I know there are food deserts in cities, but what about bathroom deserts? What about taking for granted that I could pop into a café or store and use their bathroom-even if I’d have to buy something to do it? A friend told me that if you go to a restaurant and sit down and order a glass of water, then by law the management must let you use the bathroom. I guess she sees me doing my got-to-get-to-the-bathroom-kinda quickly dance. I’d take the compliment too and skedaddle. She smiles, but I’m sure she knows I can barely see her bundled up baby from where I’m standing. ME: Do you know where there’s a coffee shop or some sort of store around here? Oh, joy - it’s A WOMAN pushing a baby stroller down the other side of Master Street. But if I did use it, would it be clean enough so that I could avoid therapy from the trauma of having to go in there in the first place? Yikes! I talk myself out of even investigating that possibility. That looks like a Spot-a-Pot next to the construction site across the street, and if it is-I might be allowed to use it. Too many “Law and Order’ episodes running around in my psyche.īut hey. Where is everyone? If I go over there to ask them about finding a bathroom, I might not be safe. Four male construction workers are reconstructing the large building catty-corner across the street from our lot. Think.īut for now screw the trashcans, or lack thereof. Watch the children play at the local school. Note to self: before I comment on any neighborhood, see and experience it at different times. I don’t remember so many plastic bags blowing about, and I also don’t recall the faces of the folks who live in this neighborhood. Our site looks worse when I walk in front of it, instead of glancing at it when I drive by like I have these last few months. Then again, what’s the use of trashcans if they’re not emptied on time? Maybe it’s like snow removal- you just know Society Hill gets plowed faster and better than this neighborhood. I see plenty of trashcans in University City and Society Hill. Maybe there are reasons that make sense, like in London, though I hardly think that trashcans throughout this neighborhood would invite terrorist bombs. Even if I felt like putting my candy wrapper in a trashcan I couldn’t. Odd pieces with awkward angles remain from the structures that were here before. Plastic bags, and broken bottles and cracked up discarded debris. And looking around the neighborhood, and our site. ‘How long have you lived here?’ ‘What do you think of the neighborhood? Would you change anything if you could?’ ‘How would you define a ‘just’ neighbor?’ I have some of my questions ready for the community members I’m eager to meet. Waiting for my colleagues to begin gathering narratives. Public art is a reflection of how we see the world – the artist’s response to our time and place combined with our own sense of who we are.Īdapted from Public Art in Philadelphia by Penny Balkinīach (Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1992).Īnd so on February 16, 2017, I am parked and waiting at Reconstruction’s site at 411 Master Street. Placed in public sites, this art is there for everyone, a form of collective community expression. Public art can express community values, enhance our environment, transform a landscape, heighten our awareness, or question our assumptions. What distinguishes public art is the unique association of how it is made, where it is, and what it means. It can be site-specific or stand in contrast to its surroundings. Its shape can be abstract or realistic (or both), and it may be cast, carved, built, assembled, or painted. It can tower fifty feet high or call attention to the paving beneath your feet.
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