this is your block on drugs

I was just coming back from going out with friends- we discovered a few of us happen to live within three blocks of eachother, and I walked home with a new comrade who just lives one block down from me. Halfway between my place and his, thirty yards before my place just after passing the square in front of the church, I hear footsteps behind me, shuffly ones. That doesn't surprise me initially, as my neighborhood is crazy busy until the bars close, it's a neighborhood very popular with the young folks.

But sadly, my lovely block, the one I profess to be the most picturesque in the east village with its stately brownstones, is also connected to St Marks Place, a cool historic church that has a public square that tends to attract people needing a place to sleep to its benches. So every once in a while my quiet street becomes a bit of a resting point for unusual characters. Really, I guess you could say that about any place in Manhattan.

Anyway, the shuffly steps quicken, and then all of a sudden someone grabs my arm. As I turn and look, there is the creepiest quiet, hissy "heey" that drips forth from this SUPER SCARY addicted-to-I-don't know-what-but-likely-just-about-everything creature. I would not described this individual as even a person, it was so sad and scary. Sallow-eyed, sores all over the mouth, thin lips and hunched over... she was like a creature out of one of Dante's circles of hell, or one of Ursula's screaming little shriveled worms in The Little Mermaid. Scared the living daylights out of me, I can't believe I didn't do anything but quicken my pace. The weird thing is that she kept following me as I fumbled for my keys... and did not find them. So I kept walking past my door... and so did she. I should have ducked in with the doorman next door, but was thinking I'd find them quickly... then I thought I'd duck in the late-night grocery, but it was already closed... so I ended up doing a full walk around the block, and it was only after getting halfway back around that I heard loud shrieking of "hey" a few times and no more shuffling. I crossed the trickle of a man peeing on the inside side of the sidewalk, turned the corner back around St Marks square with the few bench-sleepers, and made sure I had my key out well in advance the second time around.

I can say I did feel bad, like it was some Dickens-esque scene, me being like ew, don't touch my white coat, you scary underworld creature. I'm sure this woman just really needed help and was so incredibly out of it she couldn't have hurt me. Her tone seemed to convey that she thought I'd be her friend. But still... it was a scary sight. If that doesn't scare you into never doing drugs, I'm not sure what would.

Guess that's what you get for bragging about how safe and lovely and perfect your neighborhood is over late-night meat pies at Tuck Shop, you smug jerk.

abstract city

I absolutely adore the work of Christoph Niemann. You may recognize his illustrations from New Yorker covers, but his monthly entry in his New York Times blog, Abstract City, is fantastic every time. This month's entry, "I LEGO NY," is awesome per usual.



I feel like my brain somewhat works similarly to his, in a comedic narrative fashion. The whimsical reflections of a displaced New Yorker are fun to relate to as they come out each month. Fun for someone learning the city to relate to. (yes, I am that person spying critters on the tracks, and that totally is the Flatiron!) So check it out (this entry and previous ones... they are great too), I hope you enjoy his blog as much as I do, New Yorker or no.

the pickle, the giant coffee, scallions (which on the west coast are simply called "green onions"), and the ugliness of madison square garden gave me an extra snicker as I've already had discussions about these quintessential NY things since my arrival here.

CRAP

the market for recycling is in a slump, says the new york times.



what are we going to do with all of our junk?

(please try to make less)

photo- chris jordan

they were the best of times

I am doing what I really want to be doing with my life right now. That's pretty awesome. A year ago I didn't have too much of an idea what I wanted to be doing. I was a bit at a loss.

I would say I'm a pretty passionate/opinionated person about things that are important to me, and one of those things is doing good things with one's energy. I think it's our duty, especially those of us with decent educations, to use our faculties to make a positive impact.


I became a landscape architect because I wanted to make great places, for people and for the world. When I started working, I began to learn how ideology crossed with pragmatism in everyone's life in different ways, and started trying to figure out how to simultaneously live for my own well-being and happiness as well as do right by the world.

Situational difficulties and distractions took precedence for a year or two, and I found myself asking where I really wanted to be, as I was struggling to feel passionate about what I was doing with life.

I wouldn't have been able to predict that where I'd eventually take myself would be so great for me both personally and professionally. I made a gamble based on a social/cultural instinct, and it's turning out to be wonderful for me with regard to my life's efforts and personal/professional focus. I'm designing for environmental education in urban environments as I've been aiming to do since my research grant on environmental learning.

