Capitalist Greed Created the European Super League

 

Roberto Firmino of Liverpool shoots while under pressure from Éder Militão of Real Madrid during the UEFA Champions League quarter-final second-leg match on April 14, 2021 in Liverpool, England.

“Yesterday, once again, the prospect of a breakaway European Super League (ESL) reared its head. The proposal — to carve out a continental competition in which fifteen of the game’s elite clubs could never be relegated — was met with widespread dismay by those who love the game. Despite a year that has shown just how vital fans are for the ‘spectacle’ of football, it was the match-going fans that once again were of least concern. Instead, if the plans go ahead, the future of football will be shaped by television and advertising — an entertainment industry that the top clubs estimate will deliver them £300 million per year, far outstripping their current domestic and Champions League revenues. It’s important to point out that the Super League isn’t an anomaly. ...”

Jacobin

European Super League explained: the contracts, plots and threats that shook football to its core

Guardian: The greed of the European Super League has been decades in the making

Guardian - ‘It’s war’: what the papers say about the European Super League

Twin Peaks Supercut: Every Mention of Pie and Coffee

“Here it is at last! The Twin Peaks coffee and pie supercut! It took the Internet 23 years and Bryan Menegus plenty of hours of work, but Twin Peaks fans worldwide can finally enjoy this, excuse me, damn good video montage of probably every mention of ‘pie’ and ‘coffee’ on the show. Good for 3 minutes and a half of delicious footage. Bryan, I feel like we, the fans, owe you something for making this supercut… Like a cup of coffee and a slice of cherry pie perhaps? Let me know. My treat! BONUS (via Slacktory): Here’s a pie chart of every sip of coffee in Twin Peaks by character. Dale Cooper unsurprisingly leads the way, but who are the other big coffee drinkers in town?”

Welcome to Twin Peaks (Video)

2020 April: Twin Peaks: Go Down the Rabbit Hole.

What an artist captured on 1950s Orchard Street

 

“When Joseph Sherly Sheppard painted these three scenes of Orchard Street in the 1950s, this eight-block stretch of the Lower East Side was devoted to cut-rate commerce. Unglamorous tenement storefronts jockey for space, merchandise spills onto the sidewalk, and sign after colorful sign advertised such utilitarian items like coats, linens, eyeglasses, and hosiery. Orchard in the 1950s seems emptier than it had been in the early decades of the 20th century, when it was a packed Jewish immigrant enclave. ...”

Ephemeral New York

Top 10 Night Sky Objects for Amateur Astronomers

 

“Although there are thousands of astronomical objects worth observing in the night sky, all astronomers, both amateur and professional alike, will tell you that they have their own personal favorites. These might include lingering early memories, such as the first sighting of the Milky Way‘s largest globular cluster, Omega Centauri, or the first splitting of a difficult binary star system, such as observing the double star Albireo in Cygnus, whose brighter yellow star presents a striking contrast to its fainter blue companion. Whatever the case may be, the following list looks at ten celestial objects most astronomers agree are worth a second look. ...”

Astronomy Trek

Pet Shop Boys Share Live Cover Of Blur's 'Girls & Boys'

 

“The infernally catchy 'Girls & Boys' is arguably Blur's best pop song. So what happened when the world's best pop band covered it in Rio in 1994? Why, everyone went nuts, as you can see in the footage above. From their earliest inception, PSB have been pop magpies, always excited about what's happening in the cultural milieu around them, and in 1994, they paid homage to Blur just as that band were about to hit the big time. Essentially the performance has everything you'd want from the Pet Shop Boys – Neil looks amazing in a big white shirt and black waiscoat! Some lads come onstage in Brazil football strips to do keepy-uppies! Chris looks nonchalant in DKNY hat and sunglasses! ...”

theQuietus (Video - Live)

YouTube: Girls and Boys (Pet Shop Boys Remix) (2012 Remaster) 7:12

2008 September: Pet Shop Boys, 2010 November: Pet Shop Boys - 1985-1989, 2011 January: Behaviour, 2011 May: Very, 2011 December: Bilingual, 2012 March: "Always on My Mind", 2012 August: Nightlife, 2012 September: "Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can't Take My Eyes off You)", 2012 December: Release, 2013 March: Pandemonium Tour, 2013 November: Leaving, 2014 April: Introspective (1988), 2014 August: Go West, 2015 January: "So Hard"(1990), 2015 February: "I'm with Stupid" (2006), 2015 July: Thursday EP (2014), 2016 May: "Twenty-something" (2016), 2017 September: Left To My Own Devices / The Sound of the Atom Splitting (1988), 2019 May: It's A Sin (1987)

Avant Gardening - New Age Steppers (2021)

 

“In the tradition of archival On-U Sound compilations of recent years such as the Return Of The Crocodile and Churchical Chant Of The Iyabinghi sets for African Head Charge; and the Displaced Masters LP of early Dub Synidcate rarities, we’ve gone through the tape vaults to put together this special record of unreleased versions and rarities from the white hot early days of the New Age Steppers, the group that launched the On-U Sound label by appearing on both the first single and album. Highlights include a restored track from their infamous and long-lost 1983 John Peel session (an ebullient cover of Atlantic Starr’s ‘Send For Me’ featuring a beautifully spirited vocal performance from the much-missed Ari Up), the Jah Woosh deejay cut of ‘Love Forever’, some rare dubs previously only available on Japanese import CDs, all bookended by two very different takes on Chaka Khan’s ‘Some Love’. An essential set for collectors of post-punk, dub and other outernational sounds. ...”

Bandcamp (Audio)

Discogs (Video)

YouTube: Singing Love, I Scream (Rimshot), Wide World Version, etc.

2010 October: Ari Up (17 January 1962 – 20 October 2010), 2012 July: Subatomic Sound System meets Lee Scratch Perry & Ari Up of the Slits (7″ vinyl), 2014 September: Live in Cincinnati and San Francisco 1980, 2015 August: Return Of The Giant Slits (1981/2007), 2016 May: "Typical Girls" / "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" (1979), 2016 July: "Man Next Door" - Berlin 1981

Birds by the Billions: A Guide to Spring’s Avian Parade

 

An Eastern bluebird at the Greenwich Audubon Center in Greenwich, Conn. Eastern bluebirds are found in the East and Midwest; at the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin, for instance, sightings of them spike beginning in late April.

“... The Northeast: a festival of songbirdsI came to birding relatively late. My parents had a bird feeder on the Jersey Shore where I grew up, and I’d watch house finches and sparrows come and go. But I knew nothing about the migrations of songbirds until my late 20s when I interviewed Roger Tory Peterson, author of the iconic fields guides. With the spring migration underway, this is the time to discover — or rediscover — the allure of birding. ... Each day brings platoons of warblers, vireos, thrushes, tanagers and other migrants. The first thing you learn when you pick up your binoculars and head out is that you are not ‘bird-watching,’ but ‘birding.’ Bird-watching implies a sedentary activity, while birding is proactive. ...”

NY Times

2008 September: Birds, 2008 June: Bird Songs, 2017 April: Of a Feather, 2017 June: Bird Sounds, 2017 July: Beautifully Designed Tiny Houses… For Birds, 2019 September: The Crisis for Birds Is a Crisis for Us All, 2019 March: She Invented a Board Game With Scientific Integrity. It’s Taking Off., 2019 June: Where Birds Meet Art … After Dark, 2019 September: The Crisis for Birds Is a Crisis for Us All, 2019 October: A Quest to Protect the World’s Last Silent Places, 2020 June: Making a Garden That Welcomes the Birds, 2020 July: New Bird Song That ‘Went Viral’ Across This Species of Sparrow Was Tracked by Scientists For the First Time, 2020 August: How to Use Binoculars - Jason Ward, 2020 October: Get the Birds To Come To You, 2020 June: BirdNET

