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Lost in the towers.

Well, I was right. The weather was hot and muggy and partly cloudy all day, and then, late after­noon, a del­uge. This drove the film-festival launch party indoors, to the ground floor of the Renais­sance Cen­ter. That place belongs in an archi­tec­tural case study book some­where, in sev­eral chap­ters, includ­ing “And Then Came the ‘70s: What Were We Think­ing?” and, of course, “How Not to Do It.”

Built in the mid-‘70s, the Ren­Cen has its own com­pli­cated his­tory, per­haps best summed up in its name, an ironic joke wor­thy of Orwell’s Min­istry of Love. It was intended to reas­sure the white peo­ple leav­ing the city in their rearview mir­rors (although I’m not sure, pre­cisely, how that would work) that the city was done with the unpleas­ant­ness of the riots and was on its way back, yeah baby. Obvi­ously it didn’t work, but the city got its sig­na­ture build­ing out of it — a five-tower “rosette” with a cen­tral silo reach­ing 73 sto­ries and the sur­round­ing ones, 39 sto­ries, all wrapped in the black glass that was not only ‘70s stan­dard but also a trade­mark of its archi­tect, John Port­man. (Its famil­iar­ity was always an itch I couldn’t scratch, until a lit­tle research showed Port­man was the man who designed the Peachtree Cen­ter in Atlanta. Atlanta’s down­town was an early-adult for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence for me.)

Inside is the night­mare. I walked in from the park­ing garage and stood there a minute, try­ing to get ori­ented. A secu­rity guard sit­ting at a sta­tion nearby didn’t even look up from his desk when he drawled, “Lemme guess. You’re lost.” Every­body gets lost in the Ren­Cen. All those tow­ers! All those lev­els! Curse you, John Port­man and your stu­pid ideas about atria. Every­thing is round, every walk­way seems to lead to another round­about, and all the walls are some sort of beige con­crete. I tried to lis­ten for the music of the party, but the acoustics are awful. I knew where I was going, but I still needed direc­tions. These were the direc­tions: Go straight, fol­low the walk­way around to your right. Look for the esca­la­tor. Take it down one level, make another right and you’re there. And I still nearly missed the escalator.

It’s not a ter­ri­ble place, though. There’s the GM Win­ter­gar­den, a vast inte­rior pub­lic space with a win­dow wall over­look­ing the river. Alan likes to take the Peo­ple Mover over on his lunch hour and eat a Potbelly’s sub while watch­ing the freighters go by. Tellingly, this was a 1999 add-on to the build­ing, after GM bought it. Trust Michi­gan­ders to know how much you need the sun in January.

And, I’m pleased to report, you can get good cell ser­vice inside, which is good because you need it: “OK, you’re pass­ing Star­bucks? I’m right across from Star­bucks. Stop. No, stop. Stop walk­ing. Turn to your right. Look up. Not that far. Lower. OK, I’m wav­ing. See me wave? Great. No, I don’t know how to get here from there. Maybe we’d bet­ter hold the meet­ing over the phone.”

The storm was great, and the clear­ing after the storm was greater, the sun break­ing through to light the casino on the Cana­dian side, bright against the flee­ing bank of black clouds. There’s noth­ing that says, “yes, the storm will pass” like CAESAR’S in red neon, is there?

One final note: I inter­viewed a man a cou­ple years ago, a sailor. On the wall of his office is a great photo of a boat sail­ing down the Detroit River, past the half-completed Ren­Cen. It was him, and his boat. He had no idea who’d taken the pic­ture. He’d just found it at a garage sale. What are the odds.

Some blog­gage:

Geof­frey Feiger’s co-defendant’s lawyer sug­gests thanks for his client’s recent acquit­tal goes right up to the top:

In his ini­tial meet­ing with 39 mock jurors cho­sen to rep­re­sent a typ­i­cal south­east Michi­gan jury pool, the judge hired to con­duct the sim­u­lated tri­als asked how many trusted their gov­ern­ment to tell the truth. Just four of 39 raised their hands.

“In my father’s day,” Fish­man told me, “there would have been 38 hands up, with maybe one hold­out who’d just got­ten out of prison.”

Roy, on a roll, riffs on a Peggy Noo­nan col­umn about the need to let the gray stal­lion run, by let­ting him insult peo­ple. Worth a try — he already sort of reminds me of Don Rickles.

Happy Fri­day. Happy week­end. Happy every­thing. It’s a lovely day.

