A Tour of All the Pizza Styles You Can Eat in the United States (and the History Behind Your Favorite Slices)

in Food & Drink, History, Travel | September 21st, 2022

When it comes to chili, Texas, Kansas City and Cincin­nati, will cede no quar­ter, each con­vinced that their par­tic­u­lar region­al approach is the only sane option.

Hot dogs? Put New York City and Chica­go in a pit and watch them tear each oth­er to rib­bons.

But piz­za?

There are so many geo­graph­ic vari­a­tions, even an impar­tial judge can’t see their way through to a clear vic­tor.

The play­ing field­’s thick as stuffed piz­za, a polar­iz­ing Chica­go local spe­cial­ty that’s deep­er than the deep­est dish.

Weird His­to­ry Food’s whirl­wind video tour of Every Piz­za Style We Could Find In the Unit­ed States, above, savors the ways in which var­i­ous piz­za styles evolved from the Neapoli­tan pie that Ital­ian immi­grant Gen­naro Lom­bar­di intro­duced to New York City in 1905.

Wait, though. We all have an acquain­tance who takes per­verse plea­sure in off­beat top­ping choic­es — look­ing at you, Cal­i­for­nia — but oth­er than that, isn’t piz­za just sauce, dough, and cheese?

How much room does that leave for vari­a­tion?

Plen­ty as it turns out.

Crusts, thick or thin, fluc­tu­ate wild­ly accord­ing to the type of flour used, how long the dough is proofed, the type of oven in which they’re baked, and phi­los­o­phy of sauce place­ment.

(In Buf­fa­lo, New York, piz­zas are sauced right up to their cir­cum­fer­ence, leav­ing very lit­tle crusty han­dle for eat­ing on the fly, though per­haps one could fold it down the mid­dle, as we do in the city 372 miles to the south.)

Sauce can also swing pret­ty wild­ly — sweet, spicy, pre­pared in advance, or left to the last minute — but cheese is a much hot­ter top­ic.

Detroit’s piz­za is dis­tin­guished by the inclu­sion of Wis­con­sin brick cheese.

St. Louis is loy­al to Prov­el cheese, a home­grown processed mix of ched­dar, Swiss, and pro­volone and liq­uid smoke.

Mia­mi piz­zas cater to the palates of its Cuban pop­u­la­tion by mix­ing moz­zarel­la with gou­da, a cheese that was both wide­ly avail­able and pop­u­lar before 1962’s rationing sys­tem was put in place.

Rhode Island’s apt­ly named Red Strips have no cheese at all…which might be prefer­able to the Altoona, Penn­syl­va­nia favorite that arrives topped with Amer­i­can cheese slices or — the hor­ror — Velvee­ta.

(This may be where we part ways with the old saw equat­ing piz­za with sex — even when it’s bad, it’s still pret­ty good.)

Cut and size also fac­tor in to piz­za pride.

Wash­ing­ton DC’s Jum­bo slices are pret­ty much the stan­dard issue New York-style thin crust slice, writ large.

Not only does size mat­ter here, it may be the only thing that matters…to the point where a local busi­ness improve­ment dis­trict had to inter­vene on behalf of side­walk rub­bish bins hard pressed to han­dle the vol­ume of greasy super-sized slice box­es Wash­ing­to­ni­ans were toss­ing away every evening.

In the land of oppor­tu­ni­ty, where small­er towns are under­stand­ably eager to claim their piece of pie, Weird His­to­ry Food gives the nod to Old Forge, Penn­syl­va­nia, opti­misti­cal­ly dubbed “the Piz­za Cap­i­tal of the World by Uncov­er­ing PA’s Jim Cheney, and Steubenville Ohio, home of the “over­sized Lunch­able” Atlas Obscu­ra refers to as America’s most mis­un­der­stood piz­za.

For good mea­sure, watch the PBS Idea Channel’s His­to­ry of Piz­za in 8 slices, below, then rep your favorite local pizze­ria in the com­ments.

We want to try them all!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The First Piz­za Ordered by Com­put­er, 1974

When Mikhail Gor­bachev, the Last Sovi­et Leader, Starred in a Piz­za Hut Com­mer­cial (1998)

Piz­za Box Becomes a Playable DJ Turntable Through the Mag­ic of Con­duc­tive Ink

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Architect Breaks Down Five of the Most Iconic New York City Apartments

in Architecture, History, Travel | September 16th, 2022

Real estate is a peren­ni­al­ly hot top­ic in New York City, as is gen­tri­fi­ca­tion.

