Beating the Bounds

with the artists

On December 11, I took my first walk with artists on the rail line.

Let me back up: this is a project in two parts. One is my own exploration and writing about the line, and the other is the involvement and collaboration with artists, as I have said (in official documents) “in order to interrogate how place can be differently conceptualized in academic and artistic epistemologies.” 

 Or put differently, how do artists and academics “beat the bounds” differently? What do we see in a place, and how is that reflective of the ways we’ve been taught to see the world? (This goes back to a long-standing interest I have in pedagogy, in how we learn from our teachers and our environments.) 

 [BTW, I took very few pictures on this walk, not expecting to gather as many field notes as I did. I’ll do my best to describe the place in words.]

 So the idea is for there to be an art opening (or 2 or 3) in the spring, showcasing the work of artists from the different communities the rail passes through. The first artists I am working with are Steven and Susan, printmakers from Kala studio in

Berkeley

. I really wanted printmakers represented on this project.  As I wrote in the call for artists:

 The rise of the industrial era was marked by two major technological innovations: one was the invention of the printing press, which made wide distribution of print media possible. Printmaking is a form that is constantly in negotiation with its own artistic mandate: combining industrial apparatus and a highly specific craft, it produces series, rather than unique images or sculptures. For this reason, I am calling printmakers to be a part of this project, exploring an industrial landscape with a (partially) industrial medium. 

 Steven and Susan had the idea to walk the rails together with me (and then later on their own.) We went last Tuesday. Walking down Heinz st. in Berkeley, we got to a big fence with a gate – but it was unlocked and we were able to get in. We all wondered why there was an opening gate in this area, but we went in nonetheless. We saw a sign for fiber optic cables, and talked a bit about how railroad right-of-ways (similar to city streets) are often used for other networks. (Scholar Bruno Latour talks about this a bunch in his coolio website, “Paris: Invisible City.”) Steven also commented on how this place was part of the Berkeley shell mound, a thousands-of-years old historic site where Native Americans (Ohlone) used to leave their shells, as well as bury their dead. There has been a lot of controversy in recent years over building on these sites, most recently in Emeryville.

 This photo shows a really cool set of parallel transit paths that Steven pointed out: the rail, the shell mound, the Berkeley aquatic park with its walking path, the freeway, the Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. Pretty cool.

 I had walked this path before with Adrian (see Emeryville to Richmond), but somehow hadn’t noticed the third set of tracks here, decommissioned and overgrown with weeds. I wonder when UP decides it will be more efficient to build a new track than repair the existing one. (I also wonder how I hadn’t seen this before!) Also on this walk, I noticed many more “spurs” – short bits of track that used to go directly into the yards of factories and warehouses to load and unload goods. 

 I probably won’t have time to do the whole walk again, but re-visiting a place definitely changes the way you think about it.

 We saw a *lot* of graffiti on the walls by the tracks (more on this stretch than anywhere else I have been), some of it really beautiful. We got into a discussion for a while about how muraling is any different from gang graffiti, Steven arguing that it is all just the same mode of people marking territory, and I arguing that there is a qualitative difference in that one is associated with violence and fear. We didn’t come to any conclusion. 

 As we walked, Susan told us that sometime next year there will be no more train whistles in Berkeley, as part of a city noise ordinance. In preparation, the rail people have to set up special gates for safety – whistles are really the train’s only way of letting folks know it is approaching. This is also surprising to me in light of a recent death on the tracks. This is a photo of the memorial left to him:

 Susan, Steven and I talked about cameras, and digital cameras, and what one is able to see with each. They both like taking video on their digital cameras (which I almost never do.) Susan used the word “stagnant” to describe the limits of still photography, which I find really interesting. Later on the walk, she would take really cool video of a freight train on her digital camera.

 Steven asked me if I count the freight trains at all, and I said that I hadn’t, but that I’m certain I see more passenger trains more regularly. Perhaps UP runs more freight trains at night, when they could go faster without the interruption of passenger rail. 

 Another topic that came up frequently was the tendency of a lot of US cities to turn decommissioned rails into biking and running trails, often called the “Rails to Trails” program. Apparently Wisconsin has a pretty vast network of these, as does Montana. I wonder if we will regret the decision to take out the tracks when energy becomes more expensive – won’t we want those right-of-ways? Still, people love these paths, particularly bikers. And furthermore, it’s hard to build anything else on them because trains are so polluting.

 Steven talked about how he rode the rails at one point in his life (in the 1960s?) and how it lost its romance after not very long. He described two really amazing rides, however, one in an open car at night (I’ve forgotten where) and the other down the length of the Mississippi. He also told a story (later on) about how growing up in Minnesota, he and his friends would go on wilderness canoe trips on the train, and the conductor would just let them off at a certain mile mark out in North Ontario, and when they wanted to be picked up a few weeks later, they would just flag down a train coming back through. Pretty amazing.

 Then we got into a long conversation about what this space of the rail means, which is largely at the heart of my own thinking on this topic. Steven called it “a space that doesn’t exist” because you either see it from a container (a train), or you cross it at right angles, or you (the city) have your back to it. Susan called it “liminal space,” which means transitional, and we discussed whether or not that was true for a while, because we weren’t sure what it was the transition between. Then we got on the idea of calling it “movement space,” where things are only allowed to be as long as they’re moving (like the highway.) 

 I talked a bit about how my research has shown me how much people *love* the trains and want to be around the tracks. In Pinole, I think, part of the attraction of the East Bay regional park trail that runs along the Bay is that you can see the train tracks from above. I wonder if people would love being close to the tracks as much if it weren’t so “off limits.” Scholar Tim Edensor writes about industrial ruins (though the rails aren’t ruins, they have a similar sort of “off-limits-ness), and inspired a paper I wrote last year for a landscape class:

 …Edensor points out that ruins are an unpoliced space, and this also makes us as “the public” uncomfortable. However, though they often conceal illicit activities such as drug use or prostitution, they are also a commonplace hangout for people who are taking a break from the order of everyday life. They are playgrounds for grownups and children which provide an oppositional space to the safety of our normal environs. They are the places where we go to smash things, or to plunder, or to think, and these are part of human activity as well. 

