tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26173432024-03-07T02:22:04.861-05:00WalkPlaces in cities. I forsee two types of entry: the blog-standard mini-essay with photos and links, and moblogged camera-phone pics of urban phenomena with quick notes.nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-54423421498428055192007-03-26T00:42:00.001-04:002007-03-26T00:42:03.617-04:00Gramercy Park<div style="float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/434641185/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/172/434641185_9edb161e96_m.jpg" alt="" style="border: solid 2px #000000;" /></a> <br /> <span style="font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/434641185/">Gramercy Park</a> <br /> Originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/niznoz/">niznoz</a>. </span></div>The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramercy_Park">Gramercy Park</a> statue of famed 19th century actor <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Booth">Edwin Booth</a>, (who said of his notorious brother "I can give you very little information regarding my brother John. I seldom saw him since his early boyhood in Baltimore. He was a rattle-pated fellow, filled with quixotic notions.").<br clear="all" />nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1169529121614506532007-01-23T00:10:00.000-05:002007-01-23T07:18:32.303-05:00The Gordon Riots of 1780 and Barnaby Rudge<style type="text/css">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }</style><div class="flickr-frame"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/365492788/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/104/365492788_ad65bb09ff.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a><br /> <span class="flickr-caption"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/365492788/">Museum</a>, originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/niznoz/">niznoz</a>.</span></div> <p class="flickr-yourcomment"> <b>Photo: A section of the Berlin Wall on the grounds of the Imperial War Museum. The march on Parliament began near here on open space known as St. George’s Fields on Friday 2nd June at ten o’ clock in the morning, 1780.</b></br></br> <blockquote><em> “A mob is usually a creature of very mysterious existence, particularly in a large city. Where it comes from or whither it goes, few men can tell. Assembling and dispersing with equal suddenness, it is as difficult to follow to its various sources as the sea itself; nor does the parallel stop here, for the ocean is not more fickle and uncertain, more terrible when roused, more unreasonable, or more cruel.</em></blockquote> – Charles Dickens Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of ‘Eighty.<br /><br />London, 1780: Under the leadership of Prime Minister Lord North Great Britain was fighting a difficult war in her American colonies. American diplomats working in France had brought England’s old enemy into the battle. Britain was in desperate need of more troops, and one attempt to get them had been a government bill, the Catholic Relief Act of 1778 that was designed to lessen the obstacles to Catholics serving in the military. The Act inspired fierce resistance amongst Protestants in both England and Scotland. In 1779 violent protests against a similar act being introduced in Scotland had broken out in Glasgow and Edinburgh. <br /><br />On June 2nd of 1780 60,000 members of the Protestant Association, led by Lord George Gordon, massed in London to present a petition to Parliament calling for the repeal of the act. It’s members wore blue ribbons in their hats as a sign of unity. Despite physical intimidation of the legislators, a vote on the petition that afternoon was overwhelmingly defeated. <br/><br/>That evening Catholic chapels belonging to foreign embassies were destroyed by a mob chanting “no popery”. Although the initial violence may have been political, or sectarian, and anti-Catholic violence occurred throughout the course of disturbance, the riots as they evolved over the next week became a savage and tumultuous expression of rebellion by London’s poorest. Violence was directed at the authorities and anybody who opposed the mob, and looting was rampant. For while it looked like the government would be unable to retain control of the city. Contemporaries found this taste of revolution profoundly shocking: “the English reaction to the French revolution began well before it’s out break.” <br /><br />Mapped <a href="http://www.flickr.com/map/?&user_id=33602849@N00&set_id=72157594493220831">here</a></p>nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1142474692673471462006-03-15T21:04:00.000-05:002006-03-15T21:04:52.733-05:00"At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable"<style type="text/css">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }</style><div class="flickr-frame"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/113080135/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/19/113080135_1918e41e8b.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a><br /> <span class="flickr-caption"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/113080135/">"At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable"</a>, originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/niznoz/">niznoz</a>.</span></div> <p class="flickr-yourcomment"> "What miserable friendlessness and loneliness are here revealed! His poverty is great; but his solitude, how horrible! Think of it. Of a Sunday, Wall-street is deserted as Petra; and every night of every day it is an emptiness. This building too, which of week-days hums with industry and life, at nightfall echoes with sheer vacancy, and all through Sunday is forlorn. And here Bartleby makes his home; sole spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous—a sort of innocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!" - <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/129/">Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street</a><br /><br />By the time Melville wrote Bartleby -- the story of the scrivener whose passive resistance so aggravates the narrator -- at least two qualities of the financial district were already evident. The dual nature of the neighborhood was well established: a buzzing hive by day, a desert at night and on Sundays. And resistance to Wall Street, passive or otherwise, was clearly useless. <br /><br />Melville's birthplace at 6 Pearl Street is perhaps an example of this. The modest house is long gone, and the only trace of Melville's presence is a plaque and a bust of the author hidden behind plexiglass in a sconce at the base of towering white office building.</p>nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1142346481148596892006-03-14T09:28:00.000-05:002006-04-09T07:31:52.516-04:00stars<style type="text/css">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }</style><div class="flickr-frame"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/110842291/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/32/110842291_e00b93893d.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a><br /> <span class="flickr-caption"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/110842291/">stars</a>, originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/niznoz/">niznoz</a>.</span></div> <p class="flickr-yourcomment"> <blockquote>I am alone; I am alone! she cried, by the fountain in Regent’s Park (staring at the Indian and his cross), as perhaps at midnight, when all boundaries are lost, the country reverts to its ancient shape, as the Romans saw it, lying cloudy, when they landed, and the hills had no names and rivers wound they knew not where—such was her darkness; when suddenly, as if a shelf were shot forth and she stood on it, she said how she was his wife, married years ago in Milan, his wife, and would never, never tell that he was mad! Turning, the shelf fell; down, down she dropped.