My current project work has me designing public schoolyards in Brooklyn: completely barren asphalt yards to be turned into proper playgrounds through contracts from New York Department of Parks. It is so rewarding to be working with students and communities in designing better learning and community spaces, and helping people learn and grow to value their environments by providing them with good ones.

I have been going through series of meetings and design charettes with school staff, community members, and young students themselves. Working with them directly is such an important and tangible reminder as to why I do what I do every day. There were days when I'd be at work in Seattle and question whether I was doing what I really what I found valuable with my 9 hours every day. So I made a change, and the opportunity waiting for me turned out to be wonderful.

Oddly enough, I'm working for the same firm, and the office environment and culture can be more stressful and difficult by far than my old office. Granted, I'm still getting accustomed, and don't have the luxury of experience or comfort in the big, new, New York office. But I enjoy it because I love what I'm working on, and it's a challenge. I can't imagine using my brain and finite time on earth to do something like trade stocks or sell ads or take photos of famous people or fly charter jets, no matter how capable I was, or how financially rewarding it was. I spent some time teaching myself how to balance personal benefit with that of others in life and work, but I still believe passionately that we owe it to eachother to do right by our communities. We have responsibilities in concentric rings: from within -ourselves- to those close to us, radiating outward to our outermost communities of global proportions. Call your mother, send a card to remind her you love her. Travel less, consume less to remind your fellow global citizens you love them, too.

So here's to you, PS 170. Even if the economy was great, I can't imagine myself taking a resort-design position to make more money and receive the immediate gratification of travel. Your kids are awesome and I feel honored to be given the opportunity to do right by all of you.

up in my hood

banksy sighting



a few blocks from my place in soho (you can actually see my building, light grey at far right, midway up) is this great brasserie, Lucky Strike. Walk past it on Grand, and look back toward the firewall adjoining the parking lot, and wham! three stories of Banksy rat. He's wearing an iconic tee and making his own urban art.

Design On the Cheap

a cool slideshow of cheap, creative design from the New York Times-

places to dream about, or someday dream inside

I spend a lot of time thinking about my environment, as a designer (and your environment, and everyone else's). Over time, and after many living arrangements, however, I've lessened the reigns, per se, of my obsession with my living space. My first apartment definitely got more aesthetic attention than my later ones. You begin to run out of steam after moving every year or two.



I'm not, however, completely cured of my craigslist or redfin browsing, which I go through periodic bouts of... homes on the market up the street at Highland Drive or charming homes in France or New York, I'm guilty of fantasizing about potential alternate habitats. I love the light, airy, wall-of-windows modern lofts. I love the exposed-brick manhattan apartments. J'adore the Parisian ones with their tall, skinny windows that open up to wrought-iron juliet balconies with thin, scrolled handles. I have fond feelings for the standard Seattle 1920's wood-floored, brick construction one-bedrooms with hexagonal tiles in the bathroom, and turqouise-trimmed tilework in the kitchen.

I like to go for walks on Queen Anne and look at the lovely homes and wonder what life inside them is like. Dusk is the best time for it, when the lights are beginning to turn on and you can see the fireplaces, paint colors, and any ceiling detail. I have an incurable weakness for good ceilings. I love coffered ones, exposed beams, coved ones, you name it (my favorite might be coffered, or anything with good, unpainted woodwork.). I love the ceilings in old and elegant European cities' buildings that have intricate moulding, or tin panels.


I was reading the New York Times today online and flipped through the real estate slide shows (as I do fairly regularly, I'm addicted to nyt slideshows) when I came across a great apartment in Berlin. I love the simple quality of the space... light and bright, simple and modern, with heavy historical details in the walls and ceiling mouldings. An ideal city digs. The dark, modern finishes in the kitchen, replete with chandelier, and the simple, clean walls... I'd totally hit that. Of course, I'd have to add a garden gnome somewhere, and sprinkle a few other ridiculous pieces around.

With the killer balcony, I'd have the perfect location for a flamingo or two, as well...

I've relegated myself to potentially having to live in a shoebox in new york. I don't expect my own Sex In The City apartment in The Village, or anything like this flat, but a girl can dream... someday, maybe, a little moulding or coffers, or scroll-ey handles.

In New York...

Anything Is Possible

the abstract home improvement

in the NYTimes, quite the concept...



_click_

holy summer, batman

It has arrived!

