Five Cultural Tours of Los Angeles

in Travel | May 9th, 2013

As an Open Cul­ture read­er, you sure­ly enjoy a vast range of inter­ests, and what serves as a more robust nexus of inter­ests than the mod­ern city? Each city pro­duces an infini­tude of fas­ci­nat­ing case stud­ies in archi­tec­ture, eco­nom­ics, pol­i­tics, and social psy­chol­o­gy. But even when you exam­ine the less obvi­ous­ly city-rel­e­vant intel­lec­tu­al pur­suits — lan­guage, film, lit­er­a­ture, tech­nol­o­gy, style — count­less more con­nec­tions reveal them­selves. Because I’ve found orga­niz­ing cul­tur­al inter­ests by city so fruit­ful, I offer you here a set of resources to do with Los Ange­les, Cal­i­for­nia. These are just a few of the count­less pos­si­ble per­cep­tions of the cap­i­tal of main­stream cin­e­ma, the ter­mi­nus of mankind’s west­ward push, the cre­ator and destroy­er of new urban forms, and above all the great divider of opin­ion. Archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ri­an Reyn­er Ban­ham voic­es his own at the top of Reyn­er Ban­ham Loves Los Ange­les, a 1972 BBC tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary in which the archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ri­an gives a per­son­al tour of the city: “I love the place with a pas­sion that goes beyond sense or rea­son.”

“They make movies here,” says CalArts pro­fes­sor Thom Ander­sen in the nar­ra­tion of Los Ange­les Plays Itself. “I live here. Some­times I think that gives me the right to crit­i­cize the way movies depict my city.” But he does much more than crit­i­cize in his video essay’s near­ly three-hour analy­sis of the roles Los Ange­les has played onscreen: as itself, as oth­er cities, and, most often, as no city in par­tic­u­lar. Chap­man Uni­ver­si­ty’s Huell Hows­er Archive col­lects the late Cal­i­for­nia-explor­er’s non­fic­tion­al video jour­neys in places like Venice Beach, the ever-ris­ing down­town, and even in a heli­copter above the city. For a sim­i­lar­ly aer­i­al per­spec­tive, but a his­tor­i­cal one, watch this 1958 footage of Hol­ly­wood from above. And for a point of view more force­ful­ly expressed, look no fur­ther than Ice Cube’s cel­e­bra­tion of Los Ange­les as mid­cen­tu­ry design mec­ca, espe­cial­ly for the work of aes­thet­ic lumi­nar­ies (and Pow­ers of Ten film­mak­ers) Charles and Ray Eames. “A lot of peo­ple think L.A. is just eye­sore after eye­sore, full of mini-malls, palm trees and bill­boards,” he says. “So what? They don’t know the L.A. I know.”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Climb Three of the World’s Highest Peaks on Google Street View

in Google, Photography, Travel | March 24th, 2013

Google Peak

What’s sur­pris­ing about Ever­est Base Camp is the col­or. It’s a flinty, gray place lit­tered with shards of Himalayan sand­stone and shale. Here and there appears a vivid green pool of alpine water. And then there’s the red, blue and green prayer flags hung by Himalayans to blow bless­ings in the wind.

Google Street View’s lat­est project, the World’s High­est Peaks, takes us to Ever­est and two oth­er moun­tains includ­ed in the Sev­en Summits—the high­est moun­tains on each of the sev­en con­ti­nents.

Teams of moun­taineers tot­ed dig­i­tal cam­eras on treks to the top of each moun­tain and inte­grat­ed their images into Google maps so we can trek along with them from the com­fort of our lap­tops, iPhones or Android devices. Like Google Street View’s Ocean gallery, the moun­tain images bring us to places we may nev­er see with our own eyes.

It’s easy to imag­ine the dry, cold cli­mate at Camp Col­era, where hik­ers wait for the weath­er to per­mit a climb of Aconagua, the high­est moun­tain in the Andes. The views of Tan­za­nia from Arrow Glac­i­er are breath­tak­ing. Hik­ers camp here before mak­ing the treach­er­ous ascent to Uhu­ru—the “rooftop of Africa” and the sum­mit of Mt. Kil­i­man­jaro.

One of the things Google does real­ly well is cre­ate gal­leries of images that are the kind we might take our­selves, not fil­tered-lens pro­fes­sion­al shots that belong on cal­en­dars. We see moun­taineers rest­ing and hang­ing out at the frosty Casa de Piedra, on the way up to Aconagua, hik­ers pic­nick­ing at Lemosho Glades as they switch from jeep to foot on the climb up Kil­i­man­jaro, and the weird, aban­doned diesel bar­rels that serve as shel­ter for folks climb­ing Mount Elbrus in Rus­sia.

