My house is at the top of a ridge called Nanny Goat Hill. There is a fire station on Preston street, below the ridge. This station serves the downtown, so it’s pretty often that I hear the trucks racing past the house, sirens blaring. One set of trucks goes up Somerset Street, on top of Nanny Goat hill, and one set goes below. I like the sound of the trucks. The sirens are exciting and alerting, they remind me where I am.
Where I am is Chinatown, and it has been burning down. It has been burning my whole life, really, but these past couple week were particularly incendiary. A couple weeks ago, I was walking home from class and chanced upon the whole of Fire Station 11, plus some, arranged in a semi-circle around a smoldering house on my block of Bronson.
My roommate and I had been feeling a little groggy, but we chalked it up to fatigue. Then, one evening early last week, the smoke detector went off in the basement. The ancient furnace had finally given up, and was spewing carbon monoxide. We spent the night on my father’s floor. The next day, my roommate and I returned to our cold apartment, electric heaters in tow. It was chilly, but we settled in with blankets and made the best of it. I crawled into my bed, tucked into the chin, and went to sleep.
Tenants look on as firefighters douse their porch
I was awoken by sirens, more real and present than usual. The flashing lights radiated through my half-drawn blinds, casting alternating bars of red and blue on the wall above my head. I jumped up, ran to the living room, and saw the flames licking up the porch across the street. My neighbors were pouring out past the flames in their pajamas and underwear. One guy was in his boxers. First I grabbed some clothes, and then I grabbed my camera.
There is a running bet around here on which porch is going to collapse first. The place is not exactly a slum, but it has certainly seen better days. It’s not the worst place on the street. One of my neighbors calls this “the garbage house”. The kids like to party, but I didn’t expect it to catch fire. My neighbor says it was arson, that someone set fire to the recycling, and that another place had been set alight last week. That is truly scary if it is true.
Thank you, fire fighters, for being so fast. It is too bad you can’t stop my neighborhood from burning down.
Oh, one more thing: the landlord of the garbage house wants to buy the house next door (to the right) and put up a shiny new condo.
Sometimes I feel like I must be wearing some sort of a sign, like a “kick me” on my back, or invisible ink on my forehead that says “gullible.” I talk to a lot of strangers, and most of the time I enjoy it. In fact, I am trying to make talking to strangers my work. Sometimes, however, trying to be open and engaging puts me in compromising situations.
I was hanging out in the lobby of my hotel on Christmas night, and this young guy comes up to me and says “hey, are you from around here?” Obviously not, otherwise why would I be in this hotel on Christmas? And then he says “I need some help man.” That’s when I flipped on the recorder. Have a listen to the rest:
We were sitting no more than twenty steps from “the Magnificent Mile.” The fancy stores had been packed with shoppers buying handbags and gadgets the night before. The street was all but vacant now. It felt like we were the only two people left in a world that had been deserted.
He made his case. It was a scam, and I knew it from the start, but I bought it anyway.
We set out alone through the empty canyons of steel and glass. Around one corner a drunk was yelling at a cop; “fuck you, I ain’t scared of you or nobody!” The cop yelled back “you better be scared! Scared I don’t put you in a mental asylum!” Merry Christmas. We marched on, talking, through Grant Park, past the bean, towards the train station. It was starting to get cold. When we finally reached the station the train had already left.
“Where’s the hostel?” I said. He was looking like crap, slurring his speech, stumbling here and there. I was starting to get worried. As we rounded the corner heading back downtown, he started to tell me a story:
“Once, when I was a kid, my parents took me to Navy Pier (where there is a Ferris wheel) for the day. My dad gave me ten bucks, for rides and stuff. There was this guy, sitting there, begging. I gave him the money. My dad gave me hell, said I was an idiot, that I wasted his ten bucks. But I didn’t feel bad. I figure that that guy must of really needed it.”
When we got to the hostel he didn’t want to stay. I knew he would have to get rid of me. “There’s an all night diner around the corner,” he said, “the subway is in the other direction.” I don’t know why I gave him the money. I said goodbye, and we shook hands.
As I turned the corner, I watched him go back into the hostel and make a phone call. In a moment he was back on the street, crossing over in the wrong direction. I followed as he went in to a corner store, and watched as he bought lottery tickets and an ice cream cone. When he came out of the store the stagger was gone. The slur in his speach had cleared up. Back on the sidewalk he said to me “hey, be carefull,” and then he was gone.
