#I can very clearly visualize a different universe where this was built 10 years earlier (and at a more affordable price lol)

[satanfemme]

watching the jenny nicholson video about the star wars hotel and based on this testimony you could not design a more hellish experience for me if u tried I think. at no fault of the star wars ip. just the entire design and functionality of the hotel itself.... I feel physically nauseous from the second hand anxiety this video is giving me and I'm not kidding LOL

[theconservativebrief]

In 2010, Chris and Melissa Bruntlett sold their cars and began transporting their family of four around Vancouver, BC, by bike. They noticed that bicyclists’ stories were not being told, so they started blogging about their carless lifestyle at the website of what would become their creative agency, Modacity.

Through cycling circles, they heard stories and saw pictures of cycling in Dutch cities, so they went to the Netherlands to check it out, visiting five cities to study cycling infrastructure, talk with local leaders, and share pictures, videos, and articles.

They ended up gathering enough material for a book, which was released Tuesday from Island Press: Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality. It’s a tour of Dutch bicycling culture that attempts to extract lessons that can be applied to other cities, including, yes, American cities.

I chatted with the Bruntletts by phone earlier this month about everything from how Dutch have taken the concept of the protected bike lane and applied it to the intersection to the amazing Dutch cycling skills courses for kids. We even covered why the right wing in the Netherlands has to support more spending on cycling. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

David Roberts

The American stereotype of the Netherlands is that they’ve got it all figured out; they do everything right. But your book makes it clear that everybody was not always on the same page. There were political battles.

Chris Bruntlett

One of the things we heard repeatedly when we got back was, “That would never work here, our city’s different.” We would always say, “well, every Dutch city is different!”

Rotterdam, for example, was completely obliterated during the Second World War and rebuilt in this post-war, modernist image — designing cities around the automobile, where people would live outside the city, commute by car into the city every day, and everyone would have more light and space and air. They’d be living happily in the suburbs.

It didn’t take long for Rotterdammers to realize this wasn’t the future they wanted. The spaces they were building were inhospitable to walking and cycling and public transit. Cycling rates were plummeting. There were more road fatalities.

So, not just in Rotterdam, but in cities across the Netherlands in the ’70s, there was a real rejection of this car-centric urban planning.

Some of them resisted better than others. In Rotterdam, they managed to reverse the tide and retrofit some of these spaces for other modes of transportation. But certainly a lot of Dutch cities made mistakes. In Utrecht, they paved over canals. In Amsterdam, they came just a single city council vote away from demolishing the Jewish quarter of their city to build a four-lane motorway.

So their status as a cycling nation wasn’t always a given. It took a lot of hard work, a certain degree of stubbornness, and forward-thinking politicians to get where they are. And even then, you know, the margins were really, really tight.

Dutch cyclist. Modacity

David Roberts

The Dutch have this distinction between two kinds of cyclists that I thought was interesting.

Melissa Bruntlett

The Dutch have wielrennen, or “wheel runner” — the sporty view of cycling — and they have fietsen, which is just “someone on a bike.” When you talk to somebody in the Netherlands about what makes biking so special, most of them will say, “What are you even talking about? It’s no different than when I get on the train or go for a walk.” You’re no more a cyclist than you are a pedestrian or a driver or a public transit user.

Casual cyclists in the Netherlands. Modacity

David Roberts

In terms of bike infrastructure, I think most people in the US are primarily familiar with painted strips on the side of the road, those little “sharrows.” What are the practical elements of infrastructure that make it safe for, say, an elderly fietsen to go out biking in the Netherlands?

Chris Bruntlett

This is a critical point: The Dutch built environment treats people who ride bikes normally, everyday fietsen, with respect and dignity and gives them a wholly separate space to cycle.

So the Dutch design manual classifies roads depending on the speed of the cars traveling in them. If there’s any major difference in speed, then full separation is required — concrete barriers, a grass median, planter boxes, or bollards.

David Roberts

What is the speed threshold?

Chris Bruntlett

Anything where cars are traveling faster than 30 kph. So, what’s that, 19 mph?

Mixing is permitted on streets where the cars are traveling slower than that. But the volume of cars needs to be fairly low, so that the cyclist still feels comfortable traveling on those streets.

Melissa Bruntlett

In those shared spaces, it’s usually cobblestone, or raised crosswalks, speed bumps where they’re needed. It’s very clearly delineated that cars are guests in these spaces.

Cycle tracks are all paved with this easily identified red pavement, an inch-thick top coat of dyed red asphalt. It’s everywhere throughout the Netherlands — you know when you’re on a cycle track.

