99% Invisible - 242- Mini-Stories: Volume 2

Episode Date: January 11, 2017

Part 2 where host Roman Mars talks to the 99pi producers about their favorite “Mini-Stories.” These are little anecdotes or seeds of a story about design and architecture that can’t quite stretch into a full episode, but we love them … Continue reading →

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. This is from Twitter. Hey Roman Mars and 99PI work. I have a burning question for you. Why do US flags on military vehicles and uniforms always appear backwards? That's from Michael McAlvin. Well, first of all, they're only backwards part of the time.

Military regulations state that when a flag is displayed, it must give the effect of that flag flying in the breeze, as if the person wearing it is moving forward. So if the patch is on the left arm, the flag is displayed as you normally think of it, with that blue star field in the upper left hand corner. But if the flag patch is on the right arm, it's the reverse side flag that's displayed, with the blue star field in the upper right hand corner. The same goes for vehicles. The blue star field always points towards the front of the vehicle as if it's flying and we're charging forward to victory. So if you're looking at the right side of a tank or an aircraft, you'll see

the reverse flag. This is part two of the mini stories episode where I interview the staff about their favorite little design stories that don't quite fill out an entire episode for whatever reason, but they are cool 99pi stories nonetheless. Plus, in between the staff stories, I'll be telling a few mini stories suggested by you, beautiful nerds, who enjoy having me paraphrase Google search results and read them out loud. Alright, first, the senior editor, Katie Mingle.

My name is Katie Mingle and I am the senior editor. What does that mean? I do the same stuff that we all do in some ways which is like find stories and report on them and make them. But I also edit a lot. So I look at other people's stories on paper before they go to like a larger group at it and I cut like five pages out of every story. No, I cut, I probably cut like four minutes and sometimes do some restructuring and just kind of try to get it ready. Right.

So that it's a little more smooth when the whole group looks at it. And so even though we don't hear your voice in every story, you have worked on every story because you've edited almost every story that comes out of it. Yes, I'm lurking behind every 99 PI story. Cool. Okay, so but in addition to that, you do pitch stories. And so part of coming up with story ideas is basically just trolling around the internet, trying to find things to turn things into stories.

And that's how this one came to you. Yeah, huge amounts of time just like following links. That's sort of like how this one came about. And I ended up on this YouTube video about this place called The Biker Wall, which is in Newcastle, England. And it's being narrated by this woman wearing this amazing sort of double-breasted suit jacket. And she's just super, super 80s.

Her name's Beatrix Campbell. In the video, she's sort of walking around outside the Biker Wall or the Biker estate. It's big and it's small, it's cheap and cheerful, it's cheeky and it's clever. I don't really know how it's big and small, but and I'm not sure that ever we ever really figure that out. So the structure or the sort of a state that she's talking about,

it actually replaced an entire neighborhood. So let me just give you a little background. In 1963 in Newcastle, England, a 17,000 resident working-class neighborhood called Biker, so the same name as this new place, was demolished because it was considered a slum and I think there were a lot of vacancies. And the neighborhood was made up of sort of Victorian row housing and like if you've ever seen the movie Billy Elliott, and you can like picture him sort of dancing through these like brick houses and really, really close together and narrow streets.

That's the old biker. That's the old biker and I think that movie was actually filmed really close to the old biker neighborhood. Street by street, the old slums were cleared, while street by street, the new biker was built. So yeah, in place of the old neighborhood of brick row houses, this architect named Ralph Erskin built the new place, which is called Biker Wall, or sometimes Biker Estate. And it's a community of public housing that is enclosed by this great big wall of apartments. The wall is a mile and a half long, and it provides a barrier to winds coming off the North Sea and also highway noise. There's a big freeway or expressway nearby.

It creates this microclimate within the community. It's basically this big wall that wraps around these other buildings and closing them. In Campbell, she has some very vivid descriptions, but she says the way it's constructed and laid out reminds her of a pomegranate. It's kind of like a pomegranate. It's fruity, hard edges, and soft sweet places inside. Yeah. And if you're feeling like at all, like that was a little sexual,

it gets like, there's more. But what does all this mean for architecture? Is it modernist, a postmodernist, or what? For sure, it abolishes aggressive, phallic architecture, all those gray erections which puncture the skyline. Maybe it's a Volvo architecture. It's round.

