As part of my summer internship with TransForm, a transportation advocacy group in Oakland, CA, I'm going to be experimenting a lot with the possibilities of using social networking sites for community organization. It's an interesting project, and one that I feel a lot of people are talking about, but no one has really completely figured out. The first project is actually a part of a larger fund-raising event that we're throwing called the Car-Free Challenge. It's sort of a reverse walk-a-thon. Instead of raising money based on how much you walk, you raise it based on how little you drive. We've got well over a hundred people participating, and one of the main things I'm doing is encouraging them to blog. The following is one of my own posts about the first day of the challenge.

originally uploaded by Professor Bop.

Day One: 984 Miles Car Free

I usually tell people that I try to avoid flying for the same reason I try to avoid driving. A) It’s bad for the environment and B) It stresses me out. For me, June 1st happened to fall on the last day of my vacation. I’d spent the previous two weeks in Minneapolis (visiting family) and Chicago (visiting friends) and was traveling back to Boston on Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited.

A few years ago, I had used one of those internet emissions calculators to find out how I compared to the average. OK. Let’s be honest. As someone who’s been car-free for a long time and lives in an apartment building in a downtown neighborhood, I was looking to confirm how awesome I am. However, I found that, due to the amount of flying that my partner and I do (she’s an anthropologist and we tend to travel to Asia more often then most), we had the emissions of a family of four in the suburbs. My first thought was, of course, to pay for carbon offsets. But when it comes to making a decision between paying some money and changing my behavior, I usually lean towards changing my behavior. It makes me more comfortable. Obviously, there are very few ways to get to Asia from the US, but I did decide to try out Amtrak for as much of my domestic travel as I could.

Since then, I’ve traveled by rail as far as Boston to Santa Fe… and I’ve loved it. One of my favorite things about traveling across the country by rail is the view of America it gives you. Traveling by interstate, the country is remarkably uniform. You see the same highways, the same gas stations, the same cars and the same subdivisions all over the country. The rail lines tend to go through back areas, far off the beaten path. You get an amazing view of America before the interstate system. Mostly though, unlike flying, which is just transportation, taking the train really becomes part of the trip. We pack enough food, wine and games and just sit back to enjoy the ride…

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Now that studio is finished for the year and I'm wrapping up my writing projects for my other classes, I'm gearing up for hitting the rails for a few weeks at the end of May.



We'll be in MPLS from May 16th through the 27th and Chicago from the 28th to the 31st. Drop a line if you will be too.

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NOLA Spring Break

I just uploaded pictures from spring break in New Orleans to Flickr.

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I finally got pictures uploaded to Flickr for Mexico City:



and Teotihuacán:

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The Late, Late Travel Blog

So… not as good about blogging on the trip as I was hoping to be. Usually when we travel, we stay in hostels, which usually have free wireless. On this trip, I had pricelined a few nicer hotels, which all, without exception, make you pay for internet. Lame. Anyway. Here’s the condensed version:

A. Amtrak was amazing. If the train doesn’t go there, neither do I from now on. Considering how crappy the whole experience of flying has become, I’m surprised that everyone hasn’t figured the train out yet. The seats on the long distance trains give you slightly more space then first class on a good Asian airline, meaning with the seat reclined I could put my feet straight out. However, except for sleeping, we usually spent most of our time in the observation car watching movies, playing cards and drinking wine. People watching was also pretty cool. An interesting combination of people take trains. There are the old train nerds, a healthy smattering of the Amish, a few crazies (and by the way, do the old men who like to tell people about Jesus really think that we don’t notice that the only people they want to tell about Jesus are girls in their late teens? Be creepier.) and a lot of people with small kids, which makes a lot of sense to me. Why stuff poor children in a car or a plane for that long when they can be up playing and making friends.