As usu­al, Google lets us in on the process of col­lect­ing all these images with a fun blog writ­ten by the pho­tog­ra­phers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Reef View: Google Gives Us Stun­ning Under­wa­ter Shots of Great Coral Reefs

Google Presents an Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion of 100,000 Stars

Google Street View Takes You on a Panoram­ic Tour of the Grand Canyon

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at .

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Watch Huell Howser’s Decades of Television Travels Online. It’s California Gold!

in Television, Travel | February 21st, 2013

When tele­vi­sion broad­cast­er Huell Hows­er passed away last month, we South­ern Cal­i­for­ni­ans real­ized just how far his per­sona reached. The cliché “larg­er than life” seems, in this light, almost apt; it describes his famous­ly vol­u­ble enthu­si­asm, larg­er than the broad­ly local life he explored on cam­era. Though fol­low­ers iden­ti­fy Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Gold as Howser’s flag­ship series, he host­ed spe­cial­ized ones as well, such as Down­town, focus­ing on Los Ange­les’ his­toric core, Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Mis­sions (sub­ject obvi­ous), and Road Trip, which took him far­ther afield. Above, you’ll find an episode of Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Gold shot in Palm Springs. Hows­er hap­pened to own a home out there, but more to the point, so did Frank Sina­tra; it’s the Chair­man of the Board­’s house that Hows­er devotes his con­sid­er­able curios­i­ty to walk­ing through and find­ing out every­thing about. Below, you can join him for a look at Vin­cent Price’s art col­lec­tion on a Vis­it­ing… broad­cast that con­tains an inter­view Hows­er record­ed with Price back in the eight­ies.

“I don’t have an agent,” said Hows­er in a 2009 Los Ange­les Times pro­file. “I don’t have a man­ag­er, I don’t have a press agent, I don’t have a wardrobe guy, a make­up guy, a park­ing space, a dress­ing room. It’s basi­cal­ly me and a cam­era­man and an edi­tor and a cou­ple of guys in the office. I can go out between now and noon and do a full 30-minute show just talk­ing to peo­ple on the street and have it on the air tonight.” You can watch all these shows on Chap­man Uni­ver­si­ty’s new Huell Hows­er Archive; just click on a series title under the “Shows” col­umn, then through to each episode’s indi­vid­ual post. For a pub­lic tele­vi­sion icon, Hows­er had a pro­duc­tion sen­si­bil­i­ty ide­al­ly suit­ed for the inter­net, domain of the cheap and cheer­ful — well, domain of the cheap, any­way. “We have shrugged our way into a world where every­one is sup­posed to be a crit­ic of every­thing, all the time,” actor Thomas Lennon wrote in a remem­brance titled “Why Huell Hows­er Was the Oppo­site of the Inter­net.” “Huell, on the oth­er hand, would get into his car, dri­ve for hours, and show us things… just so he could tell us how won­der­ful they were.”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Google Street View Takes You on a Panoramic Tour of the Grand Canyon

in Google, Photography, Travel | February 5th, 2013

canyon SV_trekker_1_large

With Google’s Street View we can amble through New York City’s High Line Park, around the Nation­al Muse­um of Iraq in Bagh­dad, and down the cob­bled streets of Ouro Pre­to, Brazil. Now we can also take a vir­tu­al hike along the rim of the Grand Canyon, fol­low­ing Google’s cam­eras along the his­toric Bright Angel trail from its start at the south rim all the way down the Black Bridge over the Col­orado Riv­er and on to the Phan­tom Ranch camp­ing area.

It’s a per­fect way to check out the ter­rain before tak­ing off for an Ari­zona vaca­tion.

Unlike views in Google’s ear­li­er Street View maps, the Grand Canyon pho­tos are tak­en along rocky, nar­row trails where no car, snow mobile, or motor­bike could ever go. So how did Google col­lect all of the nec­es­sary images?

The Grand Canyon project is the first to uti­lize Trekker, a back­pack-mount­ed cam­era appa­ra­tus worn by a hik­er that takes a pic­ture every 2.5 sec­onds. Trekker weighs 40 pounds and is oper­at­ed by an Android phone held by the hik­er. It has 15 cam­eras point­ed in dif­fer­ent angles that can be com­bined to cre­ate panoram­ic views.

