The Urbanologist (original) (raw)

Walt Whitman And His Window

It is 10:50AM on a recent Friday morning and I’m standing in front of the wooden-frame house at 330 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard in Camden, New Jersey.

It’s not as hot as you might think it’d be on a late August day in this part of the United States, but it’s hot enough for me.

This generally undistinguished home was Walt Whitman’s last residence and the only home he owned outright. When Whitman moved in during the spring of 1884, he wrote his friend Anne Gilchrist and informed her “I have moved into a little old shanty of my own.” He would live here until he passed away in the upstairs bedroom on March 26, 1892.

As I learn on my tour, Whitman was not exactly in the best of health in his later years. Whitman suffered a serious stroke in 1873 and was largely confined to his bed during most of his time living at this residence. He was fortunate enough to have several tenants assist him during these years, along with the almost constant companionship of Mary Davis, a nearby widow who moved in to assist him, bringing a veritable menagerie of pets with her.

Making our way through the home, the guide, a retired National Park Service Ranger, informs our tiny tour group that Whitman had to be brought up and down the stairs multiple times a day by Mary for different medical treatments. His one constant request was that he be brought downstairs so he could look out the parlor window to see the “constant cacophony of people going about their business”

As you probably know, there were no mobile apps during the 1880s.

If you wanted something, you had to physically go out and get it—a strenuous requirement, indeed.

For someone so closely associated with what I like to call “sensual pastoralism”, I found it a bit unusual that Whitman in his later years ended up being a city mouse. Sure, he had lived in Brooklyn for years (the first proto-hipster?) but that was before the muscular era of exponential industrial urbanism had made Brooklyn look and feel the way it did when it was annexed to the rest of Zoo York City in 1898.

What Whitman experienced from his window is one of the joys that most people experience from the urban condition: the ability to see what people do in close proximity to each other with great frequency, dare I say WITH A MILLION DIFFERENT PERMUTATIONS.

His window onto what is now Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard was in fact, his literal window into this world.

To use a contemporary phrase to describe a past condition or state of being, Whitman was truly able to “age in place”.

We should all be so lucky.

Some related odds and ends:

I’ve always loved the Caedmon Records poetry albums. This one features Ed Begley reading some of Whitman’s works, including “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”

Camden, like most older American cities, has been mightily transformed by a host of processes over the past 75 plus years (residential red-lining, middle class flight, racism, etc). This feature from the folks at Segregation by Design visualizes some of those changes.

A team of scholars continues to work on the Black Camden Oral History project which brings together some compelling interviews and other materials detailing the Black Power Movement at the Rutgers University-Camden campus and in the broader community.

I took the 401 bus from the Water Rand Transportation Center to try one of the (cheese) steaks at Donkey’s Place about a mile and a half from the Whitman home. Hot shredded beef with American cheese never tasted so good, let me tell you. Sitting at the bar was the place to be as people drank Donkey shots (don’t ask) and talked about heading to the (Jersey) shore later in the day.

I Could Go For Another Eclipse Right Now

All I can think about right now is the eclipse.

I was out with my students when the eclipse started. We stood around in a circle, each pulling out our eclipse glasses to briefly look up. I still had my glasses from the 2017 eclipse (Jack Daniels branded—don’t ask) and I shared my optical devices with several students who had forgotten to come prepared.

The temperature dropped and dropped—-“Damn, that’s cold”, one student remarked.

Another student started humming on a kazoo. I don’t think I had seen a kazoo in twenty years, or at least the last time I had seen a one-man band in Traverse City wandering around that fair city’s celebrated Cherry Festival.

One student found time to draw a chalk circle with the words “SUN AND MOON LET’S HAVE SOME FUN” After she was done, she handed the chalk to her classmate. She kneeled down and made a smiling sun embracing the moon inside the circle.

Near the peak of the eclipse, several students from another college approached me and asked if they could use my glasses.

Sure, I said.

And they did.

Near us, a few people were gathered in a drum circle. Another clutch of college students had made matching tin-foil hats and asked to join in the percussive rhythms. One person in the drum circle handed them a couple of make-shift guiros assembled out of corrugated metal.

After the eclipse was done, my class gathered together again to continue on our journey.

One of my favorite students (yes, I have favorites) leaned in close and said “Max, that was fucking cool. The sun and the moon brought us all together.”

Yes they did.

Everybody poops. Not everybody saunas.

Have you used the bathroom today?

I’m guessing you have. Every single human being on this Earth has to expel waste products at some point each day. I am hoping that you have a place to expel said waste products in a place that is quiet, clean, and where no one is bothering you.

