human powered smoke generator

“As Pittsburgh attacked its smoke problem, the view looked clearer and clearer, and the city looked worse and worse to the spectator.”

(from: The Spectator and the Topographical City by Martin Aurand)

If blight is a problem in Larimer, black smoke could be its traditionally approved cover up. The post-industrial production of black smoke should of course be a healthy activity. Like a sport. Let’s say 10 chimneys get installed in Larimer, each one connected to a machine that has the possibility to produce black smoke by burning human energy (through the operation of a stationary bicycle for example.) If people in Larimer feel like raising hell, or working (out) they go to the chimneys and blow off some steam. The black smoke can be seen from far away.

Turn-of-the-twentieth-century Pittsburgh guidebooks included industrial and engineering sites and encouraged visitors to view and tour the manufactories that made Pittsburgh the workshop of the world and a tourist attraction. When visitor James Parton described Hell-with-the-lid-taken-off Pittsburgh, it was, he said in a sublime analogy, “a spectacle as striking as Niagara.”

(from: The Spectator and the Topographical City by Martin Aurand)

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