The Rise and Fall of Concorde, the Midcentury Supersonic Jetliner That Still Inspires Awe Today

in History, Technology, Travel | November 10th, 2022

The pop­u­lar­i­ty of the phrase “style over sub­stance” has encour­aged us to assume an inher­ent and absolute divide between those con­cepts. But as the most ambi­tious works of man remind us, style pushed to its lim­its its sub­stance, and vice ver­sa. This truth has been expressed in var­i­ous spe­cial­ized ways: archi­tect Louis Sul­li­van’s max­im “form fol­lows func­tion,” for exam­ple, which went on to attain some­thing like scrip­tur­al sta­tus among mod­ernists of the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. It was in that same era that aero­space engi­neer­ing pro­duced one of the most glo­ri­ous proofs of the uni­ty of style and sub­stance, form and func­tion, mechan­ics and aes­thet­ics: Con­corde, the super­son­ic jet­lin­er that flew between 1976 and 2003.

Nobody who flew on Con­corde (col­lo­qui­al­ly but not offi­cial­ly “the” Con­corde) has for­got­ten it. The sharp­ness and length of its ascent; the thrust of the after-burn­er, press­ing you into your seat like the accel­er­a­tion of a high-per­for­mance sports car; the vis­i­ble cur­va­ture of the Earth and the deep pur­ple of the sky; the impec­ca­ble food and drink ser­vice that turned a flight between New York and Lon­don into a sump­tu­ous French meal. A host of for­mer pas­sen­gers, crew mem­bers, and pilots rem­i­nisce vivid­ly about all this in the BBC doc­u­men­tary Con­corde: A Super­son­ic Sto­ry.  That sto­ry is told more briefly in the Vox video at the top of the post, which asks the ques­tion, “This plane could cross the Atlantic in 3.5 hours. Why did it fail?”

The short answer has to do with busi­ness via­bil­i­ty. At super­son­ic speeds an air­craft leaves a son­ic boom in its wake, which rel­e­gat­ed Con­corde to transocean­ic flights. Its inabil­i­ty to hold enough fuel to cross the Pacif­ic left New York-Lon­don, oper­at­ed by British Air­ways, as its sole viable route, with Air France also run­ning between New York and Paris. For Con­corde was an Anglo-French project, launched as a part­ner­ship between the two gov­ern­ments in 1962, at the height of the Space Age — and despite enor­mous sub­se­quent cost over­runs an effec­tive­ly un-can­ce­lable one, since one coun­try could­n’t pull out with­out the oth­er’s say-so.

With nation­al pride at stake, French com­mit­ment did much to make Con­corde what it was. “Because it went so fast, the V.I.P.s on board would­n’t need much more, from an Eng­lish point of view, than a sand­wich, a cup of tea, and a glass of whiskey,” says Jonathan Glancey, author of Con­corde: The Rise and Fall of the Super­son­ic Air­lin­er. But the French said, “No, this a lux­u­ry air­craft,” and it was ulti­mate­ly lux­u­ry — as well as a sleek­ly func­tion­al sil­hou­ette that nev­er stopped look­ing futur­is­tic — that kept Con­corde going until its retire­ment in 2003. (Nor could the con­ve­nience fac­tor be ignored, for invest­ment bankers and inter­na­tion­al celebri­ties alike: “It’s always excit­ing to get to New York before you’ve left,” said fre­quent fli­er Sting.)

“The real flaw in Con­corde was not tech­no­log­i­cal but social,” writes Fran­cis Spufford in the Lon­don Review of Books. “Those who com­mis­sioned it assumed that air trav­el would remain, as it was in 1962, some­thing done by the rich: and not the mobile, hard-work­ing man­age­r­i­al rich either, but the gild­ed upper-crust celebri­ty rich,” the orig­i­nal “jet set.” Alas, the future lay not with speed but vol­ume: “The Boe­ing 747 was just as bold a leap into the unknown as Con­corde, just as extreme in its depar­ture from the norm; noth­ing so large had ever left the ground before. And Boeing’s gam­ble paid off.” Super­son­ic jet­lin­ers have nev­er­the­less re-entered devel­op­ment in recent years, and if any come to mar­ket, they’ll sure­ly do so with such lux­u­ries unknown in the Space Age as per­son­al, on-demand enter­tain­ment sys­tems. But will any­thing they can show be as thrilling as Con­corde’s cab­in speedome­ter reach­ing mach two?