“What are you doing here?” said the pair of eyes behind the counter. Good question. John and I were going to find my grandmother’s house in Hyde Park, an upscale suburban community north of the University of Chicago. To get there, we had to walk through Chicago’s notorious South Side. What the Vietnamese man in the fast food shop meant was “What are you, two white guys, doing in this hard-up black neighborhood on Christmas?”
The air was clear, bright, and crisp. The wide suburban streets were nearly deserted. A half hour passed before we saw anyone; a couple of kids roughhousing on the other side of the street. Walking through the neighborhood from the 47th St. subway station to my grandmother’s, the whole world seemed quiet and still. Christmas was cold in Chicago, but it had been warm the night before and everyone seemed to be stuck in the ice. We stopped to give a push several times along the way.
It wasn’t a long walk, but immediately upon entering the neighborhood it was clear we were in a different Chicago, and curiosity pulled us off course. It seemed like a ghost town, Christmas or not. There were a few churches, run down corner shops, and plenty of vacant lots. Some of the cars obviously hadn’t been moved in some time. There was also plenty of fresh plywood on every street, sometimes whole rows at once. Many of the big, beautiful, turn-of-the-century houses were boarded up. One new building was abandoned half finished. This was the sub-prime mortgage crisis in action.
We walked for a long time, weaving through the side streets until we got cold and hungry. Finaly we came upon the Vietnamese place. “Hot tea?” John asked. “No,” the woman replied “ice tea only” and then continued to drink the steaming beverage in her hands. We settled for pop and spring rolls (the unfried Vietnamese variety).
We sat in what could really only be described as the waiting room, which had four tables, a television blaring the basketball game, and hand-lettered poster on green bristol board advertising special holiday catering. The late afternoon sun was streaming through the bars over the windows, and I was finally starting to warm up. I felt good, that connected and present feeling of interacting with a new and interesting place. Then the woman’s husband pushed the spring rolls onto the counter and delivered his question. It wasn’t insulting, just matter of fact, unvarnished, and amplified by his delivery in halting English.
Until that moment I hadn’t felt unsafe. In fact, everyone we had met was friendly and kind, open even. One man even entrusted us with the keys to his car while he went around the corner to get his truck so he could pull his car out of the ice. I’d been to scary places before, downright dangerous places too, but I’d never been in a segregated neighborhood. Until that moment, I hadn’t really understood that segregation meant that this was a place where there really were no people like me.
I plan on going back again. This trip is over, but it won’t be the last time I come to Chicago.
For the second year running, I’m out of the country for Christmas. Last year I was in Paris, eating really good Indian food, chocolate, and macarons. It was the first time I’d skipped the festivities, and I really enjoyed it. Although it was a bit weird to phone home and hear my family having Christmas dinner without me, the complete un-craziness of hanging out in the empty city more than made up for it. While everyone else was stressed out about presents and cooking, I was free to explore unfettered.
Teenagers at the Cheesecake Factory.
This time I’m in Chicago, and I’ve convinced my father to come. He runs a pub, and works almost every day. I’ve been working on getting him to go on a vacation for a long time. The last time we went on vacation together was, well, a long time ago. He always says that all he is going to do is sleep. I never beleive it; he’s actually a pretty energetic guy, and besides a penchant for napping, he’s restless.
My father’s parents met in Chicago. My grandmother is from Wisconsin, and was a singer here when she met my grandfather, a PhD. student. My mission, on Christmas, is to visit all their old haunts. One of my favorite things about traveling is getting lost, in a directed sort of way. I’m looking forward to exploring the places where my grandparents were young in a youthful city.
Everyone loves The Bean!
I feel conflicted about the United States. Its a place that’s easy to love. Everything is BIG here. Americas don’t really do nuance. We passed a McDonalds today that took up a whole city block. Like the other American cities that I’ve visited, Chicago has an air of vibrancy and possibility to it, even in the most difficult violent and impoverished places. The unabashed enthusiasm of people here is enthralling. It’s infective. They don’t apologize for anything. People here really believe that is is the best place in the world to live. They’re American, and they like it that way.
It is also a terrifying place. The oppression and exploitation of minorities, even in supposedly enlightened states like Illinois (they have a Freedom Museum on the main strip) really leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
Although Chicago and Toronto are of roughly the same age, size, and regional importance there is not the same amazing multicultural mixture here. My grandmother tells stories about growing up German in Wisconsin, where everyone had to learn English, regardless of being Polish, or Ukrainian, or Austrian. You checked your allegiances at the door. She can still speak German. I can’t. I think that the beauty of the United States is in its newness. It’s too bad the price is having to give up your past.