Banknote embroidery as political art – in pictures

 

“American artist Stacey Lee Webber has embroidered money for more than a decade. She started as a way to question the value of work by meticulously stitching patterns on to worthless one dollar bills. The latest incarnation – the Insurrection Bills – is a response to the US’s febrile political climate. Webber, a trained metalsmith who lives and works in an old industrial building in Philadelphia , doesn’t feel the end of the Trump era has changed much. ‘The political situation in the US is not peaceful. The country is completely divided politically.’ ...”

Guardian

A Guide to the Extensive Musical Legacy of Mills College

 

Ana Roxane, Pauline Oliveros, Gregg Kowalsky, Holly Herndon

“When he started teaching at Mills College in the late 1990s, Fred Frith already had an extensive resume. He had founded British avant-rock pioneers Henry Cow and collaborated with legends such as Richard Thompson, Brian Eno, and John Zorn. Yet he still found himself intimidated by Mills’ status as a breeding ground for inventive and influential experimental musicians. As he later told the L.A. Times, ‘When I first got here, I was a little overwhelmed by the history.’ It’s hard to blame him. The musical legacy of Mills College is dauntingly vast. Just listing all the artists who have passed through as students and professors—figures as diverse as Terry Riley, Laurie Anderson, Phil Lesh, and Joanna Newsom—could take days. ...”

Bandcamp (Audio)

NY Times: Is the Music Over at Mills College?

Mills Performing Arts

Discogs - Various Music From Mills  2:13:38 (Video)

 

The composer Robert Ashley in 1970. Through the ’70s Ashley was a guiding presence at Mills.

Capitol Police Told to Hold Back on Riot Response on Jan. 6, Report Finds

 

The report offers the most devastating account to date of the lapses and miscalculations around the most violent attack on the Capitol in two centuries.

“The Capitol Police had clearer advance warnings about the Jan. 6 attack than were previously known, including the potential for violence in which ‘Congress itself is the target.’ But officers were instructed by their leaders not to use their most aggressive tactics to hold off the mob, according to a scathing new report by the agency’s internal investigator. In a 104-page document, the inspector general, Michael A. Bolton, criticized the way the Capitol Police prepared for and responded to the mob violence on Jan. 6. The report was reviewed by The New York Times and will be the subject of a Capitol Hill hearing on Thursday. Mr. Bolton found that the agency’s leaders failed to adequately prepare despite explicit warnings that pro-Trump extremists posed a threat to law enforcement and civilians and that the police used defective protective equipment. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: Key Findings of the Inspector General’s Report on the Capitol Riot

NY Times: How a Presidential Rally Turned Into a Capitol Rampage (Jan. 12, 2021)

 

The 104-page report is one of the most searing portraits yet of the lapses and miscalculations around the most violent attack on the Capitol in two centuries.

2021 February: 77 days: Trump’s campaign to subvert the election, 2021 February: First They Guarded Roger Stone. Then They Joined the Capitol Attack., 2021 February: A Small Group of Militants’ Outsize Role in the Capitol Attack , 2021 March: Police Shrugged Off the Proud Boys, Until They Attacked the Capitol, 2021 March 21: 'We've Lost the Line!': Radio Traffic Reveals Police Under Siege at Capitol

Burn! - Gillo Pontecorvo (1969)

 

“Burn! (Italian: Queimada) is a 1969 Italian war drama film directed by Gillo Pontecorvo and starring Marlon Brando, Evaristo Márquez and Renato Salvatori. The music was composed by Ennio Morricone. The fictional story focuses on the creation of a tropical republic in the Caribbean, and the events that follow it. Brando plays an agent of the British government, named after the American filibuster William Walker, who manipulates a slave revolt to serve the interests of the sugar trade. The screenwriters also drew on the experiences of intelligence agent Edward Lansdale, who served the United States government in the Philippines and Indochina in the 1950s through 60s....”