Fol­low the South Kaibab Trail to Skele­ton Point for majes­tic 360-degree views of the misty blue Canyon. It took three days to cap­ture the main trails of the Canyon’s south rim. Two teams hiked down the Bright Angel Trail, camped at Phan­tom Ranch and hiked out the next day along the South Kaibab Trail. Anoth­er team stayed at the top, col­lect­ing images from the rim and from Mete­or Crater out­side the park.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Reef View: Google Gives Us Stun­ning Under­wa­ter Shots of Great Coral Reefs

Google Presents an Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion of 100,000 Stars

Google Art Project Expands, Bring­ing 30,000 Works of Art from 151 Muse­ums to the Web

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at .

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Trains and the Brits Who Love Them: Monty Python’s Michael Palin on Great Railway Journeys

in Television, Travel | January 10th, 2013

What is it with Britons and trains, any­way? Hard­ly just the title of col­lec­tion of Irvine Welsh’s sto­ries of hero­in and degra­da­tion, the term “trainspot­ting” actu­al­ly refers to a real, and fer­vent­ly pur­sued hob­by; trainspot­ters exist, just as do bird­watch­ers and sports fans. In terms of obses­sion with the design and oper­a­tional minu­ti­ae of their own trains, Britain falls sec­ond only to the even more dense­ly rail-laden Japan. But we Amer­i­cans, pos­sessed of a train sys­tem few would call robust, can’t quite bring our­selves to believe it. Per­haps we just need to hear it from the mouth of Michael Palin, writer, come­di­an, tele­vi­sion host, Python — and avowed trainspot­ter. Most of Pal­in’s fans know him first through his char­ac­ters in the Fly­ing Cir­cus: the shop­keep­er, Lui­gi Ver­cot­ti, Ken Shab­by, and the most mem­o­rable Gum­bys, to name but a few. But some of us know him best as the cen­tral trav­el­er of the globe-span­ning tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­taries in which he’s starred since 1989. Around the World in Eighty Days, Pole to Pole, Full Cir­cle, Michael Pal­in’s Hem­ing­way Adven­ture, Sahara, Himalaya, New Europe, and now Brazil with Michael Palin. Here we have a man who knows how best to get from point A to point Z, and all in between.

But before all of those shows came Pal­in’s first episode of the BBC’s Great Rail­way Jour­neys, a long-run­ning series whose very exis­tence speaks to the vital­i­ty of Britain’s train-relat­ed enthu­si­asm. 1980’s “Con­fes­sions of a Trainspot­ter”, view­able at the top of this post, fol­lows Palin as he makes his glee­ful way from Lon­don to Kyle of Lochalsh in north­west­ern Scot­land on a series of trains fast and slow, long and short, old and new. This estab­lished him as a tele­vi­sion trav­el­er; four­teen years lat­er, he returned to the pro­gram for “Der­ry to Ker­ry”, where he traced his roots along “that best-kept of all trans­port secrets, the Irish rail­way line.” “Is it just us who are like this?” Palin asks. “The British, I mean. Are there any trainspot­ters in Sici­ly? Do Bel­gians go misty-eyed with the thought of see­ing the 12:16 to Antwerp? Do Swedes save up all year for a Has­sel­blad to pho­to­graph a Stock­holm to Gothen­burg coal train crest­ing a 1‑in-57 gra­di­ent?” Per­haps the most defin­i­tive answer comes from a fel­low rail fan he meets mere min­utes lat­er. Palin asks the man if he has always loved trains. “Very near­ly,” he replies. “There was a short peri­od when I became inter­est­ed in girls. Even­tu­al­ly, I got mar­ried and went back to rail­ways.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Amer­i­ca Needs More Palin … Michael Palin, That Is

An Epic Jour­ney on the Trans-Siber­ian Rail­road

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Al Jazeera Travel Show Explores World Cities Through Their Street Food

in Television, Travel | August 13th, 2012

The Japan­ese have a word for it: kuidaore, “to eat one­self bank­rupt.” This has risen to some com­bi­na­tion of tra­di­tion and aspi­ra­tion in Osa­ka, Japan’s sec­ond-largest city, a for­mer mer­chant enclave once referred to as the coun­try’s “kitchen.” You can see exact­ly what emp­ties Osakan bank accounts on Al Jazeera Eng­lish’s series Street Food. Its episode on the city (part one, part two), embed­ded above, seeks out the stands that most effi­cient­ly cater to the cit­i­zen­ry’s char­ac­ter­is­tic busy­ness, the source of the fresh­est sushi around, the bar­be­cue coun­ters of Kore­atown, the poi­so­nous­ly-liv­ered fugu fish, the ide­al­ly con­tro­ver­sial dish that is whale meat, and a range of food writ­ers and crit­ics to lay down some culi­nary insight. The pro­gram fin­ish­es its jour­ney with one vis­it to a culi­nary acad­e­my and anoth­er to the poor­er side of this Japan­ese metrop­o­lis. Being a Japa­neese metrop­o­lis with more pover­ty than most but also one a greater love of eat­ing than most, Osa­ka has pro­duced street food even among its street peo­ple.

