portland
From the Brooklyn G Train to the Burnside Bridge
12/27/07 Filed in: Ideas
We have been laying low in a subleased apartment
(which includes a rental cat) in Clinton Hill,
Brooklyn. Since this is a neighborhood I do not know
very well and the rainy weather in New York is
preventing much exploration- we are using this time
to bone up on 'computer stuff'. I have done some
minor improvements to my blog, which include this new
title photo that Andrea Grover
took on one of our trips to the Buffalo Bayou in
Houston. Thanks Andrea! We finally installed
Leopard onto our computers and are starting to
work on a new NodeVideo website, in
preparation for our return from the world-wide
tour in June 08 and the conclusion of
Towards A New Architecture.
In the midst of all this downloading and file sharing, we are having that perennial conversation about where we should move to next.
Head West Young Lass
Urban: Top of our list for years has been the glorious (although damp) city of Portland, Oregon. Although I struggle with anxiety about climate change (cool grey days) and the economics (will we be able to pay the bills as we launch out with NodeVideo without the safety net of my dayjob), I am excited by the scale of the city (biking/walkable neighborhoods) and the city-wide emphasis on sustainable, community-initated development. In the background Johnny keeps whispering "Ah, that sweet Oregon air", the phrase a man once uttered to us outside the PDX airport.
Desert: I love the dry air and blue sky of the West Coast desert. There are days I can think of nowhere more perfect than a little Adobe house in Joshua Tree, Los Angeles or Tucson. But is perfect weather really a reason to relocate somewhere? Nah, I mean we are not looking to retire.
Along these lines I am a daily reader of John Weeden's blog WeedenArtsWatch about life in Memphis, TN. I admire the excitement and commitment he feels for his hometown, even though we will not be heading South this time around.
How Hip is too Hip?
How much of the hype should you believe or ignore when considering a relocation? While working as curator at the Art Museum in Asheville, NC I was involved in a few projects that involved the local Chamber of Commerce. During this time the Chamber had a rebranding campaign going on and the city's new slogan was "Asheville, Any Way You Like it". Most of my friends and I agreed that this slogan sounded sexual, especially since Asheville has a rather risqué reputation throughout the Southern states. During this re-branding (sexing up) campaign there were at least 4 articles in the New York Times about this small city in the mountains of Western Carolina. Public Relations agencies know how to do their jobs when it comes to this stuff.
Before moving to Asheville, we lived in the belly of the beast, in that cusp of hipness, the border between Greenpoint and Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I actually loved living here because it was easy to get into Manhattan one day on the L-train and really easy to feel far away the next, while riding your bike up and down Manhattan Ave- Brooklyn's little Poland. Greenpoint was the right scale neighborhood and the small food markets rocked. The only problem was the high cost of living but we found a clever and affortable solution, temporarily. We bought a 1969 camper on Ebay and drove it into Brooklyn from Michigan. The camper was parked inside the video studio (a former taxi garage) and VOILÁ we owned a small studio apartment close to the studio for the cost of one month's rent. After 6 months it started to get too cold for camper living in New York and we were getting tired of going down the block to shower at the YMCA. The decisive moment came when a woman I knew from the neighborhood was raped around the corner in broad daylight. It was time to end our experiment in urban homesteading and move down South, kicking off what would become our somewhat migratory lifestyle.
Before the little camper in Brooklyn, I lived for several years in Troy, New York. A city that seemed most proud of being the hometown of Uncle Sam, the guy in the big top hat who sold rotten meat the Army. But what attracted most of us to Troy was its proximity to New York (under 3 hours) and it was cheap. By cheap I mean $500 apartments in regal old brownstones or the 5,000 square foot loft along the Hudson River that we rented for $800 a month. Sure the loft was cold as hell in the winter but is obviously the biggest place that I will ever live. It was a 'land rich, cash poor' city, good for young artists who wanted to experiment without lots of commercial pressures and within a supportive small community. That said, Troy was defiantly a rundown post-industrial cities where you needed to make your own entertainment and espresso. So I almost choked recently when a guy in Houston told me that he considered Troy to be "the San Francisco of the the East". Who created that slogan? and could it possibly be true? Had the city changed that much since 2002 or was it all hype?
