X-Alaska governor and x-VP candidate Sarah Palin’s former future son-in-law cashes in and irritates his baby’s grandmother.

My favorite reaction is Dan Savage’s excellent unsolicited advice:

And, psst, Levi? If you did that Playgirl shoot only to drive your former future mother-in-law crazy—and if that was your plan, kiddo, it worked—imagine how much crazier she’ll get if you do a little gay-for-pay porn. Just sayin’.

It looks like fortune might be leading me towards the City of Brotherly Love. Apparently, Fallopia’s destiny has turned to the eastern shore, but I am still trying to get my bearings. Leaving the West Coast is not an easy thing to do. I am a westerner by birth, tuned to the open skies and wide open highways. Nonetheless, I’ve been recently accepted to a graduate program in downtown Philadelphia- an area I’m told is dubbed “City Center”.

I have been to most of the major eastern shore metropoleis, but Philadelphia is…inland. Here is my first complaint about a city I know nothing about. How does a city become the 4th largest metropolis in the nation while being so far from the ocean? Absolutely afraid of being landlocked, I look for a river and find that there is one, named after the sound you make when choking on a piece of hair.

Okay. A river might suffice, but I am still wrestling with the question of where to live.
We all know that the space we call home has a social and emotional impact on us. That is why humans are nesters by nature. We surround ourselves with walls and hang scraps of fabric in our favorite colors. But what about the space outside your space? What is the importance of a street, and a block, and neighborhood when you are looking for a place to be?

I’ll confess right now, the first thing I did was research the racial demographics of the city. It’s not 1962, but Philadelphia is still a very segregated city, and I don’t want to be be the only brown girl on the block. I know this from a lifetime of experience being just that. This desire helped me eliminate the majority of the Northern block, leaving about 1/2 of the city to sort through.

Here is my personal add. YBF* seeks COB** with artists and trees. N/W*** is a must. Local book store a plus.

*Young black female
**Charactered older block
*** Near Water

I’m looking for suggestions, really. If any of you have ever been to Philadelphia, or have knowledge about any of the dozen or so wards that piece together the city, let’s talk.

Superb, single-minded blog The Mid-Century Modernist is carrying a fascinating set of photos by architect Julian Weyer which focus on modernist Brazilian design. Weyer modestly describes his pictures as a ‘predictable’ tour of mid-century brazilian highlights, but although Oscar Niemeyer’s space-age architecture does feature heavily, the real star of the show is Roberto Burle Marx.

Marx was the landscape designer who worked alongside Niemeyer in creating and shaping so much of the public space in modern Brazil – and especially Brasília. But perhaps his biggest contribution to the country’s visual culture was the crazy paving design he created for the Copacabana promenade in Rio.

Check out the full set of Julian Weyer’s photos on his flickr.

From my tipster Ericthefez, with this note: “Sorry the photo is such poor quality.  I found this ‘ride concept’ at San Jose’s Christmas in the Park kind of creepy.  I let <my only daughter, name redacted> go on the swings, but you better believe I kept a close eye on her.”

In related Xmas news, I heard my first “Last Christmas” song over the weekend, so yes, holiday madness is upon Japan. Fortunately, what Japan lacks in memory-crushing medicinal meds, they make up for in memory-suppressing booze, love for drinking, and end of year “forgetting” parties (bounenkai, perfect for work or friends).

BTW, which do you find more insipid, the George Michael’s original 1980s version of “Last Christmas” or Exile’s more recent cover? What would the Japanese royal family prefer? Please feel free to comment (without defaming our majesties).

I am not a big fan of the artificial tree or of Christmas. But Japanese love holidays, imported and national. I wonder whether the stations planned these small seasonal displays, or if they were the initiatives of long-time workers.

I prefer the use of the flowering “Christmas” cactus at the Shinjuku Odakyu station. And below the JR Metro Aoyama Itchome station’s faux snow tree in all its slightly adorned glory.