 Susan suggested that the rails be somewhere that people can come and experience the trains. She had an idea for an observation shed where one could sit and observe the space, perhaps putting on earplugs at one point to just know it visually, or a blindfold in order to just hear the sounds. (This is the reason I am bringing artists on board!! They come up with the coolest ideas!!) In general, she wanted to think about how the space could be used by the public, perhaps by artists. We talked about the possibility of special runs of trains with no roof, or perhaps an art train that would stop in places where the public could interact. Using the rails themselves as a public space, we discussed, would probably be considered too dangerous by UP (a private company) as well as the municipalities. Susan is really adamant that this project not just end with my thesis, but that it be a prototype for a bigger project about how the rails and the trains can become part of our regular landscape. 

 On the way back, we walked by stands of Eucalyptus, and I learned from Steven that one of the times these trees were brought to California, it was to make railroad ties cheaply (because they grow so fast), but that there was a problem with the oil in the wood, and it wouldn’t allow the creosote to take. 

 It was a short walk (in terms of distance) but really curious. It was the first time I had re-visited a place and it made me think about what kind of authority I claim in just passing through and making observations.

Hercules to Crockett

On Saturday, December first, in the cool crisp morning, I went walking from Hercules to Crockett with my friend Charlie:

We started off our day on the bay shore in front of these pylons, which we would see many of on our walk:

These used to be the support for the many docks that lined the bay.  This is a good reminder that the trains are only one small part of the story.  If I were doing this walk 100 years ago, the many freight trains would be accompanied by fleets of ferries and barges taking freight and people all around the area. 

Another thing we noticed was lots of left equipment, like this tractor-looking thing:

Charlie commented on the presence of lots of concrete blocks on the bay shore, a lot of it with rebar still inside.  Were thes pieces brought here from somewhere?  Were they part of a structure that used to stand nearby??

Another idea that came up early on was that of perspective.  I've been taking a sociology methods class, and we talk a lot about how the method you choose of gathering data determines what it is you'll find out.  In my case, the notion of perspective is very literal.  In this particular spot, I was able to have a fine view of Hercules:

but I couldn't see the built landscape just over my head, and only knew there might be houses there because of this streetlamp:

But to focus my thoughts here, the thing I am *really* looking at lately is what might be called "vernacular use" of the space around the railroad.  That is to say, how do people make use of a path, even if it's only designed for big locomotives to travel upon it.  In my school-head, I look for theoretical grounding for this manner of thinking.  A big influence is DeCerteau's The Practice of Everyday Life, particularly the essay "Walking in the City."  In this essay, he writes about how the city isn't really a "thing" until we animate the space, particularly by walking:

The long poem of walking manipulates spatial organizations, no matter how panoptic they may be: it is neither foreign to them (it can take place only within them) nor in conformity with them (it does not receive its identity from them.) It creates shadows and ambiguities within them. It inserts its multitudinous references and citations into them (social models, cultural mores, personal factors.) (p.101)

Back to the walk at hand, the next thing we saw was this big piece of destroyed dock:

And a little park with a really nice beach where Charlie talked to this man about the area:

A note about talking to people:  You may have noticed that I don't report on it very much and that's because I don't *do* it very much.  My friend Andrew put it well:

"speaking of stories, i'd be very interested in reading stories/interviews with people who live and work in the areas you're exploring. your own observations and thoughts are wonderful, but an insider's perspective would add a wonderful dimension."

But I don't do it for two reasons. 

One is that I didn't get "human subjects" clearance from my University.  This is a way of writing up your proposal and getting it certified so that the university can make sure you are behaving ethically towards human subjects.  This certification, done by each university's Internal Review Board (IRB) was originally conceived in response to physical and psychological experiments performed on consenting and unconsenting subjects (the most egregious of these being the Tuskeegee experiments in which African-American men went untreated for syphyils to "see what happens.)  Now everybody has to go through it, including anthropologists and sociologists doing field work.  On one hand, it is a really important stance for research institutions to take.  On the other, the way they go about it isn't always appropriate to the kinds of work being done.  In any case, I don't have it and it's a long process.  Furthermore, I don't know what kinds of talking to people is and isn't allowed in my current research, and I have to find out from my advisors.  In the meantime, I don't talk to people much, which is a bummer because they know a lot about the places where they live.

The other reason, however, is in response to just this issue.  Because people know so much about the places where they live, I could easily get sucked into doing interviews (which are a very time-intensive process) and this project does *not* need more pieces.  These are the kinds of decisions we make in research: what to leave in, what to leave out.

Onward.

The next fascinating place is Joseph's Fishing Resort.

I'm not sure if people currently live there, but there is all sorts of amazing stuff around.  Like a practice target:

and a lovely bungalow-style house:

and a huge truck:

I guess it's not that wierd to see a bunch of junk in front of a place, but Joseph's used to be a popular spot (I think) as evidenced by this sign we saw a ways down the road:

I wonder when it stopped operating.  Especially because (as we shall see) there are a lot of other fishing spots further down the rail.  Also, I wonder if anybody is trying to buy it (especially the county), sitting as it does just on the edge of a piece of the regional park system.

Some non-sequitirs.
What is this?

Here is another ethanol freight car.  Haven't seen one of these in a few weeks.  This is a reminder that any major system (such as the railroad) is tied into global energy systems:

The next thing we saw a lot of were homeless encampments.  Both photographing these and posting the images poses an ethical question for me. I wrote this for the same sociology methods class mentioned above:

I am concerned here with the uses of the margins as such and by investigating them and broadcasting those results, they could easily become un-marginal, taken away from the communities that use them either through outsider use or, in the worst case, law enforcement. That is to say that, through research, I could destroy the very phenomenon which I seek to investigate. The disruption of my own investigation, furthermore, is not so much the ethical problem as is the possiblity of my research causing someone’s place for daily life to be wrested from them.

I will post these because they (a) don't really tell anything about the places and (b) are totally visible to anyone who might be interested in walking by.

In fact, we met the man who lives in the second dwelling.  He was walking his dog by the tracks and we said hello.  He asked us if we were from LA 201 which, he told us, is a class in Landscape Architecture at UC Berkeley that is doing a site assessment of the area to recommend (real or fictionally?) a promenade along the bay.  In any case, he told us that there is an organization called "project hope" (I think) that gives out good-quality tents and camping equipment to people like him who are camped out in the area.  Would I like to interview this guy more?  Absolutely.  But I had to keep on moving.