It goes with the contours of the landscape. It's an enclosure rather than a disclosure. Full of nukes and crannies, layers and levels and surprises. Woo! That's incredible! Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah, so if you didn't hear that, it abolishes aggressive,

phallic architecture in those gray erections that punctured this guy like for a vulval architecture. F*** those gray erections. Oh, that's so great. So. Yes, so I found this place and I was sort of like, I want to put this on the air, basically just to get this lady and her Volvo architecture theories on our podcast. Like, I don't know if there's a story here, but I want there to be.

But there are little cool things about Biker. There's actually a lot that's kind of neat about it. Ralph Erskin, the architect, he was a socialist and a quaker, and he really wanted to build a place that fostered community. And he'd also studied buildings in the Arctic and how they were constructed to sort of shield the inner courtyards from winds coming in from the outside. And he wanted to do something similar, but not just to shield it from winds, but also just to enclose the residents in this...

Volvick community. Volvick community. And Erskine tried really, really hard to involve a bunch of the residents from the old biker in the redesign of the new one, but despite his sort of best efforts, not that many of the original residents ended up living there, and eventually in the 80s, the place kind of turns a little bit back into Islam. There's a lot of crime and vacancies and a lot of the places sort of fall into disrepair. The Guardian said this about the New Biker Estate. For all its faults, Biker Wall was an exemplar of both design and an attempt to involve the community in the changes planned for them by those in power, that it failed in so many ways, reveals that it's rarely in the interests of communities to demolish the

homes they live in. Yeah, so that's, to me, that's just sort of like, you can try really hard to do it right and it still might come out wrong. Right. Right. So, and Beatrix Campbell, the YouTube lady, she admits that the place is flawed, but she still thinks it's pretty great.

It's flawed, of course, but at least unlike most of its contemporaries, there's a bit of democracy here. It's both monumental and modest. It's a social space and domestic. There's something like how how is it about this place? Something lovable. Okay, so I don't know if you can understand her last line there,

but she says there's something light-hearted about this place, something lovable. And then if you scroll down and just a little ways that they'll comment on the videos, they didn't tell them it was Carl Orff 24-7 in this place. And Carl Orff, I think what that comment is getting at is that it was really a kind of a dark place to live because Carl Orff wrote this tune. That's pretty dark. That's the Biker wall. Cool.

Thank you, Katie. Yeah. In 2014, the Biker Community Trust started a multi-million dollar revamp of the Biker wall with lots of improvements, including broadband in every property. So I hope it's not all Carl Orph up there anymore. If indeed it ever was. Tell me who you were. I am Sheree Fusef, assistant producer at 99PI.

And what does that mean? What do you do? I sort of do a lot of the pro-tool stuff. So working with the actual tape for a lot of the producer's stories. I score and sound design a lot of the pieces. I do research and fact checking, so I basically do whatever needs to be done. And so what is your mini story?

So things that are creative are relatively simple to copyright. You write a song, copyright, you write a book, it's easy to get copyrighted, and it's easy to prove that you've done this thing. But a question arises when you try to copyright something that is based in fact some sort of objective reality, like the definition of a word, and dictionaries are an entry for a person and an encyclopedia, or in this case, maps,

when I know you like a good map story. So I love a good map story. Yeah, so this story is about a town called Aglow, New York. And it was in the 1930s, the general drafting company was creating a map of New York state. So they put in a lot of hours and a lot of manpower detailing all the rivers and gorges and finger lakes and towns. And they said, we put in so much work, you know, we have to protect our investment. So they set a copyright trap.

Near the Northwest corner of Pennsylvania, just a couple miles into New York, they put a little town next to Roscoe, New York called Aglow. And Aglow, I believe, is actually a jumble of the initials of the founders names, a G L O E. And so they put this on the map and they know that if another map shows Aglow, New York, that person was copying their map. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So they create this fictitious town.

It's on the map. And it's like sold in SO stations around the state. And for a while, everything is all hunky-dory. But then several years later, another map comes out. And they open the map, and lo and behold, Aglow was on it. This company was called Rand McNally Drafting Company. Busted. Yeah, that's what they thought. So, the general drafting company goes, Yo, Rand McNally, you stole our map and we're going to sue you. And Rand McNally is like, no, no, wait, this is an actual place.

Let's go and take a look. And so the general drafting company people are like, okay, sure, take us to Aglow. So they go to this place where Aglow should be and low and behold, there is actually a big general store there, a small general store actually. And it's called the Aglow General Store. And there are a couple houses, maybe two at its peak.

And so the story goes, some people, maybe from the neighboring towns, wandered to this place, wanted to build a general store, saw that the map said Aglow is here, but nothing was there. So when they wanted to build the store, they just slapped on the aggloname. So

this place that was created as a fictitious copyright trap sort of sprang up into reality. So this sort of became famous because this author, John Green, wrote a book called Paper Towns that is set in agglonia york. And he gave a TEDx talk about agglonia york and about the concept of paper towns as well. And it was since turned into a movie. So we thought the story might not be a great fit for us, because people in our audience might already be really familiar with it.

But we can talk about it a little bit, and if you want to learn more, you should look up John Green, because he and his brother Hank make these great videos, you learn all kinds of things. And I know people who like this show will totally love what they do on YouTube. So check them out. And you are...

I'm Kurt Colstead and I'm the digital director at 9% Amvisible. And describe what that means. Sure, I produce web stories for the show, and I take care of all of our digital content. So, several years ago, I remember being in the waiting room waiting for Maslow who was in surgery. It's all turned out fine. I got an email from a firefighter and she said, do you know anything about Knox boxes, which are these little invisible elements that you see everywhere in urban

environments? But you probably never noticed them. So please tell us what is a Knox box? Yeah, Knox box in simple terms is a rapid entry system. It allows emergency personnel to get into buildings quickly when there's a disaster going on. For example, when there's a fire in your apartment building and the fire department is trying to get in quickly, they show up, they open the Knox box, get out a key, and enter the building. So describe it like physically. So it's like a little box that's up against a wall, like post-iron wall.

A Knox box will typically be found within a few feet of an entryway. It's an eye level. It's a black box usually with a little red on it, so it's easy to spot. So the fire department shows up. They grab a hole in this little box and they use their master key to open it and enter the building. So if there's a fire inside, they don't want to break in and all the doors and windows. They just, if there's a key available, they can use it.

Right. In an emergency, they're not worried about, you know, the property damage. Of course, that's a byproduct, but they're worried about injuring themselves, right? So if they have to break a glass door and jump through that glass door, that puts them at greater risk. It also takes more time to get into the building. This saves them time, reduces the injury of injury risk, and just lets them in quickly. And so how does the whole system work? So they have a master key that opens up all the

Knox boxes. Right. So their master key opens up all the Knox boxes for all the different buildings. And that means when they arrive at a building, they don't have to sort through a bunch of keys, figure out how they're going to get into that particular building. They just whip out their one key, stick it in the Knox box, open it up, and inside of that, they will find whatever key they need to access that particular building. What is the name Knox come from? Knox is a company that produces a lot of these boxes.

And so technically, generically, you might call them a rapid entry system. But Knox makes so many of them that it has become an everyday household name for these things. Knoxbox, like Kleenex. Like Kleenex. Yeah, exactly, okay. Cool.

So like if you were in any populated area, you will see a ton of these, right? Like they're everywhere. Yeah, you are surrounded by Knoxboxes, basically anywhere you go. You probably pass a dozen or so of these, just walking down the street every day. So on every block, every city, you'll find some equivalent of an oxbox attached to the outside

of the building. And once you start seeing these, you will see them everywhere. They are at a high level. They're made to be seen. And yet they're somehow strangely invisible until you start noticing them. So cool. This was one of those great examples of a short story that was just, it's an anecdote more than a story, so it made sense to just put it up on the web and, uh, and call it good. Right. And so we have tons of those. We have a whole website devoted to them at 99pi.org. Thanks to Nicky, the former firefighter for the Knox Box suggestion all those years ago. Last week I got this mini-story suggestion from Tucson, Arizona resident Megan Phillips.

