“
You must be a blast on long car rides.”
“Oh, I am. You haven't experienced fun until you try to fuck in the front seat of a Civic.
”
”
Nenia Campbell (Armed and Dangerous (The IMA, #2))
“
While they waited, Ronan decided to finally take up the task of teaching Adam how to drive a stick shift. For several minutes, it seemed to be going well, as the BMW had an easy clutch, Ronan was brief and to the point with his instruction, and Adam was a quick study with no ego to get in the way.
From a safe vantage point beside the building, Gansey and Noah huddled and watched as Adam began to make ever quicker circles around the parking lot. Every so often their hoots were audible through the open windows of the BMW.
Then—it had to happen eventually—Adam stalled the car. It was a pretty magnificent beast, as far as stalls went, with lots of noise and death spasms on the part of the car. From the passenger seat, Ronan began to swear at Adam. It was a long, involved swear, using every forbidden word possible, often in compound-word form. As Adam stared at his lap, penitent, he mused that there was something musical about Ronan when he swore, a careful and loving precision to the way he fit the words together, a black-painted poetry. It was far less hateful sounding than when he didn’t swear.
Ronan finished with, “For the love of . . . Parrish, take some care, this is not your mother’s 1971 Honda Civic.”
Adam lifted his head and said, “They didn’t start making the Civic until ’73.”
There was a flash of fangs from the passenger seat, but before Ronan truly had time to strike, they both heard Gansey call warmly, “Jane! I thought you’d never show up. Ronan is tutoring Adam in the ways of manual transmissions.”
Blue, her hair pulled every which way by the wind, stuck her head in the driver’s side window. The scent of wildflowers accompanied her presence. As Adam catalogued the scent in the mental file of things that made Blue attractive, she said brightly, “Looks like it’s going well. Is that what that smell is?”
Without replying, Ronan climbed out of the car and slammed the door.
Noah appeared beside Blue. He looked joyful and adoring, like a Labrador retriever. Noah had decided almost immediately that he would do anything for Blue, a fact that would’ve needled Adam if it had been anyone other than Noah.
Blue permitted Noah to pet the crazy tufts of her hair, something Adam would have also liked to do, but felt would mean something far different coming from him.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle, #1))
“
Would you like me to drive so you can manage your social life?” I asked. It came out much snippier than I'd intended but he was oblivious to my tone, still looking at his newest message.
“No, no, I'm fine.”
“We'd better not get in an accident because you're busy sexting and driving,” I said. He burst out laughing.
“I've got my hearing senses on the car in front of us is two and three-quarter car lengths ahead, and the one behind us is a quarter of a mile back. Next to him a compact car is passing. Engine sounds foreign, probably a Honda. He'll be passing us in about twelve seconds. He's got extra-thick treads, racing-quality tires. Sexting...”
He laughed again. Twelve seconds later a Civic zoomed past, low to the ground, with wide tires. Show-off.
”
”
Wendy Higgins (Sweet Evil (Sweet, #1))
“
When my nose finally stops bleeding and I've disposed of the bloody paper towels, Teddy Barnes insists on driving me home in his ancient Honda Civic, a car that refuses to die and that Teddy, cheap as he is, refuses to trade in.
”
”
Richard Russo (Straight Man)
“
Lucas' car was a beat up Honda Civic that had to have been made sometime before they put the patent on dirt.
”
”
Ben Reeder (Page of Swords (The Demon's Apprentice, #2))
“
To use a more accurate car metaphor, the Honda Civic, like the pit bull, is small in size, fairly generic in appearance, inexpensive, and easy to acquire. These four characteristics make it one of the best-selling cars of all time. For those exact same reasons, the Civic is also the leading car bought, sold, and modified for purposes of street drag racing, a highly dangerous and illegal practice that kills approximately one hundred Americans every year (three times as many as are killed by all types of dogs combined). Yet no legislator has ever proposed a ban on the Honda Civic in order to correct errant human behavior by a small number of people. If
”
”
Bronwen Dickey (Pit Bull: The Battle over an American Icon)
“
Then — it had to happen eventually — Adam stalled the car. It was a pretty magnificent beast, as far as stalls went, with lots of noise and death spasms on the part of the car. From the passenger seat, Ronan began to swear at Adam. It was a long, involved swear, using every forbidden word possible, often in compound-word form. As Adam stared at his lap, penitent, he mused that there was something musical about Ronan when he swore, a careful and loving precision to the way he fit the words together, a black-painted poetry. It was far less hateful sounding than when he didn’t swear. Ronan finished with, “For the love of … Parrish, take some care, this is not your mother’s 1971 Honda Civic.” Adam lifted his head and said, “They didn’t start making the Civic until ’73.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle, #1))
“
I had a dream about you last night. We were in your old Civic. Nine Inch Nails was turned up on the stereo and I was taking pictures of you behind the wheel with my disposable camera. We went through the drive through at El Pollo Loco, placed an order for a hundred bucks worth of food, and then just drove off at the window. I miss being stupid with you.