They’ll do raised cycle tracks when speeds don’t go above 50 kph (30 mph), and then on highways or motorways, it will be an adjacent pathway, again with that trademark red, but completely separated.

Modacity

David Roberts

Say a little bit about intersections. I’m morbidly interested in intersections.

Chris Bruntlett

It’s one area we criminally underlook in North America. We build these protected bike lanes (if they’re protected at all) and then in an intersection you’re stuck in no man’s land. That’s where the vast majority of collisions occur.

The Dutch have taken the concept of the protected bike lane and carried it through the intersection. More often than not, there is physical protection on the corners where there’s cars turning right or left. There’s often mid-block protection provided as well, so that you don’t feel exposed. The raised cycle track is also carried through the intersection. Through design, they’ve made the cycle track a priority — visually and physically.

The cars know that they are to look out for bikes. They are treated almost as guests in the city, which is a complete 180 from how we function here in North America.

David Roberts

And you write that there are all-way, no-signs intersections?

Melissa Bruntlett

One of the things they started testing in the city of Groningen — which is in the north, and has some of the highest rates of cycling in the entire country — is having intersections where the cars have to wait and there’s a bicycle-only signal. You have bikes turning in six different directions, all moving at the same time, from every corner.

It sounds completely counterintuitive, but when we experienced it, it’s really just a matter of making eye contact. Everything is done through visual clues. We traveled through that intersection easily a dozen times during our trip there, with our children, and never once experienced any sort of collision. Maybe a couple of frustrated Dutch people because we were riding too slowly!

This kind of mixed-used design, with no setback, is illegal almost everywhere in US cities. Modacity

David Roberts

I taught my kids to ride bikes, but there’s no real system set up for them to get education in it, and not that many safe places to ride. What do Dutch kids experience early on, in terms of bikes?

Melissa Bruntlett

The concept of cycling starts getting introduced to a lot of kids in preschool. They’ll run around on these push bikes. But the biggest education — while it’s not mandatory throughout the country, it’s done by most schools — is students around grade four or five, in the 10 and 11 age range, start taking cycling skills courses.

Between the ages of 11 and 12 they have to take a written exam to show that they understand the rules of the road. They also do a practical exam. So, every year, dozens or hundreds of Dutch students go out onto the street and travel on their routes to get to school, on a designated pathway. The Fietsersbond, which is their national cycling advocacy group, puts the kids right in real life situations, navigating their streets, knowing when to turn, how to signal, where to stop.

After they complete this practical exam, they get a certificate saying, “I successfully passed the cycling skills program and can now responsibly ride through my city on my own.” It’s kinda neat.

Wee Dutch fietsen. Modacity

David Roberts

How do bikes fit in with public transit in the Netherlands?

Chris Bruntlett

As Marco te Brömmelstroet, a professor at the University of Amsterdam, explained to us, the bike alone doesn’t replace the private automobile, and neither does public transit, but when you combine the two, that’s when the magic happens. Then the car becomes redundant in cities.

The Dutch use bikes as a tool to feed their transit system: 50 percent of all trips that take place on the transit system in the Netherlands begin with a bicycle ride.

It serves two goals. It increases the size of the catchment area for each station, so it’s feeding more customers into the public transit system. And it gives people a variety of options; they’re not dependent on one particular trip.

It’s creating this virtuous circle of sustainable transportation, where they have more people riding transit because the infrastructure is built to reach the stations. Cycling plays an important first-mile, last-mile role on these longer trips that may be 10, 15, 20 kilometers. That’s where you see replacement of car trips in cities: by capturing those mid-to-long trips.

Melissa Bruntlett

And they’ve also introduced the OV-Fiets, a rental bike, which is providing the last-mile solution. So 50 percent of people are coming to the station with their bike. They take their train, and on the other end, historically, they didn’t have anything to get them from the station to their next point of destination.

Now anyone who has their OV-chipkaart — the transit tap card they use for bus, trains, trams, and these OV-Fiets bikes — can pick up a bike from the train station, for €3.50 for every 24-hour period. They can have that bike all day, take it back to the train station, get on a train, and go back home to their other bike, all in one seamless trip.

Very multi-modal. Modacity

The National Rail [NV Nederlandse Spoorwegen] and ProRail, which are the two organizations managing this, have found in surveys that it’s actually replacing car trips, because people have an option at the other end. Unfortunately, they’ve been victims of their own success and can’t seem to keep up with the demand. They never have enough bikes!