Above, archi­tect Michael Wyet­zn­er, breaks down the defin­ing fea­tures of sev­er­al typ­i­cal NYC apart­ments.

You’re on your own to truf­fle up the sort of rent a 340 square feet stu­dio com­mands in an East Vil­lage ten­e­ment these days.

The ances­tors would be shocked, for sure. My late moth­er-in-law nev­er tired of caus­ing young jaws to drop by reveal­ing how she once paid $27/month for a 1 bed­room on Sheri­dan Square…and her moth­er, who immi­grat­ed at the turn of the cen­tu­ry, couldn’t wait to put the Low­er East Side behind her.

He may not truck in final sales fig­ures, but Wyet­zn­er drops in a wealth of inter­est­ing fac­tu­al tid­bits as he sketch­es lay­outs with a black Pen­tel Sign Pen. His tone is more Low­er East Side Ten­e­ment Muse­um tour guide than the com­ments sec­tion of a real estate blog where salty New York­ers flaunt their street cred.

For instance, those enfilade ten­e­ment apartments–to employ the grand archi­tec­tur­al term Wyet­zn­er just taught us–were not only dark, but dan­ger­ous­ly under-ven­ti­lat­ed until 1901, when reforms stip­u­lat­ed that air shafts must be opened up between side by side build­ings.

This pub­lic health ini­tia­tive changed the shape of ten­e­ment build­ings, but did lit­tle to stop the pover­ty and over­crowd­ing that activist/photographer Jacob Riis famous­ly doc­u­ment­ed in How the Oth­er Half Lives.

(Anoth­er mea­sure decreed that build­ing own­ers must sup­ply one indoor toi­let …per 20 peo­ple!)

While we’re on the top­ic of toi­lets, did you know that there was a time when every brown­stone back­yard boast­ed its own privy?

Home­own­ers who’ve spent mil­lions on what many con­ceive of as the most roman­tic of New York City build­ings (then mil­lions more on gut ren­o­va­tions) proud­ly dis­play old bot­tles and oth­er refuse exca­vat­ed from the site where privys once stood. The for­mer res­i­dents turn their out­hous­es into garbage chutes upon achiev­ing indoor plumb­ing.

Lay­ing aside its dis­tinc­tive col­or, a brownstone’s most icon­ic fea­ture is sure­ly its stoop.

Stoops grabbed hold of the Amer­i­can public’s imag­i­na­tion thanks to Sesame Street, the Harlem pho­tographs of Gor­don Parks and the films of Spike Lee, who learned of Mar­tin Luther King’s assas­si­na­tion as an 11-year-old, sit­ting on his.

“Not porch!,” he empha­sized dur­ing a Tonight Show appear­ance. ”In Brook­lyn, it’s stoops. Stoops!”

(For­give me if I delve into NYC real estate prices for a sec: the Bed-Stuy brown­stone from Lee‘s semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Crook­lyn, above, just went on the mar­ket for $4.5 mil­lion.)

There’s no ques­tion that brown­stone stoops make excel­lent hang out spots, but that’s not the rea­son they rose to promi­nence.

As Esther Crain writes in Ephemer­al New York, the Com­mis­sion­ers’ Plan of 1811 which led to the city’s grid­like lay­out negat­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of alleys:

With­out a back door to a row­house accessed through an alley, ser­vants and work­ers would enter and exit a res­i­dence using the same front stoop the own­ers used—which wasn’t too pop­u­lar, at least with the own­ers. 

But a tall stoop set back from the side­walk allowed for a side door that led to the low­er lev­el of the house. While the own­ers con­tin­ued to go up and down the stoop to get to the par­lor floor (and see and be seen by their neigh­bors), every­one else was rel­e­gat­ed to the side…And of course, as New York entered the Gild­ed Age of busy streets filled with dust, ash, refuse, and enor­mous piles of horse manure, a very high stoop helped keep all the filth from get­ting into the house. 

Flash for­ward a hun­dred and fifty some years, and, as Wyet­zn­er notes, a stoop’s top step offers a high­ly scenic view of the Hefty bags the neigh­bors haul to the curb the night before New York’s Strongest roll through.

Wyet­zn­er also pro­vides the his­tor­i­cal con­text behind such archi­tec­tural­ly dis­tinc­tive digs as SoHo’s astro­nom­i­cal­ly priced light-filled lofts, the always desir­able Clas­sic Six res­i­dences on the Upper East and Upper West Sides, one-room stu­dios both mod­ern and orig­i­nal fla­vor, and our blight­ed pub­lic hous­ing projects.