</blockquote> -- Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf<br /><br /><blockquote>And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes - a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.</blockquote> The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald<br /><br />It's not a moment as easily acheivable now as it was in 1925 when both these books were published -- at night Regents Park, Long Island and everywhere else remotely urban is lit up with shops, houses, streetlights like territorial markers for human civilisation. Harder to be lost, harder to imagine something commensurate to your capacity for wonder.</p>nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1141925156491451072006-03-09T12:25:00.000-05:002006-03-09T12:25:56.566-05:00It would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus.<style type="text/css">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }</style><div class="flickr-frame"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/100218667/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/12/100218667_8a5d5cf036.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a><br /> <span class="flickr-caption"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/100218667/">shadow dino</a>, originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/niznoz/">niznoz</a>.</span></div> <p class="flickr-yourcomment"> <blockquote>LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest</blockquote>--<u>Bleak House</u> by Charles Dickens<br></p>nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1125887992059652012006-03-03T22:38:00.000-05:002006-03-03T06:59:27.436-05:00Oliver's approach to LondonOliver and the Artful Dodger start their journey in Islington, and end up in Saffron Hill, where Oliver is introduced to arch-baddy (and notorious negative ethnic stereotype) Fagin. Saffron Hill was a desperately poor neighborhood at the time--a rookery, so called--with a lot of crime. It was also, to an extent, an Italian neighborhood. Here Padroni, organizers of a human trafficking scheme which brought poor Italian children to London to beg on the streets (at least according to anti-immigrant news reports of the time), ran groups of semi-criminal urchins which resembled Fagin’s. Oliver Twist was “ripped from the headlines.” <br><br>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/39970692/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/32/39970692_a92abab0c2_s.jpg" width="75" height="75" alt="oliver map" /></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/31901237/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/22/31901237_8ae784496f_s.jpg" width="75" height="75" alt="booth" /></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/39966702/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/22/39966702_3178d93308_s.jpg" width="75" height="75" alt="burials" /></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/39967234/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/33/39967234_f970797e10_s.jpg" width="75" height="75" alt="shoe repairs" /></a><br><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/31902440/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/21/31902440_f090e83e32_s.jpg" width="75" height="75" alt="banksy?" /></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/31902858/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/22/31902858_702cd111bd_s.jpg" width="75" height="75" alt="girl stencil" /></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/31903849/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/22/31903849_bd8bb5d2a4_s.jpg" width="75" height="75" alt="pasteup" /></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/31904519/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/22/31904519_d87d712700_s.jpg" width="75" height="75" alt="macintosh mod" /></a><br><br><i>As John Dawkins objected to their entering London before nightfall, it was nearly eleven o'clock when they reached the turnpike at Islington. They crossed from the Angel into St. John's Road; struck down the small street which terminates at Sadler's Wells Theatre; through Exmouth Street and Coppice Row; down the little court by the side of the workhouse; across the classic ground which once bore the name of Hockley-in-the-Hole; thence into little Saffron Hill; and so into Saffron Hill the Great: along which the Dodger scudded at a rapid pace, directing Oliver to follow close at his heels.
Although Oliver had enough to occupy his attention in keeping sight of his leader, he could not help bestowing a few hasty glances on either side of the way, as he passed along. A dirtier or more wretched place he had never seen. The street was very narrow and muddy, and the air was impregnated with filthy odours. There were a good many small shops; but the only stock in trade appeared to be heaps of children, who, even at that time of night, were crawling in and out at the doors, or screaming from the inside. The sole places that seemed to prosper amid the general blight of the place, were the public-houses; and in them, the lowest orders of Irish were wrangling with might and main. Covered ways and yards, which here and there diverged from the main street, disclosed little knots of houses, where drunken men and women were positively wallowing in filth; and from several of the door-ways, great ill-looking fellows were cautiously emerging, bound, to all appearance, on no very well-disposed or harmless errands.</i><br/>
<iframe src="http://www.wayfaring.com/maps/export/9241" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="width:400px;height:250px;border:2px solid #cccccc;"></iframe>nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1140537999178956832006-02-21T11:06:00.000-05:002006-02-21T11:06:39.230-05:00Deep in the heart of London<style type="text/css">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }</style><div class="flickr-frame"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/101378762/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/31/101378762_d26cd7fdb5.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a><br /> <span class="flickr-caption"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/101378762/">Deep in the heart of London</a>, originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/niznoz/">niznoz</a>.</span></div> <p class="flickr-yourcomment"> <a href="http://www.jjfox.co.uk/static/19 St James/stjames_history6.htm">Pickering Place</a>. Once the home to the Texas Legation to the Court of St. James. Which brings to mind this song, somehow:<br /><br /><b>London Homesick Blues</b><br /> by Gary P. Nunn. As sung by David Allan Coe, et al.<br /><br />London you're a goner. <br />Even London Bridge has fallen down, <br />and moved to Arizona, <br />now I know why. <br />And I'll substantiate the rumor <br />that the English sense of humor <br />is drier than the Texas sand. <br />You can put up your dukes, <br />and you can bet your boots, <br />that I'm leavin' just as fast as I can. <br /><br />Chorus; <br />I wanna go home with the armadillo. <br />Good country music from Amarillo and Abilene. <br />The friendliest people and the prettiest women <br />you've ever seen. <br /><br />Well it's cold over here, and I swear, <br />I wish they'd turn the heat on. <br />And where in the world is that English girl, <br />I promised I would meet on the third floor. <br />And of the whole damn lot, the only friend I got, <br />is a smoke and a cheap guitar. <br />My mind keeps roamin', my heart keeps longin' <br />to be home in a Texas bar. <br /><br />Chorus <br /><br />Well, I decided that, I'd get my cowboy hat <br />and go down to Marble Arch Station. <br />'Cause when a Texan fancies, he'll take his chances, <br />and chances will be takin, now that's for sure. <br />And them Limey eyes, they were eyein' a prize, <br />that some people call manly footwear. <br />And they said you're from down South, <br />and when you open your mouth, <br />you always seem to put your foot there.