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A Drift in Church Hill

Jonathan Tuttle recently published a neat take on an afternoon walk on the Richmond Public Library Blog called Drift in Church Hill:

“A friend recently told me that he had wandered through the Harz region of Germany while blindly following the directions of a map of London,” wrote Debord, offering an example of a beginner’s dérive. With new and arbitrary directions Debord’s friend could shake his mind up, could see and feel things people didn’t normally see or feel. Taking the cue from Debord’s friend I turned around from that beautiful view of the James with my own set of directions through London, knowing where they would have taken me if I were in fact in London, but having no idea where they would take me in Richmond.

Google “London” and the people in Mountain View, California will take you to Charing Cross, a roundabout joining Strand, Whitehall, and Cockspur streets. Considering that Charing Cross is the “center” of London and I too was standing at a roundabout (where 29th Street meets Libby Terrace), I decided to start my London directions there at the statue of Charles I. This meant that standing at Libby Hill and looking northeast, I wasn’t looking at any brick 19th century homes at all, but at the center of London.