Here's an Onion

I sliced into a particularly juicy red onion last night while making potato soup and thought it looked neat in cross section, so I tried to take a photo. This was the best one. For once I made an onion cry instead of t'other way 'round.

Totally Sick Bikes, ca. 1911

Another scan sent from my librarian-wife.

A Timely Quote

Just after posting the entry below, we received a shipment of The Philistine for our collection and I found the following quote on one of the covers:

"A criminal--one who does by illegal means what all the rest of us do legally."

So, think about that.

Between "Informal" and "Illegal"

This post has been marinating for a while, I wrote it some time ago and I wasn't really sure where I was going with it, so I didn't publish it, but reading back over it now, I guess it's at least a little thought-provoking.

I just read a very interesting article about how slums might give us a model for the future of cities. I have to admit, it was my interest in post-collapse theory that initially attracted me to the headline, but the article was actually about how the density and activity of the slums provides a different model for urban living than the sleek, sanitized, and intensely regulated modern city life the developed world has come to expect. The article was primarily about how cities have long gone untapped as a model for "green" living, but the thing that really caught my eye was a reference to the "informal sector" of the slum economy. That is, what some might refer to as the illegal sector: alleyway salesmen, squatters, and the like.

All of this made me think of a phrase our wedding florist used in reference to obtaining flowers not readily available on the retail market: midnight gardening. Basically, flower stealing. This florist wasn't saying that she steals other people's flowers to make money for herself, but if she spots a flourishing patch of Whatever in someone else's garden or lawn, she might take a snip of it some late night and put it in a vase in her own house. Theoretically, this would be stealing, but can anyone really imagine pressing charges for something like this?

My point, and the thing that got me off on this tangent, is that there is a middle ground between informal and illegal activity that most of us implicitly acknowledge as ambiguous moral territory. It is illegal to roll a stop sign in a deserted neighborhood at 3:00am, but people do it. It is illegal to drive over the speed limit, but people do it. It is illegal not to have white or yellow reflectors on bicycle pedals (at least in California), but a lot of people don't even have pedals that will fit reflectors. Most of us do things that are illegal every day with only a dim consciousness that these things theoretically breach a written code of conduct, but are not, in a cultural sense, immoral or otherwise damaging to the community at large.

And yet, even with an acknowledgement that there is some slippage between codified and actual human conduct, our first response to social problems is to seek new legislation, knowing full-well that (as the old saw goes) "rules are meant to be broken." But I wonder if the traffic calming theory of removing all signage and roadway markings might also apply on some level to other sorts of laws governing human behavior. If there is a middle ground between informal and illegal, I wonder if there is also a middle ground between the institutional formation and application of laws and utter social chaos? Is there a point at which community norms and standards can stand-in for formalized legal structures and the people can collectively (and ethically) take responsibility for their enforcement?

Ethnictown Meets Anytown

Ages ago (it seems), I wrote an anthropology B.A. thesis about the expression of German-American ethnicity in a rural Oregon town near where I grew up. One of the things I looked at closely was the physical transformation of the town from a nondescript farm community to an idealized folk version of a German village. I worked elements of cultural geography into my analysis, looking at the literal creation of visual markers of German ethnicity.

This weekend, I had occasion to revisit some of the ideas I explored in that paper when my wife and I visited Convoy Street in San Diego's Kearny Mesa neighborhood. This area is reputed to be an emerging "Asia Town" where restaurants, bakeries, and other sorts of shops and services are increasingly owned by and serve diverse Asian populations, including Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese.

We went up for dinner at a Thai restaurant (which was okay) and then looked around just a bit. The main thing to notice about this area is that Convoy Street is dominated by strip malls and industrial buildings.  The street is wide and fast, the parking lots are ample, the buildings are low and plain, the landscaping and greenery virtually nonexistent.