We saw this pile of RR ties, something I've seen a number of times.  Do they leave these in case of repair or are they leftovers?? 

Charlie wanted to know how often they repace them, and how.  I speculated that they don't get replaced too often because they are soaked in creosote, and put in piles of crushed rock to prevent decay, and weeds from growing.  This is part of the reason that old railyards are called "brownfields."  The tracks themselves pollute the earth where they lay, not to mention the fuel and freight that drip from the cars.

Next up was the oil refinery (refineries?) -- a place I've been curious about for some time.  I'm not sure what any one building does, but I do wonder how much people in the area think about the whole structure.  Do they work there?  Do they worry about the health effects of having it next door?

What about the water that it pushes out into the bay?

I was telling Charlie about how beautiful all of the lights at the refinery are at night when you see it from the train and can't tell it's a refinery, when we came to this tunnel:

We didn't go inside.  In fact, this is the only time so far that I've backtracked on this walk.  We went back by the refinery and had some lunch, and got on a bus that took us just to the other side:

On the way back in towards the tracks, we wondered what this building had been.  My guess is a post office, but it really seems pretty isolated:

What does this thing do?

Another sign of vernacular use here (further along):

Here, the rail is "carpeted."  What is the purpose?

More vernacular usage -- this kid biking.

And what's with the funny paved path along the tracks coming from Crockett?? It ends pretty abruptly here:

Next we approach the place I've been looking forward to for so long, the C&H sugar refinery in Crockett:

I was mostly suprised to find out how much formal use there is around the factory.  From the train, it's all freight tracks and refinery, but the front gates of the sugar factory are right in the town.  There's also this seafood restaurant right on the water:

and this environmental education nursery.

In fact, if it weren't for this big old water treatment plant in the middle of the space, it might seem a lot more "usable." 

And regardless of what I think, the space is used (in this case by people in fishing boats):

Even if it's a little bit funky.  And maybe that's the appeal:

This last bit (of a long entry!) is my favorite part: the old Crockett train station.  It was decommissioned when Amtrak took over passenger train service in the 1970s and decided it was more economical to have fewer stations.  The C&H people now own it, but they let some local groups use it.

"What's inside?" you may ask.  I had forgotten about train enthusiasts.

This is a track belonging to the Carquinez Model Railroad Society.  (This second picture is from a sign further into town):

This was there too:

They are open to the public on Wednesdays and Saturdays and they run trains.  When we went in, there were three men running the trains, one probably in his 70s, another in his 50s, and a younger guy maybe in his 20s who was wearing a conductor's hat with a train society patch and buttons on it, and a t-shirt with a train on it.  The room they operated in was part of the administration of the old train station, and the window looked out on the tracks.  The trains running yesterday were a freight train and an exact replica of the California Zephyr (a line that Amtrak runs from Emeryville to Chicago.)  The men talked to us about how long of a train could run on the tracks, and about a yellow train we had seen earlier that day.  I assumed all passenger trains were owned by Amtrak, but this one, they told me, belonged to Union Pacific who used it to transport important people on the tracks.

I think about how many train enthusiasts there must be all over the country, people who keep hobby shops going by running intricately detailed model trains in their basements and in clubs like these.  In fact, aren't clubs like these the basis for the most grassroots sort of community cohesion we speak about so much in community development seminars?

I wonder why people *love* trains so much.  Unlike cars, the trains can't ever, even in fantasy, belong to these people.  They are innately public vehicles.  And they know SO much about them.

The other side of the train station is a museum of Crockett history.  It was full of all sorts of old odds and ends from people's basements and attics.  Four or five older men sat around the place.  There were lots of lists of veterans from different wars and lots of paraphanelia from the history of the refinery.  A whole room is devoted to photocopies of the senior classes of the high school from the thirties until now:

Many of the other items are things that might be sold at a local flea market, and Charlie and I talked a bit about how museums can transform things from "merchandise" to "artifact."  The strangest piece on display was a full scale model of the Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral in Washington DC that you could peer into through a hole in the front and it was completely decorated inside too.

When I asked about it, the man behind the counter told me that it was donated by some people who had lived in Crockett whose father had been in a TB sanitarium and had built it together with his roommate.  Eerie.

There is also a fair amount of train paraphanelia, including this stool which you stand on to see into the cathedral:

I also asked the man at the counter if people in Crockett still worked in the refinery.  He told me that they employ about 500 people, and he'd guess that no more than 5 or 10 percent of them live in Crockett -- in fact, he doesn't think they can afford to on the factory's salary.  Most of them, he says, commute from places like Fairfield or Vallejo.

Charlie and I were blown away by both of these places -- funny little corners of the earth that we never really could have imagined.  I don't mean for this project to be about how precious small towns and their people are, and how nice it is to visit; besides being lame, such an assessment would also be essentializing and inaccurate.

Crockett is pretty charming, though, sitting as it does all perched on the hillside.

At this point, it was getting late and we were tired.  By the way, I'm *never* so tired as when I walk on the tracks.

Next stop: Martinez.  All aboard!

pinole/tara hills to hercules

on this walk, i was joined by my dear friends orli anad ben

we walked from pinole to hercules -- a short walk, and rather interesting.

we started out at the tara hills shopping center which is a bit of a 1950s relic with a cool sign, but very little else open.  orli wondered if a walmart had opened up nearby and chased out the local retail, but i think that it may just be that these things are designed to run out of steam and shut down. 

i first had the chance to photograph the memorial i mentioned in an earlier place, the one a man had built to his granddaughter who was killed by the train.  i think it's particularly beautiful in that he built a place for people to come and hang out and spend time:

off we went towards the tracks, a mostly uneventful route by the bay, but with some well-worn paths where other people had wandered around before us.  i think a lot about legally sanctioned versus informal path-making and how that guides the places we go.

another example of this is the small stone "stairway" that had been created for jumping the fence we arrived at to let us into the official east bay coastal park:

i am not challenging *why* this is done -- clearly there is a question of public safety in keeping people away from active train tracks.  but the fence functions mostly as a symbol -- people will walk where there is a worn path, or towards the things that make them curious.

one group of people that i was excited about seeing on this walk wasn't really around: the fishermen.  due to 58,000 gallons of oil being spilled into the san francisco bay, these sorts of signs are up.

i find it interesting that the fish and game people posted these, especially because it is *never* really safe to eat the fish from the bay -- in fact, there is a whole research project at uc-davis right now just looking at that.  still, the signs didn't stop everybody.