In Tucson, roads running east-west are called street. Roads running north-south are called avenue, that all makes sense. But what is unique to Tucson is that any diagonal roads are called Stravenew, a portmanteau of street in Avenue. That is an official designation that's not just slang, and I think that's pretty cool. When I got Megan's note, I was sitting next to famous portmanteau skeptic hellenzultzman of the illusionist. That's radio toky, it's a claimed word podcast,

and I asked her what she thought. I know your general opinion port Anto is pretty negative. I think that's unfair. I think where Portmanteaux are useful is to express a concept for which you don't have a proper term and it's related to concepts that you do already have terms for. However, in this case, I feel like the Portmanteaux fixing a problem that doesn't really exist I feel like the portanto is fixing a problem that doesn't really exist. And that problem is that the people of Tucson are just very much too dependent on things either being streets or avenues. And I've come from Britain, which does not have such a binary road naming system. So you might get a street that is called a street or a road or an avenue or a

present or a boulevard or not even have a road term at all. And it could go in any direction. So live and let live too, so. It's a very pro-design, pro-grid show. I'm sorry that you had to hear that, my nerds, but I assure you, Helen Zoltmann's The Illusionist is a fantastic podcast that will teach and entertain you about words and the strange consequences of language. But I won't have Helen planning my city,

because Grids rule. man, I'm so excited to, I was about to say I'm so excited to get this story out of my system, but honestly, I still think it would make a good story. I think everyone is wrong and I think I'm right and I wanted to, I'm still holding out a hold. Sorry, I, yeah. Maybe the, there'd be a groundswell that they need to know the whole story at the end. Maybe, maybe, or I'm just worried that people will hear it and be like,

oh yeah, no, it doesn't work, which would mean I'm totally crazy. Let's find out. So, okay, so tell me who you are. I'm Avery Truffleman. What do you do here? I'm a producer at 99% invisible. Okay.

So, we're telling all the type of stories that we can't tell on the radio for various reasons. Maybe they were little parts of stories that got cut out because they were too confusing. Maybe they were, you know, like a little too small to constitute, like putting a whole episode about, but this one, this one, this one is different. Why, why is it different? This was supposed to be my magnum opus. This was the one that got away. I mean, I made it like two years ago.

And so at the time, I was like, this is it. I was already planning out like the T-shirts we would sell about this episode. And like, and it just, it didn't happen. Okay, so what is this story? This is about the most iconic poster in the world. It is a poster we have all seen it is a poster we have all been forced to see. It is. This is Vince. This is Vince. It is this poster. Can you read that line there? D-A-O-6. It is that pyramid arrangement of black letters on a white background. It is usually got a big E at the top when each line of letters gets progressively smaller. It is that pyramid arrangement of black letters on a white background. It has usually got a big E at the top, and each line of letters gets progressively smaller. It is a vision chart, and it has an official name. What's the name?

It is called the Snellen chart. After the Dutch ophthalmologist Herman Snellen, who invented it in 1862. Anything here? EVO-TZ2. You are perfectly 2020. The way it works is that you read off the series of letters on each line, and if you get the majority right, you get to move to the next line. Then you pass. And I went to a bunch of ophthalmologists, and I took this vision test, a bunch of times. And according to Mirolim, this very kind ophthalmologists, and I took this vision test a bunch of times. And according to

Mirolim, this very kind ophthalmologist who works up the street from us. By convention, you always use the SNELLEN chart. This just works well. It's what everybody has. And a big part of why the SNELLEN chart works really well is because it's easy to memorize. And a lot of ophthalmologists and eye doctors have memorized their chart. ESLCAVA, DAO6, EGNU5, FZBD4, OFLC2, APEO25, EVOTZ2. There you go.

Whoa, so that's just her, she just rattles it off. She rattles it off. And that's it, because if you think about it, then they don't have to squint with you to make sure you got each one right, or they don't even have to follow along on a paper. Like if they haven't memorized, they can just be like, up wrong, up wrong, and they can assess you really quickly. Which if you're an eye doctor, you're doing this to every single patient, and then this makes this ads minutes to your day

once you have it memorized. So this known chart is iconic. You can see it on like mugs and ties and whatever. It's everywhere, just that layout is classic. Right. But it has an obvious problem. This is the thing I have a hard time describing. Let me try it out.

Okay, the way the test works, you read the line, you get the majority right, and then you get to go to the next line. But if every line has a different amount of letters on it, it's basically a different test every time. Right. You can get one line, it's okay to get three wrong, the next line, it's okay to get whatever, four wrong. It's a different test every time. You can get one line, it's okay to get three wrong, the next line, it's okay

to get whatever, four wrong. It's a different test every time. You have different odds. If you got three out of five right in the 2020 row, you would be given 2020. But if I said, let me repeat that, and you only got two letters right in that same row, now you would have 2025. It's just shockingly imprecise, it's unbelievable. That is. That is Dr. Ian Bailey. And in the 70s, he helped design a more precise vision chart that has five letters on every single line.

