- Today, while shooting, I found a perfectly preserved dragonfly with a wingspan of four inches. It is the largest dragonfly I have ever seen. He is named Flappy and sits on my windowsill. It'd sound more romantic if he weren't, you know, dead.
- Acquired a library card. Also acquired Annie Hall. And several beers.
- I've made friends who actually live in Bethlehem!
- Trying to stay positive...
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Notes 3
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
beginning something vaguely (in)conclusive
While in New York, I spent a great deal of time attempting to collect a few of my scattered thoughts on Bethlehem. Running on very little sleep (still) here is what I have, thus far. Subject to change, certainly to sleep.
(the spectral machine)
The machine stopped in the mid-nineties. The Golden Gate had been erected and jeweled with automobiles; the Empire State Building presided. In an age when a human being built a thing, an object, a monolith, and it was no longer a public spectacle of necessity or invention, of ribbon cutting or consequence, our infrastructure wavered. Marx collapsed into his books. We diffused into spectrality. Steel sat in the hands of China, and the Bethlehem Company fell, leaving a city of folded row houses in its wake. Along the Lehigh River, the blast furnaces rose and twisted like great animal trunks, betraying industrial time in silence. Hawks swept through empty rooms, the floors powdered with glittering soot. It was a slow death of production into antiquity.
"The center was not holding," wrote Joan Didion in 1967, her Bethlehem being a refuge to drag a weakened body. Had she dragged herself here, to Bethlehem, Didion would find little center at all.
When I first began to make photographs, I gravitated toward the unoccupied and the empty. The hollow. The "once was." Figuring as though the past would occupy my images in the inherent quality of empty walls or chipped banisters, I felt poetic. I photographed train stations, asylums, farm houses, junk yards. I named it spatial portraiture. The proverbial beautiful decay, though, like most, I could not make my attraction explicit. In reality, these were spaces of work, sweat, inversion, coercion, maybe death. Time, however, abstracted my subjects - through silencing, vandalism, a return to the "natural." In abstraction, I found the romantic. Instead of the iron bars is the ivy that filters sunlight, pouring from windows near a tower of stripped nails. Displaced is the meaning of the institution, the iron, the bars.
A photograph is a nominal fiction, selfishly constructed for the monopoly of a moment. Along the iron foundry, the bushes grow taller than the shingled roof, and the arches were built to invoke the arches of Rome. Here I found long plastic bags caught up in trees. Like gushing water, tendrils, anatomy.
Recently, the stacks have alighted with a new glow - not in the bellies of the machines or from bright lunar patterns. At night, Steel pulses red like the blushing twin sister of Emerald City. In the shadow of the new breed of giant, Steel quivers. They're saying the red will bring millions.
(the spectral machine)
The machine stopped in the mid-nineties. The Golden Gate had been erected and jeweled with automobiles; the Empire State Building presided. In an age when a human being built a thing, an object, a monolith, and it was no longer a public spectacle of necessity or invention, of ribbon cutting or consequence, our infrastructure wavered. Marx collapsed into his books. We diffused into spectrality. Steel sat in the hands of China, and the Bethlehem Company fell, leaving a city of folded row houses in its wake. Along the Lehigh River, the blast furnaces rose and twisted like great animal trunks, betraying industrial time in silence. Hawks swept through empty rooms, the floors powdered with glittering soot. It was a slow death of production into antiquity.
"The center was not holding," wrote Joan Didion in 1967, her Bethlehem being a refuge to drag a weakened body. Had she dragged herself here, to Bethlehem, Didion would find little center at all.
When I first began to make photographs, I gravitated toward the unoccupied and the empty. The hollow. The "once was." Figuring as though the past would occupy my images in the inherent quality of empty walls or chipped banisters, I felt poetic. I photographed train stations, asylums, farm houses, junk yards. I named it spatial portraiture. The proverbial beautiful decay, though, like most, I could not make my attraction explicit. In reality, these were spaces of work, sweat, inversion, coercion, maybe death. Time, however, abstracted my subjects - through silencing, vandalism, a return to the "natural." In abstraction, I found the romantic. Instead of the iron bars is the ivy that filters sunlight, pouring from windows near a tower of stripped nails. Displaced is the meaning of the institution, the iron, the bars.