If you’re itch­ing to play along from home, check out the New York Times’ reg­u­lar fea­ture The Hunt, which invites read­ers to trail a sin­gle, fam­i­ly, or cou­ple delib­er­at­ing between three prop­er­ties in New York City.

A sam­ple: “After a mouse infes­ta­tion at her West Vil­lage rental, a sin­gle moth­er need­ed a bet­ter spot for her fam­i­ly, includ­ing a son with autism.”

Review the lay­outs and click here to see whether she chose a brand-new 127-unit build­ing with a rooftop pool, a Harlem brown­stone duplex with a back­yard rights, or an updat­ed one bed­room in a down­town co-op from 1910.

Relat­ed Con­tent

A New Inter­ac­tive Map Shows All Four Mil­lion Build­ings That Exist­ed in New York City from 1939 to 1941

Behold the New York City Street Tree Map: An Inter­ac­tive Map That Cat­a­logues the 700,000 Trees Shad­ing the Streets of New York City

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo. She has lived in all man­ner of New York City apart­ments, but hopes to nev­er move again. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Behold a Secret Gallery of Art Created Using Discarded Gum on London’s Millennium Bridge

in Art, Creativity, Travel, Video - Arts & Culture | August 17th, 2022

Through­out his­to­ry, deter­mined artists have worked on avail­able sur­faces — scrap wood, card­board, walls…

Ben Wil­son has cre­at­ed thou­sands of works using chew­ing gum as his can­vas.

Specif­i­cal­ly, chew­ing gum spat out by care­less strangers.

His work has become a defin­ing fea­tur­ing of London’s Mil­len­ni­um Bridge, a mod­ern struc­ture span­ning the Thames, and con­nect­ing such South Bank attrac­tions as Tate Mod­ern and the Shake­speare’s Globe with St. Paul’s Cathe­dral to the north.

A 2021 pro­file in The Guardian doc­u­ments the cre­ation process:

The tech­nique is very pre­cise. He first soft­ens the oval of flat­tened gum a lit­tle with a blow­torch, sprays it with lac­quer and then applies three coats of acrylic enam­el, usu­al­ly to a design from his lat­est book of requests that come from peo­ple who stop and crouch and talk. He uses tiny mod­el­ers’ brush­es, quick-dry­ing his work with a lighter flame as he goes along, and then seals it with more lac­quer. Each paint­ing takes a few hours and can last for many years.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Wil­son works very, very small.

For every Mil­len­ni­um Bridge pedes­tri­an who’s hip to the ever-evolv­ing solo exhi­bi­tion under­foot, there are sev­er­al hun­dred who remain com­plete­ly obliv­i­ous.

Stoop to admire a minia­ture por­trait, abstract, or com­mem­o­ra­tive work, and the bulk of your fel­low pedes­tri­ans will give you a wide berth, though every now and then a con­cerned or curi­ous par­ty will stop to see what the deal is.

Wil­son, who works sprawled on the bridge’s met­al treads, his nose close to touch­ing his tiny, untra­di­tion­al can­vas, receives a sim­i­lar response, as described in Zachary Den­man’s short doc­u­men­tary, Chew­ing Gum Man:

They make think I’ve fall­en over and they may think I’ve had a car­diac arrest or some­thing, so I’ve had lots of ambu­lances turn­ing up…I’ve had loads of police.

His sub­jects are sug­gest­ed by the shape of the spat out gum, by friends, by strangers who stop to watch him work:

I’ve had to deal with peo­ple memo­ri­al­iz­ing peo­ple who have been mur­dered. Peo­ple who have been so lone­ly, or remem­ber­ing favorite pets; peo­ple who are des­ti­tute in all sorts of ways. It goes from pro­pos­al pic­tures, ‘Will you mar­ry me?’, to peo­ple who I drew when they were kids and they now have their own kids.

Like any street artist, Wilson’s had his share of run ins with the law, includ­ing a wrong­ful 2010 arrest for crim­i­nal dam­age, when a crowd of school­child­ren who’d been enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly watch­ing an itty bit­ty St. Pauls tak­ing shape on a blob of gum wit­nessed him being dragged off by his feet. (He asked if he could fin­ish the pic­ture first…)

He may not get per­mis­sion to cre­ate the pub­lic works he goes out dai­ly to cre­ate, but he con­tributes by clear­ing the area of lit­ter, and as he points out, paint­ing on dis­card­ed gum doesn’t con­sti­tute defac­ing anyone’s actu­al prop­er­ty:

Tech­ni­cal­ly in one sense, I’m work­ing with­in the law …if I paint on chew­ing gum, it’s like find­ing No Man’s Land or com­mon ground. It’s a space which is not under the juris­dic­tion of a local or nation­al gov­ern­ment.











