By Brad Listi


LOS ANGELES, CA-







Today the street-sweepers come.

I have to make sure not to park on one side of the street, or else I'll get a ticket.

Street parking.

A pain in the ass.

I got back to the home office early this morning and the skies were gray overhead.

A marine layer.

It's probably burning off right now.

It's probably turning into air.

I drove around the neighborhood at around 7:30am, looking for a suitable parking spot.

It took me a few minutes.

Driving around in circles.

Cussing under my breath.

Drinking a juice.

Looking at cars and trees.

Waiting for people to go to work.

I finally found a spot up the block, not too far from a construction site.

Dirt on the road.

An apartment building going up.

It's amazing how fast an apartment building can go up.

The workers show up like an army of ants, and the next thing you know there's a building on your block.

It happens in a time warp.

A constant parade of bulldozers and forklifts.

Hammering.

Wiring.

Lumber.

Utilities.

Someday it'll all be dust.








Someday everything will all be dust.





And smells.

A lot of things wind up turning into smells.

It's one of my favorite thoughts.

Everything turning into smells.

I think I've probably mentioned this before.

Human beings turn into smells, eventually.

You and me.

And everyone.

Same with cities.

Same with trees.

Dust and smells.

And air.

And whatever else.







It's an ugly apartment building, the one on my block.

From what I can tell, it's run of the mill.

Painfully standard.

Fresh off the line.






Architecture is a fascination for me.

I drive by a construction site in its early stages of development, and I see a massive hole in the ground.

A manmade crater, waiting to be filled.

It always boggles my mind.

Makes me impressed with human beings, even if only temporarily.

We may be killing the planet, I think, but sometimes we manage to do it in style.









Monarchies, it seems, were pretty good for architecture.

Kings and popes.

Pharaohs and queens.

Dictators with good taste.

Manifest destiny.

Style points.

Nowadays, it's not so simple.

Nowadays, it's a whole different story.

I sit there and I try to wrap my head around it.

Large-scale architecture.

Urban ascent.

I can't figure it out.

I can't figure out how it works.

You're a guy.

You get hired to oversee the construction of the Empire State Building.

"We need you to build the Empire State Building," they tell you.

So you say yeah, sure, I'll be glad to build the Empire State Building, thank you very much.

And then you sign the contract.

And then you go back to your office.

You put your briefcase down.

Your sketchbook.

Your coat.

You sit there.

You look at the telephone.

What's the first thing you do?

What's the first move?

Where do you begin?

What's the procedure?

What's the first thing you do at the site itself?

Who goes out there with a shovel or some heavy machinery and says, "Okay, guys, whaddya say we all get started on the Empire State Building?"








6,500 windows.

73 elevators.

102 floors.

It makes my head hurt just to think about it.











I don't like working with other people.

I think that's why I'm a writer.

I have great admiration for anyone who knows how to put a beautiful building together.

There isn't enough of that, in my opinion.

There aren't enough beautiful buildings anymore.

There aren't enough originals.

There aren't enough risks.

There aren't enough works of art.

Too much plastic.

Too much mass-produced crap.

Especially in suburban America.

Anyone can see it.

I guess the money must not be right.

Whenever there's too much mass-produced crap, it usually has something to do with the fact that the money's not right.

The good way is too goddamned expensive.

It takes too long.

Seems too impractical.

People don't want to bother with it.

People don't want to pay for it.

They'd rather line their pockets and get on with it.

Contractors are trying to keep costs down.

There are market demands to consider.

Contractual obligations.

And in the end:

Cookie cutter neighborhoods sitting like warning signs at the gates of paradise.









There are a lot of people in this country who have made a king's ransom by putting mass-produced crap up all over America.

The mass-produced crap business.

It's all the rage these days.







I watched a documentary on Frank Gehry not too long ago.

Sketches of Frank Gehry, directed by Sydney Pollack.









I think I might have mentioned this before.

The movie made my head shake.

Frank Gehry.

Pretty unbelievable.

Think what you will of his buildings, the man's been able to make some big, weird stuff on planet Earth in a time when the mass-produced crap business is running rampant over everything.

Gehry is an anomaly.

He's managed to game the system.

He's gotten paid a king's ransom to take big risks in big cities.

I gotta believe he's got a pretty big brain.

Is there any artist in the world today who is working on a bigger canvas?










My uncle is an architect.

His son (my cousin) is also an architect.

My roommate from the dorms my freshman year is an architect, too.

Gerber is his name.











Frank Gehry's given name was Ephraim Owen Goldberg.

He went to college at USC, and afterwards he worked a series of odd jobs, including one at the Los Angeles International Airport, where I think he washed airplanes for a living, or something along those lines.









He was struggling to find his way in life, and so he washed airplanes at the airport for a little while.

He talks about it in the documentary.

His dead end airport job.

Hosing down wings.

He talks about how valuable the experience was to his future career.

He spent a lot of time around jumbo jets, looking at the way they were constructed, admiring the precision and artistry of their design.

He was able to take that seemingly mundane and thoroughly depressing temporary occupation and turn it into artistic gold.









Call it alchemy.

Call it whatever you will.

The man is fast.

And he kept his eyes open.

It's an important thing to remember.

A beneficial lesson.

There's gold to be mined pretty much everywhere, if you can manage to keep your eyes open.

You might even be able to find some in the cookie-cutter neighborhoods that sit like warning signs at the wounded gates of paradise.

It's pretty strange.