signage – American Dirt.

[sbs_tax tax="States"] [sbs_tax tax="Albany"]

Front yards in the Federal City: even the close-knit rowhomes feature green plots for garden gnomes. Or (since it’s Capitol Hill) political signs.

April 11, 2021 5 Comments

In these polarizing and emotionally fraught times, it has ostensibly become far more common for people to announce their political loyalties from the front yards of their homes—not just by promoting the campaigns of preferred candidates, but (at least in recent years) to overtly declare one’s stance on a certain issue, or even to declare

Student Driver subterfuge: are they really new and inexperienced, or merely incompetent?

March 27, 2021 24 Comments

I’m going to go out on a limb with this mini-post. Maybe I’m the only one who has noticed this, but in my opinion, we sure seem to see a lot more of this feature these days. I’m referring to the decals above the rear bumper on this car. Which one am I talking about?

Summit, New Jersey: does a promenade between two buildings represent an opportunity gap?

March 24, 2021 4 Comments

For much of the twentieth century, it was an all-too-common occurrence: an old commercial structure in a declining downtown struggles to compete with the strip malls cropping up everywhere on the outskirts. Over time, the old building—retail on the first floor, office or warehousing on the next two/three/four levels—becomes functionally obsolete. It’s drafty, the plumbing

Graffiti Highway in the Keystone State: the histories of two abandoned roads are as different as their spraypainted messages.

March 13, 2021 14 Comments

In urban America, it’s a common occurrence for an executive body to determine that a small segment of a public right-of-way should no longer function as a transportation conduit. For whatever reason, that 300-or-so feet of roadway is obsolete. Perhaps it’s because it no longer leads to anything; it was a dead-end that provided access

Mixed-use town center as the new “organic” downtown: how distinct can they be if they become as commonplace as malls?

February 25, 2021 4 Comments

The mixed-use town center is a novelty across much of the county. A metropolitan area of one million people is unlikely to have more than one or two of these newfangled nodes, which typically combine housing, retail, offices, hotels, garage parking, and maybe even an institutional use like a school, a library, or a municipal

Corvids or COVIDs? A brief meditation on a misinterpretation.

February 18, 2021 2 Comments

It’s rare—maybe even unprecedented—that I have created an article based almost completely on a social media conversation. This probably has something to do with the fact that I’m not a heavy social media user. But I’m relenting this one time because I want to churn out a quickie article as I prep for a longer

Grants, New Mexico: where the ghosts of miners haunt a thriving prison industry.

February 6, 2021 4 Comments

Although the evidence of ghost towns proves that they exist (or have existed) throughout the country, most Americans invariably associate them with the frontier West: the High Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada; the Great Basin, Mojave, and Sonoran Deserts. We also customarily associate the emergence of ghost towns with mining, certainly more than

When green means stop: the impact of classic neon lighting in the wireless era, from West Virginia with love.

January 24, 2021 No Comments

If a good sign is worth more than its weight in canvas, plastic, fiberglass, cardboard, or whatever material helped birth it, a good old sign earns even more accolades, as multiplied by the number of years it has done its job. (Weight of the material multiplied by its age?) The perseverance of a good sign

Gateway Travel Plaza: keeping Breezewood, PA (America’s gas station town) from running on empty.

January 12, 2021 16 Comments

Breezewood. It sounds like it could be the name of a stereotypical suburb to a major Midwest city (Chicago definitely comes to mind); it also sounds sufficiently generic that one might expect a dozen towns scattered across the country with the name. Negative on both counts. There’s only one Breezewood, and it’s not a suburb

A median too far: planting Arlington Public Schools activism where it’s most (or least) accessible.

January 8, 2021 2 Comments

Loathe as I am to wade into a subject this topical, the spatial ramifications of it are just as interesting than the content itself—probably more. So, here goes nothing: That small, seemingly innocuous orange and purple sign makes an urgent plea, the context of which should be obvious: the public schools in question are closed