Aside from writing persuasively about the joys of city cycling (for transport, as opposed to sport), he does a great version of "Don't Fence Me In," that old song written by a Montana state highway engineer, Robert Fletcher, and Cole Porter. Here's a link (that I first saw on streetsblog.org):
http://www.streetsblog.org/2007/06/28/david-byrne-on-bicycling-in-nyc/
Friday, June 29, 2007
Thursday, June 28, 2007
The Power of Tension
One of the things that is great about not having a car is that walking is a lot less stressful than driving. I sure don't miss the honking, and, for that matter, is it just me or are cars driving closer to cars these days? I was walking around Saint Louis last week, heading to their new excellent light rail
when I came upon this traffic accident, a block or so before the light rail station. (I kept calling the light rail a subway, which seemed to upset the Saint Louis residents--they didn't want to be associated with subways, for whatever reason.)
No one appeared to be hurt, but the wheels of the middle car had been lifted up off the ground, as if my car magic. I saw it as a measure of tension, the anxiety raising the car, a superhuman strength. It was the power of the dark side.
when I came upon this traffic accident, a block or so before the light rail station. (I kept calling the light rail a subway, which seemed to upset the Saint Louis residents--they didn't want to be associated with subways, for whatever reason.)
No one appeared to be hurt, but the wheels of the middle car had been lifted up off the ground, as if my car magic. I saw it as a measure of tension, the anxiety raising the car, a superhuman strength. It was the power of the dark side.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Monday, June 25, 2007
George Washington on the Erie
I was in Cleveland the other day, enjoying a lunchtime stroll, enjoying the spacious downtown, the vast public squares—the summer light from the lake reminded me of Saint Petersburg or some other Arctic Circle city in the midst of an all-night-long day, not that I've ever been to Saint Petersburg—when I spotted what I thought was a pretty cool statue of George Washington. I don't know what it was exactly that caused me to stop; I think I liked the Art Deco aspect; I'd never seen such a curved George Washington. I stopped in my tracks, and then grabbed my camera. As I began to photograph, I realized in the precise moment I was looking at George Washington in the digital frame that something was happening in my peripheral vision. When I turned I saw the security guard, guarding the federal building, who then asked me what I was doing--you are not supposed to take pictures of federal building, apparently. "Taking a picture," I said, “of, uh, George Washington." (George Washington was standing right in front of the federal building being guarded.) I was a little shocked, that I was being stop mid George Washington picture taking, and I wanted to say something else, but I knew immediately that that was not necessary. I felt as if the security guard and I simultaneously realized that we did not want to do the wrong thing; we were on a very similar page at that very moment. I am merely postulating, of course, but what I was thinking was that we both did not want to wind up on some talk show or in a tabloid newspaper or anything along those lines, talking about freedom and George Washington and security. “Just don't take a picture of the building,” he said, in a kind way. “And we’ll be OK.” I agreed, and tried to talk about how much I liked the sculpture with him, but there was to be no further discussion. Our understanding was over, in fact; I could feel us parting brain ways. Here is the photo, with the building Liquid Paper-ed, of course, for security purposes. I think I'm cool with the tree.
The Death of the Cross Country Trip?
Here is an Op-Ed piece from the Los Angeles Times...
Goodbye to 'Are we there yet?'
Bidding farewell to the cross-country road trip.
By Robert Sullivan
June 25, 2007
THE SUMMER DRIVING TRIP — the pack the kids in the car and set out for the West or the East or possibly the Grand Canyon trip — is once again in jeopardy.
Of course, it's been endangered before, especially during the first energy crises in 1973 and 1979, when people spent good portions of their vacation lined up at the gas station. But this time the death of the car-bound family vacation feels real to me. (It feels real to some tourist destinations, such as Aspen, Colo., where tourism officials are offering free parking, free bicycle rentals and a voucher for $50 worth of free gas.) Thus, as a 17-year veteran of epic car trips, I'm officially hanging up my cross-country driving hat and looking back, like an obituary writer, on the cross-country summer vacation.
Though it is difficult to discern it through the clutter of portable DVD players and GPS devices that today accompanies the typical long- or even short-distance driver, the cross-country trip was born about the time the idea of America was born, mostly in the mind of Thomas Jefferson, who sponsored several failed crossings before Lewis and Clark finally made it all the way to the Pacific.
