The Accidental Avant-Gardist

The Album (detail), by Édouard Vuillard, 1895.
"The last time I was in Paris I went to pay a call on a writer I admire. Like Balzac, Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, Isadora Duncan, Gertrude Stein, and dozens of other luminaries, Raymond Roussel keeps a permanent address at 8, Boulevard de Ménilmontant, in the Cemitière du Père Lachaise, one of art’s most famous final resting places. But you won’t find flocks of tourists reverently camped out at his grave. No one lights candles for him or leaves him flowers, messages, metro tickets, smooth stones, or any other tokens of gratitude for the strange poems and even stranger novels he left to posterity. Not for Roussel’s tomb, as for Wilde’s, a recently installed glass case to protect the marble from the red lipstick of his fans. The day I visited him, it was gray and rainy and cold. There were few people in the normally well-frequented cemetery. ..."
Laphams Quarterly
Raymond Roussel – Impressions d’Afrique, 1910 Impressions of Africa
Raymond Roussel’s “Impressions of Africa”
Raymond Roussel approached the commercial illustrator Henri Zo
[PDF] Project MUSE
amazon

Raymond Roussel approached the commercial illustrator Henri Zo

We Are Getting Bad: The Sound of Phase One; Children of Jah 1977-79

"The HOLY GRAIL of reggae music. Full title - Sound Of Phase One - We Are Getting Bad. 2003 reggae/ragga compilation from one of the smallest but more revered labels to emerge in Jamaica during the late 1970's. What this label lacked in quantity it more than made up for in quality. Features 18 grooves including two previously unreleased DJ cuts, 'The Sons Of Man' & 'Gena'. Quality Late 70s Roots from Roy Francis. Roy Francis, who now runs the Mixing Lab label, created and ran the independent Phase 1 label in the 1970s. This is a compilation from the good folks at Motion Records, a reggae revive label that I don't think is around anymore which is disappointing. For their brief period of operation, Motion gave the reggae massive some excellent reissues, We Are Getting Bad included. My Phase 1 introduction came via Blood and Fire's Children of Jah 1977-79, an instant classic that presented a valuable collection of tracks not widely known at the time. ..."
Holland Tunnel Dive
allmusic: We Are Getting Bad: The Sound of Phase One
The Sound Of Phase One (Video)
amazon: Children of Jah 1977-79, We Are Getting Bad: The Sound of Phase One
YouTube: Untouchables - Sea Of Love (Extended), Children of Jah - Album 1:05:04

Lost John Coltrane Recording From 1963 Will Be Released at Last

On March 6, 1963, John Coltrane and his quartet recorded at the Rudy Van Gelder Studio in New Jersey. The session was never released — until now.
"If you heard the John Coltrane Quartet live in the early-to-mid-1960s, you were at risk of having your entire understanding of performance rewired. This was a ground-shaking band, an almost physical being, bearing a promise that seemed to reach far beyond music. The quartet’s relationship to the studio, however, was something different. In the years leading up to 'A Love Supreme,' his explosive 1965 magnum opus, Coltrane produced eight albums for Impulse! Records featuring the members of his so-called classic quartet — the bassist Jimmy Garrison, the drummer Elvin Jones and the pianist McCoy Tyner — but only two of those, 'Coltrane' and 'Crescent,' were earnest studio efforts aimed at distilling the band’s live ethic. But now that story needs a major footnote. On Friday, Impulse! will announce the June 29 release of 'Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album,' a full set of material recorded by the quartet on a single day in March 1963, then eventually stashed away and lost. ..."
NY Times (Video)
Guardian: 'A new room in the Great Pyramid': lost 1963 John Coltrane album discovered (Video)

2015 March: Attica Blues (1972), 2016 June: Archie Shepp - The Magic of Ju-Ju (1967), 2011 November: John Coltrane Quartet, Live at Jazz Casual, 1963, 2012 March: John Coltrane 1960 - 1965, 2012 September: "Naima" (1959), 2012 October: Blue Train (1957), 2013 April: The World According to John Coltrane, 2013 November: A Love Supreme (1965), 2014 July: New Photos of John Coltrane Rediscovered 50 Years After They Were Shot, 2014 November: Coltrane’s Free Jazz Wasn’t Just “A Lot of Noise”, 2015 February: Lush Life (1958), 2015 May: An Animated John Coltrane Explains His True Reason for Being: “I Want to Be a Force for Real Good”, 2015 July: Afro Blue Impressions (2013), 2015 September: Impressions of Coltrane, 2015 December: Giant Steps (1960), 2016 January: Crescent (1964), 2016 April: The Church of Saint John Coltrane, 2016 July: Soultrane (1958), 2016 December: Dakar (1957), 2017 July: The John Coltrane Record That Made Modern Music, 2017 October: Live at the Village Vanguard (1962), 2017 December: Interview: Archie Shepp on John Coltrane, the Blues and More, 2018 March: Cannonball Adderley Quintet in Chicago (1959)

