Border Town

Team Unproven Storm imagines the Snooze Cruise, for a smooth...

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 16:13:09 -0500

Team Unproven Storm imagines the Snooze Cruise, for a smooth border town surgery recovery.

12amtiger: Starting to prototype. The Midnight Tiger, moving...

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 15:57:59 -0500

12amtiger:

Starting to prototype.

The Midnight Tiger, moving from brainstorm to ideation to prototype…

We’re Live. Since Friday evening, five teams of people...

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 15:17:34 -0500

We’re Live.

Since Friday evening, five teams of people have been working to create a border crossing kit for a particular customer in a particular border town. You can follow along on Twitter at #btdj or by tracking their blogs.

Moodbook Part 8: The Every Day Carry EDC is a gear-loving...

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 13:30:19 -0500

Moodbook Part 8: The Every Day Carry

EDC is a gear-loving subculture that focuses on efficient and cool-looking tools that you carry on your person to allow preparedness for common tasks and emergencies. There is an appreciation for functional minimalism and fine design, and no small amount of badass-ness.

everydaycarry: Editor’s Note: That Böker plus folder is way beefier than I had anticipated. I wonder how it will compare to the Spyderco Techno. Nice MAKR wallet and Seiko too. Nice docket pump, regardless~

Moodbook Part 7: Lifehacks via NonCanon Dot Com - Drawings by...

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 09:21:41 -0500

Moodbook Part 7: Lifehacks

via NonCanon Dot Com - Drawings by Tom McHenry

Moodbook Part 6 North and South Korea are still technically at...

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:34:45 -0500

Moodbook Part 6

North and South Korea are still technically at war; an armistice was signed but there was never a peace treaty. The two sides are kept apart by a 2 mile-wide demilitarized zone. Two villages remain inside that zone, one on each side of the border. The North Korean village is called Kijong-dong.

The official position of the North Korean government is that the village contains 200 families who run a collective farm. They live in brightly painted buildings, wired with electricity (a luxury in 1950s North Korea). Observation from the south shows that the buildings are conceret shells, lacking windows and interior rooms. Most likely, the town is staffed by a small cadre of workers who keep the streets swept and turn the lights on an off in an effort to maintain the illusion.

Banks of loudspeakers blare propaganda, agitprop opera and patriotic marching music across the border and the town houses the world’s third tallest flagpole. The flagbpole was built in response to a massive South Korean flagpole built in nearby Daeseong-dong. The loudspeakers aren’t unique either. South Korea has its own array, which was used to blast S-Pop across the border in 2010 after the sinking of the Cheonan.

Moodbook Part 5 Licence to Kill - Q Hotel scene (by...

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 10:08:28 -0500

Moodbook Part 5

Licence to Kill - Q Hotel scene (by OliverBond96)

Moodbook Part 4 The UK Home Office maintains a flickr account,...

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 17:54:02 -0500

Moodbook Part 4

The UK Home Office maintains a flickr account, which often includes shots of smugglers’ attempts to bring drugs, people and animals into the nation. The above is a radish, with bonus narcotic core.

Moodbook Part 3: Baarle Hertog/Baarle Nassau Baarle...

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 11:56:00 -0500

Moodbook Part 3: Baarle Hertog/Baarle Nassau

Baarle Hertog/Baarle Nassau is a collection of enclaves at the southern edge of the Netherlands, near that country’s border with Belgium. Due to the vagaries of early-modern-era inheritance claims and political infighting, the Dutch ended up with twenty-two Belgian enclaves within their borders. Some of those Belgian enclaves are large enough to contain Dutch enclaves within their borders.

All of this leads to complicated systems of language, identity documents, citizenship, transport, and of course, taxes. The borders often divide blocks, farms, houses, or businesses. A child born to Dutch parents in a Belgian hospital gets to pick their citizenship at the age of 18. When the café you’re in closes in the Netherlands, you can switch tables to the Belgian side, and keep right on drinking. If your house is bisected, your property taxes are determined by the nation into which your front door opens. So, it’s not unknown for flurries of construction to result when tax laws change.

Luckily for the town’s residents, the two nations have long been closely aligned through Benelux and EU membership, so it’s easy enough for citizens of one nation to live or work in another. For more information about these entwined towns, check out the Atlantic Cities blog.

(photo by daveoleary)

"Cross often? Make it simple, use NEXUS."

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 22:34:15 -0500

“Cross often? Make it simple, use NEXUS.”

