Oh, great.

Just great. Chicago is the most stressful city in the country. According to Forbes. [sigh] I would suggest moving, but that's too stressful.

[link via Gaper's Block]

Suspiring Over Spires & Spindles

Sigh. What is it with pointy structures around here? As one goes up, another is set to be taken down. Neither effort seems to do much for the local culture.

First, the sad news: Sun-Times and Tribune report that the Berwyn Spindle is up for auction. As a former resident of Berwyn, I have to say that this is a sad moment for the small city. Not sure what Berwyn would have going for it otherwise, frankly, save for a few Son of Svengoolie mentions, the Houby Day Parade (I have yet to see a single mushroom in Berwyn), and bungalows. If you want to help save this historic piece of Berwyn, visit SaveTheSpindle.com. (The Spindle will be there for at least a few more months, but get on it now.)

Secondly, the not-sure-if-it's-good-or-bad news: The Chicago Spire isn't for Chicago, it's just being built here. When some co-workers wondered out loud last week about who would buy all the condos in the Chicago Spire, I quipped "Japanese investors." I was closer than I thought. Turns out there's strong Malaysian interest in the 'Spire properties.

The Spire condos aren't remotely affordable for the vast majority of Chicagoans. (Compare the price of the Berwyn Spindle auction to the price of a single unit in The Chicago Spire, and think about the relatively small expense to nurture local culture versus the exorbitant expense put into making Chicago more like NYC or London. Consider our ridiculous new sales tax, the highest sales tax in the entire country. We're selling out in the hope of attracting the Olympic Games, tickets to which none of us will be able to afford by 2016. What fun!)

The lesson we can all learn here is, don't get rid of pointy structures you already have - they define your character more than another Walgreen's store ever could. But if you're building a new pointy structure, don't make it too expensive for the city in which you're building.

Spindle photo by Andrew Westel. Rendering of spire by Shelbourne Development Group.

GSTV: you can't spend five minutes without TV

Wouldn't the money spent installing televisions in gas pumps be better spent defraying the high price of gas? If my gas station is installing flat screens on the pumps, I get a strong sense that they're making more money than they need. Why compromise my concentration while I'm pouring highly flammable fluids into an automobile, anyway? Why not let me sit in my car with the inane DVD player I installed in the dashboard and use the GSTV money to provide full-service instead?

If it really is so "maddeningly tedious" for you as AdRants claims, you need to start walking, biking, or taking public transportation more often.

Seriously. If you can't go five minutes without television, you probably aren't fit to be driving at all.

A Letter to Wal*Mart Dance Party-People:

Kids, no anarchist spends so much effort trying to make a big-box store look like a fun time. You've practically produced three spec advertisements for Wal*Mart and Target here, playing up to cliches and ultimately showing that you (suburban alterna-kids, nu-metal heads and army brats) enjoy yourselves at the big-box stores in your town.

Don't get me wrong - I'm sure you all had a great time at Wal*Mart. But you are neither anarchists nor punks just because you wear black, mohawks and tatoos into big-box retailers (and dance to mainstream pop music, and film what amount to guerila promo videos for said retailers).

Wal*Mart and Target both have big corporate marketing departments, public relations agencies, branding consultants and advertising agencies that are very pleased with you all right now, for giving them inadvertent "viral" marketing (about which they can now say "the kids think we're cool enough to have a dance party here") - even if the sales clerks turned your party off.

Parents, more than ads, make kids consumers

We Make Money Not Art directs us to a Guardian article about the innumerable marketing messages kids (and everyone else) are exposed to every day.

Unfortunately, the article takes the low road, opting for sensationalism instead of realism. For example, "one study" (we have no idea the sampling size, randomness of sampling, population, etc. - which makes this study reference useless) claimed that more kids recognize McDonald's golden arches and Nike's swoosh before they recognize Jesus. (To be fair, McDonald's and Nike are real companies; Jesus is mythology.)

The article goes on to complain about kids who know brand names better than they know their own names. Not surprising, if you bother to look at the parents. When they are raised in a world where their parents place irrational values on brands, kids naturally immitate their parents' behavior (regardless of how rational that behavior is). Kids typically continue to do this at least until they reach their tween years, when the influences of peers begin to crowd out the influences of parents.