I was recently given the task of writing just 200 words. That is not very much at all. 200 words is restricting. Yet, 200 words is also refreshing. Below is what happened to come out:

There’s building site just off Ponsonby Rd that I like to ride by whenever I get the chance. Lately there are never any workers there though. Construction must have halted due to a ‘recession’ or something like that. It’s for the best though because no-one really wants a Titanic shopping mall complex just behind their favourite café strip, right? The giant hole in the ground is fascinating; at the bottom of the hole someone has painted the phrase, “I wish this was a swimming pool”. Don’t you wish that was true? I love it when street art is right – when it speaks what you were already thinking anyway.

As I peered deep into the hole and imagined what it was asking me to, I snapped a photo. I was on my own, but the act reminded me that everything about my city was encouraging me to get out and be in it. To wander freely the streets and take in what was going on. Cities never sleep, Auckland is no exception – you just have to look a little harder. It’s a performance, just without the stage. I rode my bicycle much further that night and my city played with me.

as always. more photos can be found at my Flickr.

Hakoho helps Asashoryu to his feet after defeating him. Hakoho went on to to win the Kyushu sumo tournament. The hubb found this image, which suggest that “good guy” and “bad boy” rivals might also share some big love after all.

Oh, Japan Times. Bringing us the news we need. God bless you. The story above tells the tall tale of Nagoya police going undercover in drag to catch purse snatchers. For reasons unexplained, women police officers were not given the opportunity, and the men were selected for short stature and martial arts expertise.

Despite the obvious preparation, as documented in the photo above, not a single criminal was arrested! I love the policeman’s vow, “We’ll never forgive criminals who target women.” I guess forgiving is one thing, being effective is another.

The only result seems to be increased skill acquisition on the part of “young, skinny” male police officers, and the louche appreciation expressed by passing motorists. Apparently it takes more than high heels, wigs and designer bags to catch a criminal. Or as my sister-in-law says, this sounds more like a “hobby” than a public safety exercise.

NO ENTRY FOR POOR AND COMMON PEOPLE TO CUBBON PARK AND LALBAGH

(ENTRY RESTRICTED TO ID CARD HOLDING ELITES ONLY)

The Government of Karnataka plans to make ID cards mandatory to enter Cubbon Park and Lalbagh, and that at a cost of Rs 200/person. This is the beginning of the state’s encroachment of people’s right to freely access public spaces and a stage is being set to privatise public commons. All sorts of devious reasons are being flung at the public, including security concerns, morality and misuse of parks by “unnecessary elements”. The manner in which the policy is formulated encourages the particular exclusion of access rights of the urban poor (especially from minorities), street and working children, elderly people, transgenders , migrant workers, labourers, street vendors, drivers of autorickshaws and taxis, differently abled, families with children, etc. The idea of having to carry an ID merely to access these two parks, fundamentally distances them from their unfettered and constitutionally protected Right to Use Public Spaces. This policy also promotes discriminatory access to public spaces as it privileges ‘regular walkers’ and thus negates the very concept of parks as public commons. Simply stated this draconian policy encroaches our very fundamental Right to Live a Healthy Life based on dignified and unfettered access to public spaces. Join the Protest against this fundamental encroachment of Our Right to Access all Public Commons

COME JOIN THIS JUST PROTEST WITH FAMILIES, COLLEAGUES, FRIENDS, NEIGHBOURS

Queen’s Statue, Cubbon park, Monday, 30th November, 4.00 pm – 6.00 pm

Protest initiated by Environment Support Group, Slum Jagatthu, CIEDS, Vimochana, Dalit Sangharsh Samiti- Samyojaka (Bangalore Dist.), Sanmathi, Alternative Law Forum, Sangama, Stree Jagruthi Samithi, CIVIC Bangalore, Hasiru Usiru and Open Space.

