Frippy introduced me to a real great comic.

I just stumbled across a five-year-old Metro Times article about ghetto palms in Detroit, here: Ghetto palm. The term ghetto palm generally refers to the ailanthus altissima tree, but I’ve heard it used to apply to other urban weed trees as well.

Ghetto palms are trees that can grow and thrive in even the harshest conditions, and one sees them around low income neighborhoods where infrastructure and public spaces are neglected. They grow from facades and roofs of long-abandoned buildings, and even sometimes grow inside of these buildings. Growing on and in buildings, they’re a potent symbol of decay. I read about the recent rehab of a long-vacant Detroit skyscraper in which the cutting down of the skyscraper’s lone rooftop tree was a big, symbolic event that garnered its own news article.

But ghetto palms are more numerous along edges where lawnmowers can’t quite reach, like along chain link fences or growing pressed up against the foundations of buildings. In a place where people feel ownership and agency towards the landscape and tend to look after their property, these plants get weeded or cut down long before they can grow into anything more than a seedling. But in disenfranchised low income communities (you know, the ghetto), they can become shrubs and even mature trees, sometimes getting large and numerous enough to actually damage the foundation of a building.

Bill Keaggy has photos of local ghetto palms and other volunteer trees.

And this has nothing to do with ghetto palms, but I loved this quote from the Metro Times article:

“We thought it was depressing to stay in the suburbs, because the people were not nice, but hostile,” he says, laughing. “In Detroit, it was the complete opposite. If we needed to know something, we would go into a bar, and then we’d have an appointment the next afternoon. It was amazing. If the people didn’t know, they would say, ‘I know someone who knows.’ …I didn’t have a single bad experience in Detroit.”

I had a similar experience in Detroit earlier this year–the people in the city were so, so, so nice and helpful, and often very interested in talking about their city and comparing experiences. Folks who didn’t know the answer to a question would point us toward someone who did, or even take a moment out of their work day to get out their phone, call some friends, and ask. I can’t wait to get back to Detroit.

All the stalled projects Downtown gettin’ you down in the dumps? Need a reason to pick up yer chin? Wellsir, head yourself on down to DRINKS & MORTAR!

FOR THE MONTH OF JUNE, we will gather starting at 7pm on Thursday, June 26, at the Church Key, located at 4127 Manchester in The Grove. When we lost the battle to save St. Aloysius Gonzaga church from demolition, the pews and other architectural details ended up here. Quite the curiosity for archinerds. Non-smoking indoors w/smoking patio. They have pizza–try the pickle pizza!

I will buy a drink for any recently laid off architect who shows up.

yours,
Clairington
thee hostesss

What two late-ish twentieth century buildings within the city limits (St. Louis, of course) were designed to look like the Crystal Palace?

I will buy a drink for the first person to answer correctly next time s/he shows up at Drinks and Mortar.

Alright, got that Dewey flyer rollin’:

Thanks to Bill for modeling.

He is actually reading a gov doc for recreational purposes, folks. Yes, really.

Details on the event here.

ST. LOUIS—Officials at Metro announced today that in the face of an ongoing budget crunch, MetroBus and MetroLink service will be replaced with a new, more economically friendly service: MetroCow.

“Frankly, our existing MetroBus service does not run frequently enough to be a viable way to get around the city, especially when a transfer is necessary,” said Metro spokesman Jim Sloe. “Realizing that any further cuts to service would make the system nearly useless, particularly after rush hour, we decided this was nearly as good.”

MetroCow service is expected to roll out as soon as next month. Saddle-wearing cows will wander slowly through the streets of St. Louis. Instead of fare cards and transfers, riders will be able to purchase lassos at any former MetroLink stop (now called “MetroCorrals”) or Schnucks store, which they can use to “flag down” their rides to work.

Commuters interviewed by this reporter at MetroLink and MetroBus stops about the new service mostly expressed resignation. “Of course I’ll ride MetroCow,” said Walnut Park resident Theresa George-Barnett. With service being what it is, it’s not like anyone who has a choice rides Metro, and I don’t have a choice.”

George-Barnett’s sentiments were echoed by Carondelet resident Andrew Van Doren Shaw, who commented, “Riding a filthy cow around the city at a couple of miles an hour to get home from the grocery store? Well, it’s probably not any slower than using buses that only run once an hour after 6pm. Better make sure I get apples while I’m at the store from now on.”

Image: In the coming weeks, Metro will phase in the MetroCow logo on signage, before removing MetroBus and MetroLink images altogether.

Hey y’all,

Dewey Decimal Drinks is this Thursday. Apologies on the late announcement–the 48 Hour Film Festival ate my brain and I’m just now getting other things done (This is why there is no flyer as of yet).

FOR THE MONTH OF JUNE, we will gather starting at 7 pm on Thursday, June 12, at Stella Blues, located at 3269 Morganford in Tower Grove South. There’s all sorts of yummy food (Check www.stellabluesstl.com for the menu) and if the weather’s nice, we can enjoy the patio.

