Tell me this doesn’t look like the ideal place for a rainy-day #Buzzcation…
(and before you ask, no 10am is NOT too early to be thinking/talking about a #Buzzcation)
Found this on INHABITAT, so show them so love if you dig this as much as I do.
Supposedly, a team of Rotterdamn architects built the bar from visitor’s umbrellas…. it looks like a full-out umbrella party ensued, ’cause the cops had to break up the 300-strong party at 2am. The whole thing was a celebration of the Architecture of Consequence exhibition at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi).
Hmmm…. what would a Phoenix version of this sort of thing be? A gazebo made from ceiling fans? That could actually be kind of fun.
I’ve recently had a few conversations about RSS feeds, how many blogs is a standard number to subscribe to, self-promotion overkill and 1 really gigantic “subscribe to me” button.
So this morning, as I was thinking of what to read, and absent mindedly scrolling through my reader, I pondered, what does this list say about me.
Does someone’s blog reader hold the same window into their mind as their Bookshelf does? How about their cd/dvd collections?
Well, let’s take a look at how I spend my blog-reading time:
Having made that list, one thought is to summarize me as someone who’s “nerdy”, “environmentalist”, and into gaming, reading, and blogging. And clearly I’m interested in the view points of people who live near me. And you wouldn’t be wrong.
But then I looked at the categories that only had 1 blog, and those are honestly the ones where I find the most stimulating content, and/or have followed for the longest time. Perhaps I only follow 1 blog in that genre because the 1 I follow does it well and there’s no need for more….
Below is a picture of a Mighty Mugg figure I saw on Agent M’s blog.
Aside from the fact that Agent M might have the coolest job in the world, and therefore everything he mentions takes on a nerdy-Bondsian cool-factor, this dude pictured looks like something I’d want to have on my desk.
Oh wait. I do have him on my desk
(just not the same one)
I remember when I bought this dude, Anie looked at me very puzzled, and asked why I was buying it. The simple fact was I wanted to own a Wolverine figure, and the price of $10 was no deterrence.
Then I realized that what she was talking about was really, “why would you buy a random thing like that to put on your desk at work”.
I still haven’t worked out a good answer, but everyone who’s seen it seems to like it, too.
It does puzzle me why, for a pseudo-minimalist, I like to have random thing around. Perhaps my dark-side is a secret horder.
Nah, that can’t be it.
Maybe it’s because I couldn’t get this stuff when I was a kid, so now I buy it for myself?
That’s probably closer to home, but in truth, I had all the ninja turtles I wanted as a kid, just far less than the kids down the block.
Maybe it’s something totemic, like the Wolverine on my desk is a modern version of the idols we learned about in Art History class. Instead of fertility, I’m seeking to channel virility and latent aggression?
How about you? Do you have anything on your desk (at home or at work) that really doesn’t belong there but you always want to keep it around?
That’s why I found this picture and scheduled it for a totally random day in the future*.
*future being a relative term as this is no longer “the future” to you, it is most likely “the present” and very soon “the past” and hopefully someday the “remember that one time when Ryan posted something REALLY funny” and hopefull never (::fingers crossed::) the “that’s the last time I read this shit”. Either way, I found this pic on 1/4/10.
** the date wasn’t really random. I decided to pick a day that added up to 42.
I do. I love living in the city. Not only because it fits my lifestyle, but because I love the promise of it.
Urban areas are traditionally the cradles of great ideas. Think of Socrates, Cyrus, Solomon, Alexander, Magellan, Edison; democracy, art, opera, literature; all ideas born in cities, because cities allow us to know our fellow man in ways that yards & freeways & Cost Co’s don’t.
This got me thinking if there was an easier way to express my love of city life.
I hear people use the word “Urbanist” more and more lately, (or perhaps I’m just tuned into those types of channels more and more…) and I wondered if it’s a term that would apply to me.
So I Googled it. But I had difficulty finding a clear definition. I also learned that apparently there is some disagreement between “urbanism” and “new urbanism”. Hmmm, well here’s the most well-written thing I could find. Wikipedia (pfft, great source, right?) defines New Urbanism as;
“an urban design movement, which promotes walkable neighborhoods that contain a range of housing and job types.”
Well that seems easy enough. I love walkable neighborhoods, though my idea of walkable is probably a little more aggressive than most peoples. Walkable for me just means “has flat-ish areas” and “hopefully few hobos and/or feral animals”.
Then I read a quote from the Congress for the New Urbanism:
We advocate the restructuring of public policy and development practices to support the following principles: neighborhoods should be diverse in use and population; communities should be designed for the pedestrian and transit as well as the car; cities and towns should be shaped by physically defined and universally accessible public spaces and community institutions; urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology, and building practice.
So what do we have here?
Neighorhoods? Great
Accessibility? Indeed!
Diversity? Always good.
Public Policy? Can always use help.
Pedestrian and Transit? I’ve BEEN on-board with that for decades.
Alright, so this sounds like an agenda to get with.
As you know from my previous post about freeways, urban sprawl is something I definitely cannot get with. In truth, even when I lived miles away from my job and school, I still took public transit, and as opportunity presented itself, I moved closer and closer to the core. Now I live 1.5 miles from my office, right next to a light rail stop, and withing walking distance of parks, museums, great restaurants, pubs, a farmer’s market, the full gamut of culture in Phoenix, AND my favorite coffee shop. I don’t see how a car would improve my life.
We really COULD improve my life, and the lives of thousands of people around me, is a good healthy dose of Urban ReUse.
I don’t say Urban Renewal, because Roosevelt Row and many parts of Downtown Phoenix are already vibrant and thriving in their own way, so I don’t want to solicit the type of “renewal” typically thought of.
No, what I would like to see is more redesign and reuse of existing structures, filling in the empty store fronts and repopulating the vacant lots that leave gaps in our neighborhood picture. Just like an MRI, you can have 90% healthy areas, but if you have 10% missing, then you’ve got a problem.
So I was decently intrigued to see this post by fellow #30DayBC participant (and RDJ doppleganger) Tony A. I’m interested to see how his series turns out, and perhaps add a few spots to the list.
(Ironically, for 5-years I used to live next-door to the first place he mentioned, and didn’t know that it had since turned into a vacant shell.)
So, in closing, give cities a boost, for all they’ve done for you.