(orli, ben and i took a quick stop to go out on a little rocky outcrop and see the view.  it made me think that this man didn't really care much about catching fish.  we had some fun taking photos.)

serious question: is the serious nature of intellectual labor diminished if i include the fun parts in my reports?? 

so perhaps i have just seen too much industrial *stuff* but this structure (cement plant?) only caused me a passing glance. 

i haven't gotten tired of rusty things, though.  like railroad spikes.

and i think that sitting on this swing overlooking the bay would be really lovely:

orli and i got to talking about what the bay shore would be like without train tracks, how the park could go all the way to the water.  we talked about why the train is right up against the shore, and i speculated that it was because it was much easier to build it with supplies brought in by boat than by land at the time it was built.  i need to get my hands on some good history soon.

next we came upon the city of pinole bayfront park

which, as it turns out, is a water treatment plant with a grassy hill and some benches beside it.  it's actually kind of amazing how a little street furniture can denote a place where people are supposed to hang out, and they do.  unfortunately, i didn't take any photos of the hanging out, but it certainly was happening.

also interesting is that there was an active effort to get people in and around this place, which smelled funny and had this yucky water flowing into the bay.

i suppose "yucky" is what we would call a "normative term" in academia.  still, i do wonder if the attempted beautification of this spot is a response to people hanging out there anyways, or if there is a real ecological bent to it.

also, at this point the afternoon light was hitting everything and turning it delicious shades of gold.  check out the attached photo album for a bunch of these "arty" pictures.  [which, by the way, begs the question of how a "social science" photograph differs from "art" and what questions of taste come into this issue.  for a really strong illustration of this question/issue, check out the work on human migration by sebastiao salgado.]

next we arrived at a place i had long been excited to see: hercules, ca.  according to the hercules historical society website, "Hercules once had about 100 "company town" homes.  Built in the late 1890's for California Powder Works Company workers, most of the homes in the "Village" were 1,600 square feet,  with 6' 6" ceilings, some with basements."  from what i understand from the bit of history i read, the town is one part historic buildings from the time of the company town, and the other part is a new development begun in the 1990s.

my own aesthetic fascination with old, falling-apart things led me to take a lot of photos of boarded up buildings.

in this photo, note the "old style" lamppost in front of the *actually* old building:

this brings us to the new urbanist development of hercules:

see how this looks like a "traditional" (more on that term later) american town with white picket fences and everything?  attractive, no?  but why are the trees so small??  oh, that's because it was built in the early 1990s, all of it. 

new urbanism is a movement in urban design that suggests we go back to some older forms of city building in which retail and residential development are incorporated together, walkability is key, and cars/garages don't dominate the space.  real emphasis is placed on environmental sustainability and limiting urban sprawl.  while i totally agree with these principles, part of the reason that older towns feel the way they do is because they were built in bits and pieces.  with the current economy of housing development, developers build huge tracts all at once, and it gives (as orli said) this "movie set" kind of vibe to the whole place.  (case in point: john carey's "the truman show" was filmed in the first new urbanist town of seaside, florida.)

(you can imagine how delighted i was that this street was called "railroad.)

one of the big critiques launched at new urbanism is that it is, in fact, "new SUBurbanism" because these developments are just like any other in that you have to drive to go get anything you really might need.  there is no supermarket, for instance, in hercules. 

on the other hand, rumor has it that the town is trying to get an amtrak station.  i wonder how that would change its points of access -- right now, you can pick up bart only in the nearer reaches of contra costa county, and martinez is the closest amtrak stop.  would housing prices in hercules be affected if a train station arrives??  i also wonder if it would make the town greener.  i find it interesting that they have left this lovely wetland alone on the access road:

the last thing we saw was a flag for the hercules farmer's market. 

orli pointed out that as farmer's markets gain in popularity, developers are advertising these big time.  she thought i should research this aspect of hercules.  i pointed out that researching even one farmer's market (as my friend and classmate christie mccullen is doing in davis) is a huge endeavor, worthy of a whole thesis.) 

the point of writing that here is that i need, if anything, to PARE DOWN this project.  i am lucky to have some really smart, kind and invested advisors who i spoke with about this at length recently.  i am trying to focus in on one question or notion or theorists.  any thoughts??  post 'em here.

*****oh, and a preview for a few weeks from now.  there was a story on the front page of the sf chronicle today (sunday!) about the housing market crash in fairfield -- one of the places where the train stops.  like a lot of the sacramento region, this ag town had a booming real estate market until very recently.  i wonder if this had to do with train access (or highway access on the I-80 corridor.) 

i was just thinking

so the really useful thing about a blog is that there is a direct place to write what you're thinking.  not a field note, because it didn't happen in the field, but a note on my own process.  it's a little disjointed and that's how this project is for now.

1. i read an article this summer about bees in the new yorker.  it said a lot of interesting things, but the most curious to me was that when bees build a hive, the entrance/exit is always the same size.  this is because there is a certain proportion of space to bee that causes them to feel safe or comfortable.  i would posit (along with many urban designers and architects -- any suggestions??) that humans also have this need for appropriate scale to our bodies and it makes us feel disjointed when we don't.  (ever feel wierd when you walked across an empty parking lot??  ever wonder why??)  children probably know this best, with their instinct to cozy into small spaces and tents and things.  in putting myself outside of my "bee space," in a place designed foremost for locomotive engines and not humans, i spend a lot of time "feeling wierd."

2. this project is about marginal space.  it feels good and rather academic to say that we can know the things that are included in a place by searching its margins.  but is it true?  maybe.

in this project, one of my advisors suggested that i am exploring "late capitalism" by moving through the landscape of "early capitalism." 

more on this later.