Zahed Sultan on Exploring Traditional Pearl-Diving Music of the Gulf

"Bridging the gap between traditional music and modern forms, Zahed Sultan’s Hiwar project is an exploration of pearl-diving music from the Gulf, created during a residency in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. Intrigued by the relative simplicity yet undeniable complexity of the form, Sultan sought to document his collaboration with the musicians preserving this pearl-diving music, collaborating in pursuit of a contemporary, non-puristic vision of a genre that might otherwise be solely defined by its heritage. The result of these studio sessions and informal improvisations is Hiwar, meaning 'dialogue.' In addition to the eponymous short film, premiering below, Sultan and a troupe of musicians will be performing together live at the RBMA Weekender Dubai 2017, representing the latest step in their ongoing creative dialogue. In this interview, Sultan discussed the utilitarian purpose of much of this pearl-diving music, the evolution of related forms in the Gulf and how to celebrate cultural diversity without being a purist. ..."
Red Bull Music Academy Daily (Video)

Soda jerk

Wikipedia - "A soda jerk (or soda jerker) is a person—typically a youth—who operates the soda fountain in a drugstore, often for the purpose of preparing and serving flavored soda water or an ice cream soda. This was made by putting flavored syrup into a specially designed tall glass, adding carbonated water and, finally, one or two scoops of ice cream, or occasionally malt powder. The result was served with a long-handled spoon, most commonly known as a 'soda spoon', and drinking straws. The term 'soda jerk' was a pun on 'soda clerk', the formal job title of the drugstore assistants who operated soda fountains, and was inspired by the 'jerking' action the server would use to swing the soda fountain handle back and forth when adding the soda water. The soda fountain spigot itself typically was a sturdy, shiny fixture on the end of a metal pipe or other similar structure sticking out of the counter by several feet and curving towards where the glasses would be filled. The unflavored carbonated water was used to make all of the drinks. Consequently, the tap handle was typically large, as a busy shop would have the soda jerker using it frequently. This made the mixing of drinks a center of activity at the soda fountain counter. ..."
Wikipedia
The Lost Lingo of New York City’s Soda Jerks
Memories of Malcolm X, a Soda Jerk
Places to Get a Soda Jerk
NY Times: ECTOMORPHIC TOM LIKES COLLEGE LIFE (December 11, 1949), PDF
YouTube: Style: How to Be a Jerk, Rock Hudson on How to be a Soda Jerk

Townsend Drug Store, Boston. Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali - 1965

Meet the Rising New Housing Movement That Wants to Create Homes for All

"Crossing the Frederick Douglass–Susan B. Anthony Memorial Bridge on a brisk spring morning in Rochester, New York, the first thing one sees is a small tent city scattered about the banks of the Genesee River. It’s a sprawl of black tarps, folding chairs, and a charcoal grill, all set up on private land. The property’s owner, a cable company called Spectrum, has attempted for some time to tear it down, urging local officials to clear the encampment. In an effort to forestall the destruction of their fragile shelters, the homeless people who live there have hung a banner at the edge of a nearby highway that reads, simply, 'Forgive us our trespasses.' Continuing on toward the city’s southwest side, one finds a 48-unit building on Thurston Road. It’s a horseshoe-shaped structure of crimson brick; its facade is pleasing and clean. Inside, however, the mostly low-income tenants of color are subjected to bursting pipes, peeling paint, broken windows, and skittering mice—and the absentee landlord doesn’t seem to care much about correcting the problems. ..."
The Nation
The Nation: The Deep, Uniquely American Roots of Our Affordable-Housing Crisis
The Nation: 151 Years of America’s Housing History

Anthony Bourdain, Renegade Chef Who Reported From the World’s Tables, Is Dead at 61

"Anthony Bourdain, whose madcap memoir about the dark corners of New York’s restaurants made him into a celebrity chef and touched off a nearly two-decade career as a globe-trotting television host, was found dead on Friday at 61. Mr. Bourdain spent two decades in restaurant kitchens, at first shucking oysters and cleaning dishes in a Cape Cod seafood shack and later serving high-end meals in Manhattan, before accepting a friend’s offer to fly him to Mexico if he agreed to write a novel. It was the start of a second act as an author and then a host, redefining the staid genres of food writing and food-tourism shows with an inquisitive but profane bad-boy image that endeared him to fellow chefs, restaurant-goers and travelers. ..."
NY Times (Video)
W - Anthony Bourdain
Anthony Bourdain: “Parts Unknown”
NY Times: What Anthony Bourdain Can’t Travel Without (April 2017)
New Yorker: Don’t Eat Before Reading This By Anthony Bourdain (April 19, 1999)
Slate: Anthony Bourdain Wonders What He Could Have Done (Oct. 2017)

Self-Portrait with Halo and Snake - Paul Gauguin (1889)

"Self-Portrait with Halo and Snake, also known as Self-Portrait, is an 1889 oil on wood painting by French artist Paul Gauguin, which represents his late Brittany period in the fishing village of Le Pouldu in northwestern France. No longer comfortable with Pont-Aven, Gauguin moved on to Le Pouldu with his friend and student Meijer de Haan and a small group of artists. He stayed for several months in the autumn of 1889 and the summer of 1890, where the group spent their time decorating the interior of Marie Henry's inn with every major type of art work. Gauguin painted his Self-Portrait in the dining room with its companion piece, Portrait of Jacob Meyer de Haan (1889). The painting shows Gauguin against a red background with a halo above his head and apples hanging beside him as he holds a snake in his hand while plants or flowers appear in the foreground. The religious symbolism and the stylistic influence of Japanese wood-block prints and cloisonnism are apparent. The portrait was completed several years before Gauguin visited Tahiti and is one of more than 40 self-portraits he completed during his lifetime. ..."
Wikipedia

