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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Issue 32 STOP
CONNECT
12
Issue Contributors
DESIGN & MARKETING SERVICES blockclubonline.com
15
Letter from the Editor
DESIGN & OFFICE BLOG clubhaus.tumblr.com
18
The Conversationalists Interview by Ben Siegel Muralist Candy Chang on re-invigorating public spaces with public opinion.
FACEBOOK, TWITTER, VIMEO and INSTAGRAM @blockclub #blockclub #BCM32
22
Roadside Assistance Interview by Patrick Simons Pittsburgh bus riders get relief.
EDITORIAL & CONTENT ben@blockclubonline.com
24
Stop That, Right Now! Column by Block Club Losing patience for egregious errors.
30 Into That Good Night By Ben Siegel Photos by Steve Soroka Illuminating the dark in Buffalo’s late shift. 40 Return Ticket By Laura Sikes Photos by Kyle Schwab Going underground in Rochester to find clues to decades of halted progress. 56 Woman Committed Short fiction by Chastity West A brief diary of a woman on the verge of another beginning. 61
Dead In My Tracks Illustration by Adam Weekley Bumbling about.
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WE WANT BETTER. Block Club is a branding and marketing agency founded in 2007 in Buffalo, NY. We work to develop and strengthen brands for forward-thinking businesses and organizations with Block Club Creative. We tell stories about a better Rust Belt in Block Club magazine. We help locals save money with City Dining Cards, and create fun, inspiring gift products with Fridge Phrases. We do this because we want better. This magazine is printed on FSC®-certified post-consumer and post-industrial recycled paper. Production of this brand of paper consumes five times less water than the industry average, reduces air emissions, frees up landfill space, and saves the world’s mature trees. 731 Main St. Buffalo, NY 14203 716.507.4474 blockclubonline.com ©2013 BLOCK CLUB INC. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 Unported License. This work may be reproduced and shared for personal or educational use only, and must be credited to Block Club magazine. Such use for commerical purposes is strictly prohibited.
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BCM 32 11
ISSUE CONTRIBUTORS
Kyle Schwab pg. 40 Kyle is a Rochester-based editorial and commercial portrait photographer. He currently shoots for Rochester Magazine, the Democrat and Chronicle, and Subculture Magazine, among others. A UB graduate in philosophy and cognitive science, he uses neither degree in any official capacity. Laura Sikes pg. 40 Laura Sikes is a doctoral candidate in American history at the University of Rochester. Her dissertation is about rock music criticism in the 1960s. She lost on “Jeopardy!” last year and loves to tell everyone about it.
BLOCK CLUB MAGAZINE EDITORIAL STAFF
PUBLISHER PATRICK FINAN patrick@blockclubonline.com
EDITOR BEN SIEGEL ben@blockclubonline.com
Adam Weekley
pg. 61 Adam is a multi-media artist who has lived and worked in Buffalo since 2001. Born and raised in West Virginia, Weekley often mines personal history when developing content for his installations, sculptures, paintings and drawings. He is an assistant professor of fine arts at Villa Maria College.
CREATIVE DIRECTOR BRANDON DAVIS brandon@blockclubonline.com
PHOTOGRAPHER STEVE SOROKA steve@blockclubonline.com
DESIGNER JULIE MOLLOY julie@blockclubonline.com
Chastity West
pg. 56 Chastity West is a mom, partner, friend, counselor, nutritionist, baseball coach, and activist—and a writer and editor. She recently edited a short story collection, Cifiscape Vol. 2: The Twin Cities, and a monster-pocalypse, Rotholme, both available through Onyx Neon, Inc. 12 BCM 32
DESIGNER TIM STASZAK tim@blockclubonline.com
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT COPY EDITOR PATRICK SIMONS patricksimons@blockclubonline.com
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Stop The end stinks; there’s no way around it. The fact that good things die—early, or at all—is the hardest, and biggest, truth we know. This is hardly news, but it’s too easily passed aside. We ignore the inevitable and replace it with laughable theories of perpetuity, youth and narcissism. We waste time being stuck in a time and place where we once thought everything would live forever. The glory days. Our cities, though, their histories are marked differently. We’ve been likened to shepherds serving over this land that we’ve inherited, charged with the responsibility of leaving it better for our kin. Maybe death is not the enemy of progress. Understanding why something needs to end; preventing unjust closures; renewing that which shouldn’t have stopped in the first place—these are the forward-moving ideals of the cities we all want to live in. Stopping has as much to do with sustainability as it does with its antidotal “genesis.” This is the central challenge to all of the “post-” work in our progressive cities: how to build on what already exists, all the while maintaining its heart, and sustaining that growth as healthily as possible. This is power, my neighbors. This is what happens when you decide to keep going. It’s the infinite figure-eight. Time and time again, we see proof that our cities have incredible strength in their darkest corners. The very suggestion of “post-industrial” accepts that something equally as sustainable as industry could exist, that something does,
and should, come after what we all thought was the heyday. And yes, it has. We’re here. Now what? We must engage with our mythical past—the strewnabout remains of our former identities, the broken plans of attempted evolution. Some ideas are worth ditching, while some never had a fighting chance. But the brainstorm started before we showed up, and we must pick up where others left off. This doesn’t always happen. What will it take to hold on tighter to our institutions that we cry so loudly for after they’ve left the building? Some of these answers exist in a much bigger picture than what we see in our metropolises. Yes, some things do go away. That can be sad, debilitating. But new things take up their space. Landlords find new tenants. The cycle cycles. The stars know. Some have been dead for millions of years, and yet they remain present, relevant. Their tiny light glows in the sky, reminding us that where it matters, nothing really stops. Some things move over, step back, disappear. But they come back. What comfort, to know that life continues. That these wrongs can be righted, and that we can try again. That the end is only the beginning.
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BCM 32 17
THE CONVERSATIONALISTS
ASK AND YOU SHALL
RECEIVE YOU PROBABLY DON’T KNOW WHO CANDY CHANG IS, BUT SHE’S BEEN LISTENING TO YOUR DEEPEST THOUGHTS AND SECRETS FOR YEARS.
C
Interview by BEN SIEGEL
andy Chang loves a good quotation. The artist-activist is quick to reference philosophers and academics in conversation, and given her non-stop world tour of speaking engagements, art installations, and TED conferences, at which she’s presented and twice been a fellow, it’s likely she’d drop a wise line from an intellectual punk rocker or prodigal tech entrepreneur, too. Chang’s installations pose questions to those who walk by, hypothetical inquiries about your secrets, desires, doubts, dreams and even finances. It began in her New Orleans neighborhood, an unusually dense district called the Bywater, where low shotgun houses and shallow front yards are met by artist studios, coffee shops, bars and the occasional empty side lot. It’s a quiet neighborhood, though not disengaged; this is a familial city, through and through. But Candy wants to know more, like what kind of rent her neighbors pay, and what they want to accomplish before leaving this Earth. With chalkboard paint, a stencil, and baskets of chalk, Chang turned the wall of an abandoned building into a public forum. And the public responded. Chang’s various installations have been affixed to abandoned buildings, sidewalks and public spaces around the world. This spring, a Before I Die wall made its way to a vacant Fillmore Avenue house slated for demolition on Buffalo’s East Side. In all of Chang’s work, anonymity calls our attention to intimacy, the entwined paradox of space and self. Everyone needs validation of self and intellect. Curious neighbor that she is, Chang just makes it easier to listen.