In searching for our city of the future we are weighing many new options, grown up options, of what makes for a great place to live. I am trying to avoid places that reference Richard Florida's ubiquitous book The Rise of the Creative Class and wish that I could consult with Jane Jacobs, the activist who championed community-based city planning and wrote the personally influential book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. In the midst of making Pro-Con lists and daydreaming about the future, I find myself returning to Chas Bowie's fantastic article "The H-Word Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Word "Hipster" especially today after seeing this snarky picture-post on the Portland Public Art blog.
Update: Frank Rose just sent me this link about the various attempts to rebrand the image of Houston. In the year 1915 the city leaders of Houston created the slogan "Houston: Where seventeen railroads meet the sea" in an effort to rebrand the city as the railroad center of the Southwest. Imagine that.
In the midst of all this downloading and file sharing, we are having that perennial conversation about where we should move to next.
Head West Young Lass
Urban: Top of our list for years has been the glorious (although damp) city of Portland, Oregon. Although I struggle with anxiety about climate change (cool grey days) and the economics (will we be able to pay the bills as we launch out with NodeVideo without the safety net of my dayjob), I am excited by the scale of the city (biking/walkable neighborhoods) and the city-wide emphasis on sustainable, community-initated development. In the background Johnny keeps whispering "Ah, that sweet Oregon air", the phrase a man once uttered to us outside the PDX airport.
Desert: I love the dry air and blue sky of the West Coast desert. There are days I can think of nowhere more perfect than a little Adobe house in Joshua Tree, Los Angeles or Tucson. But is perfect weather really a reason to relocate somewhere? Nah, I mean we are not looking to retire.
Along these lines I am a daily reader of John Weeden's blog WeedenArtsWatch about life in Memphis, TN. I admire the excitement and commitment he feels for his hometown, even though we will not be heading South this time around.
How Hip is too Hip?
How much of the hype should you believe or ignore when considering a relocation? While working as curator at the Art Museum in Asheville, NC I was involved in a few projects that involved the local Chamber of Commerce. During this time the Chamber had a rebranding campaign going on and the city's new slogan was "Asheville, Any Way You Like it". Most of my friends and I agreed that this slogan sounded sexual, especially since Asheville has a rather risqué reputation throughout the Southern states. During this re-branding (sexing up) campaign there were at least 4 articles in the New York Times about this small city in the mountains of Western Carolina. Public Relations agencies know how to do their jobs when it comes to this stuff.
Before moving to Asheville, we lived in the belly of the beast, in that cusp of hipness, the border between Greenpoint and Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I actually loved living here because it was easy to get into Manhattan one day on the L-train and really easy to feel far away the next, while riding your bike up and down Manhattan Ave- Brooklyn's little Poland. Greenpoint was the right scale neighborhood and the small food markets rocked. The only problem was the high cost of living but we found a clever and affortable solution, temporarily. We bought a 1969 camper on Ebay and drove it into Brooklyn from Michigan. The camper was parked inside the video studio (a former taxi garage) and VOILÁ we owned a small studio apartment close to the studio for the cost of one month's rent. After 6 months it started to get too cold for camper living in New York and we were getting tired of going down the block to shower at the YMCA. The decisive moment came when a woman I knew from the neighborhood was raped around the corner in broad daylight. It was time to end our experiment in urban homesteading and move down South, kicking off what would become our somewhat migratory lifestyle.