A photograph is a nominal fiction, selfishly constructed for the monopoly of a moment. Along the iron foundry, the bushes grow taller than the shingled roof, and the arches were built to invoke the arches of Rome. Here I found long plastic bags caught up in trees. Like gushing water, tendrils, anatomy.
Recently, the stacks have alighted with a new glow - not in the bellies of the machines or from bright lunar patterns. At night, Steel pulses red like the blushing twin sister of Emerald City. In the shadow of the new breed of giant, Steel quivers. They're saying the red will bring millions.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
hello from manhattan
I've been away -
thinking, composing, running around.
so, bonjour from the icp library, my old haunts, fantastic inspiration
(some bits and pieces)
"... at first sight you have the impression that you are visiting more than just a factory, that you are visiting a machine, the inside of a machine...
the only way for prisoners to escape from this system of training is by collective action, political organization, rebellion."
-Michel Foucault, "On Attica, An Interview"
- Michel Foucault, "Of Other Spaces"
thinking, composing, running around.
so, bonjour from the icp library, my old haunts, fantastic inspiration
(some bits and pieces)
"... at first sight you have the impression that you are visiting more than just a factory, that you are visiting a machine, the inside of a machine...
the only way for prisoners to escape from this system of training is by collective action, political organization, rebellion."
-Michel Foucault, "On Attica, An Interview"
"First there are the utopias. Utopias are sites with no real place. They are sites that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of Society. They present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down, but in any case these utopias are fundamentally unreal spaces.
There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places - places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society - which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality."- Michel Foucault, "Of Other Spaces"
Thursday, June 11, 2009
A Modern Company
In order to become a truly "modern company in all respects, we must..."
- concentrate on steel
- restructure business as required
- rebuild financial strength
- maintain appropriate liquidity
- return to sustained profitability
- enhance stockholder value
- emphasize human resource capabilities and have a safe and healthy workplace
- be a low cost and high quality producer
- provide superior customer service
- emphasize total quality, benchmarking, and re-engineering
- increase market share and receive fair value for products
- be a good corporate citizen and stress corporate responsibility
"But the reality is that we're only as good as we are today because our predecessors embraced change and the progress brought with change. They understand the need for change, and since change is inevitable, we, too should prepare for it and treat it as an opportunity."
Quoted From Curtis H. Barnette, Bethlehem Steel and the Lehigh Valley's Changing Industrial Scene, 1991
Finding Mrs. Young
According to the Atlas of Northampton, Pennsylvania, published in 1874, a one "Mrs. Young" was the owner of 609 and 611 High Street, two row houses that were at one point, a larger building.
Which makes sense - we share the same roof, 609 has the cellar door while we have the small back porch.
So I'm writing from the Bethlehem Room at the Bethlehem Area Public Library. Quite the gem of an archive - I think I'll be spending many hours here...
I've also become friendly with a guy named Jack who owns the photo lab down Broad Street. We chatted for an hour when I went to pick up some film. He's got two front teeth, a pot belly, and wears a thin silver cross on a long chain around his neck.
"I keep tellin 'em that they gotta go over and check out what's in their back yard. Just once. It'll tell ya a lot about what could come in the future. Me? They're not gonna get my money. I walk in with a buck, and I'll walk out with a buck. But it's a first class operation they got goin' on over there."
Jack's a traveler and a photographer - a self procclaimed country guy who bopped around several mining towns and Vermont hillsides before ending up in Bethlehem. He spent a few years in the fabled Centralia, PA - the mining town whose grounds spew smoke from the fire below... like something right out of The Time Machine.
"We were just kids down there, y'know?" said Jack. "We'd spit on the rocks down there, and they'd go 'tsssss!' cuz they were red hot!"
A bit of a digression, yes, but that town's always fascinated me. Jack spent a few years documenting every building and every street in the town, before the whole thing was decimated, sunk, or abandoned. He said he'd bring in the work next time I stopped by the shop.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Historicals
"Charles M. Schwab of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, told the 1,200 members of the Rubber Association of America at their twentieth anniversary dinner, at the Waldorf last night, that nothing creates value but labor; that in the last analysis, every production cost is labor. Picturing the future of the country's industry, Mr. Schwab adjured the men to optimism; to think and be optimistic to the end that success would come, and to treat labor well; to let the employees be partners with them; to let them share in the profits, and finally, not to let "the agitator from Kamchatka tell you ow to run your business.'