David Roberts

Did you see one of those giant automated bike garages the Dutch are famous for?

Chris Bruntlett

One of the more spectacular products of this bike-train system is this sea of bicycles you see at any train station in the Netherlands. Step out of Amsterdam’s Grand Central — they had to build [a bike garage] over the canal because of the thousands and thousands of people that cycle to the train station every day.

Because of Utrecht’s size and location in the country, it is ground zero for this bike-train connection. They’re in the process of building something like 30,000 bike parking spots in the next 10 years. One such facility is 12,500 spaces. When it opens, either late this year or early next year, it will be the biggest bike-parking facility in the world.

Seas of bikes. Modacity

David Roberts

In the book, you stress the difference in Dutch bikes themselves. How are they different from US bikes?

Melissa Bruntlett

The first thing is, when the Dutch go into a shop to buy a bike, they’re buying a complete bicycle. Oftentimes in North America when we go into a bike shop, there’s a bike, but there’s no fenders, lights, racks, kickstand, bell, any of that kind of stuff. In the Netherlands, they don’t sell incomplete bikes because they need it to be practical.

There, everyone, save maybe a small percentage of the population, rides these Dutch-style bikes, as they’ve come to be known (even though their origins are in England). You’re seated in an upright position, almost like you’re sitting on a stool or a chair. You’re forced to interact with people, because you can see them clearly. It just helps to breed that relaxed way of cycling. They don’t have to stress about looking up every time they have to turn. Signaling is a breeze. They’re largely single speed.

Chris Bruntlett

We make a differentiation between the hunched-and-helmeted cyclist and the upright, bare-headed cyclist. Upright, everyday cycling, a form of walking-with-wheels, is far more broad, inclusive, accessible, and appealing to people of all ages and fitness levels. It isn’t just about getting from A to B as quickly as possible, it’s about enjoying the ride.

An upright, unhelmeted Dutch rider. Modacity

David Roberts

In US cycling culture, bikes themselves — the materials, the brands — are often somewhat fetishized. Is that true in the Netherlands?

Melissa Bruntlett

Not at all. Most of them will ride their bike until it falls apart. Their bikes are meant to be workhorses to last through all seasons, all kinds of beatings, because they live out on the street.

Most people we met still have their road bike that is lightweight, super-fast, clipped shoes, and all that, but that’s their weekend bike, when they go out and go for long rides, for sport and fitness. But the everyday bike, I mean, the image that most people have is of this black, beat up, vintage-looking Dutch bike — and that is literally what most of them ride around.

David Roberts

The Dutch don’t wear bike helmets. How safe is it to ride a bike in the Netherlands?

Chris Bruntlett

We — like you — live in a place where helmets have been mandated by law, because they’ve been accepted as a commonsense safety device, normal as a seatbelt. But the Dutch show that [for them], safety in infrastructure, safety in slowing cars, and safety in numbers are all far more important than safety in body armor.

David Roberts

Yeah, the US approach seems to be to up-armor the cyclist so that cars don’t have to change.

Look Ma, no helmet! Modacity

Chris Bruntlett

Exactly.

Less than 0.5 percent of Dutch cyclists wear helmets, which is one in 200 people on bikes. And that’s really just the sport cyclists. Virtually everybody else, from children to old people, doesn’t even think about helmets. It’s just not present in their culture, because they’ve ultimately decided that it’s far more important to build this culture of everyday cycling, and to build safe streets, instead of requiring people to protect themselves.

David Roberts

The Netherlands seems to be getting serious about long-distance bike corridors — bike highways. Are those getting used?

Melissa Bruntlett

For sure.

For decades, the Dutch have had a country-wide network of bicycle trails. You can get from one city to another on a bike, no matter the distance. You could travel the whole country by bike if you wanted to.

But what they started to realize in recent years is that, while that infrastructure exists, it isn’t very well-connected. So now they’re trying to find ways to make it a viable transportation option, an alternative to taking the motorway between two cities.

The greatest opportunity these are providing is for people in the growing e-bike market. You can travel further without having to break a sweat, and get from city to city on a very convenient, continuous path.

The one we talk about in the book is the RijnWaalpad, which connects the city of Arnhem with the city of Nijmegen, about 14 to 15 kilometers. At no point on that trip do you ever have to put your foot down. You ride continuously, uninterrupted.

David Roberts

How are e-bikes and electric scooters and electric mopeds fitting into Dutch bike culture?

