I'm Alive...and in Beautiful Baltimore! 10:12 PM

For the next couple months, I'll be calling Baltimore home.

My boyfriend, Michael, was honored to receive an internship position with the White House, and fate so had it that a friend of a friend had a place too lucrative to pass up in Baltimore (about an hour from D.C.).

This post is just a message that this blog will resume normal posting shortly.

As far as Baltimore observations, one word: rows. Row houses everywhere. Tons of business districts. Lots of people walking. But it's only my first day, so give me a while to collect my thoughts.

Thanks to those of you still checking this site for the end of my dry spell! More to come soon...I promise.

My position on smoking in St. Louis City 6:08 PM

Reading the enormously long list of comments over at Urban Review regarding a potential public smoking ban in the City, I was inspired to sound off.

There are many on the pro-smoking side of the issue that claim that the health risks associated with secondhand smoke are overblown (no pun intended).

I say: who cares?

Surely, the basis of any legislation banning smoking in the City would be precisely that angle: public health. But is it not true that, say, if I made so much as a threatening gesture at you, that could be classified as battery? Anything we do that affects another deserves consideration--and yes, perhaps regulation.

Whether or not I'm going to develop cancer from a brief exposure to secondhand smoke should be immaterial. Personally speaking, I went to smoke-ridden places in St. Louis all the time when I lived there, and still do when I return. There are a lot of good times to be had at places that are very smoke-friendly and ill-ventilated. The point is that I, and many others, suffer from an inability to breathe, dine, or simply relax around cigarette smoke. Just after it was reported that St. Louis is the worst place for the asthma-afflicted (yours truly being among those ranks), pro-smoking folks should realize that it's sometimes less about the chronic effects of secondhand smoke than the immediate--an inability to breathe.

Again, within the Urban Review comments on the particular topic, I hear a resounding response to this latter point: go somewhere else. Another more compelling point is that a local business owner should have the right to dictate what goes on in his or her own building. Of course, the former argument could be invalidated on the sheer arrogance of it. It's sort of a stretch, but telling a nonsmoking asthmatic who suffers because of others' smoking but wants to actually enjoy his/her city's nightlife just to go somewhere where smoking is prohibited is sort of like telling a wheelchair-bound individual to just go where the ramps are. Perhaps the real issue is what class of people should be protected--those who have taken up a habit that affects others nearby or those who suffer from these persons' habits.

Besides, there is simply a rational viewpoint in this matter, in my opinion. Smoking should never be allowed around food, at the very least. And what is so wrong with having to step outside to smoke a cigarette?

Here in New Orleans--of all places--a public smoking ban was passed on the grounds of public health. However, it only affects establishments that derive at least 60 percent of their sales income from food--therefore, smoking in bars is still allowed. Many St. Louis restaurants are already smoke-free or smoke-segregated, so this is not a huge issue.

My take on this argument is that smoking could be considered a form of battery. I am not interested in the mutual accusations of conspiracy theories among pro-smoking and anti-smoking interest groups. I'm interested in being able to go out and breathe simultaneously!

All that said, a smoking ban would be ineffectual if not statewide. Even a City-County ban might simply encourage "tavern sprawl", where patrons retreat to Jefferson and St. Charles Counties for their smoke-and-drink combo. With public smoking nixed on both sides of the Mississippi River, unhappy smokers will likely get used to the days of taking their cigs outside and reminiscing about the good old days when smokers were free.

Am I wrong?

I'm published! 1:12 PM

The delightful St. Louis Beacon published my commentary on the new Thompson Coburn garage. Read it here.

That's it!

A Coming of Rage Story 5:29 PM

There’s profound disappointment in your voice when I say no that’s no longer there;

no; that belongs to the wildflowers; the ghetto palms; there’s a piquing curiosity in your brow; why so many prairies in the Fourth City?; there’s a sweeping anger at the loss whose pangs you never had to feel; directly; whose stinging slap; the idiocy of it; you experience; only in an unquenching visual dosage;

something by nothing begot;

but your fire is kindled nonetheless; and you leave an arm; a heart; an eye; on a clearcut lot; and don’t worry; the pictures like fangs of mangled stained glass; come together to reveal a sacred biting whole; worthy of veneration;

if only more blood had been spilled sooner.

Before I forget...my trainwreck! 6:03 PM

I was in the Amtrak train that crashed on Tuesday! I forgot to include that in my post on my whirlwind trip back to St. Louis.

I could recount the story to you here, but in exaggerated and somewhat false form, the Jackson, Mississippi Clarion-Ledger included me in its extended story, which can be accessed here.

My quote is below.

There was chaos on board the train, said passenger Matt Mourning of St. Louis.

"I was in the dining car, and all of a sudden there was a huge crash. I flew across the table, and my buddy who was with me flew out of the booth," he said. "Black smoke started coming inside, and one of the crew members told us to stay calm but my friend said we needed to get out, so he started tearing out the emergency windows."

Mourning said he and other passengers climbed out the window and ran away from the train, thinking it was going to explode.

No one jumped out of the windows of the train; my travel companion did, however, remove the dining car's emergency windows, since we thought the train was on fire below us. All passengers were herded out of an emergency exit door, not a window.


I'm also featured in the Associated Press article that ran nationwide, albeit in misspelled fashion (as "Matt Morning").


Despite the scariness of the collision, it is remarkable that no one died--including, to my present knowledge, the two men on the Waste Management truck. It's also amazing that the whole train didn't derail.


