Running errands earlier this morning, I stopped in the record store on a lark. A colourful display marked "Classic Goth" caught my eye, and I laughed aloud at the name. But I stopped laughing when I noticed some of the on-sale titles: Bauhaus' Mask; Love & Rockets' Express: remastered and with the excellent bonus tracks, including a cover of Syd Barrett's Lucifer Sam. Hey, Bauhaus had already covered T. Rex's "Telegram Sam", and this song logically followed.
After hearing "Double Dare" at the jukebox at the Edinburgh Castle on Weds., I've had bauhaus and related on my mind. It's all in my mind.
In addition to the L&R, of which I have a vinyl copy gathering dust, I got a copy of the new Killing Joke album with Mr Dave Grohl, and a copy of Rough Trade's Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before anthology, with young bucks covering old toons by the likes of Cardiff's favourite brawlers, The Young Marble Giants and The Fall (no hyperlink; who'd put together a web site for these punters?). And Elizabeth Fraser singing Robert Wyatt.
"some people in the city are trying to share something else, a thing many Americans regard as the apotheosis of private property" (or is history the apotheois? A thorny intellectual question!)
This article on sharing cars talks about providing infrastructure and changing attitudes in New York City. Can't park the shared cars on the street as easily, but can make them available in very high-density areas.
There are similar programs in San Francisco and Denver; the New York vendor, Zipcar, also operates in Boston and Washington D.C.. Some of the San Francisco cars park in a garage only two blocks away from me, which makes it extremely convenient; I don't fixate on the very American form of independence having a car allows me, since I have a car every now and again, but haven't joined CarShare. Why?
Also in today's New York Times, an encomium of the Yankees' organist Eddie Layton cites an interesting condition of his hire in the 1960s:
"Mr. Layton, who grew up in Philadelphia and has never driven a car, said he did not want to take late-night subway rides. The official offered him limousine service to and from the games and Mr. Layton accepted."
October 10, 2003
New Car Rental Idea Depends on Courtesy of Strangers
By RANDY KENNEDY
New Yorkers may not like it, but they are, by necessity, great sharers.
They share tables in restaurants, benches in parks, inches on sidewalks and air in the subway. In a living arrangement most of the country would probably find far too Marxist — the co-op — they even share responsibility for apartment buildings.
Now, some people in the city are trying to share something else, a thing many Americans regard as the apotheosis of private property: the car. Over the last year and a half, Zipcar, a company based in Boston, has been stocking parking garages around Manhattan, Brooklyn and Hoboken with brand-new cars and persuading people to rent them in what amounts to an automotive co-op.
In many ways, the idea is just Hertz with an urban oil change. Instead of having to rent a car for a day, you can take one out for as little as an hour, and you do not have to go to the rental agency to pick up a car; it comes to you. Volkswagen Golfs, Mini Coopers and other eye-catching cars are parked strategically all over several dense residential neighborhoods like the Upper West Side, Greenwich Village and Park Slope.
But, in other ways, Zipcar lies in a strange land somewhere between capitalism and group therapy. It asks its drivers to assume responsibilities that traditional rental companies assume for a price: clean up after yourself. Fill up the car when it needs it. (There's no excuse: a free gas credit card is tucked into the visor.) Don't take your slobbery dog along. Don't smoke. And, remember, be punctual because another driver will often be waiting at the garage to jump into the car as soon as you jump out, like your little brother getting his turn in the family wagon.
The company's avuncular Web site, www.zipcar.com, counsels, "Always keep the next member in mind when you leave the car and exercise the golden rule: do unto others as you would have others do unto you."
The company's chief executive, Scott Griffith, is even more emphatically neighborly. He describes the company as less about transactions than about creating a village of customers with a strong sense of community spirit. "You're a part of the sum of the whole," he said.
He hopes that all those parts will add up to a tidy sum in New York, a city his company sees as its perfect fit: filled with people who do not own cars but still need them from time to time. Right now, the company calculates that half a million qualified drivers live within a five-minute walk from the 54 Zipcars scattered throughout the city and Hoboken.
But can Zipcar persuade New Yorkers to share them and be nice about it?
