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Note: This account is no longer active.
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About Urbanist
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Epinions.com ID:
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Urbanist
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Location:
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San Francisco
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Member Since:
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Oct 13, 2000
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Homepage:
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My Weblog
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Streetwise, academically credentialed gay renaissance man. For real bio, click "more" in profile.
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Activity Summary
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Reviews Written: 78
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Member Visits: 4,644
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Total Visits: 58,327
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About Urbanist
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Like most people with doctoral degrees in the humanities, I narrowly escaped from academia. I'm now a consultant in city planning, specializing in public transportation. I also write ruminative essays about travel and placehood, such as those found on my homepage, and co-edit Blithe House Quarterly, an online magazine of literary gay and lesbian fiction. Blithe House Quarterly can be found at http://www.blithe.com/.
Single, gay, and eligible (not desperate, but certainly open to referral!), I live in San Francisco but retain strong ties to both the Pacific Northwest and Australia.
For more interesting and ambivalent facts about me, see: 20 Most Important Facts About Me, the product of a write-off devoted, redundantly I suppose, to authorial solipsism.
BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME ...
My most confident reviews are on books and travel, two subjects on which I have some experience and training. (I've also done some music reviews, but they're much more from-the-gut and not as sophisticated technically. I trained myself in music history, but still can't tell harmony from counterpoint, or hit middle C without use of falsetto ... )
So for the best I can offer, see the following:
Parks and Wilderness Areas
Parks and wildernesses are not, of course, "products." Kicking back against the commercialism of Epinions, I've done some of my happiest work in this category.
See pieces on:
U.S. National Parks, National Monuments, National Seashores
Arizona: Coronado
California: Point Reyes, Redwood,
Hawai'i: Hawai'i Volcanoes,
State Parks
California:
Border Field,
Torrey Pines Beach,
California Citrus.
Wilderness Areas
Washington:
Trapper Creek.
Cities
I spend much of my life working on cities in one way or another. In North America, see pieces on
Portland,
Reno,
Juneau,
Vancouver,
Oakland,
Fort Worth,
Crescent City.
In Australia, see pieces on
Brisbane,
Canberra, and Canberra's indispensible exurb,
Queanbeyan.
Recently, I've started a series called How To Be Depressed In ..., which is specifically about big, touristed cities. In my desperation to get some kind of new angle on these old topics, I offer classic travel tips from the point of view of a highly depressed or existentialist traveler. Check out the first ones on
San Francisco and
New York City. Then PLEEZ tell me if I should stop.
Books (Fiction)
In the course of editing a fiction magazine, I've seen lots of mediocre work, so there's nothing more glorious than to feel a writer punch through into originality. Great fiction, for me, has a distinctive style or voice that fits its subject, and is pressing outward on the boundaries of literature while remaining accessible to an intelligent reader. Some of the best fiction I've read is on the list below, with links to my reviews of them. (For reviews of less than brilliant books, click on "View More Opinions by Urbanist" above.)
Incredible Books That You Have To Read Before You Die (in my humble opinion) (alpha by author)
Don DeLillo: Underworld.
Don DeLillo: White Noise.
Ursula K. Le Guin Always Coming Home (review to come)
Salman Rushdie: The Moor's Last Sigh.
Tom Spanbauer: In the City of Shy Hunters.
David Foster Wallace: Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (selections as noted in review).
David Foster Wallace: Infinite Jest (but read the previous book first).
Jeanette Winterson: The Passion (review to come)
Jeanette Winterson: The PowerBook.
ANYWAY ...
For more on on all these topics, plus assorted nonfiction books and other divertimenti, PLEASE go to the list above and hit "View More Opinions by Urbanist". One problem with the current Epinions layout is that once a review drops off the "last five" list, its hit-rate goes down dramatically (just as more people read the top half of the front page of a newspaper than read the bottom half). Fight the trend! I'm not the only epinionator who has good stuff "below the fold".
FINALLY ...
... if you have feedback on my reviews that you don't want to share with the general public, by all means email me! I love getting mail.
May you find what you seek in this odd labyrinth, and also something that you didn't know you were seeking.
Peace, Urb
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