'In the past,' said Mr. Schwab, 'we have been great autocrats with reference to labor, and now we must bend our efforts to the management, disposition and encouragement of those who work for us. Labor has not had a fair share in the prosperity of the country, and we must remember that a man is a man so long as he does his duty.'"
ALL VALUE IS LABOR, SCHWAB DECLARES
The New York Times, January 6, 1920
'In the past,' said Mr. Schwab, 'we have been great autocrats with reference to labor, and now we must bend our efforts to the management, disposition and encouragement of those who work for us. Labor has not had a fair share in the prosperity of the country, and we must remember that a man is a man so long as he does his duty.'"
ALL VALUE IS LABOR, SCHWAB DECLARES
The New York Times, January 6, 1920
Notes 2
- I now get paid to sit in a coffee shop, read, eat biscotti, and occasionally make drinks.
- On my way to work, I noticed a sign outside of Clothesline Organics that read "We BET you'll love our stuff." Cute.
- Allen called and mentioned he lost $800 on the slots last night. He went home at 2am, slept for two hours, and came back to win $500 of it back. He tells me this is "not bad."
- At the coffee shop, my boss mentioned how he likes to play poker tables. "I want to control my own destiny," he said. "Y'know... to touch the cards and all."
- Production --> distribution --> exchange --> consumption. "Members of a totality, differences within a unity." (Marx) "All production is appropriation of nature by the individual within and by means of a particular form of society." (From Grundrisse)
- Nature --> faith --> magic --> the invisible hand --> the spectral machine
- "Here, again, is the specter, the distinctive spirit, of neoliberal capitalism in its triumphal hour." (Comaroff and Comaroff, Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming)
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Prostitutes and Billionaires
"There’s people who have family members who have a gambling addiction and they’ve lived through it, okay. There’s people who are opposed to gambling just... Uh... there’s people who are like, Jesus freaks and just don’t like anything. It’s like... y’know, they don’t want you to dance either. It’s like, y’know, you got all kinds. Y’know, it’s like the ones who are like ‘we’re gonna get overrun by prostitutes and drug dealers...’ And I dunno, I may be naïve, cuz they’re here already. Well, I know the drug dealers are, but I can never figure out where the hell the prostitutes are. But I am going to the wrong places, apparently.
So... I dunno. Some of it’s just racism, y’know, that people don’t wanna come over here... Y’know, a lot of what you see over here is you got all the old immigrants over here and everything, and they got jobs at Bethlehem Steel, and as they flourished and improved their lot in life, they moved to the north side. And... the kids, okay. Grandparents are still over here. It’s like, they always tease ‘em about sneakin’ in on Sunday morning to go to church and go see Grandma and then go back to the north side again. But.. we’ve overcome that a long time ago, I think."
(Quoted from John Saraceno)
...
I spoke with Allen yesterday - he acquired a new club card at the Sands. "I know I'm gonna win the jackpot," he said. "I've done it before. I just don't know when or how much." I told him good luck. "Ah, everybody says that," Allen retorted. "It's not about luck, because if you got luck, then you also got bad luck."
Today, Sheldon Adelson, the CEO of Las Vegas Sands, and 2008's third richest American is in town, visiting his newest toy. "There's gonna be snipers on the roofs," Allen told me. "I don't even wanna be here."
...
I started my job today, at the Hard Bean Cafe on Third Street. Right down the block from John and Cleo. My boss tells me that he is aggravated by the casino. "It's takin' all my customers," he said, scratching at his angular beard. I shrugged. Time will tell.
So... I dunno. Some of it’s just racism, y’know, that people don’t wanna come over here... Y’know, a lot of what you see over here is you got all the old immigrants over here and everything, and they got jobs at Bethlehem Steel, and as they flourished and improved their lot in life, they moved to the north side. And... the kids, okay. Grandparents are still over here. It’s like, they always tease ‘em about sneakin’ in on Sunday morning to go to church and go see Grandma and then go back to the north side again. But.. we’ve overcome that a long time ago, I think."
(Quoted from John Saraceno)
...
I spoke with Allen yesterday - he acquired a new club card at the Sands. "I know I'm gonna win the jackpot," he said. "I've done it before. I just don't know when or how much." I told him good luck. "Ah, everybody says that," Allen retorted. "It's not about luck, because if you got luck, then you also got bad luck."
Today, Sheldon Adelson, the CEO of Las Vegas Sands, and 2008's third richest American is in town, visiting his newest toy. "There's gonna be snipers on the roofs," Allen told me. "I don't even wanna be here."