I will continue to support Amtrak, even if I think they need to rehaul their emergency procedures. You can't exactly wait for orders from the front of the train if that's the side that most often sees the worst of the damage.


What a crazy return home (the remaining 2 1/2 hours to New Orleans was completed by a pair of Coach busses)!

Carfree in New Orleans 10:01 PM

It's often said that urbanists with cars are hypocrites.

Make that one less swerving, cussing, cell-phoning hypocrite on the roads of New Orleans. The car broke down into a billowy smoke stack last week. It's time to sell it and move on.

Despite potholes that could double as foxholes, unexpected monsoon rains, and a humid air often described as "clam chowder", my summer in New Orleans will very likely be spent biking and walking.

Which means, I need a bike. ASAP.

I will see you all in St. Louis on May 16th.

No thank you, Enterprise. I'm hopping on the Amtrak!

As North St. Louis Burns 7:24 PM

A dozen homes in flames in JeffVanderLou and St. Louis Place. Some are owned by Blairmont. The conspiracy theory curtains open to reveal a bald truth. Our mayor (who else?) rushes to enshroud the naked figure in a shadowy blanket by doing and saying nothing.

Audre Lorde has a fitting poem, especially having read Curious Feet St. Louis's chillingly true declaration:

I promise you that Paul McKee does not sit up at night, hearing rounds of sirens and wondering, nervously, nervously, what buildings near his home must be burning. I promise you he doesn’t live like this.

Future Promise

This house will not stand forever.
The windows are sturdy
but shuttered
like individual solutions
that match one at a time.

The roof leaks.
On persistent rainy days
I look up to see
the gables weeping
quietly.

The stairs are sound
beneath my children
but from time to time
a splinter leaves
imbedded in a childish foot.

I dream of stairways
sagging
into silence
well used and satisfied
with no more need
for changelessness

Once
freed from constancy
this house
will not stand
forever.

This is a sick city; I need say little more 7:52 PM

September 2006, pre-Blairmont


February 2008, post-Blairmont

The photos are from Built St. Louis's blog, and specifically the devastating, heartbreaking, galvanizing "Daily Dose of Blairmont" series, in which 23 and counting daily posts of photos and text tell the story plainly and bluntly in the absence of the most minimal iota of civic leadership that would have already addressed the historic preservation, poverty, forced gentrification, top-down and secretive planning issues involved with Blairmont's urban "slash and burn" on St. Louis's Near North Side.

After August 29, 2005, nearly all topics in New Orleans are divided into the two categories of "Pre-Katrina" or "Post-Katrina," "pre-storm" or "post-storm". Katrina was a natural disaster, an "act of God" as it is often termed. Blairmont is an act of failed leadership, of reprehensible disrespect to an irreplaceable urban neighborhood, to its already destitute denizens, to its already rapidly fizzling history and heritage. Blairmont is a disaster not simply "avoidable"--it is a crime (nuisance laws, property code) and its insidiousness and malevolence is perhaps unprecedented in all the history of misguided or absent planning to which St. Louis claims an all too clearcut association. In short, it should have never been allowed. The first inklings of the scheme should have attracted City Hall's scrutiny; so far, all the Mayor's Office has done is encourage McKee's quite literal blockbusting.

I fear for the post-Blairmont city, a disaster in slow motion, but, sadly, one as monstrously inexorable. As we observe the landscape in the wake of its devastation, how sorely will we regret it?

The requisite introductory words... 4:58 PM

I am hoping that this blog will actually be regularly updated; will feature essays on St. Louis architecture and urbanity. I am hoping to decry the demolitions, mourn what's missing, praise what's presently left, and fight against a fulsome future. If it sounds negative, rather than uplifting, you're probably reading correctly.

Unlike many cities, praise for St. Louis--a parochial, slow growth city--must come in a form that challenges its (that is, its leaders and its residents) very reality and daily functioning as a city. The present reality is one of a city that cannot ever recover from its former World's Fair era glory, its short run as the nation's fourth largest city. So then why try?

Well, because the same great city that 850,000 once called home is still, in physical form, there before our eyes. That is, what has survived the ravages of urban renewal and years of flight to the suburbs is anyway. And we, as lovers of this city, should be fighting to preserve that heritage.

Ironically, this is the future of St. Louis, in looking at its past. Supporting a city that cherishes small scale neighborhood retail and restaurants, beautiful (even when it's plain and unindulged) historic red brick architecture, and the ability to walk, bike, skip, or whathaveyou to your destination. And that's just the tip.

The decay of St. Louis, ever present in some areas and more and more quickly disappearing in others, has held a mirror to St. Louisans for quite some time now. The refracted image is ghastly but beautiful in its abandon; for all its spookiness, it appears a saner alternative than miles of strip malls and disjointed post-modern manses with their backs turned to history, culture, and a heritage in which to take pride.

With this blog, I hope to supply images and essays that convey the potential of this overlooked river town not to realize an idealized version of the Victorian period, but a sensible and attainable way of delivering a preserved St. Louis into a post-post-modern future and all of its present realities.

I call the blog "Dotage" because, at times, there is little else to my favor for St. Louis than fond affection. I often boast of my hometown with the disclaimer, "I can't explain it but..." There's a magnetism there for some of us urbanists that transcends our roles as the uniformed observer or even the planner who's read tract after tract on urban design and urban history. It should be noted that "dotage" is also the loss of one's memory over time, through old age, so please note the double entendre.

It's a unique, if suffering, place finally poised for a rebirth. So let's explore.