- Moodbook Part 2: The NEXUS System

The NEXUS system is a joint program between Canada and the Unites States. The idea is that it is a method to allow low risk travellers to cross more easily. Membership in the program brings with it substantial benefits for card holders including self-serve kiosks and NEXUS-only lanes at certain crossings.

In the wake of heightened security, NEXUS’ effect is to return the crossing experience to something that resembles the pre-9/11 regime, which was much less invasive. The cost of this privilege is that hopeful participants must subject themselves to heightened examination during the application process.

Cross often? Make it simple, use NEXUS

Moodbook Part 1: San Diego/Tijuana Tourism has been vital to...

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:51:00 -0500

Moodbook Part 1: San Diego/Tijuana

Tourism has been vital to Tijuana since the 19th century. The city was a popular destination during prohibition and again as a place to party after World War II, when San Diego became a Navy town. Its somewhat sleazy reputation as a place where anything goes did not dissuade (and may have attracted) tourists through to the 1970s when tourism numbers peaked. In the wake of strings of kidnappings and drug-cartel-related murders, tourism to Tijuana has collapsed.

The one bright spot is medical tourism. New modern hospitals with bilingual staff and signage are built as close to the border as possible. They serve Americans seeking cosmetic surgery and other elective procedures. Many specialize in gastric bypass surgery.

Today, the Mexico to USA checkpoint is well guarded with long lines segregated according to nationality and carried documentation. The USA to Mexico checkpoint is a turnstile.

We’re back. And we’re ridiculously excited about...

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:02:00 -0500

We’re back. And we’re ridiculously excited about this.

The first Border Town design studio was a stately 10-week investigation into divided cities with assigned readings, groups tours, and an international exhibition in Detroit. For our next trick, we’re going to do it all at high speed.

We’re pleased to announce the first Border Town Design Jam, held in collaboration with ThingTank labs out of UofT. In one whirlwind weekend, we’re going to get a group of artists, architects, writers and designers together and we’re going to divide you into teams. On Friday night, we’re going to give you an assignment. On Saturday evening, you’re going to show your work to the world.

It all happens the first weekend of March, on the 2nd and 3rd. Sign up here.

If you are the reading type, we have more information about the format of the event here. If you aren’t the participating type, you can sign up for the Saturday show and tell here. But we really think you should consider doing the whole thing.

We’re going to be have a lot more to say in the coming days. There’s going to be talks, a movie room, a party, and a whole bunch of Border Town veterans on hand to help make things run smooth. For now, please put us on your calendar.

“A condominium is a territory jointly administered by two...

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:43:51 -0500

“A condominium is a territory jointly administered by two or more countries, often (but not necessarily) a territory on the common border between the parties involved. As one might surmise, such an arrangement depends on the benevolent cooperation of all parties involved — and indeed, historically, most condominiums have not survived very long.

Pheasant Island is not only the oldest surviving condominium, it is also the only one where sovereignty isn’t shared simultaneously, but alternately. For six months a year, Pheasant Island is French; for the other six, it is Spanish.” Frank Jacobs, NYT Opinionator

This is the Microfictions installation in Detroit.

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 14:18:37 -0500

This is the Microfictions installation in Detroit.

Deb Chachra is one of the godparents of Border Town. More than one, we called her for advice on...

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 14:43:00 -0400

Deb Chachra is one of the godparents of Border Town. More than one, we called her for advice on putting together activities or dealing with unexpected situations as the studio progressed. Here, she talks about Toronto, a border town 140km from the US boundary, but not for logistical reasons.

My hometown, Toronto, is 140 km from the nearest international border, but it’s a border city. Not one that lies between two contiguous geographical regions, but rather one that occupies the cultural space between all the different homelands of the people who live there, and the land of hockey and Tim Hortons and poutine.

(via)

As of 2007, nearly half of Toronto residents were born outside Canada. A city populated by immigrants is always a border town. Scattered across the city are ethnic enclaves, like Chinatown and Little India. In Toronto, they’re marked with bilingual street signs. Border towns embedded in a border town.

(via)

My parents were part of the first wave of non-European arrivals that immediately followed Canadian immigration reform in the late 1960s. When I was a child, my family regularly visited the stretch of Gerrard Street populated by expatriate South Asians: a little piece of the subcontinent overlaid on grey, indifferent Toronto. Signs in Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, and more. The scents of spices wafting out of grocery stores. The sounds of Bollywood coming out of speakers. For my parents, they could briefly be somewhere that felt like home.

