Basement Office

Misplaced intentions

The hybrid SUV is coming and I (and many others) find it to be a inauspicious event. Ford is touting it’s Escape hybrid as the best thing since sliced bread. They boast it “combine[s] SUV capability with the outstanding fuel economy and low environmental impact of a full hybrid.”

So what does that mean? More of the same unsafe handling and increased risk injury or death? And just watch that fuel economy soar, you suburban commandos, as you latch that boat trailer to the back or sit stuck in traffic while making your daily trip to the neighborhood Super Wal-Mart for toothpaste. Splendid.

Ford is so proud of their latest creation that they feel the need to show it off on the streets of New York City. Never mind that Manhattan is the last place anyone needs to be driving an urban assault vehicle.

Yes, great, let’s pat ourselves on the back. We’ve managed to develop a technology that just prolongs the inevitable, which is the eventual failure of our oil-based economy due to overconsumption. We can stretch out this suffering that is called American Culture a little longer and continue the charade of the American Dream while our cities decay, our environment suffers, and our sense of place disappears.

I don’t care how efficient automobiles become. They’re still objects that encourage isolation, monotony, and consumption. They are mechanical shells into which people retreat, emerging only when they are in the confines of their garage or mall parking lot. They, through their enormous demands upon space, create a bleak, unlivable landscape of concrete and asphalt, islands of shopping surrounded by a sea of parking.

And, oh, the shopping. We’ve all got more shit than we know what to do with, and still we can always go out, buy more, and load our oversized automobiles with our oversized merchandise that will soon fill our oversized homes. Wonderful.

Why can’t we put this ingenuity to better use and come up with novel ways to attract the suburban dweller back into the city and traditional small towns? How about coming up with mass transit systems that are attractive alternatives to private transportation? Working towards a better, different, future instead of continuing down our present road to ruin, is a bright prospect in these otherwise bleak times.

Oh, those crazy French

They’ve set standards in fashion, cuisine, literature, and the visual arts. Now they want to do something to improve their cities. And how long will it take America to catch up? Well, seeing as we’re in love with our mobility more than our environment, I’m guessing never.

This story is great. I especially like the take the mayor of London has on SUV’s:

The proposal, certain to be opposed by motoring groups, follows similar remarks by the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who in May month described SUVs as “bad for London — completely unnecessary” and called their owners “complete idiots.”

And here’s a statistic that probably applies to American’s suburban commandos pretty well:

Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported a survey showing that just one in eight 4x4 drivers had driven their car off-road, and six in 10 never take it out of town.

Morons. Gas prices be damned; we still like our big vehicles. They’re starting to catch on in Canada. The difference?

Fuel costs have a greater effect in Canada than in the United States, where gasoline prices are lower, Gomes observed.

He said typical Canadian households, despite on average owning smaller cars than Americans, spend more than three per cent of disposable income filling up the fuel tank, compared with 2.5 per cent in the United States.

We’re subsidizing ourselves into a smoggy, car-choked future. It is perhaps not as sexy as what the French have done for the world, but we’re making our mark.

Reading between the lines

Today’s Post-Gazette had a lot (seven, by my count) of interesting articles about roads, transit, gas prices, and bicycling. Reading them all is an instructive lesson in the general mindset of our car-centered society.

The story that got me most worked up was the one about the long-time-coming expressway that is supposed to connect Pittsburgh to points south. It’s a multi-billion dollar debacle that, when it is completed, will only hasten the demise of the city of Pittsburgh as well as the countryside surrounding it.

It’s a ridiculous notion, spending a couple of billion dollars for 70 miles of roads just so some poor schmuck who lives in a town far removed from the city can turn his thankless three-hours per day commute into just a little over two.

Cities have houses in them for a reason. Back in the day before subsidized road construction and government-supported exodus to the suburbs, people used to live in the cities they worked in, or at least within a reasonable distance. Huge highways were unnecessary because people had other alternatives when faced with the question of how to best get to jobs, stores, and entertainment. Now, however, we are so single-mindedly obsessed with making the automobile the de facto standard that little opportunity exists for any other type of mobility.

