After hours, much of the City is now a hotbed of club scenes. The stuff’s that’s more Vauxhall than One Poultry lane. The Ned was bedlam, as usual. As we ran out for cabs, the sky turned a Turner moment, just before dusk and drizzle as we clamoured into the familiar black cab to Bethnal Green to our favourite quieter spot for supper.
bank of england, london
Two radical City spaces: Wilton Music Hall, Whitchapel, 1690, designed as an entertainment complex for a growing working class; and Llyods Bank, Lime Street, 1986, a postmodern affront to traditional bank designs.
Barcelona
It was the first time that we met
Barcelona
How can I forget
The moment that you stepped into the room
You took my breath away
sagrada família, barcelona, 1992
My first visit as a photography student lugging a Nikon non-digital SLR all over Europe. Those spires have to yet to be built, and central nave is only starting. Keep the print, a reminder of an older craft.
madison square, new york
Prasat Pram, Koh Ker complex, Cambodia
A small (300 metres (328 yd)) long path leads to the monument. It has five towers or prasats (pram = five). Three brick towers stand in a row on the same platform. They face east. The central one is a bit taller than the others. In each of these prasats, once stood a lingam. These and the beautifully carved lintels were looted. Two prasats (faced west) are standing in front of the platform. One is built of brick and has diamond‑shaped holes in the upper part. This fact indicates that this tower once served as a fire sanctuary (fire cults were very important during the era of the Khmer kings). The other building is small, made of laterite and (in comparison with the brick towers) in bad condition. The bricks of small regular size are held together with an organic mortar of unknown composition. Originally the towers were covered by white stucco; remains of it can still be seen. Two of the towers are pictorially covered by roots. The five towers are surrounded by an enclosure. The collapsed entrance door (gopuram) is at the east side.
Beoung Mealea Temple ប្រាសាទបឹងមាលា.
east gate wall, angkor thom
In winter, Orion’s belt and sword can seen clearly in the northern skies. As he races through mid horizon, Sirus the brightest of the dog star, can be seen at his feet chasing Lapidus the hare. While the Genimi twins look on high in the north, Taurus can be seen easterly, charging the forked path between Orion’s bow. Some say it’s protecting the seven maidens, clustered in the lower right as Pleiades. Others have made it to a brand trademark, Subaru motors.
markham park, south florida
Along the barren road scape of route 10, sand dunes wind farms, life sized monsters thrust up like carnival road side attractions. Like many that dot small town Americana, there’s a hidden morality tale. In this case, funded by a creationist theory believer, divine intervention in the most improbable of landscapes.
ursa major and minor + polaris, fried liver wash, joshua tree
In the stories of the Vedas, the churning of the Ocean of Milk was an elaborate process. Demigods, devas, and Demons, asuras, churned the seas in order to obtain Amrita, the nectar of immortal life. Mount Mandarachala was used as the churning rod and Vasuki, King of the Serpents, became the churning rope. On the one side, the Asuras demanded to hold the head of the snake, while on the other, the Devas, taking advice from Vishnu, agreed to hold its tail. While this went on, thousands of Angels, asparas, sing and dance in the sky.
anza-borrego desert, southern california
“The Integratron is a 38 ft tall cupola structure design by Ufologist George van Tassel. Van Tassel claimed the Integratron was capable of rejuvenation, anti-gravity and time travel. He built the structure in Landers, California near Joshua Tree, following instructions that Van Tassel vehemently claimed were provided directly to hum by visitors from the planet Venus. The Integratron machine was started in 1957, the structure erected in 1959. It was financed predominantly by donations, including funds from Howard Hughes. “
Integratron, Landers CA
The Taishō era was a short period of stability, prosperity, and liberalism in Japan. It was a time also of territorial consolidation after the first world war through treaty management of Northern china, parts of Russian, and Manchuria. Revenue poured in. And in Tokyo, the old wards east of the Imperial palace around Nezu, Yanaka in Bunkyo wards, saw unprecedented growth in merchant housing and residential row houses known as nagawa.
Many of Tokyo’s row houses remain, a reminder when the area was a vital urban hub before Ginza transformed in the Meji era, and Shinjuku after the late Showa. I like walking in Nezu at night. It reminds of Singapore’s old shophouse alleys, or, the fading cultural moments of Shanghai’s lillong backstreets. At night, Nezu’s structural forms are illuminated, not least also by new businesses moving in from the glitzier younger parts of town.
Tokyo has undergone several rebirths, returning from the ashes after multiple earthquakes, fires, and fire-bombing during World War II. Historic structures that have been spared these catastrophes are celebrated by their community as representatives of continuity that stretches back to the Edo-period. While some buildings are static as museums representing bygone eras, others such as Hantei and Kamachiku, the two restaurants discussed here, have reinvigorated their context, bringing value and acting as historical landmarks for the city-at-large.
Of course there are the glass modernism of Dior, Louis Vuitton, and the whopping number og Comme des Garçons outposts in Ginza. The area is a paen to global moneyed consumption. But my favourite parts are the forgotten spaces that made it special as a hotbed for western modernity during the messy Meji era.
The Shisheido Parlour restaurant is one - a storied joint serves souped up western fare (yōshoku 洋食) since 1902 in a Cole Porter era dining hall. Beef stew and coffee are de rigueuer, both items anathema to a then strictly buddhist tradition.
Bar Lupin tucked behind Jimmy Choo, is another smokey throwback to Ginza as a liberal writers’ enclave during the Taisho era. By far, the Okuna building, a 1930s artifact intact from the war, tops my list. It sits quietly with its warren of rooms and steadfast art deco bricks while the rest of Ginza pops its cork for everyone to see.
okina building, ginza, tokyo
bar lupin, ginza
He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.
Maybe it’s the heat, lost world mirages, or the unfailing beauty of its waning skies. There’s something about deserts being unforgiving and redemptive at the same time, not least the towns along the Salton Sea. Sold as the American riviera in the 1950s but through nature’s damning sleight of hand, devolved into ghost towns and trailer parks.
Not all are of doom and neglect in the unrelenting heat. Pockets of intrigue and regeneration abound - from a quirky International Banana Museum to desert religious cults and inward migration from Palm Springs. Maybe the old apostles got it right the first time round.
salton sea
She sat on a bench at the edge of the lake and stared across the water to the old pillars that stand at the far shore, the Portals of the Past.
golden gate park, san francisco
One country, three languages. The YongHe temple 雍和宫, also knwon has the Lama temple, was a hegemonic effort built in 1694 to bring the Han, Manchu and Tibetan groups together. As national polity today, it ain’t working so well as China looks outside in.