Wikipedia

POLITICAL FILMS

Criterion

Brooklyn Rail

amazon

YouTube:  Burn! Official Trailer #1 - Marlon Brando

Barney Wilen - La Note Bleue (1987)

 

“... Barney Wilen remains steadfastly among my favourite tenor players. Lyrical, musical, romantic, swinging, entirely unlike the hard biting aggression of New York, or the huge breathy tone of the tenor founding fathers. He remains a distinctive voice that over decades continues to delight. I can put on ‘Jazz sur Scene’ and I cross The Channel to the Left Bank and fifty years in just the first few notes, and he has never lost that voice, because it is authentically his own..His first major appearance in the late Fifties, not even out of his teens, were the European tours of Art Blakey and Miles Davis. This record reprises many songs of that era, with compositions of Monk, Duke Jordan and Bennie Golson mixed with his own. For twenty years Wilen took his saxophone into rock and world music. We find him here back in his roots in long-term collaboration with Alain Jean-Marie, both delicate and swinging in the manner of McCoy Tyner, and Philippe Petit,  shades of Jim Hall and Kenny Burrell. He doesn’t grandstand, but gives space to other members of the ensemble as equals. ...”

LondonJazzCollector (Audio)

W - Barney Wilen

Discogs (Video)

amazon

YouTube: La Note Bleue, Harlem Nocturne, Besame Mucho, All Blues

Jack Delano's Color Photos of Chicago's Rail Yards in the 1940s

 

A view of part of the South Water Street freight depot of the Illinois Central Railroad and buildings in downtown Chicago on May 1, 1943

“Jack Delano was one of the photographers who worked in Roy Stryker’s Farm Security Administration photography program in the early 1940s, traveling the American countryside, photographing people and places with the stated goal of ‘introducing America to Americans.’ In 1942 and ’43, Delano spent time in the rail yards of Chicago, documenting the busy freight hub and the countless workers who kept the trains running 24 hours a day. Some of his most striking images were made on Kodachrome color transparencies, wonderfully preserved in the Library of Congress today. Collected below, a handful of images from Chicago as it was some 75 years ago. ...”

The Atlantic

Marcus Glitteris on Curating “Home Grown” at Village Works with: Optimo NYC, Marina Reiter, BC1, Nora Timbila, A. Candela & More

 

“Lower East Side native Marcus Glitteris is not only an intriguing self-taught artist but a passionate curator, as well.  Largely influenced by New York City’s Downtown club scene, he teems with the energy that permeated it. Earlier this week, I stopped by Home Grown, an exhibit he curated at Village Works in the East Village, and posed a few questions to him. Can you tell us something about your vision in curating this exhibit? Its main focus is to showcase the varied works of a wide range of artists who live or have lived on Manhattan’s Lower East Side or East Village. And what about this wonderful space? Village Works is the name of this new gallery. Designated specifically as a space to showcase NYC artists, it sells rare art books, as well as art. My friend, Joe Sheridan, is the creative director here. We know each other from the night life scene, but since, Joe has since ventured into the the artist community and invited me to curate here. This space used to be an architectural firm. ...”

Street Art NYC

​Dubcast Vol.14 (Blind Prophet Returns)

 

“Dub-Stuy’s Dubcast returns! To celebrate the release of his first full length EP ‘Clash’, Portland producer Blind Prophet brings us a fresh mix of roots favorites and exclusive dubs, combining sound system heat with bass music from around the globe. ...”

