My New Boyfriend

I totally have a crush on Barton Myers.


So what if he's 71? So what if my neighborhood civic league thinks he's the spawn of Satan? So what if having a crush on an elderly modern architect is not nearly as cool as having a crush on, say, Brad Pitt?

I don't think I'd ever heard of Barton Myers until last weekend when our local paper ran a long-ass story (which I'm making my students read tomorrow) about the controversy surrounding his proposed addition to a church in my neighborhood. According to the article, "Myers is a glass-and-metal modernist adding onto a Gothic Revival stone structure completed in 1910. Not everyone has embraced that idea."

Really? It would make more sense in 2006 to build an addition in a century-old style that was itself a throwback to the 14th century? Admittedly, Gothic architecture is not my thing, but come on! NOW we're gonna start getting fussy about architecture? 'Cause we have a 7-11 and a Walgreens, neither of which seem to be winning any awards for architectural brilliance. Oh, and the Hardee's and the Pizza Hut? Are they in keeping with the historic character of our neighborhood? And what about all these new condos? You know, the ones with the stupid fake columns that aren't actually holding anything up. Those cheesy McThings are somehow better than a structure that actually has some architectural integrity, even if that structure IS made of (sharp intake of breath) glass and metal?

"Great cities, and the things we love most, evolve over time," said Barton Myers. "And where old and new coexist, they're much richer, because they are a living testament to what happened."

See? How can you not love this guy?

I'm taking my kids on a field trip to the church next week. And I'm gonna ask Barton Myers to come speak to my classes. If he says yes -- which I know he probably won't, but it's worth a shot, right? -- but if he says yes, that may be it for me. I may move beyond the crush phase into the full-on stalking phase.

Free For All

In the interest of fairness, here is where I live:


In the apartment building, not the beautiful house with the wrap-around porch next door. Feel free to make fun of it. I'll start: um, it's across the street from a parking lot. . .how charming.

Is That A Dragon In Your Backyard Or. . .?

Welcome to another edition of "Talkin' Shit About Architecture," where I take pictures of other people's houses and then make fun of them (the people and the houses). Am I qualified to pass judgment on architecture? Not at all. But I have read The Fountainhead quite a few times.

Okay then. Let's get started, shall we?

Here we are in rural Maple, North Carolina, which is situated along the Currituck Sound and consists mostly of corn fields, Baptist churches, and roadside vegetable stands.

But behold! In the distance!

Is that a red UK-style telephone booth I see? It is! Would you like to ring your mum? Too bad. You can't. The door is locked and there's a little sign that reads "not a public phone." Not a public phone?! Then what, pray tell, is the point?

Also, why have an electronically controlled gate that one can easily walk around? You're not keeping out the riff-raff. A gate is supposed to, like, connect to something. Something like the rest of the fence. But I guess if you're gonna have a red (!) phone booth that serves no purpose you might as well throw in a gate that serves no purpose. Go crazy.

The real architectural mishap here though is yonder castle.

I mean, really, a castle? In North-freakin'-Carolina? And it's not even a good castle. That castle is all over the place, architecturally speaking.

As I mentioned above, I'm not an expert on architecture, but I don't think that entrance really works for a castle. Even a fake castle. Maybe without the railing. I don't know. Also, what's up with the lattice-work on the windows? They live right smack dab on a beautiful body of water and they put criss-crosses all over their windows? On purpose? Bad move. And that satellite dish has got to go. How do you think the court jester feels when they sit down to watch American Idol?

Okay fine. How much fun can you really make of a fake castle as undeniably ugly as this? Let's all just point at it and laugh.

Seriously though, what kind of furniture do you think they have in there? And, more importantly, where the fuck is the moat?

Welcome McHome

I've spent the last few days visiting my family in their suburban DC home while talking shit about the suburbs (my family does not find this endearing, by the way).

I lived in various suburbs of DC for seven years after graduating from college, but I finally moved to Norfolk because, after much consideration, I realized that I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it (Norfolk) had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.

Okay, fine. Actually I moved to Norfolk because I hate the suburbs, I missed the ocean, and I wanted to teach someone other than rich privileged white kids.

Every time I go back to visit my DC-area friends and family, I'm sadly amazed to find another cookie-cutter development where trees used to be. I fear they're going to build McNeighborhoods until there's nothing left to McBuild on. Today I drove through one of these new developments after seeing a sign on the road advertising "luxury townhomes moderately priced from the $550s." I don't know about you, but I don't really consider $550,000 to be a "moderate" pricetag for much of anything. Plus, look at this place:




If I'm gonna drop half a million dollars on a dwelling, well, first of all I'm gonna need a sugar daddy. But. . .if I, with the help of my sugar daddy, am going to spend half a million dollars on a home, it will not be:

A) a townhouse
B) in the suburbs
C) situated next to a gas station
D) totally lacking in the tree department
E) identical to every other nearby dwelling
F) brand spankin' new
G) completely devoid of architectural character
H) a soul-sucking pit of despair.

Apparently a lot of McPeople are into that sort of thing, though, because the sign said there were only three McTownhomes left.

Holy Bad Architecture, Batman!

In the spirit of Jim Kunstler's Eyesore of the Month, I offer these two monstrosities currently under construction near my parents' house (which is not a monstrosity) on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Exhibit A:

This is a perfect example of what geographers call "maladaptive diffusion" -- otherwise known as "what the fuck is that doing here?!" Note the psuedo-Southwestern stucco and tile roof. Note the corinthian (!) columns. Note the proximity to a large body of water (in this case, the Currituck Sound). Note how the longer you look at it, the more you feel like throwing up.

Exhibit B:

I don't even know what this is. I mean, I know what it is: it's somebody's house; I just don't know what they were thinking. Perhaps the owners have a shit-ton of children and need all those rooms to accomdate their extraordinarily large family. Or maybe they feel most at home in hotels and decided to create a space that just screams "Embassy Suites." Most likely they simply suffer from the fairly common affliction of having oodles and oodles of money but absolutely zero taste.

When construction first began on this monstrosity, I thought they were building condos. Ugly condos, but condos nonetheless. I was pleased that some developer was finally building something that sort of made sense, since most of the working folks who live on the Outer Banks can no longer afford to live on the Outer Banks. But nope, some developer is building yet another ostentatious piece of crap for wealthy northern tourists morons tourons who will probably leave their empty Corona bottles on the beach. The joke's on them though: that place is gonna be a bitch to heat and cool when the oil runs out.