Bottom-right corner: a pay to park sign. You could pay at the meter or be really cool and pay by phone.
Mardi Gras Beads
Outside New Orleans, Mardi Gras beads are known to have one purpose and one purpose only. But in the city itself, I found a surprising number of uses. Bike decor, fencing, even a cemetery. The beads came to symbolize the broader city itself, the same way one might hang a sports flag or wear a college sweatshirt.
Curious about the beads’ history? Check out Brendan I. Koerner’s piece in Slate: “Where do Mardi Gras Beads Come From?”
Windmills
One of the neat things about my train trip was seeing broad uses of clean energy. We certainly passed our share of traditional power plants, but I saw windmills popping up in a number of places. Above is a shot of wind turbines from wine country in Windsor, Ontario; below is one of a single blade (as you can see, it’s huge!) from the Raton Pass, between Colorado and New Mexico.
While driving along Windsor, I noticed a number of signs saying "keep windmills off our land". Aesthetically, I can see why folks who might have been used to clear skies might be upset by a series of large windmills spinning around. But personally I find them hypnotic, soothing even. And anyway, the same was probably said of street lamps, electric towers, roads. We eventually accepted them as part of the landscape.
New article: Crossing the Country by Rail
New article out on Hyperallergic. To get to Los Angeles, I took a two-week train trip west from New York. I highly recommend the journey. Learn more here:
My journey took me from midtown Manhattan to the steel mills surrounding Pittsburgh, then the museums in our nation’s capital, down the Appalachian mountains to the bayous of the Gulf Coast and brass bands of New Orleans, up to the soaring towers of Chicago, the urban ruins of Detroit, the vineyards of southern Ontario, across the Great Plains into the high mesas of northern New Mexico, the art murals of Albuquerque, and finally into the palm deserts of Los Angeles.
The above photo is of my sandals at some tide pools in Cambria, CA. They were slipping, so I opted to climb barefoot.
Where’s the bread?
Flagging
Huang Xiang
Obsolescence
Always carry your ruler
At IKEA, they distribute free rulers, pencils and pieces of paper to take notes on. Could this ever be digitized? App-ified? What if you could text in the orders you want, or type them into an app? Maybe all you’d need is a ruler, or would you?
Would people use an app like this? Seems like some things will stay analog (of course, they said that about the book).
What do you with a captive audience?
At the Hollywood Bowl recently, and it got me thinking: what do you do with a captive audience? Even though seats are reserved, Bowl audiences tend to arrive early due to a strict seating policy (get there on time or wait till an appropriate break in the music).
One trick: make them download your iPhone app.
And for the non-smartphone crowd:
