Edificio Kavanagh, Buenos Aires. 2009.
Perhaps the prettiest song of all time.
Design Policy First
“While Sperry methodically lays out his argument, responds to anticipated criticisms, and is careful to ‘cast no blame on past work,’ his call for support places the focus off-center of the actual issue - the penal policies that create the demand for such facilities. In fact, it can be argued that if architects avail themselves of the moral dillemma of designing execution chambers and supermax prisons without first addressing the policies that determine the need for them, the insidiousness of the penal system’s demands for constrictive spaces could be exacerbated.”
Wild Belle Review for Boxx Magazine
“Elliot and Natalie Bergman, the brother-and-sister Chicago duo behind Wild Belle, successfully employ a grab bag of sounds and influences seemingly culled from tropical coasts—from Afrobeat to dancehall—while wrapping their songs in an electronica-laced pop bubble. At their best, Wild Belle, with the older brother playing most of the instruments and the younger sister doing most of the singing, nearly pull off the Phil Spector-like trick of creating thickly-produced, viscerally catchy songs that contain cleverly deceptive lyrics of youthful romantic blunder.”
Snow fight, blizzard of 1967, Chicago.
The Democracy of Snow
(Originally posted Tues., 02/01/11 at Skyscrapin’ Knees)
As Chicago hunkers down in anticipation of the snowpocalypse, people instinctively tend to groan with dread and fear. The hell of a commute that awaits. The parking spot that needs to be shoveled and saved. The mental checklist of supplies needed to be stocked up on.
Political fortunes have been thrown away by mismanaged snow. New York’s Mayor Bloomberg suffered the first true fallout of his reign, after nearly a decade in power, from his city’s bungling of this winter’s storms. In Chicago, Mayor Bilandic essentially ceded the Fifth Floor to Jane Byrne after the failure to clean up the Blizzard of ‘79. (A million bucks that Mayor Daley, in one of his final civic bows before he steps down in May, will declare war on this storm before it even has a chance to hit, placing a bet in cementing his place in the canon of idealized civic leaders.)
Chicago, Blizzard of ‘67, image courtesy of Chicago Now
Moans and groans aside, the aftereffect of massive storms is often much more welcome than the waiting knowledge of the effect that they may bring. The caterwauling cry of stuck commuters inevitably gives way to more serene pictures and expressions like the one below. Massive snowfalls have a democratizing effect on cities, not only evidenced in the political ramifications they bring forth, in making leaders more responsive to their constituents, but also in leveling the playing field of the normally divisive conditions of the city. For Chicago, neighborhood boundaries in gilded places like the Gold Coast, and disparate neighborhoods like Englewood are bound together against the elements.
Snow can make neighbors out of strangers.
Chicago, Blizzard of ‘67, image courtesy of Chicago Now
Morning rises. Edgewater, Chicago.
Yo La Tengo - Fade
“In some respects, Fade feels like a culmination of the many ideas and thoughts expressed throughout YLT’s illustrious career, now fully formed into a whole. Throughout the album’s ten tracks and 46 minutes, one hears the sugar rush and delicate scuzz of I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, the majestic experimentation of And Then Everything Turned Itself Inside Out and the smooth and mellow pop of the underrated Summer Sun. Put into context within the band’s catalog, Fade wonderfully bookends 1993′s Painful.”
Read the full 4-star review of Yo La Tengo’s latest here.
Tawny Frogmouth. Chicago, USA.
Talking to the New York Times…
“The F.H.A.’s mixed-use rules date to its inception and the growth of federal housing initiatives, according to the Chicago-based Congress for the New Urbanism, which promotes pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use neighborhoods. The rules stemmed from fears that one component of a mixed-use development could fail and place strain on others to maintain the property, a concern revived by the housing crash in 2007.
‘We understand that risk has to be assessed somehow, but associating it with commercial is just not the right way to do it,’ said Ben Schulman, a spokesman for the Congress for the New Urbanism, which led the push for the rule changes.”
Read the whole article, “Regulatory Break for Mixed-Use Projects.”
Saying hey to the Wiltern. #ILoveLA.
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