airplane seat

Awesome repurposing of the exit doors of two Boeing 727 jets, and a touch of “argentinian free range cowhide” into a massage table.

I want one of these on my next trans-oceanic flight.

ruin(ed) tourism in Japan

Is there anything more poignant than a theme restaurant gone to ruin? Two theme restaurants gone to ruin?… Here, the Restaurant Chateau. This is a shot from a blog I have been reading, entirely devoted to photography of the ruin–more precisely, walking tours of ruins documented in photograph.

One of my students, Y,  had told me about the photo “boom” last year, but I had no idea that the walking tour was following in the hallowed footsteps of the “soundscape” tour, and any of a number of other walking tours very popular in Japan. There is, these days, even a blog called “Haikyo walker,” modeled on the popular walk-and-buy guides like Tokyo Walker, which give you tons of info about showings, new stuff to buy, date spots, and on and on, for about 450 yen–about 5 bucks at the sad exchange rate of today (90 to the dollar). This, in turn, has sprouted Yokohama Walker, Kansai Walker, Chiba Walker.

And when you get to Tochigi Walker, there is no magazine, only this, the ruin of a “highclass soapland.” (Soapland is a classy word for what used to be called a “Turk,” or “Turkish bath.” A high-end happy-ending type massage parlor.)

In the 1980’s, tourism was government-endorsed and built on the urban planning idea of “machi-tzukuri,” or town-making. After the bubble burst, tourism became also taken up in very DIY ways that were still linked to older practices–like the pilgrimage and the literary walk. Most of these photos are placed in the countryside, places that have been “hollowed out,” or made Wasilla-like as they are unlocalized at the same time as they are linked to multiple scales of other places, some of which are very far away. (I don’t like the sneering potshot tone of this video, the typical provinciality of the meteropole guiding with very restricted vision. But it makes some good connections…).

It’s a fascinating look, also, at how a country sees itself in decline (ok, a few people), after the bubble bursts. A former empire, no less. And what they choose to do with those ruins.

square and flat no more

Harold Gregor, Ilinois Flatscape 101

I stopped by a couple of museums today, to case the joints on the last day of a couple of exhibitions. My second stop was the Museum of the American West, for the shows on “maverick art” and “bold caballeros/noble bandidas.” (The latter should be up for a couple months more.) The maverick exhibit–a mix of avant-garde strands of trad arts, vernacular arts, and frontier-y things–had a good number of landscape paintings, among which was this landscape, rendered as if from an airplane, in the dimensionality of an aerial view, in these strange bright harvest colors.

Harold Gregor was a renowned figure in my town, which despite its apparent sleepiness, has an undertow of skilled and cerebral materialist artists working in and around it–painters, ceramacists, woodworkers, other craftspeople. This piece was an interesting transition piece between old-school Illinois representation, and that of today. It reminded me of  JB Jackson, basically the guy who founded vernacular landscape studies in the US. If you have ever listened to The Magnetic Fields’ The Charm of the Highway Strip, you have listened to a concept album modeled on the thinking of JBJ. JBJ had some salty words for my stomping grounds. Basically, he said, “people come to resemble the landscapes they live in. The midwest is square and flat.” It figures, the salt, he was from New England.

This season’s red-blue intrigues in my home state, mingling upstate and downstate elements, have brought some new geometries to my eyes, apart from the 2-D flatness. Here, a roundup, more or less inorganically mixed (oops, betraying my metaphoric downstate roots there) set of new shapes…

–the cone:

I have literally been kept up nights by Michael Pollan’s account of how ag policies in the 1970’s, under the Earl Butz regime, have changed the food landscape. Actually, the story goes back to the 1850’s with the advent of commodity corn and the grading of corn in ways to make yield the sole criterion for which growers grew…but anyway. Above a “portable escalator” (57) that carries corn into the piles that are currently all over the prairie, with so much surplus corn. These policies, and new technologies of mono-culture farming, have made yields like crazy, but have made it harder to make a living, or to use all  the stuff. Thus, high fructose corn syrup. Given that the US population only increases about 1% a year, in most years a sorry rate of growth, food manufacturers have to keep finding more uses and desires for corn products to keep up consumption and profits. Don’t even get me started on how all this number 2 corn is destined for its biggest consumer, cattle–who are supposed to be ruminants, or grass-eaters, actually, and who do not suffer a corn diet easily.

