This Wednesday, I will be hosting an informative discussion about Redistricting in Michigan on behalf of the AAG’s Redistricting Panel Series.
My guests will be Atty. Mark Brewer (former Chair of the Michigan Democratic Party), Nancy Wang (Voters Not Politicians), and Rick Sadler (MSU-Flint), with a couple of potential special guests, too.
MORE INFO AND REGISTRATION IS HERE. This event, like all the AAG Redistricting Webinars, is free.
Stop One on the Ellington Bridge, 04.06.19 (DC Punk Walking Tour Photo by Macià Blázquez Salom)
Better late than never, as promised, here are some additional photos from AAG DC, taken and shared with me by several generous walking tour participants.
As I posted about a couple weeks ago, I hosted a Q&A with Ian MacKaye at the Wardman Park Hotel on Friday afternoon. The full audio of that conversation, along with some photos taken by Josh Pitt of Palgrave and Emily Fekete of the AAG, are available on that previous entry.
As I mentioned last month in a post leading up to the meeting, the first (and probably only) AAG DC Punk walking tour got a shocking amount of interest. I wound up taking a good handful of folks who registered at the last minute on-site after the inevitable few registrants dropped out. I didn’t get a proper headcount when we set off from the hotel, but the photos below should be a good indication.
I look like I’m proselytizing, and in a way, I am. I took a chance to talk about the role DC’s physical geography played in events that punctuated punk history like the late-80’s percussion protests at the South African Embassy. Standing on the bridge named after the man gave us a chance to give Duke some love, too, being as how he’s easily in the conversation about the most vital American musicians of the 20th century. The way he wrote short, punchy songs so prolifically and so well invariably laid the early groundwork for rock n’ roll, and what was punk rock except a return to rock n’ roll’s roots?
While I was trying to recall the bands Ian MacKaye told me were on the bill for Minor Threat’s first show in this house, an older gentleman stepped out onto the porch of the house next door. He apologized for interrupting, and I said no worries and asked him how long he’d been living there. “1980,” he said. He verified the story I was relating, citing the great parties his neighbors at 1929 would throw back in the day. He also said the house had sold for $2,000,000, which was more than I recalled reading. Given the turnover in that neighborhood over the past few decades, it was an amazing stroke of luck.
Once a Yippie watering hole for Corcoran Art students and more recently the home of Crooked Beat Records (when I moved to DC in 2005), the building that built harDCore currently houses an Insomnia Cookie shop upstairs and a grow shop downstairs (keeping in the spirit of DIY, I suppose). Neither business could withstand a crush of almost 30 people and the grow shop, per DC law, needed to check every entrant’s ID, so I stood on the staircase to Insomnia to deliver my spiel.
Immediately after our stop at the original Madam’s Organ house, we crammed into Smash! Records next door. I introduced the group to my old friend Matt Moffatt, who gave the group a brief history of the shop, which started in Georgetown in a different era and moved to Adams-Morgan in the mid-2000’s.
Matt Moffatt talks with the AAG DC Punk Walking Tour at Smash! Records, Washington, DC 04.06.19 (Tyler Sonnichsen Photo)
After Smash!, we took a break to get empanadas and shop, reconvening to head down to the star-intersection at 18th and Florida and U to discuss the role of immigrants in the growth of underground music in DC. Two sites of interest there were the (now closed) Eritrean restaurant Dahlak, where I saw friends perform a number of times in the late 2000’s, as well as the neighboring building, now a young-professionals’ gym, which regularly hosted Go Go shows in the 80’s as an African-owned club. Two very pleasant English women on the tour, who admitted to me in the end they went in knowing very little about punk, told me how much they liked how I incorporated migration into the tour. It was one of the best compliments I received all day. DC Punk, just like so many pieces of any city’s “real” culture, owes so much to immigrants who opened up their restaurants for live entertainment. The city’s punk scene has included so many sons and daughters of immigrants, as well.