...
I started my job today, at the Hard Bean Cafe on Third Street. Right down the block from John and Cleo. My boss tells me that he is aggravated by the casino. "It's takin' all my customers," he said, scratching at his angular beard. I shrugged. Time will tell.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Romantics
Rain may fall in Bethlehem. Onto the noisy streets, rain may fall as if from buckets and window sills, sinking through curtains and wet paisley stitches. People here are splayed and charading like starfish - they may as well reach their arms to the sky and scream, holler, cry, "I am open!" But most seem reserved. Here is a boy with his legs kicked over a table, lost in his book. Here is a man and his son, boy in arms, with a blue plastic ball between small fingers. Here is a basset hound and a man who sneezes.
The sky is oyster shell blue, thick and milky like the inside. Ants swarm at my feet, marching over bits of candy. Crumbs, pavement, cigarette ash. I imagine them climbing my feet and washing away with rainfall. The boy on his bike, book in the crook of his arm, pedals around a corner and is gone.
The sky is oyster shell blue, thick and milky like the inside. Ants swarm at my feet, marching over bits of candy. Crumbs, pavement, cigarette ash. I imagine them climbing my feet and washing away with rainfall. The boy on his bike, book in the crook of his arm, pedals around a corner and is gone.
John and the Cowboys
Excerpts from an interview with John Saraceno, owner of Saraceno Design:
I am sitting at a long wooden table covered in stacks of magazines and newspapers. Somewhere in the back, John is bustling around, making a lot of noise when he walks. I can hear his feet smack the floor as another woman, a prospective renter, flutters around behind him with a notebook. Saraceno Design is on the second floor of the renovated Harland Building, which faces John’s wife’s artisan shop, Cleo’s, across the street on Third Ave. The walls are clean and white, and my chair is made from orange leather and old brass studs nailed into a comfortable low wooden back. John comes in and asks if I’d like coffee. I tell him I’d love some, and, as he’s thumping back through the cavernous office he hollers, “what would you like in it?” I holler back “just milk!” to which he responds, “only got sugar and powder!” I have it black. He comes back a few minutes later, deftly flicks a coaster from a hidden drawer in the long table, and places a mug before me. I peek at the coaster. It reads: “Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce Salutes Bethlehem Steel. May 3, 1993.”
When I first met John, I was in Cleo’s looking for a job. I approached him behind a glass counter filled with small trinkets and silver bangles, and he quickly became interested in my project. “You gotta talk to the business owners he said,” handing me his card. “Be in touch.”
John Saraceno doesn’t blink often when he speaks. His dark eyes are like two coffee black holes staring inquisitively. He sports a salt and pepper goatee and stern, thin lips. The skin around his eyes looked leathery and worn, and I thought of the chairs I sat in. I wondered if he took his coffee black too.
It was 10:30 on a Tuesday morning. John sat across the table from me and slid a black leather place mat in front of him.
When I first met John, I was in Cleo’s looking for a job. I approached him behind a glass counter filled with small trinkets and silver bangles, and he quickly became interested in my project. “You gotta talk to the business owners he said,” handing me his card. “Be in touch.”
John Saraceno doesn’t blink often when he speaks. His dark eyes are like two coffee black holes staring inquisitively. He sports a salt and pepper goatee and stern, thin lips. The skin around his eyes looked leathery and worn, and I thought of the chairs I sat in. I wondered if he took his coffee black too.
It was 10:30 on a Tuesday morning. John sat across the table from me and slid a black leather place mat in front of him.
...
"Well when you think of the casino it’s like, okay, if I’m over at Cleo’s, and have the little jewelry pad here, it looks like it’s... here’s the 120 acres. Here’s the casino, right here. (John draws a small square on the bottom corner of the placemat.) Okay? Here’s all the other stuff that’s gonna go on down there. It’s like, what part aren’t you gettin’? Y’know? There’s twelve hundred living units, there’s 200,000 square feet of shopping, okay, there’s gonna be the Steel Stacks Project, which is, y’know, ArtsQuest and PBS 39 is moving down off the mountain, building their whole production studio down here, they’re gonna broadcast concerts from the site, okay, there’s gonna be two small movie theaters, alright, that they’re gonna satellite in independent films on a daily basis, y’know... there’s just so much good stuff that’s gonna come outta this. And it’s gonna take 120 acres of what is essentially crap land and make it work. And between the 120 acres there, that’s the smallest piece, and then all the other stuff on the other side of the casino, okay, it’s the largest brownfields project in the United States. And it’s getting turned around. It’s getting used, okay? It’s like, y’know, so that’s my spiel. It’s like, what part aren’t you gettin’ here?"