</p>nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1130275027524131692005-10-25T17:17:00.000-04:002005-10-25T17:17:07.586-04:00The Big Match<style type="text/css">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }</style><div class="flickr-frame"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/56074994/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/26/56074994_455594bd05.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a><br /> <span class="flickr-caption"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/56074994/">The Big Match</a>, originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/niznoz/">niznoz</a>.</span></div> <p class="flickr-yourcomment"> <i>from</i><b><a href="http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/b/brillat/savarin/b85p/complete.html">The physiology of taste</a></b><br /><i>by</i> Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin<br /><br />II. A NATIONAL VICTORY.<br /><br />When I lived in New York I used every once in a while to pass the evening in a kind of tavern kept by a man named Little, (the old lank coffee house) where one could always get turtle soup and all the dishes common in the United States.<br /><br />I often went thither with the Vicomte de la Massue and M. Fehr, an old broker of Marsailles; all three of us were emigrants, and we used to drink ale and cider, and pass the evening very pleasantly together.<br /><br />There I became acquainted with a Mr. Wilkinson, who was a native of Jamaica, and a person he was very intimate with, for he never left him. The latter, the name of whom I do not remember was one of the most extraordinary men I ever met. He had a square face, keen eyes, and appeared to look attentively at everything, though his features were motionless as those of a blind man. When he laughed it was with what the English call a horse's laugh, and immediately resumed his habitual taciturnity. Mr. Wilkinson seemed about forty, and, in manner and appearance, seemed to be a gentleman.<br /><br />The Englishman seemed to like our company, and more than once shared the frugal entertainment I offered my friends, when Mr. Wilkinson took me one evening aside and said he intended to ask us all to dine with him.<br /><br />I accepted the invitation for three o'clock on the third day after.<br /><br />The evening passed quietly enough, but when I was about to leave, a waiter came to me and said that the West Indian had ordered a magnificent dinner, thinking their invitation a challenge. The man with the horse's laugh had undertaken to drink us Frenchmen drunk.<br /><br />This intelligence would have induced me, if possible, to decline the banquet. It was, however, impossible, and following the advice of the Marshal de Saxe, we determined, as the wine was uncorked, to drink it.<br /><br />I had some anxiety, but being satisfied that my constitution was young, healthy and sound, I could easily get the better of the West Indian, who probably was unused to liquors.<br /><br />I however, went to see Messrs. Fehr and Massue, and in an occular allocution, told them of my plans. I advised them to drink as little as possible, and to avoid too many glasses, while I talked to our antagonists. Above all things, I advised them to keep up some appetite, telling them that food had the effect of moderating the fumes of wine.<br /><br />Thus physically and morally armed, we went to the old bank coffee house, where we found our friends; dinner was soon ready. It consisted of a huge piece of beef, a roasted turkey, (plain) boiled vegetables, a salad and pastry.<br /><br />Wine was put on the table. It was claret, very good, and cheaper than it then was in France.<br /><br />Mr. Wilkinson did the honors perfectly, asking us to eat, and setting us an example, while his friend, who seemed busy with his plate, did nothing but laugh at the corners of his mouth.<br /><br />My countrymen delighted me by their discretion.<br /><br />After the claret came the port and Madeira. To the latter we paid great attention.<br /><br />Then came the dessert composed of butter, cheese and hickory nuts. Then came the time for toasts, and we drank to our kings, to human liberty, and to Wilkinson's daughter Maria, who was, as he said, the prettiest woman in Jamaica.<br /><br />Then came spirits, viz., rum, brandy, etc. Then came songs, and I saw things were getting warm. I was afraid of brandy and asked for punch. Little brought a bowl, which, doubtless, he had prepared before. It held enough for forty people, and was larger than any we have in France.<br /><br />This gave me courage; I ate five or six well buttered rolls, and I felt my strength revive. I looked around the table and saw my compatriots apparently fresh enough, while the Jamaican began to grow red in the face, and seemed uneasy. His friend said nothing, but seemed so overcome that I saw the catastrophe would soon happen.<br /><br />I cannot well express the amazement caused by this denouement, and from the burden of which I felt myself relieved. I rang the bell; Little came up; I said, "see these gentlemen well taken care of."? We drank a glass to their health. At last the waiter came and bore off the defeated party feet foremost. Wilkinson's friend was motionless, and our host would insist on singing, "Rule Britannia."<br /><br />The New York papers told the story the next day, and added that the Englishman had died. This was not so, for Mr. Wilkinson had only a slight attack of the gout.</p>nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1129729893663545132005-10-19T09:51:00.000-04:002005-10-19T09:51:36.376-04:00diverged: tiled vaulted ceiling Municipal Building, New York City.<style type="text/css">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }</style><div class="flickr-frame"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/53884332/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/30/53884332_f1fc31753b.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a><br /> <span class="flickr-caption"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/53884332/">diverged: tiled vaulted ceiling Municipal Building, New York City.</a>, originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/niznoz/">niznoz</a>.</span></div> <p class="flickr-yourcomment"> <i>Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--<br />I took the one less traveled by,<br />And that has made all the difference.</i><br />-- Robert Frost: from <a href="http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/frost_road.html">The Road Not Taken</a> (1915)<br /><br /><a href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/record/archives/vol21/vol21_iss25/record2125.17.html">Guastavino</a> tiled, vaulted ceiling in the Municipal Building (maybe you will get married here), New York City, 1914.<br /><br />The lines of the tiles made me think of the poem. I like that they, the poem and the ceiling, are of roughly the same vintage, although its a pretty meaningless coincidence.