CC It’s an easy way to share deeper feelings with your whole community. That’s still hard to do. The city historian Lewis Mumford once wrote that the origins of society were not just for physical survival but for “a more valuable and meaningful kind of life.” Some of the earliest gathering places were graves and sacred groves. We gathered so we could grieve together and worship together and console one another and be alone together. Our public spaces are our shared spaces and they have a lot of potential to offer us a more valuable and meaningful kind of life. There are many ways the people around us can help improve our lives. We don’t bump into every neighbor so a lot of wisdom never gets passed on, but we do share the same public spaces. At their greatest, they can nourish our well-being and help us make sense of the beauty and tragedy of life with the people around us. BCM There’s a beautiful line your work walks, between despair and hope, hate and love. We all walk around with so much baggage, these boards are almost like little airports, where you can hop on a jet and go somewhere else—somewhere more evolved. I imagine the act of sharing, of unloading your baggage, is almost more beneficial than some of the actual ideas coming to fruition. What’s the psychology of this exercise, in your view? CC We’re all trying to make sense of our lives and there’s
great comfort in knowing you’re not alone. And you’re not. Everyone you’re standing with in line and everyone you drive by on the road and everyone you walk past on
BCM People have many platforms on which to share, yet they come out of the woodwork to pour their hearts and Candy Chang is based in New Orleans, where she souls onto your installations, and with such profound offer- owns and runs a collective creative studio space in the ings. Why do you think people feel free to share here? Bywater neighborhood called Civic Center.
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photo by BEN SIEGEL
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the street is going through challenges in their life. Maybe it’s their relationships or family or work or health. Maybe it’s something they’ve been meaning to face for a long time. Plato said, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” But it’s easy to forget this because we rarely venture beyond small talk with strangers. There are a lot of barriers to opening up. The interactive public art projects started out as my quiet way to ask my neighbors things I was too shy to ask in person. Only later did I realize it goes the other way around too. You don’t have to be outgoing to share your thoughts on these projects. You can share as quietly or as loudly as you like. And the responses are anonymous, which allows you to open up in ways you might not have otherwise. We’re all finding out what is meaningful to us, what feeds us, what drives us. And we’re all finding out who we are, why we feel certain ways, why we do what we do. Personal growth starts with reflection. We have so many thoughts meandering in our mind. It’s easy to let a thought meander by without walking along with it for a while. Other people’s responses not only provide an enlightening understanding of the people around you, but they also help stir your mind about things you’ve been thinking about in your life. The Before I Die and Confessions projects have revealed an honest mess of the longing, pain, joy, insecurity, gratitude, anxiety, and wonder you find in every neighborhood. Seeing other people’s feelings encourages me to lean into my own. BCM These installations often appear in downtrodden parts of town, on derelict buildings, places where we don’t want to look up and notice our surroundings. But you’re asking us to stop, look up, look around, and take it in. What would you like people to do or experience in this pause? CC I started making things on abandoned buildings as a way to easily share our memories and hopes for these places. Many of us walk by under-used areas of our cities and have opinions of what we’d like to see in them. We know what things would make our community more comfortable, more complete, and more ours. But I’ve been to a lot of community meetings where the voice of the community ends up being the loudest person or the 10 people who can make it to the meeting. It would be helpful to lower the barrier and add more ways to get involved.
Stopping and sharing your thoughts is a first step towards considering yourself an active citizen with ideas that can 20 BCM 32
make a difference in your life and other people’s lives. These days I’m really interested in turning abandoned buildings into sanctuaries to help us pause and examine our lives more deeply. The projects are all a form of self-help and abandoned buildings have become a tender canvas to insert the things I wish were in our public spaces. Our neglected buildings are like the neglected parts of ourselves. It’s easy to let parts of us languish. I’ve neglected the solitude I need to read, reflect, and make. And in our age of increasing distractions, it’s more important than ever to find ways to maintain perspective and be proactive about what really nourishes you. It’s easy to go with the flow and postpone your deepest needs. It’s easy to neglect your relationship with yourself. The mythologist Joseph Campbell once said, “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” To be true to yourself, you need to take the time to step back, pause, be quiet, and reflect. You are constantly growing and changing, and with every experience you gain new perspectives that can reshape your guiding star. BCM To what do you attribute our inability or refusal to acknowledge these spaces? CC Abandoned buildings have become such a common
sight that they often slip quietly into the backdrop like an accepted part of our landscape. It’s easy to forget them, but these places played a meaningful part in our lives and they can become meaningful again. They’re the perfect place to restore perspective, to remind us of our deeper history, to help us contemplate life’s biggest questions together. I’m currently working on two projects on abandoned buildings. I’m making an installation for the Centre for the Living Arts in Mobile, Ala. Five blocks away is Barton Academy, this beautiful historic building that was the first public school in Alabama. It’s been abandoned for years and steps towards renovating it are slowly moving forward. It inspired me to make an interactive project to help us contemplate the fundamental idea of school—the things we learn, the ways we learn, and the role our schools play in making us who we are. There are things I wish I learned when I was younger. And I’m very excited to start working on a long-term dream. The writer James Reeves and I are working to transform an abandoned gas station on Route 66 into a library dedicated to pilgrimages and personal transformation. The Philosopher’s Library will be a remote sanctuary filled with books
We want to love and be loved. We want to understand who we really are. about leading an examined life, as well as a card catalogue where travelers can share their philosophies for personal well-being. Road trips have been a constant source of therapy for me, and this library in the Mojave Desert is a culmination of everything I want in my life right now. BCM One might categorize this kind of sharing as an active exercise—extracting the secrets, ideas or wishes we all hold onto—and you could also say it’s passive, since at the end of the day, it’s still just talk. Do you think positive energy is enough to make these wishes come true? CC It’s the first step and it’s an important step. It’s a commitment to turn abstract thoughts into something more concrete, to make sense of it, to follow where it came from, to imagine where it can go. I’ve written many things on Before I Die walls—to hole up and read books for weeks, to enjoy more cities with the people I love, to write a bedtime story, to revive a ghost town. It took months before I even began to act on some of these things, but once I wrote them down, those inklings of urges took root and became firmer in my mind. It’s like that scene in “The Little Prince” where the prince repeats out loud the things the fox says so that he would be sure to remember. I’m a distracted, forgetful person with a short attention span. I need constant reminders of the actions that will really nourish me. BCM Your work asks us to think about mortality without the fear of morbidity. How does death enter your life? CC I avoided thinking about death for a long time, in part
because I was taught to avoid it. If you bring up death out of the blue, people will often say “don’t go there” or “it’s too sad” or “you don’t need to think about it until you’re older.” When I lost someone I loved for the first time, I couldn’t avoid it any longer. I went through a period of grief and depression, then gratitude for the time we had together. I thought about death a lot and I found a deep comfort and clarity I didn’t expect. Past the tragic truth lies a bright calm that reminds me of my place in the world. When I think about death, the moment gets more tactile.
Things that were stressing me out are reduced to their small and silly place. Things that matter to me get big and crisp again. I’m more in-the-moment and more in-the-universe at the same time. Now I think about death all of the time; it’s the quickest way to filter the noise and make decisions obvious. I’ve found great comfort in reading philosophy. So many people have come before us who have thought deeply about the same universal questions. The Stoics were champions of regularly contemplating death. It’s a powerful and healthy tool to re-appreciate the present and remember the things that make your life meaningful to you. Thinking about death clarifies your life. BCM What trends do you find among responses? CC We want to love and be loved. We want more trees. We want to experience the world. We want fresh food. We want to feel our life has purpose. We want more places to stop and enjoy for a while. We want to understand who we really are. One of my favorite responses on an I Wish This Was sticker is “a place to sit and talk.” One on the original Before I Die wall is “be completely myself.” BCM How is design a factor in your work? CC I think it’s helped me try to communicate my ideas as strongly as I imagine them in my head. I’m glad I studied graphic design. It’s like being able to speak eloquently. The typography and layout of my projects are all deliberate choices to set the mood and enhance or counter certain feelings. But you don’t need to go to school to be a good designer. I learned the most outside of school, just trying to turn my personal projects into a reality. I learned a lot that way. I also picked up a random book from the bookstore that ended up becoming my design bible for years. It’s called “Letters from the Avant-Garde” and it’s a book of stationery designed by artists from Constructivism, Bauhuas, De Stijl, and other modernist movements.