”
”
Crystal Woods (Dreaming is for lovers)
“
The only trouble was, I wasn't with a group of my peers. Who are my peers? [...] And there I was with a dismal coven of repentant soaks -- a car salesman who had fallen from the creed of the Kiwanis, an Jewish woman whose family misunderstood her attempts to put them straight on everything, a couple of schoolteachers who can't ever have taught anything except Civics, and some business men whose god was Mammon, and a truck-driver who was included, I gather, to keep our eyes on the road and our discussions hitched to reality. Whose reality? Certainly not mine. So the imp of perversity prompted me to make pretty patterns of our discussions together, and screw the poor boozers up worse then they'd been screwed up before. For the first time in years, I was having a really good time.
”
”
Robertson Davies (The Manticore (The Deptford Trilogy, #2))
“
George Romney’s private-sector experience typified the business world of his time. His executive career took place within a single company, American Motors Corporation, where his success rested on the dogged (and prescient) pursuit of more fuel-efficient cars.41 Rooted in a particular locale, the industrial Midwest, AMC was built on a philosophy of civic engagement. Romney dismissed the “rugged individualism” touted by conservatives as “nothing but a political banner to cover up greed.”42 Nor was this dismissal just cheap talk: He once returned a substantial bonus that he regarded as excessive.43 Prosperity was not an individual product, in Romney’s view; it was generated through bargaining and compromises among stakeholders (managers, workers, public officials, and the local community) as well as through individual initiative. When George Romney turned to politics, he carried this understanding with him. Romney exemplified the moderate perspective characteristic of many high-profile Republicans of his day. He stressed the importance of private initiative and decentralized governance, and worried about the power of unions. Yet he also believed that government had a vital role to play in securing prosperity for all. He once famously called UAW head Walter Reuther “the most dangerous man in Detroit,” but then, characteristically, developed a good working relationship with him.44 Elected governor in 1962 after working to update Michigan’s constitution, he broke with conservatives in his own party and worked across party lines to raise the minimum wage, enact an income tax, double state education expenditures during his first five years in office, and introduce more generous programs for the poor and unemployed.45 He signed into law a bill giving teachers collective bargaining rights.46 At a time when conservatives were turning to the antigovernment individualism of Barry Goldwater, Romney called on the GOP to make the insurance of equal opportunity a top priority. As
”
”
Jacob S. Hacker (American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper)
“
What is most dystopian about all of the digital houses designed for customized consumption is the implication that the entire landscape could be covered with new houses lacking any social or economic neighborhood context. Designers minimize the need for family or neighborhood interaction if they plan for digital surveillance as a route to ordering mass-produced commodities as well as handling work and civic life. If many external activities, such as paid work, exercise, shopping, seeking entertainment, and voting, are able to be done in-house through the various electronic communications systems, reasons for going outside decrease. The residents become isolated, although the house continues to function as a container for mass-produced goods and electronic media. In a landscape bristling with tens of thousands of digital houses and cell towers, where the ground is laced with hundreds of thousands of miles of fiber-optic cable, neighborhoods may not exist. Car journeys involving traffic problems may disappear, although the roads will be clogged with delivery vans.