...
...
"They’re comin'. It just started two weeks ago, okay. Three weeks ago... it’s like they... are discovering that there’s stuff out here. We’ve already waited on people, y’know, over at Cleo’s, that were at the casino or on their way to the casino, y’know, and were out here shopping. And buying stuff. The other thing that probably a lot of people weren’t thinking about was the amount of cars goin’ by the store. They discovered that there’s a store here! Or that there’s a neighborhood here. And some of them have pulled over, y’know, gone out and investigated the stores. Now, it’s more than a handful. I know that already. So it’s like... The Sands is not the problem here. Okay, it is not the problem. We have building owners that are idiots. Who are sitting on buildings and not doing anything with ‘em. That are more of a detriment than the Sands ever will be. Okay, because The Sands is only gonna be a small part of this thing. Y’know, it’s a huge part financially, it’s a driver to get this thing movin’, y’know there’s gonna be a hotel, a three-hundred room hotel there. Those people are not gonna spend twenty-four hours a day in the hotel or the casino. Y’know, they’re gonna come out, they’re gonna wander. It’s what happens in things like this...
It's like the inner harbor in Baltimore.
Okay. The inner harbor in Baltimore was like, you didn’t go there before the inner harbor was fixed up. You just didn’t go there. It was like a war zone. And it’s... have you ever been there?
Okay, essentially it’s like this. Here’s the water, okay. And they build a couple buildings that became where the shops and restaurants were. Okay, and I’m lookin’ in from the water. Okay, over here they put in a science center, over here was an old power plant that they turned into... the power plant. Restaurants and everything. And it’s gone through some changes... there’s a Starbucks in there and a huge Barnes and Noble up on the third floor or somethin’. So, but before they even got all that stuff, the inner harbor was here, and the guys were over in the neighborhood over here, which was little Italy, who were like, terrified. (John is still using the black leather mat to demonstrate the geographically adjacent camps.) They figured that they would lose all their business. Alright, and they had a guy who was workin’ on the project who grew up in Baltimore, and he went over and talked to ‘em.
He said look, the way this works, is when we get here, or right now, you’ve got a pie that’s like this big. (John makes a small circle with his hands.) Okay, and when we get done, the pie’s gonna be like this big. (John stretches out his arms and reaches his fingers towards the walls.) Alright, and your piece is gonna be like this. (He makes a big triangle with his thumbs and pointer fingers. And that is exactly what happened. The restaurants in Little Italy are printin’ money. Because what happened was that people were like alright this is cool.. uhhh let’s go discover stuff! And they go wanderin’ out. Up behind the science center, up on the hill, was a neighborhood that you could buy a house up there for three hundred bucks. Okay, that’s how bad it was. It was just run down big time. Now, I can’t even imagine what the prices are up there. Okay, they have fixed up all the old homes, okay. There were streets up there that were coated with macadam. The neighbors went out and rented busters and took the macadam off the streets, and it’s now all Belgium blocks... it’s like, a cool place to live. None of that woulda happened without the inner harbor startin’."
...
"And... we used to beat up City Hall. Y’know, whatever we needed to do. We were like these crazy people over here. Okay, when we started the organization we decided no members, no dues, no bylaws. Cuz if you had dues, you’d never have enough, if you had bylaws, no one would ever read ‘em, and if you had members, you had nonmembers. Okay so we spent a year and a half with all the hot air goin’ around and everything, and then finally, all that kinda went away, and there was a group. And then we did dues and we did membership and we did bylaws and nobody read ‘em anyway and we stuck ‘em in a drawer. And it was basically just a bunch of cowboys that were goin’ uh well, less you get the city of Bethlehem turned around, nothin’s not gonna go anywhere. And that’s what we focused on. We got to the point where if we’d walk into a room, the conversation turned to the south side. Didn’t matter where we were. Chamber, board meeting, whatever. It was like if we walked into a room. And it wasn’t us that did it. It was the other people in the room. They responded to us walkin’ in the room because we were so vocal, constantly."
