by Alex Marshall - articles and essays

Articles Drawn From My Regular Columns:

A Scary Trip to the Suburbs - "The cinema we chose is one of the big new movie complexes in Hampton Roads. Its innovation is not only stadium seating on some screens, but to package what is basically an entire amusement park around its 13 auditoriums. You enter this big box behind a strip shopping center and find yourself ushered into a gymnasium-size hall. Its two floors hold not only long rows of elaborate video games, but bumper cars, laser tag, miniature golf, skeeball and more -- all amid waterfalls flowing over fake stone." Click on link for full article.

Don't Let Kirn Library Fly Away - "Beauty is a funny thing. It reflects, I think more and more, the relationship one has with an object, as much as the object's inherent characteristics in space and on the ground. Kirn was built in 1960-1962, financed in part by a grant from the Kirn family. Built as part of the urban renewal process that was then tearing apart the city, this sleek masterpiece of glass, steel and marble rose on its site on City Hall Avenue, now directly across from the MacArthur Mall. It replaced the beautiful, but small, Carnegie-funded library on Freemason Street, whose building still stands, but which unfortunately the city no longer owns." Click on link for full article.

Biking Amid The Cars - "When I suggested a while back accommodating bikes more on local roads, Addis, who has become the leading supporter of the traffic-jammed, suburban status quo, could only think of Bejing or Bombay. Yellow and brown hordes on rusty bicycles jostling for space on dusty roads with chickens and stray dogs yapping at their heels. Who wants that? But a different image comes to my mind. I think of two of the wealthiest and most civilized cities on earth -- Amsterdam and Copenhagen. In my travels there, I remember beautiful women in elegant skirts, and men wearing fine linen suits, bicycling along to work or shopping." Click on link for full article.

Passing Out The Favors - "Now here's the kicker . Not only is this favored quarter getting most of the private investment, it's also getting most of the public investment. Here is where is going the lion's share of new roads, sewers, schools and libraries." Click on link for full article.

Romance Novels - To A Man - Read Like Female Porn - "It is sexism, Wynde said, adding that women read romance novels, and the male literary world dismisses the books because of that. Playing around with guns, Wynde said, is more respectable than playing around with good-looking young men who might rip your bodice. Romance novels, Wynde said, get their power by using ``heightened emotional intensity, not action.'' So putting down romance is putting down emotions." Click on link for full article.

A Secret Weapon In The Battle With Warts - But the warts came back. Nitrogen worked on one or two warts on my thumb and hand, but foot warts were like Japanese guerrilla fighters, refusing to give up their positions even under the most withering fire." Click on link for full article.