at the Ponderosa motel in Missoula, MT. The woman that rented us the room had a slight mumble that reminded me of how close to home I really am. This part of the rockies is less impressive than the part that I am used to seeing but the sky is just as big here as it is in Wyoming. I guess that's why both states claim to be in "big sky country" as corny as that sounds. And it does, but it's true, so whatever. I'm just happy to feel like I recognize some of the landscape.

It's been difficult feeling so far away from home lately. My Yia Yia (grandmother) died on March 13th, while we were in Seattle. She has been in poor health since I was an adolescent, but it is still really hard to think of her being gone, especially since I haven't lived in the same town as her for so long. I moved, with my mom and gary (my other Dad), from Cheyenne when I was about 16 and I have only lived there "long term" for one summer since then.

My Yia Yia was such a great person. She moved to Wyoming from a fishing village in Greece in the 1940's when she was in her 20's. She moved with her new 60 year old husband, my grandfather, Blackie Kallas. I can't imagine the transition she must have gone through. But she went through it and became a strong woman in the Greek community of Cheyenne, WY. She ran the front counter of my family's restaurant, "Sto Cafe" as she still called it, for 40 years. Here are some pictures of what The Albany looks like now:

She raised my Uncles, Gus & Tasos, and my Dad, George, and encouraged and facilitated them going on to college, and kept her house full of good food--cooking and raising a garden and sometimes chickens. She taught my dad how to cook and he taught my sister, Maren, and me. She would take us to church and sneak us candy as we squirmed around during the services.

I remember her laughing at us as we layed under the benches and dropped hymnal and liturgy books. All the other Yia Yia's shook their heads in disapproval, but she didn't really care. She'd just handed us extra communion bread or tootsie rolls. I look a lot like her and, now, when I look in the mirror I think about that. I guess she's closer than I thought. I mean we have lots of the same DNA. Maybe that's weird to say.

More than DNA, though, obviously, my Yia Yia is a woman that I will always be able to relate to. While we both have had very different experiences with our family, our family is still the same. Our family happened because of her. We grew up in Cheyenne, WY, whether we started our lives there as children or young adults. It's home and the restaurant is still there. My family still owns the restaurant and her house. My uncle still lives in her house above the garage even though the rest of it is rented out to another family. I joke that I'm a "prarie pirate" and that I'm a "High Plains Lady"--but I'm not really joking. I'm really connected to the slightly undulating, mostly brown or gold plains that stretch out from any side of the small town I grew up in.

I'm connected to the train tracks that come into the yard right next to The Albany and to the over pass that crosses them to get to the south side of Cheyenne. I'm connected to Holiday Park, Alta Vista Elementary, 1815 Seymour Ave, Hawthorne Drive, and Gardenia Drive. I'm connected to them in lots of ways, not only because I've stared at them so many times from different angles and at different times in my life, but also because my family has too. I suppose I shouldn't be so nostalgic about this stuff, but it's hard not to when I'm listening to a train pass by our hotel and out the window I can see a bare, golden hill looking out across the big sky.

Coeur D'Alene, Idaho

2006-03-20T09:43:00.000-08:00

We spent two nights in the Budget Saver Motel Annex. Here is a picture of Courtney in the room:

I just had to put up a picture of the cigarette hole in this blanket since it's happened to us at two hotels now.

Yesterday we did work online all day, setting stuff up for the tour. We went for a walk around the huge Couer D'Alene Lake, and then went to this pub called Moontime and got beer and food.

Also, here are some pictures from a rest stop on the drive through eastern Washington/Western Idaho, called "Wasteway" which we found odd.

Vancouver, British Columbia

2006-03-19T14:25:00.000-08:00

Vancouver was one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen. Although we spent less than 24 hours there, I would consider moving there. The city is set up really nice and there are these amazing mountains in the background. There is also water everywhere and the beach is so close it's incredible. Vancouver has a very "urban" feel to it. It seems like the population is really dense, and there are millions of people walking around the street all the time.

Our screening in Vancouver was at BLIM, this awesome DIY arts space run by two sisters, Yuriko and Keiko and Yuriko's husband.

We got there around 7pm to start setting up. The inside of BLIM was amazing and I really regret not taking photos to post here. It was really bright looking but everything was painted white. There was an amazing screenprint art show up on the walls and you could just really tell that a lot of thought had been put into the way that the space was presented aesthetically. They do screenprinting workshops and hold art shows and other events there sometimes.

There was this really cool art wheatpasted to the dumpster outside of BLIM:

Courtney and I went to this great vegetarian Chinese restaurant that is apprently famous in Vancouver (and Zagat rated!). It was packed full of all kinds of people while we were there, waiting for our food (we got it to go). We got spring rolls and this seaseme chili tofu with a kind of peanut sauce. It was really good.

