In just a little while I'm going with Dr. Gym-Partner to an antique bottle show. We learned about the show last weekend while riding our bicycles through the city. We saw two men digging a big hole in someone's yard, so , naturally, we stopped to ask them what they were doing. Turns out that the neighborhood was built over an old 19th century dump, and the two were digging for old bottles. Letting the guy talk more, as he showed us an old hand-blown gin bottle, we found out that there was a local club of bottle diggers and a bottle show (I guess they sell them to collectors) this weekend. Anyway, Dr. Gym-Partner and I decided that it would be a fun project to make an audio documentary about Urban Bottle Digging. And collector cultures are always a fascinating hoot, anyway.
I'd love to play this topic off of jo(e)'s interest in urban nature and literature. The beauty that awaits beneath the urban surface. From dump to lawn to treasure trove.
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- Michael LeVan
- "--Of the twoheaded octopus, one of whose heads is the head upon which the ends of the world have forgotten to come while the other speaks with a Scotch accent. The tentacles . . ."
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3 comments:
Oh, cool. I can't wait to hear about the bottle show. It's funny that I often think of archeological digs as being off in some remote site somewhere when obviously an archeologist could find a lot beneath a city.
It's also nice to know I'm not the only one who will stop strangers to ask them what they are doing just to satisfy my own curiosity.
When we first saw these people it looked like a scene out of a movie, where someone is digging a hole to put a body in. The guy I'm working with is interested in "the city beneath the city." One of my interests has to do with this whole culture of untrained, amateur researchers/archeologists (they have to find historic dump sites that are now people's yards--then convince people to let them dig up their yard--not to mention gain a whole lot of knowledge about the history and usage of bottles). Both of us, ultimately, hope to be able to collect a bunch of interesting stories from some of these people. I'll give a post/report soon.
I hope you aren't in the Blizzard.
That's a cool interest. I'd like to hear some of the stories.
Yes, I'm in the midst of a blizzzard here, but we get a lot of snow every year so I'm used to it. And all this fresh powder should make for a terrific day of skiing tomorrow. I'm just hoping the roads will be clear so that I can get to the ski slopes.
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