Category: Urban issues

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Unrequired Reading: Nov. 10, 2006

As you know, I’ve been interested in the development of the new Airbus A380 (the really big plane) and all the production problems Airbus has been having with it. The fact that I fly between 25,000 and 35,000 miles each year is a key contributor to this interest.

Barbara Peterson at Popular Mechanics takes care of my addiction with an article on the engineering issues Airbus is running into:

Will the A380 be the next Concorde — an engineering breakthrough with little chance of breaking even? Certainly, the problem the jetliner was supposed to help solve — airport gridlock — still exists. The world’s major hubs already operate at full capacity during peak hours, and traffic is expected to increase 4 percent annually, from 4.2 billion passengers in 2005 to 7 billion passengers in 2020. Building new airports or significantly expanding existing ones, though, is a practical and political nightmare.

The Airbus solution: Increase capacity with a plane that carries up to 900 passengers — nearly twice as many as the 747. “It is this big monster,” says Hans Weber, president of Tecop International, a San Diego-based aviation consulting firm. “And Airbus has struggled with the nightmare of making something this big economically efficient.”

Meanwhile, Boeing has gambled that the market is most interested in a fuel-efficient, midrange widebody that gives airlines flexibility. Its flagship project became the 250-passenger 787 Dreamliner, slated to go into service in 2008.

Virtually all experts agree that the A380 will eventually join the civilian fleet. (The plane’s maiden voyage — a planned Singapore Airlines flight to Sydney, Australia — was recently pushed back, again, and is now slated for late 2007.) But the problems facing the most expensive, ambitious nonmilitary aircraft project in history are mounting.

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The AV Club interviewed Steven Wright this week. Turns out he and I share thoughts on travel:

AVC: What are the best and worst parts of touring?

SW: The best is definitely being in front of the audience, that rush in front of all those people. And then the other part is, “Oh my God, I’m in another hotel.” I say to my friends, if I won some contest, it would be like, “You have won five weeks in your own house!” Oh my God! I’d be jumping up and down hugging the host, hugging the other contestants.

AVC: So you’re not a fan of hotels?

SW: There’s just so many of them. It’s not that I don’t like hotels. This sounds kind of simple, but it’s true: The fact that you’re in a hotel means also that you’re not home. So as the time keeps going, and the experiences keep going, it’s like, “Man, I have not been home in this giant amount of time.”

I wonder if he was really enthusiastic and energetic in the interview.

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Five teams of finalists have been named by the New Orleans Building Corp. for the project of rebuilding the city’s waterfront. Unfortunately, Frank Gehry’s on one of the finalist-squads.

The potential development zone includes a largely derelict 4.5-mile stretch of the north bank of the Mississippi River between Jackson Avenue and the Industrial Canal, which now includes mostly wharves and port facilities. It borders the Lower Garden district, the warehouse district, the French Quarter, Marigny, and Baywater.

The RFQ calls for new commercial, cultural, park, and transportation uses for the area, and for maintaining cruise and cargo operations. This, says Cummings, could include a continuous park with walking and bike paths, museums, a large performance venue, a culinary university campus, and modern cruise ship terminals. He stresses that the area will be oriented to public facilities, not ”condominiums and private property.”

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In the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” category, Sheldon Silver helped shut down the West Side Stadium project, for which I’m quite thankful. As this City Journal article points out, Rep. Silver’s done a lot of stuff I don’t agree with:

Until last year, New York had an 80-year-old law that held auto-leasing companies ultimately responsible for accidents caused by drivers who leased or rented their cars. The law made about as much sense as, say, holding Chrysler responsible for accidents caused by the customers who buy and drive their vehicles. The law drove many auto-leasing companies out of New York, and it forced those that stayed to protect themselves by asking customers to jump through expensive legal hoops. The law had no constituency save the trial lawyers.

