Not Giving Allegiance To The Grid
You should see The Cruise. It’s a documentary about Timothy “Speed” Levitch, a completely not normal seeming guy, who’s a double-decker tour bus guide in Manhattan. There’s a great scene where he’s recalling a conversation he had with one of his tourists. He’d been talking to her about “the grid plan,” the layout of avenues and streets in square blocks all over Manhattan. Talking about how the grid plan emanates from a lie and how he’d really like to blow it up and rewrite the streets to be (as he puts it): “much more a self portraiture of our personal struggles rather than some real estate broker’s wet dream from 1807.”
Apparently the tourist is a little taken aback. She says, “I never even thought of that. I can’t even imagine that. Everyone likes the grid plan. How could you not like the grid plan? It’s so functional. Everyone likes the grid plan.”
As he’s recalling this conversation in the film Levitch is really… Read More