Buvette de la Plage in 1920

Electro Everlasting

"Amid the lights, smoke, and bodies on the dancefloor, the music's tempo does not falter as the rhythm changes. A few fail to adapt. Their on-the-spot marching is interrupted by an irregular new beat, its bass double punching the stomach at the end of the bar. For them, it's one blow too many and they fall by the wayside. For others, though, their bodies come alive; their feet add an extra shuffle, an extra bounce, as they skip to a near breakbeat. Their shoulders drop as they weave in and out of the groove while psychedelic synths and robotic vocals ride atop the restructured yet still ruthlessly regimented rhythm. Ever since the early 1990s, when it was first heard on techno dancefloors, electro has been dividing opinion. It has fallen in and out of favor within alternate sections of the same club audience in a similar manner to how it has faded from view, then resurged perpetually, since its early ‘80s birth. ..."
XLR8R (Video)

Arabian Cartography in Riyadh

"One of the oldest maps of the Arabian Peninsula shows a rather square and out of proportion landmass, surrounded by a turquoise-coloured sea. Cities like Jeddah, Abu Dhabi or Aden are absent from the map – those in their place bear names that are no longer familiar. Small, peculiar islands dot the water, and a benign-looking sea monster swims off the coast of present-day Oman. While the monster is pure decoration, the rest – the sharp coastline, the misplaced islands – represent how the world was once seen. The map dates back to 1578, and is a reprint from the famous second century gazetteer ‘Geographia’, produced by the ‘father of cartography’ Claudius Ptolemy, a Greek scholar who headed the famous Alexandria Library between the years 127 and 150. ..."
Atharna
W - King Abdulaziz Public Library

When Democracy Isn’t Enough

"When the early returns of the November 26 presidential election in Honduras began coming in, supporters of the leftist opposition candidate, Salvador Nasralla, had cause to celebrate. With 57 percent of polling stations counted, he had a five-point lead, a seemingly irreversible advantage. But then the vote-counting system went dark, victim of a computer glitch. A day and a half later, the system began working again, only now the conservative incumbent, Juan Orlando Hernández, had suspiciously caught up, and soon after, he took the lead. ... Media in the United States and other countries seemed hardly to have noticed. Perhaps it’s because Honduras is small and poor, with a population of nine million, little oil, and no Islamist radicals. Or perhaps it’s because stories of rigged elections and crackdowns on protesters have become a global commonplace. Liberal democracy seems to be on the retreat in Eastern Europe and Asia, with countries such as Russia, Hungary, Turkey, and the Philippines often cited for their turns toward authoritarianism. But Latin America, a region of more than 600 million people, is suffering its own retrenchment. ..."
New Republic

I Go Shout Plenty: A Guide To The Work Of Fela Kuti

"One of the most important musical and political figures to emerge in post-independence Nigeria, Fela Kuti was the legendary rebel and agent provocateur that pioneered afrobeat, an invigorating hybrid of dirty funk and traditional African rhythms. A complex man that was equal parts shaman, showman and trickster, whose perpetual criticism of Nigeria’s governmental and religious figures made him a constant target, Fela was one of a handful of exceptional individuals that forever changed our musical landscape. What follows is a guide to his voluminous recorded output, related as chronologically as possible. ..."
Red Bull Music Academy Daily (Video)

Visitors to Versailles (1682–1789)

"The palace of Versailles and its gardens have attracted travelers ever since it was transformed under the direction of the Sun King, Louis XIV, from a simple hunting lodge into one of the most magnificent and public courts of Europe. French and foreign travelers, including royalty, ambassadors, artists, musicians, writers, scientists, grand tourists, and day-trippers, all flocked to the royal palace surrounded by its extensive formal gardens. Versailles was always a truly international setting, and not only drew visitors from Europe and America, but also hosted dignitaries from as far away as Thailand, India, and Tunisia. Their official receptions at Versailles and gift exchanges with the king were among the attractions widely recorded in tourists' diaries and court gazettes. ..."
Metropolitan Museum of Art (Video)
Visitors to Versailles 1682-1789, Journeys France – New York
NY Times: A Room-Size Painting Becomes a Cello Concerto About Versailles (Audio)
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Blog
YouTube: Visitors to Versailles (1682 - 1789) Met Museum

Baseball Haiku: The Best Haiku Ever Written about the Game (2007)

"Baseball is uniquely American, haiku uniquely Japanese, and they fit together like a perfect catch on a flawless summer's day. 'While haiku gives us moments in which nature is linked to human nature, baseball is played in the midst of natural elements . . . as haiku happens in a timeless now, so does baseball, for there is no clock ticking.' In this literary form, nature must be invoked by a prescribed season word, or kigo. American haiku poets are less strict, but still evoke the tradition, as in this gem by Helen Shaffer, who masterfully combines nature, a hint of a season, and baseball strategy in only eight words:

drooping flag . . .
the visitors' manager
moves a fielder

One of the great pleasures of baseball is listening to it on the radio; in fact, it's the only way I can iron with any equanimity. Ed Markowski and Mathew V. Span capture the magic and even poignancy of airwave baseball:

rainy night
a hole in the radio
where a ballgame should be

radio static
somewhere in the muggy night
a ballgame

A more definite season, mixed with childhood dreams, is evoked by Cor van den Heuvel:

baseball cards
spread out on the bed
April rain ..."

