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The Passage of a Few People Through a Rather Brief Moment in Time #203: The Great Reworking
06.15.13
One or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations,
their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the
encounters they find there.
It's a bike ride.
Started by user nathansnider and user theroyalacademy.
It meets every Wednesday at 8:30pm at California Donuts #21.
We ride at 9pm.
We'll endeavor to return before the last red line trains (around midnight).
On the fourth year of this bike ride, you might expect:
- more inconvenient passageways
- more full moon picnics
- perhaps more "cover" versions of other people's rides, performed with amateurish enthusiasm
- certainly more amateurish enthusiasm
- disorientation
- reorientation
- pool halls
- bowling alleys
- dance parties
- karaoke
- imaginary histories
- scavenging for fun and sustenance
- more geocaching
- more oblique strategies
- more Oulipian constraints
- traffic median tea parties
Furthermore:
- A medium pace (maybe not for beginners; certainly not a hustle)
- We're not in a rush; we don't need to run every light.
- Maybe some distance;maybe some hills
- Victory donuts!
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This week:
The Great Reworking
In the early months of 1993, a crew of 300 Chinese workers arrived at Plant #2 of the Kaiser Steel mill in
Fontana, California. It had been the largest steel making operation under one roof in the nation when it had
closed a decade earlier. Now it was the job of these workers to disassemble the whole thing, individually label all
the pieces, ship them to China, and reassemble the plant there.
You have probably seen images of Plant #2. It was the setting for the climactic scene in Terminator 2:
Judgement Day, where the morphing antagonist was defeated and Arnold Schwarzenegger descended
heroically into the molten slag. In this melting away, perhaps we can see a parallel with the new economic vision
that was taking hold during the '90s, of a world in which the old machinery is inevitably replaced by something
more fluid - the enterprise of making stuff being remade into an enterprise of moving stuff around.
Certainly the Terminator, who was himself to be remade a decade later as the Governator, would appreciate this
interpretation, but the pattern would be played out on a much larger scale as well. Steel has not entirely
disappeared from Fontana; it's just that now, all the new steel plates and pipes are made from old melted down
scrap. Even the underground economy, which in the wake of the steel mill closure was dominated by drug
manufacturing (at one point having the highest number of meth lab busts per capita in the nation), would
eventually shift to drug distribution.
Today, all throughout the Inland Empire, the dominant new land form is the logistics warehouse, dedicated to
moving goods about as efficiently as possible. So the story we find here is one always moving in the direction of
greater fluidity, whether in the shuffling around of mortgages, consumer goods, drugs or scrap metal. And that is
what we will explore this week - the movement and the reworking of things. It will be quite the logistical feat.
This is the last in our series of weekend rides. When we return to our regular Wednesday schedule next week,
we will be celebrating the ride's fourth anniversary! In conjunction with the anniversary, we are proud to let you
know that there will be a show at the Red #5 Yellow #7 gallery, which you may read about here:
http://is.gd/passable_atlas
But back to the point of this week:
-We will be meeting on SATURDAY this week AT UNION STATION at 8:30 IN THE MORNING and taking the
9:00 Metrolink train to Rancho Cucamonga. We'll gather in the corridor with the ramps to the tracks. PLEASE BE
ON TIME and purchase your ticket before you meet up with us. Weekend unlimited passes are $10. If you miss
the train, you are out of luck.
- If you want to drive there instead, you are welcome to do so, but since the end of the ride (a the Rialto Metrolink
station) is about 11 miles from the start, you will either have a bit of extra riding back to your car or you can ride
the train two stops to get back. We should arrive at the Rancho Cucamonga station right around 10:15am. We
are not waiting there for people; make sure you are present when we show up.
- The route this week is nearly 40 miles and mostly flat, except for the two hills. There will be one off-road
section, which you may walk. We will stop for lunch in the early afternoon. Our return train leaves Rialto at 5:02
and gets into Union Station at 6:40pm.
- It's going to be warm and sunny. Bring sunscreen. Bring lots of water.
In the early months of 1993, a crew of 300 Chinese workers arrived at Plant #2 of the Kaiser Steel mill in
Fontana, California. It had been the largest steel making operation under one roof in the nation when it had
closed a decade earlier. Now it was the job of these workers to disassemble the whole thing, individually label all
the pieces, ship them to China, and reassemble the plant there.
You have probably seen images of Plant #2. It was the setting for the climactic scene in Terminator 2:
Judgement Day, where the morphing antagonist was defeated and Arnold Schwarzenegger descended
heroically into the molten slag. In this melting away, perhaps we can see a parallel with the new economic vision
that was taking hold during the '90s, of a world in which the old machinery is inevitably replaced by something
more fluid - the enterprise of making stuff being remade into an enterprise of moving stuff around.
Certainly the Terminator, who was himself to be remade a decade later as the Governator, would appreciate this
interpretation, but the pattern would be played out on a much larger scale as well. Steel has not entirely
disappeared from Fontana; it's just that now, all the new steel plates and pipes are made from old melted down
scrap. Even the underground economy, which in the wake of the steel mill closure was dominated by drug
manufacturing (at one point having the highest number of meth lab busts per capita in the nation), would
eventually shift to drug distribution.
Today, all throughout the Inland Empire, the dominant new land form is the logistics warehouse, dedicated to
moving goods about as efficiently as possible. So the story we find here is one always moving in the direction of
greater fluidity, whether in the shuffling around of mortgages, consumer goods, drugs or scrap metal. And that is
what we will explore this week - the movement and the reworking of things. It will be quite the logistical feat.
This is the last in our series of weekend rides. When we return to our regular Wednesday schedule next week,
we will be celebrating the ride's fourth anniversary! In conjunction with the anniversary, we are proud to let you
know that there will be a show at the Red #5 Yellow #7 gallery, which you may read about here:
http://is.gd/passable_atlas
But back to the point of this week:
-We will be meeting on SATURDAY this week AT UNION STATION at 8:30 IN THE MORNING and taking the
9:00 Metrolink train to Rancho Cucamonga. We'll gather in the corridor with the ramps to the tracks. PLEASE BE
ON TIME and purchase your ticket before you meet up with us. Weekend unlimited passes are $10. If you miss
the train, you are out of luck.
- If you want to drive there instead, you are welcome to do so, but since the end of the ride (a the Rialto Metrolink
station) is about 11 miles from the start, you will either have a bit of extra riding back to your car or you can ride
the train two stops to get back. We should arrive at the Rancho Cucamonga station right around 10:15am. We
are not waiting there for people; make sure you are present when we show up.
- The route this week is nearly 40 miles and mostly flat, except for the two hills. There will be one off-road
section, which you may walk. We will stop for lunch in the early afternoon. Our return train leaves Rialto at 5:02
and gets into Union Station at 6:40pm.
- It's going to be warm and sunny. Bring sunscreen. Bring lots of water.
Talk, talk, talk...
Check out our new web site!
(and join the mailing list!)
The hacienda must be built.
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