the north american anarchist studies network thingummy was kind of bizarrely situated in hartford. i don't think i've ever found a city more depressing and disturbing. joni and i stayed at the marriott downtown, but also drove around: it is a concrete wasteland, like they just demolished their city and started again with a few basic principles: (a) stalinism = everything must be conceived as coherent and gigantic and be designed at once, dropped on reality like a hippo on an infant. (2) death: all living things must be expunged, except the human bodies, which must be rigidly channeled into the approved grooves. (c) security state: all must be bathed in screeching klieg light and monitored with cameras.

really there were many huge insurance complexes and bank towers, not a single one of them even interesting or odd or distinctive: the most banal modernist gigantism. each building, including the convention center/hotel where we were, is surrounded by a "plaza": just concrete platforms, barriers, and stairs. you see these things everywhere, but in this case it composes a whole downtown that has been cleansed of the human stain.

it was bizarre, and when you saw a few old houses or buildings, sad, because you realized there was a habitable human town on this location at some point.

there was a lego convention next door: thousands of 7-10-year-old boys. and it struck me that there is a solution, and if i was running hartford i would in all seriousness do exactly this: issue this army of boys sledge hammers, spraypaint, and the occasional grenade. come back in twelve hours. lather and repeat.