Day: July 24, 2025

I still find it hard to believe that a few days ago I was at a Colonie Planning Board Meeting where the chair Steven Heider was very concerned that a proposed warehouse in Albany Pine Bush was woke enough – had enough different colors in the steel facade – to appeal to the town sensibilities. They were not concerned about the impact the warehouse had on real people’s lives – the lost Pine Bush, the traffic, or safety of the facility – just the color of steel on a warehouse.

Aesthetics, the root of being woke, is really an interesting concept. We all want beauty in our lives, we want the communities we live in be places that stimulate the mind through the use of color and style. The problem with woke is it goes no deeper then some paint. Inherit in the concept of woke is such materials are cheap and quickly made dated, a facade that covers over the real substantive problems in design or society at large.

I care about aesthetics a lot. I want the things I own to be beautiful and elegant, not just serve a utilitan purpose but give myself some joy. I can rant about how much I hate the look of vinyl siding and asphalt roofs – or talk about how superior tongue-and-groove board is to dry wall. But how much of it is really is aesthetics and not reality? Grant vinyl siding is so toxic if you’ve ever burned it, and it is designed to be used for a few years, crack and be damaged, and hauled off to the local dumping grounds. I want whatever vehicles and equipment I pay good money for to not look like crap, especially hen they are brand new.

The thing about being woke is there is some validity in it, even if it’s hard to admit it at first. Wokeness can be a sign of good bones underneath, it need not be completely shallow facade covering up rot underneath. Beauty does matter. I was actually pretty horrified at what I saw with all the wood rot at that house I looked at a year ago with vinyl siding, it looked nice at a distance with the white vinyl, but the siding below it had so much rot. Had the vinyl not been on it, maybe they would have replaced the rotted wood below it much sooner.