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry Of Avi­a­tion: From da Vinci’s Sketch­es to Apol­lo 11

Col­or­ful Maps from 1914 and 2016 Show How Planes & Trains Have Made the World Small­er and Trav­el Times Quick­er

NASA Cap­tures First Air-to-Air Images of Super­son­ic Shock­waves Inter­act­ing in Flight

Down­load 14 Free Posters from NASA That Depict the Future of Space Trav­el in a Cap­ti­vat­ing­ly Retro Style

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Watch Vintage Videos Capturing Life in Japan from the 1960s Through Today

in Film, History, Travel | October 12th, 2022

Just yes­ter­day, Japan ful­ly re-opened its bor­ders to tourism after a long peri­od of COVID-19-moti­vat­ed clo­sure. This should prove eco­nom­i­cal­ly invig­o­rat­ing, given how much demand to vis­it the Land of the Ris­ing Sun has built up over the past cou­ple of years. Even before the pan­dem­ic, Japan had been a coun­try of great inter­est among world trav­el­ers, and for more than half a cen­tu­ry at that. Much of that attrac­tive­ness has, of course, to do with its dis­tinc­tive nature, which man­i­fests both deep tra­di­tion and hyper-moder­ni­ty at once.

But some of it also has to do with the fact that, since ris­ing from the dev­as­ta­tion of the Sec­ond World War, Japan has hard­ly shied away from self-pro­mo­tion. “A Day in Tokyo,” the short film at the top of the post, was pro­duced by the Japan Nation­al Tourism Orga­ni­za­tion in 1968.

Its vivid col­or footage of Japan’s great metrop­o­lis, “the world’s largest and liveli­est,” cap­tures every­day life as it was then lived in Toky­o’s depart­ment stores, stock exchanges, con­struc­tion sites, and zoos.

The film puts a good deal of empha­sis on the cap­i­tal’s still-ongo­ing post­war trans­for­ma­tion: “In a con­stant meta­bol­ic cycle of destruc­tion and cre­ation, Tokyo pro­gress­es at a dizzy­ing pace,” declares the film’s nar­ra­tor. “Peo­ple who haven’t seen Tokyo for ten years, or even five, would scarce­ly rec­og­nize it today.” And if Tokyo was dizzy­ing in the late nine­teen-six­ties, it became pos­i­tive­ly dis­ori­ent­ing in the eight­ies. On the back of that era’s eco­nom­ic bub­ble, Japan looked about to become the wealth­i­est coun­try in the world, and Toky­oites both worked and played accord­ing­ly hard.

This two-part com­pi­la­tion of scenes from Japan in the eight­ies con­veys that time with footage drawn from a vari­ety of sources, includ­ing fea­ture films (not least Ita­mi Jūzō’s beloved 1985 ramen com­e­dy Tam­popo.) “It was a mag­i­cal place at a mag­i­cal time,” remem­bers one Amer­i­can com­menter who lived in Japan back then. “Every­thing seemed pos­si­ble. Every­body was pros­per­ing. Almost every crazy busi­ness idea seemed to suc­ceed. Peo­ple were hap­py and shared their hap­pi­ness and good for­tune with oth­ers. It was like no oth­er place on earth.”

As dra­mat­i­cal­ly as the bub­ble burst at the end of the eight­ies, Japan­ese life in the sub­se­quent “lost decades” has also pos­sessed a rich­ness of its own. You can see it in this com­pi­la­tion of footage of Japan in the nineties and two-thou­sands from the same chan­nel, TRNGL. Though it no longer seemed able to buy up the rest of the world, the coun­try had by that era built up a glob­al con­scious­ness of its cul­ture by export­ing its films, its ani­ma­tion, its music, its video games, and much more besides. Even if you haven’t seen this Japan in per­son, you’ve come to know it through its art and media.

If you’re con­sid­er­ing mak­ing the trip, this video of “Japan nowa­days” will give you a sense of what you’ve been miss­ing. The Tokyo of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry shown in its clips cer­tain­ly isn’t the same city it was in 1968. Yet it remains “an inter­min­gling of Ori­ent and Occi­dent, seem­ing­ly new, but actu­al­ly old,” as the nar­ra­tor of “A Day in Tokyo” puts it. “Beneath its mod­ern exte­ri­or, there still lingers an atmos­phere of past glo­ries. The cit­i­zens remain unal­ter­ably Japan­ese, and yet this great city is able to accom­mo­date and under­stand peo­ple of all races, lan­guages, and beliefs” — peo­ple now arriv­ing by the thou­sands once again.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Entire His­to­ry of Japan in 9 Quirky Min­utes

Watch Life on the Streets of Tokyo in Footage Record­ed in 1913: Caught Between the Tra­di­tion­al and the Mod­ern

1850s Japan Comes to Life in 3D, Col­or Pho­tos: See the Stereo­scop­ic Pho­tog­ra­phy of T. Ena­mi

Hand-Col­ored 1860s Pho­tographs Reveal the Last Days of Samu­rai Japan

An Intro­duc­tion to Japan­ese Kabu­ki The­atre, Fea­tur­ing 20th-Cen­tu­ry Mas­ters of the Form (1964)

How Youtube’s Algo­rithm Turned an Obscure 1980s Japan­ese Song Into an Enor­mous­ly Pop­u­lar Hit: Dis­cov­er Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plas­tic Love”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Art of Translating Hamilton into German: “So Kribbeln Schmetterlinge, Wenn Sie Starten”

in Language, Music, Theatre, Travel | September 23rd, 2022

The city of Hamburg’s nick­name is Tor zur Welt- the gate­way to the world.

