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good bye to the international bar on 1st avenue. i remember the international at its original location on the north side of st marks btwn 1st and a. the landscape wall murals obliterated with burnt orange patina of steeping in a century of nicotine tea. years of yellow to brown nyc tabloids inexplicably stacked in tied bundles in the corner. three almost dead dogs everpresent. a little dog more almost dead than the rest on a cushion right on the bar in front of the tender - the bar short enough that she didnt have to pry off her stool to serve. the almost dead owner or twos would sleep in there after they shood everyone off at closing time. it smelled heavily of almost death too but the drinks were cheep and the company elegiac. then it moved around the corner to 1st ave next to mcdonalds with the next generation of heirs to title catching a brief decade or so of second *cough* ...wind. alec morton used to work there ill ask him wus up next time i see him.


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zaha ha via selma


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"every body hollerin' goat"

Othar Turner lived in the small Mississippi community of Gravel Springs, located not too far from the nearby towns of Senatobia and Como, about an hour south of Memphis. He spent most of his life within these same few miles, working his farm and playing his music. He was born in Rankin County, Mississippi in 1908. His parents had separated prior to his birth and it wasn't until he was nearly four years old that he met his father. Othar always held an interest in music. As a young child he played the harmonica and would beat on a 50-gallon lard can for a drum.

He first heard the sound of a fife at age 16 from a neighbor named R.E. Williams and was enchanted from his very first listen. The neighbor gave Othar his first fife and the boy would practice it constantly. His mother disapproved and told him to stop, but Othar continued whenever she was away from home. When she discovered that he had kept up the fife, she broke the instrument. Othar had studied the fife so intently, he was able to remember where the finger-hole positioning was and began to make his own fifes from the cane he found near his home, using a fireplace poker to burn the holes. Othar continued creating his own homemade fifes throughout his entire life.

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realtor dot com is a good resource for looking at pictures of vernacular architecture for sale all over the country. it also serves as an instant appraisal of local markets. i was wondering how NO would fair after the flood but im not familiar with how the market was prior to the flood. what is apparent is how bottom heavy the housing market is. the houses for sale only show up on page 83. thats after 82 pages of rental listings and empty lots for sale.


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Levee failure reason for 'complete destruction' of St. Bernard Parish
posted: 09-13-2005


NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Officials say the "complete destruction" of St. Bernard Parish apparently was caused by levee failure along the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a 76-mile-long shipping channel.

Army Col. Duane Gapinski, who is in charge of pumping out the area, said the levee built in 1963 is 17-and-a-half feet high.

The Army Corps of Engineers believes up to 90 percent of the levee is damaged. That levee is in front of St. Bernard Parish.

The parish president estimates no one will be allowed to return to that parish for four months and it could be next summer before some people can go back to where they used to live. There is damage from oil as well as water.

26,000 homes - a total loss - here we go...


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Scanlonville Cemetery, which dates to 1870, is a public graveyard that was never formally abandoned, wrote Mikell Scarborough, the Charleston County master-in-equity, in his Sept. 6 order. According to South Carolina law, abandoned cemeteries can be relocated to make way for development.

"From a preservation standpoint, this is an exceptional victory," says Michael Trinkley, director of the Columbia-based Chicora Foundation, Inc., who testified at a weeklong trial in June. "This is the first time we have had such a significant victory in cemetery preservation, particularly for African American cemeteries."

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Modern Ironies: Notes on Losing the Bunshaft's Travertine House (1963)


For me, a Californian who grew up in a builder ranch house, the floor plan of the Bunshaft house, as it appeared in Architectural Record Houses of 1966, challenged the whole concept of what a house was. A rectangle with a living room at the center, only two bedrooms, few internal doors, and no windows on the front elevation? How could this be a house?

Its beauty was its daring simplicity; I was captivated by the rhythms and abstract composition. Sensitively, instead of turning all the views to the water, Bunshaft had oriented the two bedrooms out to the landscape, because all water all the time would have been too much. He had masterfully translated the large scale of his experience as design partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill into a house of less than 3,000 square feet.

