Cumberland Gap National Historic Park

As we grow up, we experience moments in time at forever ingrain their presence in our memory.  They become defining moments in our life, where we all of a sudden we feel a sense of relief and clarity.  When we are having a bad day or just need a break from the stresses of everyday life, thinking back on these particularly rare moments offers us peace of mind and gives us the hope we need to keep trucking on.  When I think back over the course of my life, one place - - one moment - - comes to mind.  This amazingly beautiful place is located in Cumberland Gap National Historic Park.  I remember the unusually hot summer morning that I hiked to the pinnacle in that park as if it were yesterday.  I was with a group of seven young people who I had just spent the past month and a half working on conservation projects in the park with.  To celebrate all the hard work we had completed that summer, we decided to wake-up at the crack of dawn and hike to the top of the mountain were a supposedly magnificent view would await us at sunrise.  We could have easily hopped in the car and drove to the pinnacle, but where would the adventure and excitement be in that?  With only our cameras and water bottles in hand we set out on our long hike. 

To start we first had to tramp through a meadow of very high wild grass.  I remember that most of the grass we adventured through was taller than me.  It seemed easy to get completely lost in their forever.  Luckily, we easily made our way through without getting lost.  The remainder of the hike would be under the protection of the overpowering trees in the woods connected to the meadow.  At first it seemed a little creepy pacing through the dried up dirt path in the woods in the morning darkness.  However, we stuck close together and slowly worked our way through. 

Eventually, we finally reached the end of the path and found ourselves abruptly removed from nature.  We were now suddenly walking up an ugly cement pathway.  To be on this type of path disappointed our urge for a wilderness adventure, yet we understood the park's reasons for doing so.  When we finally arrived at the pinnacle nobody else was around so we had the whole area to ourselves.  We arrived just in time to watch the sun rise.  At first it was hard to see much because the thickness of the clouds blocked everything that was not right in front of us.  However, a few minutes later the clouds started to part, slowly revealing the rolling mountains in the background.  It looked and felt like we were standing in a fairyland.  Everything looked so serene, so magical. 

After standing there for at least an hour in total silence, fully taking in the view, we decide to leave so that we could start to make our way back to our campsite for breakfast.  When I am having a tough day, I think back on the view I witnessed that morning and hope that the cloudiness in my life will soon clear like the clouds that morning did and show me a beautiful new opportunity.   

Rigg Street's Porch I have lived in some shitholes. My apartment in Bushwick was above a paint factory; I woke up every morning with a toxin-induced headache. In Bed-Stuy, I’ve had my power go out 5 times since I returned from winter vacation, a number equaled by the current leaks in my roof. In a crappiest-house-I-have-ever-lived-in competition, however, 328 Rigg Street wins, hands down.

328 Rigg Street is something of a Santa Cruz legend. Seriously. Google it. You will find, among other things: a cease and desist letter from the FCC regarding an illegal radio station being broadcast from the premise, a variety of show listings for bands like Erase Errata, Xiu Xiu, and The Quails, information about the Kamikazee bicycle gang, and a letter from the Santa Cruz City Council stating that while the house’s outdoor decoration choices were “unusual,” the neighbors could not force the inhabitants to clean the front yard. By the time that I moved in—two years or so after the end of its venue heyday and with seemingly law abiding roommates—the house could only be described as wrecked. Like, pre-rehab Tara Reid wrecked.

Rigg Street is a self-proclaimed “NO-OP.” It is an if-you-want-it-clean-you-do-it, every-man-for-himself, yeah-I-ate-your-peanut-butter and no-I have-not-bought-you-more kind of place. I suppose it is unsurprising, then, that the porch was comprised of broken beer bottles, cigarette ash, a couch that regularly leaked stuffing, a desk chair missing a roller, various bicycle parts, spray paint, a wheelchair, and at least one person chain smoking. My mom once called it the most disgusting place she’d ever been.

For all of its faults, the porch had some highlights. 1. You could never wreck the porch more than it was already ruined; therefore, activities such as riding-your-bicycle-through-the-living-room-out-the-front-door-and-off-the-porch were acceptable pastimes. 2. If you brought a blanket outside to put on the leaky couch, it was a great spot for napping. 3. You could never run out of cigarettes; somebody would always have an extra. 4. It had a great view of the front yard, complete with CPR dummies’ heads on sticks and machetes stuck in a tree. (Rigg St: 1, obnoxious neighbors: 0. Suckers!)

In a town that rarely dips below 30, even during the coldest winter nights, the porch was our official area of congregation. We regularly squeezed eight roommates plus various friends and out-of-towners into its 5 by 12 foot space. Snuggled together, I’d like to think that the porch provided more than just a place to relax—perhaps creating a sense of community and facilitating friendships or some other hippy-dippy bullshit.