If the Ger­man lan­guage pro­duc­tion of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s record break­ing hiphop musi­cal now in pre­views in that city’s St. Pauli The­ater is as warm­ly received as the Eng­lish orig­i­nal has been in Lon­don, Mel­bourne, and, of course, the US, it may earn itself with an addi­tion­al one — Hamil­ton­burg.

Excite­ment has been build­ing since ear­ly sum­mer, when a dual lan­guage video mashup of the open­ing num­ber placed the orig­i­nal Broad­way cast along­side their Ger­man lan­guage coun­ter­parts.

One need not speak Ger­man to appre­ci­ate the sim­i­lar­i­ties in atti­tude — in both per­for­mance, and inter­nal asso­nances, a lyri­cal aspect of hip hop that Miran­da was intent on pre­serv­ing.

Trans­la­tor Kevin Schroed­er quipped that he and co-trans­la­tor rap­per Sera Finale embraced the mot­to “as free as nec­es­sary, as close as pos­si­ble” in approach­ing the score, which at 46 num­bers and over 20,000 words, more than dou­bles the word count of any oth­er musi­cal:

At least we had all these syl­la­bles. It gave us room to play around.

Good thing, as the Ger­man lan­guage abounds with mul­ti­syl­lab­ic com­pound nouns, many of which have no direct Eng­lish equiv­a­lent.

Take schaden­freude which the cre­ators of the musi­cal Avenue Q summed up as “hap­pi­ness at the mis­for­tune of oth­ers.”

Or torschlusspanik — the sense of urgency to achieve or do some­thing before it’s too late.

Might that one speak to a trans­lat­ing team who’ve devot­ed close to four years of their lives to get­ting every­thing — words, syl­la­bles, meter, sound, flow, posi­tion, musi­cal­i­ty, mean­ing, and dou­ble mean­ings — right?

Before Schroed­er and Finale were entrust­ed with this her­culean task, they had to pass muster with Miranda’s wife’s Aus­tri­an cousin, who lis­tened to their sam­ples and pro­nounced them in keep­ing with the spir­it of the orig­i­nal.

As trans­la­tors have always done, Schroed­er and Finale had to take their audi­ence into account, swap­ping out ref­er­ences, metaphors and turns of phrase that could stump Ger­man the­ater­go­ers for ones with proven region­al res­o­nance.

In a round up demon­strat­ing the Ger­man team’s dex­ter­i­ty, the New York Times’ Michael Paul­son points to “Sat­is­fied,” a song where­in Hamilton’s prospec­tive sis­ter-in-law recalls their first encounter:

ORIGINAL

So this is what it feels like to match wits

With some­one at your lev­el! What the hell is the catch?

It’s the feel­ing of free­dom, of see­ing the light

It’s Ben Franklin with a key and a kite

You see it right?

 

GERMAN

So kribbeln Schmetter­linge, wenn sie starten

Wir bei­de voll auf einem Lev­el, offene Karten!

Das Herz in den Wolken, ich flieg’ aus der Bahn

Die Füße kom­men an den Boden nich’ ran

Mein lieber Schwan!

 

ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF GERMAN

So that’s how but­ter­flies tin­gle when they take off

We’re on the same lev­el, all cards on the table!

My heart in the clouds, I’m thrown off track

My feet don’t touch the floor

My dear swan!

Miran­da, who par­tic­i­pat­ed in shap­ing the Ger­man trans­la­tion using a 3 col­umn sys­tem remark­ably sim­i­lar to the com­pare and con­trast con­tent above, gives this change a glow­ing review:

That sec­tion sounds fan­tas­tic, and gives the same feel­ing of falling in love for the first time. The metaphor may be dif­fer­ent, but it keeps its propul­sive­ness.

And while few Ger­man the­ater­go­ers can be expect­ed to be con­ver­sant in Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War era Amer­i­can his­to­ry, Ger­many’s size­able immi­grant pop­u­la­tion ensures that cer­tain of the musical’s themes will retain their cul­tur­al rel­e­vance.