Posted on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 10:14 am
in Uncategorized.

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38 responses to
“Lost in the towers.”

  1. Connie said on June 27th, 2008 at 10:34 am

    Looked at the wiki link, ended up read­ing about Port­man, where I learned he designed the worst fine hotel in which I have ever stayed, the Peachtree Westin in Atlanta. 73 floors of hotel rooms and only 4 ele­va­tors plus the exte­rior glass one. We took to tak­ing the glass ele­va­tor on its express trip to 73rd and down to 66 from there. Going down in the morn­ing was impos­si­ble with­out going up to the top floor first. Ele­va­tor lines in the lobby dur­ing my entire stay. Not recommended.

  2. coozledad said on June 27th, 2008 at 10:35 am

    I’m going to steal a joke from Kings­ley Amis here: a good can­di­date for one of the short­est books ever would be “Self Efface­ment in Con­tem­po­rary Pub­lic Archi­tec­ture”.
    Portman’s work appears to be influ­enced a great deal by dis­pos­able razors. Maybe he moon­lights design­ing those, too.

  3. Danny said on June 27th, 2008 at 10:40 am

    Yeah, I’ve stayed at the Ren­Cen for a few business/professional orga­ni­za­tion meet­ings. Quite a mon­stros­ity, but I was not aware of its his­tory or its intended appeal to 70’s WASP’s.

    The rotat­ing restau­rant is cool, for about a minute. I’m not great with heights, so I kinda white-knuckled the glass ele­va­tor ride, main­tain­ing my grip by look­ing at Wind­sor and think­ing of all the great Cana­dian bands I’ve liked in my life. Rush is the best, IMO.

    Well it’s Fri­day and I’ve had a week full of 12-hour Monday’s, so I’m home today. I’ll prob­a­bly try to loosen my cubicle-hunched shoul­ders and office-cramped legs with a bike ride or a swim or both.

    Maybe pop in later.

  4. Connie said on June 27th, 2008 at 10:47 am

    Pool’s open at my house Danny, and up to 78 degrees. When can I expect you?

  5. michaela said on June 27th, 2008 at 10:48 am

    Another Ren­Cen vis­i­tor here… stayed there for a con­fer­ence of biz jour­nal­ism types a cou­ple years back (talk about a group that likes to toss back a few). I pride myself on my sense of direc­tion, but that place made me dis­com­bob­u­lated even before the drink­ing began. It’s one of the few times I’ve had a nice hotel room on some­one else’s dime, though, so for that I’ll remem­ber it fondly.

    Danny: I am ever so jeal­ous of your sched­ule for today. My con­ces­sion to sum­mer was that I finally got the petu­nias off my dri­ve­way and into the win­dow­boxes before set­tling in to work for the man this morn­ing… Def­i­nitely doesn’t help that my hus­band — just fin­ished his first year as a high-school teacher — is hap­pily prun­ing in the yard. Yeah, he deserves the time off… but so do I, dammit!

  6. nancy said on June 27th, 2008 at 10:58 am

    I think the restau­rant no longer revolves (and now that I’m think­ing about it, the one atop the Peachtree Cen­ter also rotated. Best name for a revolv­ing restau­rant, via “The Simpsons” — Sit and Rotate.). One of the ster­ling images of “Devil’s Night and Other True Tales of Detroit,” a great book, was of sub­ur­ban­ites book­ing tables for D-Night, so they could look out over the city where many of them were raised, watch­ing it burn.

  7. Jolene said on June 27th, 2008 at 10:58 am

    That Peggy Noo­nan col­umn is really some­thing. She has given evi­dence of san­ity in some of her recent columns, but it looks like that was a tem­po­rary condition.

    I am so ready for the elec­tion to be over. Let’s just put Obama in the White House and let him start fix­ing things. An unde­mo­c­ra­tic stance, I know, but greatly prefer­able, in my view, to sev­eral more months of accu­sa­tions of flip-flopping and other mis­deeds. I’m will­ing to con­cede that, yes, Pres­i­dent O won’t be per­fect, but he’ll be bet­ter than the guy we have now and bet­ter than his oppo­nent, so we might as well just move ahead, before GWB invades Iran and gives BHO some­thing else to fix.

  8. Danny said on June 27th, 2008 at 11:04 am

    Thanks, Con­nie. :) Will peanut-butter and jelly sand­wiches be served after­wards? The per­fect post-swim meal. Just ask Michael Phelps and Mark Spitz.