The screening itself was also nice. Only seven people came, but those who did seemed really interested in the topic and there was a nice discussion afterwards. Two people came who had been part of a collectively operated artist space called the Butcher Shop that recently closed. One of them, Chad Oakenfold, does this cool website called you might want to check out: oakenfold.ca

I also met an ex-pat who lived in Oregon for a long time but now lives in Vancouver. He is involved in this really cool project called Space Agency. It is a group of artists creating a project whereby they are encouraging the reclamation of seldom used public spaces, like corporate parks where business people eat lunch during the day but that aren't used much otherwise. Another project they did was beautifcation of public alleys in Vancouver. What a great project. There website wasn't working earlier, but maybe try this link: Space Agency.

I also just found this amazing website for the group called Spacing, a Toronto-based group that focuses on all issues related to pulic space and urban life in Toronto (and around the world). They mainly do a magazine called Spacing, but they also do things like hold workshops to help people figure out way to beautify abandoned bicycles in the city! They also have some interesting photoblogs, including a photonarrative about why postering is important to cities! Here's a picture from that essay:

Anyway, after the screening at BLIM, we ended up hanging out with Janette's friend Mark. He showed up around the city a little bit, we went to a park with a beach, to a show at the Astoria hotel and discovered vancouer punk rock and bad canadian beer, and then slept for a few hours before leaving for the long drive to Coeur D'Alene, where we are now. Getting back across the boder we had to wait for about 30 minutes in a line of cars, but the border patrol guy didn't give us any trouble. We stopped for a mediocre breakfast in Bellingham, and then were on our way down to Seattle and then east on I-90 to Idaho.

Being in constant motion and having constant interaction with strangers can begin to get exhausting so we are enjoying being in a city where we don't know anyone and aren't obligated to be friendly and engage in stimulating conversations. We are staying at the Budget Saver Inn. It's alright except for the obligatory cigarette burn holes in the blankets. Well, I'd better wrap this up because Courtney is probably tired of sitting in this cafe while I BLOG MY HEART OUT. Here are some photos from the drive through the Cascades yesterday as a parting gift for all of my loyal readers!

Courtney looking whimsical during the drive through the Cascades

Me looking very serious in the Cascades

I tried to take some pictures of the Cascades themselves, but their majestic beauty was impossible to capture and I don't want to do them a disservice of misrepresentation....

Seattle - a wrap up

2006-03-15T15:40:00.000-08:00

We arrived in Seattle on Sunday night, after spending a nice day in Olympia, eating a greek breakfast that Courtney made and looking in thrift stores for a winter coat for me (still haven't found one). Olympia was a nice time. The night before, Henderson showed us around town and we went to this great vegetarian-friendly bar and restaurant called Le Voyeur. He treated us to a beer and we got sandwiches with some of the best fries I've ever had. We then walked around all over town and went to a nice spot overlooking the oh-so-polluted Sound. We caught up on the past couple of years and then made our way to a party at this hip record store/used clothing store that was closing and moving to a new building. We mostly kept to ourselves but had a good time. We walked back to Henderson and Kris's house and I helped Kris work on a 2000 piece puzzle while Courtney ate chicken noodle soup and fell asleep on the couch. Their roommate who had been at her first boxing match all day, got home around 2 and then we all went to sleep. The next day we had breakfast, went thrifting, and left. We said bye to henderson, kris and mae, and took the short 45 minute drive up to seattle.

We got off the highway in Seattle right in the international district, which was where we needed to be in order to meet courtney's friend dave at the panama hotel where he is currently living. It's one of those rent by the week hotels. there is this great teahouse underneath where we ordered white peony tea while waiting for him to get there. The teahouse serves as a kind of museum full of artifacts discussing the "Relocation" of Japanese people in the area during WW2. There were a lot of interesting photographs.

I ended up staying with one of the nicest people in Seattle (maybe because he's from Wyoming). He might be mad that I'm putting this up, but I just had to.

The cherry trees right outside the window where Stevie works from home are beautiful. He lives in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle, which is a really nice neighborhood with interesting places to go and crazily-set-up winding streets.

Here is the closet that I slept in.

Stevie was a great host who let me in on the secret wonder of grapenuts, and didn't even mind when I woke him up at 2 in the morning one night and 4 the next. The first night there we went to this cool Belgian bar called the Stumbling Monk, which serves mostly Belgian ales and has a scholarly atmosphere.

