City Paper

Bicycling / City Paper — 2 Comments
11
Jan 10

MARC’s Cold War On Bicycles

On MARC Trains and Bikes

City Paper, 14 2009

The Greater Greater Washington blog and The Baltimore Sun’s Getting There blog—both generally excellent regional transportation sites—have two recent posts up discussing the possibility of allowing bicycles on MARC trains. It’s an issue that doesn’t come up much because, I imagine, MARC’s incompatibility with bicycles is largely taken for granted at this point—or at the very least MARC’s overcrowding and general insufficiency is so taken for granted that encouraging new riders with cumbersome, awkward baggage isn’t much a priority. No matter the boon it could be for commuting in the region—not just Baltimore to Washington commuting, but other points in the MARC service area that might not have ace local transit systems—maybe we have bigger fish to fry, like getting longer trains, weekend service, comfortable cars, or locomotives that don’t break down, right? Continue reading →

City Paper / Uncategorized — No Comments
11
Jan 10

Dancing in the Ruins

Dancing in the Ruins

City Paper, May 20 2009

Know your city. Know it beyond maps and neighborhoods and good restaurants, your favorite bar, blue lights, your kid’s school, the good and bad parts of town. Know its ghosts.

This isn’t too much to ask. Not just in Baltimore, but everywhere, people stay too pocketed off, sealed in cars, afraid of neighborhoods they don’t know. Just the difference in viewing a street from foot as opposed to a car, or even bicycle, is amazing. New buildings pop up, architectural quirks materialize in the streetscape, the scene changes.

Urban exploration, in its classic sense, sounds like a game of dares. Associated with sneaking/breaking into abandoned buildings, onto old hospital campuses or military bases, or descending into black slime-coated old sewers or subway passages, it comes off as more of a sport than casual touring. But at the root of even the most extreme varieties is appreciation for a city’s forgotten and shuttered urban spaces–its history, in a sense. In other words, it’s more than just purposeful trespassing.

Baltimore has long been a hotbed for that kind of urban exploring. An aged industrial burg, the city’s full of fenced off, shuttered, and mostly forgotten old factories and mills full of rusted through old machinery and other relics, although fewer and fewer than in the past. After a leveling process that took years, the Westport power generating station, once the largest of its kind in the country and a filming location for 12 Monkeys, died with a whimper in late 2007, leaving a barren platform between the Middle Branch the Patapsco River and some light rail tracks slated for upscale condominiums. Within the city limits, the massive building–full of regal arches, massive iron doors, dated generator equipment, and graffiti–was sort of the grand high temple of local urban exploring.

Many of the other popular targets of explorers are in rubble now, too. The Seton Institute, a former mental hospital for abusive priests in the Reistertown area, is mostly gone. The “hell house,” outside of Ellicott City, has been likewise razed, as is the Carr Lowery Glass Company, also in Westport. Still, these places lured the thrill-seeking kind of explorer. And you don’t have to trespass to appreciate old architecture. Continue reading →

City Paper / Olden Times — No Comments
11
Jan 10

Motel #1

City Paper, Dec. 23 2009

Trashing Days

IT WAS A YEAR OF MOTEL ROOMS. The Greenwell Inn, Price, Utah: Everything was light blue-green in and outside of the rooms, almost the color of the swimming pool, on a wide ex-highway boulevard through a desert town of 8,000 in Carbon County—which means coal. The (former) Narrows Motel, Glen Arbor, Mich.: five or six rooms at the waist of tepid, inland Glen Lake, where everything in all of the rooms was covered in fine soil, not dust. The Nordic Motel, Portland, Ore: an air conditioning unit fit for a morgue and no visitors or drugs signs. The Wildwood Motel, Gunnison, Colo.: The room was covered in flower prints, greenish carpeting, and framed prints of nature scenes—like what you imagine other people’s grandma’s houses looked like.

That’s not the chronological order of 2003, but more how it’s remembered. Narratives make their own calendars. My 2003 was my most intense period of detachment and outright selfishness. It is the year that sent me, eventually, toward writing for a living. Continue reading →

City Paper — 1 Comment
11
Jan 10

The Insane Clown Posse Posse

City Paper, Dec. 2 2009

The Insane Clown Posse Posse

Why we can’t get enough of Juggalo/Juggalette culture

There are other pathologically devoted subcultures besides Juggalos, and there are plenty of other, even more violent, talent-less, misogynistic, and homophobic musical acts than the Insane Clown Posse. But nothing quite approaches the perfect storm of following and artist than the evil-clown face-painted duo of Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J and their legion of Juggalo and Juggalette followers.

It’s anyone’s guess as to how many people make up that following, but we can make some reasonable stabs: A recent article in The Detroit Free Press estimates the ICP empire takes in more than $10 million a year. The Gathering of the Juggalos, a yearly festival centered around the duo’s label, Psychopathic Records, logs attendance close to 10,000 a year. Mall stores Hot Topic and Spencer’s Gifts likely host as much ICP real estate as they ever did Marilyn Manson merch. The band’s most recent release, Bang! Pow! Boom!, hit No. 4 on the Billboard charts. Add in comic books, movies, and “Juggalo Championship Wrestling,” and it’s a formidable empire, and an independent one at that.

That’s pretty small potatoes compared to bands like the Grateful Dead, Jimmy Buffet, and Phish, the pantheon of band-as-lifestyle culture. Yet, those particular subcultures don’t get doted on in quite the same way. Mocked, maligned, sure–but nothing compared to the attention, mostly negative, bestowed on the Juggalo. A quick internet scan brings up a four-part Juggalo feature in Vice; a post on The New York Times’ web site about Juggalo vocabulary; and the telling observation that every alt-weekly and music blog in the country seems to be able to send a reporter to an ICP live show, but few deem an actual album worthy of review. Continue reading →