    Michaela, yeah, some­times at cof­fee we wist­fully dis­cuss those who get sum­mers off. If you work at Intel, you get a 2– or 3-month sab­bat­i­cal every 8 or 10 years. Man, what I would give for a sum­mer off like we used to have when we were school-aged. I swear I would not waste it.

  9. Danny said on June 27th, 2008 at 11:26 am

    One more thing before I’m off for a while. I’ve been mean­ing to share this pic­ture of the Microsoft founders, now and then. Slash­dot linked to the story last week­end. There were some funny comments.

    One per­son said, “Thanks for the photo. When they invent time travel I will need it to go back and pre­vent Win­dows from happening.”

    Another asked which guy got the sex change. For the record, one guy died and the extra woman in the current-day photo was their office man­ager who missed the orig­i­nal photo shoot because of a flight delay from a snow storm.

  10. Connie said on June 27th, 2008 at 11:38 am

    Sure Danny, but jelly inven­tory is lim­ited to straw­berry and apple. And there’s no white bread. As a kid my home jelly inven­tory was lim­ited to con­cord grape, and I still can­not con­ceive of any pb and j using any other type.

  11. Jolene said on June 27th, 2008 at 11:39 am

    Nice pho­tos, Danny. Was the arti­cle you saw about Bill Gates’s depar­ture from day-to-day work at Microsoft? I saw some­thing on MSNBC this AM say­ing that today is the day he shifts empha­sis to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foun­da­tion. They’re show­ing an inter­view w/ Gates con­ducted by Tom Brokaw later today.

  12. coozledad said on June 27th, 2008 at 11:42 am

    Jolene: My wife and I will be head­ing into town with the Obama cam­paign tomor­row to reg­is­ter vot­ers at Wal-Mart. We’ve already offered to drive the sick, the elderly, or the walk­ing dead to the polls. I’m not even a big Obama freak. If they can get my lazy ass out there (espe­cially at the damned Wal-Mart), they’ve really achieved something.

  13. Danny said on June 27th, 2008 at 11:44 am

    Yes, Jolene. It was an arti­cle about his leaving.

    You know, they should just get George Cas­tanza to run the Foun­da­tion. I thought he did a won­der­ful job with Susan’s Foundation!

  14. crinoidgirl said on June 27th, 2008 at 12:51 pm

    If you think the Ren­Cen looks fore­bod­ing now, you should have seen it in the olden days when it was sur­rounded with a huge berm.

    The joke was that was meant to keep the riot­ing black folks from attack­ing the place.

  15. Halloween Jack said on June 27th, 2008 at 1:40 pm

    Another fac­toid bites the dust: I thought that Robo­cop was shot in part at the Ren­Cen. Turns out it was Dal­las. Hm.

  16. john c said on June 27th, 2008 at 2:18 pm

    A few years back I was cov­er­ing the Motor City Bowl and had to pick up cre­den­tials at the Ren­Cen the day before. Walk­ing from the park­ing garage, as Nancy did, it took me at least a half an hour to find a very promi­nent con­fer­ence room off the Mar­riott hotel lobby — a room that would have taken less than a minute to find in any other build­ing. Nancy’s right. The Win­ter­gaden is great. And the views from the top are fine. Bu the cir­cu­lar maze at the bottom — horrible.

  17. moe99 said on June 27th, 2008 at 3:39 pm

    An improb­a­ble love story:
    http://​www​.slate​.com/​i​d​/​2​1​93851/

    w/ photo:

    http://​blog​.bed​lam​farm​.com/​i​n​d​e​x​.​c​f​m​?​&​a​m​p​;​s​t​a​r​t​Row=17

  18. coozledad said on June 27th, 2008 at 4:02 pm

    Moe99: My sheep will stand around nuz­zling the cats for sev­eral min­utes, with their eyes half closed. The cats rec­i­p­ro­cate, until the sheep weary of the atten­tion and butt them away.
    We have a year old ewe (Lizzie Oats) who was rejected by her mother, and we bot­tlefed her until Lizzie finally fig­ured out she was a sheep. For a long time she slept on the front porch with the dogs. It was a chore to keep her from try­ing to eat with the dogs as well. We were begin­ning to be afraid she’d develop scrapie from the meat by-products.
    She still vis­its us some evenings when we’re on the front porch hav­ing our bah-bahs of wine or beer. She seems to enjoy mak­ing you wear them.