I think our chart design could be compared with designing a ruler where you say, why don't we make the markings along the ruler of the same size? It seems obvious. And so he has five big letters at the top, five letters on the next line, five letters on the next line, all spaced equally apart. It's very precise. But if you visualize it for a second, right, instead of one giant letter at the top, there are five giant letters at the top,

which means that it is a physically bigger chart. It's just wider. Right. And also that means it looks more like an upside down pyramid. So you have five really big letters at the top, and then five smaller letters, and then five smaller letters, and then they get tiny, tiny, tiny tiny but they're still always five. Yeah exactly.

And then the thing is he also had to pick which letters to use and so some letters are more comfortable like C and G. Some letters are very distinct like Z and A. And so he also had this like design challenge of making sure that you wouldn't have one line of like, oh easy letters and one line of difficult letters to make sure they distribute evenly. And he also had to make sure that there wasn't like because he designed it in Australia and he wanted to make sure N and Z weren't next to each other because people would be like, oh New Zealand and like create associations with shapes. Interesting. So yeah, it was like a, it was a really tough chart to design. That's the logmarch art. That's called the logmarchart.

It is one of many improved charts, but the problem is, so yeah, the chart is a lot bigger and wider, but physically it takes up more wall space, which a lot of offices can't actually accommodate. And since there are five letters on every row, it means there are more letters for doctors to memorize. And actually, Dr. Bailey hasn't memorized his own chart. Not exactly.

I can still remember the SNELLEN chart that I used to have when I was in private practice. Can you recite it? Yep. ECB, DLN, PTEO. Long story short, the memorization is really key to why the snow and chart works. It's like what everyone is used to. The old pyramid shape is like easier to memorize. So the vision chart presents this really interesting question about what really makes a design good. Because on the one hand, you have charts like the logmarchart, like Dr.

Bailey's chart, which are standardized and precise and just a better tool, but a little harder to accommodate and a little harder to accommodate and a little harder to use. And then on the other hand, you have the classic snow in chart, which is less precise, but way easier to memorize, which means it's a more efficient test for doctors. Plus, if it's conveniently on a wall,

it is memorable, quick, easy, imprecise, and totally iconic. There's probably more scientific ways of measuring vision, but it's a pretty good way of assessing how well you can see in functions. So it's good, it does work, and it's a lot easier than the other way you could do it. So you see both versions of the chart around, and just next time you get your eyes checked, you can see which design your doctor has opted for. If you see the traditional pyramid, SNELLEN chart shape, that means it's more efficient for the doctor to use. And if you see the upside-down

logmarr shape, that means it's just a more precise tool for measuring vision. But like both are good designs, just in really different ways. So we just gave the most cursory explanation of these two different charts and the design implications of each of them, but when the whole story was being scripted, it had lots of different details and it ended up getting more and more confusing about what 2020 vision actually was and all this sort of stuff. And eventually we just decided just to kill the story and not actually produce a full version of it, which is an ongoing tragedy. We were reminded of all the time that this one never really made it.

I researched the hell out of this. I'm still subscribed to the Ophthalmology National Newsletter, and I see this chart everywhere. And it really... Can I say pisses me off? It really pisses me off. Because I've had this tape lying around forever. I even made this really fun medley of songs. Check it out. Twenty, twenty vision. Twenty, twenty vision. Twenty, twenty vision.

That is the end of the mini stories. Happy 2017 everyone. Normal episodes commence next week with less giggling, but we might try this again a couple times a year if people are into it. We had a huge response to the last episode, so if you have a mini story suggestion, send it our way and maybe we'll address it at the end of the year. 99% invisible is Katie Mingle, Delaney Hall, Kurt Colstead, Sharif Usef, Sam Greenspan, Avery, Trouffleman, Emmett Fitzgerald, Terran Mazza, and me Roman Mars. We are a project of 91.7K ALW San Francisco and produced on Radio Row in beautiful downtown Oakland, California.

You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars and the show at 99PI org. We're on Instagram and Tumblr too. But to get the full 99PI experience, you need to go to 99pi.org. Radio TIPI. From P-R-X.