This past weekend, (which also happened to be Thanksgiving weekend), I ventured into downtown Salt Lake twice; once as a passerby and once with my friend who was going Black Friday shopping. When I was alone, I went to the Library and picked up a book on my way to Daybreak. I was only there for 20 minutes, but it was still a very unpleasant experience. For some reason, out of all the TRAX stops I have been to, the one at the library feels the most unsafe, though that isn't for the lack of people. When I have a friend, especially if he is a guy, I feel very at home there, but when I am alone I feel extremely uncomfortable. I feel uncomfortable because the TRAX station, as well as Library square, always have people smoking there. Visiting the library for 20 minutes caused me to be nauseous for the rest of the day.
I also feel uncomfortable because of the people I encounter on the TRAX platform and on the small part of Library square that leads up to the North-west entrance to the library. The people that I encounter there usually come in four groups: middle aged men that smell bad and look slightly homeless, people who are mentally disabled and their caretakers, couples that verbally abuse each other and bring strangers into their confrontations, and people who are alone that keep to themselves, who are usually in their twenties or thirties. There is also the occasional group of outgoing high-schoolers, but they are less regular. This is not to say, of course that the Library only contains those groups of people, but they are the only people I have encountered walking from the TRAX station to the library and back. Most of these confrontations happen while waiting for the light to change so the pedestrians can walk across the street, either to or from the TRAX station. Weirdly, almost every time I've gone there has been someone who is not quite right in the head who stands by the button to cross and pushes it at least 5 times. I am always annoyed by the loud chirping sound it makes as it registers the button press, but there is nothing I can do. I feel slightly appalled at myself for being scared to go to the Library, but I just don't feel comfortable during that small walk from the train to the building. But then, I also need my books, so I go.
Another reason I think I feel uncomfortable there is because of the small outdoor space just before the door to the Library. It says no smoking, but people always smoke there and the smell doesn't go away because the Library shelters that part of Library square from much of the wind. It smells disgusting. There are also benches lining the north part of the space, and a fence with a cliff at the other side. Bikes are always locked to the fence, and they are always either disassembled, or part of them has been stolen/is missing. I try not to look at the benches because I am afraid I am being watched. When you are walking through that space you feel like the Library has turned a cold shoulder to you, because while most of it is sloping and round, you are entering at the tallest, sharpest part of it. If you were in the south plaza of the library where there is a fountain and a lot of open space, it might be different. Over there you almost feel like you are being hugged by the Library, but at the north entrance you feel like it's telling you to go away. Then there is the greenery that is southeast of the Library. There are benches and a bit of a rambling garden up there, but I try not to spend too much time there because I don't feel comfortable. There are often homeless men there, and though William Whyte says that homeless men often don't make a difference in the use of a space, I avoid the garden areas because of them. I can't speak for all women when I say this, but in my personal experience, homeless men, particularly overly friendly ones or ones that smell bad, make me very uncomfortable. I suppose it wouldn't bother me if there were people who were not homeless men or smokers that frequented the gardens; I would feel more at home.
William Whyte also pointed out that some men tended to group together and lean against a wall and watch girls. Though he pointed out that most girl watchers never speak to girls, I can't help but notice that this aspect of being in public makes me uncomfortable too. I don't like being looked over like cattle, and I feel that it both encourages men's right to openly judge and rate women that they see in public, and also validates their right to speak to any in a proprietorial way, if they should feel the need to change something about the situation.
While walking from the library TRAX station to the next street west of it late at night, I discovered a plaza/courtyard. It was inside of a building with the letters City Center I on it. It looked creepy at nighttime, but luckily I had a friend with me. My guess is that most people don't use this plaza, and most people don't even know it's there. It was hidden from the street, and open to the public in just one direction. Not good plaza building, according to Whyte. Tsk tsk.
When I got on the train to take me away from the Library, I picked a bad seat. There were two boys there playing shitty music loudly from their shitty phone speakers. I am tolerant when it comes to most music. I'll even sit there and tap my feet to country for a few hours if you want. But I can't stand lazy or violent rap that has no meaning. It was extremely discourteous of them to play music aloud, and they knew that, and they would turn it off if they thought someone was around who would catch them. But they didn't care that they were being discourteous to other people because they didn't think about why people aren't supposed to play music aloud. It seems that people don't think about why rules are there anymore, they just think about not getting caught breaking them. Personal escape has taken precedent over public comfort. But I'm just as bad as the rest. I could have moved to spare myself, or I could have asked them to stop, but I felt too scared that I would offend them to do either. I'm not sure how to address that, when the only solution is my not being a coward.
