A. Greenfield does a nice little breakdown on urban spaces and the messenger:
https://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 https://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.)