Loosely Assembled

As everyone in the inner circle knows, we have all been very heads down over at Platial for the last couple months working on the redesign that just launched today! Now, while still working on more improvements for the site, we’ll also have bandwidth to kick our native iPhone app development into high gear.

So go get up on one of my maps, and let me know about your Places.

Apparently in a new Old Town location (4th and couch), i’ll check it out later today and post a pic.

Found this on Tracy’s Platial page, looks really great!

Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School Cabaret Life Drawing Class

$7 2:30pm 18+ (bring your ID, this is a bar)

I’ve been trying to manange to go to one of these for ages now.

Aside from the standard structure of short poses to warm you up and then longer ones to give you more time to concentrate, this is definitely not your typical life drawing class. The model wears awesome outfits and slowly strips out of them! The model talks! You’ll clap for them and hoot and holler! You’ll tip them! You’ll chat with your neighbor! There is no teacher to embarrass you when you don’t produce enough! You get to drink and draw without getting in trouble! There are snacks! Now is the time to heal those art school wounds. Dr. Sketchy’s will guide you.

I rarely make it over to the west side of I-5 these days, but when I do, it’s to hit up Rudy’s Mostlandian Food Cart, by way of introduction here is this weeks update from the cart, I wish he spoke more about the ice cream flavors (amazing) like rosemary+honey+goatcheese. Anyway, any pdxers in the house should totally make a point to visit the cart.

The weather couldn’t be more perfect for eating at an outdoor food cart, wouldn’t you say?

Be sure to set your watches to Lunch Savings Time!
In observation of the dark and short days of Winter, Junior Ambassadors will open one hour earlier, at 11am (Wednesday - Friday), and have a FREE cup of hot SOUP waiting for you if you get a Panwich before Noon.

“Soup’s of the Day” happening this Week:

POTATO LEEK THYME
ROASTED RED PEPPER
CLAM CHOWDER
&
VEGAN CHILI

The New Winter Time Panwiches go a little something like this:

HAM & CHEESE with Hot Pineapple and Gouda.
EGGPLANT PARMESAN with Roasted Garlic, Tangy Tomato Sauce, and Fresh Spinach.
TUNA MELT of the Season: Goat Cheese, Rosemary, Orange Zest, and Hazelnuts.
GRILLED CHEESE with Sharp Cheddar.

All Panwiches come with homemade ginger SLAW or Cheez-its.

Homemade Hot Drinks and Ice Cream are also in the house.

Treat yourself to the invigoration, come on out for the good times!
Winter in Portland, love it!

Love & Friendship,
JUNIOR AMBASSADORS
~a Mostlandian Food Cart
~Open 11am-Dark, Wed-Sat

{ the lil’ orange food cart on the grassy lot next to 4734 North Albina, up from Mississippi, south of Alberta, and kitty corner from the Albina Press }

Call 503-880-0851 for the menu of the day.
or go to myspace.com/juniorambassadors for more info.

check out the new map page - Portland Radical History

A great find from the Strange Maps blog.

Christian Croft and Kate Hartman have hacked a pair of Heelys (those sneakers with the hidden wheel in the heel) to generate enough juice to power a little onboard navigation system with unconventional ideas about navigation. As you roll down the street, a little toe mounted digital screen gives directional suggestions, but these suggestions are not trying to help you get to a specific point B, they are directions to help you get lost, to help you wander and explore your own city in a new way, in a way that isn’t influenced by your own habits, nor by urban design, nor by instinct. It’s a pure wandering route generator.

Despite understanding that the project is primarily a technological sketch for sustainable energy harvesting, I am primarily interested (for this venue) to examine the relationship it has to the situationist practice of the dérive because I feel that a purely random, or even algorithmically based path through a city misses the experience of ‘feeling’ one’s way around the psychological topography, which Guy Debord expresses as essential in his Theory of the Dérive:

One of the basic situationist practices is the dérive [literally: “drifting”], a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances. Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll.

In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there. Chance is a less important factor in this activity than one might think: from a dérive point of view cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones.

If the onboard digital instructions were less about turn right or go straight, but were more about looking, feeling and following currents like: oncoming traffic, the loudest street, the most or least crowded path, a smiling face, towards the sunrise or sunset, towards the sound of music, into an empty shop, up the steepest stairs, towards the shortest person or away from home, then i would say that this (already very cool) project would actually be participating in the historic conversation on psychogeographic dérive. But in the meantime, shit, I’d sure rock some dope ass rolling cyborg shoes! Wouldn’t you?

tip off via wmmna

using the new platial been there mapplet inside google maps is a fun and really wasy way to make a map of where you have been around the world. (when it’s working, we have been involved in a lot of platform launches recently, and it’s invariably hectic, with requirements and stability being incredibly iterative). something seems to have upgraded on google’s end just about 5 minutes ago, so go for it now, make a been there map.