3. i am taking a *fabulous* sociology methods class, which is really helping me think about what i can and cannot find out through this type of research.  it being a soc class, however, i am required to come up with an all-encompassing question for my project.  i came up with this:

how has the built landscape and transportation economy of the capital corridor railroad influenced or produced the communities around it?

it's a good question.  solid.  but it also makes me wonder if one can do research with no question at all -- not just "exploratory research" (the thing you do before embarking on your project) but a whole project. 

things i learned from amtrak locomotive engineers

last week, when i was on the train home, i heard three men talking in numbers and signs, and i realized they were off-duty locomotive engineers. 

one, an older man, had lived in berkeley all his life and was a 4th generation engineer. 

another, 22 years old, had been trained by the first, and was going to start taking online courses to get his a.a. degree.  amtrak will pay for his classes as long as they have something to do with transport or engineering.  but he can only take his classes online because of his work schedule.

the third didn't talk much.

all of them really love this job.

things i learned:

locomotive engineers were the oldest union in the country.  now they are organized by the teamsters.

engineers *drive* the train -- they don't have their heads under the hood.  (call me ignorant, but this is how we learn.)

amtrak was invented in the 1970s by the nixon administration after the freight lines stopped providing passenger service.  it's budget projected that it would only last 3 years.  now it is over 30 years old.  (the capital corridor line is about 15 years old.)

you used to be able to get a job on the train *only* if your father/brother/uncle got it for you.  that's no longer the case, but it can still be a family biz in some places. 

richmond to tara hills

[before i start, i must confess that i had my camera on a strange setting that caused all of the photos to come out blue-ish.  it makes for a dreamy effect in the first few pics, and then you get to wondering why they are all so blue.  i'm learning.]

so on october 18th, adrian and i set out from richmond towards martinez.  we got as far as tara hills/pinole, which is a good reminder that this always takes longer than i expect.  this turned out to be my most favorite walk so far -- we got to be on the bay shore for quite a bit of it, and there was a lot more "blank" space that was being used for different reasons that piqued my curiosity.

ooooh... another note before i begin.  i've been thinking a lot about blogging, and how it's this really cool form because, as academics, we don't publish things that haven't been fully reviewed, but we also don't put our field notes into a coherent, readable form for anyone else.  for this project, at least, this is a fantastic hybrid form in which i can share what i'm thinking in rea(ish) time, but not be overly concerned with the specificity of methods or theoretical implications.  i can be uncertain about ideas here, research can be incomplete, and i can speculate loosely; still, i have an audience to give me that little 'push' for the writing to make some sort of sense.  additionally, i can play with the problem of accessibility that plagues academic writing, explaining ideas and getting feedback from people who don't spend all day doing this sort of thing.

onward.

so adrian came with me again.  i got to richmond late, which i felt bad about, but it was ok because there was a big celebration for the opening of the intermodal station connecting bart, amtrak, ac transit (and maybe others?)  there was music, and plenty of snacks for adrian while he waited:

the station itself isn't that big, but it is surrounded by lots of sheltered outdoor space.  not sure if this will be useful or not, especially because that space doesn't have much place to sit.  perhaps it was built entirely for events like the opening (which, although absurd, is not entirely unlikely):

this woman is the mayor of richmond, which is a poor community, suffering (i think) from economic depression due largely to the loss of manufacturing jobs that used to exist here, mostly in shipbuilding and oil.  she (and others) spoke a lot about how this intermodal station is the beginning of a greener richmond, a town ripe for economic development where green businesses can be sited.  this poster says a similar thing:

i wonder about "green" as an economic development strategy.  i particularly wonder if it's any different than conventional economic development strategies in which towns or cities make a really inviting environment for business (often in the form of tax subsidies or land grants.)  there is nothing inherently wrong or bad about this method, but the businesses themselves are mostly *not* beholden to their communities, and can pick up and leave when they get a better deal. 
    such a thing happened in my hometown (ann arbor) when pfizer pharmaceuticals expanded their campus in the late 1990s (causing ripple effects such as the university of michigan building a huge new biotech facility) and then cutting hundreds of jobs in the last few years.  and this is not an unusual story in the united states, as municipal tax bases lessen (esp. after proposition 13 in california) and cities compete with one another to give big business a better deal.

but i digress.  the intermodal station may well be a new start for richmond and i wish it the best.  (although i'm not sure if the new amtrak seating area even connects directly to the rail.)

adrian and i walked through richmond, which looks as you might expect a working class northern california town:

we were mostly blocked from the tracks, but this allowed us to see a bit more of the town (a divide discussed in previous posts):

that said, the fact that bart and amtrak run side by side here causes a bit of a fortress effect between the two halves of town, where folks can't really cross for long stretches.  we have a similar effect in my neighborhood in oakland, where a freeway blocks off my neighborhood (north oakland/temescal) from the beginnings of west oakland.  i wonder to what extent this built boundary allowed my neighborhood to gentrify, leaving the other out.  i wonder if similar effects exist in richmond.

at some point, richmond blends into the town of san pablo, and the community seems more latino.  (that could also be just the bit i was walking -- it's hard to draw conclusions by just walking through once.)  the signs were in spanish, though, which is a good clue about the neighborhood:

this sign is an ad for home loans.

this is an ad for hiring ice cream vendors.

this is a message board on the outside wall of a butcher shop.  in community development, we see this as a sign of a thriving informal sector.

in richmond/san pablo, there are also trailer parks.  i hadn't really throught about people living in these in the bay area, but it is not surprising that they do (along with millions of other americans):

a little further along, we noticed this well-worn path up to the tracks:

it didn't seem to lead to much, but when we got up there, we realized it might be a nice place to hang out

or that it was a way for people living on the tracks to get in or out of town.  we also found this sign hanging on a pole beside a pile of mattresses and other trash:

this is really sad, and there's a lot of it beside the tracks.  this person could have been killed by all sorts of things -- drugs, violence or the train -- but this seems like a sorry place to be memorialized.

we also saw this little freight train and talked to the engineer.  this train goes back and forth from chevron (the refinery) into town.  i wonder where they are delivering the gas:

and amidst this:
and this:

also this:

it's not so unreasonable that there would be new building here, but this development seems somewhat out of place.

then we walked for a long time through san pablo on what must have been an old county road: long and straight and endless with some neighborhoods to our east, and the bay and rail to the west.  then we ran into this sign:

why are they auctioning off homes in a new (and rather attractive) development for a pittance of what houses usually go for in the bay area?  serendipitously, there was an article on this very development that day in the sf chronicle.   the short version is that developer pulte homes (also responsible for the west oakland development by wood street station) built the houses and can't move 'em quickly enough due to the housing crunch, so they're going for auction in a housing "fire sale."  in a perfectly planned world, these houses would be sold to folks that work in the industrial park across the street:

over some sort of beautifully designed pedestrian bridge.