(via)

As a teenager exploring the city, I regularly wandered through Chinatown markets. Signs I couldn’t read, brands I couldn’t identify, produce I didn’t recognise. It was the real-life version of Miéville’s Un Lun Dun or Gaiman’s Neverwhere; the alternate world snuggled up against the familiar one. If I turned left on Spadina Avenue, I could be an immigrant in my own hometown.

(via)

Visiting Little India was a very different experience in my twenties than it was when I was tagging along after my parents. I found myself in the awkward interstices between looking like I belonged there and yet feeling like an outside to the culture. I barely spoke the language (or rather, any of the languages) I heard around me. I had long since stopped watching Bollywood movies in favour of midnight screenings of European art films at my local repertory cinema. At the time, all that I really felt I shared with the culture of my parents was the love of the food, and my infrequent visits were mostly to stock up on Indian groceries, and to have a masala dosa or channa bhatura for lunch. It was many years before I came to realize that both cultures were building blocks of my identity, rather than one being chosen and one imposed.

(via)

I’ve always loved that the ethnic neighbourhoods in Toronto aren’t just informal constructs. The street signs that mark neighbourhoods send a paradoxical but clear message: We are all strangers here. We all belong here.

—

Following in the footsteps of her parents, Deb Chachra emigrated from her homeland and now resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts. You can follow her peregrinations on Twitter.

Our Foreign Correspondent from Monrovia, Matthew Jones, examines the roles of language, religion and...

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 18:33:00 -0400

Our Foreign Correspondent from Monrovia, Matthew Jones, examines the roles of language, religion and even gerrymandering in the making of borders in Africa. (click through for the full text and images)

Perhaps the most often-repeated sentiment about modern African states and the borders that demarcate them are that they were devised by European colonial powers, either as arbitrary lines on a blank canvas of lands and peoples which were unknown, or imposed to divide mercantilist, extractive spoils, or also to intentionally split apart existing kingdoms, chieftaincies, nations, tribes, and peoples in order to weaken and rule over them.

And this is mostly true, although the most nefarious conspiracies of a sophisticated coordination of parsing up a continent are a bit apocryphal. It is also helpful to compare the evolutions of nation-states and the divisions between ethnic groups elsewhere, including Europe itself, as such lines, although less arbitrary, have been subject to periodic, irregular alternations, not least due to war, aggression, empire-building, and subjugation.

European ignorance of or disregard for meaningful divisions that existed previously, especially between cultural groups, continues to have detrimental impacts on the modern states and populations they contain, Briefly, this post tried to illuminate several of the unique aspects that political and ethnic borders in Africa possess at the present time, and examine some the interactions between these different limits.

The creation of many African countries shares similar traits. The formation of various African countries evolved from the earliest European incursions into tropical Africa through to the post-colonial period. Juxtaposing chronological maps reveal many additions, subtractions, mergers and reformations which suggest the sculpting of a shape by carving, although the scalpel in hand was that of European political and economic affairs rather than a more natural or indigenous progression [see images of Cameroon below].

The evolution of the shape of Cameroon, from the German protectorate of Kamerun in 1910 above, to Anglo-French to French colony, to independent state in 1960. The rough-hewn shape, looking much like the profile of a duck-billed, crowned Parasauolophus dinosaur, is always existent but changes over time. Top image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Firstly, European sea powers established forts and trading centers along the coast. Coincidently, more intrepid European explorers began penetrating the interior regions both from the Atlantic and Mediterranean (trans Saharan) ports, following either trade routes or rivers. It was not until the 20^thcentury that European nations had more fully charted colonial boundaries inland.

For France in particular, the historic Atlas shows a claim to an immense and unexplored zone stretching from the Mediterranean to the Equator. Earlier Swedish, Dutch, Danish and Portuguese trading posts along the Ivory Coast, Gold Coast and Slave Coast gave way to the British Sea superiority during the Victorian era; German possessions were surrendered to the French and British victors after World War I.