The next night was the evening of our documentary screening. We showed it at the Wayward Cafe, this volunteer-run vegan cafe.

Monday they don't usually open and serve food, but they were nice enough to make us delicious shepard's pie, steamed greens and some rasberry cake. It was amazing. There was also a really good turn out: about 25 people. The people from Tacoma who had wanted us to come there to show the doc. came to this screening and that was nice to meet them even though we couldn't stop in Tacoma because of spring break.

I also got the chance to see 2 old friends: Josh and Brian, both of whom used to live in Denver and now live in Seattle. Josh actually ended up taking me and Courtney around one day, to see the new Seattle Public Library (most amazing architecture I've ever experienced), to get $1.50 vietnamese tofu sandwiches, to the punk rock donut stand in Pike Place Market, and to get "frosty mugs" at a nondescript bar in the Market that overlooks the water. The workers at that place were nuts (or maybe just drunk).

Our stay in Seattle ended up being extended because of miscommunication with people at the University of Victoria about the day we were supposed to come do a workshop. We were disappointed about that, and not getting to see Janette, a friend who lives there, but had a good time in Seattle. Other stuff we ended up doing: going back to eat at the Wayward cafe, going to gasworks park, walking around the university district and capitol hill a lot, eating at Glo's (a great breakfast place where dave works), visiting Josh at Linda's (a hipster bar where he works), and walking around the city a lot. This place is a haven for coffee-lovers and so it was heaven for me.

We left for Canada this morning with trepidation about making it across the border. Plenty of people told us horror stories about border police and questionings and 2 hour waits because of traffic. None of that happened to us. they didn't even ask to see any form of ID. They just asked a few questions, seemed surprised that we were going to show a documentary, and then waved us through. We went to a vegetarian restaurant, listened to French music on the radio, and walked around before ending up in "Jitters" a coffeeshop with free wifi.

Later tonight we will be showing the documentary at BLIM, a diy arts space. It seems like a cool place - they have a room that has a continually rotating display of diaroma art.

Portland and Olympia

2006-03-12T17:44:00.000-08:00

3.12.06
We are in Olympia, Washington, about to do a screening at Evergreen College. The campus is right in the middle of the forest and it is beautiful. It reminds me of the UC-Santa Cruz campus in that way. The Evergreen Infoshop is hosting us here, and we are getting paid $50 which will help us out since the alternator going out in the car cost us $350.00!!!
Here is the room we are showing the doc. in:

Last night we showed the documentary as part of opening night for the Microcosm Publishing Ten Year Anniversary Celebration. It was an honor to be included in the celebration because Microcosm is such a great project/resource for independent publishing. I had helped them set up shows the last couple times they passed through Denver and always really appreciate the different projects they were putting out.

The zine readers for the evening were really great. Cindy Crabb, who does the zine Doris, Dave Roche from the zine “On Subbing,” and Christy Rhoad who has a novel that is being published by Microcosm and coming out this month. They were all amazing readers and I’m glad that we got a chance to see them and to be a part of the same event.

This morning we went out to breakfast with Ayla and her mom at the Vita Café. I got vegan biscuits and gravy and Courtney got vegan French toast and then we shared. It was pretty good, but I like the Paradox better, aesthetically and food-wise.

Here is a picture of a view from portland from the Hawthorne bridge, which I walked across the other day.

We have been staying with our friend Thomas, who used to live in Denver. He's been a great host, who drew the most amazing map of Portland with cool things to do and see.

We left Portland at around noon and got to Olympia really quickly. We are going to stay with Henderson, which will be fun.

a portland fiasco

2006-03-09T23:11:00.000-08:00

after coming home from the screening at Reed College, courtney's car broke down on the highway. we barely managed to pull off on time. luckily some very nice portlanders kept stopping to see if we needed help and someone who looked like alex fountain put some flares on the road.

we called AAA and the towtruck came soon after as we stood in the slushing snowing rain. it is probably the "alternator" but that probably doesn't mean anything to any of you unless you happen to be a mechanic.

we came back to the house and drank some black butte porters and found places to take the car in tomorrow morning.

here are some fun photos of the tow away:

Also, here's a nice picture of my latte from the place by reading frenzy from this morning:

Beautiful Home Spaces...