It's like the inner harbor in Baltimore.
Okay. The inner harbor in Baltimore was like, you didn’t go there before the inner harbor was fixed up. You just didn’t go there. It was like a war zone. And it’s... have you ever been there?
Okay, essentially it’s like this. Here’s the water, okay. And they build a couple buildings that became where the shops and restaurants were. Okay, and I’m lookin’ in from the water. Okay, over here they put in a science center, over here was an old power plant that they turned into... the power plant. Restaurants and everything. And it’s gone through some changes... there’s a Starbucks in there and a huge Barnes and Noble up on the third floor or somethin’. So, but before they even got all that stuff, the inner harbor was here, and the guys were over in the neighborhood over here, which was little Italy, who were like, terrified. (John is still using the black leather mat to demonstrate the geographically adjacent camps.) They figured that they would lose all their business. Alright, and they had a guy who was workin’ on the project who grew up in Baltimore, and he went over and talked to ‘em.
He said look, the way this works, is when we get here, or right now, you’ve got a pie that’s like this big. (John makes a small circle with his hands.) Okay, and when we get done, the pie’s gonna be like this big. (John stretches out his arms and reaches his fingers towards the walls.) Alright, and your piece is gonna be like this. (He makes a big triangle with his thumbs and pointer fingers. And that is exactly what happened. The restaurants in Little Italy are printin’ money. Because what happened was that people were like alright this is cool.. uhhh let’s go discover stuff! And they go wanderin’ out. Up behind the science center, up on the hill, was a neighborhood that you could buy a house up there for three hundred bucks. Okay, that’s how bad it was. It was just run down big time. Now, I can’t even imagine what the prices are up there. Okay, they have fixed up all the old homes, okay. There were streets up there that were coated with macadam. The neighbors went out and rented busters and took the macadam off the streets, and it’s now all Belgium blocks... it’s like, a cool place to live. None of that woulda happened without the inner harbor startin’."
...
"And... we used to beat up City Hall. Y’know, whatever we needed to do. We were like these crazy people over here. Okay, when we started the organization we decided no members, no dues, no bylaws. Cuz if you had dues, you’d never have enough, if you had bylaws, no one would ever read ‘em, and if you had members, you had nonmembers. Okay so we spent a year and a half with all the hot air goin’ around and everything, and then finally, all that kinda went away, and there was a group. And then we did dues and we did membership and we did bylaws and nobody read ‘em anyway and we stuck ‘em in a drawer. And it was basically just a bunch of cowboys that were goin’ uh well, less you get the city of Bethlehem turned around, nothin’s not gonna go anywhere. And that’s what we focused on. We got to the point where if we’d walk into a room, the conversation turned to the south side. Didn’t matter where we were. Chamber, board meeting, whatever. It was like if we walked into a room. And it wasn’t us that did it. It was the other people in the room. They responded to us walkin’ in the room because we were so vocal, constantly."
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Interlude
The center was not holding. It was a country of bankruptcy notices and public-auction announcements and commonplace reports of casual killings and misplaced children and abandoned homes and vandals who misspelled the four-letter words they scrawled. It was a country in which families routinely disappeared, trailing bad checks and repossession papers. Adolescents drifted from city to torn city, sloughing off both the past and the future as snakes shed their skins, children who were never taught and would never now learn the games that had held the society together. People were missing. Children were missing. Parents were missing. Those left behind filed desultory missing-persons reports, then moved on themselves.
Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Two Wet Dogs
As luck sometimes has it, the Pioneer Valley graciously follows me everywhere. I went to Steel tonight with a friend of a friend from Amherst who goes to school in town here, at Lehigh. We climbed around in the pouring rain for three hours. I've never felt smaller in my life. Or wetter. From the top of the stacks, we looked south up the hill where all the old row houses were lit up like some infinitely expanding runway strip.
Steel is such an anachronistic jumble of nonsensical metal and monolithic towers - even after adjusting to places like New York City, somehow the skyscrapers there now seem small to me. Of course, Bethlehem Steel can't be more than twenty stories high, but it's different scuttling around inside a place like that.
Inside, at the top of one stack, the floors were covered in several inches of glittery dust that we let fall over a railing. We shone lights on the cascade so the whole thing sparkled in a way that made me feel like I could have been on the moon.
