I met the artist, kite-maker, and all-around inspiration of a man Tyrus Wong when I first moved to Los Angeles thirteen years ago. I was walking along the beach. He offered me tea and cookies. Tyrus died on Friday. He was 106. Here’s a story I did about him.
Thank you for all you shared with us Tyrus. Thank you for reminding us to always look up.
This Saturday, come join me at the New Museum’s IDEAS CITY StreetFest, where I will be showcasing StoryCorps: Hear and There, an audio tour of New York City’s Bowery and … Continue reading Audio Walk of the Lower East Side: Take a Walk through history with StoryCorps + Stories Everywhere Collaboration
A presentation I did at an O’Reilly conference a while back about narrative archeology and place-based journalism.
Ah the serendipity of radio. Last night I was station-surfing, driving home across the Golden Gate, when I caught a broadcast of the song “Something to Point to (See That Building),” from that improbable and fabulous Broadway musical, “Working,” inspired by Studs Terkel’s book of the same name. Lyrics below, or you can watch this endearing video
I’m hereby designating “See that Building” as the official theme-song for this blog.
It’s about one building, and every line in the song involves (more…)
My latest adventure in what I’ve come to call “location-based storytelling” was featured earlier this month in a San Francisco festival of “locative media & urban community” called City Centered, sponsored by the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, and KQED. My installation, “Block of Time,” was a site-specific radio documentary/cell phone tour/super-hyper-local-journalism experiment, on the 900 block of O’Farrell Street between Polk and Van Ness .
It was a wonderful afternoon, with all sorts of people lingering in the street, peering into the nooks and crannies of the block (marked by red balloons) and listening to the stories hidden inside.
So what happened?
Imagine one of those audio tours you’d take in an art museum, or through a historic neighborhood, where there are little numbers next to notable paintings or buildings, and you can dial them up to hear more about them. Block of Time is like that, with one difference: the place you are touring has no obvious historic or artistic value. And that’s the point. The 900 block of O’Farrell Street is totally non-descript. But every place has a story, you just need to
know where to look.
If you’d like to hear the stories yourself, check out the map below… (more…)
If you happen to be walking down the 900 block of O’Farrell Street (between Polk and Van Ness) in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District, try some of these numbers as you pass by, for stories…. (more…)
Stories Everywhere 