To prepare you for the Halloween weekend, it's time once again for a Very Special Spooky Navigator. As in years past, we are surrendering this edition of CityLab's biweekly Saturday newsletter to the pale, corpselike grip of CityLab's Kriston Capps. Read on… if you dare.

Once upon a traffic circle, while I noodled, playing Wordle
Over many a consonant in words that need to end with "-OR"
While I idled, my thumbs thinking, suddenly there came a pinging,
As of some app gently ringing, ringing through my puzzle chore.
"'Tis some banner," I decided, "pinging on my cellular —
And the word must be VISOR."

Ah, distinctly I remember, 'twas the month after September;
And each and every grayed-out letter wrought its ghost upon my score.
Eagerly I wished to beat it; —vainly I sought to delete it
When MIDGE and EPOCH twice defeated — defeated my old Wordle score —
For I had never lost a game in weeks and months spanning before —
I won in three and sometimes four.

And every green and yellow tile turning up my stomach's bile
Thrilled me — filled me with short words that I had never spelled before;
So that now, faced with this banner, underneath my breath, I stammered,
"'Tis some notice from the Times app saying I should pay them more,
Pay for this game I adore" — pay for something! what a bore —
"'Tis a banner, nothing more."

Presently the ping grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Siri," said I, "turn off the not'fication causing this uproar."
For the game that I was playing when this banner started braying,
Lost its course (though I was praying, praying it might be RIGOR); —
When on my screen I saw a darkness, darker than the midnight's bore —
Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, wondering what this black might be that seized my Apple's core;
But the darkness was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Nextdoor?"
This I whispered, and to which Siri chirped her reply, "Nextdoor!" —
Merely this and nothing more.

Back to my phone's home screen turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a pinging somewhat louder than before.
"Surely," said I, self-diagnosing, "I must have done some microdosing
To see a darkness so engrossing — darker than R-rated gore;
Darker than that light-absorbing paint owned by Anish Kapoor; —
Wait, could my word be COLOR?"

Swiping through my mobile's home screen, I found the app for transit routines
And opened up the weekday schedule for my bus, the fifty-four;
If darkness was to overtake me, if madness my mind was partaking,
Then I would greet this undertaking from the comfort of indoors; —
At least at home I'd sprawl out like a puddle on my kitchen floor —
To face my mind's fatal … ERROR?

But then the transit app did something, serving forth a blob of nothing
Over tables that explained what bus to take to reach my door;
And as I scanned for my arrival, wondering about my own survival,
There returned a message final from the app I had implored:
When could I expect a bus to ferry me to my own shores?
When's the bus come? — "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness riven by reply so aptly given,
"Maybe," said I, "this haunted phone can be updated or restored";
Again I set my destination, assessing my own situation
And with a note of lamentation retyped my request — ("ENCOR?
No, that word's six letters, duh," thought I, my game still near the fore) —
When's the bus come? — "Nevermore."

"Device!" said I, "thing of evil! — device still, if app or devil! —
Whether Satan sent or code corrupt to make me feel unsure;
Tell this soul with worry laden if my contract with Verizon
Means that hell's on my horizon — tell me truly, I implore —
Will no bus come deliver me from this perdition? Fifty-four?"
When's the bus come? — "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign of parting, app or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting —
"I won't follow an app that leads to darkness like an abattoir;
Surely my phone's factory settings don't include this dark embedding
For this prank's beyond upsetting — wait a sec," said I, unmoored
"My phone might drag me through the lake of fire but not without a score:
I think I've got the word: HUMOR!"

— Kriston Capps

What we're writing

Photo: Courtesy MAD Architects. Illustration: Stephanie Davidson

Check out the latest from Look at That Building, our new series architecturally curious:
- China's Cloudscape of Haikou park pavilion — also known as the "Wormhole Library" — is an otherworldly exercise in technology and sculpture.
- A Brooklyn condominium at 450 Warren offers a new spin on courtyard living
- The Goat Heads, a pair of modest homes in the desert town of Marfa, Texas, offers an artful, austere take on rental housing.
A first-of-its-kind museum in Vancouver's Chinatown pays tribute to Chinese Canadian history amid a spike in anti-Asian racism.
The much-hated Robert Moses returns to New York City, in theatrical form, and everyone loves him.
Author Eva Hagberg of When Eero Met His Match discusses the passionate bond between an architect and the woman who built his superstar image.
The new book "Showroom City" details how the furniture capital of the world reinvented itself — and made sacrifices along the way.

Weekend read

Verso Books has made City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, free to download in honor of author and activist Mike Davis, who died on October 25. His influential 1990 book chronicles the forces that shaped the City of Angels as both an "utopia and dystopia," and the tension that persists between its haves and have-nots.
Read more about Davis's legacy in the Los Angeles Times, Slate and The New Republic.

What we're following

An oral history of Home Depot's 12-foot skeleton (Vice)
Some Salem residents haunted by Halloween (Boston Globe)
Meet the companies trying to be the Uber of funerals (Daily Beast)
We could all learn a thing or two from fans of lousy sports teams (The Atlantic)
New books explore photographer Gordon Parks' view of America across three decades (Blind Magazine)
Florida wants to be a leader in accessible travel. Is it? (AFAR)
The soundtrack to the climate crisis is apocalypse pop (Vox)
Test your urban survival skills as Cheddar the rat (Washington Post)

Views from the ground

From Ceren Gamze Yasar in Ankara, Turkey:

For the first time in two years, my mother visited me in Ankara. She wanted to see Anıtkabir, the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who was the founder of the modern Turkish Republic. The place is really monumental, though I'd considered it solely as a tourist attraction for a long time.
But with my mother visiting the city after the pandemic, I had the chance to see the place with brand-new eyes. The monumentality of Anıtkabir was just striking, reminding us of the power of people represented in the founding years of the Turkish Republic and in Atatürk himself.

We love to feature reader photos from around the world to show how cities — and the ways people experience them — are unique. If you'd like to share an original photo with your fellow city enthusiasts, you can submit it along with a few sentences about what you find most interesting about it via this form, or on Instagram with the hashtag #citylabontheground.