Sittable Space

This will be about the most academic this blog gets. I call the inspiration for these picture, "PL21601: Boston an Urban Analysis." Joe, Greg, and I took this course last spring, gave some epic class presentations that included mini pool cues, costume changes, but excluded talking about rape. One of the concepts we covered was the idea that for a successful open areas in an urban environment, sittable space is key. Basically, people do not necessarily settle for classic spots to sit down, ie. benchs or tables but actually prefer places that are in the paths of where people walk, congretate, or offer a good place to people watch. Many of the most successful places where people hang out turn out to be simple low walls/ledges or even stairs. This is a picture of a small plaza a few blocks from where I live. As you can see in these pictures, the designer of the plaza chose not to embrace this concept.

I took these pictures earlier today, a little bit later I went to a bar and watched the Patriots game. Fuckin Latin America only had the broadcast of 7 of the 9 games at one o'clock. Ghet-to, with a capital G. There was a good size crowd of people watching the game, basically all Americans (not to be confused with All-Americans). It's cool to watch the game down here except I wouldn't call it your classic football watching crowd. ie. most of the guys had jeans on that were tighter than the jeans the girls were wearing. g-damn hipsters.

Fun idea: embrace my background as a BC grad, infamous with it's association with sports gambling and a things or two that I know from the North End to start a small sports card. In the North End there used to be a gambling card where for 10 bucks you picked 4 teams on Sunday to beat the spread. If you win, the payout is $100. If I go to this bar enough, there might be some potential to get this going, who knows. Just a fun thought in my simple mind.