LANGUAGE & ETHNICITY

Again due to the colonial legacy, West Africa is a checkerboard of Anglophone and Francophone countries (with a single, tiny, Lusophone state, Guinea-Bissau, in one corner). The former French colonies are highly aligned, using a common CFA Franc currency with a single central bank, and with the whole of West Africa operating the regional cooperative body ECOWAS [below]. But in matters between former British and French zones, the barrier of language has stunted better regional integration, particularly in terms of cross-border trade.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)

This is evident when looking at route maps of regional airlines. For example, there is at least one flight per day on various airlines between Accra, the capital of English-speaking Ghana, and Monrovia, in English-speaking Liberia. The two nations are close allies and economic partners. However, these flights cross over French-speaking Cote D’Ivoire, and both cities have only a few flights per week to Abidjan, although it is one of the most important cities in all of French-speaking Africa, and Ghana and Cote D’Ivoire are about the same size.

When looking at the border regions themselves, the already-profuse polylingual abilities of many inhabitants will include knowledge of the legacy language of the neighboring country. For instance, people in Westernmost Ghana, in addition to speaking their own language, perhaps a few other indigenous African languages, and English, will speak French as well, due to the proximity of Cote D’Ivoire. In northern and eastern Liberia, it is common for many (illiterate) locals to speak French as well as English and their own tribal language.

This atmosphere in these frontier regions is further enhanced by the presence of a common ethnic identity or language on both sides of a national border—sometimes a single group has two different names in two different countries, such as the Dan/Mande/Gio in Liberia/Cote D’Ivoire. The international boundary is often a much newer phenomenon than the ethno-linguistic landscape of the area. A grandfather might have grandchildren living in the same area but in two different countries, and clan, kinship and ethnic links often straddle borders in West Africa.

CONFLICT

Such milieux have too often, unfortunately, not proven to be seams of regional stability, but have in recent decades (and recent months) become, and continue to be, zones in which insecurity, conflict and violence spill over borders. The clearest evidence of this is in Northeastern Liberia, especially in Nimba County. The first incident, in 1990, was the beginning of the two-decade long Liberia Civil War, with the crossing of the rebel warlord (and future elected president of Liberia; now in the Hague awaiting a verdict in his war crimes trial) Charles Taylor into Liberia from Cote D’Ivoire. This took place at the village of Buutuo.

Buutuo is also one of the locations of the second series of events, from this past winter and spring, as more than a million refugees fled political violence in Cote D’Ivoire, and sought shelter on the Liberian side of the border. Many of the villages, and even the very same families, which today host Ivorian refugees, were themselves refugees in Cote D’Ivoire in earlier years, fleeing the violence of the Liberian Civil War. There have been anecdotal reports this spring of Liberian families hosting the same Ivorian families which hosted them in previous decades.

Conversely, family and clan links across borders make the spread of this same violence more fluid, especially in that it is easier to recruit rebel armies in these regions to launch hostile action in neighboring countries.

LIBERIA

Liberia is unique among African countries. Aside from Ethiopia (which was briefly conquered by Italy) Liberia is the oldest sovereign state in Africa, declaring its statehood in 1847. Liberia was founded not by Europeans but by freed American slaves and their descendants. These families and individuals came from both the northern and southern United States in waves, intermingling with the local tribes as well as the arrival of Africans freed from slave ships arrested along the coast.

The early evolution of what was later to be modern Liberia, from an unexplored area calledMalagueta by the Portuguese (from an 18th century Dutch map, top) to a series of various American settlements along the “Grain Coast” which began to organize into neighboring units, reaching independence in 1847. At bottom is a modern map of Liberia showing the original American settlement zone.

Liberia’s original American settlements were all along the coast. For its first decades, these arrivals only established any type of control over a narrow sliver of what Europeans had first called Malagueta or the Grain Coast (various types of grain pepper were traded with Portuguese ships here). Various arrivals from different parts of the United States formed unassociated settlements, which only later came to be unified into Liberia.

During the remainder of the 19th Century (top) and the early 20th century (above), the large inland claim of independent Liberia is slowly reduced away by European powers in their campaigns to control the continent.

Even after independence, these settlements exerted hegemony only a few miles inland, but by claiming control over the coast, Liberia was able to monopolize access to the interior beyond yet on the map Liberia extended its territorial claim deep into the Guinea Highlands—a temperate, almost Alpine region that is the source of the greater River Niger. Liberia was never able to gain actual control over much of this interior area, which eventually became part of French Guinea (now the Republic of Guinea). Modern Liberia is about the size of Pennsylvania.

Liberia in 2008, showing its 15 counties.

INTERNAL BORDERS

Liberia has evolved not only as a sovereign entity in relation to external neighbors, but also in its internal arrangement, especially in the legacy of its American settlements and the relationship between these “Americo-Liberian” zones and the indigenous African tribes in the interior.

