this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2025
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Yesterday I attended the "activation" of a new project in my city, where an artist/activist will be hoisting some large (10+ feet long!) wind-socks with a color matching the day's air quality warning level (yellow --> orange --> red --> pink) at the end of a public right-of-way to the ocean on the industrial waterfront (which is a large source of the particulate matter making the air quality poor in the first place). I got to the spot early, planning on sitting and reading and just chilling before the event, but when I got there, the artist and their 2 friends were struggling to get things set up, so I joined in and helped. Had a lot of fun getting my hands dirty and getting it all set up!
and then stayed the whole event and helped pack everything up.
I ended up talking with a couple people there about the project, environmental justice, etc., took a lot of neat pictures, just had a nice evening.
There was also a small amount of anguish interleaved, as well lol. One of the artists friends' started talking to me after we finished setting up, and I just did such a poor job of conversing, I wasn't really prepared or in the right mindset for deep conversation. They were asking so many questions about me, and I just... didn't return that energy. I feel like maybe they were flirting with me? Even if they weren't, It was one of those things where only after they got bored of talking to me they went to go talk to their other friend and like 20 minutes later I had that "OHHHHHHH... Damn." realization, like I should have asked them more about themselves, they were clearly interested in learning about me. Well, I wanted to at least apologize for being a bad conversationalist, but in the middle of packing up, they just left, and I never got the chance lol. So now I have that internal cringe embarrassment going on today, like I want to just curl up into a little ball and expire, even though I will probably never see this person again.
They look really good!
I will be interested to see how visible they are from afar. The space is down between a big pile of scrap metal, and a giant pile of salt. It SHOULD be fairly visible from the highway, where people are stuck in parking-lot-esque traffic every morning and evening.
The space is actually fairly interesting. It's been years in the making, but the aptly named Public St. is now legally recognized as a public right-of-way to the bay, much to the chagrin of the abutting heavy industry, who would rather keep public out of their space to avoid scrutiny. I don't know about other states in the USA, or other countries, but in the tiny state of Rhode Island where I live, the area between the low-tide and high-tide line are public property. Everywhere. Without exception. This is written into the state's constitution and tries to make it "impossible" to own the coastline. All over the state, there are right-of-way lines which consist of small strips of public land between private land to allow the public to access their lawful public property. The incorporation and inclusion of such right-of-ways can get somewhat contentious, and powerful interests who wish to privatize and exclude the public from access to the coastline always have something to say about it.
This particular new right-of-way doesn't really lead to anywhere you'd want to perform any kind of fun water-related activities. It's horrifically polluted, smelly, and directly adjacent to loud, messy industry. It does, though, cram a wedge in the space to make room for environmental justice causes like the aforementioned project regarding publicly displaying the current air quality right in the heart of the industry responsible for said poor quality, and can now be used to bring awareness to the pollution generated by the industrial waterfront. It also just feels powerful to be there. It's a place that really feels like you shouldn't be allowed to go there. On Sunday afternoon I sat there and watched a cargo ship be loaded up with scrap metal by 2 giant cranes only a couple hundred feet away. The ship was still there yesterday.