2006-03-09T10:31:00.001-08:00

There is something about using fabric, string, lace & pieces of paper to build, shape and decorate a living space that makes me feel, physically sometimes, like everything would be fine in the world if I were surrounded by that living space all the time. Yesterday we went over to ayla's, & as it turns out sarah's, house--I think it is called the tart pan. Well, Liz, Thomas & I went over to their house after having some delicious ethiopian food and as we got the tour I was impressed at the soothing greens/yellows of the house but when we went upstairs into sarah's attic room I got that feeling that everything would always be okay up in that attic. She had diligently collected some of the most beautiful patterns, textures and colors of fabric. Pieces of pleasantly colored, shaped & designed paper and packaging were hanging from strings laced across the living space. Keys dangled in singles and bunches in between the paper and fabric. Mirrors reflected a part of the room like a picture frame would. Her bed was surrounded by large billows of fabric that created what seemed like, from across the room, a cavern for sleep. I couldn't stop thinking how I would love to have so many beautiful things surrounding me and brushing my shoulders and face when I walked near them or woke up under them.

A young little lady, lola--i think, came over to their house for dinner later that night and as sarah took her on the tour I anticipated her going upstairs and imagined what her reaction must have been to the attic room. I think she must have thought it was magical. I know I would have at her age or really, did, at my age, as cheesey as that sounds.

Sarah's room reminded me of a home that I was trusted enough to see at one of our stops in the redwoods of N. California. The people that had built the structure or at least maintained it recently had done much the same things to their space as Sarah has done to her attic room. The bed was enclosed by beautiful, warm blankets and lace. Pieces of paper fluttered in the breeze as they hung from twine in between the silver ware and cooking utensils. The windows of the tarp/wood pole structure were graced with long pieces of green sheer and green lace fabric that when you looked through them they only enhanced the view of the trees on the otherside, made them look like a story picture. I just kept telling Luke, like I kept telling Liz after seeing Sarah's room, I want to live in that--I would be so happy living in that. But then I think about how much I'd have to collect, how much I'd have keep around and I threw out so much before we started the tour it would be years before I could assemble anything that meant much to me, a room that wasn't just a reflection of some concertedly thought out and manufactured notion of an identity I wish I had. So...it all goes backt to identity formation, I see. But, maybe it also just goes back to having something beautiful to comfort me and make me feel at home.

Berkeley, CA

2006-03-07T22:26:00.000-08:00

On Sunday March 5, we screened our documentary at the Long Haul Infoshop in Berkeley, as a part of café night. Every Sunday night they have an open café and movie or some other event/entertainment. We got to the infoshop at around 5 and used some leftover food from Food Not Bombs to make dinner. Kait, the woman who we stayed with, did a great job with publicity and about 20 people came to watch.

While the movie played, we went across the street to the Starry Plough, an Irish Pub, and drank a pint while we watched an impromptu Irish pub ensemble play.

After the documentary played, we met some of the interesting people who came. There was a man and a woman who had just gotten back from living in Belgium to get their graduate degrees in anthropology, and they both focused on the importance of place to a certain extent. The guy did a project where he photographed “non-places” like airports and train stations. He looked at the way that interactions are affected by taking place in non-places.

The woman focused on the process of making sustainable agriculture viable and accessible in third world nations and the notion of "development." Here is a pdf link to her thesis: Who is Really Developed:Rethinking Development in a Time of "Ecological Deficit."

We also got to see and talk to Sabin, who works with the activist media project. He told me about a collaborative film project about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that he is trying to get funded. He said that there isn’t much documentation going on, even though you’d think otherwise. He knows a woman who was a middle school teacher in New Orleans. She has managed to keep track of where all of her students were dispersed to. The idea for the documentary would be to use this middle school class as a microcosm, finding where they are, and going to talk to them. I think it seems like a great idea.

We also ran into Hannah who used to live in Denver. We went over to the place where she is living and hung out for a bit and that was nice. She has been working on a documentary about squatting for about a year and a half. It will be great to see what it turns out like.

The place where we stayed with kait is this community house that hippies bought in the 70s. 8 people live there and it's a huge mansion and awesome. Here is a picture of only a small part of their cool garden:

We even got to stay in our own "guest room." Here is a picture of that:

One of the best things about going on this trip is that people we meet everywhere tell us about the amazing projects that they are working on. People are usually more reserved about the projects that they are doing and ideas they’ve been thinking about. I guess that when people see you out there talking about and sharing your own project, they are more inclined to talk about theirs.

Here is a cool sign that i took a picture of outside of the rocks, paper, scissors art collective space that we tried to go to in order to sell shirts. Unfortunately they were closed, but it seemed like an amazing space.

I'm trying to take pictures of old artistic looking signs when i have the chance.

After going to Berkeley, we headed to Arcata for the night. We didn't get to spend much time there, but had a good time having breakfast on the beach this morning:

We also stopped by this amazing old graveyard along the Oregon coast on highway 101.

Here is a tortured poetic photo of me at the graveyard.

i am a person that older men always have something to say to.