The Ham­burg pro­duc­tion fea­tures play­ers from Liberia and Brazil. Oth­er cast mem­bers were born in Ger­many to par­ents hail­ing from Ghana, the Philip­pines, Aru­ba, Benin, Suriname…and the Unit­ed States.

For more of Michael Paulson’s insights into the chal­lenges of trans­lat­ing Hamil­ton, click here.

Hamil­ton is in pre­views at Hamburg’s St. Pauli The­ater, with open­ing night sched­uled for Octo­ber 6.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A Tour of All the Pizza Styles You Can Eat in the United States (and the History Behind Your Favorite Slices)

in Food & Drink, History, Travel | September 21st, 2022

When it comes to chili, Texas, Kansas City and Cincin­nati, will cede no quar­ter, each con­vinced that their par­tic­u­lar region­al approach is the only sane option.

Hot dogs? Put New York City and Chica­go in a pit and watch them tear each oth­er to rib­bons.

But piz­za?

There are so many geo­graph­ic vari­a­tions, even an impar­tial judge can’t see their way through to a clear vic­tor.

The play­ing field­’s thick as stuffed piz­za, a polar­iz­ing Chica­go local spe­cial­ty that’s deep­er than the deep­est dish.

Weird His­to­ry Food’s whirl­wind video tour of Every Piz­za Style We Could Find In the Unit­ed States, above, savors the ways in which var­i­ous piz­za styles evolved from the Neapoli­tan pie that Ital­ian immi­grant Gen­naro Lom­bar­di intro­duced to New York City in 1905.

Wait, though. We all have an acquain­tance who takes per­verse plea­sure in off­beat top­ping choic­es — look­ing at you, Cal­i­for­nia — but oth­er than that, isn’t piz­za just sauce, dough, and cheese?

How much room does that leave for vari­a­tion?

Plen­ty as it turns out.

Crusts, thick or thin, fluc­tu­ate wild­ly accord­ing to the type of flour used, how long the dough is proofed, the type of oven in which they’re baked, and phi­los­o­phy of sauce place­ment.

(In Buf­fa­lo, New York, piz­zas are sauced right up to their cir­cum­fer­ence, leav­ing very lit­tle crusty han­dle for eat­ing on the fly, though per­haps one could fold it down the mid­dle, as we do in the city 372 miles to the south.)

Sauce can also swing pret­ty wild­ly — sweet, spicy, pre­pared in advance, or left to the last minute — but cheese is a much hot­ter top­ic.

Detroit’s piz­za is dis­tin­guished by the inclu­sion of Wis­con­sin brick cheese.

St. Louis is loy­al to Prov­el cheese, a home­grown processed mix of ched­dar, Swiss, and pro­volone and liq­uid smoke.

Mia­mi piz­zas cater to the palates of its Cuban pop­u­la­tion by mix­ing moz­zarel­la with gou­da, a cheese that was both wide­ly avail­able and pop­u­lar before 1962’s rationing sys­tem was put in place.

Rhode Island’s apt­ly named Red Strips have no cheese at all…which might be prefer­able to the Altoona, Penn­syl­va­nia favorite that arrives topped with Amer­i­can cheese slices or — the hor­ror — Velvee­ta.

(This may be where we part ways with the old saw equat­ing piz­za with sex — even when it’s bad, it’s still pret­ty good.)

Cut and size also fac­tor in to piz­za pride.

Wash­ing­ton DC’s Jum­bo slices are pret­ty much the stan­dard issue New York-style thin crust slice, writ large.

Not only does size mat­ter here, it may be the only thing that matters…to the point where a local busi­ness improve­ment dis­trict had to inter­vene on behalf of side­walk rub­bish bins hard pressed to han­dle the vol­ume of greasy super-sized slice box­es Wash­ing­to­ni­ans were toss­ing away every evening.

In the land of oppor­tu­ni­ty, where small­er towns are under­stand­ably eager to claim their piece of pie, Weird His­to­ry Food gives the nod to Old Forge, Penn­syl­va­nia, opti­misti­cal­ly dubbed “the Piz­za Cap­i­tal of the World by Uncov­er­ing PA’s Jim Cheney, and Steubenville Ohio, home of the “over­sized Lunch­able” Atlas Obscu­ra refers to as America’s most mis­un­der­stood piz­za.

For good mea­sure, watch the PBS Idea Channel’s His­to­ry of Piz­za in 8 slices, below, then rep your favorite local pizze­ria in the com­ments.

We want to try them all!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The First Piz­za Ordered by Com­put­er, 1974

When Mikhail Gor­bachev, the Last Sovi­et Leader, Starred in a Piz­za Hut Com­mer­cial (1998)

Piz­za Box Becomes a Playable DJ Turntable Through the Mag­ic of Con­duc­tive Ink

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Architect Breaks Down Five of the Most Iconic New York City Apartments

in Architecture, History, Travel | September 16th, 2022

Real estate is a peren­ni­al­ly hot top­ic in New York City, as is gen­tri­fi­ca­tion.

