Messenger Breakdown
 

A. Greenfield does a nice little breakdown on urban spaces and the messenger:
http://speedbird.wordpress.com/2007/...essenger-mesh/

read that earlier today. good read, tho a little overly verbose.

I want to slap both his color scheme and his thesaurus.

100% garbage

I can't say I haven't already thought about what he wrote...although a tad too "theory" and pretentious for my taste in blog entries, I thought it pretty spot on.

First sentence:

I think I mentioned the other day that I’ve been reading Iain Borden’s essential Skateboarding, Space and the City, which I’m enjoying immensely, both as a detailed social history of a domain I’m more than cursorily familiar with, and for the way it frames skating as a performative critique of the urban condition.

Sorry I just hate this kind of writing.

better than the book he quotes...my favorite line is:

u guys are right

thinking about experience is too hard

better to just take it for granted

doing a decent job of writing about the ineffable is so pretentious too

man i got some papers from when i was in college you guys would LOVE.

whatever u say gadeux

+1

man up!

I just skimmed it, and the article looks to me well thought out, interesting, and written well enough...good post

the reference to public space and skateboarders defying rigidity of expected conduct within them is an important one and a good way to start off the discussion. we take our lack of access to public space for grranted and become complacent with that paradigm. man up. don't worry about being something being too verbose. expand your social horizons.

WTF is man up? Are you a bull rider or something?

there is such thing as sucking the life out of someting. that's what this article does. good analytical writing can examine something while allowing it to remain vibrant and lively. really good analytical writing enhances the liveliness of what it is analyzing. this just sucks the life out of it.

You mean we don't get credit for vocabulary posturing? My complaints have to resonate with reality?

wow - all this over people who just deliver packages on a bike. I have never heard it described in this manner by people I worked with or currently know who are messengers.

chalk it up to riding the wave.

sometimes a bike messenger is just a person trying to make a living - not a precursor to some half-assed metaphysics extrapolation.



(hopefully a tshirt printed with this article will soon be available for sale at independent skate shops around the US!)

Hey, what can I say but that I'm sorry you didn't like the piece.

All I can say in its defense is that it's a blog post, not an "article." It was meant for, like, the six people who read my blog. And they already know I'm a wordy cat.

Nothing worse than a graduate sociology student with a thesaurus and too much coffee.

im waiting for 165 to start back pedaling like he did when Sacha White showed up in the integrated stem bar thread.

That was the best thread ever!

check out http://v-2.org/, you might understand a bit more where adam is coming from.

Also, most of the folks who read Speedbird are literally grad students - they're my students from the course I teach at ITP, Urban Computing. So they're used to it, too.

Point is, the density of the writing is actually appropriate for that audience. It's not your cup of tea, that's fine. I'd rather be on my bike too. : . )

There is truth in that, though, as Sacha set me straight and it was one of the more informative discussions I have had. I even got him a red star for it.

But don't hold your breath on this one. I doubt I would get the same from this, nor am I looking for it here.

Nothing like "over-analyzing" something to take all the life and fun out of it...

It's the guys blog, & I don't see any backpedaling. The author has the stones to accept criticism without hitting back, many "writers" of blogs or articles or self published this that or the other, even published authors don't get what this guy obviously knows about criticism, good & bad. He's a step ahead if he chooses writing for a wider audience, a big step ahead of many.

At least nobody is leaving horrible comments about it or sending you hate mail (I really, really hope so, anyways.)

sorry...this IS good writing
the problem with good writing is that the functionally illiterate are often unable to appreciate it and often knock it because they are unable to do so.
what does this suck the life out of? I felt that the entry exuded vibrance, liveliness and an emotionally affected perception of the author's experience.
now I actually read the whole blog entry, and it is not even overanalytical...****, it's not even really analytical...'s descriptive of an experience, and a perspective...

messengering, as both those who've done it and those who've only imagined it know, is very different than most other jobs...you've never heard it described in this manner? sorry, but that half-assed metaphysics extrapolation you talk about is precisely connected to... "a person trying to make a living"...'s ABOUT a person trying to make a living (and perhaps being a bit introspective about the ever complex world they work in). did those people you speak of not have any relation to the stuff the blogger posted? no body aches? no relationship to dispatcher? no sense of their movement as an economic route? no knowledge of the subtleties of riding diff aves? no sense of freedom despite hardships?
people write about all sorts of stuff that people do and jobs that people have. they talk and write about life in general, their environment, how it makes them feel, etc.
I hope these cynical responses are because this is another post about messengering on a fixed forum that would rather not hear the artistic grandeur of such a ****ty job, and NOT because you all cannot relate to the blogger's need to express something about an experience that questioned the rigidity and order of the world around him (note: my interpertation).
I've only mess'ed for a few weeks in my life, and have had a fair share of conversations with other messengers that in some way or another touched on most references in the blog, plus much more (from God, the system, to *****es, and beyond)...and those were unprovoked on my part. messengers don't live life just to be messengers, and are very diverse in behavior, views, etc. Most messengers don't make a career out of it. Messengering is a part of their life (for however short or however long), and to appreciate the experience for what it is is something that I bet many of these people can do in some way or another. No, they may not look at the experience in the same way as the OP blogger, but stop this shiet about messengers not thinking about anything and just "riding their bike to make money" ...fuk outta here...they are living LIFE to make money and making money to live LIFE... I'll take the metaphysics...leave 'em with me if you don't want em

check your PMs, Teia

I think you will better understand my comments.

I ****ing love this combination (or juxtaposition) of sentences.

Man up!

165,...you didn't say much, so I wouldn't feel any accomplishment in interpreting your point. help me out though...I'm only responding to your words in the context of the general apathy in first page posts toward the blog because of its complexity and "analysis". Don't take my response too seriously as a direct refutal( your post didn't seem to 'serious' anyways), but I'll stick to my guns in saying that "just making a living" is very much inclusive of all the "metaphysics" that one may muster up in a blog

really, I enjoyed the blog and was clearly more offended by it's author by dull comments, so I'm indulging myself