Brooklyn Radio (Audio)

Mixcloud (Audio)

Lost Generation

 

“The Lost Generation was the social generational cohort that came of age during World War I. ‘Lost’ in this context refers to the ‘disoriented, wandering, directionless’ spirit of many of the war's survivors in the early postwar period. The term is also particularly used to refer to a group of American expatriate writers living in Paris during the 1920s. Gertrude Stein is credited with coining the term, and it was subsequently popularized by Ernest Hemingway who used it in the epigraph for his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises: ‘You are all a lost generation’. ... One of the themes that commonly appears in the authors' works is decadence and the frivolous lifestyle of the wealthy. Both Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald touched on this theme throughout the novels The Sun Also Rises and The Great Gatsby. Another theme commonly found in the works of these authors was the death of the American dream, which is exhibited throughout many of their novels. ... Notable figures of the Lost Generation include F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Jean Rhys and Sylvia Beach. ...”

W - Lost Generation, W - List of writers of the Lost Generation

FINDING THE LOST GENERATION

looking for hemingway’s paris and the génération perdue, part 1, part 2

 

Sylvia Beach, James Joyce

The Lost Generation and the Writers Who Described Their World

A Rare Film of Paris in the 1920s – Then vs. Now! (Video)

The Lost Generation’s Women: Writers, Muses, and Supporters

YouTube: The Lost Generation AE Biography  1:13:14

The ideology hiding in SimCity’s black box

 

“City simulators like SimCity are serious games — the kind that gets coverage well beyond the video game press. The kind of game that appears in school curriculums. The kind of game your non-gaming uncle has probably spent hundreds of hours in. On the surface, they appear to be exactly what they say: a simulation of a city. But any simulation is only as good as the model it’s built on, and the model underpinning SimCity has quite the history. In the video above, I unboxed the secret ideology hiding in the formula that built SimCity, and how that’s reflected in one of the most popular gaming series of all time. ...”

Polygon (Video)

2010 April: SimCity

A Walking Tour In Southern France - Literature by Ezra Pound

 

“Rummaging through his papers in 1958, Ezra Pound came across a cache of notebooks dating back to the summer of 1912, when as a young man he had walked the troubadour landscape of southern France. Pound had been fascinated with the poetry of medieval Provence since his college days. His experiments with the complex lyric forms of Amaut Daniel, Bertran de Born, and others were included in his earliest books of poems; his scholarly pursuits in the field found their way into The Spirit of Romance (1910); and the troubadour mystique was to become a resonant motif of the Cantos. In the course of transcribing and emending the text of ‘Walking Tour 1912,’ editor Richard Sieburth retraced Pound’s footsteps along the roads to the troubadour castles. ...”

NDBooks

THE WORLD IN EZRA POUND’S WORK by Eloisa Bressan

2020 April: The Cantos

David Johansen - David Johansen (1978)

“David Johansen's self-titled solo debut bears a closer resemblance to his work with the New York Dolls than any of his subsequent recordings, but the former Dolls singer cleverly crafted an album that played to his former band's strengths while establishing an identity of his own and delivering a set of tight but powerful hard rock. ... Johansen's songs are more straightforward and less campy than his Dolls tunes; while ‘Funky But Chic’ would have done his old glam buddies proud (’Mama says I look fruity, but in jeans I feel rotten’), the celebration of the fair sex in ‘Girls’ and ‘I'm a Lover’ cuts his former sexual ambiguity to the quick, and the tough rock & roll good times of ‘Cool Metro’ and the girl-trouble commiseration of ‘Pain In My Heart’ show Johansen could move into more conventional lyrical territory without losing his swagger or street smarts along the way. And while the Dolls didn't leave Johansen much room for slow songs where he could wear his heart on his sleeve, ‘Donna’ and ‘Frenchette’ allow him to do just that, and remarkably well. ...”

allmusic (Audio)

W - David Johansen (album), W - The David Johansen Group Live

amazon: David Johansen, Live 1977

YouTube: David Johansen Group - Musikladen 1980 (Live)

YouTube: David Johansen  1 / 9, YouTube: The David Johansen Group  1 / 18  (Live)

