and it was cold
and, it was super interesting.
I'm going to ask two questions here
and i'd like you to comment on this post with any thoughts you have-
1)
Bill has a strong point of view. What did his home and the tour he gave us tell us about his values? What's important to him in terms of space, in terms of history, in terms of place?
2)
Bill has a strong point of view. Everything he showed us and told us is framed by that point of view. To quote him, what was missing? What stories, what perspectives, what questions were left out? What did the tour leave you wondering about around the edges, and on other sides of what he shared?
We don't get to really debrief this night until wednesday...
So if you can, use these prompts to do some thinking, and some writing.
let's get down some thoughts before they become- the thing we did before we did the redmoon workshop.
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3 comments:
More than once did Bill refer to "useless green space." There was a corner lot near the Loyola campus and then the sidewalk greenery. He seemed to place value on city space that could be occupied and used by humans. A space that was green for green's sake had lower value than a space where children could play ball or a wide sidewalk where people could walk side-by-side.
He also inferred that Uncommon Ground was offering a culture that was not valued in Rogers Park. ($7 beers and weekday brunch). In his opinion, Rogers Park bar culture does NOT include $7 beers and weekday brunches.
His tour focused on a Rogers Park bar culture where establishments looked the other way at under-aged patrons, joints were bashed to splinters by baseball bats, disrespect was settled using knives and guns, universities unleashed health inspectors on dive bars, and back door speakeasies were operated behind padlocked storefronts.
(this is from greer)
He really values a respect for history. That it is disrespectful to a place of a certain style and architecture to come in and build something that completely doesn't fit. It seems like he feels that this is "ignoring the space". However, in his own home he very much made the space his own. I wonder if he would find it disrespectful or an ignorance of space to place his bedroom in the living room? He might say he thought about this decision and thought this plan was a better utilization of the space. He might say of the concrete monstrosities next to Loyola that they were not thoughtful decisions made in response to the previously existing space. Perhaps that is the issue - that there needs to be some thought and conversation behind spacial changes otherwise they are disrespectful. I wonder if there was a committee who discussed the architecture of the concrete monstrosity?
Bill was very clear that he did not like new big monstrosities (aka 15 story grey buildings) going up next to interestingly designed artful buildings(2 or 3 story buildings that had interesting bricklay designs). Like Greer, I'm curious how that was decided and if the city knew that the new big buildings might not be very pretty, but did they think that having big buildings would make it a livelier neighborhood?
After working at Redmoon and being given the task of house in which 50 people had to fit that could only be 1 foot by 2 foot and being given very few materials - I wonder if the people that designed the huge building in Rogers Park were working with limited resources. According to Bill, they were not - but we didn't get to hear their side of the story.
But I also want to add that it was fascinating that Bill has never lived outside of his current zip code. It's so simple, but amazingly rare.
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