cybermule: (Mark13)
[personal profile] cybermule
Any minute now the hipsters are going to turn up on my mental post-apocalyptic wasteland with their fixy bikes and Cath Kidson thermoses and I'm going to have to blow them to kingdom come with a Big Fuckoff Gun. Nonetheless, these pictures are awesome and encapsulate all that I find beautiful and fascinating about Amerika:

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2011/02/07/captured-the-ruins-of-detroit/2672/

(Incidentally, I've always hated the way FB shits all over any links you copy from it, leaving dirty little FB spoors behind. Now I additionally really hate the way it allows people to "like" my new friendships. Shudder.)

That also reminded me of one of my favourite Bowie songs, and my favourite version thereof:



Which reminds me of [livejournal.com profile] weemadharold, who was always my biggest Bowie ally and is still AWOL :(

It also helps me clear another blob from the bum.txt file. I've been feeling increasingly at home in Bristol this year as I've made friends and got to know it. It's only taken a decade :P Part of it is watching my own particular small town creep closer from being a dormitory town into being an exurb. I like that term. It used to be a mining village. It is Barstow to Bristol's San Fran. But now it's kind of absorbed onto the edge of the connurbation. I like the fringes at the other end of Bristol, too. For a while back in the Spring I seemed to spend all my time on the A37. It's like frontierland down there, the weird strung out little functional bits of Amerika you find, which fascintate me more than the homogenity of the cities. Cities *do* have their own characters, but nowadays they also seem to have been shrinkwrapped in a vanilla coating of bland.

I even have a fondness for Bradley Stoke. Wouldn't want to live there, but it does supply a kind of no man's land to buffer me against the hipsters. Although I feel they make make an inroad through Downend.

Date: 2011-09-20 09:44 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] quercus.livejournal.com
DO YOU KNOW HOW COLD IT GETS IN MICHIGAN!!

Otherwise yes. One could live in a theatre. Or a Unitarian Chapel.


Mind you, there's always Llanwern...

Date: 2011-09-20 07:15 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cybermule.livejournal.com
wtf is Llanwern? I'm not sure I want to dignify it with a Google.

And yes, I hear it gets a bit parky.

Date: 2011-09-20 08:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] quercus.livejournal.com
Ex-steelworks, just down the road from here. It's a vast shed that you can see from England.

Date: 2011-09-21 07:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cybermule.livejournal.com
Ahhhh! That's what *that* is. South Wales coast is far more interesting than I ever gave it credit for...

Date: 2011-09-20 10:39 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tonibunny.livejournal.com
My ancestors were miners from the outskirts of Bristol: Kingswood, Oldland and Bitton. I find the history of the area fascinating.

Date: 2011-09-20 07:15 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cybermule.livejournal.com
Coincidentally, I inherited a load of books of Bristol history recently. I feel settled, I think I might read them...

Date: 2011-09-20 03:56 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] girfan.livejournal.com
Detroit was a city I would never have lived in-relatives lived in the suburbs in the 60s/70s so I've been there when it was still in reasonable nick. The main parts had quite the lack of greenery. I knew it was going downhill when a friend told me that (in the late 80s/early 90s) you could buy a Victorian mansion for the price of a new car and no one wanted to due to the location. Houses of that ilk in Chicago were worth 10-20x as much!


It's sad so much good architecture has been lost.

Date: 2011-09-20 07:16 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cybermule.livejournal.com
How far apart are Chicago and Detroit?

Date: 2011-09-20 10:03 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mallt.livejournal.com
Google has the shortest route by car as 283 miles.
I was curious too!

Date: 2011-09-21 07:31 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cybermule.livejournal.com
Heh. And there I was thinking it would be about 50 miles. Ain't America BIG? ;)

Date: 2011-09-21 07:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mallt.livejournal.com
Yes... yes it is!
My sister & I drove home from my parents after Christmas a few years ago. Approx 2200 miles... Texas, USA to Alberta, Canada. We did it in 2 days, 16hrs the first day & 20hrs the second. Never again!

Date: 2011-09-21 07:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cybermule.livejournal.com
Heheh. At some point I'm going to fly to the US, hire a car, and just drive around until I'm bored. Prolly when I retire...

Date: 2011-09-21 09:27 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mallt.livejournal.com
There are some areas where you'll get bored pretty quickly ;p
(I'm not a fan of driving through the prairies!)

Date: 2011-09-20 04:53 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] amiga500.livejournal.com
Yep, Detroit is a shithole with few street signs, and too scary for hipsters. It's a place where I'd happily carry if I could (I normally don't unless we're well into the desert and possibly dealing with animals or human smugglers), and why I gave my parents a GPS. My dad would usually argue with what he considers an expensive gift. After having been lost in Detroit, he took this with no complaint.

Date: 2011-09-20 07:17 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cybermule.livejournal.com
I heard it was scary. Which compared to British scary is like scary^2.

Detroit

Date: 2011-09-21 10:35 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] johyde.livejournal.com
Those pictures are beautiful! Very autumnal, and so so sad. What I can't work out is the waste - why weren't the books at least removed from that library to another one where people could still use them? But then I've never pretended to understand the world.

Re: Detroit

Date: 2011-09-21 07:54 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cybermule.livejournal.com
It's best not to even try. Most of the time it just comes down to it costing more to do something than its on-paper value.

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