Above, archi­tect Michael Wyet­zn­er, breaks down the defin­ing fea­tures of sev­er­al typ­i­cal NYC apart­ments.

You’re on your own to truf­fle up the sort of rent a 340 square feet stu­dio com­mands in an East Vil­lage ten­e­ment these days.

The ances­tors would be shocked, for sure. My late moth­er-in-law nev­er tired of caus­ing young jaws to drop by reveal­ing how she once paid $27/month for a 1 bed­room on Sheri­dan Square…and her moth­er, who immi­grat­ed at the turn of the cen­tu­ry, couldn’t wait to put the Low­er East Side behind her.

He may not truck in final sales fig­ures, but Wyet­zn­er drops in a wealth of inter­est­ing fac­tu­al tid­bits as he sketch­es lay­outs with a black Pen­tel Sign Pen. His tone is more Low­er East Side Ten­e­ment Muse­um tour guide than the com­ments sec­tion of a real estate blog where salty New York­ers flaunt their street cred.

For instance, those enfilade ten­e­ment apartments–to employ the grand archi­tec­tur­al term Wyet­zn­er just taught us–were not only dark, but dan­ger­ous­ly under-ven­ti­lat­ed until 1901, when reforms stip­u­lat­ed that air shafts must be opened up between side by side build­ings.

This pub­lic health ini­tia­tive changed the shape of ten­e­ment build­ings, but did lit­tle to stop the pover­ty and over­crowd­ing that activist/photographer Jacob Riis famous­ly doc­u­ment­ed in How the Oth­er Half Lives.

(Anoth­er mea­sure decreed that build­ing own­ers must sup­ply one indoor toi­let …per 20 peo­ple!)

While we’re on the top­ic of toi­lets, did you know that there was a time when every brown­stone back­yard boast­ed its own privy?

Home­own­ers who’ve spent mil­lions on what many con­ceive of as the most roman­tic of New York City build­ings (then mil­lions more on gut ren­o­va­tions) proud­ly dis­play old bot­tles and oth­er refuse exca­vat­ed from the site where privys once stood. The for­mer res­i­dents turn their out­hous­es into garbage chutes upon achiev­ing indoor plumb­ing.

Lay­ing aside its dis­tinc­tive col­or, a brownstone’s most icon­ic fea­ture is sure­ly its stoop.

Stoops grabbed hold of the Amer­i­can public’s imag­i­na­tion thanks to Sesame Street, the Harlem pho­tographs of Gor­don Parks and the films of Spike Lee, who learned of Mar­tin Luther King’s assas­si­na­tion as an 11-year-old, sit­ting on his.

“Not porch!,” he empha­sized dur­ing a Tonight Show appear­ance. ”In Brook­lyn, it’s stoops. Stoops!”

(For­give me if I delve into NYC real estate prices for a sec: the Bed-Stuy brown­stone from Lee‘s semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Crook­lyn, above, just went on the mar­ket for $4.5 mil­lion.)

There’s no ques­tion that brown­stone stoops make excel­lent hang out spots, but that’s not the rea­son they rose to promi­nence.

As Esther Crain writes in Ephemer­al New York, the Com­mis­sion­ers’ Plan of 1811 which led to the city’s grid­like lay­out negat­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of alleys:

With­out a back door to a row­house accessed through an alley, ser­vants and work­ers would enter and exit a res­i­dence using the same front stoop the own­ers used—which wasn’t too pop­u­lar, at least with the own­ers. 

But a tall stoop set back from the side­walk allowed for a side door that led to the low­er lev­el of the house. While the own­ers con­tin­ued to go up and down the stoop to get to the par­lor floor (and see and be seen by their neigh­bors), every­one else was rel­e­gat­ed to the side…And of course, as New York entered the Gild­ed Age of busy streets filled with dust, ash, refuse, and enor­mous piles of horse manure, a very high stoop helped keep all the filth from get­ting into the house. 

Flash for­ward a hun­dred and fifty some years, and, as Wyet­zn­er notes, a stoop’s top step offers a high­ly scenic view of the Hefty bags the neigh­bors haul to the curb the night before New York’s Strongest roll through.

Wyet­zn­er also pro­vides the his­tor­i­cal con­text behind such archi­tec­tural­ly dis­tinc­tive digs as SoHo’s astro­nom­i­cal­ly priced light-filled lofts, the always desir­able Clas­sic Six res­i­dences on the Upper East and Upper West Sides, one-room stu­dios both mod­ern and orig­i­nal fla­vor, and our blight­ed pub­lic hous­ing projects.