But the law stayed on the books thanks to Silver, who used his control of the assembly to block its repeal repeatedly. Silver said that he got in the way to protect victims of car accidents. But the more likely explanation for his obstructionism is that he himself is a trial lawyer and is beholden to the trial lawyer lobby. In fact, it took blanket federal legislation last year to nullify the auto-leasing law and similar if more limited laws in a few other states.

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Rumsfeld et al. obviously mangled the postwar planning for Iraq, but I think he had some revolutionary ideas about how to execute a war-plan itself, sorta like being a good in-game basketball coach who has no ability to manage his players between games. The Iraqi army, one of the largest in the world, with months of preparation, was flat-out annihilated by a relatively light force of troops. That’s nothing to sneeze at, even with all the disastrous consequences. I think military theorists (and practitioners) will have plenty to learn from his mistakes and his successes.

Victor Davis Hanson goes a lot further in his praise for Rumsfeld.

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Speaking of the election, Brandon Arnold at the Cato Institute contends that gerrymandering is still a major force in Congressional elections:

Consider that there were 435 races in the House and Senate with an incumbent trying to retain his or her seat. Only 26 — 6% — of challengers in these races have won. That’s pretty low for a “throw the bums out” election. Pending the outcome of three or four yet-to-be-determined races, this year’s 94% incumbent reelection rate appears to be slightly higher than the 90% rate of 1994.

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Where’s the cup holder?

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Pop music stars should not write children’s books. Only Ph.D.’s formerly at contract research organizaztions should write children’s books.

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According to Theodore Dalyrmple, New Zealand once had excellent used bookstores but now has a crappy penal system.

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And finally: “A chicken, with two asses!” (thanks, Tina!)

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I Live in a Suitcase

Well, them’s the best-laid plans. I decided not to spend $200 just to get into the Magic game (I could’ve gone with a cheaper seat, but it would’ve been pretty high up in the O-rena), and the conference people called to say that they couldn’t sneak me into the Pleasure Island get-together, meaning I’d have to pony up the $120 fee to explore . . . Pleasure Island! (I make a dramatic pause whenever I say the name.)

Deciding drunkenness is the better part of valor, I elected to hit Shula’s for dinner, knock back a couple of Hendrick’s & tonics with my 20-oz. Kansas City strip, and head back to the room for some awkwardly confessional writing. Because I’m all about customer satisfaction.

Which brings us to my hotel room, where I’m sitting in my underwear (black socks, natch) and listening to I Live in a Suitcase, by Thomas Dolby. It came from his fourth album, which is terrible, but I’ve gained an affinity for this song, which is about getting stuck in Los Angeles. Funnily enough, it’s just about the only major city I haven’t been to for a conference or trade show.

It’s also the city I think is least likely to offer itself up over the course of a 3- or 4-day trip. I’ve always had this impression that LA is much more a state-of-mind city than just about any other in America, that it reveals itself over the course of day-to-day life, but not to the tourist. This probably stems from being as spread out as it is, and as devoted to its key industry (entertainment, of course) as it is.

And it probably stems from my mythologizing of it, but I’m really not trying to romanticize Hollywood by any means. It’s just that almost every other city puts me in mind of a particular set of landmarks, of lifestyles, of business, of history, and I find myself drawing a blank over LA. I don’t think “Chinatown” should stands in for the city. Maybe I’ll make an extended trip there someday, but I doubt it’ll happen. If any of you have some commentary/meta-thoughts on LA to share, comment away!

But we’re in Orlando (or, more precisely, Lake Buena Vista, FL): Living in a suitcase also puts me back in the world of USA Today, as I mentioned during last week’s travels.

Over breakfast this morning, I discovered that avian flu is a subject for the Life section, not News. It seems that Indonesia isn’t doing so well treating it because “Decentralized power weakens grip on outbreak.” If only that junta were still running things.

On the plus side, it appears that coffee helps against Alzheimer’s disease, and just about everything else. Is nothing beyond the reach of coffee achievers?

