Third Wheel Nation

A short walk to the ocean, another property is boarded shut. Urban developments in Miami are a case study in global trends.

Waste Management, Infrastructure improvements somewhere near you. As the city celebrates 115 years of incorporation, reminders of the perils of progress caution us that when we take one step forward, it is likely to follow with two steps back.

Taking one step back and perhaps two forward. Hot Dog Cart vendor on N.W. 71 Street.

Get your trousers tailored, pay the Boost phone and have a cold beer. Corporate tele communications snuggles up with ma n pa storefronts in the hood.

Rims and things. An auto garage offers window tinting, car-bling and an eye-candy attempt at graffiti.

Bus the rhymes. This solitary shelter could do with some piano tunes from Victor's to soothe riders waiting and waiting for the next bus.

Like the arrows of Saint Sebastian, traffic lights pierce the open sky in North Miami.

Snarling thanks FDOT. California is not the only place for Carmageddon. Glad my routine is counter cyclical.

Don't look now... another red-light scamera on a road near you!

Life in South Florida can be more awkward than the third wheel on a bad date. Sometimes it is being most familiar with the critters yet never quite at home or made welcome enough to feel comfortably included. Anyone out there feeling the swampiness?

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Labor vs Capital

Pigeon Park

Here are some scenes from Saturday's Support Workers Rally at Bayfront Park downtown Miami. Thanks to the organizers at Move On for staging this nationwide show of solidarity with the people of Wisconsin who are on the front line of the republican lead assault on workers unions. The GOP wants to bust all unions but their focus is on public employees. We are talking about the collective bargaining rights of police officers, school teachers and yes even the score of petty bureaucrats who make up the government of "we the people".

Torch Song

The event took place at the Torch of Friendship Memorial site honoring the continued cooperation among US and certain other countries of this hemisphere. Friendship is an illusive thing when it comes to national cooperation. Some would say "keep your friend close and keep your enemies in the closet.

Listen Up People

Defending the hard earned right of workers, public and private, should be a no brainer. Everyone should know by now corporate welfare make the bosses and shareholders wealthy beyond their need and greed. The corporate special interest's buying of politicians is not only easy, it is done in the sunshine with the blessing of the supreme court while workers struggle to keep the crumbs we scrape off the banquet table.

2 houses, one hotel

Mr. Monopoly explains why it is so important to get off the couch, put on your war-paint and take to the streets with an active participation in our government. Simply put, if you don't pass GO, don't expect $200.

Age of Aquarius

There were few people there under 30. This mature couple expressed concern for the lack of activism in young america. I told them young people are taking a wait-n-see attitude. While the old are waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop, the young are busy deciding what shoes to wear to the revolution.

You don't need a BFA to understand and/or create political art.

This is my favorite photo, Granny Get Your Helmet.

Fine ladies with floppy hats have a message for you.

This are the faces of what republicans would have us believe are the greyest threat to america.

Never too old to participate in the great american tradition of civil disobedience.

Your Honor, Labor Precedes Capital

The guy on the right is our brown knight, but many honestly have little faith in the establishment to do the left's thing. The guy on the right looks allot like a neighbor who used to parade around sporting purple velour jogging suits while munching on a cannoli back in the '80s when i lived in Brooklyn.

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recession proof

Flier Flies

These fine ladies fluttered into the Swampspace Gallery last saturday night with their usual pamphletering. While the nightlife in South Florida is only interrupted by the blinding daylight, the blistering bogus business of a messy metropolis slugs along.



Paradise Framed

The whole nine yards of concrete are getting poured into forms that interrupt the swampscape.
In some ways an economic depression can be a good thing when the brakes are put on progress. much of the construction going on was planned and spent before the bubble burst. The show must go on...



Stimulus Gumbo

Little Haiti is finally getting homogenized with more endless roadwork and a continuity code for store-fronts. Good luck with that.



Bastion of Barons

Indian Creek Island is tearing up the road at its bridge entrance for no apparent reason other than to justify expenditures from slush funds.



Make Good Fences

North Bay Village is spending some of its revenue from the Red Light Scameras that have been extorting wads of cash from the motoring public. The irony is that they planted palms that block the traffic camera's line of sight.



Re-Reconstruction

The sidewalk and curb along N.E. Second Avenue were completely tore up and replaced for no apparent reason. Bay Harbor Island also is trashing all their sidewalks and replacing with bricks for no apparent reason.



Old is New Again

This historic building on Biscayne Bay near the Omni is the old Flagler Fashion School that was built before air-conditioning was invented. looks like it is being rehabilitated.



Jazz Hands

Rather nice mural in otherwise tumbleweed Wynwood.



Slippery When Texting

Car wreck on the teflon highway. Why can't Miamians drive in the rain, cheesus!



Rail Light

Disney style monorail will connect Miami Airport to some other isolated car-centric place, not quite sure.



Why Not Write

Back down in the hood there is an empassioned yet cryptic PR campaign for social justice.




The More Things Change

Someone once said about the swamp, "only the faces change". Maybe so, but change is a tired thing by now, particularly when you like the way things are. That's when i get very conservative.

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wednesdata

Oil Oracle

Things are getting rather uncertain with regard to the impact long-term and short of the British Petroleum ecological disaster in the gulf of mexico.



When Only the Best Will Do

Dick Cheney's crew did a fine job snuffing out all those oil fires in old Kuwait middle-east but can they butt-plug the man-made volcano two thousand leagues under the sea?



Two Ply's of Rough

What do you think.
Should we stay-the-course or act outside-the-box.
Ask your mother...



