“Now that the war is nearly won, I’m thinking I should buy a car. I figure it’s my patriotic duty to burn my share of the fossil we’ve just liberated in Iraq. Then I think, if I really wanted to own a car and shop at Ikea, I could just live in Elizabeth.” TONY
Also: “The modern city is the most unlovely and artificial sight this planet affords. The ultimate solution is to abandon it. We shall solve the city problem by leaving the city.” Henry Ford
25 April 2003
The renovation of the North Avenue Baths really is quite nice, but not all historic buildings have a ready market of $2,000-a-month rentals and James Beard Foundation-honored restaurants, or zoning that wouldn’t allow more floor area (and thus makes a teardown silly).
24 April 2003
More ZTEC press in the Reader: [photo of me!] [article text coming soon]
23 April 2003
“Neighborhood collective efficacy,” or social capital, doesn’t just make for friendlier, more sustainable places, but also stops juvenile delinquency.
“More distressing even than the president’s lies, though, is the public’s apparent passivity. Bush just seems to get away with it. The post-September 11 effect and the Iraq war distract attention, but there’s more to it. Are we finally paying the price for three decades of steadily eroding democracy?” TAP
22 April 2003
Aerial photographer Alex MacLean has an almost definitive answer to the eternal question: what does density look like? Well, here’s low and here’s high.
21 April 2003
“Like ugly clothes and extreme sports, Pabst [Blue Ribbon]’s value lies in its expression of individuality and choice, a rejection of consumer society by those who feel manipulated by it… While most young consumers buy clothes and cars to make themselves seem as affluent and desirable as possible, the materialism of many of today’s counterculture youth is just the opposite. It is meant to reflect the economics of “reality,” of working-class thriftiness, of the notion of America at its best, at its most optimistic, at its blue-collar prime. Of course, this is not America. This is Americana — and an appetite for what was good when things are going bad.” As poetic a description of hipsters’ attempts to overcome pomo ennui with false nostalgia as any, from the Washington Post.
20 April 2003
Perhaps hope does spring eternal: “That grown men and women can make a living pondering such matters [in this case, topology] is a sign that civilization, as fragile as it may sometimes seem, remains intact.” NYT
19 April 2003
Silence = Death, part 2.
18 April 2003
the zoning work I’ve been up to lately has borne media fruit, even if Fran Spielman misspelled my name.
17 April 2003
“Naked” motorcycles are just the latest attempt by Americans to search out authentic, unmediated experiences within the consumerist system. Of course, it’s bound to fail in the long run since mass production will necessarily cheapen the authenticity, but at least we might have had fun trying before moving on to the next fad. Right?
16 April 2003
Stealing by the stolen from is okay, unless perhaps corporations are doing the stealing.
west north 
