Urban Goat

London, Patrick Keiller

urbangoat — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 22:00:51 +0000

Curtain Road, originally uploaded by bluebirdiebird88.

London, directed by Patrick Keiller, is a portrait of London in 1992 painted in shades of brown. It’s a fictional narrative of literary and intellectual meanderings around London and its suburbs via romanticism and English Gothic fiction.

Illustrated with a series of locked off static shots, it’s a bleak and dismal place where IRA bombs , the re-election of the Conservative government and recession seem to have drained all colour from the city. It’s a city that seems to be auditioning for inclusion in latest edition of Crap Towns.

London appears as a landscape populated with brutalist buildings, vehicles, open fields and abandoned building sites. When we do see people, they appear paralysed, staring at the aftermath of some catastrophe or walking as if through treacle. Rarely do we hear sound other than the narration, as if we’re gazing at London through the walls of an aquarium.

The narrator observes that London is “a place full of interesting people who…would prefer to be elsewhere”. London and its inhabitants are rendered solitary and unsociable by its climate, geography and poor transport that drive its inhabitants to boredom and despair.

It’s a journey that unfolds month by month; in August the city emerges from the gloom becoming more recognisable to the casual visitor, as our route takes us to the Geffrye Museum, The City and Spitalfields.

Strangely hypnotic, it’s the kind of film that would be shown at Monkey Town.

Interesting to compare this with another film that documents a year in the life of a city in crisis. NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell, because the two are polar opposites. NY77 fizzes with energy, noise and good humour, whereas London is flat, silent and torpid. Travelling between the two cities, the same is noticeable. While New Yorkers live life, Londoners seem to be merely getting through it, weighed down by a debilitating low grade depression.

Graffiti – Eine

urbangoat — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 11:43:21 +0000

Eine ~ N, originally uploaded by bluebirdiebird88.

Eine paints giant letters on shop shutters around east London. He started by painting the letters of his tag, but got bored and so expanded his repetoire to include the whole alphabet.

What started out as an illicit project, turn into something not so when he started asking shop owners if he could paint their shutters. Most were happy, having seen his work around the area, but they often insisted on chosing their own letter, which meant he had to paint 35 shutters before he could sign off the whole alphabet. O was the hardest to get rid of – he ended up turning the requested C into an O when the shop keeper went home .

Websites dedicated to tracking down the whole alphabet have sprung up. Eine is now said to be considering alphabets in new fonts or a ‘sinister message’ that can only be seen at night when all the shutters are down. Keep your eyes peeled.

Graffiti – Tats Cru

urbangoat — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:22:46 +0000

I dragged a friend up to the South Bronx one sweltering Sunday afternoon to do a tour of the area and see some graffiti by Tats Cru. There weren’t many people about, and a couple of the places we wanted to go in were closed, but we ended up sitting in a leafy square watching the kids play out on their bicycles, thinking how you don’t often see children playing outside these days.

TV Review: NY77 The Coolest Year In Hell « Blissed Out

urbangoat — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 21:51:44 +0000

Downtown New Yorkers often hanker after the old days, when Manhattan wasn’t overrun with Masters of the Universe and sleek, expensive condo buildings. This VH1 documentary remembers 1977, a year when the city was in crisis. Son of Sam was on the rampage, a mayoral election was being fought and a blackout brought anarchy to the streets. But out the desperate conditions came disco, hedonism, hip hop and punk. And it’s the loss of NYC’s edginess, its f*ck it, let’s do it, sod the consequences, we ain’t got nothing to lose attitude, that people mourn.

Find a link to the show and read a full review here: TV Review: NY77 The Coolest Year In Hell « Blissed Out

Watching it reminded me of the similarities between NYC and Manchester (England) – industrial landscape, warehouse buildings with iron fire escapesand a creative scene born out of poverty, urban decay and social unrest, before regeneration and gentrification. Dave Haslam wrote a great book, Manchester, England that chronicles the rise and fall of Manchester from the start of the industrial revolution up to the end of the twentieth century, a story inextricably linked with the evolution of Manchester’s music scene.

