part victorian, part jetsons

"The dream of the pneumatic tube will never die" ....

And so begins a carefully and beautifully collaged video of pneumatic tubes by Vox - watch til the end to see what they did with the goldfish!

mecca's tubes

With millions of worshippers visiting Mecca every year, the Saudi government needed to think of a way in which to deal with the crowds and the material consequences of that many people, namely their rubbish. Scattered around the Hajj mosque, visitors will find 400 little holes where they can deposit their trash and have it whisked away by vacuum, underneath the holy site. Read more in WIRED.

Thanks Jess for sending me this link to this fascinating use of tubes!
Image used under Creative Commons lisence, from Mohd Rasim's Flikr page.

no noise, no smell?

Those garbage tubes are making news again. This time The New York Times has published an article on the Roosevelt island tubes, which seem to never cease to amaze. The tubes are painted as noiseless, odorlous invisible labourers sucking garbage at speed, underneath the neighbourhood streets.

The journalist is surprised by how mechanical it all is. No computer screens, just dials. We hear of the ingenious methods for extracting garbage that clogs the system, from lassos and iron crosses and other medieval devices. But my favourite detail of all? The collection of house plants, salvaged from the garbage, carefully placed outside the control room.

Image my own, from my Stockholm fieldwork of the garbage tubes.

old tubes in old montreal

I have been to the beautiful city of Montreal on a few occasions. I first visited when I was nine years old, and saw felt what it was like to sink into waist deep snow for the first time. I lived there as a medical student in a basement apartment, and another time, with my sister, who generously shared her studio with me. I remember the smell of St Viateur bagels, the sound of the Tam-Tams, the taste of poutine on a Saturday night. But I cannot remember seeing the pneumatic underground. Look out next time you are in the old town - amidst those old European buildings likes another trace of Europe, but you need to keep your eyes on the ground.

Image from Envac.

more garbage, in museums and books

A short follow-up to my last posts about the pneumatic garbage disposal systems of Stockholm. For those interested in trashy matters living in the Netherlands or nearby, there is to be an exhibition on waste at the fabulous Boerhaave Museum later this month.

If you are further afield but still want to read more about the social life of garbage disposal you could grab a copy of Robin Nagle's ethnography, or read about her work in The Believer.

Robin Nagle has written about the lives of sanitation workers in New York City. Like another NYC anthropologist Wednesday Martin, who is causing waves of controversy this week with her ethnography of upper east side housewives, Nagle has mastered the art of making anthropology of public interest.

the magic underground kingdom

Earlier this week, I posted about a conference in Tallinn, with a photo of the magnificent Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. It seemed perfect to follow up that post with a picture of another building, with at least some visual similarities: Cindarella's Castle. Why? Because I have recently discovered something you may already have known about, a secret world underneath a magic one: Magic Kingdom's underground tunnels, including, of course, a pneumatic tube system.

I remember going to Disneyland when I was young, finding out it was a small world after all, riding the monorail, seeing my first 3D film, and waving glow-in-the-dark sticks with my sister during the night parade. It was an amazing holiday and my whole family had a ball. Little did we know though that the fantastical themepark had a major flaw which bugged Walt for years: cast members had to walk through one themed area, to get to another themed area, in costume, to get to and from work, looking all out of place! Disney wanted to fix this with the Florida themepark so he designed the Tunnel system:

According to blogger Steve, a long fan of Disney World who worked there for three years, the tunnel was a hive of activity, with cast members walking along, electric carts, maintenance workers on bicycles and much more. Overhead was all the electrical wiring and plumbing. And the pneumatic tube system, otherwise known as the Avac system.

The Avac system is a garbage system. Trash is picked up from Disneyworld by workers on the ground and dropped into bins which are connected to tubes. Every 20 minutes the Avac system "fires" and the trash is pushed through the large tubes with compressed air, through the whole tunnel to another collection area where garbage trucks pick it up. Apparently if you are standing in the tunnel "it sounds as if a tornado is quickly approaching, then passes you by".