Part of what was so interesting for me, though, was getting a new perspective on the US. Whenever I’ve taken long road trips, I’ve always been struck by how homogenous the US can be. Every interstate and strip mall looks a lot alike. Well, it turns out that the interstate itself must be the homogenizing influence. On the train, you almost never see a car and most of the small towns that you pass through are way off the interstate. So you see a lot of cool stuff, from elk grazing in southeast Colorado to tiny farms in the Appalachians to a small town in southern Iowa where rowhouses seemed to be the dominant building type (rowhouses west of the Mississippi!)

So, yes. We shall be using Amtrak again. In fact we’re floating the idea of Christmas in New Orleans. Plus the Crescent (the train we’d take) passes through every state east of the Mississippi that I haven’t visited before.



B. It’s been almost 5 years since we had been to Chicago, so it was nice to see that we still love it. Chicago was one of the first places where I really began thinking about urban life as a kid and it’ll always have a place in my heart for that.

Ben and John showed us an awesome time, featuring rooftop 4th of July parties with 360 degree fireworks shows and some Southside brunch and White Sox fun.

I also really enjoyed Millennium Park, which had opened since my last trip. I have to admit, I’m a little skeptical about corporate funding for public place and about over programitization of urban space, but I was pretty well convinced that that’s a really successful place. I could go on, but I think I may write more on the topic later, so I’ll save it.



C. New Mexico was a very interesting place, and very much not what I expected. Despite the fact that about half the population of the state is Latino/a (more in the cities) and the food and architecture was very Mexican influenced, you really didn’t get the feeling you were in a Latin American place. In fact, if anything Santa Fe was the largest colony of pretentious-middle-aged-art-collecting white women that I’ve ever seen. Albuquerque was a little better, but I still felt like I hear and speak Spanish more often in Boston then there. The main annoyance to me was how much Indian and Spanish history was white washed and the conquest treated like it was mere act of transfer. Kind of an “oh well, they just had to send their taxes to DC instead of the DF, no one really cared,” which I just don’t buy.

So yeah, Sante Fe was small, but we did see some cool art (both high and folk, whatever that means) and J’s friend Megan from Viet Nam, which was great. Los Alamos was the creepiest place ever. ABQ was pretty nice for as small a city as it was, but I think we managed so see pretty much everything of interest in about a day and a half. The Albuquerque Isotopes have one of the nicest minor league stadiums that I’ve ever been too, and we had a great baseball experience, although there are no buses running on Sunday nights and finding cabs wasn’t working out, so we ended up walking about 3 miles in the middle of the night to get home. Visiting Taos Pueblo was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. I’ve wanted to go there for a long time. I was very struck by how much the Pueblo Indians have influenced American architecture. Here’s a few pictures to prove it:

Taos Pueblo:


Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright


Habitat ’67 by Moshie Safdie

I could go on...

So that was our trip in short form. I put some more pictures on Facebook. (I didn’t put up pictures of Taos because I only got a permit for personal use. Ask me if you’d like to see them).

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Only 36 hours left until we board Amtrak for our cross-country vacation sojourn, first via the Capital Limited to Chicago for the weekend and then the Southwest Chief to Santa Fe. Although we do get away to the other big cities of the Northeast like New York and Montréal pretty often, we usually only go for a short weekend. This is the first long trip we've taken in several years. I am, accordingly, pretty excited.

Cloud Gate III, originally uploaded by Craig S.

Before we even decided where we were going, we decided to make the trip by train. We are both rail fans, and the idea of making a trip across country seemed like both an interesting experience as well as more in-line with some of our core values relating to transportation. We wanted to see what travel is like in a much slower, but much more sustainable trip. Chicago was a natural jumping off point, as most of the countries rail lines pass through, and both of us like the city and wanted to spend some time there anyways.

2008-06-13 Architecture Santa Fe New Mexico 0051, originally uploaded by radzfoto.