  19. nancy said on June 27th, 2008 at 4:05 pm

    When I despair that peak oil will drive us all back to the 19th cen­tury, with steam-powered iPods and no sym­phony orches­tra to speak of, I will hold you as a role model, C’dad. You make life on a small farm sound so charm­ing. I’m sure my daugh­ter will love whit­tlin’ her own toys out of down tree limbs.

    BTW, I liked Jon Katz bet­ter when he was a cranky media colum­nist, not some back-to-the-lander. What hap­pened to him?

  20. joodyb said on June 27th, 2008 at 4:19 pm

    i think you answered your own ques­tion, nancy.

  21. Dexter said on June 27th, 2008 at 4:22 pm

    Too bad thje Ren­Cen wasn’t around in the 20s and 30s so the tax agents could have had a perch to watch the Pur­ple Gang run­ning booze in , on skiffs from Wind­sor.
    Here’s the story

  22. coozledad said on June 27th, 2008 at 5:27 pm

    Nancy: There’s always board games to play and whit­tle pieces for. There’s an old book that cov­ers a bunch of them pub­lished by Dover: “Board and Table Games From Many Civ­i­liza­tions” by R.C. Bell. When the devil takes my inter­net away I’ll be con­sult­ing this book often. Or sim­ply drink­ing. I hope there’ll be a few sym­phony orches­tras around. Cham­ber orches­tras at the very least.
    http://​youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​5​t​G​A​6​bpscj8

  23. Danny said on June 27th, 2008 at 5:31 pm

    Speak­ing of whit­tling, I’m not sure, but I may be one of the few here who had to cut their own switch for a whip­ping. Never my favorite wood-working craft.

  24. beb said on June 27th, 2008 at 6:14 pm

    I think there’s another Port­man sky­scrape in LA that looks just like the Ren­Cen. Port­man, I gather, was proud of the con­fu­sion of the RenCen’s atrium, because it offered so many nooks of dis­cov­ery, for­get­ting that stores try­ing to be a liv­ing there need peo­ple to be able to find them. Remov­ing the berms makes the Ren­Cen seem more of a part of Detroit but the only way to fix the inte­rior of the Ren­Cen would be to gut the entire Atrium and start from scratch.

    There is no doubt in my mind that W’s law­less behav­ior dur­ing his term has done more to under­mine faith in our gov­ern­ment than all other Presidient’s combined.

  25. Danny said on June 27th, 2008 at 8:34 pm

    Oh, boo frig­gin’ hoo.

    Man, I really hope Obama wins. Oth­er­wise most of you are in dan­ger of elec­tro­cu­tion from tears that will soak your keyboards.

    Big babies. Geesh!

  26. Catherine said on June 27th, 2008 at 8:59 pm

    beb, I think you mean the Bonaven­ture? Inter­est­ing in a sculp­tural sense from the out­side… and impos­si­ble to nav­i­gate and nasty on the inside. BEA was held at the LA Con­ven­tion Cen­ter a few years ago and sev­eral peo­ple I know refused to come back this year specif­i­cally because of that hotel. At least mon­strosi­ties like that made way for us to appre­ci­ate Louis Kahn.

    There was an amus­ing sit­com set in the Bonaventure’s restau­rant many years ago… with Rene Auber­jonois and ??? Didn’t quite redeem the archi­tec­ture, though.

  27. Pam said on June 27th, 2008 at 9:23 pm

    The Ren­Cen wasn’t very old when I had to do a trade show there for my com­pany (early ‘80s). The place made a great first impres­sion on me when a COCKROACH ran through my break­fast plate! (You know how I am about bugs.) The waiter came over after I screeched (just a small screech) and when I told him what had hap­pened, he just shrugged his shoul­ders, said Oh, and walked away. Like it hap­pens all the time, what with all the water around. Grabbed a cof­fee and left.

  28. basset said on June 27th, 2008 at 10:08 pm

    I remem­ber walk­ing out of the Ren­Cen one sum­mer week­night in, I don’t know, ’93 or ’94, tak­ing about three steps, and see­ing a huge rat run across the walk­way. it was one of those spe­cial moments.

  29. Deborah said on June 27th, 2008 at 11:41 pm

    Where do I begin?

