by David Burn | Dec 31, 2007 | Place
“People seeing the beauty of this valley will want to stay, and their staying will be the undoing of its beauty.” –Chief Niwot
Bowl-der is the perfect place for testing the hypothesis that geography determines culture. Bowl-der is, geographically speaking, a bowl of a city nestled between a high Great Plains ridge to the east and the front range of the Rocky Mountains to the west. The bowl effect makes for an interesting stew of human interactivity.
Taking cues from the uniqueness of the land, the thoughts and actions of Bowl-der’s inhabitants are distinctly different from those who live in the surrounding geo-cultural reality. Denver is sprawl. Thus, its sense of place is scattered, which is the polar opposite of the unified feel found in Bowl-der. Despite the diversity of parts that go into its making, Bowl-der is capable of acting as one.
A nestling valley like this makes people feel at home, and one finds positivity and immense possibility in this safe zone. It’s possible to be for things–alternative energy, for instance–without feeling foolish. No scarlet letters are issued to idealists here.
The flipside to the goodness of the bowl is the fact that it is contained. Bowl-der is a microcosm, a world unto itself. While we need these hot spots of consciousness and kindness, we also need to spread the goodness found in a place like Bowl-der into everyday America.
by David Burn | Dec 29, 2007 | Place
Last year I made note of the cities where I spent at least one night. It’s a neat exercise in reflection.
Here’s the list for 2007.
- Austin
- Asheville
- Palm Coast
- Houston
- Atlanta
- Nashville
- Rochester, MN
- New York City
- Vancouver, BC
- Princess-owned floating city at sea
- Denali
- Wilderness lodge outside Talkeetna
- Anchorage
- Chapel Hill
- Myrtle Beach
- Cambridge
- Orlando
- Marco Island
- Memphis
- Winston-Salem
- Boulder
by David Burn | Dec 29, 2007 | Place
The Trident on West Pearl in Boulder is the great American coffee shop. The coffee is excellent and the conversation is even better. Intellectuals come down off the Hill and mingle with entrepreneurs, artists, vagabonds and canyon folk. It’s very much at the center of something, a confluence with different streams joining to make for a stronger river moving forward.
by David Burn | Nov 26, 2007 | Architecture, Place
“I have no money with which to build the modern American campus, but if you’ll design the buildings, I’ll work night and day to raise the means.†-Dr. Ludd Spivey, President of Florida Southern College, appealing to Frank Lloyd Wright in 1938
Lakeland, Florida is an old school Florida town with lovely lakes, a vital downtown core and a private college with the largest single collection of Frank Lloyd Wright designed buildings anywhere in the world.
inside Annie Pfeiffer Chapel at Florida Southern
We arrived on campus the Wednesday morning before Thanksgiving which meant that the visitor center was closed. However, the walking tour was all the more pleasant without students or crowds of any sort to distract from the main show. And what a show! FLW went all out in Lakeland and I kept thinking as we wandered around the former orange grove how nice it would be to spend four years on this campus, or longer if one were a faculty member or administrator.
Florida Southern is a private liberal arts school. They don’t have an architecture program. However, the school would do well to start one, or better yet a program in achitectural preservation and restoration. Given that many of the buildings were built in part by students working in return for tuition and board, there would something poetic about a new group of students engaged in preservation of this national treaure.
For more images from the campus, see my Flickr set.
by David Burn | Nov 17, 2007 | Food & Beverage, Place
Caffe Vittoria, Hanover St., Boston
My friend Mark asked me earlier today where I’d like to go to dinner. I said, I don’t know. How about something exotic? Something I can’t get where I live.
Mark delivered. Big time. He and his wife Sharon swooped over to Cambridge to get me and over the bridge to Bahstin we went in their Honda Accord. We parked downtown, then walked about six blocks to the North End, a neighborhood with no parking but an Italian restaurant every 20 feet. We dined at The Florentine, which was totally satisfying, but our dessert was the bomb.
After a port at The Florentine for Sharon and me and a single malt for Mark, we walked back down Hanover Street to Caffe Vittoria and it–like every other place–was packed. However, we were seated quickly, and the next thing I knew I was enjoying pistachio gelati and espresso while realizing that there is no place like this anywhere near where I live. It was nice to feel the Saturday night energy and experience the history of the place. And it was good to share the company of a friend I have not seen in nearly two decades (although it seems like just yesterday).
by David Burn | Nov 9, 2007 | Literature, Place
Place is one of the central themes in my life. The importance it holds for me is not normal. So it makes sense that the last few books I’ve cracked–A Man Without A Country by Kurt Vonnegut and Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck–are about place and thus about culture.
image courtesy of Flickr user, Rob Walker
Rob Walker’s Letters from New Orleans is a wonderful narrative like the aforementioned titles, concerned like I am, with place. And any visitor to, or resident of, New Orleans will tell you, the Crescent City is quite a place.
Walker, who writes the “Consumed” column in the The New York Times Magazine, started by sending the stories in this volume as emails to friends. He covers a wide swath of material in this book—”the projects,” Carnival, high society, race, music, parades, food and more. One story I particulary like is called “3% Theory.” In it, Walker introduces the reader to performance artist Kal Spelletich. He first encountered Spelletich while a student at U of T in Austin. Given that Spelletich had come to Austin from Iowa, Walker asked if he wasn’t relieved to be in a more diverse place like Austin. Spelletich responed, “There’s always a fringe element. You could go to Waco, Texas, and 3 percent of the people are going to be these experiemental artists.”
