we used to wait

At GGW, Erik Weber writes about how pop culture is embracing the city, but he ignores one very big exception: The Suburbs, the latest album by the Arcade Fire concerned mainly with growing up in the suburbs. It's not necessarily an endorsement of suburbs, but well-positioned to stir up all sorts of nostalgia about your teenage years on the cul-de-sac and how boring it was there.

One of the songs from that album, "We Used to Wait," was made into an interactive video, "The Wilderness Downtown," by Chris Milk. B. Santos over at Columbia Compass pointed me to it earlier today. You just type in the address of your childhood home (provided it has Google Street View) and it generates a video. A little gimmicky at first, but it can actually be pretty moving.

My parents' house in Calverton isn't on Google Street View, so I tried Georgian Towers, where I lived until age ten. That didn't work, nor does a seventeen-story apartment building really lend itself to a song about the suburbs. So I gave up and did Woodlin Elementary School, which I attended through third grade.

It takes a little while to load - this requires a lot of processor memory, a strong Internet connection, and a willingness to endure a lot of pop-ups - but it was probably the coolest thing I saw all day. You can check out my video of Woodlin right here or or make one for yourself.