So, here’s what I was talking about in the last post…a sample from the chapter written by AbdouMaliq Simone about the city of Douala, Cameroon.
Assembling Douala: Imagining Forms of Urban Sociality
Looks like this:
I’ve been digging into this one for a couple days. What’s especially interesting is the essay about Douala, Cameroon and the bendskins: roughly 35,000 guys that ride around on motorbikes trying to hustle some commerce out of the slums and as a result get beat down by the police, which they then retaliated against by using numbers and mobility in a crowded city to shut down all traffic and activity in the urban area. But here’s the jacket’s description:
“For millennia, the city stood out against the landscape, walled and compact. This concept of the city was long accepted as adequate for characterizing the urban experience. However, the nature of the city, both real and imagined, has always been more permeable than this model reveals.
The essays in Urban Imaginaries respond to this condition by focusing on how social and physical space is conceived as both indefinite and singular. They emphasize the ways this space is shared and thus made into urban culture. Urban Imaginaries offers case studies on cities in Brazil, Israel, Turkey, Lebanon, and India, as well as in the United States and France, and in doing so blends social, cultural, and political approaches to better understand the contemporary urban experience.”
So here’s a little bit about me:
Last week I got in a big argument with one of my best friends. Why? Well, I guess we both have personalities and don’t know when to shut up. Because it was 5 in the morning after drinking through a 2 a.m. band practice. Why? Because bad ideas and bad decisions are our specialty. I guess I can only speak for myself.
You know sometimes when you get offended by something, it’s as if that offender takes on all the attributes of everything that pisses you off about existence. A couple big talkers can definitely take this too far. Notice I’m sparing the details, because it really isn’t worth revisiting. Not now, hopefully not ever.
Through the magic of text messaging we have been able to very indirectly deal with this gaping rift, but a limp and facetious hand shake a few nights ago leads me to believe this may take a while to resolve. So be it. I think we have practice again on Saturday.
Well, I took about four naps today so I can’t sleep. At least there’s these:
And for something completely different, download this:
It was a good weekend in San Francisco. Some old friends from Minneapolis rolled through town on tour. Knife World. They played at Thrillhouse on Saturday night, and we opened for them. My head is still in a haze from that night so I’ll be light on the details here, but it was definitely a good time. A lot of friends and forties, many records were exchanged and what not. Also played were Autistic Youth and Bad Parents.
Besides that, the weather has been nice so we went to the Anarchist Book Fair out in Golden Gate park. Got some flagged literature, sat in the park and it was nice.
Hopefully my girlfriend will be back from Detroit soon.
But til then, take it EAZY…