2006-03-05T12:03:00.000-08:00

Berkeley, CA
So, lately Liz and I have been on this tour and in the course of going to all these different towns that Liz has been updating you all about I have been preoccupied by the musings of older men. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but really it seems like they always have these lessons to give me or things to shout at me or offers of marriage to propose to me.

The first interaction on tour that made me feel like I must be putting out some "vibe" that makes me seem open to having words of wisdom imparted upon me was in Prescott, AZ. We had a screening at the Catalyst infoshop there and it went really well--people talked, questions were asked and discussed. It was nice. Though there was an older man with long white hair and a big floppy hat that really had things he needed to say to everyone about manifesting reality. He really liked talking about that and channeling. But not only did he need to address the group with this information, he also felt it necessary to sit down with me in the kitchen to tell me about how I just needed to be positive in my thinking and affirm in my actions the happiness that I should always be experiencing in life. Now, I'm all for being positive and finding ways to make "lemonade out of lemons," but, I don't know why he had to talk to me for an hour about it. The way that he postured himself, always making eye contact and standing up for most of the conversation, and how he asserted his perspective as one that I really needed to consider to be a fully developed person made me feel small. I felt like he was trying to be some sooth sayer that I would remember as having changed my life after that interaction--in fact he told me that when he saw me unpacking the car that he felt he needed to give me some perspective. He saw that I was a "purposeful person" that just needed to hear how I could shift my reality and "be more open to happiness." Later on in the conversation he told me that being critical did no good and that one should just affirm the good that people, organizations, communities etc do, instead of critically analyzing what they need to work on. He used Wal-mart as an example and explained to me that they have heart. He explained, they employ people to be greeters that wouldn't otherwise have jobs and also let people camp in their parking lots. Plus, they gave aid first for Katrina victims. I listened quietly to all this and realized that there was no way that he was going to listen to what i had to say--he just wanted me to listen to him. it was frustrating but predictable, all i wanted to say was: i don't think that paying people a low wage because they can't get other jobs for shitty social stigmas/prejudices is selfless, or letting people camp in your parking lots when you don't keep them safe from rapes and assualts happening in the parking lots is selfless, and giving a small amount of aide when you are the richest family in the world doesn't excuse or mediate the harmful and indsidious policies against your workers. But, you know how it goes when an old man is preaching--you just listen and hope they don't ask you anything inappropriate.

The next interaction I had happened just recently in Berkeley while Liz and I were walking down the street. A tall, older beat poet looking man--who may have been reciting a beat poem--yelled at me specifically, "I'm F**king you in the mouth. Your sick. I'm F**king you in your a**hole. Your a**hole is your mouth. I'm f**king you in the mouth." To which I replied "It stinks. Stop. It really stinks," because what else do you do when someone verbally and symbolically assaults you as they walk away down the street. My response made him angry, it seemed, so he kept yelling that he was f**king me, but then said "shut the f**k up you jewish b*tch, I'm still f**king you!" Why he needed to tell me this, I don't know. But it really shook me up after I realized what had happened and stopped laughing about what a jerk he was. Not only did he have to tell me he was raping me, but when I replied without assaulting him he had to then degrade me in racist way to gain more power than he already had in the situation.

Later that day when Liz and I had split up to explore the mission district and surrounding neighborhoods another older man began talking to me at the bus stop on 30th & Mission. I was going to maggie mudd's, a vegan ice cream shop, to get us both a shake and then find a park to sit in and look at the city. I was happy to be in SF and when he approached me to tell me that he thought I was beautiful. I told him about what the other man that day had said--he was apologetic and surprised that the man was white that had talked to me like that. I was surprised that he would assume the man would've been black because he was himself an older black man. We made the mutual decision not to talk about race at that moment and then he asked me if he could kiss me. I told him that he couldn't and that he really shouldn't talk to me like that. He agreed and then told me he would marry me, I told him that I appreciated the kindness but that I didn't agree with marriage. So, he wished me well and I got on the bus.

The interactions were all isolated and I'm sure motivated by different experiences in the men's lives, but they all felt the same to me--violent or not--they had to say something, they wanted somebody to listen and they safely assumed that I was a someone that would. I would wager because i am a young, small, strong woman that they have a physical/vocal advantage over and so they excercise it to put me in my place, whatever that is to them.

South Central Farm got an eviction notice

2006-03-04T18:59:00.000-08:00

So, we got an email from someone who attended the screening in Santa Rosa. Hopefully this won't really happen and the farm will be saved.

