Belfast is intersected with many hulking ‘peace’ walls separating protestant (unionist) and catholic (republican) factions. Nowhere is the separation and animosity more serious than between the working class protestant Shankill Road and catholic Falls Road communities.

Al Jazeera English TV aired an insightful doc on the walls, the communities, and the political protest graffiti that dots either side of them. Apparently, certain artists, who have come to attain near celebrity status, from both sides, have ended up coming together to dialogue, with art as the connecting point. Go figure.

This American Life is an excellent longstanding wkly radio show on NPR radio out of Chicago and hosted by Ira Glass. It does profiles of standout people and gives intimate portraits that look into the soul of America.

They now have TV episodes as well on Showtime based on the same idea. This video is about the Chicago hot dog stand and landmark The Weiner Circle . It starts off seeming like an amusing episode of Seinfeld with the chap who loses his crap when he sells his soup, but it goes south, and fast. It turned my stomach, and not because of the dogs. It says a lot about the hyper-segregation between North and South Chicago. Already covered by CitySPK from a South side perspective here .

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.