The next stretch was the longest walk of the tour, a haul up Ontario Street back to Columbia Road. The sun was so powerful and the heat was so strong, I worried that half of the tour would drop off, but everyone who was with us at the bottom of the hill was in great spirits when we reached the top for:
The AAG DC Punk Walking Tour stops by the site of the Ontario Theater, now the Banfield Pet Hospital. (Photo by Marton Berki)
Unlike anywhere else we stopped, the building that once housed the Ontario Theater (the predecessor, at least in the Seth Hurwitz sense, to the 9:30 Club) actually had a historical marker of sorts. As this photo by Martón Berki details, U2 once played there in 1981, right on the cusp of breaking. Prior to it’s period as a music club, the Ontario had been a movie theater kept open through the 1970’s by the local Central American population. Further history of the building is available on Cinema Treasures and Streets of Washington.
The end of the tour was a real treat, literally and figuratively. Josh Pitt, my good friend and editor at Palgrave, treated the whole tour to ice cream. Given the heat, this generosity could not have come at a better time. It just so happened that Mt. Desert Island was not only a couple blocks away from the site of the legendary Wilson Center, but it’s also owned and operated by Melissa Quinley and Brian Lowit, a pair of great Dischord Records vets. Brian’s own label, Lovitt, released some solid gold by the likes of Frodus, Engine Down, Sleepytime Trio, and many more. Melissa and Brian came outside to talk about the finer points of underground music, ice cream, and how community ties those two together.
As my delicious ice cream was melting and running down my hand, I spoke for a couple more minutes to the group outside, thanked them, and we headed back to the hotel. It seemed like everybody enjoyed themselves and learned a lot. I’m grateful it all went off catastrophe-free.
Thanks again to everyone who took part in the DC Punk Walking Tour, and special thanks to everyone who shared the above pictures. You may notice that a bulk of them were taken by the multi-talented and immensely supportive Steven Donnelly, from Belfast. Keep tabs on him and his work via Instagram at mralligator7.
Steven Donnelly Self-Portrait in Smash! Records, Washington, DC 04.06.19
The long wait is almost over: AAG DC starts this week! Because the meeting’s in the AAG’s (and my former, for a while) home base this year, I’ve been working to arrange a few special events that I’ll be announcing here, on twitter, and via the AAG’s social media as well. It’s going to be a busy but good time. You can find me at one of the following three events (or of course by just hitting me up).
1:10 – 2:50pm
Washington 1, Marriott, Exhibition Level
AAG Session Page – Event Page
I’m excited to announce that I’ll be moderating a discussion with Ian MacKaye for the keynote session of the Media and Communication Geography Specialty Group. Thank you to Ian for his interest as well as to my friend Emily Fekete at the AAG for making this happen. We’ll be talking about the relationship between the city and punk history, as well as the history of Dischord Records and his own musical career (Minor Threat, Fugazi, Embrace, The Evens, and more). Get there early to get a good seat!
Meet at 12pm
Marriott 24th St Entrance
I’ll be honest: I wrote a long, fun draft entry to publish closer to the event for a last-minute push in case it didn’t fill up, but it did. I’m grateful and humbled that this tour has generated as much interest as it has. I’m sorry if you missed a chance to register for a spot, but as with any walking tour, there’s a reasonable chance for a few no-shows. If any spots do open up, I’ll make sure to announce it on twitter and contact those registered.
For now, here is the gist of what I wrote originally. I’ll wait to divulge more details until we’re closer to the event, but there will be surprises, some brought to you by our good friends at Palgrave Publishing, and others brought to you by our tour sites. You’re probably wondering, “AAG members offer plenty of great walking tours every year; why should I, a person of [indeterminate] interest in punk rock, be looking forward to this one?”
Let me know if you have any questions [sonicgeography at gmail]. We will take off from Marriott Wardman Park’s 24th St Entrance on Saturday 4/6 at Noon. See you there!
3:55 – 5:05 PM
Contemporary Issues in Human Geography
Washington 6, Marriott, Exhibition Level
You read that right: I’m engaging with some research on the Florida Man. This is a topic that, as a cultural geographer with a soft spot for Florida (that I catch heat for, no pun intended), I’ve been interested in for some time. It seems that every six months or so, the internet breathes new life into this apocryphal character. Recently, a meme went around imploring people to google “Florida Man” and their birthday. Much of my research focuses on circulation, and internet-mediated phenomena like these work wonders(?) to perpetuate (inter)national perspectives on what makes Florida assume the mantel of “our weirdest state.”