</p>nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1127912857234982922005-09-28T09:07:00.000-04:002005-09-28T09:07:37.303-04:00Recuerdo<style type="text/css">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }</style><div class="flickr-frame"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/47288899/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/30/47288899_c792a98954.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a><br /> <span class="flickr-caption"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/47288899/">Ferry</a>, originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/niznoz/">niznoz</a>.</span></div> <p class="flickr-yourcomment"> We were very tired, we were very merry—<br />We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.<br />It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—<br />But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,<br />We lay on a hilltop underneath the moon;<br />And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.<br /><br />We were very tired, we were very merry—<br />We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;<br />And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,<br />From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;<br />And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,<br />And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.<br /><br /> We were very tired, we were very merry—<br />We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.<br />We hailed, "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,<br />And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;<br />And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and the pears,<br />And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.<br /><br /> <br /><br /><a href="http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/millay/millay.htm">Edna St. Vincent Millay</a></p>nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1127179350940690472005-09-19T21:22:00.000-04:002005-09-26T16:30:51.033-04:00christchurch, spitalfields<style type="text/css">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }</style><div class="flickr-frame"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/8607766/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/6/8607766_a3f2dd1a29.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a><br /> <span class="flickr-caption"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/8607766/">christchurch, spitalfields</a>, originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/niznoz/">niznoz</a>.</span></div> <p class="flickr-yourcomment"> <br />In 1902 Jack London arrived in London, and attempted to visit the East End. His friends told him not to, Thomas Cook’s the travel agency, who could organize a trek across Tibet--could take you to the very ends of the earth, said it was impossible, and a cab driver didn’t know how to find it (London cab drivers still don’t want to go anywhere they don’t think they’ll pick up a good fare, although I've never heard of them saying they couldn't find the "East End." Besides, there are plenty of fares there now). So, nearly 30 years before George Orwell was down and out in Paris and London, Jack London donned a scruffy suit of second hand clothes, and walked east to see how the other half lived. Here he describes the garden of Hawksmoor’s Christchurch.<br /><br /> <blockquote>The shadow of Christ's Church falls across Spitalfields Garden, and in the shadow of Christ's Church, at three o'clock in the afternoon, I saw a sight I never wish to see again. There are no flowers in this garden, which is smaller than my own rose garden at home. Grass only grows here, and it is surrounded by sharp-spiked iron fencing, as are all the parks of London Town, so that homeless men and women may not come in at night and sleep upon it.<br /><br />As we entered the garden, an old woman, between fifty and sixty, passed us, striding with sturdy intention if somewhat rickety action, with two bulky bundles, covered with sacking, slung fore and aft upon her. She was a woman tramp, a houseless soul, too independent to drag her failing carcass through the workhouse door. Like the snail, she carried her home with her. In the two sacking-covered bundles were her household goods, her wardrobe, linen, and dear feminine possessions.<br /><br />We went up the narrow gravelled walk. On the benches on either side was arrayed a mass of miserable and distorted humanity, the sight of which would have impelled Dore to more diabolical flights of fancy than he ever succeeded in achieving. It was a welter of rags and filth, of all manner of loathsome skin diseases, open sores, bruises, grossness, indecency, leering monstrosities, and bestial faces. A chill, raw wind was blowing, and these creatures huddled there in their rags, sleeping for the most part, or trying to sleep. Here were a dozen women, ranging in age from twenty years to seventy. Next a babe, possibly of nine months, lying asleep, flat on the hard bench, with neither pillow nor covering, nor with any one looking after it. Next, half a dozen men, sleeping bolt upright or leaning against one another in their sleep. In one place a family group, a child asleep in its sleeping mother's arms, and the husband (or male mate) clumsily mending a dilapidated shoe. On another bench a woman trimming the frayed strips of her rags with a knife, and another woman, with thread and needle, sewing up rents. Adjoining, a man holding a sleeping woman in his arms. Farther on, a man, his clothing caked with gutter mud, asleep with head in the lap of a woman, not more than twenty-five years old, and also asleep. -- <i>The People of the Abyss</i> by Jack London (Lawrence Hill Books, New York, 1995) </blockquote>.<br /><br />For much of the twentieth century the small park remained a place where the homeless slept and was known, after the vermin that afflicted them, as Itchy Park (one of several green spaces in London to have that nickname).<br /><br /><img src="http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/Writings/PeopleOfTheAbyss/Illustrations/ab16.jpg" width="535" height="148" alt="spitalfields"><br /><br />Photo by Jack London. An illustrated <a href="http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/Writings/PeopleOfTheAbyss/"><i>The People of the Abyss</i></a> is available online from berkeley.edu</p>nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1126112252019301512005-09-07T12:57:00.000-04:002005-09-07T13:00:45.270-04:00fire patrol<style type="text/css">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }</style><div class="flickr-frame"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/41051482/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/32/41051482_93817422ba.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a><br /> <span class="flickr-caption"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/41051482/">fire patrol</a>, originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/niznoz/">niznoz</a>.</span></div> <p class="flickr-yourcomment"> <blockquote>Nearly every "full-blooded" Bowery male, whether immigrant or native-born, laborer or artisan, belonged to a fire company. These volunteer organizations were para-political, para-fraternal entities, organized by neighborhood, by ancestry. Like army divisions, they were formally numbered but were actually known by allusive nicknames: Big Six (famous for being Boss Tweed's company), Black Joke, Old Rock, Charter Oak, Americus, White Ghost, Shad Belly, Dry Bones, Red Rover, Hay Wagon, Bean Soup, Old Junk. -- from Low Life by Luc Sante. </blockquote><br /><br />The municipal fire service began in 1865 and eventually replaced the fire companies. But the insurance companies had started the move to a professional service in the 1830's when the Fire Patrol was created. <br /><br><a href="http://www.nybfu.org/fire/about.htm">Fire Patrol</a> is <i>not</i> the FDNY, although their jobs are just as dangerous. This Patrol house dates from 1907.