After independence, this interior of Liberia was divided into districts called Frontiers, a distinction reflecting a lesser degree of administration, and control. It was not until after World War 2 that all of Liberia came to be made up of “Counties” which reflected both the original American settlements on the coast and the frontier areas. However, counties were and are still to this day governed not as federal units (like American states), but are entirely administered by the central government from the national capital.

Liberia’s administrative districts in 1963. Compare with 2008 Map above.
Liberia’s Chieftaincies in 1963.
Liberia’s ethnic group areas in 1963.These (3) reprinted from Liberia in Maps by Stefan Von Gnielinksi.
Liberia’s counties in 1970. Compare with 1963 and 2008 maps above.

AFRICAN GERRYMANDERING

New Liberian counties have continually been carved out from existing ones, most recently the creation of River Gee and Gbarpolu counties during the presidency of Charles Taylor from 1997 to 2003. In theory, these new subdivisions could lead to greater local autonomy and citizen empowerment, but on the other hand can also reinforce central government control.

Liberia in 1999, in the middle of Charles Taylor’s presidency, in which two new counties were created (compare with 2008 and 1970 maps, above).

For instance, new counties need new appointed administrators and elected legislators, which give the central government and executive leader additional lucrative positions to distribute within its political party and support network. It is in this and in other ways that it is critical to note that the creation of arbitrary political boundaries did not end with the withdrawal of European powers, and continues to this day.

Compare the boundaries of Nigeria’s increasing number of federal states with the demarcations of its many linguistic and cultural areas.

A brief examination of Nigeria shows a similar continued proliferation of subnational prefectures, called States in Nigeria. These only roughly correspond to more historic boundaries of ethnic or religious division [compare images of Nigeria above]. It may be ironic that multiparty democracy and strong centralized control have sought to thwart ethnic identities by overlaying a series of borders. Conversely, perhaps a stronger national identity which de-emphasizes potential divisions based on language, tribe, or religion would lead to a better functioning state.

Unfortunately, recent episodes in African political affairs have proven that rival political groups will exploit divisions of identity for their own gain. Such were true of the Rwandan Genocide some 15 years ago which lead to an even larger conflict in the Congo that followed and more recently the 2008 post-election violence in Kenya, East Africa, but also manifested in the civil war which has split Cote D’Ivoire in northern and southern parts, with corrosive xenophobia leading to this year’s post election conflict which can at least be defined as ethnic cleansing, if not outright genocide.

RELIGION

A major component of the xenophobia which has festered in Cote D’Ivoire splits the citizenry along a divide that is older than African states themselves: the frontier between the coastal groups, whose traditional religions gave way to European Christianity and more recently quasi-American Fundamental/Pentecostalism, and the Muslim North, which has very recently turned away from moderation toward a Saudi-style fundamentalism.

This is most evident in Northern Nigeria, which has long been one of the greater centers of the Islamic faith. The northern states of Nigeria have all adopted Islamic Sharia law, and are now suffering from the violent terrorism of Boko Haram, which has claimed responsibility for bombings in major cities in northern Nigeria and most recently on a UN compound in Abuja, the country’s capital.

CROSSINGS AND CHECKPOINTS

Although the mandates of ECOWAS direct West Africa’s common borders to be open to the movement of ECOWAS peoples, border crossings are still choke-points for the movement of goods and people, and present a difficult for non ECOWAS passport holders, which need visas for nearly every West African country beforehand.

Extraordinarily for internal boundaries (which do not involve customs, but are merely marked with signage in the United States or European countries, including those between EU Member States due to the Schengen Agreement), there are passport controls between Liberian counties, which require individuals to pull off the road, and speak to a police official or even enter a police station to register. There are good reasons for this in a post-conflict situation, in a region where smuggling of goods and humans is rampant, but it also, like so many government procedures in weak states, creates an opportunity for corruption.

Experiences at these crossing points are certainly more pleasant than what might be encountered elsewhere, the arbitrary and often-times horrifically violent road blocks that chopped up Liberia during the war, or those that exist elsewhere in the region to harass commercial and personal drivers for bribes—a potentially unsafe condition which makes overland travel in several parts of West Africa risky for non-Africans. Due to this concern and the poor condition of roadways, infrequent air travel becomes the only viable transport.