I understand many of you may have skipped town by Sunday afternoon, but this session looks like it will be amazing: talks on Kingston, Cincinnati, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP), Climate security, and Uttarakhand.
Anyway, see you in DC. If you’re not going, you’ll be missed and I’ll be happy to give you all a rundown of the highlights from this year’s meeting on this site sometime after I get back to Knoxville. I’m still reeling as I write this from a great time in Memphis at the Balancing the Mix conference, in fact. Thanks to Mark Duffett and Amanda Nell Edgar for putting it together. If I have time this week (that’s a big ‘if’), I’ll post an update or two about the conference as well as the West Tennessee chapter of the Ben Irving Postcard Project.
AAG in New Orleans, Louisiana – April 10th through April 14th. My mind is already cycling through some dixieland band’s raucous rendition of “Just A Closer Walk With Thee.” To be fair, though, that song is like a mental screensaver for me most of the year whether or not I’m preparing for a trip to NOLA. Like most people who enjoy the coolest cities in their respective country (and perhaps continent), I fell in love with the Crescent City the first time I visited it in 1998.
Coincidentally, AAG falls on the same week as the French Quarter Festival, which was the event my family and I were down there for twenty years ago. My very talented sister was in a youth jazz band that played on Bourbon Street as part of the 1998 event, quickly being forced into a bar when a storm passed overhead. I should really digitize some of that footage. From what I can tell, the Second Line kickoff parade is happening around the time I’ll be around the corner, chairing a panel.
Speaking of which, here is where you can find me presenting:
Friday, April 13th
9:00 AM – 9:20 AM
Oakley, Sheraton, 4th Floor
“Geographies of Media VIII: Sounds, scenes and urban policies – Contemporary issues and new horizons for the geographies of music 4”
My paper this year is entitled “Punk and Pedagogy in Geography.” I’ll be talking about some of my teaching experiences so far where I’ve been able to apply lessons learned from using underground music as a mechanism for teaching cultural, urban, and other aspects of human geography. I’ll be using examples of lecture material from Gainesville, Jakarta, and of course DC and Paris. This is largely a work-in-progress, but I’m looking forward to the form it takes.
You can also find me chairing this Thursday session:
Thursday, April 12th
10:00 AM – 11:40 AM
Oakley, Sheraton, 4th Floor
“Geographies of Media VIII: Sounds, scenes and urban policies – Contemporary issues and new horizons for the geographies of music 4”
This one’s composed of a handful of great-sounding papers and is the organizational handiwork of my musical geography brothers-in-arms Ola Johansen (University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown), Severin Guillard (Université Paris Est – Lab’Urba), and Joseph Palis (University of the Phillippines – Diliman).
I’m also currently piecing together my schedule of panels and paper sessions I’m hoping to catch, of which a solid 75% will be happening concurrently with at least 3 other sessions I would like to see. Such is the big conference life.
This trip will be my fifth time in New Orleans. I’ve returned three times since then – in 2007, 2008, and 2014 – and thoroughly enjoyed myself on all three occasions. My last trip, which happened on one sweltering July day, included this Repeat Photography (as it appears in the AAG program; I still call it “Re-Photography” on this site) mission that worked out surprisingly well. You can re-read my account of it here.
I can’t believe it’s already been four years. I guess there’s nothing to really do there next week but re-photograph some other memories (TBD) while trying to make some half-decent new ones. Laissez les bon temps rouler.
For my non-AAG-attending readers here (and for any AAG folks who may have missed it), my colleague in the Cultural Geography Specialty Group, Emily Fekete, circulated a petition on Change.org in which her colleague Andy Shears articulated a tension that has existed among AAG members for some time. In simple terms, the conference has become way too expensive for many of its members. Here is the original petition.
