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Late-night urban perambulations, drifting, wandering, trespassing, gallivanting, an impromptu derive, strolling, and the like. Passing through the varied ambiances of a city, especially at night (and preferably with a lovely companion). You can even do it sober.

Where do you walk in your town? Do you see others just walking? I'm amazed so few people do this in my city.

Do any of the Londoners among us have an opinion of Iain Sinclair?

The prose seems a bit overwrought or maybe just too precious for me, but I like what he's about:

From Lights Out for the Territory:

Walking is the best way to explore and exploit the city; the changes, shifts, breaks in the cloud helmet, movement of light on water. Drifting purposefully is the recommended mode, tramping asphalted earth in alert reverie, allowing the fiction of an underlying pattern to reveal itself. To the no-bullshit materialist this sounds suspiciously like fin-de-siècle decadence, a poetic of entropy; but the born-again flâneur is a stubborn creature, less interested in texture and fabric, eavesdropping on philosophical conversation pieces, than in noticing everything. Alignments of telephone kiosks, maps made from moss on the slopes of Victorian sepulchres, collections of prostitutes' cards, torn and defaced promotional bills for cancelled events at York Hall, visits to the homes of dead writers, bronze casts on war memorials, plaster dogs, beer mats, concentrations of used condoms, the crystalline patterns of glass shards surrounding an imploded BMW quarter-light window, meditations on the relationship between the brain damage suffered by the super-middleweight boxer Gerald McClellan (lights out in the Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel) and the simultaneous collapse of Barings, bankers to the Queen. Walking, moving across a retreating townscape, stitches it all together: the illicit cocktail of bodily exhaustion and a raging carbon monoxide high.

"The Praise and Curse of the City Pool" is one of my favourite Flickr groups.



[late edit: spelling]

LAD wrote:Late-night urban perambulations, drifting, wandering, trespassing, galavanting, 閒逛, an impromptu derive, strolling, and the like. Passing through the varied ambiances of a city, especially at night (and preferably with a lovely companion). You can even do it sober

Are you endevouring to become a flâneur LAD?

If so I highly recommend Walter Benjamin's fragmentary Arcades Project and One-Way Street. Also Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity.

LAD wrote:Do any of the Londoners among us have an opinion of Iain Sinclair?

Funnily enough, he was on TV yesterday morning talking about the effect the tube-bombings on the psyche of London. I haven't read him, but have been recommended him by friends.

The best way to get a feel for any city is to walk it.

Sorry. I forgot this book:



The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project by Susan Buck-Morss. It's great.

i haven't done it in quite a while, but when i was in my early and mid 20's i did tons of walking around, in chicago and the suburbs, just taking it in. walking around for the sake of the adventure of it. and i definitely found it to be the most fun from about 10pm to 3am or so. i don't really hold a place for it in my current life, but from past experience, i have to give this the heartiest of NOT CRAPs.

One of the most not crap things you can do. (Unless you live in Hilton Head, South Carolina)

I currently live in Birmingham, UK which is often unfairly ridiculed for a glut of unlovely industrial architecture and for decades a concrete city centre that would have shamed Stalin's brutalist architects. It's absolutely made for walking being reasonably compact and having miles and miles of canals which criss-cross the city along with their well kept paths which are great for a monumental trudge or cycle ride. I often try and find a new route to work and especially love the crumbling Victorian factories in the metal-bashing quarter (as with everywhere slowly giving way to 'luxury apartments' and gentrification). The suburbs too are dotted with surprises some of which you'd only find on foot - there's a lot of stunning Victorian buildings bequeathed by giants of the industrial era, 1930s cinemas which have become Mosques, Art Deco swimming pools (my local charmingly dilapidated one below). I like the hotchpotch of styles and people - turning a corner a drab road of terraced houses becoming a lively hub of Indian restaurants and teeming markets or finding a small park you never knew existed. I don't think you get a sense of that quite so much when you're driving or taking the bus.



(I'm a huge fan of Iain Sinclair - while the prose tends to be preposterously discursive and a little bit on stilts he's never less than interesting to read and endlessly fascinated by his surroundings. I thoroughly recommend his year-long walk around the M25 motorway documented in London Orbital.)

not crap.

i spent a good portion of my first two years in chicago walking around... taking sidestreets, alleys, sneaky trails, etc... like, 10-15 mile walks.

not only did i learn the city very well, i lost about 60 pounds that i'd put on during the many years where i did nothing but drink beer & drive.

i would continue to walk around all the time but i bought a bike... so now i can snoop around the city in a quicker and lengthier fashion.

you can call me mister sexy awesome legs.

I sold my car when I moved to Chicago in May. In an effort to get to know the neighborhoods around me, and because of my lack of air conditioning, I started taking long walks every night, usually between 9 and midnight. It's become an amazing habit that will be hard to shake come winter. I see something simple and neat during every stroll.

Whatever mood I'm in, I find little supporting characters for it. If I'm happy, I notice how how good-looking everyone is and admire the books in their hands and trade a lot of friendly smiles. If I'm lonely, I find myself "shocked" that everyone in this damn city besides me seems to be a fuckin' date. If I'm feeling quiet, I always seem to notice a lot of kitties and rabbits hopping around the city parks and I stop to watch them do their rabbit-y things. The best, though, is when I'm feeling a little silly--I take in all kinds of great little things. I saw a tanned and gelled-up boy last week wearing a t-shirt that said "I'm really big in Europe". Hawhawhaw!

Cheers, long walks, you make me feel like a citizen of humanity. I hope to walk in Birmingham one day after cjh's fine description. So nice.

some of the most enduring memories of my time in silkworm will be those of late-night tramps through different cities

particularly italy. particularly verona--we wandered around from about 1am to 4am, i think. incredible at night, with the canal waters running high, all the pale buildings lit up. really a great time.

totally not crap, assuming muggings/beatings are not involved

Not Crap, unless it's in Dublin, because you're likely to lose wallet / limb / life (pick one).