Dealing with bikers is war

Barriers on Brooklyn side of the former bike side of the Manhattan Bridge (sides have switched for construction, I think). Perhaps a bit sensationalist, but I see them everyday and they make me laugh, they’re so intense! It’s like border patrol or the swirvy roads in the Golan Heights.

The crazy thing is that I myself, back in August or whatever it was, went around them a couple of times to keep on biking on that side! Bikers are cwazy (+annoying like that). It wasn’t anti-rule following either — I think I was coming from the Manhattan side and it was totally not clear what was going on at first — I thought these were just to slow bikers down (also reasonable).

It’s a tricky pickle in America though: bikers have had it so tough for so long that it’s hard to get soft as the city makes things more comfortable and convenient. It’s like my mindset, when passing these those first few times, was just like — 2 roadblocks? Well, biking is super hard on a daily level –why the hell not? Just more shit the city is doing with some arbitrary consequences for bikers. So of course it’s hard to transition from that to immediately seeing yourself as a citizen who is now protected (and in return should follow rules and regulations, etc). It’s incredibly hard for me, but hopefully the next generation of NYC bikers will be like sheep in terms of biking rules. Everyone ‘s against people being sheep like, but when people are sheep like it means that they can _afford_ to be sheep like.

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Back to the roadblock analogy though. Just a few images to follow my thought through, although quite frankly, they’re not making my case as eloquently as they should. A few more hours of image search would really pay off right now.

Golan Heights (couldn’t find better image, weirdly enough)

Well, these aren’t the best images to support the case, but apparently googling for “borders block road” is really not paying off. But hopefully you get the idea.

Honestly, I should just be blogging about silly things of biking in NYC, as I am fully recommitted to the biking life and yet as skeptical as ever if not more so of the biking Kool-aid. I’m good like that.

Notes to self — possible project

Something along the lines of “Things that will be lost”, but less melodramatic just ephemera from our childhoods. Like:
–phonebooks
–supermarket flyers
–backs of newspapers

all of this stuff that is in itself pretty useless and ugly but our kids probably won’t end up seeing, so it’s kinda of cool

On failure : failing big (in which I curse oodles)

The big thing nowadays is why failing is good. Sure, whatever. I think anytime a meme catches fire and everyone who’s anyone is repeating it non-stop (if I cared more, I’d find you references, but I don’t, and honestly I hope you know what I’m talking about with, but every creativity blog loves interviewing prominent people about why failure is important nonwadays) I get a bit cranky. Basically I agree with the failure logic (which I see as essentially: you have to try shit. Sometimes you might not be good at it.) but as a person who’s failed many many times (though perhaps not yet catastrophically!), it’s not that great. It kinda gets you down and it’s only much much later, when you’ve had some success that you somehow make some narrative of your life about how this failure taught you the lessons you needed or whatever. But if you have a moderate success, you’re rarely thinking, man, I wish I’d failed harder last time so this success would be even more rocking? Or better yet, Wish I had failed instead of succeeded! Woulda really laid the groundwork for something big! Whatevs. Basically the point is, you gotta try shit, sometimes you’ll fail, so in that sense you better make your peace with failure. But I’m kinda over this culture of valorizing it and I hope my kids are mega-successful and never fail. Just sayin’. I’d wish the same for myself, but there’s not much hope for that.

ANYWAYS. That was sort of an irritated aside which was not really the point. The point is this Failure is Good Meme is hot right now, really hot. Which means that you, as the designer, or as the creative person might as well really shoot for the moon and fail hard.

