the Urban Archivist

a shorter version of this is posted on my blog

Only the tourists walk in San Antonio, Texas. After a couple of days at the National Communication Conference we decided to get out of the tourist themed commercial zone of the Riverwalk and headed north, the city quickly turned to sprawl. We were vaguely looking for an old whorehouse, now a hip old tilted Victorian house/coffee shop. Every local told us that it was way too far to drive to it, the map told us it was a 2 mile walk.

We decided to see where the widening streets might take us. Our way was littered with dilapidated Victorian houses, urban decay, an art school haven, unexpected graffiti, and plenty of decorated shacks. This painting is a memorial mural over an industrial building that we thought was empty until we saw a tattooed guy come out an iron gated door. We guessed, maybe it was a squat. The entire building was painted from top to bottom and one side had the mural to Angel. There is a list of tags on the right wall in this image (Angel’s friends?). He was born in 1979 and died in 2006.

Naked cherubs lurking in the doorways and Angel’s hair spread along the wall in wavy curls, the mural transforms the ordinary building into either a sacred or a profane space, depending on what side of the Broken Windows argument you’re on.

San Antonio art museum falls into the butt ugly beautiful category. The color must have come from the mismatched section of the paint store for 50% off. And the building is basically a rectangle reminiscent of a prison. But in the true style of the decorated shack, described by Venturi, an interesting window shape and some conceptual art balls rolling out of it, make this building surreal and admirable. A resourceful way to make the ugly into the eye catching.

Like this pig crouching over a little shed, the decorated shack is effective in intriguing the driver from a distance and cheap. Basically bargain price architecture.

Venturi described this is as “inclusive architecture” that efficiently makes for a more vital city. While modern architecture is concerned with good taste and order and often renders the place uninteresting and sterile, the vernacular architecture of the decorated shack brings life to the street. Modernists got rid of small decorations on buildings and unconsciously created mega-structures that themselves became expensive ornament (Seattle Public Library for example). Venturi argues for the ugly and ordinary architecture (decorated with sign) over the heroic architecture (building as the sign) as being more socially responsible because decoration is more flexible, cheaper and adapts better to the environment.

Not sure if I agree because a solid building that is art in itself is more likely to last longer and more resources are saved when a building is built with good materials and to last. Too often the shack is so flimsy that it needs to be demolished and replaced and no one cares because the materials and craftsmanship are so crappy and plastic. This turns into the old debate about what’s better, democratization or conservation of resources.

But i sure do appreciate the decorated shack over the predictable strip mall architecture, like this Safeway plaza turned into a Mega church! You can still see the faded ghost signs of the pharmacy and the Safeway sign is replaced by the small abstract painting of a cross. I wonder why they bothered to get such a large space and opted for such a small sign. I wonder how the members of this church feel about going to Safeway for their religion.

Originally posted to Seattlest.com on November 29, 2006
[ Link]

With the closure of yet more businesses, the Ave’s storefront streetscape is treated to more vacant storefronts. We’ve given up thinking that such things are harbingers of the end of the world or, more locally, the Death of the Ave. People in this town, or any town for that matter, love talking about and citing evidence for the Death of insert business district. We believe that commercial turnover is just another one of those cycles that happens. Unless the UW decides to up and move, the Ave will very likely remain the area’s “campustown” commercial and restaurant strip–through better and through worse.

Off The Wall was one of those cheesy head shops that sold pot accoutrements and incense to the masses. It was the place to go if, as a college kiddie, you wanted to show off your rebelious individuality by getting a Bob Marley poster or a t-shirt with the likeness of Che Guevara on it. As such, it always had slightly less character than the other, more cramped tobacco shops up and down the street.

This is a shame, since the physical store itself had a charming spatial configuration. It was one of those old-style storefronts in which the entry was recessed into the facade. The doors were centered on a U-shaped front window. As one turned off the sidewalk and headed for them, there was a 15-foot stretch of roofed, enclosed space transitioning between public sidewalk and the private property of the store’s interior. On either side of you, then, there was a windowed display area where, in the romanticized past, the merchant could show off his or her finest and newest wares.

More importantly, however, it was one of those nebulous semi-private or semi-public spaces–it was technically private property but it was open to the public and not really part of the store. It was an enclosure–a separate transition space. It was a place where a homeless person could reasonably and comfortably sleep out of the elements while offending nobody, visually or physically. It was also a space into which Chas. could duck out of the rain as he serendipitously ran into Hal, his chum, walking down the street the other way. The two would converse there for a few minutes without obstructing the sidewalk. During the conversation, Chas. would spy a piece of fine haberdashery in the display and then buy it after Hal excused himself to run off to an important appointment at 11:15.

Seattlest mourns the loss of such genteel public spaces.

So it was with a certain amount of nostalgic malaise that we looked on as the new owner of the space demolished the recessed entryway and proceeded with construction of a new, flat, characterless storefront. We certainly don’t wish to challenge the inviolable right of private property and the self-determination that comes with it, but we are apprehensive about these developments. Far too many times in recent years, we’ve watched a vacant storefront on the Ave re-emerge as Yet Another Pho place or Yet Another Thai place. Don’t get us wrong, we lovelovelove both pho and Thai. However, we’ve had it with the lack of culinary diversity we’ve begun seeing on the Ave. And we’ve already watched a decent Greek place, a sub shop, and a Creperie close up shop.

Some day soon, we’d like to dig into the new owner’s plans, so that perhaps we’ll get some indication of what will appear. In the meantime, there are two additional vacant storefronts on the street level of this building. Our greatest fear is that the Asian Hegemony will continue to squeeze the strained gut of the Ave.

If we’re lucky we might get another Starbucks. After all, there is not one currently on this end of that block– why bother when Sureshot is across the street and Trabant is just down 45th–and the only other one is down at 42nd–right across from Cafe on the Ave and Bulldog News.

On the other hand, what with the Ave’s commercial turnover, it’ll be just a few months before whatever opens here goes out of business and is replaced by that new WalBartRite that we so desperately need.

Originally posted to Seattlest.com on November 29, 2006.
[ http://www.seattlest.com/archives/2006/11/29/good_morning_ice_world.php ]

NE 52nd Street, University District, Seattle

Back when we lived in the periodically-frozen tundra, we dutifully shoveled our sidewalks because, personally, we hated walking across others’ snowy sidewalks which subsequently froze over to resemble the desert of Arizona a jagged lunar surface. And after shoveling, the procedure called for sprinkling one’s walk with automotive-floorboard-eating, soil-poisoning rock salt to melt any ice. Thankfully, these days there are some less harmful alternatives that will not harm our verdant metronaturality Emerald City.

We utterly failed in our civic duty the other day. Good Pedestrians and Perambulators, we do apologize! On the other hand, aren’t leaves frozen in ice kinda pretty?

Well, it seems that the folks over at Getty Images would have none of this prettiness –what do they know about pretty imagery anyway?– and duly de-iced their sidewalks. Getty is located in a two block stretch known as the Fremont Tech Ghetto; this district includes other luminaries such as Adobe, Google, and, most importantly, a small company what empowers librarians.

Needless to say, a lotta highly important shit goes down in this area, day in and day out. There can be no tolerance for people succumbing to the whims of weather and the compromised physics of reduced traction. But being the visual connoisseurs that they are, the building stewards at Getty threw out a colorful twist on the old, boring, white pellet de-icer…

600 block, N 34th Street, Fremont, Seattle