See more of Ben Wilson’s work in his online Gum Gallery.

Pho­tos in this arti­cle tak­en by Ayun Hal­l­i­day, 2022. All rights reserved.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Japanese Restaurants Show You How to Make Traditional Dishes in Meditative Videos: Soba, Tempura, Udon & More

in Food & Drink, Travel | July 19th, 2022

Despite hav­ing recent­ly begun to admit tour groups, Japan remains inac­ces­si­ble to most of the world’s trav­el­ers. Hav­ing closed its gates dur­ing the onset of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the coun­try has shown lit­tle incli­na­tion to open them up again too quick­ly or wide­ly. The longer this remains the case, of course, the more intense every­one’s desire to vis­it Japan becomes. Though dif­fer­ent trav­el­ers have dif­fer­ent inter­ests to pur­sue in the Land of the Ris­ing sun — tem­ples and shrines, trains and cafés, ani­me and man­ga — all of them are sure­ly unit­ed by one appre­ci­a­tion in par­tic­u­lar: that of Japan­ese food.

Wher­ev­er in the world we hap­pen to live, most of us have a decent Japan­ese restau­rant or two in our vicin­i­ty. Alas, as any­one with expe­ri­ence in Japan has felt, the expe­ri­ence of eat­ing its cui­sine any­where else does­n’t quite mea­sure up; a ramen meal can taste good in a Cal­i­for­nia strip mall, not the same as it would taste in a Tokyo sub­way sta­tion.

At least the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry affords us one con­ve­nient means of enjoy­ing audio­vi­su­al evo­ca­tions of gen­uine Japan­ese eater­ies: Youtube videos. The chan­nel Japan­ese Noo­dles Udon Soba Kyoto Hyō­go, for instance, has cap­ti­vat­ed large audi­ences sim­ply by show­ing what goes on in the hum­ble kitchens of west­ern Japan’s Kyoto and Hyō­go pre­fec­tures.

Hyō­go con­tains the coastal city of Kobe as well as Hime­ji Cas­tle, which dates back to the four­teenth cen­tu­ry. The pre­fec­ture of Kyoto, and espe­cial­ly the one­time cap­i­tal of Japan with­in it, needs no intro­duc­tion, such is its world­wide renown as a site of cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal rich­ness. Right up until the pan­dem­ic, many were the for­eign­ers who jour­neyed to Kyoto in search of the “real Japan.” Whether such a thing tru­ly exists remains an open ques­tion, but if it does, I would locate it — in Kyoto, Hyō­go, or any oth­er region of the coun­try — in the mod­est restau­rants of its back alleys and shoten­gai mar­ket com­plex­es, the ones that have been serv­ing up bowls of noo­dles and plates of cur­ry for decade upon decade.

Ide­al­ly the décor nev­er changes at these estab­lish­ments, nor do the pro­pri­etors. The video at the top of the post vis­its a “good old din­er” in Kobe to show the skills of a “hard work­ing old lady” with the sta­tus of a “vet­er­an cook cho­sen by God.” In anoth­er such neigh­bor­hood restau­rant, locat­ed near the main train sta­tion in the city of Ama­gasa­ki, a “super mom” pre­pares her sig­na­ture udon noo­dles. But even she looks like a new­com­er com­pared to the lady who’s been mak­ing udon over in Kyoto for 58 years at a din­er in exis­tence for a cen­tu­ry. Soba, tonkat­su, oyakodon, tem­pu­ra, okonomiya­ki: whichev­er Japan­ese dish you’ve been crav­ing for the past cou­ple of years, you can watch a video on its prepa­ra­tion — and make your long-term trav­el plans accord­ing­ly.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How to Make Sushi: Free Video Lessons from a Mas­ter Sushi Chef

Cook­pad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launch­es New Site in Eng­lish

How Soy Sauce Has Been Made in Japan for Over 220 Years: An Inside View

The Restau­rant of Mis­tak­en Orders: A Tokyo Restau­rant Where All the Servers Are Peo­ple Liv­ing with Demen­tia