Four days ago, while eating a sandwich in Williamsburg, the guy next to me started talking to me about bicycles. He said that he’d gone on a summer bicycle tour down the coast of California and had stayed for a night on a porch in Santa Cruz. I asked him if he’d remembered where he’d stayed.

“Rigg Street.”

We were instantly friends.

A good place is one predicated on emotionally moving situations rather than emotionally moving forms and that allows for unmediated human experience. Successful space is that which emerges (self-organizingly) from outsets that appear chaotic. Complexity is generated more from intersubjective human spontaneity than hyposurface geometry and must be found in social narratives rather than landforms. Under certain circumstances the form of a space can facilitate productive urban growth, but should not attempt to prescribe it. Although the totalitarian tendencies of the rationally planned city have reduced the intricacy of urban structuring to exceedingly simplistic levels, there is a layered complexity to the modern world beyond immediate comprehension. A good "place" is one that embraces the constant play of contrasts, errors, and uncertainties that inevitably circulate in urbanism.

Mount Sopris: A view from the top.

The soul singer Solomon Burke has a song, "Diamond in Your Mind," in which Burke advises the listener to always keep one of those in their mental archives, a special place where one can go when the external world refuses to cooperate.

I have such a place, and although it is among my favorite places in the world, it's not a place that I've ever spent a lot of time.It's exposed, so if there's rain or snow, it will find you there. Hot, cold, or any other climatic moods are inescapable. Despite its natural beauty, the place is in cell phone range and it has a good view of the highway, so from the moment you reach it, the world is drawing you back.

It is the top of the Arbaney Kittle hiking trail, near my hometown of Basalt, Colorado. It sits at the top of a steep path up a narrow valley, a hard half hour's walk from the parking lot. It is an exposed butte marked with a single gnarled juniper tree, and from the top the geography of my childhood unfolds. To the east is the Frying Pan River, where I swam and along whose banks I biked growing up. To the west is Mount Sopris, the peak that towered over my high school years and is featured in the logo of the prep school where I spent them. That school, the Colorado Rocky Mountain School, lies to the north. To the south is Aspen, middle school, skiing, and my Grandmother. I can see it all.

What I like most about the spot is the simple lesson it offers about work and reward. When I reach it, I am almost invariably huffing and spitting, and my lungs are sore. I kneel for a moment to recover, and when I rise to take in the view relief washes over me, the sweet relief that comes after hard, almost intolerable work. Endorphins accent the landscape, and perhaps a habit of mind kicks in: up there, I have learned, I feel good. The top offers security, in the knowledge that what I have just done is almost certainly the most difficult thing I will do that day. After the hike, domestic life down below will seem easy.

Second Home?I feel like I've written this post a million times due to my failing computer battery, however every time I write it I am equally as excited to describe this "good" place. I've realized that most good places are also the places where I have encountered frustration, anger or pain. A good place lights a fire beneath you, at times warm and comforting and sometimes intense and burning. In these places it's hard to avoid getting burnt. New York is one of these places and London and almost every house I've ever lived in.
So to is the restaurant in the west village where I have worked for nearing two years. Two or three times a week I veer off sixth avenue onto the shady side street, wave to the neighborhood supers always perched on the stoops and push the heavy worn wooden door in with both of my hands or my back. I'm greeted by warmth, no matter the season, and a cheery salutation from the bartender peeling fruit behind the granite bar.
The place is small, modeled after a provençal farmhouse. Warm wood, a glass walled wine room, embroidered cushions on the banquettes and a long communal table carved from a single piece of wood in the center of the room. During service waiters float around and around this table like carved horses floating around a carrousel.
The staff is small and like any small group of people who spend a lot of time together, drama, gossip and intrigue abound. However these people, whose backgrounds are as varied as their interests, have become some of my best friends. If I do not arrive in the afternoon in a particularly ornery mood, I'll chat and giggle as I clean windows, fold napkins and slice bread. The friends in the boxy kitchen will turn down the radio to greet me, simultaneously wrapping sausage and flattening pasta.

I am thinking of a good place to sit indoors, to have a meal, to have a drink. When it is cold outside, you can creep down a flight of steps, hover in the doorway, and pull open a heavy wooden door, shutting the snow out as you enter a good place.
The place has long wooden tables, each with a unique patina that marks a visual history of all the meals eaten on it, all the stories told on it, all the spills and slowly hardening wax drops it has endured. The place is always dimly lit, the height of the candles lets you know how far into the night you are. This is a place for simple delights -- good, fresh food but nothing extravagant, a glass of wine but not cocktails, an interesting conversation with a old companion.

