natecooper.net

Now:

Three days from now:

I read with some interest i09’s assessment of Clinton era Sci-Fi. Never really thought about it but the 90’s did have some great Sci-Fi.

The Obama election has to be hugely significant for people of my generation. Specifically those around 30 years of age. The first election I was able to vote in 2000 saw a great amount of quashed optimism. The second election in 2004 was sort of confusing and frustrating at the same time. No question we weren’t happy about Bush but at the same time there wasn’t a solid candidate to rally behind.

This year was different.

The night of the election an assembly of poor hipsters gathered at the Orphanage (our aptly named Bed-stuy home) and there were those who simply refused to believe that anything good could come of the election — even though they were fervent Obama supporters. My roommate turned to one and said “Just because we’re used to being disappointed doesn’t mean we can’t be happy for a bit.”

Indeed it is a bit bizarre to be even cautiously optimistic about politics for once. Obama is like a touchtone icon for America’s hope and promise for a better future. He also seems refreshingly (at least for now) like a unifying figure after eight years of the country within and world outside wedging itself apart. Perhaps it’s simply the fact that I’ve only ever lived in blue states but I can’t ever remember seeing pictures of our president (elect) posted up in corner stores and apartment windows. Daily online you’ll find ridiculous but hopeful headlines about the future utopia to come.

Here are a few to ponder over: Does an Obama Win Mean a Dark Knight Oscar? Can Obama Save the Auto Industry by Greening it on Day One?

The best and most all encompassing has to be Kottke’s When Obama Wins which randomizes promises of a better future with Obama.

If you find any other overly optimistic headlines about Obama’s presidency post them in the comments.

This brief post from hrrrthrrr sort of sums up my reaction to my first vote (or first three) on the east coast.

Here’s how voting in Santa Cruz works (at least for my tenure there). You get a little sheet with a tear off on it and a felt tipped marker. You go to a little table with dividers and gently mark a box next to the name. Very clean, simple and unencumbered.

Here in Brooklyn voting was like standing in front of a gigantic mechanical calculator from the 19th century. You actually pull this huge lever to switch from “normal” to “voting” and then you turn little knobs and gears. Each time you switch a lever there is a horrible Cha-chunk sound. Since this took place in a school gymnasium these sounds echoed, adding gravity to the situation as if I was in some medieval torture chamber with my own personal guillotine.

Bizarre but with sufficient benevolence-inducing goodness.

Being in a somewhat captive audience on the subway it’s hard not to soak in the visual stimuli provided by advertising on the train. In between the blur of Budweiser and city services ads every so often an ad or a campaign stands out. A more recent series that has burned an image in the back of my brain is an entry from Dentyne to promote their gum. The ads play with the concept that internet technology and culture have wedged themselves in-between actual human contact. The ads use naturalistic photography juxtaposed with plain text representations of common internet phrases and communique. The implicit meaning is that these locutions are insufficient compared to their real-life counterparts and that one should reject the distance created by technology. The warmth of actual intimacy — while chewing gum — is apparently preferable to the sterile distance of online communication. I like the ads. Whenever I board the train and see one I find myself staring for lengthy periods of time but I also feel that I have a completely opposite reaction than the ads direct meaning.

One of the greatest tools several thousands dollars of debt and a film degree have given me is the ability to perform and obsession with imagery analysis. I like the idea that pictures carry a visual vocabulary of meaning. The Dentyne ads to me carry an emotional weight in that their imagery communicates feelings like love, friendship, communion, humanity. They are beautifully shot and really have a sort of aesthetics of the real kind of feel to them. For a while, the reason behind my fascination eluded me, I liked the images but felt off-put by the message. To me the internet is not a de-facto distancing technology, but quite the opposite. It can be used to extend and facilitate real human interaction. It is useful in its supplemental function as a way to find people who might otherwise slip through the cracks and its ability to communicate information like performances, parties, gatherings en masse. When used properly in fact the internet can be the means to an end for real-life human intimacy. It finally hit me when I saw the above image “Friend Request Accepted” and I realized what it was about the ad campaign that stood out.

For me, far from criticizing or commenting on the distance between what these words mean and the representative picture of the women hugging I think the emotional connection I associate with the image and the meaning of the words is one and the same. In a way “Friend Request Accepted” is a sort of virtual hug between two people. What’s bizarre for me is the way in which I realized I had associated emotional significance to such phrases in the same way I attributed the same feeling to imagery. In a way the sterile, unassuming phrases we are accustomed to seeing online become a snap-shot of an emotion that is both visceral and in a way hyperreal.

