Highways

Fun with Highways: Wall Street

Some streets take on a status beyond their physical extent. One of those is Wall Street, which is simultaneously an actual street in New York City, a neighborhood name, and shorthand for massive finance and investment industries of the United States.

Wall Street itself is quite short, and runs from South Street along the East River to Broadway. It’s terminus on the east side is underneath the South Street Viaduct (why a duck?) that carries the FDR drive to the tip of Manhattan and underneath Battery Park. The Broadway ends at historic Trinity Church. It is not a part of the city that I know particularly well. Most of my adventures don’t take me further south than Tribeca or the Brooklyn Bridge. It is interesting to look at the street names and arrangement, narrow streets with names like “Pine” and “Cedar”, “Front Street” and “Water Street” that we would associate with numerous coastal American cities and towns but not distinctly with New York (San Francisco has all four street names, as does Santa Cruz where I lived for several years). The streets are evidence of the long history in this part of the city.

The current #occupywallstreet protests are not actually centered on Wall Street, but in a park to the north along Liberty Street (officially named Zuccotti Park), just one big block away from the World Trade Center site and the new 9-11 Memorial. But things have grown since the initial encampment and march and while it was largely ignored by the mainstream media for the first couple of weeks or addressed as little more than a curiosity or object of derision. Now it appears in the news every day, and the protests themselves are growing organically. Here is an image yesterday from protesters occupying Foley Square, several blocks to the north near City Hall and the off-ramps from the Brooklyn Bridge (from the official website).

And a recent report of the massive march via Democracy Now!:

Towards the end of the video, one can see what happens as protesters approached the actual Wall Street.

If you want to support the movement but can’t make it to New York or one of the local “occupations” that have spread to other cities, you can send donations, or even order them a New York pizza courtesy of Liberatos Pizza. And we all know that New York pizza is better than what we get here on the west coast. They do recommend ordering vegetarian or vegan options, but the official “Occu-pie” looks suspiciously like pepperoni:

In the publication “Occupied Wall Street Journal”, they print a map of the plaza encampment:

I like how they label the sculpture on the plaza as “Weird Red Thing”. As reported in Hyperallergic, the “weird red thing” is actually Mark di Suvero’s “Joie de Vivre”. I quite like the sculpture, with its clean lines and curves, and red color against the grays of the Wall Street buildings.

[Photo by ElvertBarnes on flickr]

I will be visiting New York again in November, and I’m sure I will be downtown quite a bit…

Fun with Highways: LA 998, Belle Rose, Louisiana

In light of my poem “998” that I posted earlier today, I decided to see if there was an interesting highway out there numbered “998”. It turns out there is one in Louisiana.

Highway 998 is a short road (under 1 mile long) entirely in the community of Belle Rose. It starts highways 1 and 308, which straddle either side of a canal. It passes through a residential district and then ends after a few blocks, with fields stretching out in the distance beyond.

It is challenging to find any information about Belle Rose, beyond that the population is a little over 1900. It does appear on Google Street View, from which the above image was taken. A virtual walk down 998 reveals sparsely distributed modest homes and a few rundown structures, and a few stores at the intersection with highway 1 before crossing a small bridge to the other end at highway 308. The view reminds of a bit of some of the images from Doug Rickard’s exhibition at Wirtz Gallery this past spring, which also was based on Google Street View images and focused communities that are often overlooked.’

Any readers who may know more direct information about Belle Rose are invited to comment.

Fun with Highways: California Highway 114 (?)

I find myself on US 101 at least once a week for work, heading south from San Francisco to Palo Alto. A couple of weeks ago a started noticing a new route marker in a construction zone near East Palo Alto for Highway 114.

Highway 114? I did know there was such a thing. It turns out it is in fact a define short route along Willow Road between 101 and CA 84, leading to the Dumbarton Bridge, as described at cahighways.org.  It is only about one mile long.

I was also not familiar with 109, which runs along University Avenue in East Palo Alto but is unsigned.

So I wonder why 114 suddenly became signed as a detour route during this construction project? Is it perhaps a legal requirement, or maybe it will be signed in the future?

Weekend Cat Blogging and Photo Hunt: One

Today’s combined Weekend Cat Blogging and Photo Hunt features the theme of ONE.

Of course, there is only one Luna. No one can dispute that.  And this particular pose features one paw sticking out.

