Waldo Lake 2009

Waldo Lake 2009, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

"The Northwest fills the lungs, heals the pain in my chest."

Heading back to the midwest via Washington, Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota. While I'll certainly be busy as hell this next semester, I return to Saint Paul recharged, refocused, and ready for my last Minnesotan fall. Highlights of being back at home include the Portland Century ride, the Timbers' unbeaten-in-23-games streak, great weather, the Oregon Coast, getting my friends into The Room (You're tearing me apart, Lisa!), the Safe Routes to School Conference, and of course, camping for the tenth straight year at Waldo Lake.

Things are going to get a little hectic, caffeinated, difficult, and frustrating, but stick with me, dear reader, there will be photos to accompany, and it's going to be a hell of a ride through senior year. Among other obligations, I got a job this semester working as a photographer for college relations, so get ready to see a bunch of photos of happy multicultural macalester kids doing cheesy macalester things. Stick around.

Goal!

Goal!, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Portland Timbers, I missed you.

Breakfast.

Breakfast., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Saudades for Brazil, and mangoes.

Memories of Manzanita

Memories of Manzanita, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

I'm so sorry for everything.

I'm so sorry for everything., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

"They're like a gin and tonic when you should have been cut off hours ago!"
- 6'3" tall guy that decided to stand right in front of me right before the concert started.


I can't decide to give him credit for a clever remark about The National or to decide that he's some two-bit wannabe clever smug loser, like the guy that stood in front of Woody Allen in line for the movie in Annie Hall. Either way, Matt Beringer and the rest of his sextet showed up in Minneapolis last night, and I was reminded why, over the course of the last two years, their songs ring such a resonant chord in my life. Boxer is an anthem of urban existentialism, class anxiety, and the daunting reality and clarity that comes with staring in a mirror and contemplating the "uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults." I saw them two years ago at the Fine Line, a much smaller bar on the edge of Hennepin, and then only last year at Sasquatch, where their final song was greeted with an immediate onslaught of rain, a shawshank-esque downpour to couple with their last songs "Mr. November" and "About Today." So while I hate to admit it, smug tall guy that stood in front of me for the first half of the concert, I think you're onto something; listening to the National is a past time I took up a lot last year while attempting to shift into a drunken sleep, after having been cut off many drinks ago.

Turn the light out, say good night
no thinking for a little while
let's try not to figure out everything at once,
it's hard to keep track of you, falling through the sky
we're half awake in a fake empire

This year has been fraught with good concerts. I'll try and summarize them with less than a paragraph:

Blind Pilot, Early January Sneaking into the Aladdin Theatre in a pair of stolen bowling shoes, I watched from the balcony as the two-bit band mesmerized the Portland crowd. The show served as a fantastic Portland send-off before my giant trip abroad.
Manu Chao in Sao Paulo, February sometime I greeted some of my study abroad friends at the nearest Metro Station, and we proceded to pay about 2 Reals a shot of nasty listerine-tasting liquor to some street vendor running a bar out of his van that was only too happy to keep raising his prices for a bunch of desperate, drunken Americans. Set in quite possibly the largest theatre I've ever visited, Manu Chao greeted every single Paulista Marijuana smoker with about twelve encores and what felt like four hours of music. Epic night.
Sun Kil Moon, Early May Again with the bowling shoes, back in Portland, I celebrate my birthday by buying myself a single ticket to go see the man, the legend, Mark Kozelek. His concert was one of the strangest I've ever seen; his slowcore chords and baritone voice seemed to envelop the entire audience. He played to a sparce crowd in the Wonder Ballroom, with every attendee standing and staring, relatively motionless, waiting for an old song from the "Red House Painters" days. He rewarded us with "Make Like Paper"; Success!! The room was literally silent between songs, not for lack of an audience, but because, well, who really feels like talking about anything while listening to one of the most depressing people in the world play a drop-d guitar and sing about death, loneliness, and addiction?
Third Eye Blind (hah!), Late May oh, nostalgia. I suppose this concert isn't any different than the Sun Kil Moon show, in that I showed up only to hear specific songs that remind me of specific, irreplaceable and unreplicatable moments of my life, but for most of the third eye blind songs, those moments were collections of moments of doing homework in my room as a middle schooler.
Blind Pilot, June It was great to see Israel, the lead singer, hanging around outside as we walked up to the 400 club. A much smaller venue, the band still brought it, and I wore an Oregon shirt in solidarity.
The National, July I won't fuck us over.
Grizzly Bear and The Weakerthans (forthcoming!), September
Oh wow, the Weakerthans. I've wanted to see them live for the longest time. John Samson has the ridiculous ability to write lyrics about the most obscure anecdotes of modern life (smoke alarms, bus drivers, cracks in the ceiling, "a store-bought way of saying I'm alright") and somehow turning them into telling stories that express emotions weren't aware you were capable of posessing. He's oh so witty.

To be honest, life is good right now. I'm getting paid to do research, pretty much at my own pace, on the Midtown Greenway. I'm about to run a bunch of juicy, exciting multivariate regression models to prove how weather, class, age, status, gender, and all sorts of things are affecting who is on the Greenway, and how they are using the public space. I'm hoping to basically write a "place paper" (IHPers, think of it as a mix between a neighborhood day and a case study) showing some sort of a dialectic relationship between the city at large and this narrow, five mile strip of former-railroad that now carries up to 10,000 bikers a day during the summer.

During Study Abroad, I made a list of things I wanted to accomplish this summer and this fall, and one of them was to keep this blog running, if only to give me a chance to air out my grievances and thoughts. Instead, I just incessantly check Google Reader and wait for a blog about urbanity, music, or whatever express a sentiment I had been thinking about, and then veg around on the couch some more. Perhaps I'll make another go at it.