For more details contact: Environment Support Group,1572, Outer Ring Road, Banshankari 2nd stage, Bangalore-560070 Tel:-91-80-26713559-60 Email:esg@esgindia.org, bhargavi@esgindia.org Website: www.esgindia.org

I am a bit fascinated by Jenny Sanford, first lady of South Carolina. After her husband disappeared on the “Appalachian Trail,” code for visiting his Argentinian soul-mate, she separated and launched her own career: trademarking her name to sell household wares, writing a memoir, and being interviewed by Barbara Walters as one of “10 most fascinating people of 2009.”

My favorite quote is this absurd political writer’s take on how Jenny is moving from first lady to political/business career woman: “She was always the driving force behind Mark Sanford, the engine that powers the car. Now the car broke down, and she’s on her own.”

What makes Vancouver Vancouver? Civic spaces and amenities far beyond what other cities provide. A Parks Board (the only elected one in Canada) that hires scores of gardeners who make this city the lush place it is.

The closure of the Bloedel Floral Conservatory and aviary in Queen Elizabeth Park is under discussion in the city’s current round of budget cuts.

Buckminster Fuller must be crying.

This is a gem of a civic space.

A triodetic dome constructed of 1,490 acrylic glass bubbles, this is the home of more than 100 birds and hundreds of species of plants. It is a lush ecosphere in the literal heart of our city; a place to appreciate the diversity of our planet.

It is a magnificent piece of architecture. It sits like a crown on top of the highest point in the City of Vancouver. It opened at the tail end of the swinging 60s thanks to the generosity of Prentice Bloedel.

Bloedel was the B in MacMillan Bloedel, British Columbia’s forestry magnates who commissioned Arthur Erickson to design the contemporaneous MacMillan Bloedel building. It would be a shame to see it turn into a dead zone. See it while you can.

designKULTUR:

ARTHUR ERICKSON: THE PASSING OF A LEGEND

BUCKMINSTER FULLER: “SO EVERYBODY CAN ENJOY THE WHOLE EARTH”

first up :: i would like to thank all 1 person for contributing to the bummer mix!  i am telepathically giving them an invisible ice cream come.  anyone else who wants to help out please do leave a comment!  you will be doing me a great favour and you will be loved for it!

on to business ::
fence drawing and other massacres

among other things, i’ve been revisiting this space again and again because i do and it is one of the few places in mtl that i can trick myself into being reminded of home [tho it isn't really home]

there is a strange disappointment in relation to it, to a large proportion to my work.  i feel that one of the main reasons for my making is that it is a coping mechanism for disappointments, loves, unloves, heartbreaks and art school.  it is ridiculous, the amount of spoiled self loathing of privilege i carry.
i am not an artist.

one night after a futile attempt at a human relationship i took the sugar skulls i wanted us to have made and wanted to throw them, i wanted to throw them at THEM but they were not there – they were never really there but that is another story.  instead i took them to the grave and watched them melt in future rain and fog.

extending REST was absolutely integral; this place is more than i think it is, i am always finding something new.  it is always changing i am human and heather and never quite on top of things anyway.

i hadn’t really noticed this path before, and i blatantly did not even see the gate at the top of the hill.

i also worked quite a long way of the fence but i am really not satisfied at all with it and will remove it sometime in the very near future, hopefully tomorrow if life permits it.

hi hand.

one day i will get the hang of it, living, that is.  knowing my practice, my abilities without constantly short changing myself.
i would say we all got some insightful criticisms and ideas today, though i should stick to speaking for myself.

i am thinking of writing + posting an homage to elisabeth belliveau because i recently splurged and bought ‘the great hopeful someday’ with my babysitting money [yes, i am 14 - what of it?] and it is my new bible.  i’ve read it 3 times since tuesday and it is making me so much more aware of the smallest things in life.

like the finding of a quarter on the street and the action of putting it in an old icing tin that is now my nyc fund [$59.19 and counting!!!!]
like the house on waverly that reminds of michigan in 1979 tho i’ve never been there and i was only born in 86.
like my plan to touch every qat on the island of mtl
and the futility of existence that i am going to feel for the rest of my life because being 23 doesn’t solve anything.