Chris Bruntlett

The thing the Dutch have done well is classify these electric vehicles. Again, it comes down to the speed they’re capable of traveling. Regular e-bikes are speed-limited to [19 mph]. As long as you don’t exceed that speed, you’re able to use the regular bike infrastructure.

If the bike is capable of going faster than that, it must utilize the streets and act like a car. There’s insurance requirements, licensing requirements, helmet mandates for those machines.

With the e-bike and electromobility in general, they’ve shown in the Netherlands, that they’re getting people to make better choices around personal transportation. They’re more likely to take their e-bike or scooter than an Uber or a taxi, or even the public transit system.

That little electric boost provides additional psychological help, and to encourage them to ride longer distances. So we are champions of electromobility, within reason. Cities still need to carefully regulate and react to the changes — I don’t think anybody foresaw, for example, the scooter disruption that’s happened on our streets.

It takes all sorts (of bikes) in the Netherlands. Modacity

David Roberts

Some US cities have had to deal with an anti-bike lobby. Does that kind of sentiment or political force even exist at all in the Netherlands any more? Is there anyone pushing back?

Chris Bruntlett

Not that I’m aware. We had conversations with politicians there and they made it perfectly clear: Even the right-wing in the Netherlands has to support more spending on cycling.

David Roberts

Because of public pressure, public opinion?

Chris Bruntlett

Exactly. It’s not a tenable or realistic position to win an election when probably 80 percent of the population cycles at least once a week.

That’s not to say they aren’t also undermining the cause by building car parking and the like.

David Roberts

So, pro-bike is settled, but anti-car maybe is not?

Chris Bruntlett

The Dutch still love their cars. They drive miles and miles, as much as neighboring countries. They’re having the same conversations as we are around the allocation of space, because they built all this space for cycling and it started to fill up. Now they’re trying to push for more space for cycling, and the exact same argument is being made, around loss of parking, loss of vehicle lanes. Here, we’re just arguing for any space,

David Roberts

So it never ends? Every bit you take away from cars is a battle, forever?

Chris Bruntlett

Exactly.

Original Source -> No helmets, no problem: how the Dutch created a casual biking culture

via The Conservative Brief

[sinceileftyoublog]

Circuit des Yeux Interview: Stitched Songs

photo by Julia Dratel

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Circuit des Yeux’s Haley Fohr has released her opus. After 2015��s In Plain Speech and 2016′s Jackie Lynn, she’s consolidated her style and released Reaching For Indigo, the type of album that contains more ideas in each song than many entire albums do. It all started when something happened to her on January 22, 2016--she won’t describe it in much detail, but it shaped her. Reaching For Indigo directly relates to and attempts to capture that moment, but also other moments that have had an effect on Fohr’s psyche, interpretation of the world, and creative process. For example, there’s “Philo”, an attempt to illustrate the aforementioned inspiring moment, but there’s also “Falling Blonde”, about witnessing a young blonde killed after being hit by a car in the middle of the street. Two profound moments, one abstract and one concrete, intertwining to create a sort of language.

In the years leading up to Reaching For Indigo, Fohr worked on her voice, performing solo vocal sets throughout small venues in Chicago and contributing guest vocals to albums like Six Organs Of Admittance’’s Burning The Threshold. But she also solidified a cast of collaborators, from Bitchin Bajas’ Cooper Crain, who co-produced and plays on the album, as well as longtime friends Ryley Walker, Whitney Johnson, Brian J. Sulpizio, and Tyler Damon. The album feels seamless, perhaps even effortless, but is also clearly the product of an artist as much of a creator as a collaborator, one who knows how to draw the most potential out of herself and others.

I spoke to Fohr over the phone earlier this week about Reaching For Indigo. She talked about the inspirations behind the songs, why she’s never really satisfied with her recordings, the album art, switching from Thrill Jockey to Drag City, and the potential return of Jackie Lynn.  She’s heading out on an East Coast and Midwest tour with her band and will play Lincoln Hall on November 18th. Read the interview below.

Since I Left You: Reaching For Indigo is inspired by something that happened to you that you’ve kept ambiguous. Did you not want it to color people’s interpretations of the album, or is it for reasons of privacy?

Haley Fohr: More of a privacy thing, I guess. It’s something that I grapple with, letting people in in a universal way. But some things are too profound and charged to say anywhere.

SILY: Are any of the songs based on actual stories?