A Map of obstacles along overland transport routes in West Africa.Courtesy of the USAID West Africa Trade Hub, 2007.

That the modern countries of Africa are nearly all independent versions of territories formed by Europeans during the colonial period unquestionably undermines their viability as states, and challenges mutual stability, regional cooperation.

It is only decades after independence that the younger generations are beginning partake in a collective national identity (thinking of themselves as ‘Nigerian’ as much as ‘Yoruba’ or ‘Igbo’ or ‘Ghanaian’ as much as ‘Akan’ or ‘Ashanti’ Most normally, however, these fellow citizens are united not by a shared or borrowed African language, but by a common European one (the widespread use of Swahili in East Africa being the major exception to this).

Partly, this is due a newer component in the national landscape: the African diaspora. Emigrants to Europe or the United States, such as the Nigerian community in Houston, the Liberian Community in Minnesota, or the Kenyan Community in southeastern Massachusetts, identify more nearly with their common nationality than their individual ethnicity. As these families return back to their home countries, or interact within their own kinship groups, they influence the evolution of national identity.

The on-going era of strong-man politics of sub-Saharan Africa have a vested interest in maintaining the external sovereign borders. The fascinating exception of newly-independent South Sudanoffers an imperfect path to greater self-determination; the unrecognized states of Somaliland and Puntland in Somalia less so [below]; the horrible war over the attempt by Biafra to secede from Nigeria proves the rule.

A Map of Somalia, showing Somaliland and Puntland, self-declared but unrecognized independent states. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

On the domestic stage, the central governments have an alternate object to achieve the same ends: manipulating internal political and ethnic boundaries for power, or ignoring local property or traditional land use by communities in order to facilitate large foreign investment contracts for mineral and resource extraction—the so-called New Scramble for Africa. It is within this atmosphere that the still-young states of Africa, and their youthful populations, continue to struggle to establish a stable, common identity which can be the foundation for a fulfilling, peaceful nationhood.

A map of north-central Niger, showing the lucrative uranium concession area which ignores the existence of the greater cultural zone of the Taureg/Tamazight nomads, leading to armed conflict. Courtesy the New York Times.

"The line between Gerlach and its neighbor isn’t merely one of land management. It’s one of the most..."

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 15:43:16 -0400

“The line between Gerlach and its neighbor isn’t merely one of land management. It’s one of the most tightly controlled borders in the world, with 24/7 monitoring of ground radar that can pick up a coke can bouncing in the wind, and interstitial agents can be dispatched to check it out within minutes. Access is tightly controlled, vehicles entering are searched. It is actively patrolled by three, sometime four agencies of the law, and even more agents and actors of the city itself.”

- Quinn Norton on the uneasy relationship between two towns on the edge of the Black Rock Desert. And then on an entirely different kind of border.

Your Entry Pass to Black Rock City « Snarkmarket

How borders breed borders, how they cleave: the chapel, the...

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 10:01:32 -0400

How borders breed borders, how they cleave: the chapel, the gate, the road, the plot, the stone, the grave, the sarcophagus, the coffin.

Matthew Battles offers a moving paen to a different kind of border town.

A Border is No End | HiLobrow

Niagara Falls

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 20:51:55 -0400

Writer, performer and comedian Heather Gold shares her story of growing up near the “second greatest disappointment in American married life”…Niagara Falls.

______________________________

Niagara Falls.

“People live there?” Forget living. I grew up there. Like an accident at the side of the road, it’s a place everyone knows about but no one can imagine staying put in.

Most border towns are known as afterthoughts; only a place because there’s been so much passing through. Niagara Falls the town has Niagara Falls the spectacle. It has natural beauty and power which were famous when natural beauty and power were celebrity. Then it became a place to go officially have sanctioned sex on their honeymoons. It was the ‘honeymoon capital of the world” when your honeymoon was the first time you were officially allowed to have sex. Then it became a place to be sure you got a souvenir from. It went from check list box on the ‘to do’ list of the very cultured and moneyed, to coital, then consumptive. To live beside all this, within the man behind the curtain is to watch us make a place up. You can see the audience see and make the show. Because all tourism and spectacle is brought to the place by the people who visit it. Meanwhile, The water never changed.

I was the kind of kid who couldn’t wait to get out of my small town. And it was both inspiring and extra cruel that the whole world came to visit where I lived, but then they got to leave and no one would take me with them. They’d ask questions like, “What time do they turn off the Falls?” and “How do you say ‘Mother’ in Canadian?”