–the wave:

…to be continued

on hiatus/”this is the universe. Big isn’t it?”

Will be offline for a while, due to a cyborgian attachment on my finger. I had a run-in with a Venus-flytrap-like rice cooker lid, which took a whack at my finger and fractured it. No big deal, but typing is a bit of a no-go at the moment. Meanwhile, please enjoy my favorite use of a medical appliance in a music video, a tribute to the “Stairway to Heaven” sequence of the 1946 film A Matter of Life and Death.

Keep those feet a’moving: Nike buys park for development in Shibuya

A new wave of surveillance has been directed at homeless persons near the Shibuya station area, perhaps more known for the sheer volume of people who move through the crossings of the youth-culture-and-touts district. Lately police have stepped up the evictions. The backstory, according to Irregular Asylum, links to privatization and development of one of the few public spots in the vicinity, Miyashita Park. The park was just bought by Nike.

In the past, homeless persons were seen by police officers as “criminals-to-be” and thus commonly subjected to fingerprinting and photographs. However, facing growing resistance against such treatment as voiced by homeless individuals and various NGOs, as well as public criticism for rights violations, they had not recently been visibly engaged in fingerprinting or photographing homeless individuals, even in the Shibuya area. The fact that district police have returned to past discriminatory tactics in recent weeks indicates a revisiting to former hard-line security measures that “profile” homeless individuals as potential criminals. Moreover, it is absurd to insist that this incident is unrelated to increasing evictions and property removals practiced against homeless persons in the Shibuya area over the past year.

In October of 2007, a citizen’s group was pulling strings for evictions of persons from under National Highway 246 by Shibuya station, in December the Tokyu Corporation was responsible for evictions carried out by subway guards that resulted in one death, and in July of this year persons were forcibly removed from the Tokyu Department Store by overly-eager G8 Summit guards. In addition, prior to this month’s incident, enhanced tactical use of evictions as a security measure within Shibuya subway stations has been noticeable, despite previous calm in subway corridors. Regardless, as it is a matter of survival, homeless persons in these areas continue to defend themselves from expulsion from Shibuya station.

Then, in the midst of all this, it was discovered this past May that the sports apparel and accessories maker, Nike Corporation, is backing a large-scale renovation of Miyashita Park. Nike’s plan is to invest millions into building a skateboard park and open café and buy the naming rights to the public space so as to re-name it Nike Park. Should this plan be realized, over 30 homeless persons from the park would be left without a place to stay and Nojiren would no longer be able to hold the winter and summer events it has thrown in Miyashita Park for over 10 years. Furthermore, the park itself – a public space – would be transformed into a corporate space meaning that Shibuya residents and visitors would no longer have a place to sit back, relax, snack or chat outdoors and NGOs would no longer be able to use the open area for gatherings or demonstrations. The agreement with Nike was passed without ever being put up for a vote in the Shibuya ward council, and to protest the injustice of the top-down manner of making official arrangements, Nojiren formed “The Coalition to Protect Miyashita Park from Becoming Nike Park” in June. In July, we hosted a protest before Nike headquarters in time with demonstrations at the Hokkaido G8 Summit. In August we held a summer festival at the park aiming to see that it wouldn’t be out last. In September and October we held gatherings and demonstrations. At this point, there is no question that both Nike and Shibuya Ward can sense that they are cornered.

Continuing evictions of homeless persons in the Shibuya regions are clearly being coordinated with the new addition of the Fukutoshin subway line in June of this year and extensive plans for development centering on Shibuya as the Toyoko line will be brought underground. The current harassment of homeless persons by Shibuya officers is nothing other than another way of applying pressure to persons “in the way” of city plans.