I hope to see you Thursday! Woo-woo! Tell all the bookworms in your life!

always reading between the lines,
Claire-ian the Librarian
myspace.com/deweydecimaldrinks

Fig. 1: Citizen Pioneer reaches for the Statue of the Republic, July 2007.

This is what I get for overlistening to Sufjan Stevens’s Come on Feel the Illinoise this morning. (Dreamy sigh.)

Thomas Crone writes over at 52nd that word is going around that prolific, thoughtful graffiti tagger Ed Boxx has died. People say he was attacked “while painting on the east side.”

Sad, sad news.

[I should pause to say that I AM NOT INTERESTED in reading an argument about the ethics of graf here, and why you think graffiti is 100% always wrong all the time. This ain't the time or place, so kindly hold your tongue if that's what you're after. I will not hesitate to remove comments I find to be insensitive.]

Ed’s work is kinda sorta everywhere. He usually just writes “ED BOXX,” “RED FOXX,” “4GIVE YOSELF,” or “GET UP! GET GOD!” But he has done larger, more complex works, stuff on a level of effort, wit, and skill that one just doesn’t see coming from most taggers around here. I mean it’s one thing to slop one’s name hastily at arm’s height in ugly handwriting, and it’s another to develop signature fonts and characters, and to do occasional all-out installations.

One of my favorite Ed Boxx pieces took up the inside of a Near North Riverfront warehouse. It was a small, two story warehouse, and the only thing Ed painted was the insides of the steel sash windows, such that it looked like cartoon stained glass, the religious scenes replaced instead with stylized cat heads and cigarettes. He only used a couple of colors, I think blue and yellow and green. The limited palette really popped next to the red brick of the building. In good light, the whole piece seemed to slightly glow.

Another favorite took up every window on an entire facade of the Spivey Building skyscraper in East St. Louis. While exploring the building last fall, my friends and I noticed what appeared to be abstract designs in every single window of one side of the Spivey, painted with lilac and white house paint. But once we got outside and looked up, we realized that all those stories of painted windows added up to giantly spell out one of Ed’s aliases (I want to say it was REXX RAM, but I don’t have the photo in front of me, gah!). He had to have thought about that one for a long, long time, and executing something like that had to have been pretty complicated.

Another favorite, albeit one jeered by many, was when Ed edited (ed-ited) the facade of the Orpheum Theater, making it into the ED BOXX Theater.

My feelings about graffiti are complicated, but Ed’s art was something I almost always felt good about. He actually made some really interesting, compelling, thought-provoking pieces. His best works were site-specific pieces that incorporated the location into the work, rather than just the simple throw-up tags that anyone can do. Even when I was preservationist-ily muttering “On terra cotta! That glaze is so delicate! How will they ever remove the paint without damaging it?” I found myself smiling at Ed’s work.

I’ve had a lot of folks say things to me along the lines of “Forgive yourself? What’s that supposed to mean? How is any of this thought provoking?” All I can offer is that it’s kind of like a poem or a really great rock lyric: It doesn’t have to be explicit and obvious to anyone but the artist, to mean something and to make you think. Sometimes the cryptic-ness of the language in and of itself is part of the message.

Even though I never got to meet Ed Boxx, I’ll miss his presence as his tags vanish, one by one, from the city. I get to some fairly hidden spots in the city, but I saw Ed’s work everywhere I went, following me on my travels. You could tell just from where he went that he was really paying attention to the city. I’ll miss walking through some crazily hidden, industrial corner of the Near North Side and stumbling upon one of his works, which has been a small joy for me many times. Running into a particularly thoughtful Ed Boxx tag in a completely unexpected spot feels in a teeny, tiny way like bumping into a friend when I least expected it.

Ed, your presence in the landscape will be dearly missed.

__________________

I don’t have photos of some of his better, more complex pieces, but I have these:

Detail of an Ed Boxx piece in a vacant, notably roof-less building in the Carondelet Coke complex, April 2007.

Palimpsest of Ed Boxx graf and an old advertisement (Not saying I would have modified the neat old ad myself, but I did think the result was interesting). Recently, he seems to have gotten more into this editing of ghost signs.

An unspectacular tag in and of itself, but the location was the walking surface of a completely isolated pedestrian bridge that pretty much no one uses. Coming up here and seeing this tag totally made me grin, full of amused, “What the HELL?” I mean this tag was basically done for a handful of pedestrians walking to/from one of the sketchiest parts of the whole city, and helicopters. Who else would bother? That was part of the joy of Ed’s work.

Hey y’all,

Once again it is time for us to drink & discuss architecture. It’s time for Drinks & Mortar. Joy of joys!

This month, we will gather starting at 7pm on Thursday, May, 22 at the exquisitely named Colorado Bob’s Ship of Fools, at 3457 Morgan Ford. You can’t miss it–it has a sailboat in the front yard.

Colorado Bob’s is CASH ONLY and is kinda loud, so heads up on both.

But I hope you’ll join us at this friendly place! It’s nautically themed, and is host to a number of small model ships, as well as a gigantic ship’s wheel that dominates much of the actual bar.

Meow,
Claire N-B
thee hostesss
myspace.com/drinksandmortar