Finding that book was one of many serendipitous experiences that shaped me. I’ve tried a lot of things out over the last 10 years and I’ve stumbled on so many things that have changed the course of my life. It’s made me realize that it’s good to have goals, but it’s even greater to keep an open mind and to allow random experiences to become meaningful to you. There’s a Buddhist proverb: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” I like that. Sometimes we’re not ready for the insights we’re offered. But when we’re ready, the wisdom is there. BCM 32 21
CASE STUDY
Roadside Assistance
F
Interview by PATRICK SIMONS
or millions of people in this country, public transportation is a critical part of their day. Getting to work, school and health care facilities can mean an inconvenient schedule with inefficient routes. Relying on a metro’s bus system can be tough enough, and that’s when busses are on running on time. In Pittsburgh, where persistent transit problems inconvenience travelers of all vehicles, busses tend to run significantly late. In 2011, a research team at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science got to work on a remedy, something that would put real-time information about late arrivals, at-capacity busses, and accessibility issues right in the palms of riders’ hands. They developed an app called Tiramisu, that crowdsources data from those both on busses and waiting at bus stops. The team’s co-director, Aaron Steinfeld, discusses the power of this technology.
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NAME
Tiramisu
LOCATION
Smartphone app available for: Pittsburgh, PA Syracuse, NY New York, NY
DEBUT
2011
FOUNDER
Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Accessible Public Transportatation (RERC-APT)
DIRECTOR
Aaron Steinfeld, co-director, RERC-APT
WEBSITE
tiramisutransit.com
DOWNLOAD App available for free in iTunes Store and Android Market. Compatible for iPhone, iPad and Android phones.
illustration by TIM STASZAK Why is public transit a problem in Pittsburgh?
Public transit in Pittsburgh, and in the U.S. as a whole, is chronically underfunded. Funding has gotten worse in recent years. This corresponds to a significant lack of resources and repeated service cuts. Fixing an issue as common as “waiting for the bus” is, in actuality, a massive undertaking. You took matters into your own hands, and didn’t wait for the Port Authority to act. How did you decide to solve the issue with an app?
The Port Authority of Allegheny County [is] unable to purchase a traditional real-time arrival system. Based on research by the Transportation Research Board, it would cost about $10 million to purchase and deploy a real-time arrival system in a city the size of Pittsburgh. We realized that the same data could be gathered using the riders’ own smartphones, thereby bypassing the cost of a traditional system. What kind of research did you conduct before creating the app?
Our initial research was focused on helping riders with disabilities identify and share information about accessibility barriers and solutions. Some of our participants pointed out that this was useful, but real-time knowledge about the bus arrival time and fullness were higher priorities. Wheelchair users and people who need seats noted that a full bus is just as bad as a bus that never arrives. This led us to look at how to deliver real-time arrival and fullness information. How is mobile technology relevant now in ways it wasn’t, even five years ago?
I think the change is most dramatic [during] non-work hours. Many transit agency call centers have restricted service times. This means riders couldn’t get information early in the morning or late at night. If you were lucky, you had a printed schedule in your bag or a current one was posted at the bus shelter. However, printed schedules are useless to people who are blind and call centers are mostly useless for riders who are deaf. Smartphones allow riders to access relevant public transit information whenever and wherever they want. Unfamiliar routes are another area where mobile technology shines. Today’s dynamic smartphone interfaces make it easier to explore and plan new trips. How has the Port Authority addressed these problems?
They are trying to improve even with their limited funds. They made two important changes, recently. First, they dramatically improved their mobile website. It is now easier to get schedules, access detour information, and plan trips through mobile phones. Second, they have a very active Twitter account during working hours. This allows riders to ask questions and receive detour and service alerts. Unreliable public transportation is an issue everywhere. What are similarities and differences in the challenges faced with public transit in Pittsburgh, Syracuse and New York City?
Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Buffalo, and many U.S. cities [face] similar challenges in public transit. Public transit is generally an afterthought to most state and federal decision-makers, which means chronic underfunding. The service cuts seen in Pittsburgh are occurring across the country. People who don’t ride the bus are often unaware of how public transit [affects] them. Buses reduce congestion on roads, thereby making it easier for car drivers to get to work and reduce air pollution. Transit also reduces demand on parking in urban centers. This keeps parking costs in check and increases availability of street parking. Parking problems are pronounced in Pittsburgh since the urban core is tightly constrained by the rivers. Transit is also critical for people who can’t drive to work, due to cost or ability. This helps businesses fill jobs and reduces unemployment. These types of broader impacts are why public transit is subsidized by the government. In fact, these community-level benefits are why some cities have completely fare-free service. Crowdsourcing gives people a chance to have at least a little more control over something that has been historically burdensome and often inaccurate. How do you think app technology can be adaptable for other issues and in other cities?
Right! A key point about Tiramisu is that it allows riders to improve their transit service and help their community. They can take matters into their own hands and make a difference. We are extending this idea in the next version of Tiramisu. We’re currently updating the app to let riders communicate with each other and share a [wider] range of information. But there are other areas where crowdsourcing can help citizens make a positive impact on the services provided by their local government. Crowdsourcing has already been proven [effective] for parks, street plowing, road maintenance, and urban planning. BCM 32 23
VIEWS
Stop that, right now! EGREGIOUS ERRORS THAT, FRANKLY, ARE DRIVING US NUTS. by BLOCK CLUB
S
AY HELLO. Debunk what all the old people think about social networking and how it’s ruined our ability to function in the world. The next time you meet someone, talk to them as though you don’t need to Google them later. Ask them real questions, look at them in the eye, remember their name, tell them yours, and try, for just a few minutes, to be engaged in humanity. People aren’t robots, not yet at least. Typed chit-chat and spoken conversation are not interchangeable. HEAR YOURSELF. Like our heretofore misunderstood inability to smell our own breath, it’s almost impossible to hear the nonsense that falls out of our mouths. The time you were talking about your beloved hometown to your friend in Chicago, or your relative in Richmond, or your friend’s roommate in Los Angeles—you know what, it doesn’t matter who it is—and you apologized for where you live? For how cold it gets, and how small it is, and how it used to be bigger and better, and all this nonsense? Made excuses for the dirtier facts, instead of embracing them and understanding their role in our city’s larger history? Please, don’t do us any favors. You don’t deserve to be our ambassador if you’re not going to take ownership of and pride in your city. Reverse myths; don’t perpetuate them. KNOW YOUR PLACE. That time you were riding your bike on the sidewalk because you mistook it for a scenic landscape? Bikes belong on the roads (if you’re an adult), not on the sidewalk, where even your casual riding can easily put pedestrians in danger. Ever see a two-wheeler inadvertently plow through a group of Canadian tourists? It doesn’t look friendly. The more responsible bikers we have on the roads, the more visibility bikers’ rights have for automobile drivers out there, which helps raise awareness and keep everybody in their respective, proper places.
