Wednesday, January 30, 2013

CLEAN-WASHING

NFL Clean Zone, New Orleans LA.  Apparently this has happened in previous Super Bowl Cities, and ours is near-exact as Indianapolis's 2012 Clean Zone, civil liberties arguments and all.  In bringing in a large-scale event, the city is in effect trying to limit the scale of "undesirable" byproduct activities such as advertising, hanging in public places.
 Any temporary signage approved by the City of New Orleans, shall be required to consist of at least 60% Super Bowl / NFL Branding look and feel and no more than 40% third party commercial identification.
  At the same time, Mardi Gras Krewes are relocated at their own expense, businesses cut off by inane redevelopment, volunteers wasted on holding rich out-of-towner's hands, The city is spending "only" $13 million to put this on (Dallas spent $38 million in 2011.. not sure of the expenses breakdown of that $13mil, and what is not included), and expecting $185 million in returns for the efforts (Dallas made just over $200 mil.  This institution is INSANE).  The money will be going mostly to tourism-based endeavors + merch sales. Dont get me started on tourism industry's parasitic existence, keeping local workers in a servant class... my feebly-posi mind can only handle one negative rant at a time.

The Mississippi, most polluted river in the US, is part of the Clean Zone.  What is actually "clean"?  Advertising, elites wasting $, and brovibes make me feel like I've bathed in shitpuke.
 Watch out! How will the Clean Zone evolve between now and 2018?  NO has also officially put in a bid for the 2018 Super Bowl, this time to coincide with the 300th anniversary of the city.  WOW.  Im already sick of talking about football + researching it, what the heck is going on? 


HERES SOME LINKS
      * New Orleans Code Enforcement Clean Zone official pdf
      * Heres a paper from Marquette Law Review...  "Unconstitutional Hosting of the Super Bowl: Anti-Ambush Marketing Clean Zones' Violation of the First Amendment"
      *New Orleans Super Bowl Committee says "this is what we are doing to help the city"... volunteers escorting folks from the airport, volunteers putting in astroturf, CBD streetcar line (who cares), French Quarter road improvements (good thing all the other roads are smooth like all the tourist asses getting wiped), etc.  At least Hunter's Field is getting new lights, that spot is killer.
      *result of ACLU lawsuit
      *Michael Patrick Welch on Why the Super Bowl Screws New Orleans , part 2
      *evolution of NFL Clean Zone regulations
      *and a breath of fresh air reality, from"Occupy Group Fights New Orleans Super Bowl Clean Zone"
“No matter what the ordinance,” said Karen Dalton-Beninato, journalist and co-founder of the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund, “odds are locals will still be selling bottled water out of a cooler and working the ‘I know where you got them shoes’ grift somewhere within the Clean Zone.”

Monday, January 28, 2013

FTB17: Reactionary Attitude 1.31.13



The next FTB hang sesh will be THURSDAY JAN 31 at 6:00 PM at Sycamore House (3111 Palmyra St).  After much discussion last time we covered issues and ideas we want to act on, here’s a proposal open to interpretation: 


Have a location that interests you?  Chill out in a spot for a while and observe what happens, collect what your senses find.  Sketch out what happens.  What strikes you?  Why? Why does it happen? How can you respond to it? Tell a story + scheme.

OR

Got an issue that’s been on your mind?  Why does it affect you? Give some thought to how it could be addressed, how that might happen, and where.

An example taken from last week (feel free to use):
Neighborhoods’ edges are often defined by a strong border, such as spaces used as infrastructure for people inhabiting the area: surface roads, highways, canals, parks, railroads, bodies of water. You could sit under I-10 or at either side of a canal for while... What connections and disconnections do these borders create?  How did they come about? Etc. 

Draw us a picture*, make a diagram, lay some twigs on the ground, whatever… something visual helps folks understand where you’re coming from.  In thinking about a response, don’t get too bogged down with reality or unknowns... we can boil down ideas to functionality when we look at them closer n refine them.

On Thursday we can talk about what we worked on, combine thoughts, and move ahead towards CREATION. ….. with byproduct of a lil research and documentation.  Recording info you find can be one of the first steps of “the design process”, or more appropriately “making something that works"  OR  "telling a story.**" Bring a pen/pencil/paper/snack if u got it.

a diagram of rain dripping onto a broken gutter bracket, creating a loop of ascending piches amplified by the house's corner.  Seriously thought there was some freaky noisehead creature up in the wall.