So far, about 2,000 people use the cars in New York, compared with 3,000 in Washington and 5,000 in Boston, where Zipcar was founded three years ago.
But some members say the nice part might take a little longer here.
"I was sort of looking forward to that community spirit," said Matt Mendelow, 33, a software engineer. "But it hasn't really worked out that well for me. I've frequently gotten a car that doesn't have any gas in it."
But Mr. Mendelow, who lives on the Upper West Side and joined Zipcar a little more than a year ago, said he plans to remain a member because he finds the cars convenient and is proud of being part of an idea that many cities would find strange. "In L.A.," he said, "this would be like heresy."
New York is also a tougher town for many other reasons. Insurance rates are higher. Zipcar does not park its cars on the street, as it can in many places in Boston and Washington. And often, New York garages, with their fortresslike systems, seem not to understand the concept at all.
Recently, this reporter wanted to take a Volkswagen Golf out in Brooklyn, and abided by the Web site's instructions to call the garage an hour before the reservation was to begin, a requirement that does tend to dampen the feeling of impulsiveness the company wants to convey. Still, the call was made.
No answer.
On second try, after several rings, a man picked up the phone. He was told that a customer was coming to pick up the Zipcar.
"The what?"
"Zipcar."
"Yeah, O.K., whatever."
The car did, however, turn out to be in the garage, and after a little lethargic shuffling, it was produced. (One early New York member, Chris Abramides from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, had a much worse garage problem the first time he tried to take out a car: he became embroiled in a phone argument about the company's unpaid parking bills. The company says that it has worked through those problems.)
For the reporter, a nice four-hour, 16-mile tool around Brooklyn cost $70.90, with tax, which might sound steep, but compare it with $144.20 for a 24-hour Saturday rental from Avis in Manhattan. (Avis has no Brooklyn locations.)
Unlike co-op apartment buildings, Zipcar is not exclusive in the least. Anyone who is over 21 with a license and a decent driving record can join. The membership fee is $30 a month, or $75 a year; rental rates vary from $8 to $16 an hour, plus mileage fees. There are daily rates for longer trips. Members reserve cars online and use an electronic card to get into the car, where the key is tethered near the ignition. The car will not start for someone without the card.
Also unlike co-ops, Zipcars do not involve contentious board meetings, though these are somewhat replicated by Web chats in which Zipcar members debate the finer points of car communality.
One burning question recently was "To snitch or not to snitch?" In a forum, one member reported having twice seen fellow members break the no-pets rule. But he added, "I am not sure I am comfortable with being a snitch." An official from the company reassured him that dropping a dime would not necessarily get another member in trouble.
But there are fines and charges for bad behavior, like returning late. As Mr. Griffith puts it, "If you break the rules of engagement, then there will be a little bit of pain."
But the company tries hard to find other ways to encourage thoughtfulness. For one thing, it has decided to give all its cars names, like Floyd, Consuelo and Billy-Bob, and trendier ones like Mojito and Manolo. Mr. Griffith said he thought this was kind of funny. But he added, "It also reinforces in an almost psychological way that it's something you should try to take care of."
The company also sponsors get-togethers, encouraging its members to relax, have a drink, get to know one another, maybe even become friends, in a way that it is hard to imagine regular Avis renters doing.
Many New York Zipcar members say they cannot quite imagine themselves doing so either.
"I must confess I have never been to one," said Mr. Mendelow, of the film nights and happy hours that the company puts together. "I'm not sure what I would discuss with the people when I got there."
Angeline Huang, a law student, said that she had never been to an event and that, though she plans to continue renting the cars, she remained somewhat confused about the concept. "It is a little weird," she said, only half jokingly. "Is it a company or is it a commune?"
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In an analysis of issues facing Houston's mayor, the author notes "The first seven and a half miles of the $340 million light-rail line along Main Street from downtown to Reliant Stadium are to be completed by New Year's Day. Metro, the regional transportation authority, is seeking approval from voters in November for a local transit tax to finance a 22-mile addition at a cost of $640 million. The antirail and prohighway forces have been running commercials contending it would be cheaper to buy every commuter a Ferrari."