Watch Tee­ny Tiny Japan­ese Meals Get Made in a Minia­ture Kitchen: The Joy of Cook­ing Mini Tem­pu­ra, Sashi­mi, Cur­ry, Okonomiya­ki & More

The Prop­er Way to Eat Ramen: A Med­i­ta­tion from the Clas­sic Japan­ese Com­e­dy Tam­popo (1985)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Italian Advice on How to Live the Good Life: Cigarettes, Tomatoes, and Other Picturesque Small Pleasures

in Life, Philosophy, Travel | May 31st, 2022

“I guess everybody’s got a dream and we’re all hop­ing to see it come true,” mus­es Gio­van­ni Mim­mo Man­cu­sou, a philo­soph­i­cal native of Cal­abria, the love­ly, sun-drenched region form­ing the toe of Italy’s boot, above. “A dream com­ing true is bet­ter than just a dream.”

Film­mak­ers Jan Vrhovnik and Ana Kerin were scout­ing for sub­jects to embody “the very essence of nos­tal­gia” when they chanced upon Man­cu­sou in a cor­ner shop.

A lucky encounter! Not every non-actor — or for that mat­ter, actor — is as com­fort­able on film as the laid­back Man­cu­sou.

(Vrhovnik has said that he invari­ably serves as his own cam­era oper­a­tor when work­ing with non-actors, because of the poten­tial for inti­ma­cy and intu­itive approach that such prox­im­i­ty affords.)

Man­cu­sou, an advo­cate for sim­ple plea­sures, also appears to be quite fit, which makes us won­der why the film’s descrip­tion on NOWNESS dou­bles down on adjec­tives like “aging”, “old­er” and most con­fus­ing­ly, “wis­ened.”

Mer­ri­am-Web­ster defines “wiz­ened” with a z as “dry, shrunk­en, and wrin­kled often as a result of aging or of fail­ing vital­i­ty” … and “wis­ened” not at all.

Per­haps NOWNESS meant wise?

We find our­selves crav­ing a lot more con­text.

Man­cu­sou has clear­ly cul­ti­vat­ed an abil­i­ty to savor the hell out of a ripe toma­to, his pic­turesque sur­round­ings, and his cig­gies.

“Seren­i­ty, joy, ecsta­sy” is embroi­dered across the back of his ball cap.

His man­ner of express­ing him­self does lend itself to a “poet­ic thought piece”, as the film­mak­ers note, but might that not be a symp­tom of strug­gling to com­mu­ni­cate abstract thoughts in a for­eign tongue?

We real­ly would love to know more about this charm­ing guy… his fam­i­ly sit­u­a­tion, what he does to make ends meet, his actu­al age.

Home movies accom­pa­ny his nos­tal­gic rever­ie, but did he pro­vide this footage to his new friends?

Did they hunt it down on ebay? It def­i­nite­ly fits the vibe, but is the man with the eye­brows Man­cu­sou at an ear­li­er age?

Our star pulls up to a small petrol sta­tion, declares, “All right, here we go,” and the next frame shows him wear­ing a head­lamp and mag­ni­fi­er as he peers into the work­ings of a pock­et watch:

Time out of mechan­i­cal. It’s mag­ic.

Is this a hob­by? A pro­fes­sion? Does he repair watch­es in a dark­ened gas sta­tion?

The film­mak­ers aren’t say­ing and the blurred back­ground offers no clues either. Curse you, depth of field!

We’re not even giv­en his home coor­di­nates.

The film, part of the NOWNESS series Por­trait of a Place, is titled Par­adiso, and there is indeed a vil­lage so named adja­cent to the town of Belvedere Marit­ti­mo, but accord­ing to cen­sus data we found on line, it has only 14 res­i­dents, 7 male.

If that’s where Man­cu­sou lives, he’s either 45–49, 65–69, 70–74, or one of two fel­lows over age 74…and now we’re real­ly curi­ous about his neigh­bors, too.

No shade to Sign­or Man­cu­so, but we’re glad to know we’re not the only view­ers left unsat­is­fied by this por­trait’s lack of depth.

One com­menter who chafed at the lack of speci­fici­ty (“this video is a ran­dom por­trait of basi­cal­ly any­one in the world that is hap­py with the lit­tle he has”) sug­gest­ed the omis­sions con­tribute to an Ital­ian stereo­type famil­iar from pas­ta sauce com­mer­cials:

Peo­ple in Italy actu­al­ly work and have ambi­tions you know? And often are very well-edu­cat­ed and hard-work­ing. The per­spec­tive of Italy that you have comes from the Amer­i­can media and Ital­ian post-war neo­re­al­ism. Indeed, Oscar-win­ning Ital­ian peo­ple com­plained about the fact that what the media wants is see­ing Ital­ians wear­ing tank tops doing noth­ing if not mafia or smelling the ros­es.