Steel is such an anachronistic jumble of nonsensical metal and monolithic towers - even after adjusting to places like New York City, somehow the skyscrapers there now seem small to me. Of course, Bethlehem Steel can't be more than twenty stories high, but it's different scuttling around inside a place like that.
Inside, at the top of one stack, the floors were covered in several inches of glittery dust that we let fall over a railing. We shone lights on the cascade so the whole thing sparkled in a way that made me feel like I could have been on the moon.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Not Unlike Aladdin
In the first scene of Aladdin, a giant tiger head rises from the sand, eyes burning and mouth aflame. This is the Cave of Wonders. Cheesy as it may be, this was the first image I conjured when I drove up to the Sands, a glowing monstrosity bursting out of the old Steel grounds. Its name is splayed across a remaining bridge in glittering red letters that may or may not try to look influenced by Arabic characters. On a Tuesday night, I assumed the casino would be rather calm - the surrounding streets lay tired and desolate.
Inside, the Sands is perpetuated by fantasy. Dumbfounding, surreal and absurd fantasy. Every surface entertained some sort of back lit pulse or plush red velvet. Even the waitresses lit up - twinkling and reflecting the glow in gold sequined mini dresses. Like kick line girls in a strip club. From the ceiling hung clusters of long lights, a volcanic shower dripping and suspended from the high ceiling.
Here and there are homages to Steel, convoluted in romanticism and spectacle. The lights, red, yellow, and orange, allowing the plain to look like embers and flame, the enormous steel supports that span floor to ceiling, the kitschy names of the bars, Molten and Coil. But people looked happy. After the band at the Molten bar finished up a rendition of some Elvis tune, the crowd erupted into applause; some even stood and clapped with their arms in the air. I caught myself grinning a bit, but mostly I didn't know what to do or how to act in a place like this.
Apparently the idea of Sands was the only idea lucrative enough to raise sufficient money to preserve Steel. Driving home, I looked out towards the river and noticed the blast furnaces painted in molten red lights. Like something out of Aladdin's worst post industrial nightmare. Call it preservation, I suppose.
Inside, the Sands is perpetuated by fantasy. Dumbfounding, surreal and absurd fantasy. Every surface entertained some sort of back lit pulse or plush red velvet. Even the waitresses lit up - twinkling and reflecting the glow in gold sequined mini dresses. Like kick line girls in a strip club. From the ceiling hung clusters of long lights, a volcanic shower dripping and suspended from the high ceiling.
Here and there are homages to Steel, convoluted in romanticism and spectacle. The lights, red, yellow, and orange, allowing the plain to look like embers and flame, the enormous steel supports that span floor to ceiling, the kitschy names of the bars, Molten and Coil. But people looked happy. After the band at the Molten bar finished up a rendition of some Elvis tune, the crowd erupted into applause; some even stood and clapped with their arms in the air. I caught myself grinning a bit, but mostly I didn't know what to do or how to act in a place like this.
Apparently the idea of Sands was the only idea lucrative enough to raise sufficient money to preserve Steel. Driving home, I looked out towards the river and noticed the blast furnaces painted in molten red lights. Like something out of Aladdin's worst post industrial nightmare. Call it preservation, I suppose.
Richard and the Alamo
Richard once spent five dollars photocopying a dissertation on the Alamo. He wears a red plaid shirt tucked over his belly and light washed jeans. He carries a shopping bag of purchases: two new spring jackets from the Salvation Army. This means he now has four spring jackets and two winter jackets. His head and face are covered in a shock of white hairs while a few wiry strands poke between his collar and neck. His smile is unassuming and simple, bearing four gnarled teeth.
He lit a Newport. "Pardon me, I hope you don't mind that I smoke, but hey, you're not downwind, right?" he grinned and flicked his lighter. I said I smoked, and it was alright. He sat up straighter, jumping a bit. "Oh, d'you want a few? D'you want a few bucks for a pack?"
We sat on two park benches on 4th Avenue on the corner of a tanning salon and beauty parlor. I caught frequent whiffs of nail polish that burnt my nose and made me sneeze. Richard didn't seem to notice.
At first, he walked up to me and said, bluntly, "D'you think you'll finish?" I looked up. I was reading a book. Finish the book? Eventually. "Oh, school," he added. I laughed and said yes, I will. In a year. He placed his purchases at the foot of the bench and sat down. I didn't ever have to say much.