I would like to continue this conversation, and make a few suggestions with my own reasoning for future conferences after Boston (2017). Regarding 2018, I initially heard Washington, DC (which made sense given AAG’s headquarters and the organizations propensity to “max out” its attendance when/where possible), but I’ve since discovered it’s going to be in New Orleans (a move in the right direction, which I’ll address later). That being said, here is my personal perspective on the issue. Feel free to use this as a case study in your own spiels about this subject.
San Francisco inspired such outbursts because it encapsulated everything that has been problematic with the AAG’s location and scheduling choices for the annual meeting for some time. While I understand that a large-scale conference during the heavy spring tourist season must require some maneuvering, putting thousands of graduate students in an exorbitantly expensive city for 4-5 days prior to when many graduate students get paid their monthly stipends is stressful. The AAG Annual Meeting is, for lack of a better term, a geographic mega-event that brings anywhere from 6,000 – 10,000 professionals, students, and their loved ones together for a week of networking and over-committing themselves. While tenured professors and professional veterans in fields like GIS and Urban Planning attend the meeting religiously, it seems like the AAG is overlooking its indispensability to graduate students like me. Getting to present your research to people from all over the world in your area of interest (as well as branching out and attending sessions outside your specific field) is paramount to beginning a career in Geography.
A bridge to the Davis Islands in Tampa, the morning after the 2014 conference ended.
From what I understand, the AAG considered the 2014 conference in Tampa a failure because only approximately 6,000 people attended…a measly 6,000 that allowed our sessions to end at reasonable times each evening in a fun and (relatively) accessible city that kept hotel prices affordable. As much as I love Chicago and San Francisco, Tampa was my favorite AAG meeting so far. Tampa’s relatively small (albeit growing) size made it easier to focus on the conference and partition my leisure activities. The Tampa convention center’s location (unlike that of Chicago or San Francisco) kept the AAG folks safe from the crush of morning commuters yet still adjacent to the nightlife (aided, I’ll admit, by the Tampa Bay Lightning home games scheduled that week at the St. Pete Times Forum). I understand that a lot of international geographers chose Tampa as “that one year” to skip, but a lot of geographers need to take occasional years off regardless. I knew a handful who chose to skip going to San Francisco this year, even. It wasn’t because of a misconception that people need a city with “caché” to entice them to bring their families on holiday and generate revenue. Tampa may not be the “sexiest” international city to geographers outside the US (though my TB friends would probably take exception to that), but here’s a crazy notion: we are geographers. Many of us wouldn’t be in this business if we didn’t enjoy digging up the gems that every city (yes, every city) has to offer. I could name at least 15 geographers off the top of my head who teach and work in tiny towns whose nightlife consists of the equivalent of less than one block of Ybor City. Even coming out of Knoxville (which does have decent nightlife), I had a great time taking advantage of what Tampa had to offer, and so did many of my friends/colleagues. We also got to play Simpsons pinball and see The Dead Milkmen play, which were both awesome, but that’s neither here nor there.
As I eagerly await my reimbursement from my school for my registration fee ($155, fair for the professional Geography conference but still a hole in the wallet when you’re a grad student in 2016) and my hotel share (worth it for the proximity but still exorbitant even split among three other roommates), I’d like to put forth a few city suggestions for future AAG meetings and my reasoning for each. Shears’ petition already mentions a good handful, some of which I would enthusiastically support and others, while I’m skeptical about, I would still gladly attend:
Albuquerque, Atlanta, Baltimore, Buffalo, Charlotte, Cleveland, Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Madison, Milwaukee, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Nashville, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Rochester, Salt Lake City, St. Louis, Tampa and Winnipeg.
Such a great list! I’ve yet to go to an embarrassingly high percentage of those places. Taking numerous factors (city profile and sustainability, etc.) into consideration, here are a couple that I’d like to add.
