the wreck of the old '97

One astute reader mentioned the song ‘Wreck of the Old 97’ so I must talk about it at some length. This is perhaps the finest song train song ever written. Why is it great? A) it’s about trains b) it’s about Virginia c) it’s about freight transportation d) it’s about transportation history e) it’s about supply chains. Okay, it’s not really about supply chains but I digress.

The Wreck of the Old 97 is a real deal historical event. Back in 1903, a mail train derailed off a 75 -foot trestle near Danville, Virginia killing 9 people. The reports from the scene were grisly, such as the person scalded to death by the steam. The train in question was a very recent model, the Old 97 (a name derived from the year 1897 I presume), which was known for its high speed. The train was late and was trying to make up time when it derailed. There was a centennial four years ago in Danville and it would have been really cool to go to.

The song based on the event is folk song legend. It was the first song in the United States to sell 1 million copies. Many artists have covered it including the legendary version by Johnny Cash from his Live at San Quentin album. On a side note, if anyone can think of a better opening to any musical set than Big River – Wreck of the Old 97 – I Still Miss Someone – I Walk the Line I would like to know because that four song lineup is almost incomprehensible to believe.

The Johnny Cash version of the song is great because the song actually sounds like a freight train. Now that is the height of thematic excellence. Listening to Live at San Quentin is the closest thing many of us Americans get to riding a train on a regular basis.

The song has been so successful that there is even a band named for it - the Old 97s. From their song Northern Line:

I'm dreaming on a night train 

It's only been a light rain, and a darkened sky and a starry night
I'm humming on a cold train 

I'm singing about the wreck of the Old 97

transportation songs: i want my city back

I am on a never ending search for songs with directions in them and a (re)acquaintance informed me of a Mighty Mighty Bosstones song with such directions. I remember seeing the Bosstones play in the Capitol Ballroom in DC back in 1996. That's over a decade ago! Wow. And now the area where the Capitol Ballroom used to is slated to become yuppie heaven, as I blogged about recently, as it was just north of the new DC baseball stadium.

To get around NIMBY'ism and zoning ordinances clubs like the Capitol Ballroom located in near SE as did many gay clubs. Now that they're on the way out, these establishments are having a difficult time finding new locations.

the song: I Want My City Back

Up around 95, sailing down Storrow Drive
Left exit into Kenmore Square
Slowed down when I got there
And that's when it was crystal clear
It wasn't there, it wasn't where
I left it, when I left it
I want my city back

diagonal conveyence as supreme insult

'I address the haters
and under estimators
and ride up on em like they escalators'

breathe - Fabolous


I wonder if this is more or less of an insult if he is referring to the much maligned escalators of the Washington Metro

train songs (vol 1)

'I still hear trains at night, when the wind is right'

this is a firedoor never leave open - the Weakerthans

'slept all night in the cedar grove
I was born to ramble, born to rove
some men are searchin for the holy grail
but there ain't nothin sweeter
than riding the rails'

cold water - Tom Waits

'this same goddamm train
glides soft through the rain
and I sit and dizzily wait'

minute - the Lawrence Arms

coming soon, 2008

www.smartusa.com

get your GIS gear!

these t-shirts are fabulous!! www.gisnuts.com where they're nuts about GIS!

Playing SimCity for Real

This article from the New York Times is notable for many things, including its headline: Playing SimCity for Real. Here is the author's take on the roles of planners in the Centennial project: "Planners like Jackson use an array of sophisticated software programs, based on demographic and market research, that enable them to calculate the population and density required to animate new neighborhoods. Such programs also help them figure out how many schools and police stations they may need. To see their work as a real-life version of the computer game SimCity isn’t far off."

'animate new neighhorhoods'? I'm not so sure about that.