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COAST TO COAST. Drivers need to know their place, too. You’re not supposed to coast in the left lane; you’re supposed to pass in the left lane. It’s illegal to pass somebody in the right lane, in fact. (Illegal! You’re all criminals. Happy?) Confusion over this simple rule can lead to horrible consequences. The rest of the world knows this road rule, and knew it the day they took their driver’s exam. USE YOUR WORDS. “Literally” doesn’t literally mean that you’re literally going to die because you literally don’t have a thing to wear tonight. It means you don’t have anything to wear tonight. You’re actually going to live. Which brings us to... “Actually.” Actually doesn’t reinforce what you literally think because actually, it’s only meant for the clarification of something previously misunderstood. Unless, of course, you’re being ironic, which means the unexpected or opposite use of a word in context to its definition, and in which case literally being bored to death isn’t funny anymore. Langauge is fun, and it adapts, alongside fashion and climate, but it shouldn’t be mocked at the expense of its misuse. Actually. IMMODESTY. I see your handbag. It’s nice. It’s big. I assume it cost a lot (or I assume it’s Dots, because I just saw three of them). Don’t tell me how much it cost. THE ’BURBS. The thing about the suburbs is, they don’t make sense anymore. The space might be nice, and the quiet can be a gift, but the roads, and the construction, and the build-outs, and the cul-de-sac-upon-cul-de-sac, and the new plazas going in next to the old plazas, and the highways for Main Streets, and the gross misuse of public dollars, well it’s just suffocating. The hope of a sustainable city depends on residents embracing city living, understanding the need for compact, intentional design, and the immeasurable benefits of living closer together. Waste is out; efficiency is in. BUTT DETAIL. If you’re going to smoke anywhere other than in your private home, do the rest of the world a favor and throw your butts away in a proper receptacle. They litter our streets, cause harm to birds (and curious children), and smell like your trash. The sidewalk is getting asthma. RECEPTACLES. Throw your cigarettes away, but also—hello!—don’t throw garbage out your car window, or toss it to the curb! That’s why they invented receptacles, and called them “garbage cans,” or recycling bins (we’ll get to those next); they’re meant for exactly that. CONSERVATION. We first heard about the Three Rs—reduce, reuse, recycle—decades ago, and though proactive they didn’t land with the same urgency as they do now. They were cautionary words about a future so poten-
illustration by TIM STASZAK
That’s why they invented receptacles, and called them “garbage cans.” tially bleak and desperate, we couldn’t fathom the consequences of our inactions. Turns out, these words prophesied what has since happened. You’ve run out of excuses. You should feel the guilt of a nun’s blank stare when you don’t sort your garbage. You should whimper at the thought of a dying puppy on Christmas Eve when you throw away your yogurt container. You should know better by now. LIVE WITH IT. We consume too much garbage. The multiplying islands of trash in the ocean are our proof. Even if you recycle, the point is to use less—reduce. Buy something because it has the quality to last, to sustain itself over many uses. Buy something because you know you’re going to use it to its fullest capacity, not just because you really, really, must have it. COME ON. Have some decency. Tanning yourself in January to the point of jerky? Wearing pajamas to run errands? It’s not a “style” or a “look”; it’s a travesty. Where is your mirror? Shame. SPEAK UP. The last time you heard a group of brutisth college bros—a fair assumption—pass by a young lady and holler things that they’d never be caught dead saying in front of their mothers, why didn’t you say something?
Or the last time you heard a derogatory word being used against someone, whether you knew them or not, how come you didn’t call them out? We don’t all come equipped with the same thick skin; some need our support. Embarrass these fools in front of everyone; they deserve it. While you’re at it, remind them that collars haven’t been popped since the last presidency. BE KIND, REWIND. Don’t work in, or open, a store unless you can handle being nice to people. It goes beyond customer service; it’s just a matter of decency. You don’t need to blame customers for not understanding your asinine rules, or be sarcastic because it’s your “sense of humor.” Plenty of stores close because of reasons beyond their control. Take control over what you have, and value your customers. Don't go down because you couldn’t say “thank you.” FACEBOOK. Some of your status updates leave a lot to be desired. Tell us about what you’re thinking, not what you’re chewing. And stop friending us and then ignoring us in real life. LOSING. Please, for the love of all that’s holy: try winning a game for once. Like it’s your well-compensated job. THINK ABOUT IT. Just don’t be a fool, OK? It’s the very least you can do. BCM 32 25
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Into That Good Night By Ben Siegel Photos by Steve Soroka
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T
he five stages of sleep tell an insightful story about being awake. The waves of our sleep cycle have varying degrees of depth, consciousness and awareness. The deeper you sleep, the higher you wake. In the REM, or rapid-eye movement, cycle, the fifth of five that our bodies naturally rotate through every night, is where we dream. During this stage, our eyes move, rapidly as it suggests, and so does our brain. We are most active in this stage, working our way through a terrain dug out of our rampant subconscious and suppressed hopes. During REM, our muscles become weak to the active movement in the brain, where figments of our day and shards of our memories swirl around into a place that feels, upon waking, both unrealistic and familiar. It’s a heightened, even dramatic, place to rest. Consider any dream you’ve had and recreate the narrative without tripping over yourself, stopping for interpretation and meaning. Volumes have been theorized about our dreams. The remaining stages of our sleep, the NREM, or non-rapid-eye movement, cycles, are where we rest. They’re where our bodies quickly and then slowly, and then more slowly decompress. Muscles relax, the brain receives a much-needed respite, and things slow down. Your body temperature lowers as a result, your body using less energy than it exudes all day. This goes in and out a few times, REM rearing its storytime in and out along the way. This is where the real work takes place. It is night’s ebb to day’s flow, our tired mind's rest to our nocturnal curiosity's exploration—and in an unexpected way, the brightest light in all our darkness. BCM 32 31
“Night has been our kind of incubation. It’s been a time of what some think is the end, or the darkness. But there’s a lot more going on.” Dana Saylor ON THE FRANTIC CORNER of Allen Street and Elmwood Avenue—a priority on Buffalo, NY’s social calendar—things are busy, motors are running, but life is hanging on by a lone thread. Everyone is in need of resuscitation. A Greek diner revives benched revelers with plates of meat, cheese and fried potatoes; a secondhand-bookstore owner waits at her perch, offering casual customers the chance to revive one of her old friends; and therapists open their bars to lonely patients in need of a friendly ear. This is the weight of the nucleus in one of downtown’s busiest entertainment districts. It looks common, all this evening banter, this routine revelry. It’s what workingclass Buffalonians do at night: they trade their day in for something more forgetful. It moves during the day, with all its restaurants, offices and storefronts, its envied residents in their sought-after homes; but it truly lives at night, when most of the population goes to sleep. 32 BCM 32
It has never slept. Only we have. Allentown is a rich petri dish for nocturnal observation. Unlike downtown’s other entertainment district, which exists in many contrasts—lit like a football stadium, trampled through like a locker room—the energy at this intersection is deceivingly focused. Things may be dark, but they are not invisible. Attention can be paid to a number of impulses, like the eclectic, rich architecture, a veritable glossary of artisan woodwork, architectural personality and ornate decoration. These are buildings made when time and money allowed for such extravagances—though to those looking, they do not only epitomize luxury, but expression. The streets are a museum unto themselves in day or night, but especially in the dark, where shades of streetand car-light illuminate those crevices whose shadows are not visible in the light. Another light, another shade. Ghosts of artists past linger in the layered concrete, now repaved but still punctuated by their clawing grasps.
Their murals have been painted over many times. Layers of paint crumble, of course, revealing more depth than the bright sunshine would otherwise have you know. But if these are things worth noticing—and surely they are, unavoidable to a hungry eye—they still exist on the surface. They excite the brain, teasing with remnants of our pasts and others’ pasts. Stories of place and time reveal themselves to anyone available to listen, or interested to look. But there are more than these grungy fairy tales. New layers are being applied, adding to what will be noticed by future residents. Each summer, a motley crew of renegade artists, ragtag musicians, subversive dramatists and every other shade of dark, march into Allentown for the Infringement Festival. Their creations leap out of alleyways, spring up from sidewalks, and are heard from rooftops. Its art is inclusive in that it is omnipresent, but it is exclusive in that it is meant for those who wish to be active with it.
