Posts Tagged manhole covers
Look fight
Posted by megan in signs & symbols, territoriality on June 2nd, 2010
Look! There’s a fight going on down the street. That’s what this sign seems to be saying. And it’s true. There’s a constant struggle for territory going on in the streets and almost every sign, symbol, graphic and graffiti marked on the roads and sidewalks is evidence of this struggle.
I made a video (actually, a photo compilation) on this topic last year. Called Street Writing, it’s been published in the on-line Interdisciplinary Themes Journal. Turn your sound on while you watch.
Hicks, Megan. 2010. Street fighting. Interdisciplinary Themes Journal, 1(1).
The ‘Look fight’ photograph was taken several years ago in Harris Street, Ultimo (Sydney). I’m delighted to say it’s been added as a guest photo on the ‘Submissions’ page of one of my favourite websites, Misplaced Manhole Covers.
Manhole covers (2)
I’ve looked at manholes from both sides now, from down and up, and still somehow…
On 18 April I was lucky enough go on an underground tour of the Tank Stream. The Historic Houses Trust runs these tours twice a year in conjunction with Sydney Water and they are so popular that you have to enter a ballot to get a ticket. You don’t go far – just 50 metres upstream from the ladder where you descend into the underground tunnel. The Tank Stream was the original source of fresh water that determined the location of Sydney Town, but during the two centuries since then it has evolved from stream to open sewer, to closed-in sewer, and currently it is a stormwater drain.
Harrington Lane, near Hunter Street, Sydney
Sloshing along in borrowed gumboots, instead of looking down, as I usually do when I’m spotting pavement graffiti, this time I was looking up to see what manhole covers look like on the underside. Afterwards a Sydney Water worker helped me identify which covers we had walked beneath.
Manhole covers
Cavendish Street, Enmore
Admiration of manhole covers became a popular pastime in the 1990s. Mimi and Robert Melnick’s 1974 Manhole covers of Los Angeles has become a collectors item, but their 1994 book Manhole covers and Jacopo Pavesi and Roberta Pietrobelli’s 2001 book Street covers brought cast-iron style to the coffee table. The minor mania for manhole covers has culminated in book titles ranging from Designs underfoot: the art of manhole covers in New York City to Quilting with manhole covers: a treasure trove of unique designs from the streets of Japan.
In picture books the manhole covers are brushed up for the camera, but like Japanese artist Genpei, I prefer the look of them in their natural state, with cigarettes and Smarties and tsubo gardens of moss, grass or weeds nestling in their grooves.
Road resurfaced, Cleveland Street, Chippendale
My very favourites are the pretend manhole covers that mark the place of the real thing when a road is being resurfaced.
I also love the website Misplaced Manhole Covers.
Garden borders
A thoughtful graffitist provided a decorative fence for this little garden of asthma weed near Piss Alley in Enmore. To see another tiny nurtured garden, check out Darlinghurst Nights.
Elsewhere in Enmore, pavement degeneration around a cast iron alignment pin has created a niche for a weedlet garden. Many thanks to PC for his enthusiastic explanation of alignment pins, which indicate where the surveyed kerb line is. For me, official pavement embellishments such as hydrants, manhole covers, and the various kinds of alignment posts, pins and stones, can be enjoyed for their aesthetic qualities or read like an archive of urban development.