A primer on subway reading. Apparently people do read stranger things than me.

Err, stranger things than I read. Though I suppose I would be a strange thing to read.

I'm of two minds on reading. I tend to do a lot of it, and there is much to be learned by reading the right stuff. But I could be wasting time, or at least using time that would be better spent elsewhere.

Labels: musings, trends, urban

cigarette butts
cigarette boxes
pennies
coffee cups
candy wrappers
Doritos bag containing rain-soaked Dorito mush
skeleton of a rat
weeds that a woman walking by claimed you can make into an anti-cancer tea
a middle school book on cells, in Spanish
a broken wheel from a shopping cart
a poem about the struggles of the life of a convict

I think that the fact that I did not find any condoms or needles is a very positive sign for my neighborhood. I really liked the poem about being a misunderstood convict. It was written in pen on a piece of paper that looks torn from a journal. I put it on my fridge.

Labels: New York, urban

In addition to the YouTube video above, I read this article from the New Yorker which gives a fascinating survey of elevators. Okay, I just spent half an hour reading the article instead of doing work. Not very productive, but it's the stuff of urban legends and sometimes you can't resist stories like this.

Labels: local, New York, random, urban

My housemate told me last night that our neighborhood (Brooklyn in Baltimore) has the highest percentage of syphilis in the nation. I know our neighborhood has the highest rate of prostitution and child prostitution in Baltimore, so that would make sense. But still, the highest in the nation?? Well, I looked up rates of syphilis on the CDC website and found out that Baltimore does in fact have the highest percentage of Gonorrhea in the nation and the third highest for syphilis. Yay for Baltimore! Couple this with the fact that according to Business Week Magazine, Baltimore is also the most toxic city in America. Now I'm beginning to get a little depressed about where I live. I live in a city infamous for crime, drugs, STDs, and toxic waste sites.

Now I actually like my new hometown and am considering staying here, but I'm just a bit distressed about the situation its in, and if I stick around here, I may have to return to my activist college roots.

Labels: Baltimore, pollution, STDs, urban