The first thing we noticed was that the restaurant's parking lot (and the adjacent lot) was completely full.  We turned down a side street to look for parking, but there were a lot of wide warehouse driveways, red zones, and loadings zones, so not a lot of street parking. We did find a spot, just ahead of a rush of other cars who were all obviously driving around looking for parking. It was clear that in this land of proprietary parking lots, street parking was never designed-in to the neighborhood.

Second, we noticed that signage (in strip-mall mega signs) in this area is often bilingual with English or unilingual in only the ethnic language. It's almost a "covert ethnicity" that is only noticeable if you look for it, it blends into the surroundings; no rearing Chinese dragons and towering pagodas here, just words.

Can you spot the ethnic community in this photo?

Third, smack dab in the middle of the Asian ethnic restaurants and ethnic-owned businesses, was a Weinershnitzel chain, an Office Depot, a Mexican restaurant, an auto parts store, and all sorts of other non-Asian-specific businesses like mattress and tire and carpet stores.

The thing that made me really get started on this line of thought was the question: what happens when an area that was designed and planned to be acultural, becomes a cultural destination? Well, first of all, you run out of parking. Second, you subject pedestrians who are partaking in the cultural attractions to a road system that is designed to facilitate high-volume and high-speed traffic. It's an ugly, non-human-centered landscape that was never designed to be attractive for any reason beyond the content of the shops and warehouses.

So, how does such a landscape become a cultural landscape in an overt sense? Public spaces? Public art? De-emphasizing traffic and parking? What would that transformed, human-centric landscape look like? And most importantly, what role can ethnicity and ethnic identity play in this transformation? How can overt expressions of ethnicity, through physical changes to the man-made landscape, turn an area blighted with concrete and strip malls into a walkable, livable, human-centered neighborhood with significant cultural attractions?

It will be interesting to see how (and if) this growing multi-ethnic Asian community will coalesce into an interest group to rally for changes to the landscape. Will they capitalize on the cultural draw of their neighborhood to lobby for changes that will make this a more attractive place to visit (and spend money), or will the (dare I say) brutal nature of the landscape stymie any such efforts?

Photos from Elfin Forest Hike

Elfin forest defined (@ Wikipedia)

Elfin Forest Recreational Reserve (Olivenhain Municipal Water District)

Saturday Ramble: Golden Hill

Edit: jacobk asked where this little canyon is, so here's a screenshot of a Google map. The entrance to the canyon open space is at Russ Boulevard and 24th Street (blue marker in map below). It's not much, just an opening in a fence and a garbage can; cross the open area, and you'll see the trail down a little to the left of where my bike is parked in the photo above. Use caution, however, as it appears that some unsavory characters frequent the canyon area occasionally. Also, the canyon is quite small, but it sure is pretty. There is also a staircase up (or down--that's usually how stairs work) where the red marker is on the map.

Lookin' Sharp!

How much do I love my wife? She sends me stuff like this from work.

The Amsterdam City Archives

Hofman’s bicycle repair shop, photograph by Marco de Nood, 1986-1988

I have no professional interest in Amsterdam's history or archives, but I do like a good online archive. For all of the hubbub that folks in the bicycling community make about Amsterdam, it's interesting to note the paucity of bicycles in the online portion of the archive, which, of course, is miniscule compared to their physical records, but still. This was one of only two bicycle images I turned up in a quick browse through the site.

Gemeente Amsterdam Stadsarchief

The Illusion/Delusion of Hard Work

Working hard, or hardly working? Harr-harr.

David Foster Wallace Doodled on Cormac McCarthy

The Harry Ransom Center at UT-Austin has recently acquired the papers of the late David Foster Wallace. Included among the archive are books annotated by Wallace, like this copy of Suttree by my all-time favorite author Cormac McCarthy. It seems Wallace also made a few "notes" regarding the composition of McCarthy's author portrait. I also like the note on the inside of the cover: "set-up is slow -- does not set stage," which is a fair criticism, I suppose.

