Four 20-something transplants discuss what it felt like when they first moved to New York and how they’re gradually adjusting to their adopted city.

Check out their audio and photographic docs here, in the NY Times.

The borough area of Delfshaven, Rotterdam approached artist Florentijn Hofman to come up with a temporary solution to a soon-to-be demolished residential block just outside of the city’s center. Armed with an airless paint gun, he transformed this once run-down and unseen block of houses into one of Rotterdam’s most photographed areas.

The block was painted in 2004, then later demolished in 2006.

Maybe Montreal should do something like this with St. Catherine’s black hole near Atwater.

-craig

This just in from our roving cityspk adept Karl-André St. Victor. He just sent me these tantalizing snaps of sun drenched signs from the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. Truly, i cannot say enough about hand painted signs, it is a lost art up here. Back in the days, guys like the father of Casius Clay (Mohammed Ali) plyed it as their trade all over America. Here is remembering the glory days, albeit in a more rustic version. So, here is saying a big sak passé to Karl from Cityspk.

In an only somewhat related news item, local tensions have peaked between youth in Montreal’s mainly Haitian community of Monteal North and MUC police. In suburban Little Haiti, riots flared up after a suspicious police shooting — akin to the Parisian banlieue’s in 2005. Much could be said about the anomy of these type of far flung urban consellations and the overall périphérique/centre split.

The reason Cityspk started, as a film here in Montréal, five years ago, was to heighten peoples awareness of their surroundings. Too often i think people are stressed and rushed and not seeing the signs and stores and cities around them. Out of touch would be the word. That is how things like this have taken to the land… The spread of Walmart since 1962; as a terrific interactive map. Like the good book says the signs and wonders are there. And I guess some of them look like locusts devouring the land…

I am working as a bike courier to pay some bills and am taking
some cityspk shots of my city as i ride through my day. I have the classic
album by gza, liquid swords going on strong in my headphones and on my fixed gear.

The confluence of melody and city, a series of moments frozen in time,
the streets come alive to sing in sync with the wu-tang. My premise
takes shape in the form of a straddling my bike, my hung over head
taking flight into the moment. The music shakes me out of my slumber.
I get all sentimental and picture my lonesome swoopinh through the
urban high pressure cooker like a solitary bird in a Zen haiku.
Peddling into what would be a typical humid morning of deliveries.

I am working as a bike courier to pay some bills and am taking some
cityspk shots of my city as i ride through my day. I have the classic
album by gza, liquid swords going on strong in my headphones.

The confluence of melody and city, a series of moments frozen in time,
the streets come alive to sing in sync with the wu-tang. My premise
takes shape in the form of a straddling my bike, my hung over head
taking flight into the moment. The music shakes me out of my slumber.
I get all sentimental and picture my lonesome swoopinh through the
urban high pressure cooker like a solitary bird in a Zen haiku.
Peddling into what would be a typical humid morning of deliveries.

As the music builds awakens me senses to the sweet simplicities of
life: moss covered cobblestone, 13 piles of garbage in a two mile
abandoned stretch of sidewalk (could this be bad luck?), a condom
submerged in an oil slicked puddle, an ARRET sign transformed with red
spray paint to read A R T, at a downtown intersection the stillness
echoes in the void. I pull out my camera to capture all of these
things. Montreal.

The boundaries blur between city, music and self. The street signs
begin to speak. The city starts to kick its vernacular in time to the
music, through any words in the visual landscape — discarded bingo
cards, graffiti, neon signs, tattoos, vanity license plates. They
start assembling sentences, a message.

The streets begin to animate with the bustle of people. I weave nimbly
between sidewalk and street, narrowly missing the parades of suits and
cabs.

These words can be seen as the poetry magnets and this web site a
fridge. So it is my day of deliveries is interspersed with clicks. And
so it goes, that i keep shooting till the end is upon me. I am bloody
drenched.

My final delivery is to a high rise. The towering tombstone punches a
hole in the sky.
I do a trick to get off my bike, locking it up lickity split. The
mavens on the elevator eye me with contempt. I delivers to the
secretary. She doesn’t want to notice my presence, so i toss her the
envelope. I pretend that we are doing a secret fbi transaction. But
really it is paper clips from the office supply place. Don’t think i
don’t check.

The city slowly fades to blackness, the streets empty as I makes my
way home through the industrial concrete sun. But the moments i have
captured, the words and the letters remain. The city speak’s.
As the music builds awakens me senses to the sweet simplicities of
life: moss covered cobblestone, 13 piles of garbage in a two mile
abandoned stretch of sidewalk (could this be bad luck?), a condom
submerged in an oil slicked puddle, an ARRET sign transformed with red
spray paint to read A R T, at a downtown intersection the stillness
echoes in the void. I pull out my camera to capture all of these
things. Montreal.

The boundaries blur between city, music and self. The street signs
begin to speak. The city starts to kick its vernacular in time to the
music, through any words in the visual landscape — discarded bingo
cards, graffiti, neon signs, tattoos, vanity license plates. They
start assembling sentences, a message.

The streets begin to animate with the bustle of people. I weave nimbly
between sidewalk and street, narrowly missing the parades of suits and
cabs.

These words can be seen as the poetry magnets and this web site a
fridge. So it is my day of deliveries is interspersed with clicks. And
so it goes, that i keep shooting till the end is upon me. I am bloody
drenched.

My final delivery is to a high rise. The towering tombstone punches a
hole in the sky.
I do a trick to get off my bike, locking it up lickity split. The
mavens on the elevator eye me with contempt. I delivers to the
secretary. She doesn’t want to notice my presence, so i toss her the
envelope. I pretend that we are doing a secret fbi transaction. But
really it is paper clips from the office supply place. Don’t think i
don’t check.

The city slowly fades to blackness, the streets empty as I makes my
way home through the industrial concrete sun. But the moments i have
captured, the words and the letters remain. The city speak’s.