Towers and Jazz

Suki got me up early this morning. She is trying to teach me to be a less selfish and more humane person.

We had a meeting today with our systems professor, so I wanted to make an early start. Since there are no donut shops around U City or Clayton (hint hint all you entrepreneurial types out there), I ended up picking up a half dozen donuts at the Ladue Schnucks before heading into studio. I worked at studio all morning, modeling and researching the Burj Khalifa for my systems class. The structure is actually very simple. Very expensive, but remarkably simple. The 2' walls of the hexagonal core is buttressed by 2' corridor walls which run down the length of each tower lobe, and the whole thing is high strength reinforced concrete. Its kind of like three wide flange beams welded together at one of the flanges. The tower doesn't become steel until way way up almost to the top spire. So that's the secret.

Anyway, our 45 minute meeting with the professor was mostly spent talking about the other tower, not the one I spent my morning working on. We were trying to work out the structural system of this building, and we all ended up standing almost in a circle in his office acting as the various components of the tower- the professor became the core and supported himself with two outrigger arms against the super-columns of my team mates. He's a fun guy. Cracks me up. It's almost like we were all doing the robot dance really slowly, tracing out the load paths with our hands.

Spent a few hours trying to figure out how I wanted to do my book assignment for the week. I have to make a book for Thursday's class. I liked the idea of photographing spots where the city-county line runs through, since its a really arbitrary line, and often it cuts right through individual properties, although I can't tell you how exactly that works. If you look at the street, though, there's usually a line that shows you were the maintenance ends.

Went back to the British style pub in the Cheshire Inn. Drank an overpriced beer and read a white paper about the Burj as I sat in the dim space, surrounded by dark wood and leather. Ended up stealing a few hotel bath soaps and shampoos as I wandered around the building afterwards.

I drove out to Webster grove, south of Clayton, where there was a blues and jazz festival going on. The town, like nearly all of these little municipalities, has a quaint downtown main street, and they'd closed it off for the festival. Lot of people there, the street was totally packed. Vendors sold food and Verizon was taking the opportunity to hawk its phones and plans as well. I got a beer and moved towards the stage. It was a pretty uniform crowd- nearly everyone there looked white, middle to upper middle class, and in their 40s and 50s. Almost without exception. The music was very good. I was introduced to Marquise Knox and his band, and that is a smoking dude with a mean electric guitar and blues harp. Also, probably half the age of the median attendee.

I left around ten or so, and headed back home. Watched some more episodes of Cowboy Bebop. I just don't feel motivated to work these weekend nights. It's too depressing to be in studio friday and saturday night. So I'm going to work on being more sociable. Once I get this whole "less selfish" and "empathy" thing down.