Bicycle Sizing from Back in the Day

I am always startled by the huge size of bicycles relative to their riders in photos from around the turn of the century. I wonder if riding gigantic "safety" bicycles was a holdover from the days of riding high wheels? Notice especially the PBH (pubic bone height) of the guy on the left relative to the top tube of his bike. If either of these guys ever had to come down off the saddle in a hurry, I bet they were wishing they had smaller frames.

Photo from Flickr user radlmax.

Sunday Ramble: Mission Hills & Old Town

Favorite Things: The Philistine Magazine

My wife and I have a small collection of Elbert Hubbard's magazine The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest, which was produced by the Roycroft Press between 1895 and 1915 (when Hubbard took an ill-fated voyage aboard the Lusitania). Our collection is quite modest right now, and our initial guidelines for purchase have been the quality of the back cover designs, which frequently feature satirical or quirky or inspirational messages set beautifully with Arts and Crafts motifs. The example here is one of my favorites, from the September 1910 (Volume 31, No.4) edition.

And yes, Elbert Hubbard was related (by adoption) to L. Ron Hubbard, the science fiction writer and part-time wackadoo.

Would You Pay $200 for This Bike?

Spotted in the local Craigslist bicycle listings. I don't usually make fun of postings on CL, but this one is just too outrageous not to comment on. I like the creative use of the word "antique" (1983) and the unintentionally hilarious phrase "must see to believe." I'll say. I really hope nobody falls for this.

for sale bike - $200 (san diego)

"I have an antique bicycle i am trying to sell frame is in good working condition it is a 83 free spirit it is a great project bike must see to believe.please call or e-mail if interested my number is ----------. Thank You" 

Share the Road Rage

I'm no fan of motorcycles, but this story at SignOnSanDiego today gave me pause:

A message appearing on electronic freeway signs around the county in the past week wasn’t supposed to cause road rage.

To the state agencies that posted the message, its suggestion “Share the road. Look twice for motorcyclists” seemed helpful, especially with spring weather bringing out more bikers.

Some drivers apparently saw red.

“None of the calls we’ve gotten have been positive,” said Edward Cartagena, spokesman for the San Diego Caltrans office. “One call was a 20-minute rant.”

Since the electronic message was posted statewide Feb. 11, Caltrans has received about 800 phone calls, mostly positive....  “Except for here [my emphasis]. I don’t know why,” Cartagena said.

In the bicycling community, we've experienced much the same reaction to "share the road" messages. The prevailing assumption here seems to be that if you're not traveling by car, or traveling exactly the way a car would travel, you must be getting special treatment, or be some sort of ruffian, or are risking everyone's life -- and the list of outrages goes on.

The "special treatment" argument in particular is the most interesting to me. If someone chooses a different mode of travel from the dominant vehicle (and its inherent limitations), they become part of a pariah community that must, in some way, be setting itself "against" the mainstream and its values. Emphasis gets placed on what they're doing differently (traveling by a different sort of vehicle) rather than what they are doing the same (just trying to get where they're going without dying or getting maimed). The really troubling thing is that so many people rarely consider being "different" to be a good thing. They get hung up on the "different" part, and never even get to the "same" part.

Holy crap, I think I just solved every global conflict. Well, you're welcome.

Photos from Coronado/Imperial Beach Ride

A group of us from the SDBikeCommuter forums went on a ride this weekend to Suzie's Farm in Imperial Beach. About 30 of us caught the ferry from downtown San Diego to Coronado, then rode down The Strand to IB. The farm is right on the border with Mexico, a few hundred yards from the Tijuana River. It was a bit surreal to have the border fence on the hill to the south, and the Border Patrol station on the hill to the north, touring an organic farm in the middle. Here are a few photos from the trip.

