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Remember, that one time, like a week ago
Friday, June 22, 2007
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It wasn't this past Wednesday but the one before that I ended up hangin' out with Will at a mobile dance party arranged by the Sprockettes. Ya know, it was that day when I got famous.


At said dance party I happened to meet a charming young woman named Emily. I like to think she thought I was a ninja on account of the long metal bar protruding from my backpack. (The bar was in fact a new handle bar for my bike.)

There are many things I like about Emily including the fact that she beat me in a bicycle race, but what I think I like most is her tendency to starting skipping when we're walking from one place to another.

More later.

lets go stare at the clouds.

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The Supernova Next Door

Sure it from DailyKos, but its not at all political. Honest. Its just a great, awe-inspiring read.

automatic virtue, nincompoops, and the holy wrath of sleep
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
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Do you believe in automatic virtue? An easy example might be hard work: is it automatically good?

Is intelligence automatically virtuous? What about happiness?



I'm wholly tired and if I had a band I would name us Creepy MySpace Stalker so that when we started friending people it would read, "Creepy MySpace Stalker wants to be your friend." Goodnight world.

Laurelhurst Park
Thursday, June 14, 2007
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Probably my favorite park in Portland so far. It was a rainy day, around 3pm and the park was mostly empty so I got to take some cool shots. Enjoy.

im totally famous

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Photo by Jonathan Maus of BikePortland.org 2007


Come close to the screen. Look carefully! I'm in the back row, just to the right of the center. See the person in blue with her arms raised? My head is just under her arm pit.

Will and I were late getting into the picture because he was trying to get on my shoulders.

Anyway, it was a good time.

the simple reason poor is cool
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
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Poor is cool. But why? There are two things money cannot buy. The first is love.

The second is immediacy.

When you're down to your last dollar and it's unclear how exactly the next week will play out there is a sense that you might as well live it up. Of course, this is not a sustainable way to live and the truth of the experience is that the sense of immediacy is nearly overwhelmed by stress and worry.

So people fake it. They dress poor and bohemian (retro, vintage, et al) and practice living with immediacy and it becomes a style unto its own. I suspect most patrons of the lifestyle are unaware of its origins. But that immediacy, that sense of urgency is too appealing to deny. Some keep their eye on the fiction of poor being cool and end up buying themselves into actual poverty (or more accurately, indebtedness) and others fake it the whole time and enjoy swelling bank accounts and vague sense of the urgency lost.

There's more to it though. If the stress and worry are real and debilitating, but the urgency of life is too much to ignore then maybe faking it is a necessary practice.

When you've got the house, with the stuff, and the fence and the car, the security system to protect it all, and the errands to run in every direction, and the, and the, and the... Its a fort all built for naught because aging is not a battle, its a massacre and everybody loses everything, every time.

Its about to rain and I'm about to go watch.

Is there a problem here? Not really.

The depths of the fiction of poverty surround the stylish masses and a good night's sleep means one need only to deny a pause for reality for one thought longer. Just hold off reality until the dreaming starts and a new fiction begins. In no time, the sun rises because that's what it does. The new day is a long, slow walk along a private beach, with the sound of the waves crashing and a deep, deep appreciation for life's simple pleasures because existence is precious no matter who you are, the collective worth of whatever you collect, what fiction you live, or what lie you make your truth.

Naked Portland.
Monday, June 11, 2007
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My bike was stolen! I'm working on a getting another one. It could be amazing... just a few more days until its ready. A few nights ago (post bike theft) Portland bicyclists got butt naked and partied. Here's the video:

specialized behavior
Friday, June 8, 2007
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The PedalPalooza Kickoff Parade was yesterday. It was so cool to see so many people take over the streets. One thing I was curious about before the parade began was how a group so large could manage to stay together through all the street lights and cars downtown.

Upon coming to an intersection a few members of the group dismount from their bikes and simply hold off traffic on each side. At the beginning of the ride I was at the back of the group and seeing all that traffic being held back by just a few cyclists at each intersection was really something. And it wasn't just 4-way stops, traffic light intersections got the same treatment. Most drivers seemed to enjoy the sight of hundreds of costumed bikers riding by. But just before heading over the Burnside bridge to the eastside and away from downtown I saw a woman seated in the front seat of her car...asleep. I should have stopped to nab a picture.

This practice of holding up traffic as a way to keep the group together is a pretty simple behavior and whether knowingly or not, its from right out of the playbook of army ants.
"...some ants use their bodies to plug potholes in the trail leading back to the nest, making a flatter surface for... maximum speed."
Furthermore,
"The research demonstrates that a simple but highly specialized behavior performed by a minority of... workers can improve the performance of the majority, resulting in a clear benefit for the society as a whole."
Cool man. Cool.

What can't be done on a bicycle, cant be done
Thursday, June 7, 2007
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I'm working on a Grand Theory of Portland and its meta-events like these that make me realize how difficult the design of such a theory really is.

Tonight at 7pm begins 17 days of bike related events. Here is how it works:

-Shift2bikes.org sets a master calender-
-Anyone can set up an event and anyone can volunteer to help out on events-

The result is 132 events, some lasting up to 24 hours. A bike parade, tonight at 7pm, starts the festivities off. From there, the craziness begins. Donut and coffee rides. Mystery rides. Political rides and social awareness rides. Bike-in movies and bike-in warehouse parties. City tours and river rides. Choreographed bike dance performances. Rides to gelato, love letter campaigns, unicycle rides and pedal potluck picnics.

Portland is out of control with bikes for the next 17 days. Here's the promo.

And the crazy part? I'm definitely going to one, possibly two, of the naked rides.

But first I need to get a better seat.

new music
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
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I'm gonna try and not recommend any old band on this blog and instead reserve this space for new music that I really dig.