It is not for everyone, but it is available to anyone—the antidote to that other festival here, a mainstream-tailored art fair that bears gilded door knockers and decorative lawn ornaments. The differences between the two are stark and divisive. Opinions vary on which is more real. But that’s okay. We see what we look for. SOME TWO-DOZEN BLOCKS BELOW Allentown’s sea level is another chest of treasures. It’s decidedly darker than even the moody Edward Hopper-esque streetscape up north. But here, too, a light emerges. Silo City, it’s called; a befitting name. It is both a misnomer—this is not a municipality, or at least not ours— and a promise. A forest of towering homes, structures created to stand tall and empower and belittle us. This Is A Real City: A Tall City. In reality, this name evokes something stronger for those who have been paying attention to its territory. BCM 32 33
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Allentown has never slept. Only we have. It suggests that there’s another city in our future. The one right in front of us. Dana Saylor is an advocate for this industrial section of the First Ward, where the Buffalo-invented grain elevator sits in a riverfront hallway of its own museum. They are relics of an industrial past still standing, despite their tenants’ falling. Saylor, with a group of fellow artists, preservationists, organizers and rabble-rousers, want us to see this concrete jungle for what it is—all the dirt, all the industry, all the darkness. In focusing our attention to these structures, we might have a new vision for them. Last year, Saylor and her cohorts co-founded City of Night, an all-night art and activism event hosted in Silo City, on Childs Street, south of the Ohio Street lift bridge. Visitors had unprecedented access to elevator buildings that housed a variety of art installations, from projections to aerial dancers to murals to performance art. Outside, a DJ stage gave dancers the ultimate view of a lit-up grain elevator. It was an impressive display of art, for sure, but that work served a bigger purpose. This was an opportunity to see a heretofore forgotten property in an unexpected light: the dark. (The event takes place again this August.) For Saylor, the perils of this industrial district are dates in the history books, but they stay with us today. And they should remain in our line of vision. Even the low points are significant. “In any capital-based economy, these things will happen. Is it natural? Is it what should happen? I don’t think so. But it is the system that we’ve accepted,” says Saylor. “When you hear people speak about Buffalo or the Rust Belt, they’re either going to be hopeful or hopeless, almost always. I find that the difference is whether or not they appreciate the darkness, what they see as a stop. But we, the hopeful—and I’m not talking generationally, necessarily, because there are 80-year-olds that are still hopeful—see that darkness as a time for regeneration, as a time of opportunity, as a time of potential.” If City of Night is the start of something new, whether
that’s an art event or an industrial site’s rejuvenation, then what takes place in its resting mode is crucial to that new beginning. That means, of course, taking the bad with the good. “Don’t sugar coat it. People who want to move here aren’t going to move here because we think it’s perfect,” says Saylor. “We want it to not be perfect. Because that means that we get to leave our mark, we get to shape it.” City of Night is a focus on these shapes, these abstractions of scalloped cement. When visible in the dark, with colored lights dancing across their immense surfaces, we find new appreciation for their potential. This takes a tone of optimism, a belief that after a long, depressive stop, a start awaits. “Some people are always going to grumble that it’s not going to be a place of manufacturing or industry ever again, but we can’t afford to give that too much weight. That’s not going to happen. This is the reality we’re living with right now,” says Saylor. “There’s a dichotomy of people who think that the dark either means it’s the end—you turn off the lights and you go to bed; you wait and hope for the morning—or you work into that night.” The name, City of Night, takes its cue from the Lauren Belfer novel, “City of Light.” The novel tells a fictional story about the 1901 Pan-American Exposition here, and the illumination of a city on the world’s map. The real-life events of that fabled fair are well documented, but with this new take on the theme of innovation and renovation, we can also understand its patterns. “Belfer’s [book] was all about Buffalo at its height. It captured the essence of a city [at the turn of the 20th century], although it also had a dark side, obviously. It foretold the fall. And so in the opposite direction is City of Night, which also talks about the fall, but [more about] what comes after,” says Saylor. “Perhaps [there’s] a negative connotation of night in that, but we’re also celebrating it at the same time. We’re doing both of these. We’re saying that night has been a BCM 32 35
challenge, the night has been our kind of incubation, [the night has] been a time of what some think is the end, or the darkness, but there’s a lot more going on than people have even realized, and especially now.” No one would have realized that these grain silos would turn into rock-climbing walls; or that a group of students from a state research university would design and install here a magnificent, location-specific, cuttingedge tower for the study of bees; or that bus loads of civic souls from other, similar cities, who have only sketches in their minds of what these monoliths look like in person, would travel from far distances to dine under their gaze, and revel in their past, current and future glories. “We can take this darkness that’s part of our history, part of our shared experience, that has been really challenging and uncertain, and not just leave that behind, but bring that with us. What is it that has made us great through this time?,” says Saylor. “I believe all of the best things about Buffalo, outside of the remaining built environment—the people, the communities, the work: the culture—I think all of that is due to the worst that has happened to us. It’s a celebration of our pain, in a way. That’s key. We’re not denying that we’re a Rust Belt city. It’s saying, Hey, look at our grit. Look at this place. It’s an example of that.” 36 BCM 32
FOR MANY, BUFFALO already feels awake. The long, cold winter is over by now. For some industries, and in some neighborhoods, it does not look tired, or worn out, or without rest. These are shining examples of areas where progress was the evidence of a rebound, the fruits of a hard night’s labor. But in other neighborhoods, people are still sleeping. There is need for it, too. Answers are not immediately apparent, and whole systems of infrastructure require rewiring. Those areas are still riding the flow of their sleep cycle. And just as proper sleep requires balance of high and low tides, so does an attitude on renewal, recycling, reconstruction and preservation require a balanced perspective. As Saylor points out, there’s equilibrium to our city’s history when you stand back and look at its cumulative timeline. Where we stand today is in response to where we were sleeping yesterday; and how we slumber now affects how we rise tomorrow. Use your sleep well, these nighttime visions tell us. Take time to settle in and dream, and dream big. The corners of our imagination can reveal robust, profound ideas. And while you’re resting, take advantage of the chance to refuel and recharge. Because just as the evocative night falls every day, like clockwork, so too does morning rise, ready for another day of building and rebuilding.
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Rochesterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s subway system has been out of commission for almost half a century, but its platforms remain vital.
by Laura Sikes photos by Kyle Schwab
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N
early a century ago, as a growing, prospering industrial center, Rochester looked like it could be the next great American city. It was so bustling that it became the smallest city in America to ever build a subway, converting an unused Erie Canal aqueduct in the center of the town into a functioning underground. During its heyday, the subway was a symbol of the city’s potential. But its closure in 1956 marked the beginning of the end for Rochester’s optimism. The painful effects of de-industrialization hit the city hard. Public works projects fell to urban decay. Since closing, the subway has sat abandoned, and now straddles the delicate line between being an object of public enthusiasm and a burden to the city. Today, Rochester, like many Rust Belt cities, is fighting its way back from years of pessimism and declining fortunes. The economy and the population are growing and a sense of pride and hopefulness about the city along with it. Many local boosters find the subway meaningful because it is a reminder that Rochester was once a vibrant, vital city. It still surprises outsiders that Rochester ever had a subway at all. It is a site of historical memory that has long stirred the imaginations of Rochesterians, evidence of a better time. But what happens now to this romantic, ruined relic? Its fall from grace rehashes the past, yes, in a narrative we are all too familiar with. But in a way that certain pockets of the Rust Belt can understand, it also rekindles the need for new vision.
LAYING THE TRACKS The site that the subway occupies was a crucial part of Rochester’s early success. The aqueduct was built in 1823 by convicts from Auburn State Prison and connected the Erie Canal with the Genesee River. Once completed, it was hailed as a marvel of modern construction; its engineers claimed that it was one of the longest stone structures in the world at the time. The aqueduct’s connection to the completed Erie Canal in 1825 marked the beginning of Rochester’s rapid growth. The opening of the canal made Rochester America’s first boom town. It went from a sleepy village to a bustling port almost overnight. Mills sprung up along the Genesee to harvest its water power, and the newly-minted Flour City became a hub for shipping and trade. During this period, Rochester became known throughout the country as the “Young Lion of the West,” a moniker that reflected its youthful potential.