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It is ironic that Maharam would tear down a mid-century modern landmark, when the textile company that bears his family name owes its recent revival to mid-century modern design. Maharam’s sons have reissued fabric designs by icons such as Anni Albers, Ray and Charles Eames, Alexander Girard, Arne Jacobsen, Vernon Panton, and Gio Ponti, and they have been honored by the Russel Wright Design Center for their “Textiles of the 20th Century.”

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Certainly the Museum of Modern Art, which received the house as a gift from the Bunshafts, knew who they were selling the house to. Might MoMA be the real villain because it sold the property without concern for its cultural value? Isn’t the museum in the business of cultural values? Why didn’t it preserve the home or make preservation a condition of sale? Or, one hates to say it, why didn’t the Bunshafts give the house to the museum with more restrictions?
not to mention vulture martha stewarts stewardship :
And the August issue of Vanity Fair reports that much of the house’s former travertine floor now paves the kitchen of Martha Stewart’s new home in Bedford New York, a clapboard compound that also features an Amish-built barn and a century-old fence brought from Canada.
they're letting vulture martha skate!? "Perhaps there are no individual villains, just a sequence of unfortunate or misguided decisions." b.s., me thinks theres too much punch pulling in this story but well keep it for the neato photos. and as record of this despicible patch of architecturaly historical record.


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nice thread on toms page engaging the subject of artistic quotation. in sum, the beatsie boys raise the status of a whole bunch of found licks to maxims of universal truth though a (now) illegal practice on their under appreciated paul's boutique album. burn a copy for a friend.


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i have serious concerns with the likelihood of a federal agency declaring vast poor new orleans neighborhoods toxic superfund-sites and commandering them under eminent domain. then bulldozing historic (the whole damn place is historic) neighborhoods and turning them over to developer buddies for [social] redevelopment.

from pandagon :

Two shaky House incumbents, Democrat Melancon and Republican Boustany, hope response to hurricane rallies voters behind them. House Republican campaign chief Reynolds touts chance to market conservative social-policy solutions; Rep. Baker of Baton Rouge is overheard telling lobbyists: "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."
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Who knew the GOP listened to the Dead Kennedys?

The sun beams down on a brand new day,
No more welfare tax to pay,
Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light!
Jobless millions whisked away
At last we have more room to play!
All systems go to kill the poor tonight!





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m-ch


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kusama

Kusama’s theme is repetition. Her ‘Air Mail Stickers’ [1962], consists of over 1,000 of the post office seals pasted onto a 181.6 x 171.5cm canvas. The inexactly-executed rows and columns in the piece - which forms part of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s permanent collection - create a dizzying trompe d’oeil. Like Kusama’s ‘Infinity Net’ and polka-dot-field work, ‘Air Mail Stickers’ anticipates Andy Warhol’s use of repetition.

"After Warhol came to my ‘1,000 Boat’ show, he called to ask permission to use my patterns in his silkscreens," recounts Kusama from her Tokyo studio. "But I refused. I had been working with repetition for years by that time, ever since my 1959 exhibition at the Brata gallery." Kusama leans forward and smiles, "Warhol’s repetitions came from me - But my repetitions came from my childhood."
Yayoi Kusama with Robert Murdock: Audio Interview, 12/22/66 Location: New York, New York at Kusama's studio.


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There has been no healing, really. Four years have passed since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and the road to recovery at ground zero looks bleaker than ever. A rebuilding effort that was originally cast as a symbolic rising from the ashes has long since turned into a hallucinogenic nightmare: a roller coaster ride of grief, naïveté, recriminations, political jockeying and paranoia.

Rendering by Lower Manhattan Development Corporation
The only project at ground zero whose future is not in danger of being dumped is the transportation hub, designed by the architect Santiago Calatrava.
The Freedom Tower, promoted as an image of the city's resurrection, has been transformed into a stern fortress - a symbol of a city still in the grip of fear. The World Trade Center memorial has been enveloped by a clutter of memorabilia.

