Randomly Friday afternoon

Thoughts before shutting down work, visiting Mom, and driving over to my weekend house in Winston-Salem:

• A neighborhood where $1600/sq ft is a housing bargain is probably not one where I want to live. That’s irrelevant, of course, because I couldn’t afford to live there even if I wanted to (link via Dan).
• I’ve loved this song (and its siblings, “I Know a Place” and “Don’t Sleep in the Subway”) since I was a wee tyke. As I grew older, they also represented an urbanity that somehow got lost during the late 1960s and 1970s but was something I really wished I had lived through. It’s interesting to read the back story and even more interesting that I chance upon the link via an urban issues site I frequent rather than via one about music. Obviously I wasn’t the only one who recognized Pet’s whole urban vibe thing.
• On suburban blight, an issue I’ve been intrigued by in recent years, especially since watching it firsthand in East Charlotte when I lived there briefly in 2005-2006. Atlanta has more than its share as well. The big issue, as the author points out, is that discarded suburban strips are less likely to attract the sort of homos, hipsters, and homesteaders that have rehabbed other types of down and out neighborhoods, just because the built environment is so much less flexible.

Next week is beyond hectic for me. Don’t expect much in the way of updates. Not that it matters that much, I guess (David said, kicking a tumbleweed out of his way…)