 ------------------
 *There’s gotta be a million ways to represent a space or what happens in it or what happened in it or what can happen in it.  Drawing is only one way of representation, but an straightforward one.  Drawing a space like you’re looking at it from above is called a plan (see thesketch from the Lopez Bridge path).  Drawing something straight-on without perspective is called an elevation.  Cutting a line through something (often seen from the side, like the wall to the left in the picture above) is called drawing in section.  Drawing something like it looks in real life, with your eyes in a specific spot so lines trail into the distance is called Perspective.  Mathematically doing this (an angled view that doesn’t get smaller in the distance) is called an axonometric drawing.  Painting with your hand is called finger-painting.

**putting thoughts together is putting together different strands of a story that not only describes a specific space or issue, but ties it in to real life and real people. When a space is controlled in large amounts by institutions held at a distance from the folks who use that space, it becomes efficient to describe that space with broad statistics + oversimplified yes+no-type categorizations.  Tangled bureaucracies + private financial interests further dillute direct intervention by those most affected, as issues are divided between various parties.  Put a bike rack next to your oil refinery, you can still get “green” tax credits.  A great resource for a town's history are Sanborn insurance maps.  Have categorical histories of the world pushed actual connected-thought stories to "alt-history" status, simply functioning as supplementary info for fulfilling "public input" mandates? Would a map created of IP address locations be as informative as sitting next to someone - in 2045?  Whooaaa

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Public Input Session, Tues 1.22.13: HANO, people with criminal convictions, and subsidized housing

As is, people convicted of felonies are not allowed subsidized housing.  Should the New Orleans' government's housing sector assist in creating a stable living space for those who have had legal troubles, so often brought about by lack of a stable living situation in the first place?  Let's all go shout and be shouted at!! Be the kooks you want to see in the world.

---------------------------------------

"The Housing Authority of New Orleans invites HANO residents and members of the public to attend a public hearing to review and comment on HANO’s Draft Criminal Background Policy

THE HEARING WILL BE HELD ON
TUESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2013 6:00 P.M.
HELEN W. LANG MEMORIAL BOARD ROOM
4100 TOURO STREET (Please Use Entrance on Senate Street Side)
NEW ORLEANS, LA 70122

HANO’s Draft Criminal Background Policy is posted on the Authority’s website at www.hano.org and is
available for comment until February 5, 2013."

The draft basically says that HANO recognizes that their "no criminals housed" policy perpetuated unemployment and segregation, and they will no subsidize housing for any qualified individual who doesn't have a history of domestic abuse or child abuse, and isn't viewed as a current threat.

Friday, January 11, 2013

Storytime: Liability is the Mind-Killer.


"look at that pelican fly!" - Scarface
SO... the other day I went on a bike ride to meet a few friends up in City Park for a picnic.  The park is one of my favorite urban spots I've ever visited, mostly because it unintentionally accomplishes what so many parks unsuccessfully strive to do:  it makes one feel like they have truly exited the city, even though it actually still surrounds them.  The lakeside portion of City Park is an overgrown former golf course, where folks walk their dogs, fish, picnic, read, and generally have a great posi time.



This idyllic expectation was in full effect last week (Fri Jan 4 I believe) as we meet up at an oak grove where a small treehouse had been placed.  "Some folks just came by in their truck and hauled away that old couch" laughed my friends, as they recounted a goofy story of citizen participation in cleaning up the park (the couch had been seen at various spots in the park, run over by lawnmowers, beaten to hell, and was last seen dilapidated in the oak grove).  A few yards away, several kids climbed around the treehouse with their granddad.  "I used to play golf here back when it was a course, but this may be the most fun I've seen people having," he chuckled, admiring his future generations.  As the kids climbed around, a big white truck pulled up with a smiling man and his dog.  Smiling Man hopped out of his truck and in near-silence threw a rope over a tree branch, fashioning a swing which was immediately put to use by the kids + their grandpa, but not before he took a few moments to test it out.  Nothing is better than a large man on a little swing on a sunny day. At this point I was almost laughing out loud at how goofily serene of a moment we had stumbled upon, days after the recurring conversation of "gunshot or fireworks?" had been driving me mad.

 
On his way out I asked the Smiling Man if he worked for the park, and found out that he was simply a nice guy taking his dog for a walk, had some extra rope, and thought that kids would enjoy a swing in the area.  He was correct. Duh.

Next time I saw him, he was stopped by a NOPD cruiser, lights ablaze.  A sinking feeling approached faster than the cops could stumble through the knee-high grasses.  When the two officers reached the grove of trees, the children had walked away (its funny how kids sometimes sense bad vibes approaching, like animals running inland in the moments before a tsunami) just in time to miss Officer A pull out his knife and cut down the swing without hesitation.