It's eighty degrees here today, and is supposed to be almost ninety this weekend. This is the Seattle Payoff. The sky is so blue and clear and lovely, I just want to drink it up. Though I certainly am not relishing all this time at my desk, looking at the lovely day from behind sealed windows in an over-air-conditioned office. I can see that the Olympics are conspicuously less snowy (between viaduct columns)... and I like it.


Counting the hours until I head out for dinner and drinks at Agua Verde... yum. Could be a near-perfect evening.

For now, I'm going to escape from my desk into the warm concrete jungle for my lunch break. Maybe Elliot Bay Books. Maybe falafel. The world is my oyster. A warm oyster. Mmm.

urban mountaineering

Now that I have a significant percentage of my gear to head up the mountains, I'm feeling more technically prepared. On a side note, however, as it creeps closer and closer, I feel more and more anxious, and the incessant training doesn't help me feel more physically prepared, is just bringing me closer to burning out.

Nonetheless, I decided to toss the gear I had, plus some full bottles of water, cookbooks and landscape architecture textbooks, into my backpack and scale some steeper portions of Queen Anne last night after work. It was a great evening for it, calm and sunny with a lovely sunset over the Olympics. I mostly took the stairs that wind between the stately homes in the southwest portion of the hillside, but also hoofed it down and back up again through Kinnear Park. Which was comical, because as the park is a steep hillside full of invasive weeds above the industrial Interbay neighborhood, it's not all that well-taken care of, and is full of homeless people camping there. It wasn't dark yet, so it didn't intimidate me, but because I was wearing a giant backpack, it appeared as though the many men whom I passed along the way, welcoming me with smiles, nods, and even waves, were ready to welcome me into their tribe. I was friendly, but kept moving.

There are quite a few out of the way nooks and crannies that dead-end into hillsides (often with fantastic views) in that area that you might never come across, even as a Queen Anne resident, and it was cool to have a reason to stumble across them. There are quite a few homes that have front porches opening onto pedestrian paths and stairs because the grades are too steep for roads. Kind of Montmartre-sque, in that respect.

I ended up tooling up and down until it got dark (which is quite late, like nine thirty or ten in these parts this time of year), and made my way to my old neighborhood, and chatted with my former neighbors. By the time I started heading home it was well past dark, and I realized that the cats were out of food, so I figured what better way to make use of the backpack on my back, and the need for training, than to pick some up there on Upper Queen Anne and lug it home? After I left Safeway I realized I had little for me to eat at home, either, so I stopped at Metropolitan Market and threw some pasta salad in there for me, too. Which totally cracked me up, but apparently not other people quite as much, because everyone either didn't notice, or appeared to avoid eye contact with me. Which made me even more amused, secretly.

I had a hard time dragging myself out of bed this morning- big surprise.

eph you, Ruby

or, An Open Letter to my '93 Dodge Dakota

I know you're getting old, and that I haven't taken the best care of you as I am primarily a public-transport rider. I know I let a little too much time pass between oil changes, and I let your shocks go bad, and let my dad replace your broken back window with plywood rather than forking over the cash to deal with these things properly. I know that it's not your fault the EPA started testing environmentally-friendly paint sealers in 1993 and it was a bust and caused your fair, white complexion to peel interminably right after your warranty expired. I'm sorry I only had the patience to repaint your hood, and gave up when your roof and doors caught the virus, giving you the appearance of having vehicular leprosy. I respect the fact that you got me to the Gorge and back recently for Sasquatch without giving out. I know you are feeling your 248,000 milles.

But what the fuck, man? I put a lot of time and $250 bucks into personally replacing your radiator when you sputtered and died after a long, hot ride to my mom's house last month. Somehow it's my fault this new radiator and its hoses sprung a few leaks. But now you give out again, dramatically, at rush hour at a scary intersection in the city (on a birthday-cake delivering errand, no less), and I have to spend eleven hundred bucks to fix what appears to be the same radiator issue, all over again, and immediately when I get you back home you do it all over again?

Understand that I am at my wit's end with you. After all of the crap I've had to deal with lately, and the things I'm paying for on my shitty architect's salary, I barely had eleven dollars to fix you, let alone eleven hundred, and now you insist on going back to the car hospital for the same issue, rendering that thousand dollar bill pointless, and setting me up for an additional repair fee. Do you understand that aside from your age and medical conditions, the current economic/political climate is rendering automobiles with giant, eight-cylinder engines and very low gas mileage to not be looked upon favorably? You are not in a good position to act like a princess right now. I know you were hot stuff when you came from the factory- good soundsystem, AC, burly engine and all, but you've faded. It's time to play like a team, because your moody, passive-agressive, deceptive behavior has me about ten steps away from selling you, sending you off to a fate which likely could be dismemberment with some of your parts heading to a grim fate in industrializing nations.