but in real life, people who work in the industrial park probably can't afford to buy these homes, or don't want to live in such a neighborhood.  (and my bridge is imaginary.)

walkwalkwalkwalkwalk. 

and then we get to the most intriguing part of the whole day.  just on the south side of the industrial park is this tiny pocket neighborhood.  it is bordered by boxy industrial buildings on one side:

which have clearly caused some problems for the neigbors:

here is a view of the neighborhood, with a building site in the middle:

the neighborhood is separated by a sort of no-man's land including the (well-worn) trail we walked on, the train tracks, and further out, the bay.  people use this space as evidenced by a little backyard bridge:

and a cactus garden:

these are the sorts of spaces that fascinate me! let's call this "vernacular adaptation" -- more on that later.

next we arrived at the pinole regional park, where we had to jump this fence:

a beautiful, grassy stretch of shoreline that i had only seen from the train.  it had a few dog walkers (this being a tuesday morning) and a field trip.  i would like to bring all of my friends for a picnic here:

the park is on a little peninsula which, it could be argued, was cut off from the rest of town by the railroad, and therefore was "produced" by it.  this is pure speculation.

[also, beside the park is a "detention center."  (not a prison, but not a jail either?)  adrian and i had a disagreement over whether we should photograph it.  he pointed out foucault's argument (and this is why adrian is rad) that punishment used to be a spectacle, and in modern society it is clandestine, allowing for all sorts of abuses to take place.  i argued that they used to just kill people, or torture them publicly, which i also find distasteful.  in the end, i relented that the detention center was, in fact, part of the landscape i am exploring so i should have documented it.  but by then we had walked too far to go back and take a picture, so there is none.  sorry about that.]

in the park, we stumbled across this thing:

it is a machine from when "black powder" (the predecessor to dynamite) was manufactured here.  the sign says that black powder helped to build up much of california and the west.

adrian pointed out that it might be more accurate to say that black powder helped to *blow* up much of california and the west.

it is important, however, that this machine is here because it reminds us that this was an early industrial manufacturing site, in which the product (black powder) would be transported by rail to its destination.  i want to find out more.

walkwalkwalk, and we're on the shoreline.  wow.  we saw lots of birds and this uprooted tree, and it was a sunny day, and i was joyous.

this blue building was behind us; we wondered what it was for:

across the bay was this oil refinery

which is really important to an idea of this project, which is that the industrial age is not *over* -- it hasn't "gone away" because we live in the information age. our oil still gets refined somewhere, our cars built, our pots and pans manufactured.  the world has certainly changed with the rise of the information economy, but one has not replaced the other.  i am not the first person to say this, but i don't have a source for this line of thinking at the moment.  and this (as well as the obvious rail) is a really good example.

this makes me think about the discourse of transformation of industrial forms?  we are building more coal fired power plants in the u.s., talking about building high speed rail in california, trying to bring up "green collar" manufacuturing jobs in the bay area.   all of these are neck-deep in industry, but the language (and form) is tempered by the information age.  definitely more on this later. 

ok, so this is the last part (of a long post!)  we crossed from the bay shore back up to the railroad, and walked until we got to a place where there were some people fishing.  (i haven't figured out if i can photograph/post people on this thing without irb approval, so they're not here.)  eating fish from the bay is a bad idea, as they are full of mercury and pesticides and other poison, but people do it all the time.  they also might fish just for fun.  in any case, somebody built this little bridge for folks to get to the beach from the rail:

the last thing i saw, i also didn't photograph, (for the reasons listed above.)  it was a really beautiful site, a set of brick circular steps on the ground for folks to sit with a big freestanding metal firepit on it.  at the top was a tall cross.  the man sitting there told me his buddy had built it in memory of his granddaughter who had been killed by the train.  i found it really powerful that instead of just an altar (like we see on roadsides), this man had claimed the space even more, turning it into somewhere he could really memorialize his granddaughter, and that other people could enjoy, too.

again, vernacular adaptation of the space.  would the authorities remove such a thing if they found it in the name of public safety? probably.  but the thing is that the authorities don't *come* here.  so folks are left alone to build things like this.  which were caused by the unsafe environment of the trains.  i don't mean to academify this man's loss, just to point some things out.

 

walk #2: emeryville to richmond

for my second walk, i went from emeryville to berkeley and richmond.  this time, my walking companero was adrian, a long-time acquaintance and new-ish friend.  he just finished his m.a. in geography at u.n.c. and has come back to the bay area.  besides knowing things about geography, he is a lot of fun and likes to take pictures of gross things (more later.)

meet adrian.

on our way out of emeryville we saw this cool old pullman sleeper car:

i have often wondered what travelling in one of these would be like.  i think it would make me feel like i was in an old movie.

we also saw condos and the ex'pression college of digital arts.  (how very 21st century.)

emeryville is a funny li'l place -- a bite taken out of oakland that didn't attract much attention 'til around dot-com when pixar built their studios there, and folks realized it was the first stop over the bay bridge from sf and office space was cheaper.  now it's full of big-box stores and condos and a little retail area called "bay street."  but it must have been something before, too.  gotta look into that.

unlike the oakland walk, where we were prohibited from walking right on the tracks in many places, this walk was almost entirely *on* the tracks.  we saw a lot of trains this way, but not much else.  this poses a methodological question: what am i trying to find out about the tracks and am i better off finding it on or away from them?  this is a big one; definitely more on this later.

so i took photos of railroad ties

and mechanical railroad parts (which do something i don't understand)

we also saw a lot of graffiti, some of which i found mundane:

and some really well-done:

this was my most favorite:

we also saw places where people had built fires:

and cattails where there was no visible source of water:

you know, railroad stuff.

wildlife, too.

birds sunning themselves in berkeley's acquatic park:

and a dead possum (credit: adrian)

two miles in, we arrived at the berkeley train station, or shall i say train stop.  the station was turned into a restaurant a number of years ago called xanadu, and now it just sits empty.  i don't know what they are planning on doing with it, but i have heard rumors that another restaurant bought it up.  i, myself, have fantasies of turning it into a community arts center with a theater and a gallery.  it's a really beautiful building:

i wonder why it can't be made back into a train station, though.  seems like amtrak has these sorts of problems a lot.

