The sixth exploring expedition... a visit to a friend.

Dear readers,

After a morning of running around taking care of the part of life that outside of this experiment, having lunch with my dad, I was ready to get back on the street and explore again. It was a lovely, sunny day. It was surely a joy to be out in the city.

I did not made much marks or covered much grounds today. It was already a later start in the afternoon, also with the fact that I went and visited a good friend of mine who have an artist loft on South Division, I did not got to explore much. Even though the time I spent on exploring was not much, but I learned so much about this area of the city from my good friend. 

He show me different abandoned building and interesting development around the area with the help of Google Map online. He was very knowledgeable on what is happening in the development of the area. He told me about the nature of development with the development of South Division Av.. He told me how South Division was not a safe street about 10 years ago but as time and development take their places, the street had been changed from what once seem as an unsafe street full of crime to now a street famous for its art happening. My friend explained to me that at the beginning since the rent is cheap in the area due to crime and with the aiding of different non profit organization, many artist was able to rent out space in the area to pursuit their goals. And as time pass, the art scene grow bigger and bigger and it start to attract different residents, galleries and business to take roots. As more galleries and businesses are coming in, the interest of investment also increase. With the area improving and investment increasing, the price of rent of the area will increase. The increased rent will therefore force many artists out of the area as they cannot afford the new expensive rent, which is a very sad situation as the building blocks of the early development of the whole area will not be able to continue to live there anymore. I found it very interesting that artists were call to create a culture, a buzz, a simulator... then they will be discarded without a thought as the city increase the rent for the notion of "progress". In a small way, I feel artists need to find a solution in which they will no long being used and discard in the the interest of the big projects.

Also my good friend told me about how the city might find someway to encourage the people of  homeless/low income housing to leave South Division so the development can continue to undergo and also so that the city can be more safe and more artistic. I am worry about the less fortunate one on the street. I wonder how come the poor always have to move to where the city (the wealthy ones)want them to be... they are truly homeless in a sense that they have no right or choice over where they stay for the night. 

Here is what I marked on the map:

• 19 Crabapple trees
• 1 Abandoned buildings
• 3 churches
• A lot of Day Lili
• 1 graffiti wall
• 19 fire hydran
• 5 dumpster
• 2 dumpster for card board
• 1 potential sleeping spot

Here is some of what I saw:

Abandoned building, used to be a doctor or nurse dormitory

 

 

 

I checked my last garden today:

Flowers of the pumpkin plants

Potato

Thank you for reading again. 

Wish you all a good day. 

Patrick