An eviction notice was posted on the west gate of the South Central Farm by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department at 2:00pm, yesterday March 1, 2006. According to the notice the 14 acre farm(the largest urban farm in the nation) needs to
be vacated by Monday March 6, 2006. Until the end of that day, it will still be legal for the farmers to remain on the land.

Here is the website to help support the South Central Farm.

San Francisco and Berkeley/Oakland

2006-03-03T10:57:00.000-08:00

We are in a certified green business cafe in Oakland/Berkeley, called the Nomad Cafe. It seems like a really cool place. Plus we get free internet access.

We spent two really nice days in Santa Cruz. It really is one of the most beautifully located towns (beach and redwoods). We also got to hang out at the saturn cafe, a 24-hour vegetarian space-themed diner.

Last night we had a screening at Free Mind Media in Santa Rosa.

It was one of the most aesthetically pleasing infoshops
we've been into, painted really bright orange colors. The screening went pretty well. One of the people at the infoshop commented on how they felt a very specific localized connection to that infoshop as a place for community. It was a big reason why they were able to stay in Santa Rosa and not leave for an urban activist paradise like San Francisco. Whereas most of the people at infoshops in big "happening" cities have said they use their infoshops as places to stay connected with the more generalized infoshop culture across space and time , this person used the infoshop to stay connected with a localized community. I hadn't really heard anyone else articulate that about infoshops so far.

Now we are in Oakland staying with Courtney's friend Kait who is really interested in permaculture activism, which is amazing. She has been working on organizing a big Northern California permaculture convergence which is happening later in the month.

Later tonight we will be screening the documentary at Artist Television Access in San Francisco.
It's located at: 992 Valencia Street(415) 824-3890 and the screening starts at 8pm.

LA's South Central Farm

2006-03-02T10:16:00.000-08:00

Here are some great photos of an amazing project going on in LA.

It is a farm right in the middle of South Central LA, in the warehouse district. It is maintained by mostly South and Central American immigrant families, and they use food from the garden plots to feed themselves.

Unfortunately, the city of LA is considering selling the land to developers to make room for more warehouses. That probably won't happen because there is a lot of support for the farm.

It's the largest urban farm in the U.S. and feeds 350 families in the area.

It was really cool to walk around the perimeter and see all of the things growing. Like bananas. and Cacti.

There was an interesting sign on the inside that said something about the importance of urban farmers naturalizing cities which they don't necessarily have the option of leaving. It was inspiring to see.

interesting e-mail

2006-03-01T23:57:00.000-08:00

So, we got this e-mail about our doc. a few days ago, but we thought we should post it up here because it is ... well, interesting.

Hi,

I just received notice on a local SF Bay Area anarchist email/discussion list of your infoshop movie showing in SF this coming Friday, 3/3. I hope to be able to attend the showing.

I also hope (albeit with some trepidation) that you've tried to create a critical examination of various aspects of the infoshop phenomenon, and that the movie is not mere trendy hype or PC agitprop.

I'm sending a PDF of an article of mine in the current issue of Anarchy magazine that attempts to examine and criticize some of the aspects of in-group dynamics and social and cultural insularity that (despite all tstrident rhetoric to the contrary [that methinks protesteth too much]) have made infoshops (in my experience, observation, and opinion) a venue for niche-marketing a political subculture to the very sorts of elite youth that then turn around and decry their "privilege" (one signifier of the niche-market itself!).

Full disclosure: I've found myself banned from the Long Haul for, among other things, challenging the implicit hierarchy (particularly in disrespecting Jesse Palmer, a corporate lawyer and the de facto leaseholder there) and the highly prescriptive mores and cultural conformity demanded of those frequenting the place. (At times, I've wondered whether the ban, sub rosa, might even have something to do with my challenging the FBI's penetration of a queer youth group in New York when I was an investigative reporter there in the 1980s. Such agencies, after all, have long memories and a long record of "divide and conquer" tactics; furthermore, the Long Haul, after all, must also be recognized for its potential as a safety valve and listening post for the ruling class.)

As for accusations (made by some remaining at the Long Haul) that I'm "disruptive," I'd only refer you (as with many other issues) to the pertinent passages addressing this subject in the attached article. And as for any danger I could be imagined to pose, I can only point out that those making the accusation have yet to find my instruments of mass destruction.

But still, I wish I'd been interviewed for your film -- among others with dissenting or unorthodox views. I suspect there's a reason that in this society, a "TAZ" (unlike infoshops) must be temporary: until humanity evolves a reality beyond the choice between politicized governance and markets, the only alternatives to temporary "zones" or interests arranged to check and-balance each other (as even the authors of "The Federalist" realized) seem to be the mere development of entrenched factional (political or commercial) interests (and the concommitant concentrations of power and mini-fiefdoms) -- ultimately compatible with a pluralism of hierarchies, and contrary to the larger interest of liberation.

