dIce Houses by Mr. Mike Click on the image to see the full Flickr set.
I caught a brief glimpse of the Art Shanty Project on a frozen Medicine Lake on Valentine’s Day. It was the last day of the project and the lake was packed with people. Going into the shanties felt like entering a can of sardines. I definitely didn’t get to see all the shanties as much as I wanted to. There is always next year…
Blog
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Art Shanty Project
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Bill Patten at Dusty’s: Valentine’s Day
Bill Patten doesn’t get old. Valentine’s Day ended on a high note with rousing performance by Bill and his cohorts. The high point was an excellent rendition of Smoke on the Water led by the gentleman with the accordion. Click to enlarge the images.
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Doodle Dump 009
Another Sunday (only minutes left!), another Doodle Dump‚Ñ¢. Click on the images to enlarge them.
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Delirious Dubai
A friend of mine alerted me to an interesting article in the New York Times on the trouble in Dubai. Dubai, one of Mike Davis’ Neoliberal Evil Paradises, has been enjoying an economic boom over the last several years. A corollary to Dubai’s financial power has been an unprecedented building boom. Dubai wasn’t building just any old skyscrapers. It was building the world’s tallest skyscraper, revolving skyscrapers, whole archipelagos of luxury islands, and many other wonders of contemporary starchitecture.
Photo from AP [ via ] The building boom was so extensive, that an estimated 25-50% of the world’s construction cranes were located in Dubai. The crane boom was matched by the proliferation of architectural forms. World’s most prominent architects lined up at the Emirate’s door offering science-fictional visions of mutant architecture.
Unbuilt Tribune competition entry and rotating tower I’ve always thought that Dubai resembled the 1922 Chicago Tribune design competition for its headquarters. Hundreds of architects and laypeople submitted sometimes outlandish proposals for “the most beautiful and eye-catching building in the world.” Raymond Hood & John Mead Howells won that competition. In Dubai, every starchitect is a winner. Almost every month some marketing materials announced a new iconic project. Every design must be built!
Now, the Dubai economic bubble seems to be popping. Streets once full of luxury vehicles are empty. Thousands of cars sit abandoned in the Dubai airport left by foreign workers fleeing the country to avoid debtor’s prison. Unemployment is rampant. Dubai’s economic power now resembles a desert mirage. That huge number of cranes (which appears to have been a little… inflated) is sure to shrink as the building boom is grinding to a halt due to plummeting real estate values. Things are not looking good.
The NYT article had a tantalizing passage:Lurid rumors spread quickly: the Palm Jumeira, an artificial island that is one of this city’s trademark developments, is said to be sinking, and when you turn the faucets in the hotels built atop it, only cockroaches come out.
A couple of months ago I wrote about an imaginary Ballardian ‘Drowned World’ theme park… in Dubai. It seems they’re getting a little closer to accomplishing the task.
On a different track, check out Jeet Heer’s recent post on the role ‘free and rich’ Dubai played in neoliberal capitalist imagination. The comments section has an interesting discussion which vaguely reminds me of a recent comment on this blog.
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Doodle Dump 008: Field Portraits
This week’s Doodle Dump™ presents portraits drawn in the field. Click on the images to make them bigger.
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Birthday Suits, 1000s of Cats and Strut & Shock at 7th Street Entry
The concert at 7th Street Entry proved to be the most challenging yet to draw. The lack of a reasonably well lit surface demanded I draw standing up, holding the sketchbook in my hands, at an angle that made it possible to catch some light on the drawing surface. The drawings are consequently faster and more impressionistic. Note to self, check the level of ink in the brush pen before attempting to do this again. By the time the Birthday Suits came on the ink was gone half-way through the drawing.
Strut & Shock. Click to enlarge
1000s of Cats. Click to enlarge
Birthday Suits. Click to enlarge -
Minneapolis Street Car Golden Age
I recently started researching the historical Twin City Street Car system for a future project. Having moved back to the Twin Cities from New York fairly recently, it’s hard to prevent tears from flowing, when you see the following article from the July 1954 issue of the Mass Transportation Magazine posted in a short by informative article at Eyeteeth:
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
Needless to say, the local public transportation system hasn’t really recovered since the death of the Street Car. Still there are glimmers of hope. The Hiawatha light-rail line is a great start, and I hope they hurry up and build the Minneapolis-St. Paul link already! Then there is the tantalizing 2007 Street Car Feasibility Report. It took some 70 years for the Twin Cities to build a world class Street Car system. It took less than 3 years to dismantle it. How many years (if ever) before we can have a system as extensive as this again:
Map by Brett McKean. Click to enlarge