Fewer phrases bring more excitement and hope to my brain than “AAG Detroit.” This is not just because I’ve (1) never been there and (2) I may be crazy, but fewer cities in North America scream “convention” more than the Motor City. While it has been the butt of urban blight jokes for decades, it has everything: pop music history for the cultural geographers, the epicenter of the urban gardening movement, the historic epicenter of the American automotive industry for the economic and vroom-vroom (aka pure enthusiast) types, and it’s right across the line from Windsor, Ontario for the passport-holding types (which should be everybody). AAG was last held in Detroit in 1985, and 2,377 people attended, 43.7% of membership at the time. That percentage may seem paltry by today’s standards, but keep in mind that DC drew 2,707 people (47.4% of that year’s membership) the year prior, and in 1989 Baltimore would draw 3,115 (49.2%). Both DC and Baltimore were well into the “crack era” by the mid-to-late-1980’s, putting Detroit’s well-documented decline at the time into perspective. Whether the cities are “safe” in the public imaginary should be of little concern, particularly for those staying at the conference hotels. Considering how our conference this year was held in San Francisco’s notorious Tenderloin (where I spent all week with prostitutes and hustlers following me, both a part of city life but probably not what those attendees with their families in tow had in mind), perceptions of safety are highly overrated. Even downtown Los Angeles in 2013 (notably, a dip of over 1,300 registrants from New York in 2012) was beset with icons of urban blight that (given testimonies from Mike Davis and Edward Soja) were inevitable. Not to dwell on the negative aspects of any major urban area, Detroit would be amazing.
Suggested (only sort of joking) Guest Speaker: Andrew W.K.
My love of this city has been pretty well-documented (if not so much on this site…I honestly can’t remember). AAG has held their meeting here three times, the last of which was in 1965. 1,250 people (1/3 of AAG’s Membership at the time) attended fifty years ago and saw a sleepy Columbus that would, about four decades later, blow up into what can barely be contained as the Midwest’s best secret. While The Ohio State University dominates the city’s core, the downtown area, the State capital, and other industries have expanded the city’s population and role in America’s core. It would be great for the AAG to set up in the city’s convention center and capture this zeitgeist. Not only would attendees be across the bridge (that brilliantly conceals a freeway, for the urban design types) from the Short North dining/going-out district, but they’re also walking distance from North Market, the Ohio Theater, and the Arena District (in case the Blue Jackets have a home-game-heavy week like the Bolts did in ’14). Columbus has crept into the top 15 largest U.S. cities (almost tied with San Francisco proper, believe it or not), so there is little question whether Columbus could handle a convention of AAG’s size. Also, we can eat all of Mikey’s Late-Night Pizza, Dirty Frank’s delicious (veggie and non) hot dogs, and Jeni’s insanely good ice cream.
Suggested (semi-joking) guest speaker: Urban Meyer.
New Orleans is a fantasti…. oh, yeah, nevermind! Rather than spell out all the reasons why bringing the meeting to NOLA in 2018 is terrific idea (AAG are way ahead of me), I’ll just reiterate here what I’ve said to countless people over the past 18 years since I first visited: it’s the coolest city in North America.
Suggested Guest Speaker (not at all joking): Marc Morial
The AAG meeting really snuck up on me this year. I don’t remember if I said the same thing last year (probably not), but it’s hard to believe it’s here already. I still have a couple of changes to make on my presentation before I meet up with Joseph Palis and everybody on my panel on Wednesday afternoon.
Anyway, here’s where you’ll be able to find me this week:
Geo Slam II
(Geographic storytelling and performance jam sessions of sorts)
Time: Tuesday, March 29, 2015, 4:40 PM – 6:20 PM
Place: 4:40 PM – 6:20 PM in Imperial B, Hilton Hotel, Ballroom Level
I’ve already written a good deal about Geo Slam here, and can’t wait to see how year 2 goes/grows. Make sure to add us on Facebook here.
Paper Session:
2628 Geographies of Media IX: Musicscapes and Spaces of Music (1)
5:20 PM – 7:00 PM in Union Square 1, Hilton Hotel, 4th Floor
Here is the session breakdown, according to the AAG schedule. Some great scholars here! Thanks to the Communication Geography Specialty Group for putting their name on it, as well as Aether. My paper is at 6 but make sure to come at 5:20 for Caitlin Grann; we presented together at AAG 2013 and it’ll be great to catch up with her.