There you have the basic form of a Street Food broad­cast, each of which takes on a dif­fer­ent world city, all of which oper­ate under the the­o­ry that the best path into a cul­ture runs through its alleys most dense with comestible com­merce. In the episode just above (part one, part two), Mon­tre­al’s meet­ing of Eng­lish and French sen­si­bil­i­ties, a slight­ly uneasy coex­is­tence in the best of times, turns into an all-out ide­o­log­i­cal con­flict on the sub­ject of how to eat. One par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant skir­mish occurs over pou­tine, the French fry, cheese curd, and gravy dish essen­tial to any inves­ti­ga­tion of Mon­tre­al cui­sine. In the episode below (part one, part two), we see the ele­ments of Span­ish and Andean eat­ing final­ly con­verg­ing on the streets of Lima — aid­ed, in a big way, by fla­vors brought in by the Peru’s many immi­grants from Asian. Admit­ted­ly, the con­ver­gence isn’t com­plete, not will it be until Limeños not of native descent come to enjoy the city’s most pop­u­lar item of street food, with 65 mil­lion eat­en every year: the guinea pig.

All episodes of Al Jazeera Eng­lish’s Street Food on YouTube:

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Versailles 3D, Created by Google, Gives You an Impressive Tour of Louis XIV’s Famous Palace

in Architecture, Google, History, Travel | August 1st, 2012

With 3D scale mod­els, music, and video, Google’s Ver­sailles 3D brings the best of 21st cen­tu­ry web arts to 18th cen­tu­ry art his­to­ry. The palace was built by Louis XIV, the “Sun King,” who exem­pli­fied all of the author­i­tar­i­an excess­es of the French monar­chy. For­tu­nate­ly for pos­ter­i­ty, he was also a patron of the arts, to whom we owe much of the work of Moliere, Racine and painters such as Charles Le Brun. And then there is his archi­tec­tur­al lega­cy, the palace of Ver­sailles, which start­ed out as a hum­ble hunt­ing lodge, built by his father Louis XIII in 1624. In the next sev­er­al decades, father, then son, com­mis­sioned the elab­o­rate set of build­ings that con­sti­tute Europe’s largest chateau and the seat of French gov­ern­ment from Louis XIV’s ascen­sion until the Rev­o­lu­tion of 1789. If you’re think­ing of vis­it­ing, the offi­cial chateau de Ver­sailles web­site has slideshows of grounds and gal­leries, a bou­tique, and some worth­while inter­ac­tive fea­tures. But Google, as usu­al, has tried to out­do its com­pe­ti­tion, this time by part­ner­ing with it. In con­nec­tion with the Ver­sailles cura­tors, The Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute has cre­at­ed a mul­ti­me­dia almost-sub­sti­tute for a real life excur­sion to the gar­gan­tu­an and endur­ing sym­bol of Ancien Regime France.

The next video is a pre­view of a “Google Chrome Exper­i­ment” called “Chaos to Per­fec­tion,” an “inter­ac­tive stroll around the palace,” accom­pa­nied by an orig­i­nal sound­track from French band Phoenix. (The “exper­i­ment” itself is some­what slow load­ing, and requires the Chrome brows­er).

Final­ly, the engi­neers at Google (and part­ners Aloest, Wes­t­im­ages, le Fab­Shop and Les 84) give us a look behind the scenes of Ver­sailles 3D. Won­der how they cre­at­ed the elab­o­rate 3D scale mod­els of the palace grounds and build­ings? Well, the video below pro­vides a bar­rage of back­stage glimpses of the process, along with scenes from the open­ing of the Palace His­to­ry Gallery on June 14th.

And, of course, there will be mobile apps, Google promis­es, “soon.”

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Venice in a Day: From Daybreak to Sunset in Timelapse

in Travel | April 30th, 2012

It’s not the first time­lapse video of Venice, and it cer­tain­ly won’t be the last. You can bank on that. But what dis­tin­guish­es this clip from the oth­ers is its con­tin­u­al focus on the canals that make Venice, Venice. Gives this video three min­utes and it will give you a full day in the life of Venet­ian water­ways. And when you’re done, don’t miss How Venice Works, an impres­sive 18 minute video that explains the com­plex inner-work­ings of the city made up of 124 islands, 183 canals, 438 bridges and the rest. How it all hangs togeth­er is pret­ty amaz­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernest Hem­ing­way Reads “In Harry’s Bar in Venice”

It’s 5:46 A.M. and Paris Is Under Water

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