Archive for the ‘Public space’ category

“The interloper” redux

In 2011 I published a story on this site called “The interloper”. In it, a teenaged girl named Jessie falls in love with her best friend Sarah. They eventually break up when Sarah can no longer take the pressure of being queer in high school. Sarah gives Jessie a box of the notes they’ve exchanged […]

Call to prayer

One of the first things you’ll notice in Abu Dhabi, aside from the sun, is the daily ritual — five times daily, actually — of the adhan (pronounced azan), or call to prayer. Because prayer — or salat — in Islam is spread throughout the day according to the position of the sun, the timing […]

Solarama

Stardate: December 5, 2117 I’ve been stuck on this god-forsaken planet for 3 earth-years now. My safety suit was supposed to be state-of-the-art, but the seams leak and my skin itches from the sulfuric-acid dust particles that filter through. All my friends back on earth are watching the black dot move across the face of […]

LA Absmobbers

Pinned

As a kid, I saved Cracker Jack wrappers and vintage glass insulators from the tops of telephone poles. As an adult, my house is littered with baskets of Cape Cod sea shells, fabric from every quilt store east of the Mississippi, a Big Gulp cup full of wine corks with “cool branding,” a shelf of […]

Ick

Ad on the way to the courthouse:

Let us give thanks

For occupations, decolonizations, new beginnings, openings, and also for the things that are fine just the way they are.

On the Street Where We Live

Our house is a very very very fine house, but as soon as you step out the door, it’s a whole ‘nother world. What follows is an accounting of some of the crazy shit that goes on in our neighborhood, and especially our tiny little one-way horseshoe-shaped street called LC Court (initials-only to protect the […]

Yuppie rides the buses again

I now spend more time than ever on the bus versus the metro.  At my new office, I can get the 42 bus from it’s start all the way to two blocks from my house.  It’s slightly slower than metro+bus or metro+walk, but convenient when it’s cold and wet and I just want to sit […]

The inside/out project

You may remember the NYT magazine spread about the French street artist JR, who won the 2011 TED prize for his global innovation in pasting enormous photographs of individual faces in public places: the concrete banks of the Seine, where a giant nude reclines; metal rooftops in Nairobi, where a series of women’s eyes are […]