Interestingly, the philosophers and theorists you cite on your website are predominantly those of a marxist or third-worldist variety, for whom "anarchism" is merely a means toward the end of mobilizing the "multitude" (seen, as any "multitude" obviously [by its very nature] must be, from above) and enlisting it for the next phase of bourgeois-hypocritical hierarchicalism: highly constricting behavior codes and governance by a pervasive, ostensibly non-statist, non-profit NGO bureaucracy. (What a great way for a ruling class to camouflage itself! I might point out, too, that [whether nominally "for profit" or not] the most successful contemporary NGO format remains that which I believe forms the basis for the tenure of the Long Haul: a corporation.)

I view anarchy, convesely, as the absence of governance; instead of "bottom-up" governance, we need to lose the very notion of "bottom" and "top" in the first place -- and completely. Foucault might not agree that this is possible, but I comment on this in my article, too (and incidentally, at 56, still alive and kicking, I'm every bit as queer [and, I'd argue, at least as aware of contemporary reality] as he was). In his own way (in denying that it's possible to eliminate power relationships) Foucault was resigned to a variety of the notion that "there is no alternative" other than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic...
In any event, I look forward to viewing your contribution to the Spectacle (and lest I seem too snide, I hope you attend one or another stop on my book tour if and when I complete my memoir, currently in progress)... ;-)

-- Mitchell Halberstadt

Prescott, AZ 2.25.06

2006-02-28T18:17:00.000-08:00

an interesting restaurant i noticed while driving through arizona...

Prescott, AZ

Neither of us had ever heard of Prescott, AZ until we attended an intensive short course at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas last May. While there we met some students from Prescott, College who seemed really interesting and were interested in sustainable agriculture. We planned to stop at Prescott College on the tour but lost contact with the person who was setting that up. Instead we wound up talking to Katie who runs The Catalyst Infoshop in Prescott. This infoshop was the most aesthetically pleasing one that we’ve ever seen.

The Catalyst was raided by the FBI a while ago and Katie has been going through some hard times. We were really impressed that she still wanted to help us by setting something up so last minute. She lives at the Catalyst and so we spent the night there. About 15 people showed up, which we were pretty impressed with considering how last minute the promotion was. Five people actually drove all the way up from Tempe/Phoenix (a 2 hour drive). They were interested in coming because they are trying to start an infoshop. We had some interesting conversations with people and called it an early night, before heading to LA the next day after a breakfast of granola.

Albuquerque, NM Feb. 24

2006-02-28T18:08:00.000-08:00

before we left.

Albuquerque, NM – Feb. 24, 2006

We left Denver at 10am on Friday February 24, headed south on I-25 to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Our car was stuffed to the breaking point, and it’s good that none of our friends took us up on the offer to come along because they couldn’t have fit. Our entire trunk was filled with the dvds and tshirts and buttons that we plan to sell on tour.

The day couldn’t have been more perfect for driving. It was beautiful- sunny with bright blue skies. We made our first stop in Raton, NM to try to exchange our laptop adapter at a Radio Shack. Unfortunately they didn’t have the adaptor that we needed so we continued on our drive, eating wasabi peas and peanut butter filled pretzels. We stopped to get gas at Wagon Mound, NM.

wagon mound

We arrived in Albuquerque about 6pm and went to our friend Kris’ mom’s house. Pat was amazingly nice, and one of the calmest people we’ve ever met. She works at a middle school for children who have been institutionalized. She teaches them how to garden, among other things. When we got to the house, she had some homemade soup made of seasonal vegetables heating on the stove. We had dinner and pleasant conversation before we had to leave for our screening at Off Center Arts.

We got there at about 7. Basement Films hosted our event. They were really nice people. They even had some posters made for us on a cool printing machine called a Risograph machine.

Off Center Arts is a community art space for low to no income people. There is also a store that people can sell their work in. The woman, Janis, who runs Off Center Arts was amazing! She did her dissertation on urban home space. She took us on a walking tour of downtown Albuquerque and pointed out some new development and gentrification. She also told us about her critique of new urbanism.

We went back to Off Center Arts when the film was done playing and answered some questions. People brought up some interesting points including the tension between new urbanism and gentrification, and the temporary reclamation of space through alley gardens in Albuquerque.

The next morning we went out for coffee with Sarah and Tyrell from Basement films and had more scintillating conversation about public space, urban planning and driving up the west coast.