Shelf Awareness
Found in an NYC Junk Shop: Forgotten Postcards between Two Haiku Masters
Episode 7: Baseball Haiku (Audio)
W - Cor van den Heuvel
Baseball Haiku
amazon

Cor van den Heuvel

Dub-Stuy Presents Jitta Riddim

"Following the success of last year’s Kunta Kinte 2017 riddim, Brooklyn-based label and collective Dub-Stuy add a new installment to their popular dancehall inspired series with a fresh riddim from in-house producer DJ Madd, featuring international vocalists from Jamaica, Spain and Bermuda. Jitta Riddim is a brand new production from DJ Madd; a sturdy yet spacious riddim carried forward by a lilting melody and guitar stabs that are anchored by slapping snares, dub flourishes and a rolling bassline. This is a weighty but energetic riddim with the dancefloor in mind. Bringing the riddim to life are a trio of vocalists representing the roots and global expansion of dancehall and sound system music. Spain’s Sr. Wilson delivers an anthem in the making with ‘Zapatillas’, a song dedicated to all the sneaker heads worldwide who like to sport fresh kicks when they hit the dancefloor. Singing in his native Spanish and English, Sr. Wilson shares tales of daily shoe addiction around a catchy refrain that name checks the best known brands. His blend of reggaeton-flavoured autotune and kicks geek outs is sure to resound loudly around clubs worldwide. ..."
Dub-Stuy (Audio)
Soundcloud: Dub-Stuy Presents Jitta Riddim [DS-RS003]
YouTube: Dub-Stuy Presents Jitta Riddim

Through A Different Lens: Stanley Kubrick Photographs (2018)

"A total of 132 black-and-white photographs, 42 offset photographic reproductions in vitrines (double-page spreads or covers from Look magazine) and two films on video monitors, installed in three rooms of the third floor in the southern gallery, on the outer walls and both sides of a central partition. The photographs range in size from 8×8 to 30×30 inches and are organized chronologically (1947-1951) by curators Donald Albrecht and Sean Corcoran. ... Others saw cinema as a higher calling, or perhaps just a more involving, complex, risky, and lucrative one. When Stanley Kubrick and Gordon Parks made the transition from New York photojournalists to Hollywood directors, they didn’t look back. Numerous critics have wondered what Kubrick learned during his first career that prepared him to pursue his second. A few exhibitions have taken a stab at answering the question. ..."
Collector Daily
Museum of the City of New York
amazon

São Paulo Underground - Cantos Invisiveis (2016)

"The last time we heard from Rob Mazurek's Sao Paulo Underground was as part of the Black Cube SP sextet on 2014's truly glorious Return the Tides: Ascension Suite and Holy Ghost. Multi-instrumentalist Thomas Rohrer was part of that group, and on Cantos Invisiveis, he joins the trumpeter, drummer/percussionist Mauricio Takara, and keyboardist Guilherme Granado, making the band a quartet. These nine selections were recorded in Texas; they offer an almost entirely new view of SPU, one that falls outside musical classification. Here, east and west, northern and southern hemispheres, speak through tropical, desert, ritual, and party sounds that are all inscribed upon one another in a unique, often delirious language. ... Its skeleton is transformed into a psychedelic open mountain song via modular Moogs, Mellotron, and electronics that wind on and on. A drone wipes out the melody and a hypnotic rhythm and harmony then introduce Mazurek's horn. He offers his own minimally stated theme in return, and delivers a short solo to whisper Cantos Invisiveis to a close. This recording is both intimate and inimitable. Its utter strangeness is far from off-putting, however; in fact, it's aesthetic is downright seductive in its uncompromising, poetic, delirious allure."
allmusic
Cuneiform Records (Audio)
amazon, iTunes
YouTube: Of Golden Summer, Olhaluai

Sleepless Nights - Elizabeth Hardwick (1979)

"'I have always, all of my life, been looking for help from a man,' we are told near the beginning of Elizabeth Hardwick's subtle new book. 'It has come many times and many more than not. This began early.' . . . Sleepless Nights is a novel, but it is a novel in which the subject is memory and to which the 'I' whose memories are in question is entirely and deliberately the author: we recognize the events and addresses of Elizabeth Hardwick's life not only from her earlier work, but from the poems of her husband, the late Robert Lowell. We study in another light the rainy afternoons and dyed satin shoes and high-school drunkenness of the Kentucky adolescence, the thin coats and yearnings toward home of the graduate years at Columbia, the households in Maine and Europe and on Marlborough Street in Boston and West 67th Street in New York. We are presented the entire itinerary, shown all the punched tickets and transfers. The result is less a 'story about' or 'of' a life than a shattered meditation on it, a work as evocative and difficult to place as Claude Levi-Strauss's Tristes Tropiques, which it oddly recalls. The author observes of her enigmatic narrative: 'It certainly hasn't the drama of: I saw the old, white-bearded frigate master on the dock and signed up for the journey. But after all, I am a woman.' This strikes an interesting note, a balance of Oriental diffidence and exquisite contempt, of irony and direct statement, that exactly expresses the sensibility at work in Sleepless Nights. ..."
NY Times: Meditation on a Life By Joan Didion (April 1979)
New Yorker: A Singular Woman
The Paris Review: Elizabeth Hardwick, The Art of Fiction No. 87
amazon