HF: Yes, they are. They’re all pretty multi-faceted, but “Falling Blonde” stems from a very real scenario I saw unfold in 2008. “Philo” is my attempt to actually fortify and solidify the actual moment I feel very profoundly changed by. I don’t think I did a very good job, actually. I feel like it was a failure in that respect. Other songs are also just culminations of real things in my life but a little more existential or obtusely represented.

SILY: Why do you say you failed with “Philo”?

HF: I mean, it was just such a huge feeling that coursed through me. I tried so many things. I just wasn’t satisfied. I hired a string quartet, and I hired an arranger. I spent a couple days in the studio. It didn’t work out. I tried with guitar. It was this problem that couldn’t be solved. Whatever the end result was, it wasn’t big enough. But you really can’t capture a moment that lives and breathes in you and then is over. So it is what it is.

SILY: Have you had that experience before with any songs you’ve recorded in the past?

HF: Yeah, I mean the way I work as an artist, I’m pretty critical. I pretty much just work until my brain and body can’t function anymore. Then, I know it’s done. I can’t really say I’ve been truly satisfied with any of my recordings.

SILY: Do your songs live and breathe and change over time as you play them live?

HF: Yeah, I have no loyalty to the recorded subject. What I’m playing live, I’m totally open to playing anywhere that it goes.

SILY: Does that get you closer to satisfaction, or is it still far away?

HF: The recorded object is just the beginning. The following 2 years of touring is when things are really happening. That’s the exciting part--seeing where a song grows.

SILY: At the same time, during recording, is there a specific moment when you know you have to stop?

HF: When that conversation starts, I use people as a tool. I will build up something and keep working on it until it’s obliterated to nothing. I get pretty fixated. It’s also pretty intoxicating when I’m writing and recording. I’ll just keep going. For this record, Cooper Crain was the one that was like, “Stop, it’s over.” I wanted to take everything 10 steps further, and he said, “This is done.” It was such an invaluable resource. I would have done the songs a disservice.

SILY: You also benefit from working with people continuously--most of the people who recorded on Reaching For Indigo you had worked with before. What was different about working with the same people this time as opposed to past times?

HF: I think the language that I’ve built with people. We’re just on the same page--there’s some ESP involved. It’s kind of not explainable. There’s also more trust. I can let go a bit more, describe what I need and want more accurately. Not in a composition sense, but in a language I’ve created with people. This record is way more concise than what was in my mind and than previous records.

SILY: Tell me about the album art.

HF: The idea stemmed from the past two years, where I’ve taken an intentional point of working on my voice. I’ve been performing in Chicago at cafes and smaller venues doing solo vocal performances. It was something really important to me. I also took the past two years being a collaborator vocally. When I came to the idea of this album cover, I wanted it to be about honoring my voice, and I had this idea originally about becoming a rose bush, a bunch of flowers blooming out of my mouth. That eventually morphed into the image you see on the cover. It’s just a head shot. We cut the body out. It’s 35mm film that Julia Dratel shot. She’s a local photographer and artist. We’ve worked really closely with the last three albums. It’s pretty intimate, and our photo shoots are pretty physical. They take a lot out of me emotionally, and she challenges me in a really crazy way. But her results are really evocative and beautiful. She’s a very special person in my collaborative world.

SILY: You switched from Thrill Jockey to Drag City on this record. Why?

HF: I think I really came into my own style last year. Thrill Jockey is a really great label, and I think they’re kind of an anomaly with what they do and the service they provide to subcultures and experimental music. But for me, there were some conflicts in style. I also am not very apt to signing my rights away to strangers. Drag City have been friends of mine for years. It was a decision I made, and I think I made the right one. I’m really happy with the way things are going, and I just love their style. They’re hands-on and into physical media, records, and art. It’s hard to find these days.

SILY: What else is next for you?

HF: I’m gonna tour hopefully for a couple years on this. I really want to play live. That’s what’s on my short term mind. I also have a lot of working ideas in my head. Just trying to honor them all and schedule them in a way that doesn’t shoot myself in the foot. There’s a sculpture in Berlin I performed in this summer called Big Black Box. That was really rewarding, and I’d love to do that again some time. Jackie Lynn is always in the shadows. I don’t know when she’s gonna come back or not. I’m open to that possibility.

SILY: Do you have songs written but not recorded? Or are they just ideas?

HF: The way I write, it’s just a collection of random ideas. I just write them down. I also have a visual art notebook--I’m a terrible visual artist--but this is just snippets and fragments of sentences. When I’m ready to record or write a song, they all come together in this collage kind of way. “Paper Bag” is a really good example of that. Six different ideas just kind of stitched together.