In case you were wondering. Unless the majority of people defy history and vote for a black man and the President exceeds a normal life expectancy, the world’s most powerful person will be someone who attends this, otherwise harmless, children’s playgroup of a church.
The Triple Seven has been eclipsed by the Dreamliner and the A380, however, this fantastically comprehensive documentary shows just how important a plane it is. Part 1 of a mammoth 5 hour joint PBS/BBC production about the making of the 777.
Quite often, I hear people complaining that New York has lost its edge and that it has been ruined by gentrification and Yuppies. The people that I hear this from have tended to be middle class white people.
Here are some pictures of New York in the 70s and 80s, when I remember visiting the South Bronx and it looked worse than my early memory of Beirut. Not much to romanticize about, unless you look back wistfully on poverty rarely seen outside of the ‘developing’ world and people shooting up through bloody, shoeless feet. The gritty creativity of downtown New York, was a theme park hell, whereas further north there was the real thing.
There is a consensus these days, that rising oil prices spells the end of suburbia. However, few people under 40 in global cities such as New York and London have any memory other than the improvement of inner city areas. Here real estate costs soared through tenement and terrace gentrification, rezoned industrial building conversions and more recently cartoon loft condo dwellings. But in a country with few socialist programs outside of free tennis courts, and a financial services crash which will lop a sizable chunk of New York’s local government revenue, the Brownstone and brick frontiers could easily retreat as they have done in the past.
On its 50th anniversary, a group of Airstream enthusiasts plan to recreate Airstream founder, Wally Byam’s 1959 Cape Town to Cairo caravan, which travelled the full length of Africa.
I love the story of this trip, because it is like someone’s grandfather climbing Everest in a plaid shirt. Byam and his followers looked like the apotheosis of 50 suburban Americans, the type that cosmopolitan types may sniff at. But they did some genuinely ground breaking traveling. And they did it in style – because they had Airstreams.
Above is a clip of the original, and here is a link to the 50th anniversary trip.
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I am an avid cycling enthusiast who hates the cult of cycling. It is an efficient, pleasant form of transport not a fucking religion.
I often cross the Brooklyn Bridge either on foot or on a bike. There are two lanes, one for pedestrians and one for cyclists, with no barrier in between. The number of pedestrians largely outnumbers the number of cyclists, and there are a large number of tourists. This creates two situations where people naturally end up temporarily in the cycling lane: where tourists don’t realize and where pedestrians wish to bypass tourists who, quite reasonably, stop to take pictures.
When I ride a bike, I admit that I quite often ride on sidewalks (its impossible not to at the entrance to the Brooklyn bridge), and I rarely cycle in bike lanes (they actually seem dangerous in urban areas, having been thrown over a car door that someone opened into a bike lane once). I think rules can be broken, but I try and ride carefully and considerately, not breaking rules for the sake of it but because sometimes they don’t make sense.
For some reason, many cyclists on the Brooklyn Bridge ride like some car owners who hate cyclists drive, suddenly insisting on ridiculously strict adherence to rules like which lane you have to be in at all times, and cycling at speeds which are dangerous to others. I suspect that these people include those that complain about SUV drivers and like to do practical things like break rules and cycle on sidewalks. In which case they are not only selfish pricks, but hypocritical selfish pricks.
I don’t think I am exaggerating to suggest that one day a pedestrian is going to get killed. To illustrate, here is a video of a cyclist crossing the bridge who careers along hurling abuse and actually throws a punch at a pedestrian in his way.
Urban cycling is not a race requiring thousand dollar plus bikes and Manga inspired spandex, nor is it an alternative sub-culture for hipster liberals with latent Neo-Conservative rage. It is a normal form of transportation.
“Intercut scenes, from Hollywood films shot in New York’s Pennsylvania Station before it was demolished in 1963, or on stage sets representing it, form a composited narrative set in Manhattan’s great lost architectural masterpiece”.
And now the good news: the reason why we still have New York’s Grand Central, or London’s St Pancras in all their glory is because with hindsight the demolition of Euston and Penn Stations were evidently a mistake.
Ironic that the titles and production value of this documentary are actually terrible, considering that Saul Bass is the most famous title sequence designer. Nonetheless it is a mesmerizing look at some of the best movie title sequences of all time, narrated by Bass himself.
The fact that the US space program was kicked off by a Nazi who was let off because he was useful was made famous by Tom Lehrer. However the comparison between these two films rams the point home.
At top is color film from 1944 showing Von Braun as a Nazi, testing the V2.
And a Walt Disney space series from 1955, where Von Braun himself talks about space rockets.
Why Hughes is better known in print, in the US, is a complete mystery. He has been astounding as a documentary presenter for 30 years.
Eight minutes into this clip is an amazing snippet of the futuristic costumed dancers at the opening ceremony for the Chrysler building.
2 comments architecture, smashing telly top 10 documentaries
The iconic (and fabricated) image of an airship docking the Empire State Building, sums up for me the notion of New York as an antique modern city. This is as good as I could find, a Zeppelin flying past the roof of what looks like the Woolworth building.
Link
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