A POC/non-white/mixie nerd scrapbook. Because we’re awesome.
Construction is under way for the “Bosco Verticale,” two residential towers by Italian architect Stefano Boeri within the metropolitan center of Milan, Italy. The concept of reforestation within the city context intends to minimize the expansion of established urban fabric for additional green spaces while still increasing biodiversity which has been lost during development. (via Designboom)
Forest in the clouds. Feels like such a Miyazaki-esque imagining.
YES! YES! YES!!
Urban Jungle, by Jonas De Ro
this will be our city of otherly love
I haven’t been online for most of today; I’ve been at City Hall for the Executive Committee meeting, where the Mayor and city councillors are hearing some 344 citizens (that’s the final number, I hear) speak on possible cuts to city services proposed by the consultants from KPMG.
The consultants’ report did not actually address the efficiency of services, nor the revenue they generate, nor the long-term impact of cutting them to balance the budget. They were just asked to identify which services were “core”—which were mandatory and which weren’t—and how much money could be saved if they were cut. I don’t think this is enough to base decisions on and the mayor and his supporters are patently using it as a pretext to cut public services, which I plan on telling them…in a while. I’m #306 in line.
This Star article captures the general mood and describes a world-class troll in action. And Torontoist is liveblogging the whole thing. Anyone in Toronto? Feel free to drop in!
Via bfp and many other people on Tumblr—David Blair, a gifted poet and musician (who I’ve been lucky enough to see perform at the AMC) died a few days ago.
Here’s Blair’s poem “Detroit (While I Was Away)”, a loving paean to his city. Any errors in the transcription are mine.
Even though I know the air hangs like a dead dog’s ass over River Rouge,
I still miss you.
Your fenced-in gardens filled with sustenance and Saturday evening blue
draped over a back alley porch,
the September stench that creeps slow as a Woodward bus on Sunday,
black tires crawling in summer heat,
your acoustic guitars and amplified hair,
your rows of long, thin buildings arranged on a young man’s head.The last time I saw you, a woman stood
on a corner conducting traffic, her own sunken opera,
a crack pipe baton. Car horns joined in like a bad man cruising a dream.
She stood on the stage of Cass and Mack, dying to reach Joy Road.
The moon left its spotlight on a backdrop of burnt buildings,
yellow police tape posed like velvet rope:
Do Not Cross.
A picket line of teens careened down Cass
past broken glass that spread like urban sprawl
or a Diego Rivera mural painted across the whole damn D. I. A. wall.Another time I saw you,
steam barrelled out of your manhole covers like you were about to explode,
a soul imbibed forty ounces of courage so that it could head back down to the Axle Plant
on Lynch Road or Jefferson or some other conveyor belt street
that gets everyone movin’ in step like a temptation line dance.
Twenty-two ounces of sweat and iron hidden in a bathroom stall
away from the plant tours and fat cats,
the shop stewards and snitches,
I remember you, old friend.I’m in another city now, but Martin Luther King Street always looks the same.
It just doesn’t intersect with Rosa Parks, Twelfth Street, where ’67 fires started,
named for a woman who chose you beyond a boycott Montgomery and then rode the front of that big ol’ dog
straight on home to you.
Detroit, I love you.
From your basketball sun that hangs in the sky, then falls only to bounce back up again tomorrow,
down to your alligator shoes, I’ll kiss you on the river,
meet you in the middle of a suitcase and wonder:
Do you ever think of me this way?
Do you even know I’ve gone?Say my name, Detroit,
I pray you claim me,
a small-town boy born in New Jersey but made in Detroit.
My heart beats like tool and die for you,
like horsepower and pistons for you,
while mechanized-lumpenized-robot-zombies haunt Mack Avenue—
here they come! a gang of buildings in tank tops,
Mack trucks in do-rags, marching down to Hastings Street
and I never got to know you back when you wore your onyx necklace like a tire around your neck,
but I get to witness the aftermath.
Dipping your blue-black hands in the electronic currents of music and art,
the circumference of Outer Drive, Moross, and Joy,
Paris of the Midwest, they called you,
and every time ’67 fires or Hallowe’en came around,
you lived up to it.The year I was born you blew up. I heard it. I came when I could.
I never left. I stay even when I go.
Chosen heart, adopted town!
From Belle Isle to Eight Mile,
Chocolate City where the mothership landed,
late night downtown and the peacocks are out, on Fourth Street,
calling to billboards that hover over highways,
telling stories to streetlamps.
The moon is a plate full of soul food, Mexican food, perogies and paczkies,
kofta and curry we mix and separate,
mix and separate,
each [*] stoop is a garage rock chord strummed and banged like a car mechanic’s sledge,
a man screams beneath the Ambassador Bridge,
another drums on plastic tubs for tourists,
“Will Work For Food” is a piece of poetry written on an art-house wall,
festival wizards, Saunderson, Atkins and May, the Big Three!
Dee-troit. Détroit, “Of Three”,
Black Panthers, White Panthers, and Lions, oh my!
Tight boys in rock pants,
the hustlers in Palmer Park,
lovers, thugs, and bluesmen with axes
sharp enough to cut down another forced overtime shift—
these are the sundresses, the beautiful ball gowns flowing like the Detroit River,
supremely turning, bending with the weight of the city, Detroit,
your beautiful hair woven women, putting on gloves and grabbing tools next to me on the assembly line,
teaching me what perseverance and being a brother is all about.
These are the overtime fists clocking.
These are the hands that braid hair and lock dread and cook meat that falls right off the bone
into fat, black pots of collards,
working harder and harder and harder still, so…step on, Detroit,
dribble and shoot, pass and play,
struggle and fight, darken and light,
drive and impel, riot and quell,
pick the steel burrs off the cross-members at the front of the Jeep Cherokee,
look what we have made you
steam and steel, still
that’s how hard
I love you.