Handcrafting Doughnuts at Dough

"In 1931, The New Yorker reported on a circle of dough that was becoming an exponentially popular phenomenon: 'Doughnuts float dreamily through a grease canal in a glass-enclosed machine, walk dreamily up a moving ramp, and tumble dreamily into an outgoing basket. Twelve hundred doughnuts an hour are turned out.' The writer was describing a doughnut machine that had been created just eleven years before, by an inventor named Adolph Levitt. In just over a decade, he’d built a twenty-five-million-dollar-a-year business selling them. The few employees of Dough, a bakery in the neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, cut circles of dough by hand, punch out the holes, and fry them in a small vat of oil, just one tray at a time. Since its opening, in 2010, Dough has gained a cult following, and, while the owners are itching for more space ('We’re really quite tight in here. It’s hard.'), they’re hesitant to expand and compromise quality. ..."
New Yorker (Video)
W - Doughnut

Italy’s Challenge to the Eurozone Is Only Beginning

Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella, center, addresses journalists on Sunday after a meeting with Giuseppe Conte, in Rome. Conte will be sworn in as Italy’s Prime Minister on Friday.
"So Italy is getting a new populist government after all. On Thursday, the leaders of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and rightist League emerged from a meeting in Rome to confirm that they had agreed on the composition of a cabinet acceptable to the Italian President, Sergio Mattarella, opening the way for a new administration to be formed. Giuseppe Conte, a previously unknown lawyer whom many people regard as a mere front man, will be sworn in as Prime Minister on Friday. In the short run, the sight of a new government emerging in Rome may bring some calm to the financial markets, which have been rattled by the possibility of another Italian election, and even bigger gains for the populists. Looking further ahead, however, there is great uncertainty surrounding not just Italy but the entire nineteen-nation eurozone. For the first time since it was formed, in 1999, the monetary union will be confronting a government in one of its core member countries that is implacably opposed to many of its rules and policies. ..."
New Yorker
YouTube: Italy's populists reach for power - Five Stars for Rome 25:55, The Five Star Movement and the EU - BBC Newsnight 13:54

2018 January: The Fate of the Party, 2018 March: In Italy Election, Anti-E.U. Views Pay Off for Far Right and Populists, 2018 March: Notes on Italy’s Election, 2018 May: Historically Compromised

Otis “Big Smokey” Smothers - Sings The Backporch Blues (1962)

"Otis 'Big Smokey' Smothers (March 21, 1929 – July 23, 1993) was an African-American Chicago blues guitarist and singer. He was a member of Howlin' Wolf's backing band and worked with Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, Bo Diddley, Ike Turner, J. T. Brown, Freddie King, Little Johnny Jones, Little Walter, and Willie Dixon. His younger brother, Abe (born Albert, January 2, 1939 – November 20, 2010), was the bluesman Little Smokey Smothers, with whom he is sometimes confused. Smothers was born in Lexington, Mississippi, and was taught by his aunt to play the harmonica and the guitar. He relocated to Chicago in 1946. ... His album Smokey Smothers Sings the Backporch Blues, produced by Sonny Thompson, with Freddie King on lead guitar, was released in 1962. A subsequent session produced four tracks, including 'Twist with Me Annie', a reworked version of 'Work with Me, Annie'. As a part-time member of Muddy Waters's backing band, Smothers played on 'I Got My Eyes on You' in 1968. ..."
Wikipedia
Record Fiend
Blues On Stage
YouTube: Sings The Backporch Blues (Full)

Bedford Park: An Undisturbed Suburb in the North Bronx

The New York Botanical Garden’s conservatory hosts its annual holiday model train show each December.
"Bedford Park, a sleepy community in the northern section of the Bronx, is home to tight two-way streets running parallel to the super-wide Grand Concourse, and century-old Victorian- and Tudor-style homes abutting Art Deco apartment buildings. The neighborhood began to develop in 1869 after George Caulfield bought a 25-acre tract of land from a large plot owned by financier Leonard Jerome, Winston Churchill’s grandfather. Three years later, Caulfield sold the property to the Twenty-Fourth Ward Real Estate Association. Bedford Park’s suburban design was inspired by the London town of the same name, which was the first 'garden suburb.' The neighborhood’s early settlers — working-class Irish and Italian immigrants — lived in freshly built suburban villas on a street now known as Villa Avenue. Many residents lived where they worked, helping to construct the nearby Jerome Park Reservoir, the site of a former racetrack also bearing Jerome’s name. ..."
Voice

The Bedford Café is an all-hours oasis on Bedford Park Boulevard.