And the promise that culture would play a life-affirming role has proved false now that Gov. George E. Pataki has warned that freedom of expression at ground zero will be strictly controlled. ("We will not tolerate anything on that site that denigrates America, denigrates New York or freedom, or denigrates the sacrifice and courage that the heroes showed on Sept. 11," he has said.) The Freedom Center, the Drawing Center, the performing arts center that would house the tiny Signature Theater Company and Joyce Theater - all now risk being dumped, either because they are viewed as lacking in sufficient patriotism or because officials were only toying with them in the first place.

[....]

I suppose that Governor Pataki and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation could regain a measure of credibility by starting to scale back plans for development at the site. They could solicit proposals for an interim plan, say, that offers a more realistic time frame for rebuilding - not just in economic terms, but in psychic terms as well. The point would be to allow the site's meaning to evolve over time, from a place for grieving to a place where architecture reasserts the value of life.

But none of this will be possible without shifting the emphasis back to what is most important at ground zero: the cultural and public spaces that could be emotionally transformative. It would require some patience and humility. Until then, aesthetic judgments are all but irrelevant.

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gordon matta clark at white columns queens museum

"Reality Properties: Fake Estates"


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little basin morris canal jersey city


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amy wilson at abaton garage 9/11


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9/11 and "inappropriate art"


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fw



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the g stands for walter


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bywater architectural patrimony

shotgun house

creole cottage


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stream wwoz nola in exile


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stream from baton rouge la the big 870 wwl am news * talk * sports


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what would a rebuilt new orleans look like?


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SITTING safely in Washington, I am watching harrowing footage shot from helicopters above the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, submerged under 14 feet of water when the Mississippi thundered through the breached levee at the Industrial Canal and destroyed everything in its swirling waters.


The author's home before the levee breach blocks away. Katrina damaged thousands of vernacular houses that embody the city's ethos.
My home is there, a West Indian-style plantation house built in 1826, standing as an ancient relic amid a maze of wooden houses a century younger. Some are classic bungalows, but most are distinctly New Orleans building types, with fanciful names like shotguns and camelbacks. I watch as a neighbor is rescued from his rooftop. Dazed, he has emerged from his attic, wriggling through a hole he hacked in the roof, swooped up by a Guardsman on a swinging rope. He is safe. Scores of others aren't. Bodies float through the streets of the Ninth Ward. Presumably they are from the diverse group that inhabits this deepest-dyed old New Orleans neighborhood: poorer blacks and whites, Creoles of color and a sprinkling of artists.

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It was in the late 1930s that [Walter] Anderson first succumbed to mental illness. He was diagnosed with severe depression and spent three years in and out of hospitals. Following his hospitalizations, Anderson joined his wife and small children at her father’s antebellum home in Gautier, Mississippi. The pastoral tranquillity of the "Oldfields" plantation provided an ideal setting for recuperation. During this period, he rendered thousands of disciplined and compelling works of art which reflected his training, intellect, and extraordinary grasp of the history of art.

In 1947, with the understanding of his family, Anderson left his wife and children and embarked on a private and very solitary existence. He lived alone in a cottage on the Shearwater compound, and increased his visits to Horn Island, one of a group of barrier islands along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. He would row the 12 miles in a small skiff, carrying minimal necessities and his art supplies. Anderson spent long periods of time on this uninhabited island over the last 18 years of his life. There he lived primitively, working in the open and sleeping under his boat, sometimes for weeks at a time.

He endured extreme weather conditions, from blistering summers to hurricane winds and freezing winters. He painted and drew a multitude of species of island vegetation, animals, birds, and insects, penetrating the wild thickets on hands and knees and lying in lagoons in his search to record his beloved island paradise. Anderson’s obsession to "realize" his subjects through his art, to be one with the natural world instead of an intruder, created works that are intense and evocative.

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