đź”· Open Thread

Does anyone know what's going on with Boston Pride this year? I know the organization disbanded last summer, but I've heard nothing. No alternate parade or festival?
 
I know cars are at least somewhat anathema to this board, but I have to think there's more than a few people here who are bona fide car nuts like me just because. And in that spirit, today I drove behind a R33 Skyline GTR for 15 miles and it kicked ass and that's my story, the end.

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Believe it or not, but I take a good amount of car photos (especially now that the weather's getting nicer) and if y'all want I can share what I spy more frequently! Or if nobody here cares because this is a board about urbanism and personal vehicles are the enemy of good urban design, then I can kindly fuck off with this kind of stuff too :)
 
Does anyone know what's going on with Boston Pride this year? I know the organization disbanded last summer, but I've heard nothing. No alternate parade or festival?


Last I read about it is that there isn't going to be a parade this year but the city is supposed to have a few small events around town.
 
I know cars are at least somewhat anathema to this board, but I have to think there's more than a few people here who are bona fide car nuts like me just because. And in that spirit, today I drove behind a R33 Skyline GTR for 15 miles and it kicked ass and that's my story, the end.

52032925839_4d206cba33_k.jpg


52032713933_f6571ecb94_k.jpg


52031632972_22ff4a34ee_k.jpg


Believe it or not, but I take a good amount of car photos (especially now that the weather's getting nicer) and if y'all want I can share what I spy more frequently! Or if nobody here cares because this is a board about urbanism and personal vehicles are the enemy of good urban design, then I can kindly fuck off with this kind of stuff too :)
When it comes to cars and cities, I always think of something I heard Jay Leno say once that goes a little like this: Back in the old days before cars, horses were widely used for day-to-day transportation needs. The horses were underfed, overworked, and abused, and they lived miserable lives laboring all day. They also dropped horse shit all over the place, and city streets were disgusting messes of manure mixed with rainwater filling up gutters and requiring raised sidewalks to be built as platforms above the putrid brown runoff. Then when new modes of transport came along (streetcars and then cars), horses were relieved of their duties as day-to-day transportation. They then moved out of cities back to areas closer to their natural habitats, and they were no longer bred in the same numbers just to provide people with transportation. But they didn't go extinct! Today people enjoy and appreciate horses as the beautiful creatures they are, and horses live way happier lives than they used to when they were "needed." Just as horses being a required necessity for every day life was not a happy state for horses, so is it neither for cars.

People who appreciate cars don't appreciate them for commuting and traffic and parking and day-to-day errands, we appreciate them for their design and elegance and capabilities (including the freedom they provide) outside of the urban environment. I'd love a world designed such that nobody has to drive every day just to function in society, but where people still can drive when they actually want to in areas better suited for cars to do their thing. So I really don't see any tension between wanting urban areas to be designed not for cars first, but still appreciating cars for what they are.

Your R33 Skyline GTR really is a great example of this. Nobody who owns or drives or appreciates that car wants to use it as a daily driver for their year-round commute. They don't see it as a means of getting from point a to point b, they see it as a beautiful creation to be appreciated in and of itself. I want a world where every car can live a life like that R33 Skyline GTR probably does.

I also love cars and love driving, but also love that my city allows me to go about my day-to-day life without needing to drive out of necessity. So I'm all for car pics, but not for traffic pics.
 
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I know cars are at least somewhat anathema to this board, but I have to think there's more than a few people here who are bona fide car nuts like me just because. And in that spirit, today I drove behind a R33 Skyline GTR for 15 miles and it kicked ass and that's my story, the end.

52032925839_4d206cba33_k.jpg


52032713933_f6571ecb94_k.jpg


52031632972_22ff4a34ee_k.jpg


Believe it or not, but I take a good amount of car photos (especially now that the weather's getting nicer) and if y'all want I can share what I spy more frequently! Or if nobody here cares because this is a board about urbanism and personal vehicles are the enemy of good urban design, then I can kindly fuck off with this kind of stuff too :)
I saw this car at the Audrain Cars and Coffee at Fort Adams on Sunday, one of a bunch of amazing vehicles that we kind of stumbled on after the Daffodil Days cars parade that finished there. I don't have my photos of that one handy, but they also had an R32 that was just perfect (see below). The Audrain itself has, for a couple more weeks, a supercar exhibit with an F1, F40, Enzo, Veyron, 959, Chiron, Reventon, 918 Spyder, Vector W12 (the actual car Doug DeMuro reviewed) and more in a storefront. Worth the trip for those alone.


(We do need a cars thread...)
 
^^ Arenacale, your post is awesome across the board. It's too bad Newport in 90 miles from me... I simply can't justify that when work has me driving 50-100 miles each day. And uhhhhh that R32 looks so incredibly MINT

I think later tonight I'll start a proper cars thread, unless a mod wants to break off these last few posts?
 
I can't find a news story on this so I will just post the tweet. :rolleyes:


I try to be opened minded about change. But it's going to take a while to warm up to this.

Ughh. MFAB----
Are the new college kids and confused tourists in town going start pronouncing it "emm fab"? (answer: yes)

I don't know what's worse, the logo change itself, or the fact that they needed to announce it on TikTok. Like twitter and fb before it, its the sketchy platform du jour that non-profits, civic groups, and governmental organizations just cannot help themselves from going all-in on out of sense of profound insecurity about being left behind by the young'ns (whilst it simultaneously undergoes federal investigations). Sigh.

When are venerable and renown cultural institutions going to understand that they don't need to be insecure? Being hopelessly reactive is not the same as staying relevant.

I'm not that old, but am proudly identifying more and more so as a hopeless old fart, and am becoming totally OK with that. Embracing change in my self identity I suppose!
 
Ughh. MFAB----
Are the new college kids and confused tourists in town going start pronouncing it "emm fab"? (answer: yes)

Once, while looking at an ad for some pretentiously named upscale product, the thought went thru my head that the Bible could be made more hip and appealing to the sophisticates the ad was targeting by changing its name to The Biblé (pronounced Bee-blay). I thought it was a silly idea, but after reading the MFA announcement maybe I should consider presenting it to Christian religious leaders.
 
That logo is some wicked trend chasing. My opinion is admittedly clouded by nostalgia for the old logo, but the new one is trying way too hard.

The old logo screamed "museum" and while it was hardly original or particularly good design, it adequately fit its purpose. The new one says...nothing whatsoever about the organization it is supposed to be a logo for. It could be an app, a social network, a stupidly-hard-to-pronounce restaurant. It's as if the design brief was to make it stand out as little of possible in a sea of "minimalist" logo trends. If it doesn't look ludicrously dated in a surprisingly short time once the basic trends change, it'll be solely because it's so empty of any meaning or distinctiveness (making it effectively worthless as a logo).
 
Seems that the MFA is another victim of that awful minimalist-Memphis revival plague--their redesigned website does not look very pretty.
 

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