Nottingham: 1, Detroit: 0

I posted at Bike San Diego today about getting hit by a car last night while riding my bike, so I won't go into all the details again. You can read all about it over there, but here's an excerpt:

The driver who hit me had not even reached his stop line when I entered the intersection. I was ¾ of the way across the driver’s line of sight when I realized that he was not fully stopping. I yelled and pushed hard to get out from in front of him, but he clipped my rear wheel. The bike went down, but I was able to step off and stay on my feet.

As I stumbled to keep from falling, the driver crept through the intersection, looking back directly at me. Once he realized I was still standing (not broken or bleeding on the pavement), he accelerated and left the scene. 

I had to laugh just now when I gave my British steel the once-over in the light of day and found only a minor bend in the rear fender and some chipped paint. Both wheels spin true, the frame, steering, and cranks are fine, and the shifting is unaffected. In fact, I took the opportunity to tighten down my brakes, so it actually rides better now than it did before. Take that, car!

Toyota/Nader Mashup, It Was Just a Matter of Time

Sunday Hike

In San Diego's Florida Canyon, part of Balboa Park. The canyon is as green and lush as I've ever seen it, thanks to the recent rains. There was plenty of mud and standing water, but the trails were in great shape overall and there weren't many people out, on account of a certain professional sporting event taking place today. The weather was brisk for San Diego, with a chilly wind blowing and clouds moving fast. It's hard to believe these photos were taken in the center of the nation's ninth largest city.

Waist Land

I knew it! From the BBC:

"A survey from department store Debenhams... suggests that a man's waistband rises and falls throughout his life. Trousers bottom out at the age of 16 with below-the-hip styles and peak at 57, just seven inches below the armpit...

Fashion history shows this seesaw isn't such a new thing - waistlines have been bouncing up and down for hundreds of years."

BBC: Mens' waistbands have risen and fallen throughout history.

Image: The Smithsonian Institution, part of the Flickr Commons.

Truss-Bridge Bicycle Frames

I wouldn't say that I'm a covetous person. I have relatively few material things that I really want. I have a whole theory about how appreciation for material things is healthy, but over-indulgence in anything creates imbalance and unhappiness. Getting too wrapped-up in want and have for their own sake is bad, but if you truly appreciate a thing, and derive real benefit from it every day (use, aesthetics, enjoyment, etc.) I don't see any reason to deny yourself that benefit simply for the sake of believing that a person should live without material pleasures.

Anyhoo. One thing I really want (in a slow-burning, maybe-someday sort of way) is a truss-bridge bicycle. Something about the aesthetics of these frames pushes hard on a little part of my brain's happy center. The most famous American manufacturer of these bicycles was Iver Johnson, which is best known for producing firearms:

The French company Labor also produced a truss-bridge frame:

The modern company A.N.T. (Alternative Needs Transportation) makes a truss-bridge frame that isn't quite as sexy as the old ones (to my eye, at least), but I wouldn't kick it out of the garage, either:

Images:
Iver Johnson
Labor
A.N.T.

Favorite Things: Old Bicycle Photographs

This one found in the Flickr photostream of the Oregon State University Archives, part of The Commons project.

Loomis' No. 10 Pittsburgh Almanac for 1844

This weekend my wife and I spent a good bit of time at a local bookstore that has gone out of business and is now liquidating its stock at sacrificial prices. The loss of the shop is a tragedy for this city, but I like to think more about all of the people who will be enriched by the books they were able to buy and take home.

Among the many little treasures we brought home was this 1844 almanac, which we purchased for $0.50. It's not rare or valuable, but it is certainly a nice addition to our little (but growing) collection of historical ephemera, and it will perhaps make a nice teaching specimen someday. The best part is that someone wrote a couple of cryptic notes in it, perhaps practicing penmanship (but certainly not spelling): "Alnamack White hous" and "big lip piscat heffer". Or perhaps it's some sort of code?

Sprocket Man Comic, ca. 1973

This is so cool.

Spotted in Wha'ppen's Flickr photostream.