Photo Detail — A summer storm builds over Nanny Goat Hill
I’ve been working on a big panoramic photo (the final print will be about 2 feet by 4 feet) that I started this summer.
It was July, and we’d just moved into the new apartment in Chinatown. The living room was pretty sparsely decorated at that point, nonetheless my roommate and I were sitting around enjoying the cool summer afternoon. “Look at that!” he said, and we rushed out onto the balcony just in time to see the giant black storm clouds passing overhead. It was a wacky summer, and had rained almost every day. I had been teasing my roommate that he had brought the wet weather with him from Vancouver. This cloud was different, it was moving fast and very dark. You could feel the electric tension in the air. It was going to rain any moment. I rushed back in, grabbed my camera, and fired off a sequence of photos. A few sad little drops started to fall. Then a few more, and all of a sudden it was raining big wet droplets in a rapid downpour. And then, just as quickly as it had come, the storm was over.
Which balcony will colapse first?
My friends Greg and Matt lived in the white house across the street. It was a common, if not daily, occurrence for four or five people to be packed onto their little balcony in the evening, smoking and talking. From my balcony, you could see the old wood sag under their weight. They’d call over “come have a beer,” and I would, making sure to sit near the door, just in case. Nobody who lived there seemed too nervous about the distinct slant to the floor or the missing rungs on the railing. About a month before, a balcony had collapsed in Ottawa, injuring two young women. My roommate said I was crazy for going over there. So far, everything is still standing. We’ll see what happens in the spring.
Matt and Greg moved to Montreal at the end of the summer. I was sad to see them go. I miss those guys and their crazy ways. There’s nobody else who’ll play frisbee in the dark at next to midnight. I hope they’re doing well in their new home town.
Looking around lately, it seems everyone is suffering a crisis of confidence of one sort or another. There’s the global credit crisis, a manufacturing slowdown, bailouts, just about everyone could use some assistance. The city of Ottawa had proposed a massive cut to arts funding in the budget for this year. Not all the news is bad though, today I received this note from my city councillor:
“I am writing to let you know that City Council has rejected all of the proposed cuts to arts, culture, heritage, museums, and festival funding. This will restore the stable multi-year funding that was promised several years ago.”
When you’re passionate about something, be it art, automobiles, or aardvarks, I think it’s normal to feel a little alone sometimes, like you are the only one who cares about the thing you’re interested in. Its difficult to keep going when you think you’re going alone. Thank you City of Ottawa for keeping arts funding, I hope you don’t have to close too many skating rinks!
Art is worth it, whether you’re an individual or a city.
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Dragon Alley is a tiny little strip of land. At first look, it’s nothing significant. There used to be an old Horse barn at one end, a forgotten relic of a bygone age, tucked behind the busy urban intersection of College and Dufferin Streets. Only it turns out Dragon Alley wasn’t so forgotten after all. This summer, the Parking Authority for the city of Toronto tore down the barn, cut down the trees, and ripped up the earth for a new parking lot.
You might wonder, why should I care? Why does this crummy patch of dirt matter?
Cities in the integrated world economy face tremendous stress, and are changing faster than we recognize. We used to live in what economists call “The Keynesian City,” an organized city which acted to improve the lives of its inhabitants. This was a city where we were citizens, with the reciprocal and reflexive relationship of belonging to a community. The city was the place with all the swimming pools, public libraries, schools, parks, and jobs. The modern, Keynesian City protected people from the failures and abuses of capitalism. It was a place where people worked together for a common interest.
The Keynesian City started to crumble in the 1980s. Power shifted out of the hands of the Nation-State and the local community, and into the hands of global institutions like the World Bank and transnational corporations. Thatcher and Reagan were elected. The Berlin wall fell. Television synchronized global culture. The very nature of the city started to change. The purpose of the city stopped being the welfare of the people and started being the attraction of capital and the creation of a suitable business climate. With globalization, the Keynesian City was replaced by the Entrepreneurial City. This is where our little parking lot fits in.
