Mix-and-match 'street furniture' makes our cities feel like home

The term "street furniture" makes some think of city workers standing by a pile of Ikea parts, puzzling over the instructions for assembling the SIIDWAKQ, swearing that the thing is missing some screws.

Really. I always think that, but this time they forgot the pan-head A-3 screw -- oh, wait, here it is.

No, the term refers to the humble, ubiquitous items that add utility to the urban landscape -- bus shelters, trash cans, newspaper racks, benches.

Apparently our furniture is a frat-house jumble. We lack a consistent aesthetic profile for our trash-cans. Most people sleep through the night despite this fact, but there's a movement afoot to upgrade our street furniture. Meetings were held this week on the matter; citizen input has been solicited. Allow me to make some suggestions.

What should we do with newspaper boxes in the future, for example? Turn them into slot machines? Put enough flashing lights on the boxes, and people will feed them quarters without the certain expectation of an immediate reward. Why this business model never occurred to anyone in print journalism, I have no idea. Newspapers would be in better financial shape if we didn't give you a paper for two quarters for the first 20 attempts, then blurted out a Sunday edition.

No, we should replace them with urchins. The rise of the newspaper box was a crippling blow to grimy, street-wise urchins who hawked papers to passersby. The urban environment would be greatly improved by newsboys, and if you've ever seen an old movie you know that men who stop to buy a paper usually find something directly relevant to their own life on the front page, usually in type reserved for an imminent comet collision.

Imagine picking up an early edition from a nervy little street-rat, snapping open the paper, and reading MAN FORGETS LAPTOP WITH POWERPOINT PRESENTATION AT HOME. It would change the way you think about papers, and it would make the street corner far more interesting.

Bus shelters: There's not much you can do. Make them clear so people can see the bus coming, enclose them on most sides so people don't die of exposure, etch the glass with a nice design, and sell a big ad for beer with a slogan sufficiently witty to make people think, "Oh, right; beer exists." Because you can't drive home that point enough, I guess. But there's no reason they should all be spare glass houses. They look like outhouses for Modernist exhibitionists.

Benches: The old concrete sofas are uncomfortable and utilitarian - you expect to see a plaque identifying it as Proletariat Keister-Rester #23. Something more ornamental, with slats and filigreed wrought-iron, would be nice. You'd lose ad space, but we can manage. I don't think they're very effective, unless you're running a billboard campaign aimed specifically at Munchkins.

Trash cans: The city has many '70s-style trash bins with pebbled rock stuck on the side and a rusty metal opening on top. They look like something installed on the cliffs of Normandy to withstand Allied bombing. The sooner we replace these tetanus-infested vermin bunkers, the better.

In short: we could stand an upgrade, but I'd hate to see things get too standardized. Visual hurly-burly is what makes streets different than mall corridors.

When I lived in by the U there was a Daily Worker newspaper box locked to a street pole, and over the years it became smothered with thick coat of agitprop stickers and Xeroxed band announcements. Whoever was supposed to supply the papers lost his zest for the cause, and it stood empty for years. The plastic window looked like a TV set tuned to a channel that had gone out of business.

Maybe that's the standard: Look at what we have now, and ask yourself if it looks like it belongs. It does? Leave it be.