If you’re itch­ing to play along from home, check out the New York Times’ reg­u­lar fea­ture The Hunt, which invites read­ers to trail a sin­gle, fam­i­ly, or cou­ple delib­er­at­ing between three prop­er­ties in New York City.

A sam­ple: “After a mouse infes­ta­tion at her West Vil­lage rental, a sin­gle moth­er need­ed a bet­ter spot for her fam­i­ly, includ­ing a son with autism.”

Review the lay­outs and click here to see whether she chose a brand-new 127-unit build­ing with a rooftop pool, a Harlem brown­stone duplex with a back­yard rights, or an updat­ed one bed­room in a down­town co-op from 1910.

Relat­ed Con­tent

A New Inter­ac­tive Map Shows All Four Mil­lion Build­ings That Exist­ed in New York City from 1939 to 1941

Behold the New York City Street Tree Map: An Inter­ac­tive Map That Cat­a­logues the 700,000 Trees Shad­ing the Streets of New York City

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo. She has lived in all man­ner of New York City apart­ments, but hopes to nev­er move again. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Behold a Secret Gallery of Art Created Using Discarded Gum on London’s Millennium Bridge

in Art, Creativity, Travel, Video - Arts & Culture | August 17th, 2022

Through­out his­to­ry, deter­mined artists have worked on avail­able sur­faces — scrap wood, card­board, walls…

Ben Wil­son has cre­at­ed thou­sands of works using chew­ing gum as his can­vas.

Specif­i­cal­ly, chew­ing gum spat out by care­less strangers.

His work has become a defin­ing fea­tur­ing of London’s Mil­len­ni­um Bridge, a mod­ern struc­ture span­ning the Thames, and con­nect­ing such South Bank attrac­tions as Tate Mod­ern and the Shake­speare’s Globe with St. Paul’s Cathe­dral to the north.

A 2021 pro­file in The Guardian doc­u­ments the cre­ation process:

The tech­nique is very pre­cise. He first soft­ens the oval of flat­tened gum a lit­tle with a blow­torch, sprays it with lac­quer and then applies three coats of acrylic enam­el, usu­al­ly to a design from his lat­est book of requests that come from peo­ple who stop and crouch and talk. He uses tiny mod­el­ers’ brush­es, quick-dry­ing his work with a lighter flame as he goes along, and then seals it with more lac­quer. Each paint­ing takes a few hours and can last for many years.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Wil­son works very, very small.

For every Mil­len­ni­um Bridge pedes­tri­an who’s hip to the ever-evolv­ing solo exhi­bi­tion under­foot, there are sev­er­al hun­dred who remain com­plete­ly obliv­i­ous.

Stoop to admire a minia­ture por­trait, abstract, or com­mem­o­ra­tive work, and the bulk of your fel­low pedes­tri­ans will give you a wide berth, though every now and then a con­cerned or curi­ous par­ty will stop to see what the deal is.

Wil­son, who works sprawled on the bridge’s met­al treads, his nose close to touch­ing his tiny, untra­di­tion­al can­vas, receives a sim­i­lar response, as described in Zachary Den­man’s short doc­u­men­tary, Chew­ing Gum Man:

They make think I’ve fall­en over and they may think I’ve had a car­diac arrest or some­thing, so I’ve had lots of ambu­lances turn­ing up…I’ve had loads of police.

His sub­jects are sug­gest­ed by the shape of the spat out gum, by friends, by strangers who stop to watch him work:

I’ve had to deal with peo­ple memo­ri­al­iz­ing peo­ple who have been mur­dered. Peo­ple who have been so lone­ly, or remem­ber­ing favorite pets; peo­ple who are des­ti­tute in all sorts of ways. It goes from pro­pos­al pic­tures, ‘Will you mar­ry me?’, to peo­ple who I drew when they were kids and they now have their own kids.

Like any street artist, Wilson’s had his share of run ins with the law, includ­ing a wrong­ful 2010 arrest for crim­i­nal dam­age, when a crowd of school­child­ren who’d been enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly watch­ing an itty bit­ty St. Pauls tak­ing shape on a blob of gum wit­nessed him being dragged off by his feet. (He asked if he could fin­ish the pic­ture first…)

He may not get per­mis­sion to cre­ate the pub­lic works he goes out dai­ly to cre­ate, but he con­tributes by clear­ing the area of lit­ter, and as he points out, paint­ing on dis­card­ed gum doesn’t con­sti­tute defac­ing anyone’s actu­al prop­er­ty:

Tech­ni­cal­ly in one sense, I’m work­ing with­in the law …if I paint on chew­ing gum, it’s like find­ing No Man’s Land or com­mon ground. It’s a space which is not under the juris­dic­tion of a local or nation­al gov­ern­ment.











