#public space

[archiveofaffinities]

Boardwalk, Atlantic City, New Jersey, circa 1912

[the-scottish-costume-guy]

I’ve seen multiple people genuinely asking whats wrong with playing their music on a speaker/their phone in public rather than through headphones. While it baffles me that you can’t reason it out I’m taking it in good faith that you genuinely don’t know - so here’s a list of reasons you shouldn’t:

- It sounds bad. It doesnt matter if people like the song, you might be close enough to your phone speaker for it to sound largely as intended, but everyone else is getting a distorted mess. 

- Unwanted noise is extra stimulation in the already overpowering public space. Yes this is particularly bad for neurodivergent people but I actually want to acknowledge that this effects Everyone. Everyone has a stimulation threshold and unwanted music easily pushes people closer to it.

- Its distracting/disruptive. People want to focus on their own conversations, listen to their own music through their earbuds, or just be alone with their thoughts. Your music is intruding. 

- Differing taste. This one is less significant but people around you just dont always like the same music you do. In extreme cases they might actively hate a song you’re playing. 

- People have the right to as close to silence as they can get. If they’re in a shop playing obnoxious music they can leave, they can change the radio in their car, they can skip the song on their playlist. They have no control over what you are putting on and in bus situations they can’t get away from you. 

- Any other number of reasons; Maybe your music is offensive, maybe its uncensored and there are children about, maybe someone just got horrible news and your perky feelgood song feels like salt in the wound, maybe someone’s sick or hungover or in pain and your music feels like a drill to the skull. 

You might think your music is good, it might make you smile after a hard day. Nobody is saying dont listen at all, just put in earphones. To everyone around you its the equivilent of a drunk guy singing loudly and off key at the back of the bus. Maybe it makes some people smile to think he’s having a good time, maybe some people are scared his lack of boundaries will mean he could act out, maybe some people wish he would just shut up. 

EDIT: I've turned off reblogs because we have a mix of people taking things in bad faith or others picking fights. This post isn't that deep lads.

[arc-hus]

Metropol Parasol, Seville - J. Mayer. H

[typhlonectes]

[citymaus]

private use of public space.

“If your car was a tent, you would be criticized for taking up too much space and even occupying public space illegally. This shows that car parking hides an injustice—why not put trees, benches, a wide sidewalk there?“ 

—lcyclable 

[fabriciomora]

Midjorney explorations by fmtmblr

[eelhound]

"It’s easy to take the city’s parks for granted. But when more and more social interaction takes place from behind computer and phone screens; when fewer and fewer people meet their romantic partners through real-world social networks; when fewer Americans report having close friends than ever and more say they’re spending less time with those they do have and feeling increasingly lonely — the very existence of public spaces for leisure, open for all to enjoy free of charge, is something to cherish.

Those spaces haven’t always existed. In the United States and elsewhere, public parks, recreation centers, and swimming pools were the product of social turmoil and political struggle, with socialists often playing key roles in creating and defending such spaces. Nobody’s thinking about class struggle as they flip hotdogs on the public grill. But because they serve the collective good rather than private profits, public parks are a challenge to the logic of capitalism...

Because public parks and recreational venues are publicly owned, operated for the common good rather than private profit, and generally open to all without regard for ability to pay, they do not obey the logic of for-profit capitalist enterprises or commodities. And as socialists from Milwaukee to Malmö have recognized, they provide rare spaces for collective enjoyment, discussion, and education of the kind we’ll need to build a better world. Green spaces where we can toss frisbees or soak up the sun, it turns out, have political value too.

My first spring park excursion this year was an evening a couple months ago, when the air was still brisk but didn’t require a coat. I picked up a tall boy from a corner store and made my way past the food trucks in front of the Brooklyn Museum and the pedestrians and bikers crunching together near Grand Army Plaza, eventually getting onto the walking path that leads into Prospect Park from the north side.

After wending onto a small trail that led me to the main lawn, I found my friends drinking beers in a small circle, listening to music on a small speaker; similar groups were scattered around the grass, along with dogs and people playing catch and flying kites. It was a totally ordinary scene, but being there — enjoying the park’s respite from the atomized concrete chaos of the city — filled me with a sense of relief and gratitude. You only need a few moments like that on a warm spring evening to know that socialists have been right to care so much about public parks."

- Nick French, from "Socialists Love Public Parks Because They Belong to Everyone." Jacobin, 24 June 2023.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Jonathan Feldstein

Israel’s war against Hamas has triggered widespread public disruptions by terrorist supporters around the world. Calling them terrorist supporters is not rhetoric but fact. Even before the bodies of the 1200 people massacred by Hamas terrorists on October 7 had been identified, massive public protests took place.  Shockingly, astoundingly, the protests were not against Hamas’ atrocities and war crimes but against Israel: the victim.  

The world and millions of Hamas terrorist supporters turned a blind eye. They deny that Hamas committed such atrocities: that families were bound by metal wires and incinerated alive, women gang-raped and executed in the most violent ways, babies were beheaded, children were murdered before their parents’ eyes, and parents murdered before their children’s eyes, tens of thousands of rockets that were fired at Israeli communities by the terrorists, or when the terrorists’ own rockets fell short and killed Palestinian Arabs in Gaza.

And as they denied that these crimes took place, even saying that Israel fabricated the videos that the terrorists made themselves documenting their inhuman slaughter, they blamed Israel for the massacre.  And then blamed Israel for its response.   

Sadly, this kind of behavior and manufacturing of lies is all too expected from Hamas and its terrorist supporters. Now, however, we’ve seen them raise the bar on their incivility by shouting down and threatening others and hijacking the public space over and over. They have effectively opened countless fronts of this terrorist war, not just against Israel but against the West, with particular disdain for Jews and Christians.  

This has taken place in many forms and venues.  Pro-Hamas protesters disrupted the annual lighting of the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center in New York, winning this year’s award for the biggest Grinch to steal Christmas. During the Christmas holiday travel season, pro-Hamas demonstrators blocked roads leading to major US airports as if somehow doing so was going to “free Palestine.”  On Christmas day, a friend in Chicago tried to get to her parents, only to be rerouted for hours by pro-Hamas protesters blocking more roads. They blocked all the entrances/exits of the Freedom Tower, the site of another massive terrorist attack that you may have heard about on 9/11. New York Mayor Adams has warned that the annual New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square will certainly become the target of pro-Hamas protesters, ushering in a new year of hate.

All over the world, thousands of cruel, heartless people tore down and defaced pictures of the 250 hostages kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, as if somehow showing human compassion for civilians held hostage in Gaza was an evil worse than that of the terrorists’ massacre.

[archiveofaffinities]

Athena Tacha, Crossings, International Airport, Columbus, Ohio, 1982-1983

[zzkt]

Banksy on Advertising

People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use.

You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you.

They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.

[arc-hus]

Community Space, Larrabetzu, Spain - Behark

[michaelschreiner]

Chair

[realismoutopico]

KOSMOS Architects + Parabase / Permanently Temporary Pavilion / 2023 / via ArchDaily / Divisare / Image © Laurian Ghinitoiu

[2000ghosts]

january 10, 2009

[tedrzewa]

Nowy Sącz, ul. Bema