Archive for the 'The World' Category

community resources

Published
by
Dory
on May 18, 2010
in The World and cities
. 0 Comments

I just read about the Baltimore Virtual Supermarket project–grocery delivery to libraries in the food deserts of Baltimore. It means that people can get access to fresh, good food, pay with SNAP, and not have to worry about delivery charges or minimum orders.

I think it’s really great that they’re using libraries as the hub–they are community resources that are well-distributed throughout cities (usually, hopefully).

It reminds me of this article that Kurt passed along about the US Postal Service, which mentions that post offices used to offer small savings accounts, especially important and useful for folks who live in places that banks have ignored. Seems to make a lot of sense to me to utilize already-existing infrastructure to do good things.

G’bye, Freddy’s

Published
by
Dory
on May 6, 2010
in The World, bikes and brooklyn
. 0 Comments

This is fun: at about 1:36 you can see my friend John and I cross the street (from bottom left corner to the bar), lock up my bike, and go inside. And then my bike gets to be front and centre for the rest of the little clip.

Freddy’s Bar - Last Days from tracy collins on Vimeo.

NYT article and slideshow about Freddy’s here.

Coop Haul

Published
by
Dory
on May 2, 2010
in The World, brooklyn, coop haul and food
. 1 Comment

Inspired by Emily’s farmer’s market haul photos, (inspired, in turn, by Sweet Juniper), this is today’s Park Slope Food Coop haul

everything I bought

1 cucumber
bag of brussels sprouts
cream cheese
blue cheese
peccorino cheese
2 avocados
bag of baby carrots
2 packages of frozen ravioli
1 loaf amy’s bread
4 tomatoes
1 kiwi
4 limes
1 bunch kale
3 packages frozen peas
yogurt
milk
4 bottles of beer
2 leeks
6 eggs
bag of salad greens
bunch of mint
handful of basil
2 lemons
2 lightbulbs
current issue of the coop newspaper

$48

someday there will be songs about the Ace Hotel like there are about the Chelsea Hotel, right?

Published
by
Dory
on April 28, 2010
in The World and cities
. 2 Comments

The Official Management Company is responsible for all the lovely design at the Ace Hotel (in New York and Portland and a few other places).

These are some of my favourites, but the OMC website is certainly worth a look.

every exit
postcard back
sidewalk writing

mail

Published
by
Dory
on April 22, 2010
in The World
. 0 Comments


second class,originally uploaded by dorywithserifs.

I’m addressing 12 envelopes to mail CDs off to people in my CD exchange. It feels incredibly magical that you can just write where you want the thing to go, put it in a box, and it goes there!

This feels especially true as I write “Canada” on the envelopes. Go to Canada little package!

Lululemon follows my advice

Published
by
Dory
on December 17, 2009
in The World and cities
. 0 Comments

The other day, I suggested that you could talk around Olympic trademark rules: “the year between 2009 and 2011 models now in store!”

And then today I read that Lululemon is doing just that, with their line of clothes called the “Cool sporting event that takes place in British Columbia between 2009 and 2011 edition.”

Of course, this isn’t enough for VANOC! They claim that lululemon has “broken the spirit of Olympic trademark regulations.”

Their commerical rights management dude says:

“We expected better sportsmanship from a local Canadian company than to produce a clothing line that attempts to profit from the Games but doesn’t support the Games or the success of the Canadian Olympic team.”

It just totally makes me crazy to hear them use words like “spirit” and “sportsmanship”–like they’re pretending this is about anything other than money.

If trademark people really believed in the “spirit of trademark regulations” rather than the letter of the law of trademark regulations then we wouldn’t have events like when Starbucks made Puddleduck, a kids clothing store, take away the sign that said “starducks” on the table where they offered free coffee to customers. There are a million other examples.

new york and food

Published
by
Dory
on November 27, 2009
in The World, drawing, food and grad school
. 0 Comments

All of my work these days, for my final papers and such, is about New York and Food. So I sit in piles of photocopied printed and stapled articles and reports and draft legislation about food and agriculture and farm-to-cafeteria initiatives and maps of food deserts and on and on.

It is wonderful. It makes me happy to read these things.

The American Journal of Public Health Research and the Journal of Planning Research and Education do not have pretty pictures though.