    I work for an archi­tec­ture firm as a graphic designer and my hus­band is an archi­tect with his own prac­tice here in Chicago. John Port­man has been a puz­zle to us for years, very spotty work. A few really good things a lot of bad.

    I think Port­man did the O’Hare Hyatt back in the late 70s. I was there a few months ago and what a dog it is. Bru­tal con­crete and human scale­less mis­ery. Shame on him. But I remem­ber when it was in all the archi­tec­ture mag­a­zines as the best thing since sliced bread.

    Cather­ine REgard­ing Louis Kahn, our favorite archi­tect of all time. Have you ever seen the Kim­ball in Fort Worth? or the Salk Insti­tute in San Diego? Fab­u­lous. The movie by his son, “My Archi­tect”, is definily worth seeing.

  30. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 27th, 2008 at 11:49 pm

    Don’t want to sound like i’m vent­ing at the end of a rough week in a bad month on a late night (all true), but while i’ve not been a Peg Noo­nan fan right along (check the blog archive here, among oth­ers), but are we talk­ing about this:

    http://​online​.wsj​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​S​B​1​2​1​4​5​0​9​3​0​6​1​6​7​0​8​1​3​9​.​h​t​m​l​?​m​o​d​=​t​o​d​a​y​s​_​c​o​l​u​mnists

    ‘Cuz i can’t see where she isn’t say­ing some pretty rea­son­able things and likely sce­nar­ios with­out call­ing the elec­tion for any­one, least of all McCain.

    To which i nec­es­sar­ily add, as many of us recall with­out look­ing it up:

    http://​www​.usnews​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​1​/​2​8​/​j​o​h​n​-​m​c​c​a​i​n​-​p​r​i​s​o​n​e​r​-​o​f​-​w​a​r​-​a​-​f​i​r​s​t​-​p​e​r​s​o​n​-​a​c​c​o​u​n​t​_​p​r​i​nt.htm

    The lady has a point is what i’m say­ing. If say­ing Obama isn’t a sure-fire lock on the final bal­lot 4 months out is mean-spirited dem­a­goguery, sorry to have sinned in that unex­pected direc­tion. Barack would win tomor­row, but i’m lis­ten­ing to what he says the next six­teen weeks.

    And i’ve already heard a *bunch* of DSA lib­er­als say if Obama doesn’t sup­port over­turn­ing the Heller deci­sion, they don’t know why they both­ered show­ing up for the pri­mary vote and won’t cast a bal­lot in the gen­eral. It’s as if he’s gonna say next that we won’t have all troops out of Iraq by Christ­mas ’09.

    Yep.

  31. Catherine said on June 28th, 2008 at 12:32 am

    Deb­o­rah, I have made the pil­grim­mage to the Salk Insti­tute and the Yale museum that Louis Kahn did, and they were well worth the effort. Have not made it to Ft. Worth… try to avoid TX… iron­i­cally head­ing to San Anto­nio for work tomor­row. Mean­while, I will def­i­nitely put that movie in my Net­flix cue. Do you know of any other build­ings worth the trip? I’ve always wanted to see that church in Rochester. Any other archi­tects you like almost as much?

  32. Terry WAlter said on June 28th, 2008 at 4:29 am

    I think both can­di­dates should post a top 10 list of things they want to apol­o­gize for. “If ANYBODY was offended that I breathed in air and emit­ted car­bon diox­ide, I’m sorry”. And any other inane tripe the pro­fes­sional vic­tims & hatchet men want to hear. The Noo­nan method would sure be a lot more enter­tain­ing than the watered down Pablum we are being forced to suf­fer through.

  33. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 28th, 2008 at 7:50 am

    Cather­ine — in San Anto­nio, try to see the Span­ish Mis­sions, aka San Anto­nio Mis­sions National Park, oper­ated by the National Park Ser­vice: the Alamo was the most north­ern of them, but is now all about Texas patri­o­tism. Mis­sion Con­cep­cion, Mis­sion San Juan Capis­trano, Mis­sion Espada, and Mis­sion San Jose are all founded and orig­i­nally built c. 1690 – 1720, and the build­ings and grounds are impres­sive and evoca­tive archi­tec­ture. If you’re lim­ited in time, hit Con­cep­cion and San Juan — they’re embed­ded in mod­ern neigh­bor­hoods, dot­ted along the river to the south (extend­ing way south of San Anto­nio proper), and there are great neigh­bor­hood restau­rants near the clos­est three (esp. San Juan).

