East vs. West, or I Always Wondered About This

I was always curious about why it can sometimes seem like the "west side" of an area is nicer than the east side. The author postulates that it was due to the direction of the wind, which would blow pollution eastward, prompting the rich to move westward.

http://www.planetizen.com/node/47486

The "west is best" argument is obviously not true in Wausau, as clllllearly the academically gifted reside on the superior east side of town. The fact that I used to live on the east side (go Lumberjacks!) has nothing to do with my statement of "fact" ;) The east side also has the gorgeous historic homes of Franklin Street and the Leigh Yawkey Art Museum.

The west side of LA is definitely "nicer" than the east side of LA. My beloved gelato shop is there, there is more shopping, and all kinds of vibrant businesses and creative venues. In fact, when many people speak of "East LA" it's in a tone reserved for the "poor Little Nells" of the world.

East LA may not have the reputation for violence that South LA has, but it does have blight and as East LA proper is unincorporated it suffers from being economically disadvantaged. But people make it their home. There are street cart vendors and small businesses. Family ties are probably stronger and stretch further than one's immediate family. And there are some lovely affordable housing sites whose models resemble market-rate homes elsewhere.

However, no matter how you frame it, it's significantly hotter, especially in the summer, than the west side which is cooled by delicious ocean breezes, even a few miles inland. And when the temperature reaches the triple digits I'd rather be at the beach than espousing the benefits of having your extended family under your roof.

The author's theory, on closer inspection, could be a sweeping generalization. In New York it's not a clean cut haves and have-nots. The Upper East Side is the swankier side, the west is more liberal. Though in some areas some boho babies are also trust fund kids who are slummin it with their beatnik and hipster buddies. And in Chicago it's kind of hard to say as it's built almost on the lake. There is the Gold Coast that is on the east side, but Lawndale, which is a really rough section of Chicago is on the west. Though if you drive for a few more minutes you are in the very nice suburb of Oak Park. And the swank city of Pasadena is on the east side of the general area of greater Los Angeles.

But in smaller cities the west side can be nicer, more cosmopolitan, etc., For example, in MSP- Minneapolis is the more cosmopolitan, while St. Paul, though lovely, is more reserved and less glam.

At least, when it comes to LA the answer is literally blowing in the wind! (And a lot of history that I am blatantly glossing over as this is a blog post not a book) For more info on the history of LA there are a ton of books, but the Reluctant Metropolis, by my former prof, William "Bill" Fulton is great and City of Quartz or the Ecology of Fear are "interesting" reads by Mike Davis. They're on my bookshelf. But Amazon.com will be more than happy to supply you with hundreds of other titles. :)

Won't You Take Me to. . .Dinkytown?!

I hope that this first posting in the year 2009 finds you safe and well.

I myself have recently thawed out after visiting my parents in the great frozen state of Minnesota. And yes, it was as cold as it sounds.

Luckily, despite being a (second time around) California transplant, I spent the majority of my formative years in Wisconsin and therefore did not curl up in a little ball on the sidewalk, where I would undoubtedly have gotten stuck (think that flagpole licking scene in A Christmas Story) and whimpered like a little girl.

And it's a good thing too because had I not been made of hardier stock I would have missed my friend Petey's gracious tour of her stomping grounds of the Twin Cities.

Though my parents live in a rather nice suburb of St. Paul, I am unfamiliar with the layout of St. Paul and Minneapolis as they moved there after I had graduated from college. As far as I can ascertain, the two cities are several miles apart and are interconnected with many, many highways, which will also route you to the various suburbs that surround the major metropolises.

Petey is an architect and she knows that I am going for a master's urban planning so she tailored a comprehensive, but concise tour of her towns. For example, in some perverse trek to a structural engineering's Mecca, we drove over the I-35W bridge that had collapsed on August 1, 2007 and which has since been reconstructed. We were driving too fast and it was too late at night to admire the new details, but it was a sober reminder that civic improvements should never be neglected.

We also went to Dinkytown, which, according to Wikipedia, is an area within the Marcy Holmes neighborhood in Minneapolis. Dinkytown can be found at 14th Avenue Southeast and 4th Street Southeast and is also part of the north side of UMinn's Twin Cities East Bank campus.

Full disclaimer: Dinkytown is not a slander against the hard-working Midwestern folk that live in that neighborhood, it is its official name and if you ever have a chance to go there, I strongly encourage it.

Not to sound like some pretentious new urbanist idiot but it is an "adorable" community- quiet streets lined with trees festooned with twinkle lights, cozy Mom and Pop shops and untouched, unscathed by Pottery Barn, Barnes and Noble, or Starbucks. More disclaimers are in order- if the IRS were to pull up my bank records they would see that the majority of my free money does go toward padding the coffers of Barnes and Noble and Starbucks. But even my favorite Saint Arbucks/Starshmucks and Noble Barn cannot compete with an old school used bookstore or coffee shop.

Tempting restaurants abound in Dinkytown and Petey and I caught up over perfectly chilled Strongbow ciders, the official drink of the Queen of Denmark (!), at the Kitty Club, or something like that, which is an awesome bar, not what you probably think the name implies.

Unfortunately, the Loring Pasta Bar (formerly Gray's Drug) was too crowded to eat at, which is a shame because Bob Dylan lived in that building. There is a mural dedicated to him around the corner from the visually spectacular Varsity Theater.