But this week there is new Maira Kalman in the New York Times! And it is about thanksgiving and food and bounty and cities. It is lovely, twee & smart at the same time.

things I am halfway through (or thereabouts)

Published
by
Dory
on November 24, 2009
in The World
. 1 Comment
  • the food issue of the New Yorker
  • a sad article about fetal alcohol syndrome in an old issue of the Walrus
  • a secret quilt project
  • the first year of my PhD

when the water gets cold and freezes on the lake

Published
by
Dory
on November 6, 2009
in The World and brooklyn
. 0 Comments

Yesterday I went to see Julie Doiron and Herman Dune play at the Bell House. I used to have a “no Julie Doiron in November rule” because it can be such sad music and November is often so grey. But her new stuff is more upbeat and November in New York isn’t really winter yet, so the rule doesn’t apply. Both She and Herman Dune have lots of songs that mention months–mostly Octobers and Novembers and Decembers.

There’s one HD song that he played that talks about “when the water gets cold, and freezes on the lake” and I was thinking about a lake I walked on a few winters ago, in Northern Ontario.

snowshoe feet
break

on coffee and neighbourhoods

Published
by
Dory
on September 17, 2009
in The World, cities and food
. 3 Comments

There are a lot of empty storefronts in my neighbourhood, in what I think is a one-man gentrification scheme spearheaded by my landlord. In my estimation, he’s sitting on these spaces waiting for fancy coffee shops and boutique kitchenware stores to open up and attract more folks like Zach and I. I remember learning somewhere that landlords actually get tax breaks on vacant retail space, so there’s actually quite a bit of incentive for this sort of behaviour.

But nonetheless, across the street there’s been construction for a while on the soon-to-open Breukelen Coffee House (blogged about on I Love Franklin Avenue here). Exciting! Hooray! Now I don’t have to walk the full block to the Glass Shop when I need out of the house for some reading-and-coffee.

Except, maybe not so much.

There’s been a lot of discussion about this new cafe on the Crown Heights message board (excuse: I got sort of addicted to the message board after I fell down the stairs and couldn’t explore the neigbourhod on foot. Thanks, internet), including posts from the owners who describe the new cafe as such:

The Breukelen Coffee House is a holistic and organic coffee shop. Our intention is to serve organic whenever we can (we are aiming for 100% of the time- but it’s not always available and accessible).

We are proudly serving Stumptown Organic Coffee. And organic milks: almond, hazelnut, oat and hemp milk. Milk will not be available nor conventional sugar. We will only be serving non processed, all natural sweetners such as stevia, agave syrup and Manuka honey.

We’ll also have delicious organic smoothies!

Equally important are the holistic workshops we’ll be holding. They will focus on proper breath, proper hydration, eating with ‘life foods’, etc, etc.

Our motto is: Order anything from our menu without guilt! Holistic, healthy eating is what we do and where we pride ourselves.

Last but not least- we’ve heard your requests! We will adjust our weekend hours of operation to:

Mon-Fri 7:00AM-7:00PM
Sat 7:00AM-6:00PM
Sun 7:00AM-5:00PM

And here is a photograph of the space. It’s not my photo, but it could be, because this is pretty much what I see when I leave the front door of my apartment. It’s slightly unsettling to share a corner of the city with someone I don’t know who blogs about it all the time, with overly wide-eyed enthusiasm (look! a new bus shelter!), but that’s neither here nor there.
breukelen coffee house

So the discussion on the board is mostly “milk please,” for a few different reasons, mostly “I want it” and “you’ll lose customers.” In truth, I would like real milk (which could be bought from Ronnybrook at the Grand Army Plaza farmer’s market once a week, and be walked over to the store and support local economies and upstate farms), and it probably will push people over the also soon-to-open cafe run by Tony Fisher of Fisher’s Market (actually the cafe which started the thread on the message board), who does a good job of keeping me away from his store by talking too much about the number of hot girls in the shop over on his twitter account.

But really, this shop seems to be sending a big f-you to the neighbourhood, which is now mostly discount stores and roti shops and hair braiding. I would like more retail diversity, yes, but this just seems like it’s skipping over too many steps in a reasonable evolution, and ignoring a whole mess of people who really would just buy coffee and a brownie if they could. I think agave nectar and almond milk are good things (though I am much less fond of the reported hollistic health workshops–seriously, gag me with a spoon and then maybe buy me a beer), but to the exclusion of other things is to the exclusion of other people.

As David says, “white people are great, but they’re not the end-all be-all.”

I just want to say that I was really really wrong! I let my cynicism get in the way of generosity, and that’ not fair. The Breukelen Coffee Shop is actually a wonderful addition to the neighbourhood, it’s full of all sorts of people, and the owners are three incredibly great people. I’m sorry for being mean and suspicious! -Dory

New House News

Published
by
Dory
on July 26, 2009
in The World
. 0 Comments

Kalin Reads the New House News

(That there is Kalin Reading the New House News)

So it happened! I moved into the new place–a wonderful apartment with a big kitchen, high ceilings, wood floors, a fire escape and windows that don’t overlook the highway, a reasonable amount of stairs from the ground–and a whole new neighbourhood (and it’s requisite neighbourhood blog).