My other trip into the city with my friend on Black Friday took me to City Creek Center. On the way there from the Courthouse TRAX station, we observed the seemingly public space on Main Street at the foot of the Wells Fargo building. I noticed that the ledges there were made of a fancy, shiny, black stone, but they had protrusions on them to keep people from sitting or loitering there.
These pictures show some of the area between the Courthouse TRAX Station and the City Center TRAX Station. The last is a picture of a supposed seating place at the Gallivan Plaza TRAX Station. The seating place does not meet Whyte's observational requirements, and it was rather awkward to sit on because it faced away from the other convenient seating on the planter box and was not wide enough when used in the conventional form.
There was not much to see or do in that part of the city, and Gallivan Plaza, which is just behind the building, has a crowded ice rink in the winter, but is otherwise deserted. Perhaps this could be fixed if there was a good opportunity for eating in the plaza, but people don't seem to think of that. There are not too many take-away restaurants downtown, and hardly any food carts, at least in the places I visit. However, the section of Main Street between the Courthouse TRAX Station and the City Center TRAX Station is trying. It is painted green, which gives it a different feeling than regular road, and there is only one lane on either side of TRAX, which makes it more pedestrian friendly. But I have never hung out there, and I probably wouldn't want to. It would be very noisy from TRAX and the occasional car, and if I were to sit there for more than 10 minutes, a smoker would walk by and I would have to gag on the already polluted air until a rare breeze blew the smell away. So, it's not a place I would voluntarily choose to spend my time, I only tend to use it for getting from one place to another. I have no ownership of the street, an neither do any of the businesses that operate there, other than the occasional one that features a small outdoor seating area. But again, given the choice, unless the weather was particularly fine, I would choose to eat inside.
Looking back at my own recounting, I would say that how a place smells matters a great deal to me. If downtown smelled like delicious pastries all the time, I would go there more often. If the library didn't smell like dried pee and cigarette smoke on the outside, I would spend more of my time there. I suppose I'm spoiled because, relatively, the U smells good. It smells like clean mountain air, and food, and clean laundry, and grass. And it also smells like cars and pollution and smoke occasionally, but mostly it doesn't smell dirty, which is why I like spending time here. Smell is an avenue that we haven't fully explored yet, and I'd like to play with it the same way we've been playing with lighting. I also notice noise a great deal. I love TRAX, but I wish there was a way to make it less loud and less hard to enjoy myself next to.
I also feel uncomfortable because of the people I encounter on the TRAX platform and on the small part of Library square that leads up to the North-west entrance to the library. The people that I encounter there usually come in four groups: middle aged men that smell bad and look slightly homeless, people who are mentally disabled and their caretakers, couples that verbally abuse each other and bring strangers into their confrontations, and people who are alone that keep to themselves, who are usually in their twenties or thirties. There is also the occasional group of outgoing high-schoolers, but they are less regular. This is not to say, of course that the Library only contains those groups of people, but they are the only people I have encountered walking from the TRAX station to the library and back. Most of these confrontations happen while waiting for the light to change so the pedestrians can walk across the street, either to or from the TRAX station. Weirdly, almost every time I've gone there has been someone who is not quite right in the head who stands by the button to cross and pushes it at least 5 times. I am always annoyed by the loud chirping sound it makes as it registers the button press, but there is nothing I can do. I feel slightly appalled at myself for being scared to go to the Library, but I just don't feel comfortable during that small walk from the train to the building. But then, I also need my books, so I go.
