Stay Weird
While being blessed with a career that lets me travel to some amazing places, finding time to explore and understand a place isn't always the easiest.
Austin,TX had some WONDERFUL light to show me while I was out there earlier in the year.
My advice when travelling? Get out of the shiny, shopping, business district as fast as you can, and walk.
Up, down, left, right, round and round.
Take me to the backstreets, the flyovers, parking lots, the old bits, the un-gentrified bits.
Everything in a new place is different. The mundane and banal hold a fresh beauty to the visiting eye.
Staying in the Rainy Street district, I found quite a severe divide between wealth and poverty. All bundled in on top of each other, the signs of gentrification, and the damage it can cause to a neighbourhood were evident to see. It felt quite similar to what's happening here at home in East London, but on a more extreme scale. A lot of wonderful, vibrant and fun things crop up when a neighbourhood gets chosen for gentrification. Some would say the safety increases too. Sadly, it always seems to be at the cost of many original, existing residents and communities, unable to afford the privilege of fitting into this new environment.
When researching the area, I found an interesting little documentary on the history of the Rainy Street community. Produced by Andrea Merrim and Paula Manley, in 1981. A story of a community vs. the developers.