sometime this summer, they put in a ticket machine.  (it used to be that you couldn't buy tickets here.  we'll see how long this fragile machine lasts):

i know this station really well because i picked up the train here last year twice a week.  (this year i will be leaving from emeryville.)  it is a platform that sits under the freeway, and they've tried to fancy it up with public art and poetry.  homeless people live by the mural.

there are lots of bombed out old warehouses in this area, but one was torn down last year and the lot is slated for redevelopment.  (in fact, i used to ride the train with a woman who lived in that particular one when it was an artist squat.)

long story made short, this walk was mostly on the tracks, so while adrian and i both got to take lots of pictures of rusty things (which we find delightful), there's not much of an obvious story here.  check out the photo album for more cool pictures. 

i guess this is part of the learning process i discussed in the last post.  last time, we were blocked from the tracks, which frustrated me, but we saw a lot of the *effects* of the train on the landscape.  this time, we stayed on the tracks the whole time, and i mostly got a sore throat from the dust and the diesel fumes. 

in the end, we arrived in richmond where they are building a new transit hub of sorts -- a combo amtrak/bart station that is more attractive than the old one from the 1970s.

while we were there, we watched some workers install a mural done on tile about the history of richmond:

there is also new housing right by the station.  this is often called "transit oriented development."

i'm not sure who lives here, or what income level.  richmond is a pretty poor town that used to have a big ship-building industry, and still has oil refineries.  i don't know much more about it, but i do know that a lot of condos and things are going in -- it's some of the last cheap land in the bay area.

i'm going away for three weeks, but when i get back i'll be doing the next leg: richmond to martinez.  i'm really excited to walk by the bay for a long stretch. 

also, i've gotten a bunch of good feedback from community arts organizations, and i'll start working with them in october.

please leave comments here, and tell your friends to check out the blog.

hasta pronto,
n

what's it all about?

i got a lot of really good feedback from the first post; thanks for all the support, questions and suggestions.  one friend asked me if i'm *really* getting a degree for this.  the answer: but of course.  it's interesting, though, to think about scholarship and what it means to investigate.  it got me thinking a lot about how "serious" work is often a euphimism for "totally inaccessable and marginally coherent." so my goal here is partially to shake up my/our about what education and knowledge-seeking is all about.

one particularly important problem this project has is a succinct goal or question.  that's what this post is about.

as an undergraduate in my senior thesis seminar, i was taught a method called "logical positivism."  in this way of thinking, one asks a "why" question (mine was "why does the US still practice capital punishment?), and then comes up with a number of hypotheses, culling them off until one finds the TRUE ANSWER.  well, i dropped out of this seminar because, frankly, i wasn't buying the message, which seemed like social science turning circles to legitimate itself as science.  clearly, there are lots of answers to a question like the above, and to credit one with being the MOST CORRECT makes for strong methods and weak scholarship.  (in my opinion, anyways.)

when people ask me about this project, they are initally very excited to hear that i am walking such a distance in such an unusual place (the train tracks?  really?  is that safe?)  but when it comes time to explain *why* i am at somewhat of a loss.  and i think, once again, it's because there are a lot of reasons -- i don't have one true answer.  so i'll list them, and i hope you, dear reader, are able to respond:

1. scale

we take for granted that there are certain places on this planet that are for vehicles carrying stuff/people, and for all of our safety and convenience, we don't go to those places.  they include highways and runways and railroad tracks, among others.  i find that in any place designed for something *bigger* than a human to move through, walking around in it feels pretty wierd.  (ever tried to walk to your local supermarket with it's big parking lot?)  any place that humans have built that makes humans feel wierd is interesting to me.  wierd, right?  so by walking  a great distance on a path built for a railcar i am INTERROGATING THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT.  or in normal-speak, i'm checking out the wierd.

see how tiny i am compared to this freight train? 
that is a question of scale.

2. regions?

in the united states right now, there's a big move towards "regional governance."  this means that cities or counties (or even states) get together, and make decisions on a scale different than the standard ones.  this is interesting because it calls into question how/if governments make decisions. 

example: in the sacramento area right now, there is a tremendous amount of development going on (read: housing and commercial building.)  the boards of supervisors of six counties in the area have come up with a transportation and development plan they are calling a "blueprint."  the problem is, it's really hard to hold any of these policy-makers accountable for their decisions because the normal mechanisms (ie. voting or going to the planning commission meetings) are out of reach.  sometimes this is called "jumping scale," and it's important because it can either be really useful (like when a region cooperates on water resources) or really frustrating for citizens who don't have much say.  also, a region doesn't have any particular limit to it's space or scope, and it can be defined by all sorts of things like political history and culture (the american south) or landform (the central valley of california) or...

... transportation.  like the capital corridor line.  this train links two powerful political areas generally considered pretty separate - the bay area and sacramento - and makes a "corridor" of the space in between.  so what happens politically and economically to the communities in this big ol' hallway of a rail line?  does that make it a "region"?

(for bay area people, another good example of this is BART, and what constitutes the "bay area."  marin county, for example, voted down bart in the 1970s -- does that make it less a part of the bay area?)

3. historical landscape.

so there's this idea that people have that we build the stuff we want to build and that's how cities (and other built environments) happen.  but really, there's often historical reasons that we build the stuff we want to build, like historical agricultural communities in river valleys (like l.a.  for real.) and mercantile cities near natural harbors and so forth. 

the train line that i ride to school every day is run by amtrak, which leases the rails from union pacific, which laid out the tracks close to 100 years ago.  and i'd wager that if we were to build passenger rail lines in california today, they would not go through the same places they do now.  but we're "stuck" with the rail as is, and so the lucky citizens of martinez, for instance, a small out-of-the-way east bay town, have an amtrak stop.  huh. by the same token, there are four stops really close to one another on one end of the line (oakland/emeryville/berkeley/richmond) and the other four are really spread out.

i want to know what else has sprung up around the rails, or is still there just because it never moved.  for this, i will be reading lots of history.  any book reccomendations?

4. art

there's also an arts element to all of this.  i mentioned in the last posting that i was going to contact community arts organizations along the tracks to participate.  (i have sent out a bunch of messages, and folks have responded with great enthusiasm!)  at the end of the year, i hope to mount art shows having to do with the rails with art by local artists and by davis students in all the communities along the tracks.

why art?  well, partially because i like to make art and because i find the stuff along a rail line really compelling (read: i like to take pictures of rust. ) 

also partially because i study community arts.  but furthermore, artists raise the question "how do we know what we know?"

academic scholarship certainly has its place, and i will be reading and writing a ton about historical landscapes and regions and such.  but academe only has some language for this, and artists have other language.  this plurality of voices is what i'm after.  more on this another time.

