Talking Flash Mobs and Flash Robs in La Vanguardia
26 August 2011 | Share:
photo by Eva Guillamet
I was interviewed about flash mobs and flash robs and South Street by Marc Bassets’, a Washington-based reporter for La Vanguardia, Catalunya, Spain’s leading Spanish daily. Marc had been at my house visiting with our house swappers, Eva Guillamet, a photographer whose photo made it into the paper edition of the article (and whose photo appears here), and Daniel Venteo, a writer and historian of Barcelona’s architecture and urban design. Daniel’s new book, on Barcelona’s iconic street La Rambla, is out now in English. I ended up talking a great deal about race and alienation, and growing inequality on the streets of Philadelphia. That’s a subject that supersedes race, of course, and probably has little to do with aggressive and violent anti-social behavior. But it’s hard not to notice the pummeling so many have taken as a result of the Great Recession, which has left our streets full of the desperate, broken down, addicted.