London Calling: Paul Gilroy, Dick Hebdige, and British Multiculturalism

Black man gotta lot a problems But they don't mind throwing a brick White people go to school Where they teach you how to be thick White riot - I wanna riot White riot - a riot of my own White riot - I wanna riot White riot - a riot of my own - “White Riot” by the Clash The winds of imperialism blow two ways. While we often focus on the impact of the colonizer on the colonized, in recent years, more and more writers have begun to also consider what colonialism has meant for imperialists on the domestic front.   Few places provide a window into this reciprocity than 1970s London.  Postwar immigration from former colonies to Britain resulted in an increasingly diverse …

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Best of 2012 Part V

I read the bulk of Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers, appropriately enough, on a flight to Mexico City. I’ve always appreciated the urban dystopia genre despite its obvious flaws. While Mike Davis’s Planet of Slums annihilates any particularities in the proliferation of slums throughout the world, he at the very least writes with the urgency the phenomenon demands. Boo’s book is of an altogether different nature. Behind the Beautiful Forevers tells the story of several children and families in the Mumbai slum of Annawadi. Lurking throughout the novelistic narrative is a vivid critique of global capitalism. In addition to this critique, Boo attempts to display the failings …

Remembering Harry Nilsson for the First Time: Best of 2012 Part III

As part of ToM’s Best of 2012 our contributors reflect on books, movies, music, and other pop culture stand-by’s that they discovered this year, no matter when their source of inspiration originated.  That’s right, it’s a vaguely “objet trouvé” Best of 2012.   Art historians everywhere are recoiling.  For Part I click here and Part II - here. The main source of my fogyish inability to keep up with the current crop of bands is that there always seems to be a new genius to discover in the history of pop, rock, and jazz. My “new” find this year (really late to the party, I know) is someone who has lurked on the edges of my musical consciousness forever but never quite …

Activating Alternative Historical Narratives: The Black Arts Collective of Philadelphia Visits South El Monte

SEMAP Interview from Henry Pacheco on Vimeo. For Activate Vacant, the South El Monte Arts Posse invited artists to transgress space by creating installations in abandoned, un-used, and, often, fenced of lots. Carribean Fragoza’s two word self-titled poem installation/billboard “ay corazon,” made entirely of white plastic grocery bags, interrupted the monotonous landscape and functioned as an emotional holograph for El Monte’s commuters. Christopher Anthony Velasco’s “Let It Sparkle,” invited bus riders and the SEMAP team to cover the adjacent abandoned car garage and parking lot with yarn. Lastly, Jennifer Renteria’s rendering “The Uncultivated Park,” allowed residents …

Making Modern San Francisco: Josh Sides’ Erotic City

Over the past twenty years, historians charting the shifting geographies of 20th century sexuality have made some of the field’s strongest contributions. George Chauncey’s landmark publication Gay New York (1995) pushed back against notions that pre-World War II homosexuals languished in isolation and obscurity, presenting a coded gay subculture that clearly occupied a place in the public sphere. More recent works by Nan Boyd (2005) and Daniel Hurewitz (2007) focused primarily on the first half of the twentieth century. Each employed approaches that placed homosexuality squarely in the public spheres of their respective cities, San Francisco and Los Angeles. In many ways, Josh …

Debunking the Mythical Discourse Surrounding Public Housing: Part IV of the UHA 2012

In ToM's final installment of its 2012 UHA coverage, our correspondents present a detailed report regarding one of the conference's perpetually most popular subjects: public housing. With a packed house in attendance, the UHA’s six roundtable presenters provided a coherent and compelling argument against prevailing myths regarding public housing.  Considering the success of documentaries like The Pruitt Igoe myth in recent years, new interpretations of public housing’s legacy have come to the fore. Leading figures in urban housing including Kenneth Jackson and Alexander Von Hoffman among others attended, making for a lively post presentation discussion.   From Le Corbusier influenced …

The Relentless Pace of Hipsterdom: A Day at Pitchfork Music Festival Paris

[Editor's note: Please welcome Greg Spivak to ToM.  All photos appearing here were taken by Mr. Spivak, we encourage you to click on them to see them at full size and resolution.] In French there is no equivalent for “hipster.” Recently the term has been adopted by the French press, with articles describing this American idea of “le hipster”; slowly, the word is starting to lose its italicized status as a new loan word along with les has-been, les best-of and les lifting (fine, the last is a strange Gallic deformation of "face-lift"). The closest the French come is the bobo, which, although coined by David Brooks, moved to, settled, and thrived in France -- talk shows speak …

Steel Towns, Motor Cities, and Cuban Refugees: Part III of the 2012 UHA Conference

Welcome to the third installment of ToM's four part coverage of the 2012 UHAs.  You'll detect a clear bias in favor of aged/renewed rust belt cities with a flourish of transnationalism at the end via the Cuban Revolution and post WWII Miami.  If you missed Part I click here and for Part II here. Panel – Rust Belt Cosmopolitanism Joshua Akers – Settling the City: Urban Homesteading and the Construction of Markets in Detroit “It stands out on the highway like a creature from another time/ It inspires the babies’ questions for their mothers as they ride/ But no one stopped to think about the babies or how they would survive/ We almost lost Detroit, this time.” - …

Impending Hurricanes, Alternative Sexualities, and Tourism – Part I of the 2012 UHA Conference

Welcome to the 2012 Urban History Conference.  Hurricane Sandy loomed over the event like depression in a Tim Burton film, and ToM's editors and contributors send our best wishes to everyone on the Eastern seaboard. Much like our 2010 coverage, we did our best to cover an array of topics but inevitably the conference’s size and density placed limits on our correspondents. Nonetheless, ToM's endeavored to bring you several snapshots from the conference. Consider these imagistic academic instagrams rather than a comprehensive take on the event itself. Part I – Sex and the City   Panel - The Sexual City in the Americas: Tourism, Migration, and Race in Mexico City, Miami, and New …

Jennifer Renteria’s “The Uncultivated Park”

For Activate Vacant, the South El Monte Arts Posse invited artists to transgress space by creating installations in abandoned, un-used, and, often, fenced of lots. Jennifer Renteria, a recent graduate of USC's School of Architecture," imaged and rendered "The Uncultivated Park." Join us for the on-site installations: October 13th, 9am, corner of Merced and Santa Anita, South El Monte. For further reading on SEMAP and Activate Vacant, see: The South El Monte Arts Posse Presents "Ay Corazon" Christopher Anthony Velasco's "Let It Sparkle" Blurring Boundaries: A Conversation about Urban Nature with Jennifer Renteria …