Mountains, urinals, and crosswalks?

Continuing on the subject of “thoughtless acts”

George Herbert Leigh Mallory was a British Mountaineer who may have been one of the first to Summit Mt. Everest. When he was asked “why do you want to climb Mt. Everest?” he replied quite succinctly “because it is there.”

Some people feel compelled to climb mountains because “they are there” and others kick pigeons, and sometimes men pee on things.

The (awesome) thoughtless acts that I would like to discuss this week take place in Dutch airport bathrooms. I know this sounds kinkier than it is… Trust me.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet the urinal fly

The urinal fly began in Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport. The tiny image of a fly was etched into a urinal with the intention that it would give the Dutch men something to aim at while relieving themselves of the extra Amstel and Heineken they’d been carrying around since lunch. An act that is so very thoughtless as to be almost compulsory. The results (as far as I have read) show tiles below the urinal as much as “85% cleaner”

This is a really cool example of thoughtless acts being used to “control” behavior and direct it in a more positive way. I think there is a lot of potential in ideas like this. What are some other behaviors that people feel compelled to perform? Ideas similar to this might be: basketball hoops above trash cans in parks to curb littering, or maybe a little game at the corner that would keep pedestrians entertained while waiting and reduce the desire to jaywalk at unsafe times. Just thinking on paper but like I said, there’s a lot of potential with these thoughtless acts.

Dead pigeons and mayhem in the city

The theme for this weeks blog post is "thoughtless acts" and just yesterday I observed an awesome series of such behaviors.

This act begins on the corner of NW 12^th and Burnside, in Portland OR. It’s a corner that I find myself at a lot because it is very close to my school and my GF works at Henry’s 12^th St. Tavern. This particular afternoon I was enjoying one of the sun’s first appearances here in the Pacific NW and doing a good job of tuning out the traffic and pedestrians, until I heard a loud POP! And heard several girls at the crosswalk begin screaming in terror.

I quickly scanned the scene trying to determine what had happened, searching for the broken feet of the pedestrian that had surely stepped in front of a car by accident. I had recognized the loud popping sound as that of a car bumper hitting something soft and heavy at a high speed. As I saw none of the midday stream of cars stopping I quickly deduced that no human beings were injured, but why the screaming? I saw a pair of young lesbians staring in disbelief at another girl with what appeared to be her family. As the girls I had heard screaming ran down the block, continuing to scream like Harpies, I saw the dead pigeon slowly writhing as the last moments of his (relatively) small Avian life came to an end. The girl with her family also were fleeing the scene and the two “girls who like girls” yelled down the street “What were you thinking?” with obvious indignation.

Now I had puzzled the pieces. The girl with her family had kicked at a pigeon, meaning only to shoo it away, as I imagine, many of us have done before. She probably didn’t intend that the pigeon, probably annoyed at the inconvenience of being separated from a bagel, would jump right in front of an oncoming Dodge Charger. At least that is what I will continue to believe, if only for the kickers’ sake.

The resultant horror, hysteria, and even hilarity were caused by a very simple, unconscious act of kicking a pigeon on the street.

As the rest of the city’s stream of pedestrians continued to use the crosswalk at Twelfth Ave, they stumbled upon a gruesome history fully unaware. They had not seen the last moments of that pigeon’s life as its beautiful speckled wings failed its body, or heard the crush of its hollow bones as the number 20 bus sealed its fate and ground it into the asphalt, hopefully ending any misery that persisted.

They instead encountered a dead pigeon.

As they did they briefly noted its existence acknowledging only that it shouldn’t be stepped upon, another mindless act that occurs over and over when walking in a city. Mother’s back be damned, there are more than just cracks out there to watch out for. Walking in the city is sometimes no small peril. Yet all of us are relatively certain that we won’t die on the way to pick up the coffee creamer. While navigating around puddles, closed sidewalks, shady characters and aggressive cars can sometime require the skill and grace of a soccer player making an advance on goal, yet none of us brag about it upon reaching our destination.

Some of my favorite art is that of a street artist working mostly in Great Britain named “Banksy” His subversive, guerilla style graffiti often blurs the line between political statement and public nuisance, and has been received well by the artistic community. But the aspect that I love the most about his artwork is its capacity to make you look twice at something you take for granted when shuffling about in the city.

Potential abounds for pointing out thoughtless acts in the city. As we walk around in a sea of billboards, buses, and even people’s skin, trying to distract us and sell us, we have become very good at tuning out the background fuzz. When something of meaning reaches out to us I believe there is a sense of connection that we find reassuring. Some “one” out there has pulled back the blinders and wants to show us something deeper, a shared experience that was always there, just overlooked.

Perhaps if that pigeon were resting above a note that informed people of the shocking death rates associated with drunk driving accidents they would’ve paused to consider something new, something that touches all of us, instead of spritely hopping over a slight impasse and returning to more important worries of the day.