I saw this utility cover on a walk through downtown San Jose last night. It’s so solid looking, and tells you exactly where you are. There are chunks of Toronto infrastructure that say “Toronto” on them — not just a tacked-on sign, but engraved or forged. It’s good — but there isn’t enough of it. (Suzan Krepostman wrote about our utility covers in a previous issue of Spacing). There is a certain “solidness” to American cities that always impresses me…even fast growing Western cities like San Jose, a town of 200,000 in the early ’60s now ballooning up to a million. Someone I met yesterday called it “Detroit in reverse.”
I was out looking for a bar or cafe to write in — not knowing a city, and trying to figuring it out on foot, without a guide or map (haven’t been by a map store yet), is fun but takes some time. There are populated nightspots in the downtown, but the sidewalks are largely empty, and I had that slightly nervous feeling you get from walking on deserted sidewalks. I already miss Toronto’s inhabited sidewalks, day and night — but it’s too early to judge this place, and it’s still early in the week. Lots of bars seemed like the wrong place to open up a Mac Powerbook (even though this is the centre of Silicon Valley) but finally found a giant pool hall playing Jay Z really loud, which was actually a good and anonymous place to do so. In the course of sitting there and ordering 2 beers, the bartender called me “brother” 8 times. So far this has been an intensely friendly and welcoming place. We even got a tour of the city in a hybrid Toyota Prius (there are lots of them here — in Toronto I’ve only seen the Mayor driving in one).
Last night we went to a few neighbourhood events that were part of “National Night Out,” a US-wide crime and drug prevention event that is more like an excuse to have block parties where neighbours come out and meet each other and hang out. It’s very American, in the “Law Enforcement meeting the community” sort of way, but quite nice. Some neighbourhoods were small affairs, in people’s backyards, others were big — like in Japantown, where a block was cordoned off, and people were petting police horses and Tyco drummers were drumming. The final event we went to was a dusk showing of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Johnny Depp version — so weird but good) with hundreds of people spread out on the grass in Backesto Park, where the community is involved in much the same way the Dufferin Grove community is with their park. Despite being anti-drug we could smell teenagers smoking weed over by the handball courts — a common enough and unremarkable smell in tolerant Toronto, but daring and risky in America, one would think. A nationwide bock party in Canada wouldn’t be such a bad idea though. Imagine Kensington’s Pedestrian Sundays … in every city, at the same time.
(Ed note: Spacing Associate Editor Shawn Micallef is in San Jose setting up a [murmur] project for the ZeroOne / ISEA 2006 Symposium and will be posting about the city and festival over the next two weeks)
One comment
gorgeous cover :)! thanks for posting it