when you walk east on NY route 2 from downtown troy, the road surges uphill sharply. the city abruptly segues into this odd sort of mix of rural and urban. on your right, as you walk up the hill towards vermont, are rolling hills with tufts of forest on them. maybe 12 or so meters of grass separate the edge of the forests from the road, which turns here and there as it heads uphill.

in the winter, when the forest is denuded, you can see the skeletal remnants of foundations lacing these hills. it looks like there used to be some kind of fortress or something there. on the shortest day of the year last december, the sun shone gorgeously, and I went walking up there with boards of canada on my headfones. I kept glancing over my shoulder, cuz in the warmer months the area is a popular place to purchase and/or smoke crack, but I was alone that time.

I’ve lived in troy for two and a half years, but I’d only just noticed the fortress remnants this past winter. I asked my friends about this, but most of them hadn’t seen it either (although most of them were quite piqued and suggested that we go explore it with cameras and such). I realized I probably hadn’t seen the thing because prior to this winter, I was too busy driving past it. but what with finally selling my car this past october, I got to walking all over the place, and seeing stuff at the side of the road at a far slower place.

and so yeah as I was walking thusly I couldn’t help thinking of peter bilak’s fantastic academic justification for a typeface that, when viewed at rest, is basically a pile of incomprehendable nonsense but looks dandy at highway speeds. that typeface, and that wacky self-assembling MoMA QNS rooftop sign, suggest to me a potentially good design salve against the more problematic aspects of robert moses’ car fetish, and the similar autophilic trends of the past century that arguably fucked up a lot of shit: careful consideration of how fast people are actually moving.

I’m no expert, fo’real. and while yeah I’d like to dumpster cars and hole up in the west village like anyone else, it would seem that they are in fact here to stay. so. in shit like this design, by a Brian Strawn and a Karla Sierralta (you have to scroll a bit), looks all well and good here with a fixed viewpoint. but how’s it look from behind the wheel on that long, slightly curved boulevard depicted there in the front? I dunno. it’s like how corbusier’s megatowers all looked hot cuz he made very hot line drawings of all them, with the line-drawing happy humans all smiley and ne’er a cloud in the sky.

so yeah that’s some shit to think about next time I’m stuck in a stinky greyhound bus, or some shit like that. now that I don’t have a car I’m way more sensitive to that shit, how about that? that’s my little silver-lining reward for being forced to walk everywhere, and having no choice but to order any semi-decent food I want off the internet. word all that. anyway yeah.

-fish

ps. if I completely missed the boat on this stuff and there is already like 10 tons of writing, research etc. on the subject then feel free to stick me in a dunce cap and point me at it, yeahyeah, I like it like that.

pps. IF YOU LIVE IN NEW YORK GO TO HOW TO KICK PEOPLE TONIGHT INSTEAD OF SPIDERMAN 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! yes!

retardedly, I do realize that none other than “learning from las vegas” totally touches on this bigtime, regarding the elaborate signage of vegas, and the manner in which different parts of any given sign function relative to the speed at which that part of the sign is being taken in by, erm, the signee. wow I’m dumb. ok yeah more later.

-fish

i really like the word “thusly”.

you take the word “thus” and change it into an adverb by adding “-ly”.

of course, “thus” is *already an adverb*.

but that doesn’t stop “loud”, “hard”, and “deep” from receiving the same treatment.

i *highly* recommend reading mencken’s ‘the american language’ @ http://www.bartleby.com/185/