It doesn’t have to be like this. Being poor is not a moral failure, and it is not justification for marginalization and exploitation. The construction of a parking lot in a hidden and cramped area is dangerous and ill considered. Concerns about violence are a smoke-screen. A park, where the neighbors are invested in the upkeep and security of the space, is inherently safer than an empty parking lot at night. The privatization of shared space and public life is a scourge, and a blight on the health of the city as a living organization. It is unjust to remove green space from apartment dwellers, the people who need and benefit most from public space. The cold, calculating, and fundamentally uncaring misgovernment by the city of Toronto exhibited in their decision to pave Dragon Alley is shameful and short sighted.
Dragon Alley isn’t paved yet. Now is the time to speak up, to speak out, and to protect what community we have. This fight is about more than cars and kids, it is about how we imagine the city, and our place in it.
Email councilor Adam Giambrone to tell him you oppose the parking lot at 9 Bonar Place.
My friend Melanie has a favorite neighborhood coffee shop, The Commons, on College street in Toronto West. It’s a cozy little independent place, complete with edgy baristas, well-worn benches, and fine young things. It has four long tables, and a good vibe. Like most local coffee shops, the regulars here know each other. In this case, they’re part of a semi-urban artistic and professional class. They work together, sleep together, and listen to the same bands. Some are crazy, some are nice. Some are nice and crazy. Sit at the right table, and chances are good that the stranger on the other side will have some common interests or friends. It is a happening little hub. Oh, and the coffee is very good.
Melanie and I talked a lot about community, and the value and vagaries of public space, shared culture, identity, race, and place. Intersections of difference and commonality abound in the city, and create tension between competing interests. It’s nice to have a place like The Commons, where people can come together and share the things they have in common. It scares me that these important meeting places are increasingly being made private and restricted.
I just got home from a short trip to Toronto. It was a whirlwind few days. I filled up on good cheap food, caught up with old friends, and made a few new friends too. I even picked up a half day of work (thanks Rémi). I ran out of time, and didn’t get to see everyone I wanted to see. Guess I’ll just have to go back!
I love being in transit. As a kid, I spent countless hours riding to Cape Breton and back every summer in the back seat of my family’s old white Toyota. I’ve always been excited by going somewhere. There is something freeing about being on the highway. I’ve been lucky to have seen a great deal of Canada. For me, the real heart and meaning of our country is not in the city but out in the beautiful and quiet middle of nowhere. We live in an enormous country. Traveling and sustaining connections and relationships across great distances is an integral part of being Canadian. When I’m out on the road, I feel at home.
I took this photo on Highway 7, on the way to Toronto, just before the bus stop at the Log Cabin Restaurant near Tweed, Ontario.
This Summer, I had the good fortune to photograph the Second Annual Time Squared event for Gallery 101. Artists are crazy folk, and performance artists are a special breed. I had a lot of fun, even though I was soaked through and through by pouring rain at the end of the day.
Performance art is a tricky thing to do under any circumstances, and a tricky thing to photograph. The work is fleeting and experiential. An essential part of the performance is the relationship between the performer, the surroundings, and the audience, so that in a sense, the audience is a part of the artwork. I’ve always considered photography to be a bit of a performance art. On that day, there happened to be a giant performance of the ceremonial guard at Parliament Hill, directly across the street from the G101 event. They had cannons and all, it was a real production. It was the kind of thing that makes artists, most who are already neurotic, totally insane. We had to roll with it, and in the end, I think the craziness of it all it made the day a little bit better.
Looking back, I think that I made significant progress this summer. My pictures were bigger, better, and more frequent than the summer before. Summer ’08 was the summer I moved away from my home town. It was also the summer I moved back. I came back to Chinatown, to where I grew up, after almost a decade in exile.
Coming home was as big a big deal as leaving was, and it shows in my photos. I’ve been working on a project about the idea of home for a long time, and I feel like the pictures from this year have moved this project forward. The next step will be to take the project further, into the community. Stay tuned.
Three pictures from the “Home” series will be on display at the Carleton University Art Gallery this month as part of a group show. I’ve been working with the gallery over the past few months, and it is a pleasure and a privilege to show there.
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A blog by photographer Jackson Couse about using photography to understand and talk about the world.
I write about images and current events, examine the construction meaning using images, and try to understand the increasingly important role visual culture plays in life.
Brenda Kenneally intimate portraits of social issues, like post-industrailism or urban underclasses, at the intersection of the personal and the political
David Burnett managing gravity, Olympics, American politics with toy cameras and 4×5s
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