In the article Robert Lang of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech states that the future of urban development is "remaking the postwar landscape" by transforming our automobile-oriented suburbs and that "Los Angeles is really the nation's largest infill project." LA and other western cities might just provide clues to the future of urban planning as they will run out of space long before the less geographically constrained eastern portions of the United States.

city poems: seattle

sometimes one word attaches
the paper begs for an addition
Seattle reading Moby Dick sipping coffee
rhythm of raindrops into Puget Sound
I should jump on a boat journey across the seas
instead I'll knock off your hat
as someone had in New Bedford
halfway across the century
the day of my dad's birth 1944
year's later my inheritance
grows in affinity for the port cities

soccer: the bastion of American communists?

Steven Wells of the Guardian UK has the very interesting article about how communists and anarachists in the United States are passionate about soccer. In a portion of the article, he details a major game between anarchists and communists in San Francisco, where some people in the crowd were chanting: "You say you look to Mao for salvation? What about the Xinjiang workers' situation?!"

One thing Wells doesn't get into is that the American left tends to favor almost anything that is unpopular in the United States and popular in Europe. I myself often look to Europe favorably but this tendency should be noted and examined in detail.

construction update: DC baseball stadium

I read somewhere that there was a webcam showing the construction of the new baseball stadium for the Washington Nationals, a stadium which the district government spent over $600 creating. After checking out the Clark Construction webcam I was surprised to see much progress had been made. One thing that struck me was how close the stadium will be to the Anacostia River. This gives me a good idea for a future post, which will contain a primer for Nats fans on what they need to know about the Anacostia River. Step 1: that it exists.

Even more astonishing are Monument Realty's plans for a Ballpark District. The Half Street Corridor will contain 775,000 sq ft of mixed-use retail, office space, a 200 room trendy W hotel, and 320 residential units. The District of Columbia it seems, even in SE, is ready for hyper upscale development. From an urban design standpoint, I really like those lights that arch over the corridor and provide definition for the space without being too confining. I hope they make the final design. Construction is scheduled for completion in 2009. For those unfamiliar with the area, most of this part of SE currently looks like this:

Angel es de Laos

I just returned from Los Angeles, where I had a very good time. But let me tell you, the University of Virginia webmail service shares an anti-LA bias with much of the east coast. On one of my e-mails the spell check corrected my Los with 'Laos' and my Angeles with 'Angel es'. With the help of the spell checker, I was able to construct the sentence that is the subject heading of this post.

I brought with me two of the classic LA urban studies/planning films: Blade Runner and Chinatown. I didn't have the time to see Chinatown (that's, that's Chinatown) but it was fun to watch Blade Runner in the place where it was supposed to be located. However, the surroundings of Los Angeles are almost completely opposite that of Blade Runner, which to this day looks a lot like modern Tokyo.

What to make of LA? Well, UCLA has one of the coolest things to share my name since the Maryland Area Railroad Commuter. May I present the Mindful Awareness Research Center.


The best part has to be the website address: marc.ucla.edu. But I am highly supportive of mindfulness, awareness, and research so this place has to be quality. In the About MARC section of the website is the following quote by Henry David Thoreau: 'Direct your eyesight inward, and you'll find a thousand regions in your mind undiscovered. Travel them, and be expert in home-cosmography.' Home-cosmography? What on earth is that?

The only other thing I have to say about LA is that on Monday it was 80 degrees and sunny there and back in DC it was in the 30s; yes, that's a 50 degree difference. !Angel es de Laos pero el suena de Los Angeles!

the saga of the Aztec Express

The Los Angeles Times has a very interesting story on the saga of the Aztec Express, a vessel seized off the coast of Haiti. The article brings up many pertinent questions such as: what constitutes ownership, what is nationality in terms of business, and how are national laws applied in the international realm? These might seem like easy questions but in the world of shipping simple issues become complex quickly. And why is shipping important? I will continue to argue that shipping provides the foundation for the modern globalized economy. Certainly, stories like the Aztec Express are the marginal cases but these cases are still pretty amazing.