i really thought, when i was younger than 22, that i was going to find ~true love at 22.  why 22?  well it was my champagne year – and it most certainly was, the most beautifully bittersweet bubbly i’ve ever experienced – without a doubt the best year of my life thus far, and i miss it very dearly.  maybe 23 will be getting better soon but nothing falls into place.  it is constant effort and rejection and reeffort and i don’t even know what i’m trying to achieve.  in any case, i didn’t find it and now i think i am doomed.  doom doom doom is what i feel in my chest when i wake up, sighing, entertaining the thought of dropping school.  but what for for what?  there is no back up plan.  i am here because i have no better place to be.

good gourd why divulge so much information?  context?  i am producing because i have to, like pulling teeth and blood from a stone.  i have been emptied.  there is nothing left to project[ile vomit] but we go on.  like a zombie empire of art without meaning or need or desire.

we went to joliette and the only engaging work of art there was in the children’s studio.

let that be a lesson for you.

Awwww. I am touched by this Nico Nico Douga live-casted marriage between man and Nintendo videogame character. I like the honeymoon photo above. See below for a video report of this path-breaking wedding. The happy couple’s names are SAL9000 & Nene Anegasaki.

I hope the marriage lasts longer than the console!

Much of Tokyo is covered in concrete and pavement. In the photo above, a low traffic small street has impermeable pavement. There is a wide, unnecessary brick sidewalk in the foreground built to accompany a recent apartment building. Two private residences also have concrete car-parks and cement surrounds. If you look very closely, to the left of the red traffic cone, a canna flower is breaking through the concrete and blooming.

Up close, the flower is brilliant on a sunny November day. Even more remarkable is that the plant has somehow managed to break through the pavement. How did it get there? How does it survive the city’s relentless drive to bury every grain of soil? Do the neighbors appreciate this floral beauty and the power of nature over the built environment?

After the jump, a closer view of the plant in its context.

In the context of such poor urban design ,this brilliant canna flower breaking through provides some hope that nature will regenerate despite our best efforts to displace it.

Another blog post shamelessly “borrowed” or re-blogged from InvisibleGaijin is this post about the latest Tokyo men’s fashion: dyeing your hair to match your fur collar. I love both the fashion itself and the reporter, who claims that “man skirts” are so last month. This photo is a visual love poem to the Tokyo Metro.

CNU has given a few awards to projects which knits new urban fabric into the leftover space around still-standing Modernist spatial objects — effectively finding underutilized “new” space for infill. (This differs from other approaches which remove the offending highway, housing project, etc.) These have included parking lots in Portland, lawns and plazas in Arlington, backyards in Takoma Park, mall ring roads in Columbia, even highway viaducts in Columbus.

I’ve wondered whether a similar approach could be used to heal the wounds that urban renewal left around me, in particular around the CHA senior housing projects that dot many lakefront neighborhoods. Many of these locations plopped open space down where there was — and could once again be — economically productive, vibrant neighborhood fabric, and yet there’s no reason to demolish the existing buildings. And such an approach could yield really big: a UMich graduate studio calculated that new development alongside NYCHA’s Lower East Side projects could accommodate up to 8,000 new apartments, or 22 million square feet of new space — two World Trade Centers or 3.6 Rockefeller Centers worth.

Next Wednesday night (December 2) I will be speaking at Pecha Kucha night in Tokyo (click for map). The event brings together the widest possible variety of designers– including architects, fine artists, crafts, graphic designers, illustrators, and other creative types.

Pecha Kucha’s name comes from the Japanese phrase for “chit chat,” takes place in an informal club setting with a simple format: presenters each show 20 slides that automatically change every 20 seconds. Begun by Tokyo-based architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham, the event has spread to 257 cities worldwide. Some past presentations have been put online.

In my 6 minutes and 40 seconds, I will try to speak half in English and half in Japanese. I hope some of my blog readers will be able to attend.