Building this road won’t do a whit of good. It’s a proven fact that traffic grows to occupy whatever space it is given. So tear through the hills and cut down the trees. Pave the world over. And bask in this gloriously ugly landscape of concrete, smog, and cheap architecture. Just know that when all is said and done, the roads will be just as filled as before, the city will be even emptier, our air will be dirtier, our pocketbooks lighter, and we as a society will be none the richer for it.

It’s a gas

I fail to feel the slightest sympathy for these individuals who are profiled as “victims” of higher gas prices. If you live in the city and refuse public transportation as a viable means of transportation, live in the suburbs and drive an SUV as your primary means of transportation, or just feel like you “have to drive,” as all of these individuals do, then one should suck it up and pay one’s dues. This car culture can’t be had for free, and I think we are in the beginning stages of seeing just how much of a mess we have gotten ourselves into. These statistics (from AAA, no less) certainly point to an increasingly expensive future for car lovers.

What if gas goes up another 50 cents or a dollar a gallon? Let it, I say. Sure, it may put Jane and Joe Suburbs in a pinch, and it may paralyze the transcontinental just-in-time distribution network that all of our favorite generic big-box retailers depend on to make a profit, but it may also act as a hard slap in the face of the collective conscious of the car-obsessed American culture.

Thoughts while stuck in traffic on my rare occasion of driving to work

Just as America was responsible for the rise of the automobile as the primary means of personal transportation, I hope America will be responsible for coming up with a solution to the mess it has created.

In my lifetime I want to see society come to terms with its auto-centric idea of personal mobility and realize what a mistake it was.

Update: And if people who continue to insist on driving and talking on cellular phones (despite the obvious safety implications), especially grey-haired women driving black Chevrolet Cavaliers from West Virginia who fail to realize that an on-ramp is used for merging, not stopping to chat, were eliminated from the picture by some mass epidemic or banishment to a mosquito-infested island in Philippines, all the better.

This one hurts

Proving itself to be a stellar city to live in yet again, Pittsburgh has come up with another way to impress me. This time, the special surprise was delivered via some enterprising individuals who took it upon themselves to enter our apartment unannounced (while we were both away, of course) via the transom window above our door (now drilled shut, you punks).

The items liberated in this little case of B & E included our digital camera, a flash, some other camera equipment, a backpack with a bike lock inside of it, a piggy bank (with a whopping $8.23 cents in it, you desperate crack junkies), and a whole bunch of CD’s.

We have renter’s insurance, so it’s not the money that’s got me bothered. What I’m mostly miffed about is the loss of some great music. It’s not like I can’t go out and replace most of the discs I lost, but accumulating them has been a labor of love for many years. Many concerts have been attended and many hours have been lost to the hypnotic “click-click-click” of used CD shopping. And what was taken doesn’t really seem like it would be something that would be a hot item on the street corners of Pittsburgh. In a place with better musical tastes, maybe it would be. I’m half-expecting the CD’s to turn up on our doorstep with a note attached that says something like “You can have these back. Your taste in music sucks.” And I wouldn’t be offended in the least.

Just for fun, I’m including the list of discs that I submitted to the insurance company and the cops (that’s right — the cops, you low-life bottom-feeders). I do hope that whoever ends up with these albums appreciates them as much as I did.

Inspired thoughts

A couple of weeks ago, I finally finished Lewis Mumford’s book, A City in History. Like I said before, this was a book that I started a long time ago, and, over many lunch breaks and bus rides, I managed to eventually finish.

I’m starting to assemble my thoughts on the book, and put it in context with what’s going on in the world today. Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of stuff in the book that remains valid today.

As I understood it, one of Mumford’s main points in the book was the ill effects that capitalism eventually laid upon the city. Specialization reduced the citizen to the part of a small cog in a big machine, and the form of the city that resulted from this type of mindset left the individual out of the equation. Mass production and mass consumerism led to a society that was (and still is!) destroying itself by trying to keep alive a culture that values continuous growth over all else. Wal-Mart’s and McDonalds’ of the world, take note. Mumford writes:

“…even in cultures far less committed to quantitative growth than our own, there comes a point where the tumorous organ will destroy the organ at whose expense it has reached such swollen dimensions.”