”
”
Dolores Hayden (Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000)
“
and we ran down the street, laughing in the dark, out of breath when we finally reached his car. He hadn’t been lying about it. It was a Honda Civic, although it was a newer model, so that counted for something. He pushed me against the passenger door, dropped my shoes on the concrete, and then swept a hand into my hair. I looked over my shoulder at the car we were leaning against. “Is this really your car?” He smiled as he reached into his suit pocket and pulled out his key fob. He unlocked the doors to prove it was his, which made me laugh. He stared down at me, our mouths thisclose, and I could swear he was already imagining what life with me would be like. You can’t look at someone the way he looked at me—with the entirety of his past—without also imagining the future. He closed his eyes and kissed me. The kiss was full of both desire and respect—two things a lot of men didn’t seem to know could go hand in hand. His fingers felt good in my hair, and his tongue felt good in my mouth. I felt good to him, too. I could feel how good I felt to him in the way he kissed me. We knew very little about each other in that moment, but it was almost better that way. Sharing a kiss that intimate with a stranger was like saying, “I don’t know you, but I believe I would like you if I did.
”
”
Colleen Hoover (Verity)
“
949. The most commonly stolen car model in the USA is Nissan Altima, in Canada – Honda Civic, in Australia – Holden Commodore, in Russia – Land Rover Freelander, in Saudi Arabia – Toyota Corolla.
”
”
Lena Shaw (1000 Random Facts And Trivia, Volume 3 (Interesting Trivia and Funny Facts))
“
Hondas sound like cars designed by pacifists and humanitarian diplomats. The Accord, Civic, Insight.
”
”
Paul Beatty (The Sellout)
“
I could feel Rick’s eyes on me the whole time as I drove. I already knew what he was thinking about, but I hoped that he didn’t try to start any mess in this car, especially while my kids were with me. The weather was terrible outside, making it extremely hard for me to see. “Where you get that cash from that I saw in your purse?” Rick asked me. I cursed myself for leaving the money that Antonia had given me the other day in my purse. When we had gotten to the register so that I could pay for the groceries, I reached into my purse to retrieve my EBT card, and Rick caught a glimpse of the fifty-dollar bill that I had lying in there. “Antonia gave it to me, okay?” I told him, hoping that would be the end of this conversation. “So, you hiding money from me now, Gina? Is that what we’re doing?” he asked me. “Rick, I’m not hiding anything from you because this isn’t yours to begin with! The girls are going on a field trip next week, and it’s to pay for it!” I yelled at him. Right now, the rain had begun to pick up even harder and loud sounds of lightning and thunder were rumbling outside. “I don’t give a fuck about no damn field trip! Give me that money!” Rick yelled, trying to reach over my lap. I slapped his hands away, which caused me to swerve in the next lane and a car to blow the horn at me. “Rick, can you stop, please! You’re scaring my babies!” I yelled at him. It happened so quick. I was so distracted that I ended up running the red light and it was too late to brake because at this point, the eighteen wheeler came crashing into the right side of my little beat up Honda Civic which didn’t stand a chance. All I remember was looking in the rearview mirror and I noticed that neither Allison nor Ciara was in a seatbelt. It took seconds and their little bodies went flying out the front window and the truck had pretty much crushed into Rick and I, leaving everything to turn to black.
”
”
Diamond D. Johnson (Little Miami Girl 3: Antonia & Jahiem's Love Story)
“
I drove my car here. Honda Civic.
”
”
Colleen Hoover (Verity)
“
Father was a strict disciplinarian to his children in their early years, but his attitude toward himself was truly Spartan. He never visited the theater, for instance, but sought his recreation in various spiritual practices and in reading the bhagavad gita. Shunning all luxuries, he would cling to one old pair of shoes until they were useless. His sons bought automobiles after they came into popular use, but Father was always content with the trolley car for his daily ride to the office. The accumulation of money for the sake of power was alien to his nature. Once, after organizing the Calcutta Urban Bank, he refused to benefit himself by holding any of its shares. He had simply wished to perform a civic duty in his spare time.
