Nowtopian

Stockholm for walkers and thinkers

On the train from Oslo to Stockholm, we finally had clear skies. Towards the "end of the day" which is about 3:20 in this photo, we got this amazing sunset, which turns out to be somewhat typical of these days in Stockholm too. After seeing the Edward Munch museum in Oslo, and his famous painting The Scream, Adriana immediately tagged this view as the source of his inspiration...

A pedestrian alley in the Old City.

Visiting my cousin and his boyfriend in Stockholm, we’ve had a few days to be tourists and wander around. It’s the perfect city for wandering, that’s for sure! I kept thinking of Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” as we climbed staircases and stumbled upon elegant old churches and explored the Old City (Gamla Stan)… I also got a head cold, probably from the endless passage between too cold (outdoors) and too hot (indoors)… I forget what real winter is like!

View towards the Old City from Sodermalm.

We stumbled upon the Sofia Kirke (Church), which was an impressive Lutheran edifice sitting atop a steep hill in eastern Sodermalm (a central island in Stockholm, rather trendy now after being a working-class district for most of its history).

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Up and Down in Oslo

We came to Oslo, Norway from Copenhagen (my first blog post from this trip appears here). It was supposed to be by train, but the Swedish National Railroads were repairing some tracks and due to surprising disorganization, we got stuck sitting in the Gothenberg central station for 4 hours waiting for a bus to run us up to Trollhatten where we could get back on a train. So the travel day was very long, but we were greeted by our hosts Audun and Tine, and have had a very nice visit here.

A gray wintery city, Oslo only has daylight from about 8 am to 4 pm these days.

On Saturday, I gave a Nowtopia talk as part of a “Social Change, Not Climate Change” talk at a local social center called Humla. About 20 people showed up, and I gave a shortened version of my usual talk since the point here is to fit it in a larger discussion about Climate politics. I shared billing with a couple of Swedes who came over from Stockholm to talk about their fascinating group called Planka.nu, which means something like “Crash it now!”, referring to their program of advocating free transit by jumping turnstiles and gates and not paying. The organization enrolls dues-paying members and if they get caught by the transit police without a paid fare, Planka pays their ticket. It’s a kind of insurance for free riders, and has its roots in both the anarcho-syndicalist youth movement (that has been around since the 1930s, and is connected to a national anarcho-syndicalist labor federation) and an autonomous Marxist think tank. I’ll write more about this later, probably in a full length report at Streetsblog after I interview them this week.

Lots of water surrounding Oslo.

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Frontiers Unfettered by Any Frowning Fortress: Nowtopian Buffalo

Buffalo, an animal and a city...

Spent two and a half days in Buffalo, a place I’d never been before”¦ Always wondered why it was named Buffalo since that beast probably never roamed anywhere near here. Locals say it’s derived from a French expression Beau L’eau, with an “˜f’ somehow inserted into it by long lost accents”¦ the beautiful water of course would refer to the Niagara River meeting Lake Erie here, along with a variety of smaller waterways. Pouring through the Niagara Gorge, a famously beautiful natural rock formation, the waters then plunge over Niagara Falls a short way north of here.

I heard a lot about the local water from a woman I met last night, Katie B., who hails from Athens, Georgia. She works locally with a Riverwatcher nonprofit, helping local citizens monitor water quality in wetlands, creeks, and rivers hereabouts. She loves her job which she was anxious to tell me after my public appearance on a panel last night, where I gave my usual rant against useless, stupid work. It was at a place called “Sugar City,” mostly known as a punk rock venue. (Oddly it seemed like a sweet local art gallery much more than a punk venue, but I think that’s because they had to shut down for 3 months due to hostile neighbors, and are now reinventing themselves as a good neighbor.) It’s a great spot in one of Buffalo’s thriving districts, Allentown, full of historic architecture, a hopping bar scene at night, and a fine used bookshop, Rust Belt Books. The bookstore owner, Christie, told me in a brief conversation about the city, “Buffalo is not depressed. Buffalo is unimpressed!”

Rust Belt Books in Allentown district of Buffalo, NY.

Cool rusting bike racks in front of Rust Belt Books.

Allentown District sign, with its surprising invitation to anarchists to be residents!

True enough, it’s a town full of secret energies and a palpable sense of an interesting future embedded in a depopulated, often devastated landscape. This is after all the home of Love Canal and countless other lesser known toxic catastrophes (probably some still ahead). Buffalo was one of the most important cities in the U.S. back in the 19th century, first when the Erie Canal arrived in the early part of that century, and then during the long booms and busts of industrialization that followed. At its earliest moments around 1820 there was even a communal society that built a thriving village called Harmony on forested land purchased from the Seneca Indians, in an area now absorbed by the city of Buffalo.

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