We’re getting ever closer to that point. Employers, ever conscious of their bottom line, continue to pay less for more work. Financially-strapped workers flock to the big-box retailers, drawn to the impossibly low prices that can only come from the massive economies of scale that can be leveraged by the retail giants. This massive buying power is imposed upon manufacturers, who search high and low to find ways to deliver their product at a cheaper price than the next guy. Jobs are exported to third-world countries and are run as slave labor operations. What stays here usually does so at the cost of livable wages, health insurance, and quality of life. And so the cycle continues.

What is wrong with setting limits? Does this culture of laissez-faire capitalism preclude all social responsibility? In an ideal society, a decent way of life for everyone should trump the almighty dollar. Can’t we step back, draw a line in the sand, and hold ourselves to it?

Or will we continue to consume ourselves, simply because it’s all we know how to do?

This is why I stay in the city

Despite my best efforts to shop exclusively in the city, we had to throw up our hands in defeat last night and drive out to the ‘burbs to finish our Christmas spending extravaganza.

I behaved well, I think, but I didn’t think the night would go so great after our first stop for some wonderfully crappy food at Taco Bell. Apparently they now have a policy of refusing to accept checks. Instead, they now direct those without cash to an ATM in their lobby that does not actually give out cash, but instead gives out store credit. With a $1.35 surcharge tacked on top of it. Add that to the charge that I’m sure my bank of dubious distinction will tack on for using an ATM out of their network, and suddenly a cheap run for the border ends up costing a bit more than the quality of the food really warrants. I really hope other places do not continue this trend.

Typical Pittsburgh

After yet another disappointing visit to a local Mexican restaurant (more on that later), wifey and I have come to several conclusions:

1. Pittsburgh does not have a rich Mexican heritage, nor does it have a down-and-out, in the dirt Mexican heritage.
2. You can, however, get pizza and pierogies on any street corner in the city. This is not necessarily a good thing.
3. As a rule, when trying something new in Pittsburgh, set your sights low. Then be prepared for the shock when things turn out worse than you expected.

This last point seems to be a pretty cut-and-dried rule of thumb for living here. Be assured that if the Chamber of Commerce ever holds a contest for a new city slogan, ours will be the first one in the office:

“Pittsburgh. Prepared to be underwhelmed.”

Perhaps I’m being a little too harsh on the city. Instead, I wish to focus on the restaurant that let us down tonight. Future Googlers take note, José and Tony’s is a bad place to eat. Let me repeat that for those who may search without the accented “e”: Jose and Tony’s is a bad, nay, horrible place to eat.

I said as much in the napkin-length letter I left on the table. And if I wasn’t so Midwest passive-aggressive, I would have marched right up to the counter boy with the cell phone plastered to his ear and told him so. But I know it’s hardly his fault. Nor do I blame our cook, even though we watched him take our plates (paper, of course) out of the microwave and put them back in three times. It’s just the way things are here, and we’re learning that there’s not a lot that one can do about it, except leave, which is looking more attractive all of the time.

We should have just walked out the instant that we walked in and smelled the stale cigarette smoke and saw the menu, complete with hot dogs and pizza. We should have left after tasting the vegetable soup that they called salsa. But we thought we’d give it a chance. We thought, “Hey, after three bad places, this one has to be good. Things can’t suck forever, can they?”

Yes they can. Oh yes they can.

This is not progress

Everything about this story of officials in Shanghai banning bikes on major city roads smells rotten. It’s unfortunate that the “growing affluence” experienced by the Chinese has to bring them down the ugly American path of increased personal mobility at the expense of the society and the environment.

Does the increasing dominance of the automobile and the corresponding decrease in the quality of city life in the last 50 years in America provide no lesson to anyone else? To have the experience of history on one’s side and still make the same mistakes is plain ignorance.

There’s so much more left to be said. This isn’t the last time that I’ll speak of this.