The lead News story is about how Fresno is the most insanely hard-ass city on drunk drivers in America:

Police sneak into the driveways of convicted drunk drivers to plant Global Positioning System tracking devices on their cars and search their homes for evidence they’ve been drinking.

The “problem,” it seems, is that drunk driving fatalities have leveled off since the mid-1990s, after dropping annually for nearly 20 years prior to that. Rather than credit the reduction in deaths to improved vehicle safety and greater awareness about drunk driving, the article implies that it’s only police & the courts that can reduce the number of deaths. Hence, bugging the cars of convicted drunk drivers.

I also discovered that the Second Amendment doesn’t seem to pertain if you’re drunk:

One officer observes a man walking unsteadily as he leaves the bar. When he gets in his SUV and starts to drive off, other officers swoop down on him. The officers find a loaded Glock handgun in the center console. The man’s friend, who owns the SUV, walks over to show the police his concealed weapons permit. But he has been drinking, too, and the permit is void if he’s intoxicated. They arrest him, too.

In the Money section, we learn the valuable art of spin with the lead story Prius finally available without a wait. In addition to increased production, it turns out that reduced demand is a factor.

The Sports section told me that Ricky Williams is some sorta zen master:

When it comes to the search for elevated self-awareness and a higher plane of existence, Ricky Williams may be the [most] introspective athlete of all time. He is a vegetarian, a yogi, a vertiable Buddhist philosopher in shoulder pads. Unfortunately for the enigmatic running back, pro football does not place a premium on the quest for eternal truth and personal fulfillment.

Also, he really likes weed.

And I found out that Doogie Howser, M.D. is gay. All this over breakfast!

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By lunch, I learned that there’s a staging of The Winter’s Tale that you might be interested in seeing, if you’re around NYC the next few weekends. It’s being directed by a guy who used to be my closest friend, but he’s been a douchebag to me for three-plus years now, so I figure I’ll skip out on this performance.

I do find it pretty funny that he can’t return a phone call or e-mail to me since 2003, but is quite content to send group e-mails asking for people to come out and see and/or promote his show. We’ve got different ideas of friendship, is what it boils down to.

Speaking of which, a bunch of my high school friends (Pennsylvania edition) have invited me to a mini-reunion next week down in Philadelphia, so I may come back with some entertaining anecdotes or photographs by Sunday. It’s one of those things where I realize how close so many of these friends have stayed in the 17 years since we graduated high school, and how close they stayed to me even though I only attended school for one year down there. Different ideas of friendship.

That said, I’m at a point in my life where I really don’t want to crash on someone’s sofa or air-mattress, so I’m trying to find an inexpensive hotel (sans bugs) that I can stay in Saturday night. I’m gonna get back to that right now, since I’ve given up on trying to figure out why my buddy Chip likes that Nightwood so darn much. It’s baroque; fix it.

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Are you ready for some shopping?

The Sports Guy’s football picks this week are pretty entertaining for three reasons:

1) A great anecdote about Milton Berle’s natural gifts:

I thought of a new gambling theory after last week’s Denver-Oakland game when the Broncos sat on a 13-3 lead for the entire second half: The Milton Berle Theory. In case you didn’t know, Berle was famous in Hollywood circles for being more endowed than anyone else. Basically, he was the Dirk Diggler of Hollywood. (Note: There’s a hysterical anecdote in the SNL book “Live From New York” about this. Highest of high comedy.) Anyway, the famous story about Berle (maybe an urban legend, maybe not) was that somebody challenged him to a “who’s bigger?” contest once, and Berle soundly defeated the guy, then bragged to someone else in the room, “I only pulled out enough to win.” I’ve heard this story 20 different ways but that’s always how it ends.

What does this have to do with gambling? In the age of perpetual putridity, I feel like we’re seeing these games now where double-digit favorites play bad teams straight up, let them hang around for four quarters, then prevail in an unsatisfying, closer-than-we-thought win that leaves their fans wondering what the hell just happened. Well, why does this happen? Because they only pulled out enough to win.