Sharon and I wrote about the park in 2005, when it was the site of “rave demos,” demos that used reggae systems to bounce sounds and DJ sets against the concrete/screen set of Shibuya spaces to rail against sending Japanese troops and money to support the US war in Iraq. You can see the multimedia version of our piece here.

Voting at the big-top

It was a beauty of a day to vote. This shot from the tundra of asphalt between the polling place entrance and the actual spot shows off the vista nicely. Lucky for me I have two able-bodied legs and plenty of time on a Tuesday, since the polling place is shockingly inconvenient. It is baldly all-American, in a symbolic way–the “city on a hill” 16th-century element is present in the church locale. The postwar element shines through in the barracks construction, visible next to the big-top. And the 21st-century kick is provided by the tour through the Best Buy on the way to this open field of pavement you have to cross in order to go stand in line. It’s like time-traveling from the colonial era in a few tenths of a mile.

There is something so not appropriate about voting in a church. The church itself was very hospitable, and had very helpful greeters out to direct people to the beginning of the line. But I feel that incorporating religious institutions into a civic process–and select Christian ones, at that–exacerbates the whole unholy muddle of governance and theology (some of it very sinister or empirically crackpot, in the case of the current positions on science) that has conjured up many of the country’s troubles in the Bush regime, or at least blessed them.

Moreover, getting to the place is forbidding if you are on foot, old, a bus-rider, or any of the above with small children, who were numerous when I went at 8am. Anyone who might have difficulty motating the .3 mile from Los Feliz Boulevard to the polling place itself would be up a creek trying to make it to the big top without some serious help. I walked it, on my approach, but I was so mad about the placement of the polling place that I went back and clocked it in the car.

There are so many better, more accessible, and secular places to vote in Atwater. Hell, the car wash even has a nice little veranda, not to mention the library, and the many many garages.

点と線–dots and lines

That is the title of an awesome detective novel by Matsumoto Seichô, about murders that are solved because the detectives know the comings and goings of train platforms around Tokyo. Their file-cabinet-like brains inform them  why the purse was thrown here, why coal dust mysteriously turned up there, and how the bodies got buried, especially that of the super-gifted telephone operator who accidentally intercepted the wrong call… I was thinking of that precision today, on my way to work, because my station @ Glendale is on the same line as the train that wrecked last Friday, killing a hundred plus people. Most likely because the engineer was texting to a couple of local “tetchans,” train enthusiasts. There is a big model RR club, actually, that meets regularly in Glendale, and seems to have a number of kids in it.

Today was kind of a weird commuting day. I showed up 5 minutes early to the platform, and went through a gateway of wreaths worthy of the Kentucky Derby, flush with flowers. There was a Metrolink rep there, hooking up passengers heading outbound, so they could make their transfer. I had a nice conversation with a diamond polisher while waiting and riding, about different kinds of tea. My train was almost an hour late, which threw off the ripple effect of transit relays, and got me to work just before class started, foiling my last-minute grading plans. Ugh. Later, on the way home, I heard that the inbound had been late because of the lateness of inbound buses, and overfull parking lots farther out than Glendale.

The way home was less pleasant, not only because it was more crowded, but because the crowds were bandying about their descriptions of who got flown, poleaxed, severed, in what part of the train, and how close they had come to what. Lots of idle speculation about what went wrong, which I am not sure anyone knows yet. One of the explanations hit a very sad chord, as it intersected with a very vibrant and fun exchange that had been going on, on one of my Japanese film BBS groups–films about trains. As you can imagine, these are manifold. From the pink “train pervert” series, to mad chases, to romances, to the genre that had been most compelling right around the time of the LA wreck–the genre that puts you right in the cab with the driver. Mike, a film grad student, posted some of his findings:

