Bear with me. This article is almost too dinky for a mini-post. Really more of a Tweet (what do they call those now, after the renaming?), so I’m stretching the content to its limits, inversely, by posting fewer words than just about ever. But the previous article on the Durham Can Opener took me way
Saying “I like Trader Joe’s” isn’t very edgy; it’s not going to instigate a revolution anywhere. They aren’t exactly fighting words. Ranking right up there with California phenomenon In-N-Out Burger as one of the least controversial chains that dole out food, a person is far more likely to provoke fisticuffs for saying “Trader Joe’s is
This article represents an interesting first. Frankly, I’m surprised it’s taken this long—15 years of blogging!—for someone to approach me about this while I was out snapping pics for my blog. Given that I have over 20,000 photos consisting primarily of mailboxes, parking meters, cracked curbs, lonely utility poles, labelscars, and miscellany that would only
I’ve never bothered to discern what Pierre Bourdieu would probably brand the “echelons of taste” that distinguish “folk” from “pop”. Their thematic intersection owes a great deal to the fact that they share a prosaic, anti-elitist undercurrent, but the commonalities probably don’t extend much further. While both folk and pop eschew the highbrow ethos that
“Fast food with style.” That’s the motto that I, coming of age in the late 80s and early 90s, associate the most with Rax Roast Beef. But let’s face it: when this formerly thriving restaurant began floundering, the slogans shifted with the seasons. Thirty years later, it’s hard to say which marketing campaign is the
In what is a first for American Dirt—and what I hope not to become a regular occurrence—I offer a tribute to a fellow urbanist and friend. Longtime employee of Philadelphia City Planning Commission and then Philadelphia Streets Department, Anthony Santaniello passed away on October 21st. Anthony wasn’t just a casual follower of the work on
The infamous book How to Lie with Maps initially offered a light-hearted attempt to explore how maps can entice, mislead, inflame, and generally propagandize, often without necessarily depicting anything geographically untruthfully. Juxtapositions (not always to scale), labels, color choice, and infographics can all endow an editorial skew on what seems like objective spatial representation. And
After inadvertently stumbling across some vintage footage of shopping culture from yesteryear, I couldn’t help but ask myself: Is it reasonable, at this point, to compare the revolution in how we consume goods with the old cliché of a boiling frog? How much longer before we the frogs feel the temperature climbing? Using any vintage
The battle has been the stuff of legend in South Philly for half a century. Wedged into two triangular blocks formed through an oblique intersection (East Passyunk Avenue, a beloved corridor I have covered many times on this blog) are two of Philadelphia’s most legendary cheesesteak establishments. They’re so close to one another that it
Poking out over the squat, one-story barbecue joint in the photo above is a relentlessly iterative office building, with not a single variation in its fenestration across all thirty-nine of its upper floors. Windows look the exact same, row after row after row. The only exception is the far left and far right of this
Bear with me. This article is almost too dinky for a mini-post. Really more of a Tweet (what do they call those now, after the renaming?), so I’m stretching the content to its
Saying “I like Trader Joe’s” isn’t very edgy; it’s not going to instigate a revolution anywhere. They aren’t exactly fighting words. Ranking right up there with California phenomenon In-N-Out Burger as one of
This article represents an interesting first. Frankly, I’m surprised it’s taken this long—15 years of blogging!—for someone to approach me about this while I was out snapping pics for my blog. Given that
I’ve never bothered to discern what Pierre Bourdieu would probably brand the “echelons of taste” that distinguish “folk” from “pop”. Their thematic intersection owes a great deal to the fact that they share
“Fast food with style.” That’s the motto that I, coming of age in the late 80s and early 90s, associate the most with Rax Roast Beef. But let’s face it: when this formerly
In what is a first for American Dirt—and what I hope not to become a regular occurrence—I offer a tribute to a fellow urbanist and friend. Longtime employee of Philadelphia City Planning Commission
The infamous book How to Lie with Maps initially offered a light-hearted attempt to explore how maps can entice, mislead, inflame, and generally propagandize, often without necessarily depicting anything geographically untruthfully. Juxtapositions (not
After inadvertently stumbling across some vintage footage of shopping culture from yesteryear, I couldn’t help but ask myself: Is it reasonable, at this point, to compare the revolution in how we consume goods
The battle has been the stuff of legend in South Philly for half a century. Wedged into two triangular blocks formed through an oblique intersection (East Passyunk Avenue, a beloved corridor I have
Poking out over the squat, one-story barbecue joint in the photo above is a relentlessly iterative office building, with not a single variation in its fenestration across all thirty-nine of its upper floors.