It’s not that the tourists were all that sophisticated. They were just from somewhere else, whether that was Ohio or Japan, and that was enough for me. Growing up in Niagara Falls, I sometime worked in my grandparents’ variety store on Clifton Hill. Clifton Hill was a steep hill near the Falls themselves lined with classy museums like The Guinness Book of World Records, The Criminals Hall of Fame and Houdini’s, arcades, fudge shops and Rumors, the one dance club in town.

It was also the place for Cabbage Night partying (the place to get wasted before and after pulling pranks on the night before Hallowe’en) and the place for the annual initiation night for the high schools’ fraternities and sororities. They’d all drink a bunch, wear crazy outfits and have to do things like put their hands in a toilet while blindfolded and squish up what they weren’t told was actually a banana.

On Clifton Hill anyone could see lights and tourists and the border. For me, there was also Richard, the guy who sold tours from a ramshackle wooden stand outside the store in which I worked. Richard was scrawny and had a mustache that was scrawny too. It went out to the sides and then tried to make it down to his chin. He wore dirty white pants, a little white Captain’s hat and a hook for a hand. He’d come in to buy cigarettes and always ask me to light the first one for him.

To me, Niagara Falls is Richard, italian bakeries and a big guy in the high school hall cornering you to buy tickets to his cousin Louie’s Semi. Semi-Formal dances that happened at Polish Halls or Club Italia and ended, supposedly, at one of the plethora of cheesy, out-of-the-way motels. At least that’s what I heard. It was all very risky and seedy to me back then, immersed in good girl rule noticing and nerd-hiding at home with a book.

It was a grimy time and place and I felt that most when I recently returned to give a tour to the Border Town project. Everything I remembered most was gone. Where was Cyanamid, the giant chemical plant with the coloured smoke that my Uncle played softball(?) in front of? What about the Shreddies cereal plant? Where was the resentment of small town life you used to be able to smell in the air? Where was the barber who drove a Ferrari and all the other Mafia legends? Where were all the prostitutes at the corner of Bridge and Erie streets(?corner of street)? Where were the head shops full of bongs and black and white Rush concert baseball shirts? Where were the .38 Special tunes coming out of someone’s Camaro cruising downtown?

What happened to downtown? It used to have a department store and lots of shops, many run by merchants in our miniscule Jewish community. But even after the mall on the edge of town took care of most of that, there were at least strippers. Where did they go? They used to be near the train station and the downtown and the river and the border. Now there are casinos and high-rise hotels just down the river road and I guessed they’ve zoned it all away.

You see it all around you / Good lovin’ going bad / And usually it’s too late when you / realize what you had

When I got my driver’s license I would go “over the river” as we called it, but not to drink like everyone else; I went to an even shabbier Niagara Falls to buy the Sunday New York Times.

I would pore through the Arts section. And the Book Review. I wanted to be in bigger world. A more sophisticated one. And I found it. I left and lived in New York, Chicago, LA and mostly San Francisco. I was part of the scene when the web really got going. I travelled. But when I returned to Niagara I was surprised to see that I missed the grime and pollution and seedier stuff the most. Even the legends of mafia look corporate now. It doesn’t seem like the place anymore when you could find out who stole the tires off your car when you went to a local park and then had to buy them back, which happened to my dad when we went tobogganning.

The world has plenty of spectacle. The biggest gift Niagara Falls gave me moves with me. I’m still liminal: Canadian and now American too. I’m not really great at being any one thing. My look, what I do, how I see the world, it all sits on the border with my favourite word: both.

I can get an infinitely reproducible copy of the iconic shot of...

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 11:34:00 -0400

I can get an infinitely reproducible copy of the iconic shot of Conrad Schumann leaping the checkpoint barricade within seconds of googling for it, but the symbolic buttons it presses get pressed much harder when one buys it as a postcard from a shop on Unter den Linden before sitting down among the glistening new constructions of Potsdamer Platz 2.0 to scribble a suitable message on it and send it to a friend back home.

Paul Graham Raven runs Futurismic and has lately become obsessed with our Grim Meathook Future. For Border Town, he takes a sort of break from that, beginning with amoebas and ending with… well, we won’t spoil it for you.

The Canonical City | Futurismic

Border Town

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Niagara Falls

I can get an infinitely reproducible copy of the iconic shot of...

We’re Live. Since Friday evening, five teams of people...