señor taco’s travels

In my last post I
had mentioned that a park near work, Franklin Square, seemed to be one of those
detractors for a city that brings the neighborhood down.

It appears I was wrong. While I was out picking up some lunch this afternoon
I happened to be waiting on one of my co-workers and I looked across to the
park. From my elevated position I could see kids running around in the fenced area of the park. That leads me to believe that the construction that was or
is there is to rehabilitate the park and it is still used because it’s the only
thing like it in the area.

That doesn’t, however, solve the problem of homeless using the park and making
the public facing areas cast a pall over the entire park. The fenced area is
used and mostly hidden from the public. That fence only does one thing, create
a divide and force there to be essentially 2 parks. Now, without the fence
there would probably be not as desirable a usage of the field areas and quite
literally the park might be overrun by homeless (in fact, I suspect that was
once the case). However with the lax attitude San Francisco has to the
homeless it’s no surprise that the park appears the way it does.

I’m still not going use the park because it’s inconvenient though.

For my last birthday my friends Mitch, Deb, and Ryan got me the book href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/067974195X/ref=nosim/danimalorg-20"
title="The Death and Life of Great American Cities @ Amazon.com">The Death and
Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. I had heard about it a
little bit but only recently saw more pointed discussion about it on href="http://www.kottke.org/04/05/task-office" title="kottke.org">Jason
Kottke’s site and I was intrigued.

Over the last month or so I’ve been reading it on the train to and from work
with the exception of a title="Book Review: Syrup and Jennifer Government">much needed
fiction break. I have to say, Jacobs has done a good job of making sure
examples are clear and understandable and going through and referring to them
so that all of her assertions and statements tie into one another.

Even though the book was written in the early sixties there are still many
cases where Jacobs’ warnings about what not to do still apply. Some of the
examples felt a little dated but at no time were they no longer relevant to
explaining the situation at hand. I often found myself looking back on when I
lived in New York (or forward to the few examples from San Francisco) and
trying to see how things have changed in the intervening 40 years. Some
things haven’t changed and others have gotten better. It seems to me that some
city planning now gets the ideas Jacobs was putting forward and there is
definite progress in making cities less sterile and more functional than
previous planners would have done.

I was particularly struck by the talk about parks. I had never really stopped
and thought about parks as possibly areas that are detriments to neighborhoods,
even though I’ve seen bad parks before. I guess that plane of thought is
just from what has been beat into the public about what is good and what isn’t
in a city. Ideas that Jacobs soundly debunks.

Near where I work (between the Mission District and Protrero Hill in San
Francisco) there is a park called Franklin Square. I’ve never really thought
about the park before other than seeing it from the street. Generally I’m
walking on the opposite side of the street from it and when I do walk next to
it I don’t pay it any mind. It always seems to have some construction and
parts of it appear fenced off. There are also a lot of homeless people that
hang out in the park from what I can see. That combined with few entrances
(the park is on a hill so from at least two sides there is a retaining wall
around it that is quite foreboding) and general lack of kempt make it a place
to avoid. There is never any reason to go through the park even though that
could be a nicer route were it a nicer park. I was actually shocked to learn
from a little web searching that Franklin Square href="http://www.sfneighborhoodparks.org/parkhistories/franklinsquare.html"
title="Franklin Square History">has quite the history and at one time
was a well regarded park. I’m not sure if the park is used much now and
honestly it doesn’t really look like it is well utilized, but it seems as
though there might be efforts to rehabilitate it. It’s actually kind of funny
because many of us at work have lamented the fact that there is no nearby park
(but there is, Franklin Square) that we could go and sit in to eat lunch.
Instead we end up on the much more desolate roof of our building. It has a
nice view but not so much greenery or shade.

Of the four sections of the book the first two seemed to drag a little bit, but
I realized later Jacobs was just laying down the groundwork for what was to
come, feeding fuel into the fire if you will. The third and fourth sections
were the ones I liked the best. They dealt totally with how to identify what
is wrong in a city and how to go about correcting it. cities are amazing
entities that I am still awed at every day. Even a small city like San
Francisco has it’s share of dumb luck, bad planning, and corrective
behavior from within.

Now that I’ve finished the book I’m going to see what I notice as I go about
my life in the Bay Area. While reading the book I was also able to pick up
on some good concepts about work and the way things should be setup and
coddled as they relate to cities, but that’s a post for another time.

For a while I had been reading only non-fiction works. I don’t mind them and
in-fact, I love them. However apparently my mind needs a little more
variation.