Magical trash disposal! From Tomorrowland to the tip. For those as fascinated by this system and those underground tunnels as me, you are in luck. There is a walking tour which spends some time in the tunnel, something to book for your next trip to Magic Kingdom (but not for those under 16 - apparently according to Hidden Mickeys, "because it would bother children, seeing two Goofys passing each other, Mickey without a head, seeing Minnie eating with Snow White, and ruin the magic". In the meantime, for those who can't make it on the tour and aren't too afraid by what they may see, here is a link to a video of the underground.

Creative Commons image of Cindarella's Castle from Matt Wade photography, via Wikipedia. Other images from MilitaryDisneyTips.com, where much material for this blogpost was also sourced, as well as from HiddenMickeys.

maintaining the pressure/vaccum

Technology is designed, and then it is used. Once any technology is put into use, it needs some form of maintenance. Looking at the maintenance required of pneumatic tube systems reveals all forms of tinkering and improvising and adapting.  

                   

For example WIRED did a wonderful piece on the maintenance of the pneumatic sanitation system on Roosevelt Island. They talked to the Swedish contractors who "crawl through the pipes, find holes and repair them”, and find "all manner of things down the chutes that clog up the system ... Christmas trees, exercise equipment, computers, shelving and vacuum cleaners in the pipe. An electric frying pan jam turned out to be particularly troublesome". The engineers at the facility maintain the system with inventive practices, including devising ways to "drill long metal rods through the jams and then pull them out".

And whilst job advertisements for pneumatic tube system on-site Field Service Engineers state that the engineer will "provide preventive and corrective maintenance, emergency and paid service, start-up of current systems, user training, and promotion of company products & services as required", the job will no doubt involve all sorts of inventive practices that can never be captured in a job description.

Hospital pneumatic tube systems need a lot of maintenance, with their heavy traffic flows. By looking at how these systems are maintained, we can learn a lot more about the colourful life of the technology and about the creative ways in which humans will tinker with its parts.

Photo of pneumatic waste disposal system on Roosevelt Island 06, originally uploaded on Flikr by urbanomnibus.

moving trash underground

One use for pneumatic tube systems, that I have not previously covered on this blog, is garbage collection.

A recent exhibition at Gallery RIVAA explored the way that garbage moves through tubes under Roosevelt Island, New York. The Roosevelt Island underground pneumatic waste disposal system was constructed in 1975. Since the opening of the island, residents have emptied their waste into garbage chutes which feed into pneumatic pipes that are transferred to the system's main station and then compacted, sealed off and exported to a landfill. There are many other cities where similar systems are in place, including waste disposal systems in hospitals and nursing homes.

Fast Trash was described on the exhibition website as:

"Part infrastructure portrait, part urban history ... [drawing on] archival materials, original maps, photographs, drawings, diagrams and video interviews to bring an invisible system to the surface, and asks what a community built around progressive policies and technologies can teach us about how we choose our infrastructure"

The exhibition received a lot of attention from bloggers (green bloggers, urbanite bloggers, architectural bloggers, art bloggers, NYC bloggers) and others online, demonstrating a public fascination with this technology. I particularly like this image of those working with the system, depicted in a New York Times review:

"The staff of eight full-time engineers perform regular repairs and maintenance on the system, monitoring the vacuum seals and gauges, which are often on the fritz. They have halted the engines for residents who panicked about missing false teeth, wedding rings and pocket books that have been sucked under the city’s streets. And even let them sift through a 12-ton pile of refuse"

For those interested, the exhibition website has a documentary, another site an interview with curator/architect Juliette Spertus, and here and here are some images from the exhibition. I would love to have seen the exhibition. With its video interviews with engineers, maps and other artefacts, it seems like an incredibly ethnographic portrait of pneumatic tubes; one that has captured the public's imagination.

Images from envac and fast trash.