2) An entertaining rant by his wife, who’s beating him this season in NFL picks:

I’ve seen “Devil Wears Prada” four times already: twice in the movies, then on both ends of a cross-country flight last week. Bill couldn’t understand why I would watch it four times so I tried to explain it to him. They don’t make enough movies where there’s a young girl who has no style and can’t fit in, and then, as the movie goes along, she realizes you need to look the part to get ahead. So she finds somebody non-threatening who’s willing to help her understand how to dress and act, and the whole time, everyone’s wearing great clothes, looking great and going to high-society events. And by the end, she’s cooler and more stylish than anyone in the movie. Pretty Woman worked the same way: Julia Roberts was a hooker with no style, then she found a billionaire boyfriend and a new wardrobe and everything turned out fine. I’m glad she fell in love and it was a nice story, but I really liked her clothes more than anything, especially the brown dress she wore in the polo scene.

Bill joked that, if that’s what I liked about these movies, then they should just keep remaking “Prada” in different environments. Like if, instead of a fashion magazine, they tried a high-class gossip magazine, or a black fashion magazine, or a teen fashion magazine, or they could get out of the magazine industry and use an ad agency or a daytime TV show. It could be the same premise every time — a young girl gets a job in a hectic workplace and has no style, people are mean to her and, eventually, she fits in and succeeds at her job even though she has an evil boss. Then she gets a promotion, falls in love and gets her revenge on everyone who thought she was worthless and didn’t have any style. I thought this was a neat idea until Bill said he was kidding. But why is that a bad idea? Bill has something like 50 favorite sports movies and they’re all the same movie — somebody’s an underdog, nobody believes in them, then they win the big game in the end. That’s every sports movie. So how is that different than making my fashion movie premise 50 different ways? I think Bill is a hypocrite.

3) A link to a good article by Chris Rose of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, defending the decision to get the Superdome opened in time for this season:

The arguments posited in [anti-Superdome letters sent to] USA Today seem to suggest that there be no compartmentalization of funding for recovery. In other words, that repairing the Dome prevents homes being rebuilt in the 9th Ward. Or that patching potholes on Bourbon Street is keeping hospitals from opening. Or that reopening the Aquarium of the Americas — or doing anything with federal dollars that rebuilds our economic engines rather than homes — keeps people homeless.

Read the whole shebang.

That said, this week’s Sunday NFL slate is so bad that I’m willing to take the day off and go up to the big outlet mall so Amy can do some shopping.

It’s up in the Harriman Park area, so I’m hoping we can go off and take some pictures of the fall color, too. Unfortunately, we got hit with Day-After-Tomorrow-style wind yesterday, so a lot of the leaves may be gone by now.

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Unrequired Reading: Oct. 20, 2006

Sorry for the lack of posts this week, dear readers. I’ve been kinda busy in the evenings, and a little outta sorts in the mornings. Fortunately, I’m still up for some Unrequired Reading if you are!

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When the official VM wife became the official VM fiancee, we had to go out ring-shopping. (Since I proposed a little sooner than I had planned, I didn’t actually have a ring for her.) She researched a bunch, and decided that the diamond trade was just too venal for us to get involved with it as a symbol of our love. So we went for a gorgeous aquamarine instead.

Here’s a piece (plus slide show) about shopping for the guilt-free diamond.

(Note that I’ve resisted making any comments about using the term ‘conflict-free’ as it relates to engagement rings.)

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Congrats to the state of Oregon, for upholding a law restricting asset forfeitures. I never really understood how cops were able to seize and sell a person’s assets even if the person isn’t convicted of a crime.

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I admit to letting the Darfur slaughter fall off the VM radar since I first wrote about it in May 2004. This is mainly because I believe the western world has failed to stop the Sudanese government and militia from killing the civilians and rebels in Darfur. By failed, I mean it’s gone past the point of no return. To make up for my lack of coverage, here’s an interview with Paul Salopek, the journalist who was imprisoned in Khartoum for a month on trumped-up charges:

FOREIGN POLICY: What is the biggest misconception about the crisis in Darfur as reported in the Western media?