”
”
Paramahansa Yogananda (Autobiography of a Yogi)
“
While reading some old articles to jog my memory for this book, I came across an article in the Chicago Sun-Times by Rick Kogan, a reporter who traveled with Styx for a few concert dates in 1979. I remember him. When we played the Long Beach Civic Center’s 12,000-seat sports arena in California, he rode in the car with JY and me as we approached the stadium. His recounting of the scene made me smile. It’s also a great snapshot of what life was like for us back in the day. The article from 1980 was called, “The Band That Styx It To ‘Em.” Here’s what he wrote: “At once, a sleek, gray Cadillac limousine glides toward the back stage area. Small groups of girls rush from under trees and other hiding places like a pack of lions attacking an antelope. They bang on the windows, try to halt the driver’s progress by standing in front of the car. They are a desperate bunch. Rain soaks their makeup and ruins their clothes. Some are crying. “Tommy, Tommmmmmmmmy! I love you!” one girl yells as she bangs against the limousine’s window. Inside the gray limousine, James Young, the tall, blond guitarist for Styx who likes to be called J.Y. looks out the window. “It sure is raining,” he says. Next to him, bass player Chuck Panozzo, finishing the last part of a cover story on Styx in a recent issue of Record World magazine, nods his head in agreement. Then he chuckles, and says, “They think you’re Tommy.” “I’m not Tommy Shaw,” J.Y. screams. “I’m Rod Stewart.” “Tommy, Tommmmmmmmmy! I love you! I love you!” the girl persists, now trying desperately to jump on the hood of the slippery auto. “Oh brother,” sighs J.Y. And the limousine rolls through the now fully raised backstage door and he hurries to get out and head for the dressing room. This scene is repeated twice, as two more limousines make their way into the stadium, five and ten minutes later. The second car carries young guitarist Tommy Shaw, drummer John Panozzo and his wife Debbie. The groupies muster their greatest energy for this car. As the youngest member of Styx and because of his good looks and flowing blond hair, Tommy Shaw is extremely popular with young girls. Some of his fans are now demonstrating their affection by covering his car with their bodies. John and Debbie Panozzo pay no attention to the frenzy. Tommy Shaw merely smiles, and shortly all of them are inside the sports arena dressing room. By the time the last and final car appears, spectacularly black in the California rain, the groupies’ enthusiasm has waned. Most of them have started tiptoeing through the puddles back to their hiding places to regroup for the band’s departure in a couple of hours.” Tommy
”
”
Chuck Panozzo (The Grand Illusion: Love, Lies, and My Life with Styx: The Personal Journey of "Styx" Rocker Chuck Panozzo)
“
agency, where she’d filled seemingly endless paperwork despite all the forms she’d already filled out online, and was now in proud possession of the keys to a Honda Civic. It was nine o’clock in the morning, and the sky outside was as gray as pewter, with mean little flakes of snow, not the fluffy, festive kind, drifting down on a muted grey landscape of concrete and leafless trees. Claire dumped her bag in the trunk—or the boot, she supposed, someone in England would call it. Claire had always loved her godmother Ruth’s English accent, and when she was a kid she’d quizzed Ruth on all the different British words. Pavement for sidewalk. Jumper for sweater. Rubber for eraser. The last one, of course, had caused eleven-year-old Claire to burst into muffled giggles of embarrassment and mirth. Ruth had just smiled, her eyes twinkling, sharing the admittedly immature joke. Slowly, very conscious she was driving on the other side of the road, Claire pulled onto the road, and then followed signs for the M62 and York. An hour and a half later, those mean little flakes of snow had turned thick and fluffy and white. They were beautiful, but her little car was not handling the snowy roads all that
”
”
Kate Hewitt (A Yorkshire Christmas (Christmas Around the World Series, #2))
“
Raised in privilege, Robert Moses was always cushioned from real life; from the age of nine, he slept in a custom-made bed and was served dinner prepared by the family’s cook on fine china. As Parks Commissioner, he swindled Long Island farmers and homeowners out of their land to build his parkways—essentially cattle chutes that skirted the properties of the rich, allowing those well-off enough to own a car to get to beaches disfigured by vast parking lots. He cut the city off from its waterfront with expressways built to the river’s edge, and the parks he built were covered with concrete rather than grass, leaving the city grayer, not greener, than it had been before. The ambient racism of the time hardly excuses his shocking contempt for minorities: of the 255 new playgrounds he built in the 1930s, only one was in Harlem. (Physically separated from the city by wrought-iron monkeys.) In the decade after the Second World War, he caused 320,000 people to be evicted from their homes; his cheap, sterile projects became vertical ghettos that fomented civic decay for decades. If some of his more insane schemes had been realized—a highway through the sixth floor of the Empire State Building, the Lower Manhattan Expressway through today’s SoHo, the Battery Bridge whose approaches would have eliminated Castle Clinton and Battery Park—New York as we know it would be nearly uninhabitable. There is a name for what Robert Moses was engaged in: class warfare, waged not with armored vehicles and napalm, but with bulldozers and concrete.