See more of Ben Wilson’s work in his online Gum Gallery.

Pho­tos in this arti­cle tak­en by Ayun Hal­l­i­day, 2022. All rights reserved.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Japanese Restaurants Show You How to Make Traditional Dishes in Meditative Videos: Soba, Tempura, Udon & More

in Food & Drink, Travel | July 19th, 2022

Despite hav­ing recent­ly begun to admit tour groups, Japan remains inac­ces­si­ble to most of the world’s trav­el­ers. Hav­ing closed its gates dur­ing the onset of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the coun­try has shown lit­tle incli­na­tion to open them up again too quick­ly or wide­ly. The longer this remains the case, of course, the more intense every­one’s desire to vis­it Japan becomes. Though dif­fer­ent trav­el­ers have dif­fer­ent inter­ests to pur­sue in the Land of the Ris­ing sun — tem­ples and shrines, trains and cafés, ani­me and man­ga — all of them are sure­ly unit­ed by one appre­ci­a­tion in par­tic­u­lar: that of Japan­ese food.

Wher­ev­er in the world we hap­pen to live, most of us have a decent Japan­ese restau­rant or two in our vicin­i­ty. Alas, as any­one with expe­ri­ence in Japan has felt, the expe­ri­ence of eat­ing its cui­sine any­where else does­n’t quite mea­sure up; a ramen meal can taste good in a Cal­i­for­nia strip mall, not the same as it would taste in a Tokyo sub­way sta­tion.

At least the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry affords us one con­ve­nient means of enjoy­ing audio­vi­su­al evo­ca­tions of gen­uine Japan­ese eater­ies: Youtube videos. The chan­nel Japan­ese Noo­dles Udon Soba Kyoto Hyō­go, for instance, has cap­ti­vat­ed large audi­ences sim­ply by show­ing what goes on in the hum­ble kitchens of west­ern Japan’s Kyoto and Hyō­go pre­fec­tures.

Hyō­go con­tains the coastal city of Kobe as well as Hime­ji Cas­tle, which dates back to the four­teenth cen­tu­ry. The pre­fec­ture of Kyoto, and espe­cial­ly the one­time cap­i­tal of Japan with­in it, needs no intro­duc­tion, such is its world­wide renown as a site of cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal rich­ness. Right up until the pan­dem­ic, many were the for­eign­ers who jour­neyed to Kyoto in search of the “real Japan.” Whether such a thing tru­ly exists remains an open ques­tion, but if it does, I would locate it — in Kyoto, Hyō­go, or any oth­er region of the coun­try — in the mod­est restau­rants of its back alleys and shoten­gai mar­ket com­plex­es, the ones that have been serv­ing up bowls of noo­dles and plates of cur­ry for decade upon decade.

Ide­al­ly the décor nev­er changes at these estab­lish­ments, nor do the pro­pri­etors. The video at the top of the post vis­its a “good old din­er” in Kobe to show the skills of a “hard work­ing old lady” with the sta­tus of a “vet­er­an cook cho­sen by God.” In anoth­er such neigh­bor­hood restau­rant, locat­ed near the main train sta­tion in the city of Ama­gasa­ki, a “super mom” pre­pares her sig­na­ture udon noo­dles. But even she looks like a new­com­er com­pared to the lady who’s been mak­ing udon over in Kyoto for 58 years at a din­er in exis­tence for a cen­tu­ry. Soba, tonkat­su, oyakodon, tem­pu­ra, okonomiya­ki: whichev­er Japan­ese dish you’ve been crav­ing for the past cou­ple of years, you can watch a video on its prepa­ra­tion — and make your long-term trav­el plans accord­ing­ly.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How to Make Sushi: Free Video Lessons from a Mas­ter Sushi Chef

Cook­pad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launch­es New Site in Eng­lish

How Soy Sauce Has Been Made in Japan for Over 220 Years: An Inside View

The Restau­rant of Mis­tak­en Orders: A Tokyo Restau­rant Where All the Servers Are Peo­ple Liv­ing with Demen­tia

Watch Tee­ny Tiny Japan­ese Meals Get Made in a Minia­ture Kitchen: The Joy of Cook­ing Mini Tem­pu­ra, Sashi­mi, Cur­ry, Okonomiya­ki & More

The Prop­er Way to Eat Ramen: A Med­i­ta­tion from the Clas­sic Japan­ese Com­e­dy Tam­popo (1985)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Italian Advice on How to Live the Good Life: Cigarettes, Tomatoes, and Other Picturesque Small Pleasures

in Life, Philosophy, Travel | May 31st, 2022

“I guess everybody’s got a dream and we’re all hop­ing to see it come true,” mus­es Gio­van­ni Mim­mo Man­cu­sou, a philo­soph­i­cal native of Cal­abria, the love­ly, sun-drenched region form­ing the toe of Italy’s boot, above. “A dream com­ing true is bet­ter than just a dream.”