Paul Salopek: Well, I think it’s been oversimplified as this Manichean struggle between ethnic Arab herders who are armed by Khartoum, and these helpless African farmers who are struggling for their rights in this very desolate, Western region of the Sudan. I think that has a fundamental truth to it, and that has been historically a problem that goes back for generations, if not centuries. But I think that perception has to be overlaid with much more complicated tribal rivalries that are then manipulated at the national level in Sudan. Even internationally, there’s a layer of interests that are tugging and pulling at that area of Sudan.

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Holy crap! Discs of Tron was on the Atari 2600?

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Playing it safe with the design for the NYTimes’ new HQ.

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If you have a Wall Street Journal account, you really oughtta read this article about how Holt & Co. blew more than a million bucks trying to engineer the next Da Vinci Code.

Historical thrillers in particular are hot. One theory says readers are seeking a certainty in these books that since the end of the Cold War they’re having trouble finding elsewhere.

“We’re seeing a return to the past because everything was in its place, and people were recognizably polarized in a way that gives us comfort,” says literary agent Richard Curtis. “In the post 9/11 world, we aren’t clear about our enemies. Is the military officer in an Iraqi uniform a friend, or is he a terrorist posing as one? We need to know who to root for and historical fiction provides us with that.”

So Holt went after a novel starring Freud & Jung. No, seriously. (In what may be a first, it looks like Amazon is actually charging more than a bricks & mortar store, since I saw this book with a 50% off sticker in Borders on Wednesday.)

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The new issue of Men’s Vogue (sue me) has an excerpt from the autobiography of art critic Robert Hughes, Things I Didn’t Know. It centers on Hughes’ awful car wreck in 1999 and the legal problems he had after. He was raked by the “meejah” for being an elitist expat.

For of course I am completely an elitist in the cultural but emphatically not the social sense. I prefer the good to the bad, the articulate to the mumbling, the aesthetically developed to the merely primitive, and ufll to partial consciousness. I love the spectacle of skill, whether it’s an expert gardener at work or a good carpenter chopping dovetails or someone trying a Bimini hitch that won’t slip. I don’t think stupid or ill-read people are as good to be iwth as wise and fully literate ones. I would rather watch a great tennis player than a mediocre one, unles the latter is a friend or relative. Consequently, most of the human race doesn’t matter much to me, outside the normal and necessary frame of courtesy and the obligation to respect human rights. I see no reason to squirm arond apologizing for this. I am, after all, a cultural critic, and my main job is to distinguish the good from the second-rate, pretentious, sentimental and boring stuff that saturates culture today, more (perhaps) than it ever has.

Here’s a review of the book in the Telegraph.

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Why is NYC losing financial jobs? Relocation, relocation, relocation.

The city and state bear some responsibility for the space shortage. A nearly ten-year effort to rezone Manhattan’s Far West Side for commercial development wound up getting bogged down in Mayor Bloomberg’s plans to build a stadium there and lure the Olympics to New York. Potential construction of office towers in the area is thus still years away. The city has now missed two real-estate expansions, going back to the late 1990s, in trying to rezone the Far West Side.

Meanwhile, state and city officials haggled for years over the plan to redevelop Ground Zero, with some observers, including Mayor Bloomberg, pessimistically calling for a reduction in the office space planned for the site, assuming that it would be unneeded. As a result of the delays, only one building, 7 World Trade, is nearing completion — developer Larry Silverstein could rebuild it quickly because it wasn’t part of the site that the government controlled. Other Ground Zero towers won’t be ready for years.

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VM bleg: Anybody know a gin snob who can tell me if Cadenhead’s Old Raj Gin is worth the $44 for a 750ml bottle they want at Wine Library?

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The official VM wife sends word that Cameron Diaz looks like crap.

