Block Partly

One of the nine or ten thousand perks about living in Depot Town is that I get to monitor development on the Thomson Block.

I pass it every morning on my way to work, and I can actually shave a few square meters off my frequent walks up River St. by cutting behind it. I did so yesterday and was shocked to see ACTUAL WORK being done on the building.

For years it sat abandoned and for months it sat undisturbed even as it was theoretically being renovated. The Barnes' only managed to hang a sign out front. The Beales matched them in that and did a bit better by parking a construction trailer out front. I remember that they were hauling garbage out of it sometime in 2007 but apparently Beale the younger ran out of money.

The project is apparently back in the green for having leased space to the dude who took over the Elbow Room. The rear wall has been knocked out and is being re-bricked. The front doors were open this morning and sturdy looking chaps were hauling in particle board and other building type stuff.

I doubt they'll have lofts (or anything else) ready by Fall 2008 as their sign proclaims, but I'm excited nonetheless.

I just realized "all politics is local" is a paradox

Lately I've been reading (and writing) about the postmodern condition (how much more über-hipster can you get, honestly) and its relation to art and commodities. I'm not going to name-drop (well I will, just not here and now...) but I did want to write for just a minute on how I see these forces playing out in my own personal life.

One of the things these high-falutin' intellectuals write about is the erosion in the (post-)modern mindset of the idea of place: the copy machine , the (cell) phone, the camera, the automobile, the projector, and the internet have all worked to turn presence into (functional) omnipresence. Increasingly nothing is anywhere, everything is everywhere. (1) And business has mirrored this, too, moving to meet popular desire wherever possible. No matter where you go there they are: a Starbucks, a Walmart, a McDonald's, a Best Buy. Or better yet, amazon.com. This is the essence of Western Culture as it conceives itself: the love affair between desire-satisfying boxes and desiring bodies; it's hard to know which is reproducing faster.

This is, of course, an illusion. Meijer is at the corner of Carpenter and Michigan Ave (among other places), and the products within all have a history and an origin. Nothing "comes from the store." You can do a google image search for "Magritte pipe" and find a copy (of a copy of a copy of a copy...) but -- çeci n'est pas une tableaux! -- you'll find neither a pipe nor a painting. The real one (the painting, I have no idea about the pipe) is still in the LA County Museum.

But, and this is where it gets interesting, there is this emerging counter-desire that unsentimental ad execs tell me is taking America by storm! (True story.) Apparently The Charm of The Highway Strip has faded with middle-age; people are really into local business now. Well kind of. How many people do you know who shop at the Food Co-op exclusively, for instance? But, the unsentimental ad execs told me, local-ness is the Most Valuable Thing local business can sell. In other words, our most precious, most fetishised commodity.

As cool as that sounds, and as much as it would seem to promote a decentralized, heterogeneous culture, I'm not sure I'm buying. The unique, cool, and firmly localized Ypsilanti Food Co-op does not transfer a portion of its essence to that can of tomatoes you bought. Just check your receipt, it's not on there. Local-ness in not another commodity, like crude oil, coffee, or the iPhone.

And what about all these other things we are being sold along with our cars, diamond rings, and mutual funds? What about security, love, and happiness? What is up with this collision of consumption and desire? It's one big mass delusion. Commodities have to be objects of exchange, the fact that we desire them is not enough.

Can we let ephemera remain ephemeral? I hope so, or we risk the madness of confusing closeness with control, and like The Duke of Ferrara, ending up with a rather poor substitute. People cannot purchase presence, except in real estate, fine art and (still, lamentably) the slave trade.

It's something to think about as I drive my Japanese car with Venezuelan gas on my way to the local East African grocery store (where they now call me brother) to buy a Bermudan phone card to call my girlfriend. In Azerbaijan.

1) Critics are split on whether the fact that nothing is anywhere means that nothing means anything anymore, (man, how's that for a brain teaser) but Kevin Dole 2 thinks so.

Lookout! Names dropping!
Karl Marx, Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Robert Browning, and YOU.