“The Walkman changed the way we understand cities. I first heard Joy Division on a Walkman, and I remain unable to separate the experience of the music’s bleak majesty from the first heady discovery of the pleasures of musically encapsulated fast-forward urban motion.”

Today we move through our cities with cameras, music, maps, and local news on our telephones. We share snapshots with the world. We are globally positioned. We check-in to restaurants and weather events, we tag each other on the weekends. I wonder if our handheld devices allow us to understand and document the city in an exciting new way, or if they insulate us from its details, muffling the background chatter of our private thoughts during the idle moments spent standing at a crosswalk or waiting for a friend who’s running late, those moments when the stoops and fire escapes and strange alleys and gothic archways begin to make themselves visible to us.

We’re honored to be included in Something in Particular, a full-length documentary currently being filmed across the southeastern United States that chronicles the people and organizations driving creativity in the South today. “Recently the South has seen a revival in national interest,” say filmmakers James Martin, Melonie Tharpe, and Cubby West. “The South is currently undergoing a renaissance of sorts, producing vast numbers of artists and designers and attracting even more from strongholds like New York and Chicago.” The crew should arrive at our studio in New Orleans in the middle of March, and hopefully we’ll have walls and electricity in our office by then. Keep track of the project here and support them via Kickstarter.

Candy Chang was recently featured in an article in O, the Oprah Magazine and her Before I Die project was featured on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams! She was also interviewed by The Atlantic, and her projects have been recently featured in design mind, Salon, The Times Picayune, and The Brooklyn Paper.

I used to live just a few blocks from the Fulton Mall so it means a lot to me to see the Before I Die project installed in this area of downtown Brooklyn bursting with personality (my friends made a book all about it). Located at the corner of Adams Street and the Fulton Street Mall, it’s more than twice as long as the original wall in my neighborhood in New Orleans, and it doesn’t take long for the wall to turn into a collective abstract painting bursting with hand-written responses. It’s like I’m seeing my old neighbors in a new way. You walk by so many people every day and most of them remain strangers forever. This project helps you see a little bit of the hopes and dreams of the people around you, and it’s a way to remind yourself of what matters most to you.

Some responses from the wall: Before I die I want to… eat mad tacos, rally with the Occupy Wall Street movement, get an ‘A’ in math, hold her close, lose this damn weight, publish my book, experience true love, visit Libya, swim around Manhattan, see my Mom free from pain, build a school, clean out the basement, figure out women, get her back (someone else added: then go get her), have a “Huxtable” family, finish the Ironman, go on a cruise, stop smoking, help people be friends, speak English fluently, travel the world, be a gymnastic teacher, be a super hero, be financially stable, be remembered, be a creator not a destroyer, bring peace of mind to my mom.

The construction is scheduled to end around November 29th, so enjoy it while you can – and send us photos! Thank you to Theresa Mullen and the Shake Shack team for spearheading the installation on their temporary barriers while their storefront has been under construction. They used the Before I Die toolkit to humanize those blank blue walls and turn them into valuable spaces made for and by the neighborhood. We’re currently working on a new project website that will better feature all the walls worldwide and provide more resources to help you make one with your community. Thank you for all your support for this growing project! Our public spaces can better reflect what’s important to us as a community and as individuals. By reimagining the ways we use our public spaces, the people around us can not only help us make better neighborhoods but they can also help us live better lives.

Brooklyn, NY. “Eat mad tacos” photo by Victor Hu. All other photos by Belinda Kanpetch.

A few months ago we bought a sea green building that needed some help. A few days ago I pushed open the door to a thick old smell that I couldn’t place. I flashed on being a little kid and mucking around in the dirt, of poking at earthworms after the rain. The door finally gave way and in the dim light I saw tall piles of soil. Our floors were gone.

Apparently our floors were sitting on a floating slab which was tipped at a 45 degree angle and careening toward the center of the earth, so they had to go. This was a good time to sit on a stack of 2x4s and think about our life choices. About the things we want to do with our company. About the reason that our heads are filled with a mysterious and muscular new vocabulary: framing, leveling, decking, topcoats, ductwork, HVAC. The other night I put on a baseball helmet and wildly swung a crowbar to take out a drop ceiling. It felt fantastic to beat the hell out of a drop ceiling.

We’re keeping the faith: a studio space with a gallery, a store, and a place to sell xiaolongbao to our neighbors. Our contractor is doing an amazing job and we’re on track to open our doors sometime in January. If you’re in the Bywater, stop by and take a look. You can even leave us a note or some cookies because there isn’t any glass in our windows.

Last night we installed a big green sign at the inaugural night market on St. Claude Avenue in New Orleans. The St. Claude Main Street association, in collaboration with Press Street and Neighborland, organized a night market in a vacant lot that might become a Popeye’s if no other offers emerge. Hundreds of people turned out on a cool Saturday night to shop and eat from local vendors while digging the fuzzed-out sixties sounds of Bunga Bunga. Strings of lights twinkled overhead while neighbors got together to eat macaroni and cheese. It was a beautiful night.

St. Claude Avenue was once a healthy corridor of elegant homes and little shops until, as in most American cities, it fell apart in the 1960s due to systematic neglect. These days, the avenue is a tough mixture of old homes, tire shops, art galleries, schools, bulletproof glass, vacant lots, and empty storefronts. Its surrounding neighborhoods are changing at a remarkable clip and as the art galleries, food co-ops, cafes, and specialty shops begin opening their doors, this is a good time to pause and think about what residents want to see on their street.

We installed a big green sign for Neighborland that collected ideas from passersby. We dug 18-inch holes, sank a couple of 4×4 posts, and hoisted this question into the air: “What do you want on St. Claude Avenue?” Some initial responses: Slower traffic. More night markets. Nicer cops. A Korean restaurant. A rooster removal program. (Yes, they’re a problem.) And less gentrification. A debate emerged in the margins about spiking rents, big box stores, the needs of long term residents, and the entitlement of the area’s new residents. I’ll address this in a separate article — for now, it’s simply eye-opening and inspiring to see so many different points of view at once.

And for the record, nobody wrote “Popeye’s” on that sign.

More photos here.