This is too choice! In the safest city in the world, the US Embassy is now warning Americans to stay away from Roppongi. This story was circulating widely on Twitter yesterday, and I laughed out loud. Based on the photo above, I guess the warning only applies to Americans (^_-)

From Kosins Attorney at Foreign Law blog, I must quote the entire post:

The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo reissued its July 10, 2009 warning advising American citizens from frequenting bars and clubs in the Roppongi area of Tokyo due to drink-spiking incidents. As stated in the American Citizenship Services (ACS) Newsletter, the U.S. Embassy “continues to receive reliable reports of U.S. citizens being drugged in Roppongi-area bars.”

The U.S. Embassy continues to receive reliable reports of U.S. citizens being drugged in Roppongi-area bars. Most reports indicate that the victim unknowingly drinks a beverage that has been secretly mixed with a drug that renders the victim unconscious or stuporous for several hours, during which time large charges are fraudulently billed to the victim, sums of money are charged to the victim’s credit card, or the card is stolen. Victims sometimes regain consciousness in the bar or club, while at other times the victim awakens on the street. Assaults on Americans have also been reported in connection with drink-spiking.

U.S. citizens are strongly encouraged to maintain a high level of vigilance, be aware of local events, and take the appropriate steps to bolster their personal security.

I have been invited to talk at a well-known cultural space/bar next week in Roppongi. Do you think I should only invite Japanese and Europeans?

Oh, all right, this’ll be another miscellany post.

1. I was reading Sunday’s Frank Rich column on Sarah Palin while walking down Lincoln Avenue — the sadly silenced “German Broadway.” The fiercely nativist, “politically incorrect,” anti-intellectual, non-reality-based far right certainly deserves the moniker “New Know Nothings“

Back in 1855, Chicago’s immigrants electorally vanquished the old Know-Nothings after the Lager Beer Riot. With that, the right-wing elite lost power over the city for centuries — over the right to drink beer. Which of today’s wedge issues is a sure loser for today’s right? Bear in mind that nationally, they ended up winning (and then losing) the war over beer.

2. I ran my new address through the magic new TIF Search. Even though the Fullerton/Milwaukee TIF was only authorized in 2000, it already takes over 2/3 of my tax bill. pie chart

3. Monée Fields-White has a cool profile in Crain’s this week about the Bensidoun public-market operation that’s coming to the C&NW concourse.

4. Hint from Tom Vanderbilt:

One recent study conducted by officials at the Paris Metro—which looked at “missed connection” ads placed by urbanites looking for love in the city—found that the Metro “is without doubt the foremost producer of urban tales about falling in love.” The seats closest to the door, it seemed, offered the best opportunities for falling in love with the proper stranger.

5. I keep meaning to finish off an essay on the parking privatization deal. One of these days…

In front of Shinjuku’s Opera City, a high rise office tower with cultural facilities including theaters and a museum, four levels of stacked freeways cast shadows, pollute the air, and block pedestrian space with giant concrete support columns. The presence of even one elevated freeway undermines pedestrian life and divides neighborhoods. Are all the elevated freeways necessary for Tokyo?

After nearly 2.5 years, Pedestrian City is up and running again!

The first official event happened last Thursday, October 22nd at the Toast Collective in Vancouver. It was the first step in a collaboration that’s underway with the Vancouver Public Space Network in their Green Mapping initiative. The vision is to create a series of green maps of the city based on the local spaces that matter to us.

The City of Vancouver states that “greenness” is a key to our collective identity and that we live in a green paradise. In response, the VPSN is initiating a Green Map-style inventory to help us advocate for public “green” space within the City. A Green Map can “create perspective-changing community ‘portraits’ which act as comprehensive inventories for decision-making and as practical guides for residents and tourists.”

Some more informal mapping took place last night at BarterTown, also at the Toast Collective, and will continue sporadically over the next couple of months. Check the Events page (and while you’re there, the new Green Mapping and Get Out and Walk pages!) at www.pedestriancity.ca for details of upcoming chances to contribute to this exciting project. Anyone who contributes a Green Map is also encouraged to participate in the rest of the Pedestrian City process, which involves taking pictures, sharing stories, and maybe tracing your routes through your neighbourhood in a more detailed fashion.