gordonzola (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gordonzola) wrote2004-01-27 08:41 am
gordonzola) wrote2004-01-27 08:41 am
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My walk to work (part 1)
In a post that should have been copied by more people, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
anarqueso detailed her walk to work. I started working on my version almost immediately but got caught up and distracted by one of my favorite urban pastimes, using the strorefronts and streets as a way of remebering the history of unimportant things. Well, unimportant when taken individually, but taken as a whole, the type of things that present a view of times that pass frightenly quickly in an easily gentrifiable city going through an economic boom.
A friend once described me as the most nostalgic person she knew, but acknowledged that I can get just as easily nostalgic for last week as for last decade. In a city like this, where knowing what store occupied a building five years ago makes people treat you like an old-timer, writing down my own unimportant memories feels like something I need to do. It doesn’t really matter that few people remember what I remember, and that no one will have the exact same triggers.
But I guess that’s what makes me nostalgic person, eh?
I’ve written a lot about 13th St. so I decided to detail my walk down 14th for a little change of pace.
My most hated new urban architectural features are the anti-pigeon spikes. Slowly most of the houses near mine have started installing these anti-avian lines of razor-sharp knitting needles on all their moldings and below their windows.. They stick straight up and make every home look like a military institution or like it’s filled with valuables to protect.
And that’s the thing. While I know they’re sold in order to keep bird shit and pigeon lice from ruining people’s homes and investments, they almost certainly have a dual purpose. Instead of putting bars up which block the occupant’s view, installing these thin spikes prevents break-ins and only pedestrians and neighbors have to see them. Well, until all one’s neighbors install them too. In the old days, and there are some holdovers, people used to just make their own irregular, but functional, versions with nails. The traditional nail method gets all rusty too, adding possible tetnus to the is-it-worth-it factor for a would-be burglar. The new mass-produced spikes have been going up so fast that the first thing I look for when I leave the house is any new converts.
At the end of my block, there’s a large apartment building that is sinking. The pigeon spikes glisten off the sun, when it’s sunny, and make the lack of level lines even more apparent. The shining metal make the moldings look like mini roller coasters. It’s the kind of house you look at and think, "Well, that’s going down in the next earthquake. Glad I don’t live there."
The union hall at the end of my street is a strange place. It’s the most conservative union in the city and I keep running into people I knew in high school there. One I worked with at the photo lab while he was trying to make it as a male model and had the hokiest stage name ever. At first it was just "Tor" but when people always laughed at his one-name, craggy rock pretentiousness, he started using his real first name with it. Paul Tor, Male model. He did get some gigs and was used a couple of times as the basis for illustrations in some old-west romance novels. He nearly got fired when he told a customer to fuck off when she called to make sure our free-photo, x-mas Santa wasn’t Black.
Another union member and ex-classmate was one of the CMP* skate punk clique. They were all working class kids who grew up together rightfully resentful amidst the wealth of our county. One year, someone’s cousin visited from England and over the Summer they all became Mods instead of skaters. This ended, and I may have written about this before, when a bunch of them saved up their money to go to England. They got really drunk and when the pubs closed they started singing, "We are the Mods, We are the Mods …"** really loud until they were set upon by real Mods who kicked the crap out of them. The next fall they were punks again.
Every weekend the same street vendor has been having an open air junk sale on the benches in front of the hall. The merchandise doesn’t change much. So I sometimes wonder how profitable it is for him. Mostly he sells bad artwork thrown out by thrift stores and books and clothes that were left on the street. But people are always there haggling. And since the cops started rousting everyone of Church St., it’s the only regular street sale around these days.
(To be continued, I haven’t even gone a block yet.)
*Corte Madera Punks! Isn’t that intimidating?
**You know, like in "Quadrephenia".
anarqueso detailed her walk to work. I started working on my version almost immediately but got caught up and distracted by one of my favorite urban pastimes, using the strorefronts and streets as a way of remebering the history of unimportant things. Well, unimportant when taken individually, but taken as a whole, the type of things that present a view of times that pass frightenly quickly in an easily gentrifiable city going through an economic boom. A friend once described me as the most nostalgic person she knew, but acknowledged that I can get just as easily nostalgic for last week as for last decade. In a city like this, where knowing what store occupied a building five years ago makes people treat you like an old-timer, writing down my own unimportant memories feels like something I need to do. It doesn’t really matter that few people remember what I remember, and that no one will have the exact same triggers.
But I guess that’s what makes me nostalgic person, eh?
I’ve written a lot about 13th St. so I decided to detail my walk down 14th for a little change of pace.
My most hated new urban architectural features are the anti-pigeon spikes. Slowly most of the houses near mine have started installing these anti-avian lines of razor-sharp knitting needles on all their moldings and below their windows.. They stick straight up and make every home look like a military institution or like it’s filled with valuables to protect.
And that’s the thing. While I know they’re sold in order to keep bird shit and pigeon lice from ruining people’s homes and investments, they almost certainly have a dual purpose. Instead of putting bars up which block the occupant’s view, installing these thin spikes prevents break-ins and only pedestrians and neighbors have to see them. Well, until all one’s neighbors install them too. In the old days, and there are some holdovers, people used to just make their own irregular, but functional, versions with nails. The traditional nail method gets all rusty too, adding possible tetnus to the is-it-worth-it factor for a would-be burglar. The new mass-produced spikes have been going up so fast that the first thing I look for when I leave the house is any new converts.
At the end of my block, there’s a large apartment building that is sinking. The pigeon spikes glisten off the sun, when it’s sunny, and make the lack of level lines even more apparent. The shining metal make the moldings look like mini roller coasters. It’s the kind of house you look at and think, "Well, that’s going down in the next earthquake. Glad I don’t live there."
The union hall at the end of my street is a strange place. It’s the most conservative union in the city and I keep running into people I knew in high school there. One I worked with at the photo lab while he was trying to make it as a male model and had the hokiest stage name ever. At first it was just "Tor" but when people always laughed at his one-name, craggy rock pretentiousness, he started using his real first name with it. Paul Tor, Male model. He did get some gigs and was used a couple of times as the basis for illustrations in some old-west romance novels. He nearly got fired when he told a customer to fuck off when she called to make sure our free-photo, x-mas Santa wasn’t Black.
Another union member and ex-classmate was one of the CMP* skate punk clique. They were all working class kids who grew up together rightfully resentful amidst the wealth of our county. One year, someone’s cousin visited from England and over the Summer they all became Mods instead of skaters. This ended, and I may have written about this before, when a bunch of them saved up their money to go to England. They got really drunk and when the pubs closed they started singing, "We are the Mods, We are the Mods …"** really loud until they were set upon by real Mods who kicked the crap out of them. The next fall they were punks again.
Every weekend the same street vendor has been having an open air junk sale on the benches in front of the hall. The merchandise doesn’t change much. So I sometimes wonder how profitable it is for him. Mostly he sells bad artwork thrown out by thrift stores and books and clothes that were left on the street. But people are always there haggling. And since the cops started rousting everyone of Church St., it’s the only regular street sale around these days.
(To be continued, I haven’t even gone a block yet.)
*Corte Madera Punks! Isn’t that intimidating?
**You know, like in "Quadrephenia".