We also veer away from cats and into the realm of highways with California Highway 1. This view from Pescadero (between San Francisco and Santa Cruz) is a quintessential image of our coastal highway.

This one is further north, crossing over a harbor in Fort Bragg, in Mendocino County.

Although thought am sure I have lots of images of Highway 1, they have become rather hard to keep track of in the ever increasing library.   (It’s hard to keep track of all the Luna photos as well, for that matter.)  Tagging and naming files does help, but I would like to use image similarity search as well. Does anyone have any suggestions for this?

Weekend Cat Blogging #323 is hosted by Samantha and Clementine at Life from a Cat’s Perspective

The Photo Hunt #278 is hosted by tnchick. This week’s theme is one.

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted this Sunday by Nikita and Elvira at Meowsings of an Opinionated Pussycat.

And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Fun with Highways: 401 and 427, Toronto

Another listless Sunday evening, another highway interchange.

This is the bizarrely complex interchange of highways 401 and 427 near Toronto and Mississauga, not far from Toronto Pearson International Airport.  They are known colloquially as “the 401” and “the 427”, similar to way highways are referenced in southern California.

It looks like there might have been a plan to build another freeway extending due east from interchange, which could explain it’s strange configuration. It could also just be due to the fact that 401 is a huge highway. South of the interchange towards Mississauga it widens into 18 lanes divided into four sections (one collector and one express) in each direction. To the north it thins out but becomes as 16 lane collector/express system again as it approaches Toronto. This would make it one of the largest in the world, certainly larger than the New Jersey Turnpike at its widest, or I-5 south of Los Angeles.  It is also one of the “busiest highways in North America” (see this reference.)

Here is a view of the interchange looking east along the 401:


[Photo from Floydian on Wikimedia Commons.]

The 401 extends all the way to the western end of province to Windsor, just across the U.S.-Canadian border from Detroit. I have thought about a musical “401 tour” a few times, that would start in Detroit (and leave time for photography) and extend to Toronto. As such, leads on experimental musicians and performance venues along this route would be welcome.

Fun with Highways: Doylestown

Today we resume are series from towns and cities that feature prominently in our Facebook page insights. One that had been appearing for a while was “Doylestown”, which we assume to be Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

Doylestown is central Bucks County, north of Philadelphia. The area served by by “Doylestown Bypass” PA 611 and US 202, which runs through the center of town. It does appear that there is a freeway for US 202 as well, south of the town that currently ends at an interchange with 611. One can see half of the interchange and the roadway beyond are dirt, which I thought was interesting.

It turns out this is part of a large project to build a US 202 Parkway. It is scheduled to open in mid-2012. Follow the link to find out more about the project.

The downtown is northeast of the highways. Like many downtown areas, it has had its past ups and downs with changing economic times and competition from large shopping centers, but is now doing well as a regional cultural center and attraction, with small downtown shops and institutions like the Mercer Museum, a large concrete structure built by Henry Chapman Mercer. The museum houses Mercer’s collections of early American artifacts and collection known as “Tools of the Nation Maker”.

In addition to Mercer, Doylestown is the hometown of several other well known individuals. I had no idea of Oscar Hammerstein (of Rogers and Hammerstein fame) was from here until I did the cursory online info gathering for this article. Writers James A. Michener and Pearl S. Buck are also natives of the town.

An Independence Day post

In addition to fireworks, barbecues and the occasional embarrassing musical tribute, Independence Day is an opportunity to reflect on living in one of the world’s most unusual countries, even as it sometimes tries to pretend that it is a normal country. The latter comes out the imagery one sees today, with celebrations and streets lined with flags, and people and places that we try to think of as representative of the term “American”. Here I look some images and ideas from my personal and family history that are part of “American” that most readers, both in the U.S. and beyond, would not usually associate with the typical 4th of July.

You likely will not see the tenement buildings of New York’s Lower East Side, where half of my ancestors, Jews from Central and Eastern Europe (primarily Austria as well as Russia) settled at the beginning of the 20th century.

My mother’s family later settled in the central part of the Bronx – richly vital neighborhoods at the time that would later be synonymous with controversial building and demolition projects (think of the Cross Bronx Expressway) and still later with urban blight and decay.

It’s even less likely that you will see the countryside of Uttar Pradesh in India, with the other half of my ancestors came from.