"it led a short life but brought smiles to all who rode it, while pointing to larger-scale inadequacies brought about by the insurance racket. RIP"

He didn't stop here though, as he huffily grilled my friend and I about "why that guy put up a swing" and how "people can't just do stuff like that."  "This treehouse is gonna have to go, NOW" he growled, as his good-cop partner took pictures, climbed around, and beamed that it was actually pretty damn nice.  We tried to maintain non-emotionally-blinded inquiry, finding out that (even though the overgrown, dog-eating-gator inhabited, crumbling-building-dotted, hole-spattered, fire-ant laden plot of land was constantly enjoyed by all ages in a safe manner) someone "could fall off of the swing and die", leading to liability issues.

Well are you gonna stop building bridges too, if you have a problem with people sleeping under them?  People can fall off of them as well, you know. And then there's the issue of "well, it's City Park's land", which touches on issues of increasingly privatized resources in New Orleans as well as the rest of the world and the fallowing of urban space as problem to be solved by use dictated by needs + the users' self-determination.  But then I'm reminded by this incident that City Park isn't so much concerned with the well-being of their "users," but its continued existance as a corporate entity:  proposed skate parks are fee-based, historic live oaks are planned to be destroyed for soccer fields, and the land enjoyed by a diverse many (humans + wildlife!) is to be converted to a bleak resource-draining playground for a select few.

Here's City Park's Master Plan for 2018.  Check it out.  It's not all gross.  But what IS gross is that people so often grow up being instilled with the idea that they are not allowed to make this world better by direct means, and when they come across people pushing agendas for happiness and self-improvement, they see those same do-gooders cut down like a rope swing before any actual reflection is given to the situation, simply because it is an outlier to the expected modes of creation (going thru the regulated avenues that so often deflate any positive momentum) and therefore, by virtue of being "other" and irregular, something to be feared.  Neoliberal regulatory attitudes towards existence and creation - the same attitudes pushed by the affluent that have, for example, stifled small businesses because "signs on telephone poles are trashy and bring down property values" - provide:

-a labyrinth of suffocation for those who want to make change through officially recognized avenues,
-persecution and branding as "bandit" for those who cannot afford (via time, $$, or other resources) to go through officially sanctioned channels or choose not to out of general practicality
-more excuses to tighten regulatory statutes (through municipal governments or organizations involved with public interest) because it's in their interest to force everyone to swim down their regulated stream by penalizing those who choose otherwise even if it's at no cost to others

 "Fear is the Mind-Killer" - Bene Gesserit litany
This anecdote was significant to me as it contains so many examples of issues in our society, but in a small-scale orb.  It's easy to recognize that change is needed with the upbringing of our youth, as impotence in self-determination is both reinforced and exemplified when cops act hostile partly because that allows them to cope with the reality that they are pawns for carrying out institutional injustices that they may personally not agree with but are required to uphold to keep their jobs.  GoodCop admitted wanting to be able to climb around + swing "for a long time."

Liability has brought us Maps + Stories

When was the house you stay in constructed?  How about the school down the street?  And why are there those weird bridge-like things at the Florida Canal?

On the 3rd Floor of the New Orleans Public Library Main Branch is the collection of Sanborn Maps for the entire city.  Sanborn Map Company starting making these maps around the time of the Civil War for assessing fire insurance liability.  Aside from being beautiful (check out those north arrows!), they hold a wealth of information about city infrastructure + individual buildings' constructions + construction dates, while looking at several separately-dated maps gives a look into the way that urban landscapes have evolved.  Especially interesting are the maps from before/after 1960's + early 1970's, when neighborhoods were demolished for the construction of I-10 and I-610.  What stories will today's maps tell future generations?

Some of the older maps are available online:
nutrias.org --> search our databases --> history --> Sanborn Maps.  
Each volume contains a different section of the city, and each volume's scanned index is very helpful for finding street locations.

 

FTB16: Reconvening Recon Evening 1.17.13


HEY! 

On THURSDAY January 17, 2013 come to Sycamore House (3111 Palmyra St in Midcity) at 7pm for a Freedom To Build meetup potluck!  Aside from catching up and talking about what is on our minds around town, we will be collecting ideas for where to go and what to do in this next session of "classes."



Lopez Bridge is a litttttle less janky.  "No more broken heels"... "My daughter can play around there now n I'm not worried"... "Yall gonna mess something up (first time walkin by)... yall gonna mess somethin up (2nd time walkin by) ... oh man this is pretty nice (3rd time)"