Pubic bathrooms are an essential part of allowing people to use public spaces continuously without seeking out a bathroom in a nearby hotel or restaurant.

On a casual stroll past Boston’s City Hall Plaza last week, I noticed this attractive structure with a small sign that read “SAUNA” in large black letters.

Nowhere on this sign did I see the word “BATHROOM”

As it turns out, the city of Boston contracted with a third party vendor to create a winter “activation” at City Hall Plaza. Talking with the attendant, I learned that this mobile sauna is available at no charge through March 3rd. This amicable saunattendant told me about the website where I could sign up to reserve a space. I walked away and as I browsed on over to the site, I learned that they were all booked up—no room at the sauna.

Let’s be clear: I’m definitely pro-sauna. I have some lower back pain and I do love sitting in climate controlled interior spaces where there are no phones and very little conversation.

And I’m definitely very much in favor of getting people out in the colder winter months, but damnit, cities should focus on the basics, which include clean and plentiful public bathrooms.

I’ll point out that Boston just dropped $70 million on City Hall Plaza’s renovation.

Honestly, I feel that they could have at least dropped in a Honey Bucket as part of this scheme.

Maybe one with a working lock, why not?

My 2022 Highlight: The We Will Chicago Plan

I’ve been involved with many arts and culture plans over the years.

It’s been an honor and it’s also been a lot of difficult work. Work that is most valuable, but at times, the process can involve bringing together a raft of competing agendas and personalities.

This year, I’m most proud of my year long work on the city of Chicago’s “We Will Chicago” plan. Specifically, I was involved with the arts and culture section of this 148-page document.

Over the course of a dozen plus meetings, our arts and culture team met via Zoom to look at ways to address resiliency in the cultural arts sector around Chicago, create new opportunities for emerging artists, and work on bringing together different groups of artists and creatives around the city.

You can read the entire plan here.

And happy New Year!

In The Wake of The News(stand)

As you well know, cities contain multitudes.

There are tobacconists, there are clothing stores, there are drug stores, there are shoe stores, and there are places where you can buy erotic pastries. I mention erotic pastries specifically because there was was just such a place near my family’s apartment in Seattle. My brother and I would walk by and hope to get a glimpse of a breast rendered in glorious fondant—we were usually not successful.

For centuries, cities have also contained newsstands or some place like a newsstand where you could buy printed materials. My favorite one will always be the now shuttered newsstand in the Pike Place Market. Along with dozens of monthly and weekly magazines, there were stacks of out of town Sunday edition newspapers, including the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and the Chicago Tribune, aka the World’s Greatest Newspaper.

Before I started college, my dad picked up the Chicago Tribune on several consecutive Sundays. I pored over ever single section as I learned about the Cubs daily exploits, the seemingly infinite suburban communities surrounding Chicago proper, and the upcoming musical and theatrical shows at places like Drury Lane, the Ivanhoe Theatre, and the Auditorium Theater.

It was a big paper for a big town.

You might imagine my joy when, a few months later, I arrived in Chicago for college and found that there were no less than five newsstands within a ten minute walk of my dorm.

And guess what?

There were real life human beings who sold the paper out on the street. Real “extra, extra, extra!” type stuff over on East 55th Street, over on South Lake Park Avenue and even one fellow who stood at the entrance to Lake Shore Drive who SOLD PAPERS AND BAGS OF FRUIT TO PEOPLE WAITING FOR THE LIGHT TO CHANGE.

It all seemed so very cosmopolitan to a young man from Way Out West.

Fast-forward over twenty five years and the pandemic has added another body blow to the newsstand landscape. Many folks were and still are working from home and the cost of actual newsprint has gone up, up and away. I’ll spare you the usual asides about the other changes within the world of newspapers because that’s another conversation.

The situation for newsstands continues to get worse in other large cities as well. The numbers continue to dwindle in Philadelphia and the newsstand in Boston’s South Station closed during the pandemic. Apparently, the former newsstand space there will soon become a place to buy novelty 3D greeting cards—which retail for $15 each.

In Chicago, the news about newsstands is not great either. The large newsstand on Michigan Avenue across from the Water Tower closed during the pandemic. Honestly, your best bet for getting an actual newspaper anywhere nearby is at Walgreens or 7-11.

The situation in New York isn’t much better. In January 2021, I was back in the city to write about the opening of Amtrak’s Moynihan Train Station. One early morning I got up and walked for two miles on Broadway before I found a newsstand that was open. Apparently, it’s still pretty hard to find a copy of any paper at any newsstand in Zoo York.

I would imagine that within my lifetime the last newsstand will go POOF—at least in the United States. Until then, I will try to make my way to one of Chicago’s last newsstands as much as humanly possible.