After all, how often are we conscious of the moments we become friends? I can name many people I would consider close friends but I can’t name the specific point at which that became the case for each relationship. I can think of instances, moments when that connection manifested and I became aware of the reality of our friendship. But, as with many people my day to day interactions are not so much a catalog of those moments of clarity but instead a deluge of taking life for granted. That is what really hits me about this campaign. The isolated clips provide a window into an untapped level of awareness. Whether they be generic computer phrases or beautiful photographs.

The Project for Public Spaces is organizing a Parking Day NYC. I’ll try to stop by the one in Park Slope tomorrow. I don’t think I’ll be in the city. Would be neat to check some out though…

natecooper.net is making it appear as if all I’ve been reading is cracked.com and BLDGBLOG. Could be worse I guess. BLDGBLOG’s discussion of “extreme signage” [link] does pique my interest. I don’t know if I fully agree with the assessment of this fountain as “public signage that no one can read”. Seems to me that it may be simple enough to read if the amount of gradation is not so much on a sliding scale but on minor variations (ala red light, green light, yellow light). Furthermore I’ve often thought that Los Angeles needs more and more large scale public (art) works projects. The city is so flat and widespread that dramatically scaled structures with aesthetic value would help define the landscape better (the Watts towers not excepted).

On the topic of extreme signage I’d throw my hat in to vote for the Clock in Union Square. I’ve even have it explained to me and I still feel totally inept at my inability to read it. Luckily the Gothamist has a little primer [link] if you’d like the mystery ruined.

Coffee is a singular experience in New York. Though I have yet to experience the perfect cup of Joe here at the very least it is plentiful and there is a fair amount of independent shops — far fewer per-capita than should be but fair none-the-less. There is, however, a unique ritual to the purchase of coffee at the numerous corner stores (Bodegas in Brooklyn, Delis to Manhattanites). I don’t pretend to be an expert on East Coast culture (candle pin bowling? wtf?) so perhaps the experience is wider spread but to a transplant from the west coast it seems a New York enough thing.

First off when ordering coffee you wont find a little side counter with choices of sugar and creaming agents. Maybe its just a space issue but I’ve found even in coffee shops where space is less premium than at my bodega they insist on filling your coffee for you. This is sort of like traveling to Oregon for the first time and realizing you are not allowed to fill your own gas tank. What results is sometimes a light brew far too milky for my tastes but an experience which makes you feel like you are getting white-glove service. The delivery of sugar being in increments of 1, 2, or 3 is far more reserved and I find a much better fit as I tend to over-sugar my brew.

If the full-service coffee event is easy to adjust to the coffee doggie bag is simply odd to the out of towner. Being from an environmentally-minded town in California I’m probably more sensitive than most to the wastefulness of bags given out almost everywhere. No, thank you, I don’t need a bag for this water bottle that I’m about to open and enjoy instantly, Ms. Duane Reade. But if you visit a corner store in New York with any amount of regularity (usually meaning twice in a week) you may find the same being asked about your to-go coffee. A bag? For coffee?

What a delightfully wasteful practice! How so very much New York. Having moved here two years ago I am happy to have missed the plethora of styrofoam I would have inevitably been exposed to and forced to dispose of on a daily basis. Coffee to-go still comes in a paper cup with a sealed plastic lid like the rest of America. So what’s with the bag offer? Perhaps its an offering to the walking and public transit riding New Yorker who, unlike the rest of the U.S. may suffer convenience for lack of cup-holder in their Urban Assault Vehicle.

Despite the wastefulness, the New York style coffee doggie bag does present a nice little pleasantry I’ve not found elsewhere in the U.S. Often folded closed with care and packed up nicely-fit the bag is often full service with napkins neatly pressed up against the coffee so as to let the cup stand straight upwards and avoid spillage. Not only do the bag and napkin arrangement prevent wet clothing on the run to the subway they also provide a gratifying unwrapping experience. Its like your parting gift at a birthday that you can’t wait to unwrap and when open is overwhelmingly adequate and expectant as well as lacking the splendor of a personal gift. It’s one of the few occurrences in New York I’ve found that celebrates the mundane and whose procedure lends a bit of ritual to everyday life — even if most of the time when asked if I would like a bag I just respond with “No thanks.”

This is the second article about this nifty under-sea tube thing I’ve seen in the last couple of days .. and while I don’t fully understand it I must check it out! [link]

Hot damn!! I’m there!! [link]