Since my father bequeathed you to me when I passed my driver's license exam almost ten years ago (and I'd been hoping for something more compact like the Civic I learned on), we have acquired some good stories. I have fond memories: messages written by male suitors in dry-erase marker on your windshield in high school; sleeping in in your bed on a roadtrip down the west coast with glow-in-the-dark stars pasted to the inside of the canopy; hundreds of campus parking tickets found under your windshield wipers in college (many contested, most with late fees); numerous trash-can and light-pole-tapping incidents pockmarking your chrome bumper (accountable to your limited rear-visibility, esp due to the plywood back window); both rear-ending and being rear-ended on the Tacoma Narrows bridge (separate incidents); countless loads hauled moving throughout Seattle; intense singing and yelling sessions held within your soundproofed cab, and my cats destroying their carriers to roam around inside and wail neurotically during moving, to name just a few.

Nostalgia, the need to see my suburban parents without holding court in the city and expecting them to come to me, and the stubborn refusal to purchase a car before my anticipated departure to more metropolitan environs has kept me from forsaking you until now. But I'm very close to coming to terms with parting ways; you and Ron at the repair shop are going to have to come to some sort of terms before I put you back in my good graces and take you off probation.

It can go either way. I don't want to have to make the call that may cause you to end up in Truck Heaven, but it's in your hands at this point.

the commute

I catch the bus every morning at the bottom of the hill, at Queen Anne Avenue and Mercer Street, which is the center of Lower Queen Anne and is a major transfer point for the area. I tend to sleep until the last minute possible, and hit the street during the last-minute commuter rush.

And I really like the experience associated with doing so; it feels like being a part of something great, a mass pilgrimage. I like the communal gravitation toward the node, a small swarm of us pouring down the hill like groggy robots and quietly converging on the bus stop in a line (also like robots) along the building facade.

And I also secretly like it when the bus arrives, and it's crowded enough to make the dozen people getting on at Mercer turn it into standing-room only, with people packed all the way up to the driver. It doesn't matter if it's a long, accordion bus or a shorter one. The 18 and 15, coming from Ballard, are popular enough to be packed regularly.

I like being crammed between a bunch of people while in my own world, plugged into headphones; it's like being on the metro, but with a better view. The route goes along First avenue, and I love riding through Belltown, looking out the west-facing windows to the Sound as the views between the buildings open up and give way to water and distant landscape as the grade falls away. As the bus approaches Broad, I always get to see Calder's red Eagle, framed between buildings, and I love the filmstrip of an experience it's a part of as each view corridor reveals a slightly different glimpse... water, railroad, Calder, cruise ship terminal, freighter, ferry, water, water and Alki, Pike Place Market, Market sign... then it gives way to viaduct and then shortly my bus stop at work, and that sixteen minute ride is just right to put me in the right place to start the day.

Unless, of course, I know the day's gonna suck. (Then I just enjoy my non-work moments while I've got 'em.)

Aside: There is a short, two-block-long street just before Broad that gives the view of Calder's Eagle sculpture at the year-old Olympic Sculpture Park. Its name- Eagle Street. Odd... the street name came before the sculpture was placed there. Serendipitous?

observation

I have made the connection between sawdust in the planter outside my window and the lack of leaves outside my bedroom window now that spring has come. The Norway Maple lost its life to the work on the sewer line running to my building a couple months ago. Positives: year-round Space Needle view from bed, view of Lower Queen Anne and Dick's sign (actually reads as "icks" from my place). Negatives: one less tree in the world. Associated negatives include less privacy and arboreal beauty, less birds outside, and those who do come must resort to the utility pole.

:(

new york i love you

(you aren't bringing me down)

When I came to this town for the first time last September, I had little to no preconceived notions or concrete expectations for what New York City would be. For all the opinions and impressions you hear from others of the city, it takes going to a place to understand it. I'm not sure if this makes more or less sense that I would become enamored, but that's how it played out.