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Whatcha really get’s a box of Newports and Puma sweats (damn!)

(I just felt like making a 3rd Bass ref; sue me)

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We should go to the Chihuly exhibit at the New York Botanical Gardens next Thursday night! Who’s with me?

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Congratulations to the Cardinals for pulling the upset on the Mets, earning the right to walk into a buzzsaw.

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This week’s non-web reading: Chronicles Vol. 1, by Bob Dylan. The first chapter, covering the period he first arrived in New York, is fantastic. The chapter discussing losing his mojo in the late ’80s, and rediscovering it while playing with the Grateful Dead? Not so much.

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Unrequited reading

Sorry to be writing less frequently, dear readers. I’m in the midst of a work-crunch of monumental proportions. Gotta finish a giant issue of the magazine by next Wednesday, then help put on our annual conference & exhibition Thursday and Friday, then get on a plane Saturday for a chemical ingredient conference. On the doubleplusgood side, said ingredient conference is in Paris, and my wife’s coming along for the trip.

On the down side, the book I just started, Witold Rybczynski’s City Life, is boring me silly, so I may have to drop it. I enjoy WR’s architecture articles on Slate, but the first 50 pages of this book have been pretty dull and pedantic, especially the second chapter’s extended take on how population size does not say much about the importance of a city. Again and again.

Fortunately, Amazon is about to deliver my copy of Shakespeare Wars, the new book from Ron Rosenbaum. Unfortunately, I don’t want to carry a 640-page hardcover with me overseas. So why don’t you suggest a book for me to read, already?

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Unrequired Reading

I’ve decided to make Unrequired Reading a regular post on Friday mornings. It’ll consist of the same stuff I was posting at random in the past few weeks. Which is to say, thanks to the miracle of RSS feeds, VM goofs around online so you don’t have to.

As my friend Mitch put it, “You know you’ve bottomed out when Bobby Brown says you’re an unfit mother to his children.”

(It’s Mother’s Day, not All Everybody Day!)

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Here’s a slideshow about Jonathan Ive, the design guru at Apple.

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10 Highly Pretentious Musical Instruments

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You stay classy, Cleveland.

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You are your Netflix Queue.

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Visiting Kandor?

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Firing tons of people — even Japanese people — does not automatically make you a success. I can’t stress this enough. Restructuring by “cutting fat” is fine, but it doesn’t necessarily put a company in the position to succeed in the future. Carlos Ghosn is trying to stay ahead of the game by allying with an American automaker and firing a ton of people.

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A wide-ranging (by my lights) interview with U of Penn Architecture Department Chair Detlef Mertins, author of a book on Mies van der Rohe.

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Paul Wolfowitz is running into trouble as president of the World Bank, due to his policy of not lending money to corrupt regimes.

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This week in Unrequired Reading

Stories that have been sitting in my RSS feed this week:

Tim Cavanaugh of Reason magazine muses on the 40th anniversary of Star Trek:

And finally, [Star Trek is] a story of a powerful belief in what the franchise represents: the right of individuals, through machinery, weaponry, or barehanded intelligence, to live, be free, and pursue happiness, no matter how horrific the results (and we can all agree that Robert Wise’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture was as slow and agonizing as any torture devised on that evil Enterprise from the “Mirror, Mirror” episode in which Spock has a beard). Put all these ingredients together and it’s clear: Star Trek is the story of America.

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Mary Worth and Nothingness

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Tom Spurgeon interviews Sammy Harkham, the only “young” cartoonist whose work I’ve started to follow. I have an unfinished post from earlier this summer, about the MoCCA comics festival in NYC. The post was all about my realization that I’ve become a boring old fart, because I couldn’t think of any cartoonists whose work I discovered in the last five to eight years. Fortunately, I picked up one of Sammy’s comics then, and found a small book of his a few weeks later that impressed me.

Sammy edits an anthology called Kramer’s Ergot, and the interview discusses the process of putting the most recent edition together. As ever, I find this stuff fascinating, but you may not.