I think the article fails in that it doesn't hold parents accountable (or even acknowledge parents as key influencers), as if three- and four-year olds are somehow on their own in the world. When your parents proudly wear swoosh-laden clothing every day, or seem to be in a better mood when they can unload the dinner duties on a place that has golden arches at its entrance, what kind of conclusions do you make about the world? Whatever they are, your parents' behavior leads you to those conclusions - perhaps more than any other cultural influence.

To Yahoo!, from the streets

Wooster Collective reports that Michael Oliver has created a cool hack combining Flickr (a Yahoo! property) and Google Maps to create a dynamic map of street art snapshots as uploaded by users. Of course, Oliver's hack isn't working right now... but there's a similar hack that does work - using geotagged Flickr images and Google Maps - here (though there isn't much that's been mapped yet).

Hey, Yahoo!, maybe it's time to get your map application in shape enough to compete with Google's? This "hack" creates a combination of tools that are not unique to street art afficionados; wait until the travel industry and its journalists pick up on this... if they haven't already.

Up your ass with luxury.

Various sources are reporting that we may soon witness a rise in popularity of luxury toilet paper.

Why would I want to willingly associate the unattainable idea of luxury with the soiled, tangible reality of fecal matter? Luxury = shit? Well, okay, if you luxurious brands insist... I'll just think of you all as crap from now on. (I'll keep favoring the "secret" brands who don't make me pay to be a walking billboard.)

Could a "high-end meets rear-end" trend actually signal the decline of luxury brands, or just a lowering of standards for what are considered luxury goods?

Either way, it appears that luxury (as we once knew it) is ultimately headed down the drain... probably for the best.

Two-faced Tats Cru?

This post completes my triology of calling out street artists. It's more of a follow-up to the Tats Cru / Hummer post.

As you can plainly see here, here and here, Tats Cru are in fact paid by Hummer. They get paid to paint the message, then deface it. I'm almost jealous. Isn't the consumer supposed to be involved in the communication at some point, folks? Are Hummer and Tats Cru just wanking each other here?

Just because you're "street" doesn't mean you're immune to ethics. Wait... Let me rephrase that: just because you're a corporate graffiti artist doesn't mean you're "street".

More Irresponsible Commentary

So I'm sure came off grumpy in the last post about ill-conceived street art... but here's another reason why the street artists need a good calling-out.

Tats Cru used a toxic, perhaps even petroleum-based spraypaint when they tagged this Hummer ad, presumably to add a tone of environmental responsibility. And they re-branded it with their own branding, which isn't much nobler than what Hummer did in the first place. One could argue that it's actually worse, since Hummer paid to place the ad and Tats Cru played the role of the hater.

If it were only about the environment and opposition to gas-guzzling, there'd be no reason for Tats Cru to brand the vandalism; instead, they're just looking for legitimate work for themselves... Tats Cru is already in league with coroporate graffiti. Consider the projects they've already done for soft drinks, hard liquor and malt liquor.

Or was Tats Cru simply paid by Hummer to vandalize their own ad?

Clip art blows, kids.

I've seen way too much of this in my neighborhood.

I know I'm not the only person who's tired of every other struggling art student assuming the general public wants to see his or her doodles plastered all over bus stops, train stations and otherwise private property. I'm all for poetic terrorism - but not shoddy imitations. "Street art" in this vein strikes me as arrogant and inane - this particular example mounts toxic paint and adhesives to other people's property. The poetry of the "nature scene" is lost, betrayed in the piece's execution.

The take-away here (though it may not have occurred to the artist) is that Chicago street art is as boring and unoriginal as clip art. Maybe try to break the law for a good reason next time, kids? Follow-through and please try not to further poison our environment with half-baked "back to nature" efforts.

Homo Urbanus

According to the UN, half the world's population will soon live in cities. This comes as no surprise when you consider that we're well into the Information Age, we're consequently placing more value on culture itself, and cities physically represent our cultural centers. A higher population density means a higher rate of meme-churn (did I just coin a new term?); a higher/faster rate of cultural evolution. More people tend to yield more ideas, simply put. More complicated, however, is the urban sprawl that ensues.

(article link via Kottke)