Another reason I think I feel uncomfortable there is because of the small outdoor space just before the door to the Library. It says no smoking, but people always smoke there and the smell doesn't go away because the Library shelters that part of Library square from much of the wind. It smells disgusting. There are also benches lining the north part of the space, and a fence with a cliff at the other side. Bikes are always locked to the fence, and they are always either disassembled, or part of them has been stolen/is missing. I try not to look at the benches because I am afraid I am being watched. When you are walking through that space you feel like the Library has turned a cold shoulder to you, because while most of it is sloping and round, you are entering at the tallest, sharpest part of it. If you were in the south plaza of the library where there is a fountain and a lot of open space, it might be different. Over there you almost feel like you are being hugged by the Library, but at the north entrance you feel like it's telling you to go away. Then there is the greenery that is southeast of the Library. There are benches and a bit of a rambling garden up there, but I try not to spend too much time there because I don't feel comfortable. There are often homeless men there, and though William Whyte says that homeless men often don't make a difference in the use of a space, I avoid the garden areas because of them. I can't speak for all women when I say this, but in my personal experience, homeless men, particularly overly friendly ones or ones that smell bad, make me very uncomfortable. I suppose it wouldn't bother me if there were people who were not homeless men or smokers that frequented the gardens; I would feel more at home.
William Whyte also pointed out that some men tended to group together and lean against a wall and watch girls. Though he pointed out that most girl watchers never speak to girls, I can't help but notice that this aspect of being in public makes me uncomfortable too. I don't like being looked over like cattle, and I feel that it both encourages men's right to openly judge and rate women that they see in public, and also validates their right to speak to any in a proprietorial way, if they should feel the need to change something about the situation.
While walking from the library TRAX station to the next street west of it late at night, I discovered a plaza/courtyard. It was inside of a building with the letters City Center I on it. It looked creepy at nighttime, but luckily I had a friend with me. My guess is that most people don't use this plaza, and most people don't even know it's there. It was hidden from the street, and open to the public in just one direction. Not good plaza building, according to Whyte. Tsk tsk.
When I got on the train to take me away from the Library, I picked a bad seat. There were two boys there playing shitty music loudly from their shitty phone speakers. I am tolerant when it comes to most music. I'll even sit there and tap my feet to country for a few hours if you want. But I can't stand lazy or violent rap that has no meaning. It was extremely discourteous of them to play music aloud, and they knew that, and they would turn it off if they thought someone was around who would catch them. But they didn't care that they were being discourteous to other people because they didn't think about why people aren't supposed to play music aloud. It seems that people don't think about why rules are there anymore, they just think about not getting caught breaking them. Personal escape has taken precedent over public comfort. But I'm just as bad as the rest. I could have moved to spare myself, or I could have asked them to stop, but I felt too scared that I would offend them to do either. I'm not sure how to address that, when the only solution is my not being a coward.
My other trip into the city with my friend on Black Friday took me to City Creek Center. On the way there from the Courthouse TRAX station, we observed the seemingly public space on Main Street at the foot of the Wells Fargo building. I noticed that the ledges there were made of a fancy, shiny, black stone, but they had protrusions on them to keep people from sitting or loitering there.
There was not much to see or do in that part of the city, and Gallivan Plaza, which is just behind the building, has a crowded ice rink in the winter, but is otherwise deserted. Perhaps this could be fixed if there was a good opportunity for eating in the plaza, but people don't seem to think of that. There are not too many take-away restaurants downtown, and hardly any food carts, at least in the places I visit. However, the section of Main Street between the Courthouse TRAX Station and the City Center TRAX Station is trying. It is painted green, which gives it a different feeling than regular road, and there is only one lane on either side of TRAX, which makes it more pedestrian friendly. But I have never hung out there, and I probably wouldn't want to. It would be very noisy from TRAX and the occasional car, and if I were to sit there for more than 10 minutes, a smoker would walk by and I would have to gag on the already polluted air until a rare breeze blew the smell away. So, it's not a place I would voluntarily choose to spend my time, I only tend to use it for getting from one place to another. I have no ownership of the street, an neither do any of the businesses that operate there, other than the occasional one that features a small outdoor seating area. But again, given the choice, unless the weather was particularly fine, I would choose to eat inside.
Looking back at my own recounting, I would say that how a place smells matters a great deal to me. If downtown smelled like delicious pastries all the time, I would go there more often. If the library didn't smell like dried pee and cigarette smoke on the outside, I would spend more of my time there. I suppose I'm spoiled because, relatively, the U smells good. It smells like clean mountain air, and food, and clean laundry, and grass. And it also smells like cars and pollution and smoke occasionally, but mostly it doesn't smell dirty, which is why I like spending time here. Smell is an avenue that we haven't fully explored yet, and I'd like to play with it the same way we've been playing with lighting. I also notice noise a great deal. I love TRAX, but I wish there was a way to make it less loud and less hard to enjoy myself next to.
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