”
”
Taras Grescoe
“
The next morning, Steve and John were sitting on the porch of the house, taking in the nice view—which was marred only by the sight of John’s 1984 Honda Civic, with 210,000 miles on it. “The paint was just sunburned off,” says Lasseter. “The seats were shot—I put T-shirts over them. Steve had driven up in their Jeep Cherokee. Now he knew the roads I had to drive on every day.” “Don’t tell me that’s your car,” Steve said. “Yeah, it is,” John told him. “You drive to and from Pixar on these roads in that car?” Steve said. Lasseter sheepishly nodded. “Okay. No, no, no, no. No, that just won’t do.” “Steve,” said Lasseter, “I’ve got to be honest, I can’t afford a new car right now. We just bought this house and it’s far more than we can afford. I just can’t do it now.” “I think what he was thinking,” Lasseter told me, “was, ‘Oh my God, I bet the farm on this guy, and he’s driving that crap car … if a truck hits him—dink!—he’ll be dead.’ ” “Okay,” Steve said, “we’ll figure something out.” When Lasseter got his next paycheck, it contained a small bonus. “You have to use this to buy a new car,” Steve told him. “It has to be safe, and I have to approve it.” John and Nancy picked out a Volvo, and Steve approved.
”
”
Brent Schlender (Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader)
“
Let’s take my car. Is that alright?” “Yes, sir.” I followed him to a Honda Civic; it was sleek and silver, and outshone my ten-year-old Camry.
”
”
Suzy Ayers (Erotic Fantasies)
“
Carl pulled up in a green Honda Civic, a surprisingly ugly car, considering how nondescript it was. It looked like the kind of car that a man who sold calendars door-to-door would drive.
”
”
Kevin Wilson (Nothing to See Here)
“
With the best Trackless Train Rental Houston has to offer, look no further than Spring Party Rentals. This train will be a huge hit at your next birthday party, church function, corporate event, parade, fundraiser or civic event. A is a surefire way to make your next party in Houston, TX and the surrounding areas a huge success. With striking similarities to a real life train, your guests will feel just like they're riding the rails. With 3 cars to hold passengers and an engine in the front.
”
”
Trackless Train Rental Houston
“
Jaguar model names sound like rockets: XJ–S, XJ8, E–Type. Hondas sound like cars designed by pacifists and humanitarian diplomats. The Accord, Civic, Insight.
”
”
Paul Beatty (The Sellout)
“
Charlestown’s most characteristic pastime had long been the reckless sport of “looping.” The young “looper” played by a rigid set of rules. First, he stole a car in downtown Boston. Then he roared into Charlestown, accelerating as he reached City Square, where the District 15 police station stood in a welter of bars, nightclubs, and pool halls. Often he had to take a turn around the square before the first policeman dashed for his patrol car or motorcycle. Then the chase was on: down Chelsea Street to Hayes Square, up the long slope of Bunker Hill Street to St. Francis de Sales’ Church at the crest, then down again, picking up speed, often to 70 or 80 miles per hour, until a screeching left into Sullivan Square took him onto Main Street, where, dodging the stanchions of the El, he roared into City Square again, completing the “loop.” All that remained was to ditch the car before the police caught up. Looping was an initiation rite, proof that a Townie had come of age. But it was something else as well: a challenge flung at authority, a middle finger raised to the powers that be. Before long, looping became a kind of civic spectacle, pitting the Town’s young heroes against the forces of law and order. Plans for a loop circulated well in advance. At the appointed hour, hundreds of men, women, and children gathered along Bunker Hill Street, awaiting the gladiators. When the stolen car came in sight, racing up the long hill, a cheer would rise from the spectators, followed by jeers for the pursuing policemen. The first recorded “loop” was performed in 1925 by a sixteen-year-old daredevil named Jimmy “Speed King” Murphy, but most renowned of all was “Shiner” Sheehan, the teenage son of a federal alcohol agent, whose exploits so electrified the Town that he drew round him a group of young acolytes. Membership in their “Speeders Club” was limited to those who could produce newspaper clippings showing they had bested the police.
”
”
J. Anthony Lukas (Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (Pulitzer Prize Winner))
“
By 1937, Charlestown’s civic leaders were fed up with the practice, which had blighted the Town’s reputation. A committee demanded that the Police Commissioner end looping “at all costs.” Late that year, authorities announced that any captured looper would be publicly flogged on a platform in City Square. The plan was never implemented, but increased police surveillance led to the arrest of seventy-seven loopers in 1937 alone. The next March, Mayor Maurice Tobin ordered Bunker Hill Street dug up at three locations to create “bottlenecks” slightly wider than an automobile wheel base and filled with low concrete pyramids. If these traps weren’t negotiated at low speeds the pyramids would rupture the car’s undercarriage.