Rochester’s remarkable expansion showed no sign of slowing as the 19th Century progressed. Already, by the 1830s, the massive number of ships passing through the canal required that it be expanded. Meanwhile, civic pride blossomed as the “Flour City” became the “Flower City.” Rochester hired some of the greatest architects, landscapers, and city planners in the world to create spectacular parks, buildings and public spaces. Investments in the city’s improvement were a solid bet at a time when Rochester was on the upswing, and the beautification of the city reflected the idealism of the town’s pride. But two major changes around the turn of the last century pushed the canal and the aqueduct toward obsolescence. First was the changing nature of the city’s business. Far from seeing the area’s industries slow down, Rochester’s prosperity climbed higher than ever as cutting-edge companies like Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, and Western Union settled in the city. Though beneficial for the city on the whole, the shift to an industrial economy soon overshadowed the flour mills and other manufacturers who relied on the waterway to transport their goods. The final blow to the aqueduct was the construction of an Erie Canal bypass, completed in 1919. What to make of the newly abandoned structure quickly became the subject of public debate. One early proposal to build a highway running through the city in the path of the aqueduct was deemed unrealistic in the 1910s, when there were only about 3,000 cars in the entire county. The most popular proposal for the use of the canal bed was the creation of a mass transit system. In some ways, a subway was the most obvious option for the city. In other cities with underground train systems, the construction of the tunnels was a complex, expensive undertaking requiring that the major swathes of the above-ground portion of the path be razed. In Rochester, however, there was already a deep, solid and established space for the train that ran right through the center of the city. So while the city might not have had the population of other cities with undergrounds, it did have the advantage of the empty aqueduct. Also essential to this growth was the attitude of the citizens of Rochester toward their city. It was a city on the rise and had been since its earliest days. Though the canal was instrumental to its early growth, the city’s industrial success proved that it was no longer reliant on the waterway. In fact, the first decades of the twentieth century were a time of greater prosperity than ever. The streets had become congested with traffic and bus and trolley lines were overloaded. The subway would be a massive expenditure and Rochester would be the smallest municipality to ever attempt such an undertaking, but Rochesterians were un-
intimidated. The subway proposal passed the Chamber of Commerce with a unanimous vote. Construction began in 1922. The existing structure was enlarged and reinforced with concrete. The underground portion of the subway was short, running for only two miles beneath the middle of Rochester. At a total length of about 10 miles, the system reduced the trip from one end of the route to the other from 40 to 13 minutes. The area above the subway was converted into Broad Street, which became a major artery for Rochester’s bustling downtown traffic. The New York Times reported on Aug. 31, 1924 on the subway’s construction: “Rochester has made for itself a new street, and while they were about it they made arrangements to put subway tracks under it. There is hardly a city in the country that does not look upon this improvement with greedy eyes, for the cry is heard everywhere for more room.” They reported the cost of the project as $6 million, but wrote that the outlay was “expected to justify itself in a short time.” When the subway opened, there were about 270,000 people living in the metropolitan area. The city was banking on projections that the populace of the city would continue to grow, and its transit needs along with it. Some estimates in the 1920s showed Rochester’s population doubling within the next 50 years. There was little reason to doubt it: the population of the city had doubled in the years between 1900 and 1930, after doubling again and again in the century before that.
“AN ADVENTURE IN OPTIMISM” The subway was a successful enterprise for the majority of its existence. It survived the worst of the Great Depression, rebounding quickly from reduced ridership in the early 1930s. When World War II began, Rochester was a crucial part of the war industry with its large, technologically advanced manufacturing center. Workers fueling the wartime production drive used the subway system en masse. Meanwhile, shortages on fuel made public transit invaluable—using the subway was even viewed as patriotic because it saved on resources. It was during the war that the subway finally began running at maximum capacity, running full loads every day. By 1944, more than four million passengers were using Rochester’s underground annually. After the war ended,
Members of Rochester’s homeless population often sleep underground in the winter. 44 BCM 32
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in both 1946 and 1947, more than five million trips were taken on the subway annually. Meanwhile, however, it seemed that the “Young Lion of the West” had finally reached its limit. The populationgrowth projections on which the future of the transit system was based had proven overly optimistic. But even without continuous population growth, the subway had shown itself to be a viable enterprise. Nonetheless, by 1949—only two years after its peak business—ridership had hit its lowest ebb ever, the result, in part, of the country’s widespread urban shift. Car culture had taken over in America in the years following World War II. The massive industrial output initiated by war production shifted to domestic manufacturing once again, and Detroit began churning out cars to meet the demands of a nation experiencing an economic boom. Suburbs sprung up along interstates and highways, places the subway system didn’t reach. Even those who remained in the city began using cars with increasing frequency. Rochester’s urban planners ignored the public’s calls to improve the subway, choosing instead to focus on highway construction. The subway system tried to compensate for its reduced use with hiked fares, a move that would be the final nail in its coffin. In 1949, the city council voted in secret to shut the transit system down. From then to its closing in 1956, the subway hobbled along, becoming a financial burden to the city. June 30, 1956, the day the subway made its final run, became a day to celebrate Rochester’s past glory. The local newspaper ran an editorial about the closing of the system that captured the feeling of the city at the time, proclaiming that this was “the end of Rochester’s adventure in optimism.” The city that had, from its founding, experienced nothing but extraordinary growth and prosperity was coming to terms with a new vision of the future—more realistic but less rosy than the hopefulness that came before. Ventures like the subway would soon be a charming relic of Rochester’s idealistic past. Of course, there was no way of knowing at that time that the optimism would give way to pessimism as Rochester began its slow post-industrial downward spiral. People moved out of the city in droves and their jobs followed them. The tax base that supported the city declined along with its population. By the 1970s, the city was struggling to maintain its infrastructure. It had little money or energy to devote to a relic like the subway, with no obvious utility to the public.
In 1973, a Rochester historian wrote: “The seemingly endless succession of crises with which American cities have had to contend in more recent times has tended to replace the excessive optimism of the earlier period with an excessive cynicism.”
GROWING UP In recent years, the pessimism of the past has tempered conversation about the city’s future, which once again looks to be brightening. With a stronger economy and a growing population, Rochester has started dreaming again, ramping up investment in historic preservation and other city improvements. Many city boosters hope that part of the city’s progress will include a celebration of the past—perhaps even underground. The question of what to do with the abandoned subway has become a major focus for some involved in the city’s revitalization efforts. Some people want to restore the subway or the aqueduct to its original purposes, while others are interested in using the land in other, yet still progressive, ways. Though a few promising projects have come to light, addressing one social need or another, none bear the weight of a master plan, a complete re-imainging, a holistic vision, that enthusiastic urban renewal usually bears. There is still vacancy—both below ground, where the tracks eerily whisper, and to some extent, above ground, where stomping has only just begun. One local organization, Foodlink, has leased part of the subway bed— a swathe of undeveloped, unoccupied grass running straight through the northwest section of town—for an urban farming project serving Rochester’s large Bhutanese and Nepali refugee population. Three years ago, the garden opened on Lexington Avenue, near Mary’s Place, a ministry run by a local church to aid incoming refugees. “The neighborhood was once at a very busy and vibrant intersection,” says Mitch Gruber, Foodlink’s community food access coordinator. Today it consists mainly of rundown houses, dilapidated industrial buildings, and struggling businesses, which Gruber calls the “forgotten quadrant of Rochester.” But it remains an asset. “It’s where [refugees] get their first state-mandated social services,” says Gruber, further emphasizing its importance in the city’s growing, changing community. The area is home to many refugees whom Foodlink was attempting to serve. The non-profit decided to ask the
Rochester in motion at street level, above, and seemingly frozen, below ground. BCM 32 47
city government if they could use the subway land for a community garden, and won approval. Currently, 40 families farm on 20-by-8-foot plots. There is already talk of expansion—opening up the garden to other residents in coming months, making it a true community garden. The project is part of a wider movement to repurpose abandoned urban areas for public projects. Gruber points to other Rust Belt cities—Cleveland, Milwaukee, Buffalo, and particularly Detroit—for leading the urban farming movement and seeing great success. Rochester’s city government has been largely supportive of the farming movement, says Gruber, adding that the city leases the subway bed to the group for only a couple hundred dollars a year. The cheerful Lexington Street Garden is a model for repurposing the long aboveground portion of the subway bed, which could bring underground revitalization even closer to the surface.