I’m thinking about this with a project I’m working on right now. It’s ok, looks good, kinda makes sense. It won’t be crown jewel of my portfolio but I’m not scared to look anyone in the eye about it. (That’s what real failure really is, by the way, to all of you all who so valorize it*. Fuck disappointing yourself. I don’t give two shits about that anymore: it’s kinda non-stop and terrible, but also awesome and makes you self-critical like a hawk. It’s disappointing others that kills. Because design is a service profession, so when you fail big, there’s other people’s shit at stake: other people’s money and other people’s deadlines and other people’s projects. Real failure is failing on behalf of someone else so that it sucks to look them in the eye.) But there’s a lack of spectacularity about it. It’s neither here nor there. In some sense, it’s a failure — but not enough to get me the street cred for it! Better to have gone for the moon, either wildly succeeded and failed  –and then gotten the points for my super contemporary eagerness for the taste of failure.

 

 

*I said I wasn’t going to look for links but I fucking broke down. I love all these people individually and, honestly, even what they’re saying here. It’s just the whole thing — is so fucking smug and simplistic. I kinda think Sagmeister should know better.

New Years Type Things

So this is going to be one of those long posts without any pictures in which I reveal too much (making it, perhaps, much more interesting for you, but much more stressful for me). I started the post the other day and then scrapped it, thinking it’d be too personal to post, but somehow I keep coming back to it. Maybe cause it’s helpful to declare your intentions publicly, to commit to keeping them. Let this be a Declaration of Intentions for 2012 then, or at least a search for the articulation thereof.

Perhaps out of nowhere for you, I need to mention the Etsy shop, which is currently under withandagainst but should probably or obviously be renamed Betsy on Etsy due to the wild popularity of that moniker. Right now it’s just selling the Brooklyn Notebook and is, I need to stress, completely not financially viable (confession number 1: due to inexperience and un-self confidence, I priced it way too low).  No matter. The point is, it’s a first tip-toe into the world of Etsy and though, like any great project, I cannot possibly foresee the amount of work it would take to get a substantial income off Etsy… I sort of see it as conceivable for me to go down that road. Which I am not saying I am going to do anytime soon.

Why is that important?

I really desire the ability to financially support myself . And ideally in a manner that could allow me to live , eventually, somewhat off the grid. In my head, this meant, obviously, freelancing.

Ok, ok, ok, this might reveal some faulty logic here. But what freelancing meant for me as well was learning how to design for the middle. Middle America. Which I love voraciously and probably, it would seem, as an exotic fruit. But let’s face it. I am not that good at doing Middle America. I love Middle America and Middle America loves me, but as visitors. I am not the designer who would be particularly good at designing a Target ad. I’ve known this always (obvs.) but didn’t want to reference it here, on my semi-job related blog, but who are we kidding. Nobody is going to hire me to design for Target so I can scream it from the heights of Varick St: it is not a surprise to anyone.

So basically I was sort of pushing myself in this Middle America path with interesting results, but a lot of the pushing was a bit unnatural. And a lot of the pushing was sort of just motivated by fear, in the most blunt way to put it, though I don’t think that bluntness does it justice. Because as I do stress, I have quite sincere love and respect for the middle and a part of me, of course, yearns to be more part of it. But there was that financial side, too.

Anywho, so I feel like Etsy releases that valve for me somehow. I can run away off the grid and not necessarily freelance but run my own Etsy shop.

I know, I know, but I shall admit and own up to my piles of irrationality where others will falter.

So letting that Middle America design aspect go a bit — or rather, channeling it into Etsy to make CASH MONEY for me — will perhaps allow the  design that I don’t do for Etsy to free up as well. To be wilder and crazier and chaoticer. I love all my projects, but thinking strategically, I think it’s my skills of making sense chaotically that seem to excite people. If that makes any sense. I am always drawn to minimalism, but I am actually not that great at it. I want peace and order but I think the orderly people are drawn to my chaos, especially when I somehow make sense of it. So let me pursue that more, see where it goes.

So I guess a design resolution for the New Year is to follow my gut more. Which may be every creative person’s resolution, but still, I shall embrace it like I am the first to have that brilliant idea.

___

I think there is a gloss here, a little bit. It’s tricky because I am drawn to order and clarity and concepts. But I see I do better when those elements naturally evolve in my work (or just instinctively) rather than foisted upon them. So it’s tricky, tricky. To follow my gut and to push my gut to speak loudly. And trust that it all makes sense in the end!