Huge thanks to the fine friends who helped me pack, move, clean, disassemble and reassemble my furniture: Caitlin Dourmashkin, Adam Esrig, Avi Fox-Rosen, Emily Frye, Rachel Gurstein, Leah Koenig, Ben Murane, David H Rosen, Ari Shapiro, Abby Weiner, Joe Wielgosz, and Sarah Zarrow.

As a present to the new house, I bought a set of the New York Postcards from Yellow Owl – they haven’t arrived yet, but they’ve already got a spot on the wall by the door waiting for ‘em.

Thing is, less than a week after moving in, I took a tumble down the stairs and f’d up my left ankle something good, so I spent 5 days housebound&bedridden, imagining what walls get what things once I can freely move about the apartment (and the world).

I’m getting there, though! Yesterday I wandered the neighbourhood, hitting up the oh-so-cute Franklin Flea (5 vendors!) where I bought some pinapple pepper salsa from a very earnest young man, walked through the About Time kid’s skate day, and towards the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket (which is so huge and overwhelming compared to McCarren park, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it), and a picnic in Prospect Park.

When I got home I totally overcompensated for not being able to do projects the past week (other than knitting while watching Battlestar Galactica)–I set some pickles to ferment, made bread, and put some suntea out on the fire escape to brew.

I will stop typing now before I get all earnest and gushy about how lovely the world is when you’re allowed out of your house on a sunny day. Instead, here are some photographs of my trip to America for the 4th of July (from Vancouver to Bellingham/Anacortes, I know that I live in America but such voyages are still exciting).

billboard blues

Published
by
Dory
on July 8, 2009
in The World and brooklyn
. 1 Comment

When I moved into the apartment on South Fourth Street, the billboard outside the kitchen window (target audience: BQE drivers) was for a Land Rover. I made the joke that in 15 years I’ll buy a Land Rover, and though I won’t remember living by the billboard, it will have made its impression on me. Then the billboard was for paint, and then insurance.

But then things started to go downhill. One morning the words outside the window were large, in yellow, and said “STOP CUTS TO DOWNSTATE MEDICAL AND OUR SUNY SCHOOLS.” The pictures were bad flash photos of doctors and 20-year-olds standing in a line. The billboard was still annoying, yes, but this one kind of amused me.

I started to talk about how this billboard was an indicator of the recession, getting less and less high-paying advertisers. Zach said I should submit it to Andrew Sullivan for BOTH his “The View From Your Window” and “The View from Your Recession” projects.

And then things got ugly:

got hemorrohids?

A “Got Hemrrhoids?” billboard with a butt as the “o” in “proctology.” I started keeping the curtains drawn.

But now that I’m leaving this apartment, the view has changed. Kurt sent me this cameraphone photo of the swtichover while I was in Vancouver:

on cbc radio or sirius sattelite radio 137

So maybe the economy is getting better along with the view?

Cult of Done

Published
by
Dory
on March 5, 2009
in The World
. 1 Comment

So since I’ve been writing about getting things capital-D Done, it makes sense to post the Cult of Done manifesto here:

The Cult of Done Manifesto

  1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
  2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
  3. There is no editing stage.
  4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
  5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
  6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
  7. Once you’re done you can throw it away.
  8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
  9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
  10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
  11. Destruction is a variant of done.
  12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
  13. Done is the engine of more

I can’t say that I follow all these rules, nor that I want to. I’m a graduate student, a planner, I like to think things through and make sure that I’m picking the right course of action (which is especially important when making decisions about other people’s lives and environments!), but keeping all this in mind is really helpful. Especially if thinking is doing (it is), and writing is doing, and telling other people about your idea is doing.

My favourite is point 8: the anti-perfection declaration. That’s how I felt in quilt class; while I was impressed that people were taking their blocks apart and re-doing them because pieces were a quarter-inch wider than they wanted, that’s not my style. I’d rather do, work, make more. I don’t like to agonize.

I guess I just mean to say that the Cult of Done doesn’t apply in all circumstance, and you have to know when it works and when it doesn’t. I probably need to focus more on NOT following these rules and I’d be prouder of some of the papers I’ve written and sweaters I’ve knit, but I’d rather be a doer who makes some mistakes than deliberate forever and have one perfect thing to show for it after 15 years.

design, signs, questions, and the Atlantic Project

Published
by
Dory
on January 5, 2009
in The World, cities and friends
. 0 Comments

Following a link that said “what’s the cost of being a nerd?” I landed at the Atlantic.Project–which looks to be a new package for the Atlantic. Set up as a series of questions, there’s a cute little video for each and links to “conventional” articles and blog posts. The whole thing looks great! Screenshot (click to embiggen):
what's the cost of being a nerd

Each question gets written out in neon in some wonderfully ordinary place, on the street, on the steps of the library, in a diner, and people are standing and sitting near them when talking in the videos.