Sleeping outside New York Public Library, Bryant Park

urbangoat — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 17:10:34 +0000

Sleeping outside New York Public Library, Bryant Park, originally uploaded by chrisjohnbeckett.

Wonderful Town, Ed. David Remnick

urbangoat — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 16:42:14 +0000

USPS in Chicago, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Men, it appears, don’t like to read fiction. To serve them, The New Yorker contains fiction seeminlgy written expressly for men, that is, devoid of anything that might arouse passion or provoke an unsettling emotion; fiction written as if by scientists.

Look at Nerve, the sexiest dating site in NYC. Note that a good proportion of the men advertise themselves as readers of The New Yorker, as a testament to their intellect and literary leanings.

But look closer and you’ll find their New Yorkers piled high in a dusty corner of their bedroom next to the furniture they’ve designed and built themselves and 600 thread count sheets, carefully arranged to woo women looking for literate, sensual men who are good with their hands.

The romantic ambitions of these men are apt to go the way of their literary aspirations; a triumph of ennui over achievement.

To save room in your bedroom, a selection of short stories from The New Yorker has been collated in Wonderful Town so, in the unlikely event your date asks what you last read, you can talk with the necessary confidence and intellectual swagger. But an admission that you don’t read it because you don’t get on with the font is likely to reward you with relief and probably a snog at the end of the night.

Whether you choose to go back to theirs to inspect their (alleged) stack of New Yorkers in person is entirely up to you.

Where to read: Bryant Park Reading Room in summer or New York Public Library in winter

PS1

urbangoat — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 22:55:53 +0000

Originally uploaded by Alex Terzich.

PS1in Long Island City, Queens is the much cooler sibling of MOMA. Housed in a Victorian school, it’s worth going just to wander round the labyrinthine and atmospheric corridors.

Sit on the playground steps, hot chocolate or glass of wine in hand to watch the Brooklyn hipster / downtown design types congregate at their cultural watering hole. There are no tourists here.

The art is contemporary and varied, there’s usually something good, bad and ugly to make you smile/scratch your head/despair.

In the summer, Warm Up (pictured) with DJs and dancing in the tricked out school yard; young architects compete annually for the opportunity to design the space.

If you like graffiti, check out 5 Pointz, which is across the road. You can’t miss it.

5 Pointz

urbangoat — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 22:39:33 +0000

, originally uploaded by bluebirdiebird88.

5 Pointz is a massive warehouse building just across from PS1 art gallery in Long Island City, Queens. It’s covered in various and changing graffiti, some by kids who attend a project to teach them aerosol techniques, some by west coast and European artists.

You can get to the roof via a fire escape for great views of Manhattan.

Check out PS1 across the road.

Goodbye Blue Monday

urbangoat — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 22:47:53 +0000

Goodbye Blue Monday @ Bushwick, originally uploaded by photophobia.

Head out to Goodbye Blue Monday in Bushwick, Brooklyn to see new bands play in the surreal surroundings of a junk emporium. It’s a bit of a trek but worth the effort to get to this frontline of hipsterdom.

There’s all kinds of furniture and books piled floor to ceiling, but find a spot to perch and enjoy the music. The venue has a great story and the owner books anyone who wants to play.

There’s a bar that serves beer, wine and coffee and a sculpture garden out back. Oh, and everything is for sale.

1087 Broadway, nr Dodworth Street, Bushwick, Brooklyn

(Kosciusko Street on the J train)

Von

urbangoat — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 22:18:30 +0000

Bar Movements, originally uploaded by Nick Nada.

Von is a narrow, candlelit bar, just north of Houston. There’s seating tucked away at the back and around the corner, but sitting at the bar is best. You’ll probably get your ankles nuzzled by their fierce looking but friendly pitbull, Happy.

3 Bleeker Street @ Bowery
(Bleeker Street on the 6 train)