My interest in New Mexico comes largely through my interest in general in Stateless Nations. Although, taken as a whole, the settling of the United States was, of course, a colonial act, there are only really a few places in the country where the populations of people living there were great enough for them to remain a force in intervening years; Hawai'i, Alaska and Nuevo México being the most apparent three (and not accidentally, the last three states admitted to the US). Even today, the state is roughly 45% Spanish-speaking, 45% Anglo and 10% Indian. I find this intersection of varying populations extremely interesting, especially as, like Québec, the state can be said to function both as a sort of internal colony, but also enjoying all of the powers and freedoms that any other state would have. Of course, my main interest is to see how this is inscribed in physical space.

I hope to blog relatively frequently and (though to be honest I haven't been feeling the photobug lately) to have pictures uploaded as we go.

Now let's just hope that the rain in the midwest stays down long enough for the train to get through Iowa and Missouri.

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J and I are just back from TO.

We really liked it there... but then we stopped in Montréal for a day on our way back, so now I'm basically forcing myself to go back and justify why I liked it.

So, here are things I really liked about Toronto:

1. Streetcars. I really like subways, but having quiet, roomy streetcars running above ground is really awesome. I love being able to watch the city go by.

2. People. TO is all about the hipster (in a good way). People seem very political and activism driven. Just in the days we were there, there were protests for Native Treaty Rights and for a "don't ask, don't tell" policy in housing illegal immigrants. The demographics were really interesting. It seemed to be about 50% Asian.

3. Food.

4. Neighborhoods. TO has a lot of great neighborhoods. The Annex was very cool. Kensington Market was unlike anything I've ever seen in the first world (it reminded me a little of the neighborhoods in Berlin that had been taken over by Anarchists. The Islands were also really cool.

Anyways. In a lot of ways it reminded my of a really nice Minneapolis. You get a major sense that the whole city is in a major state of change right now. It'd be an interesting place to live.











We also stopped at Niagara:



And in Montréal:





And J got her nose pierced!

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Advertising a la Montreal

I commented in my last post that the tourist agency for Montreal had put up a billboard outside my window last week. It turns out that that was just the tip of the iceberg. Walking around the city last weekend, I found myself overwhelmed by advertising for Montreal. They actually have street teams out talking to people (and by the accents, I would say they were probably actually Quebecois). There is a little movie theater set up at Feneuil Hall (I would have taken pictures, but the camera is with J in Thailand) and one of the street walker guys had a cool backpack thing that supported a flat screen TV over his head. All around this seems like a huge investment from Montreal's tourism board.

This isn't the first advertising campaign that I've seen in the city for another city. Philadelphia and Quebec both have adds sometimes and Berlin did for a summer too (which I think is because Boston buys its street furniture from a Berliner company, Wall), but this is by far the most intense campaign I've seen. It's really got me thinking about the nature of tourism today.

I guess it's no surprise that urban space is being commoditized (that's what Disneyland is, isn't it?), but it seems like it's reaching new levels. It's almost like cities are being repackaged as baseball cards. You're given a quick and easy view of what's different about that particular one and then you can move on a collect the rest (I know I'm guilty of that). Why else would things like this exist:


create your own visited countries map

I'm not really sure where I'm going with all this, but it really does raise some questions for me. First of all, is this kind of advertising really good for a city? It's marketing something that is created by a huge group of people (all of the citizens of the city) but obviously the most tangible benefits only accrue to a small group. How can the city even gauge what kind of an effect this advertising has? And lastly, I can understand why a city like Philly, which has had some tough years, might need to advertise (by the way, Philly's "City of Brotherly Love" adds in gay neighborhoods around the country were pure genius), but why do cities like Berlin and Montreal, who have been at the top of the quality of life reports for years, have fairly strong economies and well-known cultural contributions need to do this kind of advertising?

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Having missed posting for so long, I'm now in the awkward position of having too many things to say. What that means to you, the reader, is that I am going to say to much. You will read the first paragraph or two get bored and stop. Next time you see me, you will ask me about something that I wrote here, and I will look at you confused, since you should have already read it here. Or you will read the whole thing, so as not to antagonize me now that I have warned you. Which puts the pressure back on me (I said I had things to say... not that they are interesting). Also, I've been reading Haruki Murakami lately. If you read him too you'll probably have more idea what I'm talking about. Especially if you like metaphysical sheep.