VOCAL ECHOES The problem of what to do with the underground portion of the subway is trickier. The tunnels have functioned as ad hoc housing for Rochester’s homeless population of nearly 9,000 for decades. During the harsh winters, the pipes and ducts running along the walls provide heat. While it doesn’t routinely house a permanent population in the way some cities’ subway tunnels do, a few barrels with burned wood and some litter show that people have occupied the space for sleep and shelter. But there are rats; it is exposed, largely unsafe; and furthermore, it hides a homeless population that deserves more than a conveniently dark annex in which to derive shelter. In this narrative, the city hides its unspeakable present as well as its heralded past. According to Mike Governale, a Rochester transplant who has become a major proponent of the subway’s revitilization, the city has been working in the last couple of years to clean the area up, improve its maintenance, and address the city’s struggles with homelessness that have made these tracks a viable, if not sufficient, shelter for them. Interest in the tunnel abounds among mainstream daytrippers who adventure through the open tunnels with flashlights and maybe a local guide to tell about what it used to be like. Its romantic “ruin porn” is keenly appreciated by some—bands have played shows there; promoters have hosted huge dance parties. Elsewhere, the mythology of this once and former space
pervades cultural interest. Michael Jarvis, a professor of American history at the University of Rochester, takes his class to the historic space every year. In recent years, a modernized version of the subway map, designed by Governale, has appeared in shops, businesses, and houses throughout the city. In 2010, the World Canal Conference was held in Rochester, drawing numerous visitors to the tunnels along with attention to their neglect. Another draw is the graffiti that has built up on the aqueduct’s walls; indeed, some of the best street art in the city is there. The ample natural light that streams in through the arches of the tunnel onto the colorful artwork makes for a stunning sight. A walk through the tunnels reveals impressive largescale murals that attract frequent visitors to the space, despite the area being officially off-limits. Governale calls these works of art “organic and ever changing. It’s constantly being painted over; layer and layer on top of layer.” Though he, like many, appreciates the beauty of these works, he says the walls’ purpose is temporary. “[These artists] will find other places to write,” says Governale. “I don’t know if there is any effort going to save the graffiti—unless someone stepped up. I know that if it was left up to the city, they would just as quickly remove it. I don’t think the city has any love for the artwork there.” A few proposals have floated around in recent years for the future of the space, though there is no current viable front-runner. Many proposals reflect a great deal of historical sentimentality. Some have argued in favor of celebrating the site’s history as part of the Erie Canal. The aqueduct is one of the canal’s best preserved sections and other cities along the canal have built successful museums that showcase similar locations. The Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse, for example, attracts thousands of visitors from around the world every year, noted one proposal. A group called the Canal Society of New York State promotes returning the canal to its original use. A functioning canal would be impractical, though, says Jarvis, who called it a “pie in the sky” idea. Jarvis argues that an attempt to return the canal to a working waterway would be to ignore the problems that prompted the canal’s diversion in the first place. The result would be largely ornamental. “If they build it, people won’t come,” says Jarvis.
Graffiti art promoting Rochester-based hip-hop artist Thievin’ Stephen. 48 BCM 32
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Some media have piqued interest in returning a lightrail system to the city, an idea thought to be equally as impractical as a restored aqueduct. Despite differences of opinion, the structure is not something the city can afford to ignore. Maintenance on the tunnels costs about $1 million a year. Some sections are in worse repair than others. In 2008, to minimize maintenance costs, the city started to fill in a large section of the system, much to the opposition of grassroots groups like Subway/Erie Canal Revitalization (informally known as Chill the Fill). The group tried to raise public awareness about the subway in their battle to maintain the aqueduct, encouraging family tours of the tunnels with local historians who would use their expertise to educate the public about the historical importance of the site. Petitions garnered thousands of signatures and the City Council held a town hall to discuss the fate of the subway. In the end, the movement failed to come to an effective consensus. The city promised that whatever they put in the fill could always be taken out in the future. Though Chill the Fill ultimately lost their argument, they proved adamant about the vocal interest locals have in the tunnels’ fate, and a willingness to work toward revitalization. 50 BCM 32
NEXT STOP Though progress in restoring Rochester’s historical sites has been schizophrenic at times—with the city demolishing certain historic sites while investing millions in preserving others—the attitude toward the future of the city has become more positive. Whichever idea for the revitalization of the subway prevails, the renewed interest in its fate marks a change in Rochester’s attitude. The subway is an important site of historical meaning for precisely this reason. Since the city was founded, the structure has served as a mirror for the city’s outlook. When the city’s fortunes have been good, so have the tunnel’s. Conversely, the underground has suffered along with the city during tough times. With the revitalization of the city and an economic upturn, interest has returned to the projects that had to be put aside during the city’s less stable years. In the excitement of new-project planning and neo-urban renewal, it remains imperative to accept the reality of change. The weight of altering entire systems of operation, and the exponential history that will follow these decisions—long-term effects to short-term solutions. And that even after a half-century of inactivity, with all that grime, quiet and destitute, some trains can ride again.
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Woman Committed “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” - Henry David Thoreau by CHASTIT Y WEST
S
he looked to her right and discovered there a small green notebook with a black, capped pen lying on top of it. The notebook and pen lay purposefully on her bedside table for these moments when she’d suddenly awaken and would need to record a memory or a dream or a terrible plaguing train of thought. With some effort, she heaved herself out of a sleepy haze and onto her side so she could reach the notebook and pen. She flipped the pages with her thumb, fluttering them like a deck of cards, until she came to the first blank one. Then she swiped backward one, two, three pages to the beginning of her most recent entry. Day 31, I think. Nighttime. I seem to have been more present than not today. Can’t say whether that’s a permanent or even a positive development, but it’s the truth for today. Not that I really gained anything from being more “with it.” Nothing much happened, and if every day is like this, what’s the point of it? Something about loved ones, and making the most, and gratitude for what we have, investments in the future. I try not to listen too much; that’s bad manners. I know it, and they know it. Nevertheless… I started this entry, despite having written earlier today, because I suddenly remembered a day I wanted to record. It came 56 BCM 32
to me fresh and green and alive, and everything I know now is brown and dying. I want to hold this one, see if it can sprout in my palm, shoot its roots down to the earth and anchor me here just a bit longer. I was young, 10 maybe, and it was Easter Sunday. It was everything an innocent Christian girl would wish for in an Easter Sunday—sunny, new swarms of gnats claiming the air, and my shiny white buckle shoes clicked on the sidewalk. This year I didn’t have to wear lace socks—they were plain cuffed instead, and they were new so they wouldn’t crumble and bunch under my heel like those lazy, hand-medowns from last year. To this day, I maintain, few things feel quite as satisfying as a new pair of good-fitting socks. Well, a fresh cup of hot coffee. The day was pristine. New life emerging everywhere, everyone on their best behavior—Mama and Daddy included. Smiles and sunniness warmed away the last chills of winter. Despite some minor and typical childhood bumps, I hadn’t yet learned fear. Pretty soon, and forevermore, but not just yet. My Easter dress was yellow… … … and I’ve just been idling here, chewing my pen for I don’t know how long trying to describe this yellow. It wasn’t of lemons or buttercups or egg yolks. It was breezy and ethereal and entirely unto itself. I remember sitting on the hard church pew, my tip-toes just barely touching the floor, hands resting in my lap, perfectly pleated yellowness
illustrations by JULIE MOLLOY
fanning over my knees, and I remember ordering myself to lock that moment away. Why did I, at 10, order my mind to take note of a moment and hold it for so long? With that picture, I told myself, “You’re happy right now. Don’t forget.” And so I’ve held it all these years. Sometimes I forget that I know this moment, but then, like today, it all comes back fully formed, and for the splittest second I can feel, really feel, “You’re happy, right now,” of my 10-year-old self and know she was right. The ghost of that happiness plays briefly in the air about me as I live inside the memory, but then I sigh blowing away the happy spirit, and I’m left wondering whether I really remember what I thought I remembered? She finished reading and closed the notebook deciding she had nothing new to add after all. She turned it over and over in her hands, fussing with it, something pinching at the back of her mind, something she couldn’t get to. It agitated her, and she crunched her eyes tight trying to see backward into her head, backward into time to find—her eyes popped open, startled by a knock at the door. She thought, with somewhat less bitterness and more resignation than usual, how it would be nice if she could just be left alone. “I’m fine, you know,” she called toward the door. “I know, but I’m coming in anyway,” said the door.