<br /><br /> From <b>The Wall Street Journal</b> Mar 16, 1987:<br /><br /><blockquote><i>NEW YORK -- Garbed in black fire-resistant coats and heavy red helmets, sirens on their red trucks wailing, three crews from the New York Fire Patrol race to an early-morning fire in an office building. They aren't firefighters. Their trucks carry no hoses or other equipment for dousing flames.<br /><br />Instead, the fire patrolmen troop into the burning building and set about protecting the interests of their private-sector employers: insurance companies that write fire policies. Working mainly on the two floors directly below the firemen and the fire, the patrolmen deploy heavy canvas tarpaulins and electric pumps to minimize water and smoke damage -- and thus cut insurance claims.<br /><br />Almost unknown to city residents, the New York Fire Patrol has been rushing to fires here since the 1830s. It traces its roots back even further, to 1803, when merchants organized the Mutual Assistance Bag Co. to haul out goods from one another's premises (in bags) during fires. The patrol, in fact, predates the city's paid fire department.<br /><br />Once there were fire patrols in more than 20 American cities. But for 25 years, since closings in Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore, New York's has been the only one. London insurers ended a similar operation in 1983.</i></blockquote><br /><br />Patrol House 2, shown above, in Greenwich Village, is located opposite the site of a house where Edgar Allen Poe used to live. It is, apparently, haunted.<br /><br />nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1125522792621983042005-08-31T17:13:00.000-04:002005-09-20T10:45:34.850-04:00Hawker<style type="text/css">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }</style><div class="flickr-frame"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/38998483/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://photos21.flickr.com/38998483_2ade1658b4.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a><br /> <span class="flickr-caption"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/38998483/">Hawker</a>, originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/niznoz/">niznoz</a>.</span></div> <p class="flickr-yourcomment"> <a href="http://telematics.ex.ac.uk/realcornwall/peopleandplaces/rev_stephen_hawker.htm">Rev. Hawker</a>, opium smoking poet and vicar of Morwenstow.<br /><br />Robert Stephen Hawker (1803-1875)<br /><br /><a href="http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem2582.html">The Song of the Western Men</a><br /><br /><br />I.<br /> 1 A good sword and a trusty hand!<br /> 2 A merry heart and true!<br /> 3 King James's men shall understand<br /> 4 What Cornish lads can do.<br /><br />II.<br /> 5 And have they fixed the where and when?<br /> 6 And shall Trelawny die?<br /> 7 Here's twenty thousand Cornish men<br /> 8 Will know the reason why!<br /><br />III.<br /> 9 Out spake their captain brave and bold,<br /> 10 A merry wight was he:<br /> 11 "If London Tower were Michael's hold,<br /> 12 We'll set Trelawny free!<br /><br />IV.<br /> 13 "We'll cross the Tamar, land to land,<br /> 14 The Severn is no stay, --<br /> 15 With `one and all,' and hand in hand,<br /> 16 And who shall bid us nay?<br /><br />V.<br /> 17 And when we come to London Wall,<br /> 18 A pleasant sight to view,<br /> 19 Come forth! Come forth, ye cowards all,<br /> 20 Here's men as good as you.<br /><br />VI.<br /> 21 Trelawny he's in keep and hold,<br /> 22 Trelawny he may die; --<br /> 23 But here's twenty thousand Cornish bold,<br /> 24 Will know the reason why!"</p><br/><br/><blockquote>Stormy nights, and a sea mountains high, and the thunder on the shore, heard three miles inland -- those are the times when I like to think of Parson Hawker, the Cornish mystic and poet. He was born at Plymouth in 1803, he went to the Grammar School, Cheltenham, and a a boy he was given to practical jokes. There was, for instance, the time when he dressed himself up in sea weed and little else and sat singing on the rocks at Bude and combing his hair. Some of the people of the place thought he was a mermaid. He went to Oxford and at the age of nineteen he married a lady of forty-one. He loved her very much indeed all her life. She died in 1863 aged eighty. 'It will be long before I shall sleep,' he wrote, 'Nearly forty years and never five night away from her. And now I start up to desolation.' But a year later, at the age of sixty, he married a Polish girl of twenty and had two daughters. He died in 1875. For forty years he had been Vicar of Morwenstowe. . .
Hawker would sand at his Vicarage door, hand outstretched to welcome, He was large, silver haired, red-faced, excitable, and humorous, with blue eyes. He refused to war black like a clergyman, so he had a plum-colored tailcoat, a fisherman's dark blue Jersey with a red cross embroidered on the side where the centurion's spear pierced our Lord, breeches, and high sea boots made of Hessian. If he had a hat it would be a plum-colored or brown beaver. He did not tolerate fools who came to see him. There is the story of a tourist who said, 'Mr. Hawker, what are your views and opinions?' The Vicar took him to a window in the passage facing the sea. 'There is Hennacliffe, the highest cliff on this coast, on the right; the church on the left; the Atlantic Ocean in the middle. These are my views. My opinions I keep to myself.' But he dearly like a talk with genuine people. Tennyson called once, with his long black hair, Spanish face and cloak. They walked out on to the cliffs, quoting Homer and retranslating him to the thunder of the rollers hundreds of feet below them.
From Hawker of Morwenstowe (BBC WESt of England Home Service broadcast 7 October 1945 - abridged version printed in The Listener, 18 October 1945)
collected in Coming Home: An Anthology of Prose by John Betjeman (Vintage, London 1998)</blockquote>
Morwenstow today is, possibly, even quieter than it was in the days of Hawker. Tourists come in the summer for cream teas, and there's a solid inn where you can get a pint and a meal all year round. The wind howls, the surf roars, surfers have replaced smugglers, and the spooks at GCHQ have taken the place of the revenue men. The church is on the site of an 8th century celtic chapel, which, the leaflet for sale in the church explains, was probably on the site of a pagan religious structure as there is often a remarkable continuity in the places that man chooses to worship.nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1125423246540747252005-08-30T13:34:00.000-04:002005-08-30T13:44:21.493-04:00Wiliam Blake<style type="text/css">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }</style><div class="flickr-frame"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/31906217/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://photos23.flickr.com/31906217_4d8385e620.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a><br /> <span class="flickr-caption"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/31906217/">Wiliam Blake</a>, originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/niznoz/">niznoz</a>.</span></div> <p class="flickr-yourcomment"> London:<br /><br />I wander through each chartered street,<br />Near where the chartered Thames does flow,<br />And mark in every face I meet<br />Marks of weakness, marks of woe.<br /><br />In every cry of every man,<br />In every infant's cry of fear,<br />In every voice, in every ban,<br />The mind-forged manacles I hear.