Cliff House: by JpLPeople often ask me, “if you could choose between Los Angeles, Manhattan, and Paris, where would you most want to live?” My answer is always the same: San Francisco. When asked why, I struggle to put into words a concrete reason that makes me yearn for that little city up north. It is more a feeling than a particular purpose—maybe there’s something in the foggy air… or in the Hetch Hetchy water. The truth is, San Francisco as a place has meant many different things to me, and with several different people over the years. All I really know, is that even in comparison to a warm, late fall walk through Central Park, or flaneuring through Paris at Sunset, I am somehow most whole when sitting on the westernmost edge of San Francisco’s Sunset District, at Ocean Beach’s Kelly’s Cove, watching the small waves roll in, listening to Neil Young’s On the Beach, eating a burrito from Chino’s or Gordo’s, all under a gloomy gray sky. I grew up in the center of Los Angeles, but have only really found my own center within the superficiality of that glamorous, sunny, city when near the ocean, especially on the Venice Beach boardwalk. No matter where I am, I find peace from just staring out at the ocean. When I can sit on a bench or even in a parked car in the parking lot overlooking Ocean Beach – which admittedly has maybe the most uncreative and BORING name of any beach I have encountered – I am at peace, reflective, even happy. There is something meditative in looking out over the open water. Kelly’s Cove is just south of the Sutro Baths and the Cliff House, with richly colored hills rolling in the background aside those wonderfully San Franciscan townhouses of almost as many colors behind me along Great Highway (or really, to the east, but behind me when I’m sitting on a bench facing the water). I have always lived my life with a soundtrack playing in the background, the lyrics of Jimmy Page or Neil Young or some other great rock mind articulating so poignantly that which I am feeling or experiencing or seeing. Maybe it’s “a feeling I get when I look to the west,” seeing “the sky about to rain,” but somehow the music aids the moment, makes it whole, bringing me closer to myself.

Life is in the contrasts.
Emerging from the ordered stone streets of Paris one is greeted by a sea of leaves and blades of grass. Though the flora bustles and grows around you, the symmetry of the blocked buildings and straight streets bathes this place as well; it remains somehow solid. Fixed in time.

Small forests of freedom and topiary set against a measured sky. It creates a play between two worlds where one can bounce freely between the ordered and the natural, ascension and grounding.

As you walk on the gravel avenues towards a mowed clearing, the head of something hovering begins to enter your view. There is a steel head on graceful legs that seems to be moving upward from the bedrock. It pulls from the ground effortlessly and continuously; frozen in steel that emanates its transcendent aspirations.

An upwardly tapering ruler that taunts us to think higher, see more while also giving a coaxing impression of our insignificance. An impression that relaxes. It calms the soul from its daily tugs and tears. Conversely, it also taunts us to reach higher, to look farther, and in many ways to see past what is normally placed before us. Look up! Don’t simply look ahead on your fixed path. Dream. Explore. Invent.

Your awe, though bouncing continuously in the caverns between your ears, seems to subside and the murmur of friendly faces and laughs pulls you back to the quotidian. The voices trail with you towards a soft patch of grass. Everyone plops down and descends into the careless.

Sipping on (or gulping) a glistening bottle, stumbling over the pliable green hurdles of cut grass. The watchtower gazes from above with a benevolent and insightful eye. Letting you know that your frolic is only a frolic, your sip only a sip, and letting you bathe in the green light of your youth.

ITThere is a place in Hampton Virginia that is unlike any other place in the world. In fact I have just come to the conclusion that no two places are the same, all are unique, but this one is especially special. The Hampton Coliseum is more than a stadium, more than a concert hall, more than silly building in the middle of a silly town, it is a place where one can transcend space and time; enter a vortex to another dimension; essentially a place where one can BLAST OFF. The facade of the Coliseum appears most uncoliseum like (if there is such a thing, but I deem that there is). It looks like the futuristic creation of a foreign alien race, who just happened to place one of their temples in the middle of America. It sits right on a body of water and at night appears as if its floating, waiting for the moment that it can take off back into the infinite body of mass that is the known universe. Four years ago I witnessed a band create music there that sent the patrons of the coliseum to a place that is neither physical nor real, a place of spiritual essence that I deem the TRUTHNUGGET. That band is Phish, and once again they are returning for the coliseum to play their reunion show. Who knows what may happen when they return to this majestic location, but I will be their to witness the launch of a new Phish era and possibly a massive displacement of Place into the greater heavens of space.

I was 11 years old, spending the night at my Aunt’s house in “the valley” (LA). It was a hot summer night, and all was silent but the symphony of crickets. There was a light breeze from the overhead fan. I had one leg in the covers, one leg out. I remember not being able to sleep, and my aunt’s soothing, yet perplexing words in reply were, “Just don’t think of anything”. It was the first time I had ever heard that, and at 11 years old, I didn’t know it was at all possible. I remember struggling at first, that night, to make it work, and after only five minutes of trying, I fell asleep. Ever since then, whenever I am having trouble sleeping, I hear my Aunt’s voice say these words and remember the scene as it was that night. Unfortunately, it’s a lot harder now calming my restless mind with a few simple words (even with the fake sound of crickets I purchased on itunes), but I will never forget that moment of peace…when all worries were assuaged by a comforting voice, five seemingly simple words, and a backdrop of a country night’s serenity.