2009 June: City Island, Seaport of the Bronx, 2015 January: Anna Matos on WallWorks NY — A New Gallery Space in the South Bronx, 2015 July: ¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York, 2015 November: Bronx Cheer, 2016 February: Rebel Music: Race, Empire and the New Muslim Youth Culture (2014), 2016 May: The Birth of the Bronx's Universal Hip Hop Museum, 2016 June: Who Makes the Bronx, 2017 March: New York by New Yorkers: A Local's Guide to the City's Neighborhoods, 2017 August: From Lagos to the Bronx, Photographer Osaretin Ugiagbe Documents the In-Between, 2017 September: The Bronx, 2018 January: Towards Anarchitecture: Gordon Matta-Clark and Le Corbusier

Slick Leo, the Godfather of DJ Culture in New Orleans

"It’s seafood Tuesday at Caesar’s on the West Bank of New Orleans, and it is cold and blustery and, believe it or not, hailing outside. A bummer of an East Coast winter night, perhaps – but for a January in Louisiana, damn near apocalyptic. The next few days will see the city covered with a thin patina of frost, enough to induce power outages, shuttered schools, panicked city-wide travel warnings and an intense-sounding 'boil-water advisory.' Which means the folks who have left their homes to party tonight with Captain Charles and Papa Smurf must be the hardcore of the hardcore. The club’s a quarter full at best, but there are half-pints of cognac for sale and a plastic tub of Trustex condoms in the bathroom, and the floor stays covered with packs of line-dancers falling easily into synchronized formations. In here, it’s all ages: A memorable scene breaks out when a 60-something fellow in a fedora grinds up on a 20-something woman with platinum hair, and, in the process, to great cheers, drops his cane. ..."
Red Bull Music Academy Daily
Soundcloud: SLICK LEO SNIPPET FROM THE FAMOUS DISCO '83 ON WAIL 105 FM NEW ORLEANS (Audio)

Tales from the far-flung Faroes

"When it comes to remote, the Faroe Islands has it all. Tucked between Norway and Iceland, in the dark waters of the North Atlantic, the 18 tiny islands are home to a population of just over 50,000. Half of those residents live in the archipelago's capital Tórshavn 'Thor's Town'. But some of the islands are sparsely populated, with just a handful of people living on them. The Faroese are self-reliant, modest people, with a rich heritage of storytelling and a deep desire to share information with one another. The self-governing nation has a well-developed communication network - courtesy of the Kingdom of Denmark of which it is part - but many still rely on the postal service. Some of the islands are connected by tunnels and bridges, but on others, mail bags arrive by boat or even helicopter. A network of hard-working postal workers then criss-cross islands on old mountain routes used since the 19th Century delivering the post. The fittest people used to be nominated to walk these routes, but these days 4x4 postal vehicles cross the rugged terrain. But still, on the smaller islands, post is delivered on foot by locals. Meet some of them. ..."
BBC
W - Faroe Islands
YouTube: Top Places to See in the Faroe Islands, Faroe Islands 27:52

The Mystery of Caliphate

"Six episodes into a 10-episode series, the New York Times’ podcast Caliphate is a handsomely produced collection of riveting audio in search of a stable identity. In the podcast’s short prologue, the Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi tells producer Andy Mills that her mission is to answer the question 'Who are they?'—meaning the Islamic State, Callimachi’s beat. But is Caliphate a news podcast, like the Times’ hugely popular The Daily, in which host Michael Barbaro interviews the journalists responsible for the paper’s biggest stories of the moment—with Mills as Barbaro and Callimachi as the reporter conveying her scoops? Or is it, as its limited run suggests, a story, with a beginning, middle, and end? The Daily works so well because it’s symbiotic with the paper. Listeners feel like they’ve been seated next to the reporter at a dinner party and are getting both the version of a six-column feature and a bit of the reporter’s personality and attitudes. Without the institutional rigor of the Times behind it, however, all this insider talk would be little more than gossip, yet another take in a world brimming with free-floating opinions. ..."
Slate: The Mystery of Caliphate
NY Times: Caliphate (Audio)
twitter

2018 April: NY Times: The ISIS Files

The Death and Life of a Great American Building - Jeremiah Moss

The St. Denis, 2017
"I am one of the last tenants of the St. Denis, a 165-year-old building on the corner of Broadway and East 11th Street, just south of Union Square in New York City, that is in the process of being emptied and readied for gutting. It is quiet in my office, early morning before my psychotherapy patients arrive. My four large windows overlook a courtyard and the angled back sides of three buildings, their walls a geometric patchwork of brick. Pigeons purr on a sill. In the NYU dormitory across the way, a student has decorated her window with paper snowflakes. It is winter and I hope to see a real snowfall one more time before I go. The St. Denis is desolate. Only two dozen tenants are left. There used to be hundreds. For decades, the St. Denis has been a haven for psychotherapists of every sort: classical Freudian analysts and new-age Zen psychologists, existential counselors and gender specialists, therapists who use art, dance, and neurofeedback. We’ve shared the building’s six floors (plus one semi-secret half-floor on the un-seventh) with other small businesses, mostly providers of wellness—Rolfers, Reiki healers, craniosacral balancers, Feldenkrais practitioners, acupuncturists, Pilates instructors, and at least one psychic who does past-life regressions. ..."
NYBooks

A staircase inside the St. Denis, 2017

The 50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time: A Playlist Curated by Pitchfork