My father from this part of India came to study in Minnesota, and numerous other relatives have settled in various towns and suburbs arounds the U.S over the years. Indeed, the equivalent image to the New York City tenement builds for the Indian side of my family might as well be the New Jersey Turnpike, another image you are unlikely to see in today’s celebrations, but is quintessentially American.

These are the states that I can think of immediately where relatives either currently reside or did so in the recent past:

New York
New Jersey
California
Maryland
Virginia
Georgia
Florida
Minnesota
Illinois
Wisconsin
Michigan
District of Columbia (Washington, DC)
Arizona
Texas
Indiana
Pennsylvania
Connecticut
Hawai’i

The Hawaii story is fun, actually. As it was related to me by a friend and former colleague who is from Hawai’i, he was playing with his band and a middle-aged man from New York approached them – ultimately, this led to his reciting his somewhat edgy poetry with their music in the background. It turns out that the poet is my cousin – our names are quite different, so there is no way my friend would have made the connection if I had not told him (the surprised reaction was priceless).

The family story is really a complex interplay not only of ancestral origins which get much of the attention, but of class, religious practice, geographical preferences, and the changes people experience even within a single lifetime. This complexity is another feature of American culture and history that is often hidden from our usual imagery – even the positive imagery that celebrates diversity, immigration and multiculturalism leaves out the complexity. And it is hard to think of life here without it – the idea of a homogeneous heritage in a single hometown with people who look and sound like each other seems…well, foreign.

So where does that leave things for me, now, in this story? Well, it’s complex as well. I find myself coming full circle to my Jewish ancestors in the Lower East Side – perhaps I may even live there sometime in the future. Some of my most experimental music pieces include instruments and idioms from Indian music. Some things have little to do with my ancestry, jazz which I have been returning to in the last year as a musical practice, the bits of East Asian culture I picked in both Asia and California, are all part of the mix. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that I might find myself in Hawai’i sometime doing improvised music and poetry. And like others, I am figuring out how to take all of these things make something of it in what seem to be rather challenging times. In the end, there is no conclusion, on the personal, family or national narratives – and it seems appropriate that way.

Fun with Highways: Livingston (?)

Every so often we like to have fun with the cities and towns that appear in our Facebook Insights and Google Analytics. One town that has been appearing prominently in our Facebook page stats recently is Livingston. However, we have no idea which place called “Livingston” this actually is, so we will explore a few possibilities.

Based on the demographics of our readers and Facebook fans, it’s probably in the U.S., and it is most likely Livingston, NJ, a town east of Newark along I-280, not far from New York City.

Livingston is a medium-sized suburban town. Though its history dates back a long time (about 300 years), it was relatively sparse until automobiles and highways arrived in the 1920s. Notably, it is named for William Livingston, the first Governor of New Jersey. It is also near the Riker Hill fossil site, also known as Walter Kidde Dinosaur Park, a major paleontological site – I remember hearing about the “major dinosaur fossil site in New Jersey” a few times while growing up across the river in New York.

It could be Livingston, California, a town along the Highway 99 corridor in the Central Valley, between Modesto and Merced.

Like much of this part of the Central Valley, it is primarily an agricultural town.

It could also be Livingston, Montana, a picturesque town along I-90 and US 191 north of Yellowstone National Park.

[Image by Jonathan Haeber (http://www.terrastories.com/bearings/) via Wikimedia Commons. Click image to enlarge.]

It has that classic “old US downtown” look with mountain ranges in the background. It also seems like a relatively prosperous town (much of its economy is related to tourism). As of this writing, however, it sounds like they are at the edge of this year’s intense flooding along rivers in the U.S. and the Yellowstone River is again above flood stage as of the writing of this article. We hope they stay safe and dry! In late May, flooding on the Yellowstone River closed parts of I-90 near Livingston.

Livingston, NY is in the Hudson Valley and quite a ways north of New York City. It is considerably smaller than its counterparts in New Jersey, California and Montana.

In the strange way that I remember such things, I am pretty sure I have been through the junction of US 9, NY 9H and NY 82 (and NY 23).

Smaller yet is Livingston, Louisiana.

It is along I-12 east of Baton Rouge. I mention it because it has a gravitational wave observatory. That is cool. Gravitational waves are theoretical ripples in the curvature of spacetime that propagate as a wave – a phenomenon predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity but never directly detected.