<br /><br />How the chimney-sweeper's cry<br />Every blackening church appals;<br />And the hapless soldier's sigh<br />Runs in blood down palace walls.<br /><br />But most through midnight streets I hear<br />How the youthful harlot's curse<br />Blasts the new-born infant's tear,<br />And blights with plagues the marriage hearse.</p>nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1116360164385963582005-05-17T16:02:00.000-04:002005-07-21T06:37:57.213-04:00No. 5<style type="text/css">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }</style><div class="flickr-frame"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/14375742/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://photos9.flickr.com/14375742_f7101e3ad3.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a><br /> <span class="flickr-caption"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/14375742/">No. 5</a>, originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/niznoz/">niznoz</a>.</span></div> <p class="flickr-yourcomment"> <b>The Great Figure</b><br />by William Carlos Williams<br /><br />Among the rain<br />and lights<br />I saw a figure 5<br />in gold<br />on a red <br />fireturck<br />moving<br />tense<br />unheeded<br />to gong clangs<br />siren howls<br />and wheels rumbling<br />through the dark city.<br /><br />As an illustration of William Carlos William's poem, with the exception of the figure 5 in gold, the above picture is pretty lousy. Even more so on the scene: the firemen seemed relaxed and deliberate. They had travelled, at a modest pace, only about 300 yards from the firehouse on 7th Avenue along Houston to Sullivan Street. None the less, I was slightly star-struck by the number 5 on the fire engine: "I saw you in a poem, just the other day."</p>nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1115774747925599322005-05-10T21:25:00.000-04:002005-05-10T21:25:47.983-04:00Peter Stuyvesant<style type="text/css">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }</style><div class="flickr-frame"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/13343464/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://photos9.flickr.com/13343464_f94d876e27.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a><br /> <span class="flickr-caption"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/13343464/">Peter Stuyvesant</a>, originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/niznoz/">niznoz</a>.</span></div> <p class="flickr-yourcomment"> [Peter] Stuyvesant [1602-1672] had other ideas. He was family man now, and he wanted to put down his roots. Within the year [1650] he would arrange to buy the farm, called Bouwereie Number One, outright from the company, and then purchase acreage on both sides of it, giving him a plantation stretching from the East River west to the center of the island and covering approximately three hundred acres. Here he built a manor and chapel. Here he would live out his life and be buried, and here, over the parade of centuries, flappers, shtetl refugees, hippies, and punks--an aggregate of local residents running from Trotsky to Auden to Charlie Parker to Joey Ramone--would shuffle past his tomb*<br /><br />*As a nice metaphor for the way history has muddled Manhattan's Dutch period, Stuyvesant's tombstone, embedded in the foundation of the Church of St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery, manages to get both his age and title wrong.<br /><br /><i>The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America</i> by Russell Shorto, Vintage Books, 2005</p>nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1114053130474456032005-04-20T23:12:00.000-04:002005-04-20T23:15:51.756-04:00(former) McGraw-Hill Building<style type="text/css">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }</style><div class="flickr-frame"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/5781331/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://photos6.flickr.com/5781331_14d9b9b3d7.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a><br /> <span class="flickr-caption"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/5781331/">(former) McGraw-Hill Building</a>, originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/niznoz/">niznoz</a>.</span></div> <p class="flickr-yourcomment"><b> 330 West 42nd Street
</b><br/> <blockquote>The building accommodates three categories of activity that correspond to the setbacks of its section; printing works in the base, loft spaces for book productions in the middle and offices in the slender shaft. Once, when it suited him, Hood pretended to have no feeling for color: "What color? Let's see. How many colors are there--red, yellow and blue? Let's make it red." Now he considers yellow, orange, green, gray, red, Chinese red and black with orange trimming for the building. The tower is to be shaded from a darker tone at the base to a lighter one toward the top, "where it finally blends off into the azure of the sky. . ." To realize this denial of the tower's presence, one of Hood's assistants checks the location of each single tile--its fit within the overall project of "disappearance"--with binoculars from a window opposite the construction site.</blockquote><br /><br />So here we have a <a href="http://www.wirednewyork.com/mcgraw_hill.htm">building</a>, which now hovers over the Port Authority Bus Station, whose airy top, which by design is indistinguishable from the surrounding sky, can take an equally (or not) airy idea and, as it travels down through the body of the building apply to it the alchemy of the publishing industry, until, at some length, it is ejected on the pavement as a book. Textbooks from heaven. Ephemeral excreta from the jolly green giant.<br /><br /><blockquote>its golden shades pulled down to reflect the sun, the McGraw-Hill Building looks like a fire raging inside an iceberg: the fire of Manhattanism inside the iceberg of Modernism.</blockquote> Both quotes from <i>Delirious New York</i> by Rem Koolhaas, The Monacelli Press, New York 1994.</p>nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1113957292048846792005-04-19T20:34:00.000-04:002005-04-19T20:36:58.660-04:00Ansonia Hotel<style type="text/css">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }</style><div class="flickr-frame"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/9963620/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://photos7.flickr.com/9963620_2d587a5ceb.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a><br /> <span class="flickr-caption"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/9963620/">Ansonia Hotel</a>, originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/niznoz/">niznoz</a>.</span></div> <p class="flickr-yourcomment"> <b>2109 Broadway</b><br /><br />Built in 1904, the <a href="http://www.nyc-architecture.com/UWS/UWS031.htm">Ansonia Hotel</a> is a gorgeous confection. Beaux-Arts? So they say. Mit schlag? Absolutely! Full of architecutural creamy goodness outside, the hotel (despite its name it's an apartment house) possesses extra thick walls, making the apartments attractive to musicans (Arturo Toscanini, and Igor Stravinksy both lived there), and anybody who doesn't mind living next door to musicians as long as you don't have to hear them. Other residents included Babe Ruth, Enrico Caruso, Florenz Ziegfeld, and Theodore Dreiser.<br /><br />The naughty 70's swingers club "Plato's Retreat" was housed in the basement</p>nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1112020033511367772005-03-28T09:27:00.000-05:002005-03-28T10:58:41.836-05:00power station<style type="text/css">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }</style><div class="flickr-frame"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/3746314/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://photos3.flickr.com/3746314_65b067d830.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a><br /> <span class="flickr-caption"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/3746314/">power station</a>, originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/niznoz/">niznoz</a>.</span></div> <p class="flickr-yourcomment"> </p>