A guy who runs a “cult-horror-trash” video store across the street from Off Center Arts came over to the screening to buy three copies of the dvd for his store. We were kind of surprised because Living Room is definitely not of that genre, but flattered nonetheless.

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We also managed to lose our special plastic orange thrift store cups that we got for the tour by leaving them at Off Center Arts. Figures.

Neither of us realized how big Albuquerque was. The sprawl stretched on to infinity. Courtney was impressed by the futuristic looking highway architecture but it mostly terrified me. -liz

Here are some nice pictures of the desert (in either new mexico or arizona).

Los Angeles

2006-02-28T00:38:00.000-08:00

So, we got into LA last night around 6:30. Pictures will be posted tomorrow, as will stories from the first two days on the road (and pictures). We both had stereotypically negative impressions of what LA would be like. I came to LA a couple years ago with a friend during spring break and wasn't at all impressed. I remembered sitting in traffic on the freeway and seeing nothing but a sea of cars and smog as the sun set. I thought of urban sprawl, pollution, concrete- basically a dirty city with no redeeming qualities. In the 36 hours I've spent here so far, I've come to see the city much differently.

I think that most of the images of LA I had in my head do not stem from any real experiences I've had here or even that people I know have had. I'm thinking of the rich white LA that drives everywhere all the time, is shallow, appearance-obsessed, and completely disneyfied but in a post-apocalyptic kind of way. LA is interesting. It seems real. It is maybe the most urban place I've ever been. There are tons of people walking everywhere. The buses are full. There seem to be a lot of interesting cultural/artistic and political happenings. I've been surprised at how GREEN the city is. Things are growing everywhere. It makes sense considering the geographical location of the city, but I just never expected people to have gardens here. I certainly didn't know that LA has the biggest urban farm in the US. (more about that to come when I upload photos from today). I also never realized how many factories are here. I saw the American Apparel factory today, where my wholesale shirts for screenprinting come from. Things in this city look old and worn, run down. Marc called it "shoddy." I think it looks real.

I've also met some amazing, fascinating and genuinely Nice people.

We are staying with Robby and Kimberly who both work on the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. Robby's brother Marc, is the one who actually set up the screening for us. The Journal is really cool and I recommend checking it out. Lots of cool articles.

During our tour we are helping them with their project, the Red State's Journal.

Here is a description: We have sent out several diaries to act as chain-letters to documents the lives and communities of creative folks and activists to share their thoughts, ideas, reflections about the notion of living on the conservative side of the "Divided States of America.

We intend to publish the Red State Journals in an editioned artbook. We will also display them on-line and as a part of an exhibition.

Marc had planned for us to show the doc. at this place called Beta Level (formerly C level) in China town. It's in an alley in a basement. The only signifier that it's even there is a red (unmarked, unnumbered) door. There was a torrential downpour all day today. We got trapped on Sunset Boulevard in the rain and mostly hung out at the Down Beat Cafe (my new home in LA). Ava (a cool radical urban planner at UCLA) met us there and we talked for a while. We drove in the rain to China Town after that and the traffic was a nightmare (AKA normal). Ava co-edited this really cool book about public spaces. The Pdg files are online so check them out.

We got there and waited for a bit but no one came to the screening. Marc had tried to set the whole thing up in the matter of a couple of days and I'm sure the torrential rain didn't encourage people to come out. So instead of showing the dvd we sat around talking theory and sipping tequila. It was a nice night overall. Tomorrow we head for Santa Cruz.

An introduction

2006-02-26T23:49:00.000-08:00

I'm creating this blog in order to document a three-month, 50 city documentary tour of "Living Room: Space and Place in Infoshop Culture." Courtney and I made this documentary as a final project while getting our BAs at the University of Colorado at Denver. We travelled to six cities interviewing people at infoshops during the summer of 2004. Our project examines the relevance of access to public space and the creation of meaningful interactions and political/social movements. After finishing school last May, we decided that we wanted to continue our research on the importance of place to some extent - and at the least create opportunities to meet interesting people doing interesting projects.

The idea of taking the documentary back to the places where we had interviewed people came up. Soon we had decided that we wanted to leave Denver and experience all kinds of new places, people, events, and moments. Somehow Canada got thrown in there. So we spend the past few months contacting infoshops, community art spaces, micro-cinemas, and universities, setting up video screenings across the U.S. and Canada. And here we are now, at the beginning of our trip.

We have decided to thoroughly document our travels across the country, through photos and writing. Please contact us if you are interested in anything that comes up on this blog.

p.s. We meant to launch this blog before we hit the road, but we ran out of time and are now starting it our third day into the tour, February 26, 2006. Our experiences of the first two days will be posted next when we get access to the computer they are stored on.