2015 June: New York Dolls (1973), 2016 September: Too Much Too Soon - New York Dolls (1973), 2017 April: From Paris With Love (L.U.V.), 2020 July: Valley of the New York Dolls

How to Make Stunning Croissants at Home

 

“Does anything in the baking realm rival a fresh croissant, the way its burnished shell shatters, then yields to the silky, bready, layered interior? Simply, the answer is no. A pastry as miraculous as a croissant is, predictably, tricky to make at home. There is the lamination — the process of rolling and flattening butter into thin sheets between layers of dough — and the rolling and folding of that butter-layered dough, a technique called a ‘turn.’ In professional settings, machines called slab rollers in temperature-controlled rooms laminate the dough quickly and effectively, producing light, flaky, uniform croissants. Home bakers, however, must complete these tasks by hand, making it harder, slower and much more variable. ...”

NY Times

W - Croissant

Seine - Île de la Cité

 

“The Seine is a 775-kilometre-long (482 mi) river in northern France. Its drainage basin is in the Paris Basin (a geological relative lowland) covering most of northern France. It rises at Source-Seine, 30 kilometres (19 mi) northwest of Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and into the English Channel at Le Havre (and Honfleur on the left bank). ... Over 60 percent of its length, as far as Burgundy, is negotiable by large barges and most tour boats, and nearly its whole length is available for recreational boating; excursion boats offer sightseeing tours of the river banks in the capital city, Paris. ...”

W - Seine

“The Île de la Cité is one of two remaining natural river islands in the Seine within the city of Paris (the other being the Île Saint-Louis). It is the center of Paris and the location where the medieval city was refounded. The western end of the islet has held a palace since Merovingian times, and its eastern end since the same period has been consecrated to religion, especially after the 10th-century construction of a cathedral preceding today's Notre-Dame. ...”

W - Île de la Cité

The River Seine

Discover the Night: International Dark Sky Week is Here!

 

“If you live in the United States or Europe, chances are you’re among 99% of the population that experiences skyglow, the brightening of the night sky due to street and house lights. Skyglow — and other detrimental effects of light pollution — hides the Milky Way from 60% of Europeans and a whopping 80% of Americans.This state of affairs concerns the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA), an organization with a mission to excite us about all things astronomical, and in so doing raise our awareness of the detriments of light pollution. Light pollution doesn’t only impede our enjoyment of the night skies — its effects are widespread, impacting humans’ circadian rhythms and sleeping patterns, the habits of nocturnal creatures, even the growth patterns of trees. ...”

Sky and Telescope

Discover the Night by Playing International Dark Sky Week Bingo!

YouTube: DISCOVER THE NIGHT: International Dark Sky Week 2021

Live from Studio S2 - Hania Rani (2021)

 

“Hania Rani is an award-winning pianist, composer and musician who, was born in Gdansk and splits her life between Warsaw, where she makes her home, and Berlin where she studied and often works. The motivation to make the recording of the live performances which became the release ‘Live from Studio S2’ came from the invitation from the Berlinale Film Festival. Rani confirms: ‘In the beginning of February 2021, I was asked to record a live set as a part of EFM sessions, which are the part of the Festival. I thought that bringing back my piano and equipment to the hall where I recorded my live session videos for my debut album 'Esja' would be a nice idea and the right cinematic choice. This time, I wanted to use not only an upright piano, but also a grand piano and some other keyboards including a Prophet 08 synthesizer and a Roland stage piano.’ ...”

Bandcamp (Audio)

W - Hania Rani

YouTube: Live from Studio S2 (Video)

A Cyclist on the English Landscape

 

Sluice Lane

“A year ago, as a travel photographer grounded by the pandemic, I started bringing a camera and tripod with me on my morning bicycle rides, shooting them as though they were magazine assignments. It started out as just something to do — a challenge to try to see the familiar through fresh eyes. Soon it blossomed into a celebration of traveling at home. I live in a faded seaside town called St. Leonards-on-Sea, in Sussex, on the south coast of England. If you’ve not heard of it, you’re in good company. It’s not on anybody’s list of celebrated English beauty spots. Indeed, most of my riding is across flat coastal marsh or down-at-the-heel seafront promenades. ...”