He told me a lot about the Alamo. Eagerly bending forward on the bench so that he hollered at me when the traffic got heavy, he told me about dates, places and old battles. I asked what made him so curious about the Alamo.
"Isn't that what everybody's fighting for?" he said. "Property, y'know. It's worth dying for."
He showed me his government check, pulled from his back pocket and folded in half. "See, there it is. A check from the government. They always wanna know where you're getting your money, the government, y'know." Twenty dollars. "I get it every week," he boasted.
We talked for about a half hour before, mid-story, he checked the time, rose quickly, and announced he must leave. He gathered his bag, his two spring jackets, and shook my hand. "A pleasure," he said and walked east up 4th Avenue.
He lit a Newport. "Pardon me, I hope you don't mind that I smoke, but hey, you're not downwind, right?" he grinned and flicked his lighter. I said I smoked, and it was alright. He sat up straighter, jumping a bit. "Oh, d'you want a few? D'you want a few bucks for a pack?"
We sat on two park benches on 4th Avenue on the corner of a tanning salon and beauty parlor. I caught frequent whiffs of nail polish that burnt my nose and made me sneeze. Richard didn't seem to notice.
At first, he walked up to me and said, bluntly, "D'you think you'll finish?" I looked up. I was reading a book. Finish the book? Eventually. "Oh, school," he added. I laughed and said yes, I will. In a year. He placed his purchases at the foot of the bench and sat down. I didn't ever have to say much.
He told me a lot about the Alamo. Eagerly bending forward on the bench so that he hollered at me when the traffic got heavy, he told me about dates, places and old battles. I asked what made him so curious about the Alamo.
"Isn't that what everybody's fighting for?" he said. "Property, y'know. It's worth dying for."
He showed me his government check, pulled from his back pocket and folded in half. "See, there it is. A check from the government. They always wanna know where you're getting your money, the government, y'know." Twenty dollars. "I get it every week," he boasted.
We talked for about a half hour before, mid-story, he checked the time, rose quickly, and announced he must leave. He gathered his bag, his two spring jackets, and shook my hand. "A pleasure," he said and walked east up 4th Avenue.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Very Dirty Clothes
Allen is concerned with my ability to find work. In asking around, he learned that I, not being twenty-one until the fall, can still enter Sands - the restaurants, shops and bathrooms. Maybe a few hallways. Maybe Emeril's new place. No gambling floor. No breathing orange walls or pulsing slot machines. No made up girls or their liquored men in cream slacks and Hawaiian print shirts.
"But you know, I don't want you to be depressed or anything," he said on the phone. I stuck my finger in my ear to hear him more clearly. Standing at the gate between the iron foundry and the road, I imagined him pacing the shack around the corner. He'd be wearing the orange security vest with a clean shirt stuffed in his pants pocket. "It's nice to hear your voice again, that's all," he said.
My white t-shirt was rubbed with thick dirt and my jeans bore grayish sand stains against black denim.
I learned how to get into Steel. After loitering in the parking lot downwind from the security checkpoint and after noticing the very obvious police car by yesterday's train tracks, I walked back up Polk Street towards Third Avenue hoping to find a break in the fence.
The fence would not break. The frame only bowed a bit where foliage and weeds stubbornly grew through the holes. I tossed a blanket onto a main gate and hesitated. I pulled the blanket down. The blanket snagged. I thought of Allen walking around the corner and shaking his head, bald spot glinting in the sun. "Nahhh, you're not authorized to do that," he'd lisp.
I took the blanket along Third Avenue and approached a corroded red painted gate. A teller booth sagged between two twin pairs of bars. Two enormous dumpsters blocked the view to the street. Blanket tossed atop the gate, I considered the height. Too tall. Fuck. I pulled the blanket down and let it pool around my feet.
As I was about to leave, I turned back to the gate and looked down. Could I squeeze beneath? I pressed my face to the ground, right cheek into the gravel and scuttled under like a lanky crab. Then I pulled my backpack under the fence. I stood up, dizzily, on the other side.
I wandered through the iron foundry and what remained of the No. 4 shop. Flora here is competitively sprawling and enormous compared to the buildings. Bushes and weeds reached the roof of the foundry, an aching and empty warehouse three stories high. The brick walls of the No. 4 shop look like forcefully straightened edges of the Coliseum. Standing beneath an arch, arguably seven times my height, I listened to the cars bump through the checkpoint and the birds scamper through the bushes. Two rolls of film, done.
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