7 - 30 - 09: Alviso, California leading to New Chicago Marsh.** 

               ~this is a map of a peculiar "gallery" (or was it a burial ground/drunk kids masterpiece, all of the above?) ,
               discovered by accident in the deserted and painfully discolored marshland of Alviso~

coordinates:
1. "X" = the spot where this map was created, near the historic Laine house and its collapsing neighbor.
     (the arrow points northwest to a trail where Danny advised us to go, but Stay OUT of the water!)
2. -well beyond Alviso, along the tracks. yes that IS the water.
3. -revised stonehenge # 1. the mutant.
4. -revised stonehenge # 2. mixed media AND audio too.
5. -deep in the outback, and a sign of previous life
6. -revised stonehenge # 3
7. -revised stonehenge # 4: a more minimal approach.
8. -revised stonehenge # 5: the spookiest-looking one of all.
9. -revised stonehenge # 6
10.-cannery mural of Drawbridge
11.-a warning
12.-stranded


We searched and searched for our El Dorado, our sinking Drawbridge town in yellow marshes corroded with pink
plasticky deposits from who-knows-where...."Beware of the water...cuz if you fall in...you ain't gettin out." -words
from the wise, aka Danny, creator of this map.   What we found instead was a small series of monuments left without
explanation, in the middle of nowhere, mysterious artworks that stand without audience, save for the roar of passing
trains, and the occasional rare explorer like myself.

What can i say, follow the dots that tell the tale of our trek to another neverwhere, up the railroad tracks, through a
perilous and appallingly discolored swamp named "New Chicago Marsh," dotted with strange monolithic offerings
(or some drunk kid's take at Modern Art) , back to the historically forgotton town of Alviso, with its ghost marinas
and collapsing former grocery store/chinese lottery/antique store buildings which shake and quiver as each train
rushes past.

The visible and the invisible intersect in well-past-their-heyday towns like Alviso, the type of place that's left
off of most maps of the San Jose/San Francisco Bay Area. Its just the David Lynch aesthetics returning in me,
that draws me to explore small towns and their casts of characters.

Where does this map fit within the age of media and information that we live in? It fits in the many towns that exist
in slumber, and in the minds and awareness of those who just look.   This town saw the failure of its steamship industry,
its cannery, its salt evaporation ponds, its marina, and its watch company.  Yet what IS there is so fascinating, like a
mysterious transport into the past yet a "presence" just as solid.


**it was called New Chicago Marsh in keeping with a development that never really came to fruition. No one there
was actually from Chicago, it was just an optimistic name by a guy who wanted to bring his failing watch company
to prosper in Alviso in the 1890's, and he imagined that his development would take street names from Chicago, like
Dearborn, Wabash, LaSalle, Michigan....