Shop and Listen

We've all been to a Walmart or drove through hoods like Little Haiti and Hialeah. The Brooklyns of Miami are proof positive that we will always be a developing nation, and that's a good thing.



Pro Progress

The weird thing is that no matter how much concrete we pour or swamp we pave, no amount of progress will solve the people problem. But in reality people power is the solution and institutions are the problem, corporate mindset is the culprit in many a current woes, such as cost of living aka monthly bills. Power, TeeVee, Phone, Water, CCcards, you name it, the more you take on the more happier corporation get.



We got Boom And Bust...



In An Upside Down World...



Miami Parties Like it's 2009...



Billboards are Bigger than Buildings...



Adrianne Arsht rides the "subway"...



From the Rubble of the Orange Bowl, a Venue is Born Again...



We Got WiFi on the Metro Bus...



and Gloria Pow-Wowing with Obama!

Could be worse, then again it's only Wednesday.

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Cruise to Somewheresburg

Martin Luther's Crib

This is a place that time has built. This is a story of yearning for far away places and untold riches. Only time will tell where humans will trek to fulfill the quest for cruising. A line has been drawn on the oceans, care to float across it?



Chalet with a View

From my window at the Aquamarin Inn in Papenburg I could just catch a glance of the Joseph Meyer Wharf in the distance over the winter weary trees. This small rural town in northern Germany is the birthplace of the biggest Cruise ships in the world.




Tracking the Beast

Q: Is this the mark of a fuzzy snow bunny or the hoofs of a moose monster? Clue: The deft hunter knows how to track a prey, so i did some googleing before going to P'burg. A: Let's just say you don't need GPS to find this mastodon of maritime trophies, but it helps.




Titan in a Teapot

Royal Caribbean's Newest cruise ship ECLIPSE is like the sleeping condo about to wake up with a splash of Nodic water and some Viking hot prospects. But good things take time and Euros. Built in 10-12 months on a payroll of 3/4 mill per week, the Eclipse is practically a micro-economy. Lawd know you gotta keep the Terry Malloy's of the waterfronts busy.




Barnacle Deck

If you ask me how many men work at the wharf, the answer would be "about half".




It Takes a Mt. Trashmore

Crushing really, the seemingly endless caravan of dumpster-loads of garbage this project has produced is somehow worth it when you walk inside and see where you could live for six days and five nights while island hopping in some of the worlds nicest oceans. Green has always been in.




A Tree Grows in Molecuwetlyn

The FAQ on Miami's Robert Chambers is, how swampy can he go!.




Who Likes Round Things?

The golden arch is a recurring theme though the ships design, it is the thread that stitches together the interiors of the haul, the exterior is a barge welded in a continuous bead of molten steel tempered and painted for the journeys ahead.





... and more round places.



2010 a lounge odyssey

They say the best part of a journey is the middle, maybe so. These spaces are built for people to forget temporarily about the things that tug at our pursuit of happiness.




Den of Denominations

What would a cruise be without the chance to win big at a casino. There where the shake-down is king. Lot's of boatspace is allocated to the one-armed bandits. Like a pachenco parlour pin-ball-wizard our happy travelers will wager their expendable incomes and disembark happy losers.



Live Acts of Poseidon

There is even a theater that is probably bigger that the Adrianne Arsht Center where Fraulien Gaga will play there sometime soon as she is one of the big coffers.




Coming Soon

But for now the theater is empty, the kitchens are empty, the gym, the spa, the library, the glass museum, the morgue and the weapons vault all sit empty.




Food Courting

The dining rooms sit empty, no smells of culinary cornucopias, no clanging of plates, no rumbles and grumbles of over-indulgence. Just the sound of tools over the smell of new.




Above Deck, Kinda

Finally there is an indoor pool, and outdoor pool, a jocking track, a hoops court, a putting green and much much more. Sign up now, why wait till you're old!







Gang of Four

Of all the workmen on the ship, Here is my P'burg crew from left to right: Captain Daniel Arsham, First Officer Alex Mustonen, Navigation Specialist Yadin Dickstein and Systems Specialist John Bianchi.




A Tool for Every Job

Here is what a greman tool-box looks like. Far as I can see the only thing missing is an espresso maker.




Kunstscheize

Miami's Arsham is both the serenity at the eye of a storm and the tempest of the tropics. This install photo shows a wall sculpture of thirty items resembling erosion clustered to suggest loose graphic of a hurricane image.

Worked like a Rauscher Test gem on the UN of workmen, lot's of goober-thumbs-up comments.




World Wall Warp

Sit down, relax, take a load of your feet. Here is another piece from Archam's curtain-cum-bench series; draping frozen in time as if to remind us of those infinite spaces fluttering with undulating light.




X Marks the Spot

At 14 stories above sea level, the smoke stacks of this voluptuous vessel will billow with the steam of sea faring revelers for years to come.




Tight's All Right

Here's the thing, Papenburg is forty kilometers inland up the Ems River. With only inches of clearance, the giant ship is towed out to sea with much fanfare from locals along the narrow passage.



Next XXXL

Back inside the giant garage, craft-workers are building the next beast of the blue, this time for Disney.



Bulkhead Tested

The Eclipse is now somewhere in the north sea performing Sea Trials; that is looking for troubling water, flooding the ballast tanks to tip the boat over and basically taking her on the Scuppers stress test hot-dog joy-ride.



Grobal Warning

With a job well done we set sail back to Amsterdam and noticed another sure sight of global warming, a giraffe in Emsland.



Fresh Squeezed

Eclipse will be in Ft.Lauderdale sometime this fall.
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like swamp.

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