Super Normal

Craig!

I am not necessarily doing street food at all, I like the notion of a small scale catalyst in the urban realm, this is where I’m beginning. I agree with you designing another food cart or a market stall could become a very sterile exercise, I guess the key is what people do with these objects and how they are appropriated (city bikes are rad-even when stolen-they are doing something!). Most design is boring and clinical, some design is aesthetically beautiful and tastefully done, some is very clever but useless to the general public. So how do approach the project and make something what it is, appropriate and idea but not sterilize it, make a commentary but reach a wider audience. 

A food cart might become very interesting if it provides places to sit and meet, if it’s guerilla style and temporary, if it sells moonshine, there are possibilities here. Maybe I will end up designing a hot toddy hut for ice skating rinks in the winter who knows. 
All the examples you gave have a lot to do with cultural context-and there is no way to duplicate years of history and tradition but I could come up with something new, maybe. 

You’re right we don’t have much of a culture here, what we do have is a white bread modernist american dream type of culture, our city is catered to suburban families that line up at Ikea first thing in the morning for the $1 breakfast. I am not going to take on Calgary, it’s a mess, I know why we don’t have culture here, I am not going to change that either. People are freakishly paranoid about germs, public life and would rather stay home and watch HDTV, harsh but true, the great minds leave this place. Calgary has appeal if you want a good job, a house with a yard and 2.5 kids, which a lot of people want. 

The statement below is a really good point! Can I quote you?
“Over regulation and prescription, whether in neighbourhood planning, in zoning, in food and safety regulation, in restaurant designations, in wine making, in cheese production, etc, you eliminate the possibility of a very bad experience, but in doing so they eliminate the possibility of a really great one too… you get averages, you do not get sick most of the time, but then you also do not get blown away by something incredibly unique and special either… and often with bad design you just get distilled versions of the original.”

Here’s the thing though, good design much like art can be really interesting too. I am really intrigued by things like the Droog ping pong fence, I think that it’s campy and silly but there is a lot there, or could be. I love that it turns the idea of a private yard on it’s head, and that for it to work neighbors have to meet and talk to one another. 
Maybe I’m ultimately concerned with the North American obsession with private life, order and rationality. But I don’t know if a small design project can answer to this? 
t.

I love the idea of street food and I am hoping you can find a way that is appropriate for here, but the thing that I love about traveling and street food around the world are the ad-hoc kinds of things you see in floating markets in Turkey and Asia, bazaars in the middle east, open markets on garbage heaps in Cambodia, guys walking up to my car in a traffic jam in the Philippines with warm hardboiled quail eggs and salt, families selling tomallies out of their ’73 station wagon in Mission on Sunday in San Francisco and fish tacos out of a rusted out camper in LA… design kills these things when it touches them and tries to mimic them there and over-regulation kills them here.  Our markets are dismal and lifeless, our street food is non-existent… is this cultural - is ‘white trash fear of the new’ a culture? Is it weather - its fucking cold here in the winter - but then why don’t we have hot mulled wine and sausage stands like the do in Prague? Is it regulation – we make sure that most places do not poison their customers and provide a basic level of sanitation, but we do it with excessive and restrictive permits and regulation of public space that makes it almost impossible to have street vendors, to the point where there is a permit lottery now and you have to stay on your designated street once you do get it? Design – is it lack of design or maybe too much design?  Why do we not have a decent food and street culture here????  They exist in other places, even in relatively richer places like Czech, not just warm poor countries.

Over regulation and prescription, whether in neighbourhood planning, in zoning, in food and safety regulation, in restaurant designations, in wine making, in cheese production, etc, you eliminate the possibility of a very bad experience, but in doing so they eliminate the possibility of a really great one too… you get averages, you do not get sick most of the time, but then you also do not get blown away by something incredibly unique and special either… and often with bad design you just get distilled versions of the original.

What do you want to achieve with your project???  Do you want to create a street culture a vibrant street culture here or do you want to find out why one does not exist here?  No matter which one you pick - what role can design play in your exploration???

I love street food, it is the heart of a place and you can tell the life of a place by it… your project could be amazing, but we have to figure out what you are going to do… as a designer.

My external supervisor (Christopher Day, environmental architect) asked me a question that I did not know how to answer and I have still not answered it, maybe you can… “In the Stockholm Airport they sell bent plywood laptop cases… is that local?”

Yeay! 

xo Craig

The Goodbye Gossip Girl playlist for 1 September 2009 with Adele and Angela

The final show! We’ve had fun and hope you did too. Thanks for listening and keep tuning in to CJSW 90.9 FM!

Coconut Records - The Summer (Davy)

Bahamas - Whole Wide World (Pink Strat)
Feist & Benjamin Gibbard - Train Song (Dark was the Night)
Camera Obscura - You Told A Lie (My Maudlin Career)
St. Vincent - Actor Out of Work (Actor)

Discovery - Orange Shirt (LP)
Phoenix - Fences (Wolfgan Amadeus Phoenix)
Black Lips - Veni Vidi Vici (Good Bad Not Evil)

Stephen Malkmus - I’ve Hardly Been (Face the Truth)
Sonic Youth - Leaky Lifeboat (The Eternal)
Nurses - Apple’s Acre (Apple’s Acre)

Joel Plaskett Emergency - True Patriot Love (Down At the Khyber)
The Kinks - 20th Century Man (Muswell Hillbillies)
Fruit Bats - Tegucigalpa (The Ruminant Band)

Gobble Gobble - Meteor Eschat (Neon Graveyard)
Animal Collective - Lion in A Coma (Merriweather Post Pavilion)
Parts & Labor - Unexplosions (Mapmaker)

Blitzen Trapper - Silver Moon (Black River Killer)
The Young Canadians of the Calgary Stampede - Some of These Days (A Burst of Pride)
The Most Serene Republic - Vessels of a Donor Look (…And the Ever Expanding Universe)

Devendra Banhart - Carmensita (Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon)
Bill Callahan - Eid Ma Clack Shaw (Sometimes I WIsh I Were An Eagle)
She & Him - I Thought I Saw Your Face (Volume One)

Dirty Projectors - Cannibal Resource (Bitte Orca)
Sunset Rubdown - You Go On Ahead (Trumpet Trumpet II) (Dragonslayer)
Swan Lake - Paper Lace (Enemy Mine)
Women - Group Transport Hall (Women)
The Jam - (Setting Sons)
The Replacements - Bastards of Young (Tim)
Chad VanGaalen - Inside the Molecules (Soft Airplane)

Discovery - So Insane! (LP)

BYE!