I've been enjoying the mp3's of Windmill for a little while now, as I patiently waited for my eMusic subscription to roll around again. I spent much of yesterday and today listening to "Puddle City Racing Lights" and I dig it.

Windmill is actually solo artist Matthew Dillon. The sound is both piano driven and epic oriented. and the vocals are strongly reminiscent of the male vocals of the Magic Numbers. There is an epic feel thats comparable to Destroyer at his loudest, though with less ambiguous lyrics and more winking (Jens Lekman like). There are so many ideas on this album and I keep waiting for them to begin repeating but also like Lekman's "Oh You're So Silent Jens" and Destroyer's "Rubies" there are enough satisfying surprises to keep from getting shticky.*

My favorite songs so far are: Tokyo Moon, Bourding Lounges and Asthmatic.

Check it out.





*"Shticky" is Copyright Zac Benjamin 2007. All Right Reserved. Like "Happy Birthday" for Time Warner royalties are required for use.

who's keeping portland weird?
Monday, June 4, 2007
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Keep Portland Weird.

I see these bumper stickers all over and the sentiment seems to be the city's unofficial slogan. Check out these photos from the fringe.

Next to a bus stop, in what was probably a formally crumbling square of sidewalk, someone planted a garden and installed a sign. The sign reads, "Garden Made With Love, in need of tender care, weed while you wait." It's ridiculous until you realize you've got 11 minutes until the bus comes and hey, gardening could be fun.

There are bicycle-only turning lanes. There are bicycle boulevards that run parallel to main thoroughfares a though they vary in size and scope they tend to share one common trait: funky bike friendly road enhancements. There are small bike symbols on the ground that indicate the boulevards and you can get just about everywhere following them around.


Yesterday Nat told me to meet up at Don Panchos for some uber cheap Mexican food. I got there pretty late and everyone was finishing up. The food I ordered took some time to arrive, but everyone was kind enough hang out while I housed two entrees. Sitting there, I thought I heard someone mention something about a guy. On a couch. But I didn't follow up. Leaving Don Panchos it all became clear: Across the street there was a guy, sitting with his guitar, on a couch, in the middle of a small field.

Will and his new house mate Henry headed one way, and myself having caught the bus to dinner, caught a ride with Ramon. We were joined by Nat and Emma. The plan, as I understood it, was to pick up a bed for Nat she'd found on Craigslist and then to find a way to get it back to her new apartment. On the way there we saw the most incredible thing: a man riding a bright red scooter, a woman seated behind him, and a matching red sidecar with a medium sized labrador.

We gave chase. At first it seemed we'd lost them but they turned off to a side road and we followed. I was leaning out the window trying to take pictures but it was getting dark and we were too far away. Our pursuit signaled for a left turn. Ramon proclaimed the chase too weird and let them turn away while we continued on straight. But at the next block we turned left and then left again, coming face to face with our pursuit. It seems they were actively trying to evade us. I still couldn't manage to get a very good photo, so I'll have to leave it with just these two.


In the end, the bed was sold before we could pick it up. Dang! Luckily, craigslist is fruitful and ever giving. A few hours later Ramon summed it up best: who was keeping Portland weird, the scooter trio or us for chasing them?

Are we building our own heaven?
Sunday, June 3, 2007
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Things are getting out of hand. Ever read mashable.com? Just try and keep up. Everyone is buying everyone, everything is integrating with everything else. Its a Web 2.0 orgy and honestly, it feels less like there's some master corporate plan and more like a self organizing monster. Except for Google, I don't think any company has any idea exactly whats happening (and even they goof often). CBS just bought Last.fm for 280 million, in cash. Wait... what?

Its not just that there are new technologies and new web apps pushing the internet. Its that things are being made to plug into and tap whats already there in new ways. Information is being created by the masses and then being organized by the masses. And no one person or company controls that.

My head is spinning.

My high school history teacher, Mr. Sutherland, used to say, "One reason people had so many kids back then is because your offspring were your health insurance when you got sick and your retirement plan when you got old. The other reason was because it was cold and dark and really, what else are you gonna do?"

No wonder people in the internet fueled world are having fewer kids. There's just so much to do. You can spend your whole life being entertained and catered to and I wonder, is that so bad?

We're talking about the infancy of the Internet here. Web 2.0 might as well be called the Internet at age 2. A little toddler of information, the neural networks just starting to really engage the information coming in, tiny limbs just starting to tug at the world. A body still too small to get hurt when it slips and falls.

But the metaphor falls apart when I think about life ever coming to an end. Does the web ever get old? Or is it a fountain of preserved youth?

In a way, we're uploading our minds to this vast network and plugging in in such fantastic new ways. Imagine 10 billion minds all considering each other. What couldn't be known? Could this be eternal life?

Are we building our own heaven?

What makes something original?
Saturday, June 2, 2007
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If there were a formula for being original, being original would cease to be.
---Henry Baumgartner (dance critic)


(scroll one third of the way down)

the hawthorne bridge is a sex machine (oh baby, take me to the otherside)

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Seriously though, its always such a thrill to ride along this bridge. The incredible views are something all on their own, but when you're pedaling like God is on your side, your legs are burning and your heart is going to explode... well, there's just no time to take in the views. So you end up getting these little glimpses, these split second vistas. And meanwhile the buses go rumbling by, there are runners and walkers in the bike lane (get over onto pedestrian lane, please!), and then of course there are cyclists going so much faster than you that are trying to pass.

And then there are people like me. Slamming on the brakes, getting in the way, trying to grab a picture when I know... I just know that pictures are too flat and the world just really isn't. So this blue moon and this sunset and this guy Charlie ("you're in my shot!"), colorful as they are, must be drained of color, because the color can't be accurate. But they cannot be cropped out because this moment of action is a slice of time, captured as it is.