Open Space

Jim Griffioen, a stay-at-home dad who also writes about and photographs Detroit – you know him from Sweet Juniper, I think –  posted yesterday about what he calls that city's suburban "fauxtopias": reconstructed, turn-of-the-century museum towns. Like Williamsburg, except that these towns never actually existed. Their structures were removed their original locations to the new one and outfitted for tourists.

Jim's photos of those towns really struck me. I couldn't get over all the space. I couldn't get over all the grass. An expanse of grass that large would be wildly expensive to maintain here in Bend. Even golf courses don't have that much grass.

The photos made me feel – I don't know. Liminal, maybe that's the right word. Betwixt. I grew up in a landscape just like the one he photographed, but I've been gone so long, and have lived for 10 years now in such a different landscape, that I felt that both that place and this one are alien.

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Interestingly, Bend is pitched as a kind of utopia.

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So I took a few pictures to contrast with Jim's. View from the eastern flank of Awbrey Butte, which was built out during the boom of 1996-2006, and where the remaining unallocated space – abandoned these five years – is what they call "buildable residential lots."

Curb, Costco, squall.

Road, roof, river.