We live in a corrupt state. It’s not just bad actors — we’ll always have those — it’s the system itself. It’s corrupt in its construction. The compromises necessary to its founding — America’s original sins — have rotted it from within.

We don’t want to believe this. We’re good people! And hey, some 60 percent of us, depending on the day’s polling, really are. We want to do good, be good. Collectively, we have that spirit.

And our corrupt structure of government crushes it.

Read more »

Today’s the big day for the Golden Gate Bridge. Gorgeous day or night, in rain or sun. Enjoy some photos of now and then.

The Pan Am clipper flying over the unfinished bridge:

More oldies after the jump:

Read more »

In Ess Eff, it’s all about the real estate pron. And more so the parking pron. Bonus points for flummoxing the permit/planning guys when you present to them the World’s Coolest Garage Door.

[Beausolieil via CurbedSF]

Because today’s news out of Afghanistan is too fucking depressing for words, here’s a preview of Ikea’s newest piece of furniture…HUNDSTOL.

Of all the private homes I’ve seen that were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, this is the one I’d most like to reproduce and live in. Built for a doctor and his nurse wife in 1950, the house is located in Manchester, New Hampshire. It’s owned by the Currier Museum of Art. I saw the house in the early spring of 2000. The above photo is of the back – for some reason I didn’t take a full-length of the front.

Read more »

Frank Lloyd Wright died in April of 1959, and the museum on Fifth Avenue was not completed until October. When Wright found out where the museum was to be built, he was glad that it would stand nearly across from the Metropolitan Museum and declared that “his museum” would make the Metropolitan look “like a Protestant barn.”

This is a photo I took of the Guggenheim in 2003, using my crummy little Holga and standing in more than a foot of snow.

Read more »

Another Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece I visited a few times in 2000 and 2001 – it’s in Western PA, about 10 minutes from Fallingwater.  I took a few photos, as you might imagine. This is the front of the house – the carports (Wright refused to build garages lest they fill up with crap) are off to the left.

Yet the house looks like a fortress on the approach.

Read more »