Before the little camper in Brooklyn, I lived for several years in Troy, New York. A city that seemed most proud of being the hometown of Uncle Sam, the guy in the big top hat who sold rotten meat the Army. But what attracted most of us to Troy was its proximity to New York (under 3 hours) and it was cheap. By cheap I mean $500 apartments in regal old brownstones or the 5,000 square foot loft along the Hudson River that we rented for $800 a month. Sure the loft was cold as hell in the winter but is obviously the biggest place that I will ever live. It was a 'land rich, cash poor' city, good for young artists who wanted to experiment without lots of commercial pressures and within a supportive small community. That said, Troy was defiantly a rundown post-industrial cities where you needed to make your own entertainment and espresso. So I almost choked recently when a guy in Houston told me that he considered Troy to be "the San Francisco of the the East". Who created that slogan? and could it possibly be true? Had the city changed that much since 2002 or was it all hype?
In searching for our city of the future we are weighing many new options, grown up options, of what makes for a great place to live. I am trying to avoid places that reference Richard Florida's ubiquitous book The Rise of the Creative Class and wish that I could consult with Jane Jacobs, the activist who championed community-based city planning and wrote the personally influential book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. In the midst of making Pro-Con lists and daydreaming about the future, I find myself returning to Chas Bowie's fantastic article "The H-Word Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Word "Hipster" especially today after seeing this snarky picture-post on the Portland Public Art blog.
Update: Frank Rose just sent me this link about the various attempts to rebrand the image of Houston. In the year 1915 the city leaders of Houston created the slogan "Houston: Where seventeen railroads meet the sea" in an effort to rebrand the city as the railroad center of the Southwest. Imagine that.
Bike City USA Portland, Oregon
11/07/07 Filed in: Ideas
Seems the NY Times & I are having both having a
love affair with this bike city!
Article: In Portland, Cultivating a Culture of Two Wheels
Video: The Business of Biking
Article: In Portland, Cultivating a Culture of Two Wheels
Video: The Business of Biking
We are in the NY Times
09/28/07 Filed in: Rambling
While dining at Le Pigeon in Portland, Oregon we were
photographed (lower right corner) for the NY Times
article In Portland, a Golden Age of
Dining and Drinking
Around Jupiter
09/16/07 Filed in: Art
After a day of the Affair at the Jupiter art fair, which included a little lunchtime conversation with blogger and Portland arts writer Chas Bowie, we headed over to Le Pigeon for a farewell meal. There was a photographer from the NYTimes there taking photos for their upcoming food section article on Portland restaurants. (UPDATE: Here is the article from the NY Times on-line)
Portland Report
09/13/07 Filed in: Rambling
After a week it is time to post about about our time
in Portland, Oregon but I hardly know where to start.
This is an amazingly beautiful city that hardly seems
American with all the bike riders and dynamic,
mixed-use neighborhoods.
On the Art front: The TBA festival is happening this week and there are performances taking place in theaters and clubs all over the city. Check out the day-by-day coverage of the festival provided by the staff at the Portland Mercury. While we've attended less TBA shows than hoped, we did see Mirah & Spectratone International's late night show Share This Place, a 12 song cycle about 6 insects... yes, songs about bugs. All the late-night TBA 'Works' performances are held in the lovely Wonder Ballroom, which feels like a Vermont Grange Hall dressed up prom (in a good way). Share this Place was a unique trope, reminding me of David Byrne's song cycle Here Lies Love, about the life of Imelda Marcos. It was a special event, but one that left me hungry for Mirah's indie pop songs, but the song Community stood out. There was a strong video component to the show provided by Britta Johnson's stop-motion films. At times I was slightly distracted that Johnson's edits did not sync up with the music, but her color palette worked so well with the space and the music that I was able to overlook this. Her round video screen was both conceptually smart and aesthetically pleasing.
On Saturday night we traveled across the Burnside Bridge to attend YACHT's 30-minute set that was part of the NW MusicFest. YACHT has an amazing amount energy & some great dance moves. He was a full-on one man show, accompanied only by his laptop and his girlfriend (for one really cute song). It was the highest energy performance I've witnessed in a while, and the audience agreed, dancing up a storm.