Compared to other cities, New York is a constant festival of anything goes; of peoples of all cultures and colors, and backgrounds. The sheer variety of people, and the density with which they're at, is fascinating and lovely. On top of that, the setting is pretty cool; every imaginable type of urban neighborhood and architecture, connected by the subway network. And I'm not sure if it's the weak dollar and the cheap american goods, but there are French people EVERYWHERE right now, which was overstimulation for a francophile like me. At first it was exciting, and then it was just bizarre, having French seem equal to the background of constant English noise in Manhattan. Sure, I was hearing some Chinese, Japanese, Italian, and German, as well, but nothing like the onset of the French on the town. Love the diversity.

I started this post when I was there last week, and now things are a little blurred, unfortunately, and living as a fuzzy glow in a repository of memories. It was a wonderful break; meeting up with old and newer friends in the context of such a dynamic, lovely place. The weather was mostly beautiful, with the flowering cherries, redbuds, and apples in bloom in Central Park, and the whole world out promenading to see them and eachother. Apparently the weather had just turned in the week before my arrival, and the Northeast had just come out of hibernation. It certainly brought me out of hibernation.

I was lucky to leave a rainy Seattle and land in a warm and sunny New York, and leave in a torrential downpour to land in a clear, beautiful Seattle. The good times were following me. As it always should be...

have you wondered...

Or are you even aware...Queen Anne Mafia

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/359354_needle17.html

I've seen these little mysterious flyers around...and I like it. This is my type of people... don't take life, yourself, or your property values too seriously.

(What's also hilarious are the comments people made in response to the article...)

i got a 95

Green is very hip these days (compared to previous days). Interesting how it's taking on, with regard to marketing, there are some novel approaches out there, and even the "greenwashing" of products or concepts that aren't much more sustainable than their traditional counterparts. But if there's one thing that cannot be debated, it's walking more and driving less. Better for our wide American bottoms, and the embarrassing score we get RE: energy consumption.

There's a cool calculator, Walkscore, which will score your home's walkability within its neighborhood:

http://walkscore.com/

It indexes all of the amenities, down to a hundredth of a mile in distance, to your home, and gives you a score. You can link it to real estate websites when selling a property. Pretty cool, says the Landscape Architect / Urban Designer nerd that I am.

Of course there are always flaws in an automated system, I noticed some of the amenities listed as closest weren't really the closest, but it's still a good tool for evaluating a location quickly.

On a broader scale, there's the concept of One Planet Living, which is a nice lens for both personal and global impact. The concept behind it is that given the way that many of us live, there are not enough resources to go around if we were all to live that way. If everyone on Earth were to live like the average European it would take three worlds, and five if we all lived like the average American. Test your ecological footprint on the WWFs website and they'll compare your impact to the average American, European, and African individual's. It will then also give suggestions of easy and high-impact changes you can make given your lifestyle to reduce your footprint. I have a pretty small footprint compared to even the average European, given my lifestyle, but there is always a way to improve...

Here's to a future.

design competition / PDX

Last fall our office collaborated in a design competition for Portland (Oregon) Metro that asked students and professionals to envision how the urban environment might develop over time to allow increased human density and increased habitat. My office participated in it, and the process was both cool and difficult. I contributed mainly in the environmental education piece and graphic production but also in the conceptualization and brainstorming in the beginning. Our entry focused on not only the sustainable design of the site, a residential block, through ecological and community-making best practices, would transform the place, but how crucial policy and education would be in instigating and embracing systematic change that nurtured environmental sensitivity within a densifying urban fabric.

The contest was the brainchild of our design director, and the legwork and coordination of another coworker of mine, but when it came down to it, neither of them could make it to the award announcements and ceremony in Portland last week, so they sent me (we had a 24-person team and they sent me, haha).

And we won two significant awards, holy crap. Out of 108 entries in the whole show, we won second in our category by the jurors and best at the event as voted by the attendees- which also meant that we were the only entrants to receive more than one award. It was all very overwhelming, as the train got me down there late, and I entered the art museum to the proceedings already begun and had to nose through the crowd and orient myself as to what was going on. However, it was good I was there to represent our team, in light of the winning. I actually got to meet Susan Szenasy, the editor of the very-cool New York-based Metropolis magazine and juror of the contest. She was very kind, and pretty down-to-earth-seeming, which I found especially interesting given her intellectual/savvy/shrewd image and reputation. I wouldn't mind being her successor in the effort toward functional and beautiful sustainable design through intellectual critique by an opinionated woman. ;)

Annnyway, our little office has Portland Metro calling about our approach to our design, and The Oregonian interviewed us immediately on Friday. Pretty crazy. Here's the entry: http://www.integratinghabitats.org/photos/max/PE3001.jpg
and the competition premise and context:
http://www.metro-region.org/index.cfm/go/by.web/id=21627