__
* Inaudible. “Printed”? “Prentice”?
THERE ARE SOME THINGS I CAN HANDLE
I can handle you messing up geography and claiming that a point is a mile away from two things that it cannot physically be a mile away from
I can handle that for some reason you had a bunch of white cops have a family reunion so far down on the southeast side that the closest number street is 106th.
BUT I CANNOT HANDLE THE FACT THAT YOU JUST CALLED ‘HYDE PARK’ ‘LINCOLN PARK’
HYDE PARK IS THE ONE NEXT TO THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, OKAY?
THE U OF C CAMPUS IS IN HYDE PARK. AND THERE IS NO U OF C CAMPUS IN LINCOLN PARK. THERE IS ONE IN STREETERVILLE, BUT THAT’S AT LEAST 2 MILES AWAY FROM LINCOLN PARK.
AND YOU KNOW WHAT? THIS DESCRIPTION SUCKS.
“Artemis Bock, proprietor of Chicago’s oldest occult shop, had been a fixture near Lincoln (FAFJKDSAF;FADJ;SADF) Park for years before I had ever moved to town. The neighborhood was a bizarre blend of the worst a large city had to offer marching side by side with the erudite academia of the University of Chicago. It wasn’t the kind of place I wanted to walk around after dark, […..] cheap apartments that were flying gang colors on the windows nearest the doors”
FUCK YOU, JIM BUTCHER. You have obviously never actually lived in Hyde Park. I bet you just walked around a little bit — maybe you walked along the edges of Washington Park, maybe you walked down 55th until you hit Cottage Grove. Did you walk along 53rd St and decide that this was “the worst a large city had to offer”? What made you think that?
Was it the Starbucks on the corner? Or the farmers market that happens every Thursday morning in the summer? The Aveda salon? Treasure Island, the expensive “European food market”?
Or was it the back door Latino club that sells empenadas and Latinoamericano magazines out of the back door every afternoon? The smoke shop with the cheap weaves on Styrofoam heads in the window? The crappy Mexican food shop that sells huge burritos for a buck? The 24 hour cheap grocery by the bus stop, where I bought my yogurt from because I couldn’t afford to shell out 5 dollars on fucking yogurt?
Was it the Black people, Jim Butcher? Did they make you feel unsafe?
I spent 4 months in Hyde Park. In the freaking middle of Hyde Park — 54st, right off of South Shore Drive. I worked at a Black women’s organization on 53rd. I spent almost all of my time in Hyde Park. I walked everywhere. And I was always safe. I’ve even been to the 49th St Beach, where in a previous book you had a junk yard and a bunch of junked up cars. Psst — you know where 49th St Beach is? It’s about 3 blocks north and 8 blocks east of President Obama’s house. In the same area that Muhummad Ali and Louis Farrakhan live. You know what’s I would see when I made my way from my apartment to 49th Beach? The fucking fanciest apartments I’d ever seen. They had valet parking. I couldn’t afford to use the bathroom of one of those places.
If you think that Hyde Park is the “worst a large city has to offer,” then you have lived a sheltered existance. Yeah, 55th and Cottage Grove can be pretty rough. It’s not as pretty as places to the east of U of C. But it’s still safe. I know that it may blow your mind that poor people can live and not be inherantly dangerous, but it’s true.
If you want dangerous, how about you go visit the Family Planning Associates on 79th and Cottage Grove? Last time I was there, they were all talking about how the week before they’d had to go home early because someone got shot trying to rob the pharmacy right next door. Or you could go live where my old boss lives — 63rd St. There’s not a night goes by where she doesn’t hear helicopters overhead.
But you never will, will you, because I’m 7 books in and the lowest down your main character has ever been is 55th. And you think that Hyde Park is the worst that Chicago has to offer. Which is pretty despicable.
Because you can’t even get the fucking name right.
P.S. You want to know the kicker? Despite your main character being in Hyde Park, which is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Chicago, and definitely not white, there hasn’t been a Black character yet. Not even the stoned hooker your protagonist just nearly tripped over. You can’t even put Black people in the South side, Mr. Butcher. You are a fucking winner.
Reblogging for the entire comment thread.
“
“Actually,” Tak was saying, “I suspect the whole thing is science fiction.”
“Huh? You mean a time-warp, or a parallel universe?”
“No, just…well, science fiction. Only real. It follows all the conventions.”
“Spaceships, ray-guns, going faster than light? I used to read the stuff, but I haven’t seen anything like that around here.”
“Bet you don’t read the new, good stuff. Let’s see: the Three Conventions of science fiction—” Tak wiped his forehead with his leather sleeve. (Kid thought, inanely: He’s polishing his brain.) “First: A single man can change the course of a whole world: Look at Calkins, look at George, look at you! Second: The only measure of intelligence or genius is its linear and practical application: In a landscape like this, what other kind do we even allow to visit? Three: The Universe is an essentially hospitable place, full of earth-type planets where you can crash-land your spaceship and survive long enough to have an adventure. Here in Bellona—”
“Maybe that’s why I don’t read more of the stuff than I do,” Kid said.
”– Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren IV.5
Thinking about science fictional cities…
Description: Me, holding up copies of Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17 and Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death in front of my grinning face. I’m wearing the same yellow Galactus T-shirt I wore yesterday…
God damn I love being a nerd.
When I was at the library, saw that the Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books has an exhibition on called “Magic Cities”, which I should probably see before I write about China Miéville’s The City & the City. Also re-reading Dhalgren and need to get my hands on Brown Girl In the Ring. Blog posts are SRS BZNS.