There are nights in bars that I recall...

, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

The Blue Door Pub
Nelli's 21st birthday
Selby and Fairview, Saint Paul MN

Bright new Minneapolis

Bright new Minneapolis, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

I'm already through my first week of my latest Midwestern summer.

The Endless Summer Continues..

International Honors Program, Cities in the 21st Century 2009, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Okay, so I'm totally smitten with the art of photography, but after spending time over the last year or so browsing Vimeo, I'm really starting to get drawn to the medium of video. Check out these videos I found of the cities that I've visited; it takes me back to Sao Paulo in ways that even my best photos of Diadema could never even touch.

Urban Age :: São Paulo Film from OutrosFilmes on Vimeo.

A Question from Rowan on Vimeo.

Hanoi crazy night traffic from v!Nc3sl4s on Vimeo.

Oh, and tonight's my last night with my host family here in Hanoi. We leave for a retreat for the next week, and by next friday I'll be on a plane heading east once again, this time over the pacific ocean and back towards the united states. This blog started off in earnest in January as a vehicle for me to get in touch with people back home, organize my thoughts, and attempt to write poetically about urbanity and my travels. I would say that my travels are about to end, what with my impending flight back home and my upcoming move-in to a dorm back on campus for the summer (woo free housing!), but to be a pretentious prick about it, I hope that I'm never finished "travelling" or ever done with keeping an eye open to my surroundings and finding things to write about. I know this blog got a bit sloppy here and there over the past few months, and that it was difficult to write effectively and intelligently when there were so many better things to be doing (like seeing penguins in Cape Town!), and I feel like I definitely lost my focus on what I wanted to write. My professor read most of these entries and went so far as to say I was a bit "undisciplined," but that's what I get for not actually keeping this journal on the topics that the original assignment required. Nonetheless, I'm thinking I'm going to keep this blog running, post-IHP, just as an opportunity to keep my soapbox around, should the desire come about to air our some grievances, post some photos, and ruminate on midwest and cascadian urbanity. My entries from Brazil (particularly those in Sao Paulo) make me homesick for the congestion, chaos, insanity and intensity of Rua da Consolação, and I've decided its not enough to just take photos of my meanderings without attempting to coherently piece together whatever it is I'm thinking about. WIth over 400 unique visitors to my blog, and over 1000 page views, I guess someone somewhere likes what I'm doing, so I'll keep it up.

My summer stands to be pretty interesting; I'll be doing a project on the Midtown Greenway in Minneapolis, and perhaps this blog will help chronicle the stories of an undergrad way over his head in the world of socially-minded academic research. I'm also hoping to do some serious roadtripping around the upper midwest this summer, and since the horizon of the end of 2009 brings possibilities of stories of extended time on student government, potentially hammering out an honors thesis, taking a 200-level biology class (why the hell did I sign up for that?!) and all the other drama that waits in the wings, it'll be fun to blog about all of it. There's "Contested Urban Space" in every city, and perhaps I'll find some neighborhoods in Minneapolis worth writing about this summer. Plus, by blogging, I can make a statement against using the asinine piece of idiocy that is twitter.

Meanwhile, I've got about a week until I get back to Portland, and since I've posted Vimeos of the three cities I've lived in, I'll post one more as to what I'm looking forward to upon my jetlagged return to the City of Roses.

My Pretty Portland from The FREELS Brothers on Vimeo.

New York, New York, USA - Jan 19 to Jan 29
São Paulo and Curitibas, Brazil Jan 30 to Mar 4
Cape Town, South Africa Mar 5 to Apr 10
Hanoi, Vietnam Apr 11 to May 15th
Portland, Orygun May 15th to May 23rd
Saint Paul, Minnesota May 23rd through August

"Vietnamese girls put on the pounds"

Vietnamese girls put on the pounds
http://www.hoilhpn.org.vn/newsdetail.asp?CatId=123&NewsId=10678〈=EN

The beauty of Vietnamese girls is legendary. The image of charming girls riding bicycles along streets with long black hair falling over slender shoulders is engraved in many memories.

However, 20 years of innovation and modern living has turned many slender girls into fat ladies jogging and exercising around parks and lakes in an effort to lose weight.

Like many Western women, Vietnamese sisters are now faced with obesity, something they had never contemplated before.

Perhaps the best part about this article? This comes straight from the Vietnamese Communist Government's "Women's Union," an organization that is supposed to mimic civil society and stand up for "women's issues" around the country.

- hat tip to my roommate here in Vietnam, Jacob Koch, for finding this article.

May Day in Hanoi's Lenin Park.

May Day in Hanoi's Lenin Park., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

After a minor case of illness that might as well have been Swine Flu, and a mysterious set of medicine and massage therepy by my wonderful host mother, I'm back and healthy and looking forward to the conclusion of my study abroad trip. I'm not exactly sure what pills those were in those tiny envelops she gave me, and exactly how that peppermint ointment massage works is beyond my Western understanding of medicine and biology, but I'm at full strength and greatful nonetheless. I'm also excited to report that after my group presentation on bicycles in Hanoi tomorrow, I'm pretty much done with all of the academic work on this program. Things are going well here in Hanoi; the group has chilled out a bit, and I'm really looking forward to our retreat next week. I'll be back in Portland May 15th, and stick around long enough for Papa Brown to buy me a beer for my birthday. Are you going to be in town between the 15th and the 23rd? Wanna hang out before I skip over to the Twin Cities? Send me a message, fool.