Walker tells two tales about legendary New Orleans’ restaurant Galatoire’s. It’s funny stuff. He has a journalist’s eye for detail and nails the crusty oldtimers, drinking heavily and flirting over five-hour Friday luncheons.
It’s clear that Walker’s love for New Orleans is the real deal. I’ve only been there during Jazz Fast–yes five of them–but I know enough to know how important the culture of this most un-American of American cities is to the nation, to my friends and to me personally. Letters deepens the mystery whist revealing it (no easy task).
by David Burn | Oct 28, 2007 | Architecture, Place, The Environment
Thanks to an article in Dwell, I’m freaking out right now. In a good way. I’m freaking because I just learned about El Cosmico, the new community art project from Bunkhouse Management.
Bunkhouse is the team behind the coolest hotel in the world, Austin’s Hotel San Jose. Their vision of El Cosmico is equally enthralling.
El Cosmico will be part yurt and hammock hotel, part residential living, part art-house, greenhouse and amphitheatre – a community space that fosters and agitates artistic and intellectual exchange. As part of the overall aim to build community in a creative and sustainable space, thirty renovated vintage trailers will make up a small village on the site.
This experiement is taking place in West Texas, outside the small town of Marfa.
Like any great community project, there is a blog to keep people in the loop.
by David Burn | Oct 18, 2007 | Place
“Throw out them LA papers and that moldy box of vanilla wafers. Adios to all this concrete. Gonna get me some dirt road back street.” -Guy Clark
Image couretsy of Flickr user Matt Logelin
I stumbled across this strange, but well writtern, BLDGBLOG post about the city of Los Angeles, after following a link from Dooce’s sidebar. Geoff Manaugh, the writer, is interested in architecure and urban planning and he LOVES L.A. (more than most).
L.A. is the apocalypse: it’s you and a bunch of parking lots. No one’s going to save you; no one’s looking out for you. It’s the only city I know where that’s the explicit premise of living there – that’s the deal you make when you move to L.A.
The city, ironically, is emotionally authentic.
It says: no one loves you; you’re the least important person in the room; get over it.
What matters is what you do there.
So, it’s some kind of extreme version of America meritocracy? I’m not so sure. I think appearances, contrary to Manaugh’s arguments, do matter in L.A. But I will concede that it’s far, far away from the East Coast aristocracy (where the fact that your great great grandfather went to Harvard matters immensely).
In the comments to his post, a person known only as Steve, has some great insight and reactions. Steve–who says he lives across the street from Manaugh in San Francisco–invites Manaugh to return to the City of Angels.
I’m sick to death of ambitious people moving to San Francisco and complaining the whole time about how it’s not L.A. or New York, and whining about how it’s not whatever it was they expected, which usually boils down to “I thought San Francisco would give me X, but it’s not doing that!” …as if the good to be gotten from a city is what you can take from it, rather than what you can add to it.
San Francisco doesn’t need any more people lecturing it about how it should feel inadequate because it’s not somewhere else. It needs its own heroes: people who are committed to making it great here and now by doing and making stuff that leverages the city’s unique beauties, and forming fertile collaborative bonds with other people who live here — like everywhere; like you would be in L.A.
One thing that’s not up for debate—place fosters culture. And being in the right place is central to one’s happiness.
by David Burn | Sep 7, 2007 | Food & Beverage, Place
Back porch, Cafe Driade, Chapel Hill, NC
Over the past two days I’ve enjoyed sipping fine espresso thanks to the efforts of Scott Conary at Carrboro Coffee Company and the baristas at Cafe Driade in Chapel Hill. Like wine, coffee is culture, and culture is found in intelligent places. Chapel Hill is an intelligent place.
by David Burn | Sep 3, 2007 | Place, Politics
Salt Lake Tribune looks at that city’s race for mayor and in doing so questions my good friend D.K., also known as David R. Keller, associate professor of philosophy at Utah Valley State College and director of the Center for the Study of Ethics.
DK, a native, envisions a vibrant, modern Salt Lake City.
“The real issue that transcends the sky bridge or the mayoral race is the fundamental question: What kind of city should Salt Lake be?” Keller says. “A celestial city or a cosmopolitan city? A city that reflects the values of one particular social group or the value of pluralism, which is fundamental to the American experience? The latter option is more economically viable, and, more importantly, interesting.”
Of course, pluralism requires a “live and let live” mindset and that’s not where members of the LDS Church are coming from. Proof of this can be found in the church-mandated worldwide proselytizing/recruitment efforts. And in the state’s arcane liquor laws.
Having lived in Salt Lake City twice, I will say it’s a great place with great people. Yet, I could never quite get comfortable there. The reason I could not has everything to do with the fact that the Mormons can’t quite get comfortable with me, and those like me, living among them as neighbors.
D.K. and I have talked before about the difference between a place settled by pilgrims and a place settled by pioneers. Salt Lake was settled by pilgrims—those with a religious agenda. Yet, we expect Salt Lake as a Western frontier city to embody the pioneer spirit. But that’s not the case. Salt Lake embodies the pilgrim spirit, much like the New England states once did.
As in most arguments about American culture, the debate eventually winds its way to an economic answer. For pilgrims, like pioneers, both share a love of American money. The Mormons have become more adept than most at gathering this money. Thus, the fundmental question is: Will Salt Lake’s desire to become even wealthier than it already is, lead the LDS Church to embrace pluralism? In the short term I don’t think it will, for the simple fact that the economy in Salt Lake has been, and remains, quite strong. Hence, there’s little incentive to change.