“Well, I’m not decent. You’ll have to come back later.” “Oh, please. Your indecency won’t surprise me.” The door pushed inward along with a woman. She was youngish and dressed smartly—probably for a day at the office, thought the woman in bed. And isn’t that just nice for her, making something of herself out in the world. She’s probably tight with her money, loose with her morals, cynical about everything. “I can hear you criticizing my clothes,” she said as she pulled open the curtains next to the bed. “I am not.” She could see the other woman’s figure reflected in a floor length mirror on the opposite wall, and she noticed a familiarity in the face and stance. “Well, you can stop it. You convinced me this was a good change. Don’t make me regret listening to you.” “Something doesn’t match. You can’t go like that.” “Not this again, I look fine. No excuses today, I mean it.” The woman sat on the edge of the bed and frowned. Looking toward the door, she saw that it remained closed. She pulled her eyebrows together trying to figure something out, but the light from the window shattered her concentration. When she blinked, she glanced in the mirror, realizing she was alone in the room. She examined her clothes and hair, and everything was fine, as she’d said. She was appropriBCM 32 57
ately dressed for a workday, but…but…but…but…her heart pounded out the cadence that always accompanied these moments. She swallowed, and her throat stuck. The air around her ears pressed in. She was deafened by her own relentless pulse fighting against the hard quiet air. “No, I think I’ll go back to bed,” she said to no one. Day 32. Evening-ish. I’m trying to keep track because for some reason I feel posterity is important. Obviously, posterity is important, what I mean is that for some reason I feel my contribution to it is of some value. It might not turn out to be, but by that point, let’s hope I’m gone and none-the-wiser. I’m ashamed to say, I slept through the day. I got up with strong ambitions, got dressed and everything, but sometimes I just sleep. It’s an avoidance tactic for sure—as soon as I’m faced with a challenge that’s too much, I get so drowsy, my eyelids fall and I’m out. There’s no use fighting it. So I don’t. And I spend the day in bed wrapped in guilt and self-loathing. Then, I’m compelled to record the failure. I wonder why that is. So I can see all my incompetencies lined up neatly on the page? Marvel at the lot of them, all at attention and ready to strike when I least expect? It’s not self-flagellation; it’s reality. Today, I thought I was ready. I thought I was going. Turns out, I wasn’t. Like a dumb mutt returning to its vomit, I daily have to replay it all (yesterday, then the day before, and then the day before that, etc…) chronologically. It’s the only way to know for sure I lived through it, so I replay each previous day, adding on as far back as I can searching for The One that started it all. It’s like winding up a spool of string, except I’m winding days. Wouldn’t it be nice to tie those strung-together days to a fancy kite and just let them unfurl and fly where I never could? All the days of my life soaring through the adventures I couldn’t ever have. It’s a lovely metaphor for something, I think. For freedom, maybe, though that’s an esoteric concept not easily reduced to pretty metaphors. I could look out my window now, to the streets below and watch plenty of people hurrying and moving about their business, or lounging and bull-shitting on the corner. They are all free. They are all out and going and doing… I don’t know, maybe they could look up and see me watching the world from my attic perch and envy the freedom I have compared to them. I find it unlikely, but I try not to discriminate against the improbable. A phone rang on the stand at the other side of her bed. She hesitated to answer, without even knowing the caller, because she could recite these conversations verbatim. They’d try and draw her out. She’d not-so-deftly parry the move. This was a case of the opposites—practice did not, in fact, 58 BCM 32
make perfect. The more she denied their advances, the harder it became. They’re just not buying it anymore, she thought. They’re going to quit trying with me, and then I won’t even have the occasional phone call to pretend to answer. I was going to write something optimistic about improbable not meaning impossible, but then the phone rang, and I just don’t think I believe that anyway. I reached over like I might answer it. Ha! Like there’s anyone here to fool but me. Part of me thinks dinner would be nice. Catching up would be nice, but then I realize that’s delusional. There’s no way I’m having a good time while attempting conversation with them above all the noise in my head: What if I hate the food? And then I can’t eat, and have low blood-sugar and slide off my chair embarrassing everyone. What if I change my mind and have to leave instantly because I might claw through the wall if I have to sit with my back facing the room? I don’t think they understand this is a real risk. Of course they don’t. They don’t know I’m a wreck. (On a good day.) I hold my shit together like a vice. They just don’t know it. If someone knew, even just one someone, I could let go for a minute… Oh! I remember when I was 13, I think, and panicking over something—probably a snake in the yard—I just stood there sobbing and moaning. Mama said I was “taking a fit,” and when she found out why, she slapped the backs of my bare legs with a twig from a bush and barked, “Contain yourself !” The tears sucked themselves back up into my tear ducts and haven’t moved since. She, of course, stomped over to that snake and scared it back down its hole. She was tired of the excuses, and she knew her friends must be too, so she let the phone ring. She remembered what she’d written earlier about sleeping through the day and told herself that’s all this was, a continuation of the day’s failure to go anywhere. At least she’d succeeded at consistency. Again she flipped through her notebook to an earlier day, looking for a clue, looking for reassurance that the clockwork would continue ticking, and that maybe somehow, with time, she’d be OK. She found herself at the beginning. Day 8. It’s been some days, some number of days. Things blur and I have no confidence in my memory, the state I’m in. In my mental cataloging of the days, I’ve only been able to work backward from now to Day 4. By the time I work through Day 3 today, it will be time to sleep again making it tomorrow, and I’ll be forced to remember today as yesterday, and when I reach Day
4 again (tomorrow) it will really only be Day 5 and no matter what I do, I’ll still every day be one more day further from the discovery of what set it off in the first place. One day… One day… Huh. Think of this: One day… Day One. What an absurd time trap. Let’s just call it Day 8. I have to write this because The Fear is winning, and someone told me to record and preserve because maybe it would be enlightening later. Every day it’s worse. Every day I expect magically to walk out of my house, unscathed by a morning of panic, convinced today is the day I get over it and get out. Because this is crazy. I’m grown, I have a life. Lots of people have it worse, and there they go doing life. No one’s arguing I’ve had my share of shit, but…what…suddenly now I’m a victim? I’m gonna sit here, wallowing in this stagnant mental swamp? Why? Because she was hateful and absent? Because he couldn’t get it anywhere and settled on the convenience of me? These should not be catastrophic. I should be fine. I hate this place. I should be fine. I don’t understand. My sphere of existence is becoming smaller every day. Reduced from work and friends’ houses and home to just my bedroom. Soon, I will be utterly incorporeal—my entire Self stuck inside the murkiness of my own head. Brains are unkempt places, cobwebby and dark, and I’d much rather not live in one. “God that’s depressing.” Her voice was loud and foreign, and she remembered why
she quit reading her daily purgings. It’s hard to climb out of a hole with your head swiveled backward. She flipped ahead to an empty page, not caring whether it was the very next empty page, and scrawled fast and hard: Day 32. Evening-ish, again. Despite whatever, I do actually want to live. Not exist, not breathe in, out, sleep, wake, work, eat… Not this mundane cycle. There needs to be action worth accounting for. I’m tired of the tiredness. Whatever comes next is a giant mystery, but tomorrow the world will still turn, the sun will still blind me through the window, the old lady downstairs will still run her Victrola every time she pees… It’ll all still be the same… But I could go for a walk in the morning to gain some perspective. I could see the trees and hear the birds and have an epiphany. I could walk until the backs of my knees ache and my shoes rub a raw spot on my heel. Maybe I’ll get winded from the hills I’ll climb and the fearsome dogs I’ll dodge. I’ll wear my feet thin for the sake of encountering physicality again. Maybe that’s not a noble enough end. Walking is fine, I guess. Exercise, all that. Thoreau touted its many virtues. But it’s back to the monotonous rotation. I still always get off where I got on—back at my house. I’ve gone nowhere. I’ve accomplished… sore feet? I’m just…home…having changed nothing. However, tomorrow I could write Day 33, Walking...Day 1… we’ll see. BCM 32 59
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