Syracuse, New York

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.