This morning I was on-line checking out Ultimate Blogger 3 (Jona from YACHT is a co-instigator & it is a TBA co-production) and while it took forever to download the videos using the shared wireless connection at the Jupiter Hotel, Ultimate Blogger 3 is some funny stuff!
We just returned from a great bike ride through the Mississippi and Alberta neighborhoods of Portland. We stopped for some coffee at the local favorite The Albina Press, and the guys from Ultimate Blogger 3 showed up and started shooting video outside the coffee shop. It was a real alt Hollywood moment. Portland is a small city & there always seems to be art being made just around the corner. In fact, as I type this post, the staff of the Jupiter Hotel are getting ready for the "Affair at the Jupiter" Art Fair (which kicks off tomorrow). They've been moving beds and dressers out of the rooms to make the transition from hotel to gallery easier. While the Jupiter is clearly a hipster hotel, I recognize the good design of a hotel that houses a tattoo parlor, adult sex toy shop, nightclub and hair salon. It is exciting and a little overwhelming that all of this activity is happening all around us, we sure picked a great week to visit.
With all this happening in Portland it might seem crazy that we would rent a car to head up above the treeline to Mt. Hood for lunch, but just look at these views!
On the Art front: The TBA festival is happening this week and there are performances taking place in theaters and clubs all over the city. Check out the day-by-day coverage of the festival provided by the staff at the Portland Mercury. While we've attended less TBA shows than hoped, we did see Mirah & Spectratone International's late night show Share This Place, a 12 song cycle about 6 insects... yes, songs about bugs. All the late-night TBA 'Works' performances are held in the lovely Wonder Ballroom, which feels like a Vermont Grange Hall dressed up prom (in a good way). Share this Place was a unique trope, reminding me of David Byrne's song cycle Here Lies Love, about the life of Imelda Marcos. It was a special event, but one that left me hungry for Mirah's indie pop songs, but the song Community stood out. There was a strong video component to the show provided by Britta Johnson's stop-motion films. At times I was slightly distracted that Johnson's edits did not sync up with the music, but her color palette worked so well with the space and the music that I was able to overlook this. Her round video screen was both conceptually smart and aesthetically pleasing.
On Saturday night we traveled across the Burnside Bridge to attend YACHT's 30-minute set that was part of the NW MusicFest. YACHT has an amazing amount energy & some great dance moves. He was a full-on one man show, accompanied only by his laptop and his girlfriend (for one really cute song). It was the highest energy performance I've witnessed in a while, and the audience agreed, dancing up a storm.
This morning I was on-line checking out Ultimate Blogger 3 (Jona from YACHT is a co-instigator & it is a TBA co-production) and while it took forever to download the videos using the shared wireless connection at the Jupiter Hotel, Ultimate Blogger 3 is some funny stuff!
We just returned from a great bike ride through the Mississippi and Alberta neighborhoods of Portland. We stopped for some coffee at the local favorite The Albina Press, and the guys from Ultimate Blogger 3 showed up and started shooting video outside the coffee shop. It was a real alt Hollywood moment. Portland is a small city & there always seems to be art being made just around the corner. In fact, as I type this post, the staff of the Jupiter Hotel are getting ready for the "Affair at the Jupiter" Art Fair (which kicks off tomorrow). They've been moving beds and dressers out of the rooms to make the transition from hotel to gallery easier. While the Jupiter is clearly a hipster hotel, I recognize the good design of a hotel that houses a tattoo parlor, adult sex toy shop, nightclub and hair salon. It is exciting and a little overwhelming that all of this activity is happening all around us, we sure picked a great week to visit.
With all this happening in Portland it might seem crazy that we would rent a car to head up above the treeline to Mt. Hood for lunch, but just look at these views!
Portland or Bust
09/07/07 Filed in: Art
For the next 10 days we will be posting from Portland, Oregon where we will attend the Time Based Arts Festival hosted by the Portland Contemporary for Contemporary Art and catch some of the shows that are part of this weekend's Musicfest NW