”
”
J. Anthony Lukas (Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (Pulitzer Prize Winner))
“
The city’s garment industry thrived on cheap immigrant labor and inexpensive transit services. But the combination of rapidly increasing ridership and insufficient funding for the subways created a problem that raised the ire of numerous civic groups in the mid-1920s. A leader of the Metropolitan Housewives’ League pointed out “the inhuman, indecent, and dangerous crowding and jamming of passengers, the unclean trains and platforms, and especially the conditions of the public waiting and toilet rooms which are filthy, unsanitary and disease breeding.” Likewise, the City Club of New York told city officials, “We do not get a civilized ride for a nickel today. We get instead a chance to hang on, like a chimpanzee, to a flying ring suspended from the roof of the car while we are crushed to the point of indecency by our fellow sufferers.
”
”
Philip Mark Plotch (Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City)
“
We have all heard the sceptics who warn that serious action to fight climate change and energy scarcity will lead us into decades of hardship and sacrifice. When it comes to cities, they are absolutely wrong. In fact, sustainability and the good life can be by-products of the very same interventions. Alex Boston, the Golder planner who advises dozens of cities on climate and energy, doesn’t even ask civic leaders about their greenhouse gas reduction aspirations when they first start talking. ‘We ask, “What are your core community priorities?”’ says Boston. ‘People don’t talk about climate change. They say they want economic development, livability, mobility, housing affordability, taxes, all stuff that relates to happiness.’ These are just the concerns that have caused us to delay action on climate change. But Boston insists that by focusing on the relationship between energy, efficiency and the things that make life better, cities can succeed where scary data, scientists, logic and conscience have failed. The happy city plan is an energy plan. It is a climate plan. It is a belt-tightening plan for cash-strapped cities. It is also an economic plan, a jobs plan and a corrective for weak systems. It is a plan for resilience. THE GREEN SURPRISE Consider the by-product of the happy city project in Bogotá. Enrique Peñalosa told me that he did not feel the urgency of the global environmental crisis when he was elected mayor. His urban transformation was not motivated by a concern for spotted owls or melting glaciers or soon-to-be-flooded residents of villages on some distant coral atoll. Still, a funny thing happened near the end of his term. After making Bogotá easier, cleaner, more beautiful and more fair, the mayor and his city started winning accolades from environmental organizations. In 2000 Peñalosa and Eric Britton were called to Sweden to accept the Stockholm Challenge Award for the Environment, for pulling 850,000 vehicles off the street during the world’s biggest car-free day. Then the TransMilenio bus system was lauded for producing massive reductions in Bogotá’s carbon dioxide emissions.fn1, 3 It was the first transport system to be accredited under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism – meaning that Bogotá could actually sell carbon credits to polluters in rich countries. For its public space transformations under mayors Peñalosa, Antanas Mockus and their successor, Luis Garzón, the city won the Golden Lion prize from the prestigious Venice Architecture Biennale. For its bicycle routes, its new parks, its Ciclovía, its upside-down roads and that hugely popular car-free day, Bogotá was held up as a shining example of green urbanism. Not one of its programmes was directed at the crisis of climate change, but the city offered tangible proof of the connection between urban design, experience and the carbon energy system. It suggested that the green city, the low-carbon city and the happy city might be exactly the same destination.
”
”
Charles Montgomery (Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design)
“
Talk radio filters through the air from a Honda Civic on the passenger-side flank of the car. Today’s program is about violent encounters with wildlife on the fringe of urban spaces. One of the guests is a mother of three who was attacked by a pack of raccoons while trying to return a pair of sneakers to a local Foot Locker just after closing. “They took the box from my hands and began pawing through it. They chewed at the brand detailing, the little swoosh. I think it was because of the leather scent they spray in these things, just too completely real. But if it can fool a wild animal, it must be a high-quality product.” The driver of the Civic is female, in her twenties, with a lime-green streak in her hair. When she looks over, Horseshoe smiles at her and waves with his cigarette hand. She looks away.
”
”
Alexandra Kleeman (Something New Under the Sun)