Any time you go to a major video store in Tokyo and look near the documentary or
special interest sections, you’ll find rows of DVDs with pictures of trains on the front and titles like “Untenshitsu tenbo” [Lookout from the front car] “Nihon no tetsudo [Japan's railways],” “Nihon no tokkyu [High-speed trains of Japan],” “Hi-vision ressha dori [View from the seat in hi-vision],” and so on. In Japan there are scores (if not hundreds) of DVDs available that will give you a conductor’s seat view of different train rides from all across the country; local and express, urban and rural, exotic and boring. Of course the ‘phantom ride’ stretches back to the very early years of film exhibition, but now you can finish a whole two-hour ride in color without any cuts as you listen to the conductor announce the stations along the way. There are also similar kinds of video games in Japan, eg Densha de GO [GO on the train!]!

A couple of months ago I went out for drinks with some of the staff and cast from Chikan densha daibakuha [a pink train movie]. I brought one of the train ride DVDs with me (an express going into Shinjuku–a line I used to ride as an exchange student years ago) and played it on the bar’s TV to see what they would think. At first they gave me a hard time and kept teasing me for being a “tetchan [train boy],” but after a few stops they couldn’t take their eyes off it. For
70 minutes all we talked about was what station we would pass next, whether or not the 11 a.m. express would stop at X or Y, what restaurants and shops we knew around the different stations, and so on.

In that spirit, a couple of nice scenes. One that takes you into the green, in a one-man car:

And one that takes you through the repertoire for the route, the Chûô-sen near Tokyo, before sending you off, back to the garage.　I find this one rather sobering, in its quiet flip through the options.

back on line

Monday morning came early, today, but the train was late. I turned in my badge–my parking pass for work–last month, and vowed to become a greener-and-improved commuter come August. I had padded my way up to the Glendale station this weekend, to see the scene, and check the times. It was shuttered, basically, except for a few schedule flyers, some vending machines, and a stack of flyers on a glass case containing trains, advertising an upcoming meeting of the Glendale Model Railroad Club.

It’s only a fifteen minute walk to the station. Or I’m guessing a five-minute skate, as I judge from watching the skatekid who emerged off the train just in front of me, as he bombed down under the railroad, down Los Feliz, facing down the traffic, crouched, his hands clasped behind his back. I was all hoped up for my inaugural ride on the Metrolink, but a bit crestfallen when, 20 minutes after ETA, the train still had not arrived. It was only because I happened to be standing next to a guy from Amtrak PR who had a direct line to the Burbank railyard that I knew it would be coming along, eventually. I had time to read my student’s near-final draft on her summer research paper, purple in some prose, and get plenty sunburnt.

The rest of the trip to and fro was a bit more/less eventful, the bus leg to school very friendly and fast, the return trip back along San Fernando on the train full of the commuter intrigues I know and love from other cities–peering at the crowd, considering where to sit, the rush of suits and heels and backpacks going places, the glorious mass anonymity of it all. The overheard conversations, about tripping up a guy on his purported travel details (by the girlfriend), and the x-ray technician who spent Saturday night taking pics of a woman whose teeth got busted by another woman wielding a beer bottle in a bar fight. As always, I am amazed at the number of people who 1) relate their credit card details out loud and 2) cut their fingernails while on public conveyances.

So, all in all, a success of a commute–cheaper, pretty relaxing, a bit longer, but includes a nice walk on either side. The LP version of what I have been doing is a bit longer, but would include:

–lots of reading and writing, primarily the book

–trying to outwit massive ant infestations. They got really random crazy before the earthquake, but are generally just kind of spazzy, intermittently in deluge form

–going up to Montreal for a couple weeks, and after being locked out of my apt, making some calls to Malawi, being taken in by hospitable friends, and getting sick, had a pretty good time catching up with people, though it is never long enough

–there, ending the live music moratorium with an amazing show at the Sala, organised by the friend of friends, by Las She Devils, mostly from Buenos Aires, and their bigger-band version, Las Kumbia Queers. Las She Devils played some genius covers, including one of my favorite earnest/randy teenager songs, The Undertones’ Teenage Kicks.