For Jefferson (and the Spanish soldiers who were looking to arrest Lewis and Clark), the idea was this: He who mapped it and described it in journals would own it.
Next came the stagecoach, described by Mark Twain in his travel adventure "Roughing It" this way: "How we suffered, suffered, suffered! … We sat absorbed and motionless through four long hours….Hunger asserted itself, but there was nothing to eat…."
As soon as the railroad laid tracks across America, railroad owners employed public relations teams to plant articles about the restorative powers of the scenic viewpoints along the line. Montana was the new Switzerland and Santa Fe, N.M., the new Orient. "See America First" went the campaign line, hand in hand with the revolution in landscape painting that saw God in the American landscape, Manifest Destiny in the view from the dining car.
The automobile arrived as an antidote to the urban, factory-fueled culture that produced it; drive a car and you restored your soul, your city-weakened spirit. Touring the countryside, the first cars were towed out of mud by farmers; in the '20s, cars camped anywhere, to the further ire of farmers; then car camps on the edge of town became car parks, then mo-tels, then motels. Roads were mostly for farmers, to get vegetables to market; parkways were for tourists.
Problematically, people began to go everywhere and do everything with cars. We got more and faster roads, roads that quickly seemed too few and too slow.
By 1956, when construction began on the first interstates, these Autobahn-inspired roads offered the promise of access to a cross-country system of cloverleafs and limited-access expressways. It meant freedom from traffic. It meant going anywhere at any time. For the summer vacationer, the trip that Lewis and Clark took became a breeze: two lefts out of your East Coast driveway, then straight for 3,000 miles.
The problem is, the cross-country trip became the everyday trip. Motels, which in the 1950s advertised new products for your home (air conditioning, wall-to-wall carpet) began to look like homes, or vice versa. It also created a new kind of settlement — a big-box store, fast-food chain, Gas & Go, chain motel — that is the perfect oasis of amenities for the interstate cross-country traveler. Except that its existence eats away at what the trip-taker has gone to see, which is the United States.
Meanwhile, our state roads have begun to resemble interstates, leading us to malls — each filled with the kind of places I used to see only way out near the highway. When my wife and I began driving cross-country together in 1989, we visited towns because they were different from ours: Oh, to eat huckleberries for breakfast in that old drugstore in Butte, Mont., again!
Now these towns feature roadside food stands writ large, as in really large, as in Costco giant-mayo-container large. Today's version of Lewis and Clark's trip — Interstate 90 — is used to get us to work and back. The ability to go on the cross-country trip has resulted in there being a lot less country to cross.
What's a cross-country driver to do? I have recently informed my family that we will not be making the cross-country drive ever again. No one believes me, and you wouldn't if you knew me and my wife — we were married after a year of cross-country-trip dating. (Total cross-country trips: just shy of three dozen.) But to prove that I mean it, or that I mean something, anyway, I sold our car.
We live in a city, so we can do it, no problem. But I felt a sense of urgency in that even New Yorkers are driving their kids a mile to school. I have to say, I feel like a radical, which I am not.
In the 1970s, when people were worried that the interstates would change driving from a sport into a government-regulated hassle, with seat belt laws and speed limits and rules they equated in part with Big Brother, the Cannonball Run was an act of protest, a seat-beltless road race from coast to coast. Today, I think that a good way to capture some of the Cannonball spirit is to walk, or bike, or even just rent a car once in awhile.
We'll take a train across the country, or fly to grandma's out in Oregon, which is at last cheaper than driving. But we're going to mainly spend time closer to base — vacation-wise and for life in general. After all these years of seeing America, I feel as if I have to spend some time seeing what's left of what I call home.
ROBERT SULLIVAN is the author of "Cross Country," just out in paperback.
Goodbye to 'Are we there yet?'
Bidding farewell to the cross-country road trip.
By Robert Sullivan
June 25, 2007
THE SUMMER DRIVING TRIP — the pack the kids in the car and set out for the West or the East or possibly the Grand Canyon trip — is once again in jeopardy.