5. what about the people?

we all know that there are people that live near the railroad tracks.  i saw some of their dwellings yesterday:
   to be honest, i'm not sure how to deal with this.  i do not want to make art about them because i find their predicament interesting.  it is not interesting; it is sucky and sad and frustrating.  people are marginalized  so they live in marginal places  which are not safe, but where they will be mostly left alone.  sometimes they get hurt -- i was on two different trains from davis to berkeley last year that hit and killed people who were wandering around on the tracks in the dark.  it was totally strange and disconnected and sad. 

i can't take on this problem; at the same time, i can't just ignore these people.  i'm still thinking about this (very) sticky problem and not sure what to do.

so that's the project, for now.  kind of meandering, but i'm still comfortable with that.

next up: walk #2 from emeryville to richmond.

protowalk: oaktown to emeryville

sometime last year, staring out the window of the capital corridor train from berkeley (where i lived) and davis (where i go to school), i started thinking about all of the places that i know so well from the train window, and had never seen up close: the sugar refinery, the town of hercules, the tiny fishing huts in the bay-delta.  and i got curious.  so for my thesis project, i came up with this project, "beating the bounds," in which i would walk along the railroad tracks from oakland, where the train originates, to sacramento in order to see what i could see.  or more officially, to explore regional change in the area and its basis in the historical landscape.

Beating the bounds, an English tradition, is the title for this piece:

A custom dating from the 5th century when parishioners asked for God's blessing to protect their crops. During the Reformation walking the parish boundary became a more important part of the ceremony as it provided the community with a mental map which could be drawn on in disputes over boundaries. (www.commonground.org.uk)

though the project seemed to me (and others) a bit outlandish, my advisor seemed to think this was a *good* idea, and encouraged me to do it.  when i applied for a grant (and received it!), i realized i had to actually go through with this.   so yesterday i bought my first-ever digital camera, and  started walking; today i  started my first-ever blog.   

[when i understand more about blogging, i'll put the proposal for the project up.  until such a time, i'll just spill out my thoughts on what i did yesterday, and maybe some photos if i can figure that function out.]

although the capital corridor route ostensibly begins in sf (a bus takes you to oakland), i decided to start at the oakland station where the train itself originates.  also, it's really hard to walk (swim?) from sf to oakland.  i had my buddy justin meet me at the station to walk with me -- although i generally like to strike out on my own, it occurs to me that the walking portion of this project will have to be done with a [male] partner.  also, he is lovely, and requested only that i bring him trail mix.

so off we went, out of the train station and into the great wide world. 

i had a route mapped along the tracks the whole way, but it wasn't very far past jack london square...

that we were walled off from the tracks.   

see, the amtrak runs on rails that they *lease* from union pacific (at least here in california), so they often run through freight yards and other places walking people aren't allowed.  this brings up an interesting problem: part of my project is to encounter the rails outside of the train, and see how that feels.  however, as justin pointed out, it can be sort of dangerous and there isn't really much to see.  it's sort of a no-man's land.  regardless, being disallowed access to a place set my artistic sensibilities all a-tizzy. 

in the end, i relented and we walked as close to the tracks as we were allowed, which was pretty far.  this being a proto-walk, it brought up an important question: what exactly am i trying to find out?  and how far from the tracks do i go to find that thing?  do i want to talk to the people or the landscape?  what do i hope they will tell me?  i think coming up with a rule, even if slightly arbitrary, will help define the (otherwise vast) scope of this project. 

[tangent: this is a tactic employed in poetry, where the poet often comes up with rules for herself in order to refine the poem.  in a syllabic poem, for instance, the poet is confined to a certain number of syllables per line.  this is to say that the rule establishes a place that can be explored more thoroughly.]

so we walked, and found some suprises, many as i hoped, based on the fact that the tracks were laid where they were a long time ago, and that they butt up against the port of oakland, long one of the west coast's most important ports.  one such suprise was this superfund site where a chemical plant had been:                        

just next to this house where a family lives (!)

and a park that runs a few blocks beside the freeway.   

my favorite suprise was a tiny garden at the back of the postal service fortress in west oakland, complete with compost bins made of old plastic letter boxes:

after the post office, it was a long walk on "frontage road," a pretty empty place whose main function is to run parallel to the freeway.  nonetheless, it has sidewalks, and justin and i plodded through in the hot sun (note: future walking ought to commence early in the morning instead of 2:30 in the afternoon in the august sun.) 

eventually, we came across the pulte housing development of west oakland, a multi-million dollar project that i frankly know very little about.  particularly curious to me, however, is
that the centerpiece of the whole thing is this old train station that is an historic landmark.

i am also curious about what makes brand new plywood buildings qualify as "historic lofts."

 

and then we were in the industrial district of west oakland, an area historically sited based on its proximity to transport.  there are certainly some machine shops and other traditional manufacturing outfits.  there were also, however, businesses that just require space, and are easily accessible by car, such as this doggy daycare beside the freeway:

signs of impending development are certainly present as well, like this charming plot of flowers beneath the freeway (near nothing else at all) a few blocks from emeryville:

at emeryville, we were able to get close to the train tracks again.  also, because justin is studying urban planning at berkeley, he knows lots about physical and economic development in emeryville, which made it way more interesting.  i got to see the new "green" development, blue star corner, as well as lots of familiar places like ikea and the bay street development from the back.  shockingly, there's not a lot to see behind a big cement building where nobody lives.

it did get me curious, however, how emeryville has become the big box mecca it is today in such a short time.  how is the history of this tiny bite taken out of oakland tied up historically with the rail lines?

we weren't sure how far we would walk in one day, but after 3 hot hours we arrived at the emeryville amtrak station, beneath the pedestrian bridge that marks the place where you *ought* to walk, it was clear that our journey was over:

the next walk, hopefully, will take me from emeryville out to martinez. 

to do: learn how to post bigger photos, learn more neat tricks with my new digital camera (!), buy better shoes, get a tour of the oakland amtrak train yard, get a tour of the oakland postal service center, get a tour of the housing development and train station in oakland, figure out how to plot my adventure on google maps.