    There are func­tion­ing parishes still using the insides, on an agree­ment with NPS to man­age the grounds, exte­ri­ors, and inter­pre­ta­tion, and you are wel­come to wan­der inside other than Sun­day morn­ing and 8 – 9 am week­days. Well worth some side trip­ping to fit in, even if you never saw the movie “The Mis­sion,” and if you did, you just can’t miss see­ing real deal, pre­served as if out of an Ama­zon­ian mist.

  34. Danny said on June 28th, 2008 at 10:19 am

    Wow, the Salk Insti­tute. Is that really con­sid­ered a thing of beauty by a large com­mu­nity of archi­tec­tural geeks? I would have never guessed.

    I grad­u­ated from UC San Diego, which is right across the street and shares a lot of the same archi­tec­tural “ambiance” with said Insti­tute, assum­ing dreary slabs of con­crete are what get you going. For the life of me, I could not have found these struc­tures more ugly and depress­ing. It was like some­one looked at the beauty of the Pacific there in La Jolla and said, “What can we do to make this place look like a ster­ile slum.”

    The build­ings kind of evoke the projects in Chicago to me. And I used to park at or near the Insti­tute all the time because there was never enough park­ing on cam­pus. I remem­ber walk­ing back from the cliffs at the hang-glider port, over­look­ing the ocean, and then see­ing all of these con­crete mon­strosi­ties and think­ing it was all low-budget, util­i­tar­ian dystopia.

    Now you guys are telling me they really paid a lot and were going for this look. Hmmm.

    DISCLAIMER: I am not and archi­tect and do not play one on TV.

  35. moe99 said on June 29th, 2008 at 12:56 am

    Here’s some­thing fun for Sat night (it still is here in the Pacific day­light time zone). Make sure you stay for the finale. Unbe­liev­able! China cir­cus on the Russ­ian bar:

    http://​uk​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​P​R​J​x​J​d​g​c​4​N​g​&​a​m​p​;​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​=​r​elated

  36. Jolene said on June 29th, 2008 at 1:28 pm

    Was fun on Sun­day after­noon too, moe. In 1985, I saw a troupe of Chi­nese acro­bats, part of China’s ear­li­est efforts to show off the tal­ents of its per­form­ers. They were hys­ter­i­cal – excel­lent acro­bats, but no show­man­ship. Poor-quality cos­tumes and no sense of how to relate to the audi­ence. Maybe we just had the third-string team, but, if not, they have obvi­ously learned a lot.

    You might be inter­ested in James Fallows’s obser­va­tions about some of the not-ready-for-prime-time things China is doing in the lead-up to the Olympics. I can only imag­ine what it’s like to put together an event of that scope in any coun­try, but the idea of a semi-dictatorial, eco­nom­i­cally mar­ginal coun­try prepar­ing to wel­come peo­ple from through­out the world and the inter­na­tional press is mind-boggling. Would be fas­ci­nat­ing to have an inside view of the decision-making there. Any­one who had such a view would also have the mak­ings of a great book.

  37. Jolene said on June 29th, 2008 at 1:55 pm

    Speak­ing of inter­est­ing things hap­pen­ing in China, here (via Andrew Sullivan’s blog) is an arti­cle about what hap­pens when mil­lions of not-very-well-schooled speak­ers start speak­ing Eng­lish.
    An excerpt:

    “Thanks to glob­al­iza­tion, the Allied vic­to­ries in World War II, and Amer­i­can lead­er­ship in sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy, Eng­lish has become so suc­cess­ful across the world that it’s escap­ing the bound­aries of what we think it should be. In part, this is because there are fewer of us: By 2020, native speak­ers will make up only 15 per­cent of the esti­mated 2 bil­lion peo­ple who will be using or learn­ing the lan­guage. Already, most con­ver­sa­tions in Eng­lish are between non­na­tive speak­ers who use it as a lin­gua franca.”

  38. Ricardo said on June 29th, 2008 at 6:09 pm

    I used to go over to the Bonaven­ture in down­town LA about once a week when I worked in the area. It already has that sec­ond class look and smell and many of the shops are closed up. Maybe the smell was due to the indoor water fea­ture. It has lit­tle bal­conies on the lev­els below the food court with exer­cise sta­tions from the health club which look very odd.

    The Ren­Cen was the last job my car­pen­ter dad worked on before retire­ment. Built after I moved away, I just might visit when we arrive in August for the 40th year class reunion.

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