I digress. The most important news is that J graduated:

She made it through with a 4.0 and got first in her class (Northeastern calls them Class Marshalls). Her parents and brother were out and a good time was had by all.

We took of the next day for a few days in NYC with her parents, who had never been there before.

Followed by a few days in Philly, just the two of us.

More on that later...

During the time away, i was still finishing up the semester. I just finished the last of my thesis on Monday. I'm so tired of thinking about Montreal... hence all of the novel reading that's been going on the last week. I'm really liking both Murakami and Jonathan Lethem. I'm reading The Fortress of Solitude right now. It's about growing up in Brooklyn, but it really reminds me of growing up on my block in South Minneapolis (yes, I realize that mpls is a poor excuse for a real city). The way the kids roam the streets and have a world that the grownups don't really see resonates my childhood. In his world it's all out on the street, in mine it was up and down the alley, but still. There was just a section where the main guy got his bike stolen. I felt some pain for my awesome red bike that disappeared. sigh. (As an aside, the day I finished my paper on Montreal, Tourism Montreal put up a giant billboard directly outside of my kitchen window.)

On Sunday, J flew off to Thailand to work with an NGO for a month (after which she'll be visiting "family" in Ho Chi Minh City for a couple of weeks). She promised to resurrect her blog, so look out for that. I've talked to her once since she got there. So far she's lived through a small earthquake (which she said was probably God's wrath upon the earth for allowing Jerry Falwell to die, which is impeccable logic that the would have done the old man proud).

So, back to Philadelphia. What a cool city. As one of my friends at work said, it's like something halfway between Boston and New York. It's got the oldness and the row houses of Boston but the big city feel and ghettoness of New York (or at least that I'm told NY used to have before Giuliani had all the poor people sent to Siberia or whatever the hell he did with them). I really like a city that has a little bit of edge. Both Boston and New York are a little too clean. I like having some great graffiti and street art around:

Yeah, I gots work ethic too, boy.
There was also a dude who did these incredible mural things all over the place. This is his "garden":

And here's a couple of his buildings:

No way you'd see that in Boston. Menino would have it re-facaded with red brick before you could say wicked.

We went to a Phillies - Cubs game, which was awesome. Great stadium. Ryan, don't worry about those wide concourses. If they do it right it'll be great. At Citizen's Bank Park, everything was just kind of open, so you could get your Hot Dog (or Cheesesteak) and still watch the game. And if you felt like it, you could stand there with your beer and watch from wherever you feel like. Also, the Fanatic could beat TC to a bloody pulp.

Also on the enjoyable list: The Institute of Contemporary Art at UPenn with J's friend Nicole and the crazy security guard lady. Oh, oh, and cell phone audio tours!!! What a great idea. And so democratic. And the theater where we saw Lookinglass Alice.

Horrible transit though. It's not good when your subway is creepier in the daytime then the streets are at night.

Anyways, I'm rambling, and no one really cares.

Last thing, I promise. I ran into James Howard Kunstler at work yesterday. He wroteGeography of Nowhere and The Long Emergency both of which I highly recommend. What an interesting guy. He said he's now writing a dystopian novel about the post-oil world.

Well, that's it. Congratulations for those who made it.

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So, here's a question... is it possible to get yourself into Wikipedia?

Anyway. J and I got to go see Glenn Murcutt last night at MIT. He's an Australian architect that won the Pritzker Prize a couple years back. He does pretty amazing stuff with natural ventilation and renewable resourses and sustainable building practices and so on. It was a pretty interesting lecture, although the combo of the Australian accent and trying to get through 6 projects in an hour made it a little difficult to follow. I wish I could throw some photos up, but my flickr doesn't seem to be working.

