DOG WALKERS WALKING

You know, as I wander the world, and indeed my own neighborhood, I see a surprising number of “professional” dog walkers on the streets, ambling along awkwardly with a handful of not especially happy-looking dogs.  I even see flyers stapled to trees and telegraph poles from people offering their dog walking services.  I guess there must be a market, and I suspect a really good dog walker is hard to find. 

And in fact I find something not quite right about this.  I mean sure, I can see that if you’re very old or feeble or sick it might be permissible to get somebody else to walk your dog for you, but otherwise it seems to me it’s something you really ought to do yourself.  Nobody put a gun to you head and forced you to have a dog, so now that you’ve got it, do your duty, and abase yourself by picking up the poop while you do it.  Here is a picture by Hunter S. Thompson, from the 1960s, titled, “Sandy Walking with Agar” – I’m guessing she’s not a professional dog walker and I’m guessing this was in the days when people got much less upset about dog poop.  And like you, I can only guess what’s happened to the poor dog’s ears.

Somehow I can’t imagine that Victoria Beckham walks her own dogs, much less picks up their poop, but it does make for a good photo op, thus:

ROMAN ALL OVER THE PLACE

My pal Steve Kenny has just been in Rome, walking in, or at least among, the ruins, and also doing a fair amount of walking on cobbles, which he reminds me can be very hard work indeed.  And he sent me this picture (mild shades of Garry Winogrand) and an accompanying email:

“For the benefit of your readers, here's a pic of a girl showing how you shouldn't dress when exploring ruins and walking on cobbles and uneven ground.  It was in the Forum - she gave up after 50 yards and went back to the car.  She looked nice but everyone was laughing at her.”

I’m not sure that I’d have laughed at her. I think I might well have cheered.

Anyway, while trying to find some supplementary information about walking in Rome, I came across an item saying that a new law has been passed in Rome forbidding tourists (and I don’t suppose it only applied to tourists, but I think the idea is that the citizens of Rome have more class) from eating pizza, ice cream and whatnot as they walk the streets of the ‘centro storico’ of the Eternal City. 

An activist named Viviana Di Capua says, “This is a way to re-educate people, especially tourists visiting Rome in awe about how to behave in this city. We’ve let standards fall.  At the moment tourists can do anything they like in this city. We need to restore respect. It’s just a first step – a lot more needs to be done.”  Who could argue with a woman named Viviana?  And actually I suspect that if you looked like Audrey Hepburn you might still get away with it today.

FIT TO PRINT

I only just found this, a wonderful correction in the New York Times dated May 19, regarding an article by Andrew O’Hagan, who for some reason they don’t mention.

It runs  “An article on May 12 about traveling alone quoted incorrectly from a letter that Henry James wrote to his brother William from Rome.  He boasted about roaming the streets ‘from midday to dusk” (not “dust”).

Oh come on, “roaming till dust” is so much better.  “Walking from dawn till dust” is better still.

BLACK FLAG WALKING

Here’s something from Henry Rollins’ column in this week’s LA Weekly:

“I don't do much walking in Los Angeles. I am sure there is a lot to enjoy as a pedestrian in our city, it just never occurs to me to do it. Years ago, when I lived in Silver Lake, I used to walk for miles all the time. As I would make these epic, biped journeys into Hollywood to see shows, I always had the same feeling that I wasn't really going anywhere except deeper into the seemingly endless sprawl of Sargassoid stucco.

“In Washington, D.C., I walk for hours, take a break for food or writing and then set out again. Most of my walks are referential, having to do with music. Places I saw bands, places where bands used to practice, houses I used to hang out in and listen to records. I go to these places over and over again, decade after decade. I know that sounds strange and it probably is, but to me, it's like a Kata or a meditation. The walk, the arrival at the spot. A moment to dwell on the significance and then to walk elsewhere, is to me what it means to be 'poetry in motion.'"

I think any even half-way serious walker would completely agree with what he says in the second paragraph; I think we’re talking psychogeography, or deep topography, or conceivably Proustian remembrance.  I’ll drink to that.

But I wonder if I get his point in the first para. “Endless sprawl of Sargassoid stucco” is a nice, if slightly opaque, phrase, and I assume it’s a reference to the Sargasso Sea: a two million square mile gyre (another nice phrase) – i.e. rotating currents - in the middle of the North Atlantic. It’s a seaweed-choked place of mystery, discovered by Columbus, where ships have historically been becalmed and where uncanny things have happened.  These days apparently it’s also a vortex of swirling plastic waste, much like the North Atlantic Garbage Patch.  So, not much walking to be done there.

Still, be that as it may, I think I’m enthralled by the idea of walking “deeper into the seemingly endless sprawl of Sargassoid stucco,” in fact I think it’s what much what I do it all the time.  Here’s a pictures of Henry Rollins, walking (sort of), not in seaweed, but on the red carpet:

THE HOLLYWOOD WINOGRAND

And speaking of Garry Winogrand, as I often do (that's him above),there’s currently a huge exhibition of his work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  Winogrand hated the term “street photographer” but most people would think that’s precisely what he was.  The thing about street photographers is that they walk the streets themselves and take lots of pictures of other people who are also walking.  I find this enormously appealing.

Winogrand was a New Yorker, through and through, who grew up in the Bronx, and I think it’s fair to say that the majority of his best pictures were taken in New York, but he worked plenty of other places too.  There was a great early series that became a book, The Great American Rodeo.  He even took some pictures in England. 

Towards the end of his life he moved to Los Angeles and took a lot of pictures there too.  By then however he wasn’t doing much walking.  He got people to drive him around and he took pictures out the windows.  The received wisdom is that this isn’t the very best way to take photographs, certainly not “street photographs,” and that it indicated a great falling off in the quality of his work.  This is an occasion when The recievde wisdom appears to be true.

However,  I just found the wonderful picture above by Ted Pushinsky showing Winogrand on Hollywood Boulevard, at the corner of Whitley Avenue.  Winogrand was, however briefly, a genuine Hollywood Walker. He does look a little overdressed, but then so do the other people in the picture.