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George Will reviews a 9/11 novel that doesn’t sound very interesting to me, but that’s because the 9/11 novel I published tanked:

Messud’s Manhattan story revolves around two women and a gay man who met as classmates at Brown University and who, as they turn 30 in 2001, vaguely yearn to do something “important” and “serious.” Vagueness — lack of definition — is their defining characteristic. Which may be because — or perhaps why — all three are in the media. All are earnest auditors and aspiring improvers of the nation’s sensibility.

Uh, yeah.

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BLDGBLOG interviews author Jeff VanderMeer about the intersection of architecture and the novel.

As a novelist who is uninterested in replicating “reality” but who is interested in plausibility and verisimilitude, I look for the organizing principles of real cities and for the kinds of bizarre juxtapositions that occur within them. Then I take what I need to be consistent with whatever fantastical city I’m creating. For example, there is a layering effect in many great cities. You don’t just see one style or period of architecture. You might also see planning in one section of a city and utter chaos in another. The lesson behind seeing a modern skyscraper next to a 17th-century cathedral is one that many fabulists do not internalize and, as a result, their settings are too homogenous.

Of course, that kind of layering will work for some readers — and other readers will want continuity. Even if they live in a place like that — a baroque, layered, very busy, confused place — even if, say, they’re holding the novel as they walk down the street in London [laughter] — they just don’t get it.

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Times UK restaurant reviewer Giles Coren visited Croatia for a column:

The language is called Croatian these days, except in Serbia, where it is called Serbian, and it hasn’t got any easier. Chapter two of my Teach Yourself Croatian book was about counting to ten, and gently explained as follows: “The number one behaves like an adjective and its ending changes according to the word which follows. The number two has different forms when it refers to masculine and neuter nouns than when it refers to feminine nouns, and is followed always by words in the genitive singular, as are the words for ‘three’ and ‘four’. The numbers 5-20, however, are followed by words in the genitive plural. . .”

This is why you never see Croatians in groups of more than one or less than five in a bar. Because it isn’t actually possible to order the right number of beers.

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Official VM buddy Jecca reviews the second issue of Martha Stewart’s Blueprint (which, as I type it, sounds like something she came up with while she was in the joint, a la that Prison Break show).

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Gorgeous pictures of the world’s greatest libraries. There’s a book about it.

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Written in flesh

You may or may not know that I have a 9/11 tattoo on my right arm. I got it the Sunday after the attacks. It’s not particularly exciting, as tattoos go. In fact, my artist was a little bummed that I wanted a dull, blocky font, rather than the flourishing cursive he was planning to use.

A few months ago, an acquaintance of mine (Eric Solstein) discovered that an acquaintance of his (Jonathan Hyman) has been photographing 9/11 memorials: tattoos, graffiti and other personal tributes. Eric hooked us up, and a few photos of my tattoo are now among the 15,000+ pics that Jon has taken.

Before the shoot, Jon showed me a bunch of shots from the collection, and they’re pretty breathtaking. He filled me in on the stories of how many gallery shows or museum exhibits he was going to have, and how often the rug was pulled out from under him. While the portfolio was amazing, I admit that my BS-meter was pinging a bit (but I was glad to be part of the collective memory).

Fortunately, I was utterly wrong. “9/11 and the American Landscape: Photographs by Jonathan Hyman” will be open from Friday, Sept. 8 to Saturday, Oct. 7, at WTC #7, 250 Greenwich St., 45th flr. The event is curated by Clifford Chanin and is accompanied by a color catalogue featuring an introduction by Pete Hamill, according to Jon.

I doubt that my photo is among the 63 that are on display in this exhibit, but Amy & I will head in Saturday for the opening reception. The venue (that rebuilt WTC #7) overlooks the WTC site (or the Memorial Hole, as The Onion put it); I’ll try to post some photos from the event, especially for you out-of-towners who wonder what things look like nowadays.