Driving St.Louis County

Design thinking has three objectives- the establishment of a concept, program, and site. To that end, we are all required to go on two 5 hour bus tours, one in St.Louis city, and one in the St.Louis county. I went on the county tour yesterday. It was fun to be on a bus with a bunch of friends, but five hours touring the county is about two hours too long. The last two hours of riding around, I was totally fried. It's amazing how just looking out of a bus window can be so exhausting.

Highlights of the tour

• Driving through Kinloch, which is a decimated neighborhood with one or two houses in the entire municipality. It strongly reminded me of the post-Katrina lower 9th ward of New Orleans near the breach. Nothing standing but trees, concrete rubble, bad streets, and jersey barriers.
• Historic downtown St.Charles was really picturesque and looked very interesting. I may head back for a beer or a bite to eat sometime. 
• Stopping for bathroom break and lunch at the longest strip mall in America in chesterfield. What a depressing place. A four-lane road separating endless fields of parking and the most suburban and banal big box chains. Baby's-R-Us next to Best Buy next to Bed Bath and Beyond next to TJ Maxx next to The Container Store next to Ad Infinitum next to Ad Nauseum with chain restaurants sprinkled in the parking lot to the tune of Burgers, Mexican, Italian, Grill, Burgers, Mexican, Italian, Grill.
• Circumnavigating the Northwest Plaza, an abandoned mall built back in the 1960s. It must have been a magnificent piece of contemporary '60s architecture when it was built, but it's an empty and forlorn hulk now.
• Phillip passing me a beer from his stash he picked up at the gas station. 

Anyway, after the tour, I was burnt out but dutifully went up to studio and got some work done. 

Also some distractions in the form of Pinterest. (http://pinterest.com) 

Pinterest is the hot new social media thing, kind of like StumbleUpon meets Flickr. Basically, if you're on some website and you see an image you like, you click your "Pin It" bookmark, and pinterest puts the image on your "board" which is something visible to anyone and anyone who is following you. You have to add some kind of comment to successfully "pin it" but its very quick and easy and doesn't disturb the flow of surfing at all. Then, you can come back to your board and see what you've saved, and because they're basically links, clicking on the image will take you back to the page where you found it. 

People make multiple boards, most commonly categories of photography, cute things, clothing, products. The creative class has jumped on it in a big way with boards for architecture, design, graphics, etc. My pinterest boards are here: http://pinterest.com/desertcrow/.