J and I finally got all of our travel arrangments worked out following her upcoming graduation. We will for sure be in NY from 6-9 May and Philadelphia from 9-12 May (Phillies/Cubs, yeah!) if anyone wants to get together. J leaves for Thailand on the 13th. She'll be in Vietnam and Myanmar for sure too and might throw in a side trip to KL or Singapore. I think I may also be in Mpls for a weekend in June for my brothers graduation.

And speaking of Phillies/Cubs: One of J's professors, Alan Klein, does research on the anthropology of baseball. I just read his book Growing the Game, which is about Baseball and globalization. It was really interesting. I'd highly recomend it for all the baseballers out there. He's also got a book on Baseball in the Dominican Republic and one on a team that plays in both Loredo and Nuevo Loredo that I'm planning on picking up.

Just three more weeks/two papers/one building away from the end of the semester!

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One would think the semester should be winding down, but it seems like I've still got a ton of stuff due. I just spent all morning working on this project for my architecture class:

now I've got to build that out of wood. Not that I don't love doing that, but it's still going to be time consuming.

On top of all that, I'm starting to look seriously at which grad schools I'm going to apply to. Right now, I think it's going to be CCNY, Pratt Institute, Columbia, McGill, U of Toronto, University of British Columbia, MIT and Harvard Design. I'm still considering throwing UCLA in there (I'm not really excited about living in LA, but they've got a great program). I'm really looking for somewhere that is really strong in design. If anyone out there has any other suggestions I should look out for, please comment. J has pretty much decided that she's going to work for a few years instead of applying right away, so I'll really get to concentrate on school for my masters.

Anyway. J is graduating in a little over a month! I think she's only got three more weeks of actual classes. She's had one interview already for work after school, although she's going to be leading a student trip to the "golden triangle" (that's where Laos, Thailand and Myanmar meet) for a month and then for two weeks in Ho Chi Minh City to visit her "family" there before she starts working.

So yeah, that's about it for us. We're going to be in NYC for a couple days at the beginning of May and then either in New Mexico or Cascadia for a week after that if anybody wants to get together.

btw. I'm watching the Braves and Phillies right now. It makes me really happy that baseball is back... but at the same time, it's a little sad that I live in a city where it's too expensive to actually go the the games. What happened to baseball for the people man?

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I guess if your computer has to freak out on you, spring break is the time to do it. For some unknow reason, my poor laptop is freezing up after about 20 minutes. The guy at the Mac Store says it's probably software related, so I've been frantically trying to transfer all of my important files to J's computer before I send it into the shop.

Anyway. I've been wanting to write for awhile, but haven't been able to because of the whole crappy computer situation.

We had a good spring break. We went up to Montréal, which is fast becoming one of our favorite places around.


It was a bit cold, but I also had some research to do for my thesis at Quebec's National Archives, so it worked out fine. We got to see some cool Architecture, including the Archives (that's the Bibliothèque et archives nationales de Québec for the Francophones out there), which were designed by Patkau Architects out of Vancouver and Menkes Shooner Dagenais Letourneux from Montréal:

Moshe Safdie's awesome Habitat 67, which he designed at 24 for his Master's Thesis:

and The American Pavilion from Expo 67, designed by notable ecentric Buckminster Fuller and architect Shoji Sadao:


We also got one nice day and were able to take some nice walks around Parc du Mont Royal and Parc Jean Drapeau.

We took a day to go to Ottawa too, which was fun. J is taking an anthropology of travel class and she needs to write her final paper on her spring break travel, so she got some good stuff about cultural identity in the capital.



I'm using J's computer now and she's got some papers to write so I'll have to write more later.

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Where We'll Be and When...

...get your dance cards ready...


March 8-11


May 6-8


May 15-June 15

...with more to come...

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We just got these in at work and they're pretty neat. They're little travel guides from Phaidon and Wallpaper Magazine that focus on deisgn and architecture stuff (much like Wallpaper itself). They're pretty cheap, too.

Not quite as cool as the new Moleskine Travel Journal, but what is?

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