"What makes a good ambient record? I’m not sure I can even begin to answer that question, and I count myself a longtime fan of the genre, such as it is. Though conceived, ostensibly, by Brian Eno as modernist mood music—'as ignorable as it is interesting,' he wrote in the liner notes to 1978's Ambient 1: Music for Airports—the term has come to encompass 'tracks you can dance to all the way to harsh noise.' This description from composer and musician Keith Fullerton Whitman at Pitchfork may not get us any closer to a clear definition in prose, though “cloud of sound” is a lovely turn of phrase. Unlike other forms of music, there is no set of standards—both in the jazz sense of a canon and the formal sense of a set of rules. Reverberating keyboards, squelching, burping synthesizers, droning guitar feedback, field recordings, found sounds, laptops, strings… whatever it takes to get you there—'there' being a state of suspended emotion, 'drifting' rather than 'driving,' the sounds 'soothing, sad, haunting, or ominous.' (Cheerful, upbeat ambient music may be a contradiction in terms.) ..."
Open Culture (Audio)
Pitchfork: The 50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time (Video)

The Maltese Falcon (1941 film)

Wikipedia - "The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 film noir written and directed by John Huston in his directorial debut, and based on Dashiell Hammett's 1929 novel of the same name. The film stars Humphrey Bogart as private investigator Sam Spade and Mary Astor as his femme fatale client. Gladys George, Peter Lorre, and Sydney Greenstreet co-star, with Greenstreet appearing in his film debut. The story follows a San Francisco private detective and his dealings with three unscrupulous adventurers, all of whom are competing to obtain a jewel-encrusted falcon statuette. The film premiered on October 3, 1941, in New York City, and was nominated for three Academy Awards. The Maltese Falcon was selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry in 1989. ... In San Francisco in 1941, private investigators Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) and Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) meet prospective client Ruth Wonderly (Mary Astor). She claims to be looking for her missing sister, who is involved with a man named Floyd Thursby. Archer agrees to follow her that night and help get her sister back. Spade is awakened by a phone call early in the morning and the police inform him that Archer has been killed. ..."
Wikipedia
Vanity Fair: The Mystery of the Maltese Falcon, One of the Most Valuable Movie Props in History
Guardian - After The Maltese Falcon: how film noir took flight
YouTube: The Maltese Falcon (1941) Trailer, 'The Maltese Falcon' | Critics' Picks | The New York Times (A. O. Scott)

Third Coast Percussion

"Back at the beginning of time, the human voice was the very first instrument. Probably close in second place were folks banging on stuff – in other words, percussionists. The quartet of gentlemen who form the Chicago-based Third Coast Percussion takes primordial pounding into a completely distinctive new league. To be sure, in this Tiny Desk performance, they'll play their sophisticated, modern marimbas and vibraphones, but be on the lookout for the subtleties of tuned cowbells and 3/4" galvanized steel pipes, like those found at the local hardware store. Add to that a glockenspiel, a MIDI synth, a melodica, a drum kit, children's deskbells, crotales, a Thai gong and a singing bowl, and you've got significant noise-making potential behind Bob Boilen's desk. The mesmerizing opening number, 'Niagara,' written by the group, is from the band's latest album, the aqua-centric Paddle to the Sea. This water is fast-moving, with pulsing, repeating patterns in the vibraphone, punctuated by drum beats and a bed of low synth. The Third Coasters follow with another from the album, their own arrangement of a slowly rippling ode to the Amazon River by Philip Glass. Beginning with droplets on the glockenspiel and evocative bowing of both vibraphone and crotales (small bronze discs), the music flows softly, taking its time to fan out in all its quiet beauty. ..."
NPR (Video)
W - Third Coast Percussion
Third Coast Percussion
YouTube: Ritual Music, Fractalia by Owen Clayton Condon, "Torched and Wrecked" by David Skidmore

William Ferris: The Man Who Shared Our Voices

"They don’t teach mule trading at Yale University, but Bill Ferris had a sneaking suspicion the blue-blooded Ivy Leaguers he ran with in the 1970s might benefit from some practical knowledge, the kind you don’t find in books. That’s how Ray Lum, an 84-year-old Vicksburg, Mississippi, mule trader, wound up spending a late September day in 1975 outside Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library, holding forth to any student or professor who would listen. Ferris had grown up on a Mississippi Delta farm called Broadacres — '16 miles on a gravel road,' he says, from Vicksburg. He had known Lum 'from the time my father would take me to the auction barn' where Lum held his weekly livestock sales. At this stage of his career, Ferris was 33 years old and in his third year as an associate professor in Yale’s American and Afro-American Studies programs. He had long since understood the spell a drawling, self-made raconteur from Mississippi could cast upon the unSouthern. He’d learned it well after years of up-North and overseas education at a Massachusetts boarding school, Chicago’s Northwestern University, Trinity College in Ireland, and finally the University of Pennsylvania. ..."
THE BITTER SOUTHERNER (Audio)