But I did indulge in my number one vice, used bookstores and purchased several works, including a work entitled, Cities & People by Mark Girouard, which will be reviewed in an upcoming blog. The fact that the publisher chose Gustave Caillebotte's Paris Street: Rainy Day, for the cover, wins them extra points.

(it's the huge mid-19th century rainy day street scene that Ferris Bueller and friends stand in front of in Ferris Bueller's Day Off when they visit the Art Institute in Chicago. Yeah, yeah, once an art historian, always an art historian) ;-)>

[Unfortunately, my literary indulgence almost meant that I had to check a bag at United at the airport and pay their baggage fee lest I inadvertently tear my shoulder from its socket. Grrr.]

Starving, we then headed to downtown Minneapolis, which I had visited as a child. Upon my initial visit I had been enamored by the everpresent skywalks- enclosed glass and steel bridges that jut out from buildings like tree branches, allowing people to traverse from building to building without being exposed to the frigid weather. Still a genius idea as until global warming kicks into high gear Minneapolis is going to continue to be a frozen tundra in the dead of winter and the less exposure to the elements the better.

Petey knew of an excellent Irish pub, Kieran's (330 2nd Ave., Minneapolis) whose offerings did not fail to delight. I had a fork tender pot roast and she enjoyed a chicken pot pie with puff pastry crust. The music, was sadly, not anything resembling Irish folk or punk, instead we tuned out Fastball and other musical oddities.

Alas, I had a plane to board the next day and our fun had to end. I promised Petey that I would visit her when the weather is warmer and we could explore more. And as you know dear reader, a review of those adventures will be in order. In the meantime, if you have a chance to visit the Twin Cties, there is much in store for you too! Happy 2009!

a little slice of me part II: the more things change, the less they stay the same

Every little kid is vaguely cognisant of his or her surroundings growing up, but I have come to realize that I took true delight in seeing other cities and what made them different from where I lived even as a kid-o. And being keenly aware of this intangible "sense of space" I was deeply affected by the changes that were made in my city, be they for good or bad, even when I no longer lived there.

When I was in the third grade I went on my first trip (that I could remember) to a big city. I remember being enamoured with the city that is Minneapolis and being in awe of their skywalks, an ingenious invention in a city that is colder than it has any right to be in winter.

My passion for cities grew when I visited New York City for the first time as a high schooler when we moved out to CT. I had always wanted to visit New York and to be swept up into the hustle and bustle of the pre-holidays season was fantastic. But I loved it that much more when I visited in college on my own, for a job interview, and was able to navigate it based on its simple, and frankly intuitive, grid plan. This is coming from someone who can get lost in her own town with just two missed turns and no idea how to "just retrace her steps."

My interest in downtown revitalization, another key focus of mine, was sparked when my dad took me to the Historic Third Ward in Milwaukee. I've mentioned this before ("Gentrification," Tuesday, August 12, 2008)and Milwaukee is definitely the sweet, but dowdy cousin of chic, sophisticated Chicago, but that didn't stop them from creating a Historic Third Ward, which has created its own little flair in a charming city.

Another turn of events that affected my understanding of cities was when the city of Wausau, home of the majority of my childhood, location of the the beloved Franklin Street, and the "eh" library tore out a huge section of the downtown to make a downtown park (see John Michlig's blog, "Sprawled Out: the Search for Community in the American Suburb) for a picture of what it looks like now). I won't be back there until Christmas and when I do it'll be covered in snow, so, please enjoy his pictures (and hard work).

My dad, I think, is a latent, amateur architecture buff too and certainly a lover of beautiful things and we would go "downtown" on Saturdays and have coffee and donuts and look at the old pre-war buildings that have stood the test of time- and frankly had been immune to the need for historic preservation as rarely did anyone ever want to demo a building. And if so it'd be like wanting to send grandma out into the cold world with nothing but the clothes on her back- you just don't do it 'cause why would you?!

Even for the people of Wausau who have no idea what urban planning is, this was a change and a shock. We had moved away by the time this restructuring of the downtown occurred, but upon coming back it was a sliver of what it must be like to come home to one's house having burned to the ground or waking up after a car accident and seeing that you have lost a limb. I, in no way wish to diminish the unspeakable tragedy that such circumstances are to those who have experienced them personally. But I will say that seeing the downtown looking everything and nothing like how it used to is like losing a part of yourself. It did drive home the point that every place has a "sense of place" and if you change one thing, you change everything, no matter how subtlely.

I won't even go into detail about how my beloved high school was turned into apartments/condos. It was an ingenious move on the city developers' part, but it literally meant that one can't go home, or back to school, again. I'd be less affected if I'd attended Wausau West, an ugly relic of 1970's architecture- grey masonry globbed together in a vaguely circular form with little to no windows. But I attended a beautiful pre-war building that even served as a city bomb shelter owing to the fact that the walls were three feet thick! I haven't seen the new apartment complex so I have no aesthetic judgment regarding the renovation. Suffice to say I hope that the people who live there now enjoy living in a part of history.

I attended college in Savannah, GA, which constantly harps on its "Jewel Plan" to anyone within shouting distance. And while it was aurally fatiguing to hear, it is a beautiful city that I highly recommend to anyone. Each square is unique and beautiful, ugh, like a jewel. But it was previous events, experienced much earlier, that really made me aware of a city and its impact on a person, no matter how small the change, or the person that is affected by it.