If you just want to read about my recent trip to Gary, Indiana, please scroll down to Part 2. If you want to know about the origins of my pseudo-obsession with the city, please start with Part 1. If you do nothing else, please check out the galleries towards the end for some great scenes of general abandonment and dereliction. Part One: Genesis Everybody knows … Continue reading Indiana Dreaming
I remember watching Friends and other apartment-based American sitcoms as a youth and being slightly sceptical of the premise that there were all these apartment buildings in big cities filled with people that actually hung out with each other. I remember moving into my first landlord-rented apartment in 2010 and, in the two years I lived there, having a grand total of zero instances of communication with any of … Continue reading Tales from the Castle
I’ve been working in Chicago for almost two months, and I just had the pleasure of attending my first fancy conference. Go me. Let’s set the scene. I actually don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet, but I work for this super feisty non-profit called the Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Clinic (LTFHC). Like the name would suggest, they are, in fact, building a floating hospital on … Continue reading To the Summit
At the end of my last post, I was somewhere in up-state Wisconsin on a coach that was 4 hours behind schedule with a US phone that had run out of battery and a UK phone that was about to follow suit, knowing that, even if everything from now on went to plan, I was going to be dropped at a bus station approximately 2 miles … Continue reading A Wausau Wedding
Prologue A series of odd circumstances converged this week, with the unexpected outcome that I’m spending the first ten days of 2014 in New York City! I’ve arranged to spend a few days with my good friends Holly and Syed at their apartment in Brooklyn, a few days with my good friend Tom DeGroot at his house in Wantagh, Long Island, and a couple of … Continue reading Race to Crown Heights
It was late July and the mercury had been pushing thirty all afternoon. I’m guessing this, of course, as I haven’t laid eyes on an actual thermometer all year… but my Blackberry was telling me that it was, in fact, a stonker of a summer’s day, and even if there’d been a technological blackout, the masses of people lounging semi-naked along the banks of the … Continue reading Girl on Top (of the city)
Everyone loves a good bridge, right? Majestic, strong and really quite useful, the right bridge in the right place can become more than just a piece of infrastructure, it can become an icon. Of course, the most iconic bridge in New York City has to be the Brooklyn Bridge, a Hollywood favourite and one of the oldest suspension bridges in the US, but all good … Continue reading A Tale of Three Bridges
Leaving Erie was pretty sad. I’d had an awesome time with some awesome people that I knew I probably wouldn’t see for a couple of years at least. But no time to dwell on that, there’s travellin’ to be done! So. I’m sitting at the bus station in Erie, waiting to for my Megabus to Pittsburgh to arrive, and I notice a bunch of women in maroon … Continue reading The Amish and the Ex-Cons
the lost scot 