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crafty boy meets information capitalism

The LA Times did an interesting article today about a new chain of “tech shops,” one of which is slated to open in Los Angeles. Apparently, for about a hundred bucks a month, you can use the atelier and its stuff, which includes welding torches, a 3-D printer, and facilities for neon production. Hard to find room for that economy of scale stuff in your apartment. Which is one of the many compelling reasons why places like the fun and amazing Machine Project exist, so you can learn things about like tissue culturing and crochet, and fornicating sea slugs.

But I digress. The switcheroo of scale in the LAT piece–individual and mega, as in the use of quaint artisanal terms like “atelier” to describe 15,000-foot mega-spaces–is kind of a capsule version of how the idea works. You can’t just play with stuff, it has to be very purposeful, as in the “R&D” of the headline. Along these lines, the workshop is an interesting mix of DIY and business plan mentalities. In the article, this slide is bridged by the regulator of the term “maker.”

Make is, of course, the O’Reilly publication from the Bay Area that features cool crafty boy stuff (mostly, though there is a cool article about a female engineer’s efforts to make swimming robots). My favorite project so far is the gun-operated alarm clock: “Hack a retro gaming light gun with tilt switches to control a vintage digital clock radio. When the alarm wakes you up, grab the gun and kill it off!”

So just as the term “maker” is ambiently brandable and pitched to boys, there is a sister publication, Craft, which typically has girly stuff. I did a piece for them on cosplay last year, which was great fun, highly informative, and they paid me on time! The sex separation as strict as any highway rest stop is pretty striking, but hey, why not cross the great his-n-hers divide by cross-reading.

But getting back to the LAT, imagine my surprise when Kinko’s came across as the great DIY business model.

By offering affordable access to otherwise out-of-reach tools, TechShop is lowering start-up costs and providing a commons for previously isolated minds. It’s a place where “makers” — as members of the do-it-yourself movement are known — can make such products as water-cooled stacks of computer servers and remote-controlled robots that do videoconferencing.

It’s doing for physical goods what Kinko’s did for printed products, said David Pescovitz, a research director at the Institute for the Future, a forecasting group in Menlo Park.

Kinda cynical use of the term “commons,” in my opinion, nicely finessing both the material histories of both the open-source and 17th-century enclosure movements. And while I harbor fond memories of midnight runs to the Castro Kinko’s many a time, I’m not sure it’s anyone’s idea of an empowered workforce, as the interviewee intimates.

“i-Phone killers” in Japan

An interesting Forbes piece on the “meh” hopes of the iPhone’s future in Japan, whose consumers are notoriously demanding about their gadgets. (You may wonder why I link to such a venue, but in fact, to keep up with what’s up in Japan, you have to read the biz press. The big books on pomo, empire and neo-liberalism have nary a mention of important things like the 1985 Plaza Accord, which basically paved the way for globalization in US-Japan circles, which is to say, a couple of eensy-beensy details like free trade between the world’s first- and second-largest economies.) Anyway, back to enjoying the symptom…

The real trump card for Japanese handsets may be their screens. Screen quality is so important to Japanese consumers that cellphone manufacturers have begun branding their handsets the same way they do their TVs–Viera for Panasonic, Aquos for Sharp and Bravia for Sony. Consumers will often invest in the same brand for their handset and their home TV, say analysts.

Pictured above is the number-one best-selling phone, a Panasonic. I have to say I love Panasonic durability, even if I am not going to be swiping my subway fare or paying my gas bill with a phone anytime soon.

Screens are a selling point mostly because the Japanese are big fans of mobile TV. Unlike the U.S., where TV-on-the-go is a nascent and pricey industry, Japanese consumers enjoy mobile TV free of charge, with plenty of fresh content. Under a system called “One Seg,” phones can directly access television broadcast signals. Like larger LCDs, these screens display crisp images in up to 17 million colors.