Organizer(s):
Joseph Palis – University of the Philippines-Diliman
Laura Sharp – University of Arizona
Chair(s):
Joseph Palis – University of the Philippines-Diliman
Abstract(s):
5:20 PM Author(s): *Caitlin Grann – University of New Mexico
| Abstract Title: Ghost Bikes: A Trialectical Journey into the Place of Music within Grassroots Memorials |
5:40 PM Author(s): *John Byron Strait, Professor of Geography – Sam Houston State University
Abstract Title: The Impact of Aloha on the Birthplace of the Blues: The Hawaiian Roots of the Slide Guitar
6:00 PM Author(s): *Tyler Sonnichsen – University of Tennessee
| Abstract Title: Finding the Washington, DC Landscape in French Punk |
6:20 PM Author(s): *Douglas L. Allen – Florida State University
| Abstract Title: “We are a New Race”: Booker T. Washington’s Use of Music in the Placing of a New Negro Image |
6:40 PM Discussant: Ola Johansson – University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown
Session Description: These sessions examine the geographical implications – social, political, cultural, and economic – that are often contained within the spaces and places of different forms of media. Geographies of media extend beyond their original form and text to include the broader industrial and political complex in which culture is an economic commodity set within the broader frame of a global and postmodern era. Geographies of media link between these realms and our daily lived experiences, from our cities to streets, from the living rooms to imaginations. These contexts invite inquiries into the production, distribution, exhibition, and consumption of all types of media. Geographies of media sessions are brought to you by Aether: The Journal of Media Geography (www.aetherjournal.org).
Otherwise, follow me on twitter at @sonicgeography and I’ll try my best to keep it updated with any big changes. But per usual, it’s impossible to predict what I’ll get pulled into here. It’s been a while, San Francisco, and you look wonderful.
An update to let you all know where and when you can find me and my research this Spring Semester.
GEOSYM 2016
The University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN
February 5 – 6, 2016
This is not only a chance to see me present some of my research on France, but also visit my first conference as an event coordinator. My good friend and colleague Savannah Collins and I are currently in the home stretch of pulling the final schedule together for the papers, panels, and workshops. It’s been a challenging and already rewarding process, and we’re excited to welcome over 50 scholars, including our keynote Dr. Dydia DeLyser, to the symposium. I had wanted Dr. DeLyser to feature at this event ever since I became the chair of the 2016 event over two years ago now. Her talks on the geographic history of neon light restoration at AAG 2013 and 2014 were as entertaining as they were fascinating. For this conference, she will be presenting on the Geographies of Materiality, focusing on the restoration of three Indian Motocycles [sic]. Our schedule and other details are posted at our Facebook event here, and will shortly be added to the official page on our department’s site here.
SEMSEC
Society for Ethnomusicology, Southeast and Caribbean Annual Meeting
Southern Academy of the Performing Arts
San Fernando, Trinidad
March 4-6, 2016
This sounds horrible, I know. Not that I post a whole lot anyway, but I’ll try to minimize the amount of beach photos on social media so you don’t all get jealous and start plotting my demise. No matter where the conference is held, I’m glad to be able to make my return to SEMSEC with my French DC/punk research in between eating my weight in doubles and sneaking in some scuba diving. Also, if anyone knows where to find the good dusty Calypso records, I’m all about that, too.
AAG
Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting
San Francisco, CA
March 27 – April 2, 2016
I’m excited to see a lot of the usual suspects this time around, even some of the less-than-usual suspects, making the trek across the globe to one of the our coolest and most expensive cities. I’ll be presenting my paper at 6pm on Wednesday, April 30th. I’ll also be performing in the Second Annual GeoSlam! Event. More info on all this as it draws closer.
I’ve got some planning and budgeting to do.
