2010-01-22

*** Sidewalk Weekend *** #35

Sidewalk Rating: Certain Death!

I slipped and fell on the sidewalk last night. It had an ultra-thin coating of ultra-slick ice, made all the more trecharous by the fact that the decorative (beautiful to look at) sidewalks in Highland Park Saint Paul (along Ford Parkway and Cleveland Avenue) are actually quite without frictive qualities (slippery to walk on). This mirrors another observation I made a little while ago about how the paint of crosswalks (a "safety feature") are often more slippery than the asphalt they surface.



Be careful out there, Twin Cities. Neither bruise your elbow, nor break the fragile contents of your bag. Do not sprain your dignity!

Update: The same brick pavers line the sidewalks of downtown Saint Paul where I just saw a good play. Warning, These red bricks are slipperier than a Wall Street lobbyist!


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And I thought Mid-Century Modernism was only good for furniture. Turns out its good for walkable strip malls...


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Speaking of which, watch as this chair moves through Manhattan, tempting passers by.






See as they "curb mine" furniture, carefully lingering by the chair, looking around the sidewalk, then nonchalantly uproot: the underarmchair.



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But I'm still not ready to embrace "mid-70's kitchmodern" or whatever the LV Strip was called back then.



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Both updating Jane Jacobs’s vision of urban life and criticizing its failure to confront the power of investors and developers, the book enters the still-raging debate between those who want to build big, in Robert Moses’s style, and those who want to preserve the “authentic” city of neighborhoods and local identities.


Jane Jacobs legacy is under attack from Sharon Zukin, of all people? (Seems unfounded. She's often mistaken for a nostalgiaholic.)


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A good point:



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Operatic Twin Cities:




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Let us mourn his passing:




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If only I could ride the A Train with Donald Byrd.

1 comment:

Stephen Gross said...

No bling? At least the font is cool.