The
Brady Archive
Real
Streets
By
Robert Brady, (KJ
55, STREET special Issue)
Every real street began
as a footpath between places very worth walking to, later widened for
horse and cart and speed and then there were sidestreets, and avenues
added in full-blown urban ad hocness to spell out whole cities all the
way from foot to car to bus and truck and airport air streets in the
world city, the streets now memorable lines in the long long story that
is the city, the veins in the living urban body, source of its nourishment
and character and voice, people houses machines, metaphor for going,
being, neighboring, community, membrane of private/public, face of the
neighborhood, streambed of commerce, the other half of home, the street
is what the old folks lean out the windows or sit on the porch or the
stoop and gaze upon, remembering the streets of their days, common property,
the favorite memories of a former city kid are memories of the street,
where all the meeting happens, all the socializing happens, all the
growing happens, graffiti museum, and streets too evolve, remember they
were all once just dirt, even only a short time ago, look at the old
pictures preserved in the museums that make people go Ah! And the street
as mythic theater; and as common voice, marketplace, festival, playground,
way to elsewhere, to school, church, work, the way home, the way away,
to other streets and towns and nations full of streets and towns of
their own, on the street where you live, where happen miracles and terribles,
potential stage of tragedy and comedy and romance every minute, and
the streets of old cities, old Tokyo gone with the war, and the streets
of old Kyoto with their old houses with the fold-down benches on the
front for folks to sit on and watch the world of the street pass by
too are gone to tv streets. Shijo, Main Street, Champs Elysees, Broadway,
Unter Den Linden, Rodeo Drive, the beat, street smarts, street value,
easy street, La Strada, the long brown road, life’s proving ground,
the heart of the art, the way, the Tao, the Tao is a street, the way
of all streets; streets are faces, streets are voices, and beneath the
streets are streets above streets…
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held by the author
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