In the decades of my life which I’ve spent (as millions have) in eager anticipation of this date, I never expected when it finally arrived to be in the middle of my third year of PhD study, preparing for my comprehensive exams, starting to turn the gears on a dissertation about the undercurrent between DC and Parisian punk, a series of personal pursuits and projects around Knoxville (where I never suspected I’d be living)… and working on co-editing a book about the Geography of Back to the Future. When my friends David, Teresa, and I started the early iteration of this project in 2012, we had grand ambitions to have it out by today, but life, the academic publishing vortex, school, and more life got in the way. However, I am pleased to report the project is still alive, and in the wake of a fantastic panel at AAG in Chicago earlier this year, we have a great, creative crew of writers assembled with contributions. I look forward to having more news to report in the spring. For now, I need to get back to reviewing, writing, planning, and a bunch of other things that aren’t quite as fun as discussing Hoverboards, flying cars, and Marty McFly (though I have written a chapter draft about his home town).
Happy Back to the Future Day, everyone. As much as the production team may have gotten wrong about 2015 (we still need roads), the Bobs probably never anticipated just how excited they would make us all to be here.
As expected, I returned from Chicago with a seemingly insurmountable pile of work backlogged from the week away. I imagine this is commonplace, as the AAG meeting typically falls late in the spring semester. I cannot move any deadlines or life events that have delayed it, but better late than never, here are some photos and highlights from the first-ever Back to the Future panel! Before I delve into it, I wanted to add that my paper session on Tuesday morning and the first annual GeoSlam (also on Tuesday) were both successful and a lot of fun. Thanks to RJ Rowley and Pamela Sertzen, respectively, for organizing those. Pam and I were already chatting about next year’s AAG GeoSlam, possibly in a SF jazz club? Lawrence Ferlinghetti will probably be too old to join us, but we can always dream.
Anyway, back to Back to the Future…
RJ and I bumped into each other in the hallway outside of Skyway 282, the hatbox room we had been assigned for the session. Considering this was going to be at 4pm on Saturday (when a majority of AAG’s participants have usually left the event), we looked forward to the panel with cautious optimism. Even in a worst-case scenario, we would have a fun group discussion by which to end our AAG meeting. Maybe a small handful of curious conference-goers would find their way to it. We did not get preeminent about the proceedings; we were not expecting a big crowd.
We were so wrong. Even before any of the other chapter authors filtered in, we had a pair of strangers come in and sit down. As 4pm approached, the small room slowly filled up. My colleague Matt Cook, always helpful, went next door and even grabbed a few more chairs to fit into the entryway for the additional people who came in (unless he was violating a fire code, in which case I’m kidding about everything I’ve said in this sentence).
Co-Editor RJ Rowley introduces his chapter to a tightly packed crowd at the “Geographies of Back to the Future” Panel. Notice the packed entryway, including onlookers sitting on the floor. Julian Barr and Lydia Hou, co-authors of another chapter, sit next to RJ and look on.
It wasn’t enough. By 4:30pm, we had one longtime follower of the project sitting on the floor, poetry-slam-style in front of us, the room already oriented for a circle discussion. Every seat in there was full, and everybody was at complete attention to each of our presenters. One by one, Greg Pagett, Dr. Chris Dando, Stacie Townsend, Ashley Allen, Dr. RJ Rowley, Dr. Rich Waugh, Julian Barr, Lydia Hou, and myself brought a different idea to the table which the franchise had inspired.
Drs. Robert Winstanley-Chesters and Torsten Wissman look on as I, Greg Pagett, and Dr. Christina Dando share a laugh with some attendees. (Matthew Cook photo)
After we all went around and introduced our chapters, Dr. Dando presented a brilliant and concise discussion of the panel which will undoubtedly inform our book proposal moving forward. We then opened the floor up to discussion from attendees. A pair of geographers actually thanked us for helping them understand just what Back to the Future has to contribute to the geographic literature and theory. When they said that, it felt incredibly grateful that our discussion struck so many chords across several subdisciplines.
My personal favorite anecdote came from Dr. Robert Winstanley-Chesters of Leeds University, who shared his experience as an immigrant to suburban New Jersey in 1984. His father, a visiting professor at a major NJ institution, was able to enroll him in an expensive private school that year. One of his lasting memories of that school were the three DeLoreans he saw in the parking lot every day. For most BTTF fans, the films represent this fantasy of mid-1980s America; in a strange way, they represented Robert’s reality. I hadn’t laughed that hard since… RJ and Greg engaged in an argument over who was the bigger film nerd about one hour prior to that. Needless to say, we had more fun than anyone would predict at an AAG panel.