And I absolutely must swoon and thank Laurie in our office for hooking me up with a sweet hotel last minute. I must post photos of its kickass design to Flickr soon, but it's too late right this minute, and a link to the Ace hotel will have to suffice for now. There's an Ace in Seattle (the original one) and one in PDX, and the design is so incredibly indie and ReadyMade (a magazine which is provided, along with Spin and The Believer and graphic quarterlies, in the hotel's library loft and your room's bedside table).... From the mod/reused/ironic/carefully-thought-through design elements which are pretty minimalist while being designed in detail and accented with meaning; to the made-in-oregon and organic everything; to its careful but unique and mod conversion of the historic brick building a half-block away from Powell's, Portland's legendary bookstore; the place is so cool.

So very cool. So very, very cool. Almost too cool, with its retiring, polite-enough-but-unimpressed staff, poem stenciled on the wall, and abundance of grey. I love grey, and I really like this hotel, and the fun little elements about it. But, and I'm not sure if it's Portland's in-ness that is making me predisposed to wanting to buck the trend, but the place seems like it's trying too hard.

Like the city itself, the Ace seems as though it's so thoughtfully contrived, to be cool and smart like everything is in that area, that it has turned into this homogenized, over-the-top cool. As though Portland is so lovely, to me, that there isn't enough contrast, it's kind of vanilla. So many lovely little things here and there, as in the park blocks, and in the new cool spots in the Pearl, that you don't have the contrast of the weird or edgy, like I'm used to in Seattle. So yeah, Portland is doing a lot of things better, I hear it all the time and I'll acknowledge, has it's sh!t together more than Seattle (I will give you the way better planning and transportation setups, and dreamy walkability), but there's something I'm used to about Seattle's organic funk and creativity, that kind of crazy mishmash I like...and plus, the Emerald City is way prettier.

But really, Portland and Seattle are siblings that could stand to stop being compared to each other...they really are different beasts. Seattle is the first child, the one that was an unplanned early pregnancy and was a result of passion, and not planning, and whose Alaska Yukon Gold Rush gestational period was the equivalent of a teen mother on coke. With the lovely good looks going for it, Seattle had to learn on its own as it grew, and was sent through the wringer along the way, a result of its bickering, dysfunctional parents. Portland came along later, to founding fathers who knew how they wanted to raise a polite, genteel, livable city. Sure it wasn't as stunningly good-looking, but that would be compensated for in proper thought and planning. Seattle became the temperamental, dysfunctional, chain-smoking starlet with potential but no organization or focus to pull anything off, and Portland the cute, friendly, A-Type little sibling that tried harder. These are children, I think, who could stand to stop being compared to each other ...don't ask about Tacoma, though, it's the unfortunate stepchild, not nearly as cute or smart, had to go into the military to get much a of a future, and is always overlooked.

To conclude, it was a good trip. Nice train ride down, nice stay in a nice place for a very nice reason, albeit too short, and a nice train ride back. I hope, next time, however, to have more time to enjoy my fair-trade Stumptown espresso beverage alongside my complimentary Macbook while scanning for hipsters over my equally-hip periodical literature in the loft.

Do you ever wonder...

Sometimes when I'm in public places, like sitting among others on the bus, I wonder what their stories are. Where are they coming from, what is their house like? What time do they get up in the morning? A lot of times I like to think about all the people in my vicinity, in the city, and how we are all buzzing around eachother closely within the urban grid, accomplishing things in our own little worlds, with very little interaction. I wonder, if I could float above and watch people moving through the city, where would they be coming from, and heading? I'd like to tie never-ending ribbons to everyone's belt loops, attaching the spool to their bedpost in the morning, and be able to see their paths throughout the day. It could be beautiful, all these streamers fluttering about. Though then we'd have to have special slits made in our jackets.... Sometimes I also think it would be interesting to hover over an apartment building, or an office tower, and peel away the skin of the structure to see the people going about their day, having perfectly mundane, private moments, watching The Price is Right, making soup, or checking their personal email and bidding on eBay in the middle of the workday- these very isolated, independent existences within very close proximity.

Maybe that sounds like Jack Handey's "Deep Thoughts", or Mary-Catherine Gallagher from Saturday Night Live, but oh well, if I'm outed for being a weirdo, so be it. I'm not sure if I haven't been outed already.