Of course, it's been endangered before, especially during the first energy crises in 1973 and 1979, when people spent good portions of their vacation lined up at the gas station. But this time the death of the car-bound family vacation feels real to me. (It feels real to some tourist destinations, such as Aspen, Colo., where tourism officials are offering free parking, free bicycle rentals and a voucher for $50 worth of free gas.) Thus, as a 17-year veteran of epic car trips, I'm officially hanging up my cross-country driving hat and looking back, like an obituary writer, on the cross-country summer vacation.
Though it is difficult to discern it through the clutter of portable DVD players and GPS devices that today accompanies the typical long- or even short-distance driver, the cross-country trip was born about the time the idea of America was born, mostly in the mind of Thomas Jefferson, who sponsored several failed crossings before Lewis and Clark finally made it all the way to the Pacific.
For Jefferson (and the Spanish soldiers who were looking to arrest Lewis and Clark), the idea was this: He who mapped it and described it in journals would own it.
Next came the stagecoach, described by Mark Twain in his travel adventure "Roughing It" this way: "How we suffered, suffered, suffered! … We sat absorbed and motionless through four long hours….Hunger asserted itself, but there was nothing to eat…."
As soon as the railroad laid tracks across America, railroad owners employed public relations teams to plant articles about the restorative powers of the scenic viewpoints along the line. Montana was the new Switzerland and Santa Fe, N.M., the new Orient. "See America First" went the campaign line, hand in hand with the revolution in landscape painting that saw God in the American landscape, Manifest Destiny in the view from the dining car.
The automobile arrived as an antidote to the urban, factory-fueled culture that produced it; drive a car and you restored your soul, your city-weakened spirit. Touring the countryside, the first cars were towed out of mud by farmers; in the '20s, cars camped anywhere, to the further ire of farmers; then car camps on the edge of town became car parks, then mo-tels, then motels. Roads were mostly for farmers, to get vegetables to market; parkways were for tourists.
Problematically, people began to go everywhere and do everything with cars. We got more and faster roads, roads that quickly seemed too few and too slow.
By 1956, when construction began on the first interstates, these Autobahn-inspired roads offered the promise of access to a cross-country system of cloverleafs and limited-access expressways. It meant freedom from traffic. It meant going anywhere at any time. For the summer vacationer, the trip that Lewis and Clark took became a breeze: two lefts out of your East Coast driveway, then straight for 3,000 miles.
The problem is, the cross-country trip became the everyday trip. Motels, which in the 1950s advertised new products for your home (air conditioning, wall-to-wall carpet) began to look like homes, or vice versa. It also created a new kind of settlement — a big-box store, fast-food chain, Gas & Go, chain motel — that is the perfect oasis of amenities for the interstate cross-country traveler. Except that its existence eats away at what the trip-taker has gone to see, which is the United States.
Meanwhile, our state roads have begun to resemble interstates, leading us to malls — each filled with the kind of places I used to see only way out near the highway. When my wife and I began driving cross-country together in 1989, we visited towns because they were different from ours: Oh, to eat huckleberries for breakfast in that old drugstore in Butte, Mont., again!
Now these towns feature roadside food stands writ large, as in really large, as in Costco giant-mayo-container large. Today's version of Lewis and Clark's trip — Interstate 90 — is used to get us to work and back. The ability to go on the cross-country trip has resulted in there being a lot less country to cross.
What's a cross-country driver to do? I have recently informed my family that we will not be making the cross-country drive ever again. No one believes me, and you wouldn't if you knew me and my wife — we were married after a year of cross-country-trip dating. (Total cross-country trips: just shy of three dozen.) But to prove that I mean it, or that I mean something, anyway, I sold our car.
We live in a city, so we can do it, no problem. But I felt a sense of urgency in that even New Yorkers are driving their kids a mile to school. I have to say, I feel like a radical, which I am not.
In the 1970s, when people were worried that the interstates would change driving from a sport into a government-regulated hassle, with seat belt laws and speed limits and rules they equated in part with Big Brother, the Cannonball Run was an act of protest, a seat-beltless road race from coast to coast. Today, I think that a good way to capture some of the Cannonball spirit is to walk, or bike, or even just rent a car once in awhile.
We'll take a train across the country, or fly to grandma's out in Oregon, which is at last cheaper than driving. But we're going to mainly spend time closer to base — vacation-wise and for life in general. After all these years of seeing America, I feel as if I have to spend some time seeing what's left of what I call home.
ROBERT SULLIVAN is the author of "Cross Country," just out in paperback.
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