 

Cannot hide it any more, must share

Chocolate ice cream with grapefruit juice is really, truly exquisite.

Last Minute Wrapping Paper?

Used my old project as wrapping paper, which I think looks REALLY good….

Except it’s really a bit sloppy on the other side:

Oh well. A girl can dream that every project can be recycled with pizazz.

Subway map a branding continued

Just continuing my thought that the nyc’s subway’s most powerful branding
Is simply its map (and extent)

Actually if i were them, i guess the natural thing would be to only play this up. This is prolly super obvious but can we see some chart where we see how far we get to go for relatively cheap?

Betsy on Etsy

Ah, ah, inevitable hilarity I have just noticed. I may need to do research whether this Etsy shop name already exists!

Trying it out, first with the pret-a-ecriver Brooklyn notebooks.

 

The possibility of blankness

NJ Travel, Part 1

Let me begin by saying that for work right now we are looking at public transportation systems and cars. There’s an implicit idea that the car will remain but it’s probably for the better if public transportation systems were encouraged. Which is essentially my stance as well (another example of fortuitous mind-meld between me and C-Lab.)

I went to NJ yesterday to visit not one but TWO friends. On the way there, we took the NJIT from Penn Station.

Actually, it was kind of a madhouse; it was Christmas Eve Day (can I say that? it sounds silly, but it makes the most sense — we were there at noon!) and there turned out to be some sort of football game that people were really revved up to see and me and my friends were really getting a bit stressed. I’ve tried to get over my Holocaust trauma a long time ago but there’s something about trains and crowds of people that makes one uneasy. There’s a definite specter of sardining-into-train-cars that hangs over the whole thing. (The American Jew Holocaust Trauma: another topic for a long post, but essentially all of American Jewry comes with some sort of inborn Holocaust trauma, which is not a particularly attractive trait in my experience. A paranoia that’s paired with stunning success in contemporary society .)

ANYWAYS. It turned out quite fun, we made it on the train without incident, and arrived into the cute town of Summit, NJ. I have a sickness for cities and towns of any size and any vibrance level. Actually this is one of those clear things that is an oddity and a weakness and I should turn into a strength, but essentially, probably my favorite thing ever is getting my bearings and exploring (if you can call it that) a new place, whether it’s Summit, NJ, Destroyed Town #9, Michigan, Tunis, or Paris. Any place. Ever. (Ok. So this is the good thing about journaling, private or public: it can help you make concrete thoughts that had been floating in the nether. And this is something for me to put away and think about, about somehow employing my fascination with cities of any size, which as we all know, is very timely.)

On the way back, my traveling companions went back to BK and I veered off to Jersey City. Another thing: I love traveling, the act of traveling. I find it really intense, really discombobulating, figuring out where to go the first time and how. And in a sense, I definitely love to do it alone, so nobody is stressed, it’s just me, sinking into the system, figuring out how it works. This time however, maybe because I was a bit tired (…hungover?) , PATH was really blowing my mind. There was NOBODY, not one person who worked there, at any of the stations. There was no explanation of fares or anything. There was one placard with how the trains went. I actually don’t remember any labels to figure out which train station I was at, but I might be exaggerating here. (Coming back from JC, however, I came back from Exchange Place and there was _definitely_ no labels that it was Exchange Place, which I think is just… odd!) So it was a bit weird, this PATH trip. Directions were unmarked. I asked if MTA card would work and no one knew. I asked if the train was going in the right direction and the man just wordlessly pointed across to the other tracks. There was another set of tracks beyond that (for what? for who? everything was unmarked, of course) but there were only two doofy-looking football enthusiasts waiting there, so I figured I shouldn’t pin my fate with theirs.

So I wish I could somehow employ my love of navigating unknown, foreign systems to my advantage, but so far I have no money-making schemes for this right now. If you do SEND ADVICE.