Film­mak­ers Jan Vrhovnik and Ana Kerin were scout­ing for sub­jects to embody “the very essence of nos­tal­gia” when they chanced upon Man­cu­sou in a cor­ner shop.

A lucky encounter! Not every non-actor — or for that mat­ter, actor — is as com­fort­able on film as the laid­back Man­cu­sou.

(Vrhovnik has said that he invari­ably serves as his own cam­era oper­a­tor when work­ing with non-actors, because of the poten­tial for inti­ma­cy and intu­itive approach that such prox­im­i­ty affords.)

Man­cu­sou, an advo­cate for sim­ple plea­sures, also appears to be quite fit, which makes us won­der why the film’s descrip­tion on NOWNESS dou­bles down on adjec­tives like “aging”, “old­er” and most con­fus­ing­ly, “wis­ened.”

Mer­ri­am-Web­ster defines “wiz­ened” with a z as “dry, shrunk­en, and wrin­kled often as a result of aging or of fail­ing vital­i­ty” … and “wis­ened” not at all.

Per­haps NOWNESS meant wise?

We find our­selves crav­ing a lot more con­text.

Man­cu­sou has clear­ly cul­ti­vat­ed an abil­i­ty to savor the hell out of a ripe toma­to, his pic­turesque sur­round­ings, and his cig­gies.

“Seren­i­ty, joy, ecsta­sy” is embroi­dered across the back of his ball cap.

His man­ner of express­ing him­self does lend itself to a “poet­ic thought piece”, as the film­mak­ers note, but might that not be a symp­tom of strug­gling to com­mu­ni­cate abstract thoughts in a for­eign tongue?

We real­ly would love to know more about this charm­ing guy… his fam­i­ly sit­u­a­tion, what he does to make ends meet, his actu­al age.

Home movies accom­pa­ny his nos­tal­gic rever­ie, but did he pro­vide this footage to his new friends?

Did they hunt it down on ebay? It def­i­nite­ly fits the vibe, but is the man with the eye­brows Man­cu­sou at an ear­li­er age?

Our star pulls up to a small petrol sta­tion, declares, “All right, here we go,” and the next frame shows him wear­ing a head­lamp and mag­ni­fi­er as he peers into the work­ings of a pock­et watch:

Time out of mechan­i­cal. It’s mag­ic.

Is this a hob­by? A pro­fes­sion? Does he repair watch­es in a dark­ened gas sta­tion?

The film­mak­ers aren’t say­ing and the blurred back­ground offers no clues either. Curse you, depth of field!

We’re not even giv­en his home coor­di­nates.

The film, part of the NOWNESS series Por­trait of a Place, is titled Par­adiso, and there is indeed a vil­lage so named adja­cent to the town of Belvedere Marit­ti­mo, but accord­ing to cen­sus data we found on line, it has only 14 res­i­dents, 7 male.

If that’s where Man­cu­sou lives, he’s either 45–49, 65–69, 70–74, or one of two fel­lows over age 74…and now we’re real­ly curi­ous about his neigh­bors, too.

No shade to Sign­or Man­cu­so, but we’re glad to know we’re not the only view­ers left unsat­is­fied by this por­trait’s lack of depth.

One com­menter who chafed at the lack of speci­fici­ty (“this video is a ran­dom por­trait of basi­cal­ly any­one in the world that is hap­py with the lit­tle he has”) sug­gest­ed the omis­sions con­tribute to an Ital­ian stereo­type famil­iar from pas­ta sauce com­mer­cials:

Peo­ple in Italy actu­al­ly work and have ambi­tions you know? And often are very well-edu­cat­ed and hard-work­ing. The per­spec­tive of Italy that you have comes from the Amer­i­can media and Ital­ian post-war neo­re­al­ism. Indeed, Oscar-win­ning Ital­ian peo­ple com­plained about the fact that what the media wants is see­ing Ital­ians wear­ing tank tops doing noth­ing if not mafia or smelling the ros­es.

Watch more entries in the NOWNESS Por­trait of a Place series here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

What Are the Keys to Hap­pi­ness? Lessons from a 75-Year-Long Har­vard Study

A Guide to Hap­pi­ness: Alain de Botton’s Doc­u­men­tary Shows How Niet­zsche, Socrates & 4 Oth­er Philoso­phers Can Change Your Life

Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy: A Free Online Course from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

The Sci­ence of Well-Being: Take a Free Online Ver­sion of Yale University’s Most Pop­u­lar Course

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

 

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