The opposite of the neon lights though, are the questions written up to camouflage with the rest of city signage:
can selfishness save the environment?
who killed the great american novel?

These are the most beautiful. The mimicry is spot on, and to see these in the city would be such a sweet, private moment of being disarmed. They remind me of my favourite Steve Lambert work:
call you mom (soonish)

I’ll keep my thoughts on gentrification to myself, for now.

Published
by
Dory
on December 14, 2008
in The World and grad school
. 1 Comment

how to cheat on your girlfriend and get away with it..are you becoming the man your mother divorced?

I’m posting this because I’m in a good mood so it amuses me more than anything else. Photo snapped in the subway system somewhere (42nd street, on a Q to 2/3 transfrer, most likely).

It’s the end of my semester, celebrated with a good mix of academic awesomeness (in the form of a Critical Urbanism conference at CUNY, beer and potato salad, french onion soup and Settlers of Catan, Contra dancing, egg creams, and tomorrow’s crafternoon. Now that I’ve emerged from the coccoon of idea-arranging and time-bound-thought-thinking, shitty magazines are somehow amusing again.

tired. cranky. busy.

Published
by
Dory
on December 14, 2008
in The World
. 0 Comments

adam, dory, avigail This is what the end of a semester looks like.

departmental bowling

Published
by
Dory
on November 16, 2008
in The World and grad school
. 2 Comments

bowling alone coverColumbia Urban Planning went bowling the other night, against Pratt and NYU. I didn’t make it, choosing to stay in Brookyn and play home made Apples to Apples. My dear housemate Kurt went bowling with his department the other day. It’s the season for rented shoes, I suppose.

And then today I discovered this bit of info on the Berkely Planning website:

Ph.D. Bowling League: Robert Putnam observed that “The most whimsical yet discomforting bit of evidence of social disengagement in contemporary America that I have discovered is this: more Americans are bowling today than ever before, but bowling in organized leagues has plummeted in the last decade or so.” The Berkeley Planning Bowling League sponsors a regular happy hour for Ph.D. students in an effort to counter this trend and rebuild social capital. They have yet to go bowling, but it could happen some day.

electoral crafts

Published
by
Dory
on November 7, 2008
in Craft and The World
. 0 Comments

I bought this fabric over the summer, and had been holding onto it, not sure what its highest and best use was…and then it occured to me:
oven mitts!
Oven mitts!

closer up

Pattern is from the Lotta Jansdotter Simple Sewing book, fabric from the Oneonta Norwich WalMart.

I’m kind of charmed by From 52 to 48 with love, a Ze Frank project about bipartisan collaboration. Or, well, the support for the idea of bipartisan collaboration. I think the mitts count—I mean, both of your hands have to work together, right?

are we gonna get new bicycles?

Published
by
Dory
on November 4, 2008
in The World and brooklyn
. 1 Comment

On Halloween, we carved these pumpkins:
obama pumpkins

Somehow Halloween, the NYC Marathon, and the election seem inexorably linked. Next year there will be halloween and a marathon with no Sarah Palin Costumes and it will seem odd. I guess the first time you do anything (like live in America) seems like the “right” way.

Anyhow, happy election day, everyone.

It’s no secret…

Published
by
Dory
on November 2, 2008
in The World and food
. 0 Comments

dory jon and kenan at the diner

(Jon, Kenan, and I ate breakfast at this diner in Afton that was pretty much the most perfect thing ever. We stopped at the Quickway diner on the way up, and the Roscoe coffeeshop on the way down. I’m happy just thinking about it a week later.)

No secret indeed that I love Upstate New York. Last weekend Jon and Keenan and Lady Grey and I went up to visit Na’aleh. We stayed in the ghost town of a site that Na’aleh is in the off season, and did pretty much everything we did all summer, but compressed into a day and a half: we went to 2 bars and three diners, bought used junk at an “antique store,” ate ice cream at the Treats and Eats, and went to Frog Pond Farms and saw the largest pumpkin ever:

dory and the pumpkin

I don’t mean this to be just a rattling off of things done. It’s just that these away weekends have been wonderful and the folks that I’ve spent them with have made me really happy.

This string of upstate adventures is over for a little while (especially since the trees are bare and the drives are that much less lovely). I can focus on here for a bit.