The connection of this picture to the music of Pink Floyd is, in reality, tenuous, but pretty obvious:
<blockquote>...In the late 1980's, Yakutsk musicians in the Arctic regions of Siberia became obsessed with the music of Pink Floyd. All the best young bands sounded like Pink Floyd except somehow more immediate and more authentic. It was a cargo-culture phenomenon. Asked to explain how a renegade copy of <i>Dark Side of the Moon</i> could galvanize an entire subculture, one musician said, "The sound reminded us of the snow."</blockquote>
<u>Destiny in My Right Hand: "The Wreck of Old '97" and "Dead Man's Curve"</u> an essay by Dave Thomas (lead singer and founder of Pere Ubu) in <u>The Rose and The Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad.</u> edited by Sean Wilentz and Greil Marcus, Norton, New York, 2005.nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1111685141239728802005-03-24T12:25:00.000-05:002005-03-24T12:29:34.603-05:00Assassin<style type="text/css">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }</style><div class="flickr-frame"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/6868730/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://photos4.flickr.com/6868730_72746bd668.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a><br /> <span class="flickr-caption"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/6868730/">guerilla</a>, originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/niznoz/">niznoz</a>.</span></div> <p class="flickr-yourcomment"> </p>
<blockquote>This bullet is an old one.<br/><br/>
In 1897, it was fired at the president of Uruguay by a young man from Montevideo, Avelino Arredondo, who had spent long weeks without seeing anyone so that the world might know that he acted alone. thirty years earlier, Lincoln had bee murdered by that same ball, by the criminal or magical hand of an actor transformed by the words of Shakespeare into Marcus Brutus, Caesar's murderer. In the mid-seventeenth century, vengeance had employed it for the assassination of Sweden's Gustavus Adolphus in the midst of the public hecatomb of battle.<br/><br/>
In earlier times, the bullet had been other tings, because Pythagorean metempsychosis is not reserved for humankind alone. It was the silken cord given to viziers in the East, the rifles and bayonets that cut down the defenders of the Alamo, the triangular blade that slit a queen's throat, the wood of the Cross and the dark nails that pierced the flesh of the Redeemer, the poison kept by the Carthaginian chief in a n iron ring on his finger, the serene goblet that Socarates drank down one evening.
<br/><br/>In the dawn of time it was the stone that Cain hurled at Abel, and in the future it shall be many things that we cannot even imagine today, but that will be able to put an end to men and their wondrous, fragile life. -- <i>In Memoriam, J.F.K., Jorge Luis Borges</i> </blockquote>nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1111521718708694572005-03-22T15:01:00.000-05:002005-03-28T11:01:28.453-05:00tea rooms<style type="text/css">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }</style><div class="flickr-frame"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/3823396/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://photos3.flickr.com/3823396_daa492bc5c.jpg" class="flickr-photo" alt="" /></a><br /> <span class="flickr-caption"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/3823396/">tea rooms</a>, originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/niznoz/">niznoz</a>.</span></div> <p class="flickr-yourcomment"> <blockquote>A tea-shop is a delightful place. It is the milestone that marks the end of a day's work.<br/><br/>In the provinces, and particularly in the north and in Scotland, where men take tea with passionate sincerity, frequently starting with sardines and ending with apple tart, the tea-shop occupies an appropriately massive position in daily life. London's tea-shops are, however, talk-shops, refuges from a day's shopping, trysting-places after a terrible eight hours' separation.<br/><br/>O, the eyes that meet over a muffin every afternoon in London; the hands that thrill to a casual touch beneath the crumpet plate. . .<br/><br/>London's tea-shops are of many kinds, from the standardized shop to the good pull-up for millionaires constructed on the Paris plan, where slim Gruyere sandwiches hide in paper coats, and cakes taste of Benedictine, and bills have a queer habit of working out at fifteen shillings.<br/><br/>Then, of course, there is the cosy type of tea-shop run on amateur lines where genteel young women who do not seem to have forgotten William Morris bend wistfully over the meringues in brown or sage green <i>crepe de Chine</i> gowns and an air shattered romance. -- <i>Women and Tea</i> from <u>The Heart of London</u> by H.V. Morton, Methuen, 1922.<br/></blockquote><br/>Where do hands <i>not</i> thrill to a casual touch beneath the crumpet plate. The memory of the memory of the tea shop is fast fading in London. You'll get the same tea-bag in six ounces of tepid water you get anywhere else in the world, and you'll like it.</p>nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1108612342780151482005-02-16T22:50:00.000-05:002005-02-16T22:52:22.783-05:001917: Republic of Greenwich Village<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/4874500/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://photos4.flickr.com/4874500_ca8cd2efad.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="headquarters: republic of dreams" /></a>
</br>The Washington Arch was built in 1889. It was designed by Stanford White. A fitting tribute to the father of our country to be sure, and a gem of the beaux art school of architecture. But, better than this, a great place to party and excellent vantage point to see in dawn while declaring your independence from the bourgeois world:
<br/><blockquote>[Gertrude Drick] discovered a neglected but accessible staircase (now sealed) that led to the top of the Washington Square arch, an don a fall evening led Sloan, Marcel Duchamp, and three actors, . . . up there. They carried Chinese lanterns, red balloons, hot-water bags for sitting on, and supplies of food and wine. [Drick] read a Greenwich Village declaration of independence, proclaimed the existence of the republic, and everyone fired cap pistols and released the red balloons. The party went on until dawn. In the morning passersby noticed clusters of red balloons in the neighborhood trees. p 336 Low Life by Luc Sante (FSG, New York, 1991).