More short-sightedness comes from residents in the Mission, who worry that increasing the number of people in their neighbourhood through a new housing development will cut down the number of available parking spaces. The San Francisco Chronicle quotes a woman whose household has at least two cars; instead of lobbying for better public transit routes, increased bus frequencies, she's complaining that "her 20-year-old daughter, who now owns a car of her own, often has to park blocks away from the family's Outer Mission District home".
Car ownership should be more heavily taxes; gasoline costs should reflect the true and future-amortized cost of car usage. Although California is digging itself into a deeper hole one way or another -- either legitimizing non-resident driving, or failing to increase vehicle taxes.
Everyone should ride the bus, train, walk, and bike. And civic infrastructure should make this easier; communities and corporations should offer incentives for people to keep commutes short and on public transit; and people might revel in the quality of life in a community where they live and work.
October 9, 2003
LETTER FROM HOUSTON
Snarls of Traffic and Politics Amid Freestyle Design
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
HOUSTON
"No Handguns Allowed in Meeting" cautions a sign outside the City Council's Art Deco chamber here. Maybe it is just as well, with Houstonians on edge from monster traffic jams, budget woes, bitterly partisan politics, police scandals and the sting of being called too ugly for company.
(First the guns: the Texas Legislature decided this year to allow people to carry a licensed pistol into any public building that is not a school, courthouse or polling place. Houston's answer was to give out red badges marking armed visitors as carriers of, uh, concealed weapons and barring them from the City Council chamber.)
The city's anxiety is being fanned from several directions. There is a heated mayoral race, as Mayor Lee P. Brown nears the end of his three permissible two-year terms. As hard-hat armies rush to complete Houston's first light-rail line in time for Super Bowl XXXVIII at Reliant Stadium in February, traffic snarls from a torn-up downtown and a sharply accelerated highway expansion program have tempers flaring, with traffic reports detailing the carnage every rush hour.
And, oh, there is mold growing on the plastic roof of Minute Maid (formerly Enron) Park, home of the National League's almost playoff team, the Astros.
Most troubling, many say, are the questions now clouding potentially hundreds of prosecutions, including death penalty cases, based on flawed work at the Houston police laboratory, which was shut down last December. Houston's longtime police chief, C. O. Bradford, resigned last month in what he called a planned retirement, but not before Mayor Brown awarded him a $1,054 yearly raise, which pumped up his pension. Enraged City Council members tried fruitlessly to block it. Mayor Brown said he was just keeping a promise to the chief, who had done "a good job." As for the revelations about the laboratory, the mayor said, "I was very disappointed."
On top of all that, there is the issue of civic insecurity. Houstonians have always been a bit defensive about their brash oil boomtown carved from the bayous of East Texas, and now they are grappling with an existential question: Is their city too ugly?
A leading Houston architect and civic planner, Daniel B. Barnum, posed the question recently on the op-ed page of The Houston Chronicle. He reported that the city had been ruled out as a contender for the 2012 Summer Olympics by a member of the selection committee who told a booster, "We can't bring the world to all this ugliness."
Mr. Barnum, a member of the advisory Midtown Management District, did not quibble. With the Super Bowl less than half a year away, "we are finally waking up to fact that much of our city is in fact ugly," he wrote. "Why does it take a Super Bowl to wake us from our slumber? Can't we see the ugliness around us every day? Are we forever condemned to being this way?"
Mr. Barnum said later that he was particularly referring to the welter of commercial signs along U.S. 59 the route into the city from George Bush Intercontinental Airport. "We ought to be embarrassed," Mr. Barnum said in an interview. "It's awful. I don't know any other city where that kind of introduction awaits you."
His remarks elicited a storm of reaction, much of it positive, but some of it hostile. Mayor Brown, for one, took exception. "I wouldn't accept that Houstonians don't care the way the city looks," the mayor said. What about all the abundant greenery? he asked. The clean streets, the landmark downtown buildings?