I have been busy recently with reading href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684813785/ref=nosim/danimalorg-20">
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes and href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/067974195X/ref=nosim/danimalorg-20">
The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. Both books
are good, but in the case of the Rhodes tome it is quite gigantic and a lot
to plow through (not to mention a hefty volume to have to lug to and from work
so I can read it on the train). The Jacobs book is also good and fascinating
but I found myself dis-inclined to read while on the
BART.

I finally figured out my brain was really wanting some fiction to chew on so I
got a couple of books by the author Max Barry: href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140291873/ref=nosim/danimalorg-20">
Syrup (possibly listed as Maxx Barry) and href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385507593/ref=nosim/danimalorg-20">
Jennifer Government.

The main character, Scat (changed to such to be more catchy), is in marketing.
The entire book revolves around a corporate world gone mad and bent on
marketing to the ultimate.

Scat starts out the story with a million dollar idea that is promptly stolen
from him by his room mate, Sneaky Pete. This pretty much sets the tone for
the rest of the story. Scat meets up with a woman named 6 and together they
go through the highs and lows of trying to get back at Sneaky Pete. Now, Scat
had met 6 at Coca-Cola, whish is where she worked and he pitched his brilliant
idea. After some snaking and charming by Sneaky Pete both 6 and Scat find
themselves down and out and working to get back into Coke. An opportunity
comes along for Scat and 6 to get back at Pete via Coke’s newest ultimate
marketing idea (which I won’t go into because it will taint future readers).

Full of back stabbing, likeable if lightweight characters and a good
light-hearted romp into soda and entertainment industries, Syrup
has appeal and zing. It’s not a particularly heavy novel, but it is a great
read (I finished it in two days of BART reading).

In the not too distant future corporations run the world, lands like Australia
and Britain (amongst others) are all part of the USA and the free market rules.
People no longer have a last name because it’s the name of the company they
work for (Hack Nike, Jennifer Government, et c.). With corporations run
rampant the world is a much different place than the one we currently inhabit,
but any reader will be able to see it as one possible alternate to what we have.

A better book (and Barry’s sophomore effort), from the chases around the
world to the depiction of the NRA and the Police as security companies the
story will have no trouble in keeping the readers attention. That some of
the behaviors are in the realm of impossibility for us makes it that much
more enjoyable. The characters are better fleshed out than in Syrup
and even though you might be tempted to think part way through that there
are so many of them that things are unravelling you will be pleasantly
delighted when you get to the end.

Max Barry is an author that I’m going to keep my eye on and I’ll certainly be
reading more of his books as they come along. As for The Making of the
Atomic Bomb and The Death and Life of Great American Cities
I’ll be getting back to those now (and I better they were very kind gifts from
good friends) before I move on to anything else in my reading list.

This weekend I was listening to some music by href="http://www.alkalinetrio.com/mainsite.html" title="Alkaline Trio">Alkaline
Trio and
Tiger Army. My roommate asked if either band was Morrissey. At that point I
totally heard the similarity, but up until that point I had never made a
connection. Now, I’m not a huge Morrissey fan. I like his music but I don’t
own any nor listen to it (in fact it may have been several years since I last
heard any Morrissey). I’m just wondering, does this make me a closet Morrissey
fan? I’m sure that Alkaline Trio (punk) and Tiger Army (psychobilly) have some
influences from Morrissey, but I don’t know that I would necessarily like him
on a regular basis that much. I guess I’m just really surprised at the
connections one can make with more and more knowledge packed into your noodle.

As anyone can see in the side-bar to the right I am a reader. For the last
few books I’ve been mostly on a non-fiction and history kick. The most recent
book read is href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0066212855/ref=nosim/danimalorg-20">
Krakatoa : The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon
Winchester. Winchester does and excellent job of explaining the world
around Java and Sumatra before, during, and after the explosion of one of the
most powerful volcanos in history.

I was quite happy to have learned a lot of cool information about the Portuguese
Empire and Dutch Imperialism. Seeing how those things helped to shape the
world is fascinating. Winchester also does an excellent job of explaining the
social ramifications of the Krakatoa explosion, especially the rise of Islam
in the region of Java (Indonesia).

The science explanations about plate tectonics and the like were sufficiently
deep enough for me, but not so thick as to be unapproachable (and Winchester
does a great job of providing reference should a reader be interested in
more scientific reading). His common explanations helped me to visualize
what was happening and picture the times that were during the explosion.

This is a good book and people that can stomach history texts should give it a
go. The only thing I found deficient about the book was the lack of one clear
map that shows Krakatoa’s relation to the Islands of Java and Sumatra along
with city and town names (some of which don’t exist any longer) so that the
reader could easily flip back to the map and better visualize locations.