</blockquote><br/>nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1107880132245270482005-02-08T11:28:00.000-05:002005-02-08T11:32:43.633-05:00London: mini-true<div style="float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/4234305/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://photos3.flickr.com/4234305_6bca71f978_m.jpg" alt="" style="border: solid 2px #000000;" /></a> <br /> <span style="font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/4234305/">mini-true</a> <br /> Originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/niznoz/">niznoz</a>. </span></div><blockquote>Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer, though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing. A kilometre away the Ministry of Truth, his place of work, towered vast and white above the grimy landscape. This, he thought with a sort of vague distaste -- this was London, chief city of Airstrip One, itself the third most populous of the provinces of Oceania. He tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that should tell him whether London had always been quite like this. Were there always these vistas of rotting nineteenth-century houses, their sides shored up with baulks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron, their crazy garden walls sagging in all directions? And the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air and the willow-herb straggled over the heaps of rubble; and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger patch and there had sprung up sordid colonies of wooden dwellings like chicken-houses? But it was no use, he could not remember: nothing remained of his childhood except a series of bright-lit tableaux occurring against no background and mostly unintelligible.</blockquote> -- George Orwell <u>1984</u><br/><br /><a href="http://www.ull.ac.uk/introduction.shtml">Senate House</a> and its library, despite being the architectural basis for the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's 1984 is still the repository of archived material. No one is working there, busily recreating the past, changing history to suit the needs of the government.<br />Even if it would be a convenient.<br clear="all" />nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1107189309561543432005-01-31T11:23:00.000-05:002006-11-26T21:18:44.750-05:00London: Roman Baths<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/3823329/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://photos3.flickr.com/3823329_2f43cf8f07.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="roman baths" /></a>
<blockquote>An American once told me in Vienna that the Strand possesses a Roman bath well worth seeing, but, being a good Londoner, I did not believe him -- until I went there.<br/>
This Bath, which was constructed in A.D. 200 -- seventeen hundred years ago -- is opposite Bush House, in the Strand. Think of that. bush house and Rome! It is in the basement of No. 5 Strand Lane, an astonishing, a narrow, dingy alley that, in one step, takes you back to the darkest days of Victorian London, when lanterns glimmered in passages and 'Peelers' twirled truncheons and wore stove-pipe hats. No. 5 belongs to the Rev/ pennigton Bickford, Rector of St. Clement Danes, who bought the house a few years ago to save the bath, which was - O incredible London! - in danger of destruction.<br/>
Page 143 - Our Roman Bath. Notes from London by H.V. Morton - fifth edition, Methuen and Co, Ltd. London 1941</blockquote>
O credulous Morton! Architectural critic Nikolaus Pevsner(page 371 -- The Buildings of England: London and Westminster
Simon Bradley and Nikolaus Pevsner. Yale), for one, thinks this unlikely: "David Copperfield took a cold plunge in it before setting off to walk to Hampstead." which is all very well, but he's fictional. "The dimensions of the bricks are not Roman, and the high ground level also rules out a Roman origin. More likely is that the bath belonged with ARUNDEL HOUSE, which would suggest a C16 or early C17 date." Case closed. So what you have in this back alley off the strand, is merely a 16th century bath -- an era not noted for bathing -- built by some aristocratic collector of antiquities. It dosn't really matter who built it. Its weird enough to find the alley with the bath. Its owned by the <a href="http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/scripts/nthandbook.dll?ACTION=PROPERTY&PROPERTYID=279">National Trust</a> (check the link for directions etc.), but it is unattended. You push a light switch on a timer and peer down into what looks like a flooded basement (well lit, made of a khaki sandstone). It makes you wonder what's hidden around the next corner, what building has a lightswitch on it so you can peer inside. It is fantastic.
<br/><br/>My friend Ben Chant, in his as yet unpublished <i>Liars Guide to London</i> (copyright Benedict Chant) imagines that the Roman Bath is part of a ancient Temple complex. Here he describes a visit:
<blockquote> Turn left out of the cafe and walk up Arundel Street until you reach Temple Place on your left. This is the site of the spectacular Roman Temple that gave the area its name. Follow the lane round to the right and ring the bell. The Temple is open from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., but it's frequently rented out in the evenings to parties of lawyers and business people from the nearby Inns of Court or the City, so call ahead if you are planning to arrive after 6:00 p.m. The National Trust looks after the temple so there's no admission fee, just the venerable custodian standing next to a collection box as you enter. If you do donate something you'll find the staff eager to give you an informal tour. You should probably do this because although the temple appears to be simply designed (it was merely the "private chapel" of a minor Roman official), your guide can point out some peculiar details. Note, for example, the mosaics of exceptionally priapic rams and dolphin-boys playing in the water. The story goes that there is a room in the back of the temple with wall paintings that match the licentiousness of Pompeii's frescoes, but I have never been able to donate enough money to pry a definite "yes" or "no" from the guides.</blockquote>nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2617343.post-1105892038106808672005-01-17T10:57:00.000-05:002005-01-16T11:16:49.976-05:00Wonderful Saloon<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/3424581/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://photos2.flickr.com/3424581_5d858648aa.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="The Old House at Home" /></a><br/><br/><blockquote>To a devoted McSorley customer, most other New York City saloons are tense and disquieting. It is possible to relax in McSorley’s. For one thing, it is dark and gloomy, and repose comes easy in a gloomy place. also, the barely audible heartbeatlike ticking of the old clocks is soothing. Also, there is a thick, musty smell that acts as a balm to jerky nerves; it is really a rich compound of the smells of pine sawdust, tap drippings, pipe tobacco, coal smoke, and onions. A bellevue intern once remarked that for some mental states the smell in McSorely’s would be a lot more beneficial than psychoanalysis or sedative pills or prayer. - <i>The Old House at Home</i> from <i>McSorely’s Wonderful Saloon</i> collected in <u>Up in the Old Hote</u>l by Joseph Mitchell. Pantheon, New York, 1992.</blockquote><br/><br/>Until the 1970's (when, conincidently, the Swiss finally allowed women to vote) McSorely's refused to serve women their ale. Such is the way of small landlocked nations. It's probably Joseph Mitchell's fault as much as anybodys, but the peaceful bar he describes no longer exists. It <i>looks</i> the same, to be sure, but, on weekends, it full of loud beer enthusiasts obliterating history with their weird slogans (i.e. "fucking A!"). But go during the week, early in the day, and you'll get a sense of what made the place special. Of course, you'll be drinking -- early in the day, and in the middle of the week. Thats an excellent way to feel special in itself. Order ale two mugs at a time, but go easy on the cheese, onion and saltine platters.nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05493739609795650739noreply@blogger.com