The Sistine Chapel of Comic-Strip Art

What remains of the cartoon wall at the Overlook, a Midtown sports bar.
"In a dark booth at the Overlook, which resides in a little brick building that has defied demolition below the skyscrapers of East Midtown, two men were having a beer. The bar was rowdy with people eating wings and watching basketball on televisions, but the men were busy studying the cracked, aging wall beside them. Twenty feet wide and spanning the room’s length, it was covered with dozens of fading drawings of classic American cartoon and comic strip characters. ... This crumbling, beer-splotched wall in the back of a sports bar on East 44th Street is one of New York’s more neglected cultural treasures. Created in the 1970s, it is a veritable Sistine Chapel of American comic-strip art: the 30-some drawings across its face were left by a who’s who of cartooning legends, including a Spider-Man by Gil Kane, a Beetle Bailey by Mort Walker, a Dondi by Irwin Hasen, a Steve Canyon by Milton Caniff, a Hagar the Horrible by Dik Browne, and a Dagwood Bumstead by Paul Fung Jr. There’s also a self-portrait by Al Jaffee, a doodle by Bil Keane, and a Mad magazine-style gag by Sergio Aragonés. Old regulars are familiar with the wall’s past, and comic book scholars make occasional pilgrimages to the bar, but the Overlook’s cartoon mural remains largely unknown and untended. ..."
NY Times

A group of artists works to restore the original James Thurber murals at Costello's, April 1972.

A Woman’s Place

"It starts more like a Nike commercial than a political ad. The camera pans over a wintry landscape, and a woman appears, wearing a hot-pink racing jacket, hair in a ponytail, music building as she runs. Her voice comes in, telling the story of a race she ran with her father as a young girl: Just as a boy and his dad moved ahead of her, her father asked if she was going to let the kid beat her. ... The woman is Erin Collier, candidate for Congress. After touting her family’s eight generations in upstate New York and her work as an agricultural economist for the Obama administration, she says, 'I’m a woman, I’m an economist, I’m a farmer, I’m a triathlete, I’m a feminist. I’m not going to let those boys beat me.' It’s an extraordinary ad, and not just because of its girl-power, pink-sneaker aesthetic. Collier doesn’t just embrace her gender. She speaks to a woman who has rarely existed before in the American political imagination: ambitious, successful, and, most notably (even jarringly), competitive. A record number of women are running for office this year. A few are Republican, but the vast majority are Democrats. ..."
New Republic

Moving Out - Sonny Rollins (1954)

"When the title Moving Out is applied to this album, it bears no reference to leaving one domicile for another but means stepping out into high gear while playing. Those of you who are familiar with Sonny Rollins' playing know that he does a lot of moving out, stepping out (right out of his shoes) and stretching out (extending himself to play interesting parts of the chords). These are vintage Rollins recordings made in a New York period prior to his year of study and self-evaluation in Chicago. They are from a steadily flowing Sonny who only hinted at future experiments with rhythmic figures and time breaking. That he has matured and become even more personal is evident in his more recent recordings but it is equally evident in listening to the selections in this LP, gathered from two 1954 sessions, that Sonny's talent did not go begging before 1955. Four of the selections were recorded on August 18, 1954 and feature trumpeter Kenny Dorham in unison with Sonny. At this writing, the two are re-united in the Max Roach quintet. ..."
Tripod
W - Moving Out (album)
amazon, iTunes
YouTube: Moving Out 31:41

2012 September: The Singular Sound of Sonny Rollins, 2012 December: Village Vanguard, 2015 September: Rollins Plays for Bird (1957), 2016 February: Saxophone Colossus (1956), 2016 May: Plus 4 (1956), 2017 June: Inside Sonny Rollins’s Jazz Archive, Headed Home to Harlem, 2018 April: Tenor Madness (1956)

An Illustrated History of the Picnic Table

Picnic grove at Cedar Point, an amusement park on Lake Erie, Sandusky, Ohio; postcard dated 1911.
"From campground to crab shack to suburban backyard, the picnic table is so ubiquitous that it is nearly invisible as a designed object. Yet this ingenious form — a structurally bolted frame that unites bench seats and table into a sturdy package — has remained largely unchanged since the 1930s. Having transcended the picnic, it is now the ideal setting for any outdoor event that compels us to face one another squarely across a shared surface. Even a conversation between the former President and Secretary of State is transformed. There is something intensely familiar about this massive table on the White House grounds; though it is off-limits to the public, we can imagine sitting there ourselves. The table seems to humanize its powerful occupants, even as it curiously diminishes them with its over-sized components. These qualities of familiarity and abundance have made the picnic table an American icon. ..."
Places Journal

Arthur Wigram Allen and his brother Boyce picnic in Sutton Forest, Australia, 1900.

Spotlight on … Ted Berrigan: The Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan

Alex Katz / Ted Berrigan
"'Mess and Message,' the final three words of a poem in Ted Berrigan’s 1969 book, Many Happy Returns, describe perfectly and succinctly what makes his poetry compelling. The message of his poetry is the mess that is life. Appropriation figures in large and fascinating ways in this message. The very words 'mess and message' are copied, as is the entire poem in which they appear, 'Frank O’Hara’s Question from Writers and Issues by John Ashbery'. Berrigan produced surprisingly numerous kinds of meaning by pilfering all sorts of pre-existing sentences, fragments, and whole passages of writing (literary and prosaic), not to mention visual imagery. Berrigan understood that from time immemorial poets had imitated, if not downright copied, earlier poets in order to establish their literary genealogy. A helpful genealogy of appropriative writing—with the earliest example dating to the late nine- teenth century, and including Ted Berrigan—was recently drawn up by the poet and art critic Raphael Rubenstein, who aptly puts himself into the genealogy, just as Berrigan would have done. ..."
Dennis Cooper Blog (Video)