NY Times

 

A crescent moon and a flock of sheep, along a country lane near the village of Brede.

The Moment of Impressionism

 Camille Pissarro, The River Oise near Pointoise (1873)

“Théodore Duret, one of Impressionism’s most impassioned champions, wrote in his famous brochure of 1878, Les Peintres impressionnistes: The impressionists didn’t come into being by themselves, they didn’t shoot up like mushrooms. They are the product of a regular evolution of the modern French school. Natura non facit saltus any more in painting than in other things. The impressionist descend from the naturalist painters, their fathers are Corot, Courbet, and Manet. It’s to these three masters that the art of painting owes the simplest procedures of facture and that spontaneous touch, proceeding by large lines and by the mass, which alone brave the passage of time. ...”

non:site

  

Claude Monet, Parc Monceau (1876)

John Ashbery’s Music Library: A Playlist

 

“During the more than thirty years that the American poet John Ashbery (1927-2017) served as an art critic for New York Herald Tribune, Art News, Newsweek, New York and other publications, the highest compliment he gave to a work of art was that it achieved ‘the condition of music.’ ...  Ashbery was not a trained musician, but he had a musician’s ear, which he developed further by listening.  He first heard songs on Sundays, accompanying his grandparents to the famous St. Paul’s Church in Rochester (which had a great organ) or the more modest St. John’s in nearby Sodus where the Ashbery family lived on a fruit farm.  His first exposure to classical music was through movies. ...”

Evergreen Review (Video)

A Study of New York City’s Belgian Block Heritage

 

“Belgian block streets are still found in every corner of New York, sometimes paving an entire street or other times, only being revealed by some pavement which has worn off, revealing the roadbeds of the past. These streets are found both inside and outside of designated historic districts. In historic districts, these historic pavers are protected as part of the sense of place just as much as the architecture. Historic neighborhoods like SoHo, TriBeCa, the Gansevoort Market and DUMBO are just a few places around town where these types of streets characterize the look and feel of the place. Although protected features in historic districts, many of these stones are being eroded from the streets. ...”

Historic Districts Council

Ephemeral New York: A downtown alley’s Belgian block paving stones

When Pavement Was Pretty: New York’s Cobblestone Streets

Nicola Cruz

 “An interest in ancestral Latin American cosmology has always run right through the music of Ecuadorian music producer Nicola Cruz. His creative process involves an attentive, careful search for the living roots and rituals that are part of South American identity—its Andean and African origins in particular—valuing its rhythms, its oral traditions, its instruments and the energy they transmit. His first record, Prender el Alma (2015) explored the development of the consciousness and spirituality, and how they connect with music. In Siku, his most recent production, Cruz continues this exploration, expanding his vision towards new stories and other cultures as sources of inspiration. A crucial aspect on this journey is his collaboration with other artists from around the world. ...”

Nicola Cruz

YouTube: Nicola Cruz & FE (Live A/V Show) | Boiler Room: Streaming From Isolati 44:34, Nicola Cruz & Fidel Eljuri • DJ Set • Le Mellotron 1:11:03

Soundcloud (Audio)

'A parallel universe': the rickety pleasures of America's backroads - in pictures

 

“From rundown churches to shuttered stores, this road trip across America offered up countless visual gems – as long as you opened your eyes to them. ... Gas station, Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, 2013. Ruins often provide an uncanny meditation on time and the ephemeral nature of life. ... Shingle clad, double-wing house, West Fulton, NY, 2016. There’s a bittersweet ambiance to rounding a bend and suddenly coming upon a tilting old wooden church or shuttered general store on a lonely stretch of road. ...”

Guardian