Another highlight came after we adjourned; two attendees introduced themselves and said they had driven up that day from Champaign (over an hour) just for the panel. They said it was worth it, and I was incredibly humbled. Checking the twitter account and seeing positive comments like this certainly didn’t hurt, either:
Thank you @Clocktower2015 and everybody involved for a humorous yet in no way ridiculous session on the geog of #BackToTheFuture! #AAG2015
— Konstantin Greger (@kogreger) April 25, 2015
Thanks again to all the contributors, participants, and even curious bystanders who craned their necks to hear the proceedings from the hallway, who reminded us all that “if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.”
Thanks for reading! Don’t forget to keep tabs on “Save the Clocktower!” at our Facebook page and on Twitter. More updates soon!
I’m extremely excited to announce here that I’ll be attending and presenting at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Chicago this week. After a brief visit to see some friends and some colleagues in Wisconsin (Madison and Milwaukee are so much fun), we’ll be heading down to the Windy City this afternoon.
The Blackhawks hadn’t just scored. This picture was taken during warm-ups when they announced that the AAG was coming to town.
Here are the conference activities in which I’ll be participating, in sequential order:
1. PAPER SESSION
I’ll be presenting my paper “The Flâneur and Flânerie in Geographic Thought” in a special ‘Space and Place’ session with my friend RJ Rowley at the helm. Pasting my abstract below, from the AAG website.
Tuesday, April 21st, 8am
Burnham, Hyatt, West Tower, Silver Level
“…the ambivalence of the stranger thus represented the ambivalence of the modern world…” (Jacques Derrida, quoted by David B. Clarke in The Cinematic City).
The flâneur, a common literary and theoretical term for the apocryphal urban wanderer, has long been a commonly held analogue in sociological thought. Normally (un)settled in Paris and influenced heavily by the work of Charles Baudelaire as well as post-modernist thinkers like Jacques Derrida as ‘the hero of modernism,’ the flâneur has appeared relatively infrequently in the geographic literature. This seems to be contradictory, as the character is well suited to frame the dialogue over the interaction between individuals and the urban landscape. In light of the emphasis on interaction and detachment with the city in the concourse of twentieth century thought, this paper examines and rethinks the flâneur and flânerie through contrasting lenses of humanism, modernism, and feminism/postmodernism. While the flâneur may be essentially a “literary gloss” (according to Rob Shields, 1994), the idea of the character and conversations around him illustrate various (sometimes contradictory) perspectives on the changing role and position of the Western urban citizen over the past two centuries.
2. GEOSLAM
I will also be participating in the first-ever GEOSLAM (which is exactly what you think it is). I’ll be doing a reading talking about my obsession with punk rock and Gainesville, Florida. This will be
Tuesday, April 21st from 12:40 PM – 2:20 PM at
Skyway 260, Hyatt, East Tower, Blue Level.
A word from the organizers: “Drawing on Ruth Behar’s The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart, this year’s theme is “vulnerable geographies.” Through these pieces, we want to explore the ways in which we are emotionally drawn to the places and people of our research.”
No more spoilers on this one. And last, but not least…
3. SAVE THE CLOCKTOWER
It’s AAG 2015, meaning it’s time for some discussion on everyone favorite time-travel film franchise, “Back to the Future!” I’m very excited to finally have all of the contributors to Save the Clocktower (RJ Rowley, Chris Dando, Richard Waugh, Greg Pagett, Lydia Hou, Julian Barr, Ashley Allen, Stacie Townsend, and more) in one room to introduce their chapters and discuss the overall contributions that Marty McFly, Doc Brown, and their fictional town of Hill Valley still have to contribute to geography. This will help formulate an introduction to the book in honor of the film’s 30th anniversary as well as Doc, Marty, and Jennifers’ impending arrival this October. Our panel will be closing out the conference on…
Saturday, 4/25/2015, from 4:00 PM – 5:40 PM in
Skyway 282, Hyatt, East Tower, Blue Level
Sonic Geography 