August 31, 2004
My Postmodern Dinner
Walked into the "new" downtown Silver Spring tonight for dinner. Here are some pictures, digital mementos obtained with that suddenly ubiquitous hybrid of instant recollection, the camera phone.
Community space or virtual space? A couple with matching laptops using wifi in the open air. What are they doing? Probably emailing, talking, chatting . . . just not with each other.
The restaurant as theme park . . . the meal is secondary to the experience ("eggsperience"?) which begins with stylized egg-beaters as doorhandles. The concept restaurant caters to the eye more than the palette. (I had a mango burger and fries.)
The lettering on these buildings, a public housing project, identifies them as "The Twin Towers"--their physical ugliness compounded by the grotesque irony of their name, which only now makes them visible to the casual passerby in the afterimage of two other, absent, towers.
Posted by mgk at August 31, 2004 09:19 PMI love how the newly "sprung" Silver Spring also has a neon electric sign announcing it's "downtown" section and tv commercials to induce people to come and spend their money there. It seems as if towns can now announce their comming out like debunates did/do. Along those lines, has anyone seen the restorations made to Glen Echo park? They also reverted to using a gigantic neon sign to announce the site. I don't think this aided in restoring the park to its orignal appearance, but maybe an exact copy would have been more kitsch than the neon electric.
Posted by: Donnelly at August 31, 2004 11:01 PMI went down to Silver "Sprung" with my friends the other night. They claimed it now resembled downtown Bethesda. However, all I could really find was a string of chain restaraunts. It seems too... planned, maybe? It needs atmosphere.
Posted by: Sandi at September 1, 2004 07:44 AMI think it's also interesting that the restoration plans for this Silver Spring area mirror the Bethesda plan. I mean, have you ever been to Bethesda and just realized that there is way too much sprawl around? Growing up there, I assimilated into it pretty easily, but it's an odd place to absorb from a skeptical viewpoint. I don't know about you, but the whole concept is like a Utopian joke...
Posted by: Faryan at September 1, 2004 01:45 PMYeah, in the past year Bethesda has definitely turned into a little Disneyland.
Posted by: Donnelly at September 1, 2004 07:15 PM