One perennial flash point is traffic, as recounted in a new book, "Houston Freeways," by Erik Slotboom, a computer specialist and a longtime student of the road system. The problems may have been brewing for a long time, as Mr. Slotboom says, but never before, it seems, has so much work been going on all at once.
The first seven and a half miles of the $340 million light-rail line along Main Street from downtown to Reliant Stadium are to be completed by New Year's Day. Metro, the regional transportation authority, is seeking approval from voters in November for a local transit tax to finance a 22-mile addition at a cost of $640 million. The antirail and prohighway forces have been running commercials contending it would be cheaper to buy every commuter a Ferrari.
The project's fate has become entangled in the mayor's race. One of the three candidates, Orlando Sanchez, a Republican and former councilman who almost beat Mayor Brown in 2001, has made opposing the rail line a keystone of his campaign.
Mr. Sanchez's two opponents are Democrats who support the rail plan, Sylvester Turner, a member of the Texas House of Representatives who almost became the first African-American to be elected mayor, six years before Mr. Brown did in 1997, and Bill White, a former Texas Democratic Party chairman, who is white.
In the latest twist, Mr. White charged the Turner campaign with trying to undercut him by slipping another candidate named Bill White onto the ballot, thus splitting his vote. Mr. Turner denied involvement.
Although Mayor Brown has yet to announce an endorsement — he says he has eliminated Mr. Sanchez — none of the candidates have a good word to say about City Hall's handling of the road mess and the traffic lights, which are maddeningly unsynchronized. Mr. Brown insists that the work was carefully planned.
"We have to complete it in a given time or lose federal funds," he said. "I chose to do it in 4 years instead of 10 or 12. Is that a mistake? No."
Many drivers would differ. Growing numbers of Houstonians are voting with their feet, or wheels, giving up on nightmare drives to work to move downtown. Every vacant plot there seems to be sprouting new houses, mostly cutesy, suburbanesque garden apartments that give the willies to architectural critics like Stephen Fox, an adjunct lecturer at Rice University and a celebrated leader of walking tours. Looking at one complex of what he called "pretend lofts," Mr. Fox said, "The sudden unreality of this little mirage of urban life becomes apparent." But such builders, he said, were doing "appallingly well."
Yet the urban housing boom, which ties into Mayor Brown's goal to raise the percentage of home ownership to 50 percent or more from 45 percent now, has produced its triumphs, Mr. Fox said. He showed a visitor the growing clusters of innovative metal houses by noted architects like Larry Davis and sleek townhouses by a young Vietnamese immigrant, Chung Nguyen, in Montrose and other historic neighborhoods now stirring with new urban life.
One innovative homesteader in the booming West End, Frank Zeni, an artist and architect, has erected a temple-like residence using metal pipes for columns and other scrounged materials. "I have reinvented the house," he declared.
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The roundabouts are really irritating. I was walking through the intersection of Scott and Page this evening, and two cars didn't even slow down as they drove around the temporary traffic circle. I hucked a copy of American Psycho at the second car, a BMW. The smack of the paperback hitting the lacquered car was satisfying, but the car still didn't slow down. At all. I cracked the spine of the book, which I'd just found on the sidewalk.
The town crier just rode by, bellowing "The polls are now closed" at the top of his lungs. I'm sitting on the stoop, drinking the dregs of a case of Miller High Life (The Champagne of Beers, available $8.99 from the New Santa Clara Market on the corner) with Aram, who's on the phone for a legal hearing. At 8 o'clock in the pip emma.
Everyone's trying to claim the short short spot in front of the house; some idiot parked poorly, and took up two good spots with one ugly Subaru.
And some clown driving a pimped-out late-model Camaro convertible parked across the sidewalk, blocking pedestrian right-of-way. After about half an hour, a kid suddenly charged at the car and rolled capably across the hood. The annoying car alarm went off, and the enraged car driver had to interrupt his Scott St. booty call to turn off the alarm.
Headed over to the 510 today and checked out the action at Scharffen Berger chocolates with mum, dad, Aram, and the Birthday Girl MD MD.
Saw the astonishing melangeur, and marvelled that these chocolate makers are so confident in their ingredients and methods that they open their factory to everyone.