Watch more entries in the NOWNESS Por­trait of a Place series here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

What Are the Keys to Hap­pi­ness? Lessons from a 75-Year-Long Har­vard Study

A Guide to Hap­pi­ness: Alain de Botton’s Doc­u­men­tary Shows How Niet­zsche, Socrates & 4 Oth­er Philoso­phers Can Change Your Life

Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy: A Free Online Course from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

The Sci­ence of Well-Being: Take a Free Online Ver­sion of Yale University’s Most Pop­u­lar Course

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Exploring the Greatest of Italy’s 6,000 Ghost Towns: Take a Tour of Craco, Italy

in History, Travel | March 31st, 2022

When Amer­i­cans think of ghost towns, we think tum­ble­weeds and crum­bling Old West saloons. These aban­doned set­tle­ments are mere babies com­pared to Italy’s ancient necrop­olis­es. We know, of course, the famous dead cities and towns of antiq­ui­ty – Pom­peii, the ruins of Rome, etcetera. Such famous sites are only the most obvi­ous haunt­ed ruins on any itin­er­ary through the ven­er­a­ble boot-shaped coun­try. Can they be con­sid­ered ghost towns? The first fell prey to a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter that encased its res­i­dents in ash before they had the time to leave; the sec­ond thrives as the eighth-most pop­u­lous city in Europe. It may be full of ghosts, but it’s hard to catch them in the throngs, traf­fic, and noise.

That said, there are no short­age of towns that fit the bill. Italy con­tains “more than 6,000 aban­doned vil­lages,” the video above explains, and “accord­ing to con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mates, anoth­er 15,000 have lost more than 95 per­cent of their res­i­dents.” That’s an awful lot of aban­don­ment. In the video tour above, we get to explore the “Cap­i­tal of all Ghost Towns,” Cra­co, a tow­er­ing vil­lage on the high cliffs of a region known as Basil­i­ca­ta in South­ern Italy, nes­tled in the instep of the boot. Found­ed in the 8th cen­tu­ry AD by Greek set­tlers, the vil­lage sur­vived Black Plague, “bands of maraud­ing thieves,” writes Atlas Obscu­ra, and the usu­al polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty and internecine con­flict of Ital­ian towns, duchies, city states, etc. before the coun­try’s 19th cen­tu­ry uni­fi­ca­tion. In the end, “a land­slide final­ly forced res­i­dents from Cra­co in 1991.”

The very loca­tion that kept the town safe for cen­turies from those who would sack it also exposed it to the ele­ments. “Once a monas­tic cen­ter, a feu­dal town and cen­ter of edu­ca­tion with a uni­ver­si­ty, cas­tle, church, and plazas,” Ancient Ori­gins writes, Cra­co has now become a des­ti­na­tion for adven­tur­ers and a set for sev­er­al films, “includ­ing Sav­ing Grace, James Bond’s Quan­tum of Solace and the hang­ing of Judas scene in Mel Gib­son’s The Pas­sion of the Christ.” Charm­ing, no? While such towns are hard­ly found in the usu­al his­to­ry text or guide­book, ancient Ital­ian ghost towns and aban­doned cas­tles have inspired actu­al ghost sto­ries for hun­dreds of years and are the very ori­gin of the goth­ic as a lit­er­ary genre, via Horace Walpole’s haunt­ed cas­tle nov­el, The Cas­tle of Otran­to.

Wal­pole might just as well have writ­ten about the cas­tle of Cra­co, which you can explore above with Mar­co, Till, Tobi, and Sam, hosts and pro­duc­ers of Aban­doned Italy, a web series devot­ed to exact­ly that. In sev­er­al sea­sons online, they trav­el to oth­er ghost­ly towns, vil­lages, and islands, ask­ing ques­tions like, “what if humans go extinct?” Answer­ing that one is a bit like pon­der­ing the tree-falling-in-the-for­est ques­tion. If no one’s there to see it.… ?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Data Visu­al­iza­tion of Every Ital­ian City & Town Found­ed in the BC Era

High-Res­o­lu­tion Walk­ing Tours of Italy’s Most His­toric Places: The Colos­se­um, Pom­peii, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca & More

The Chang­ing Land­scape of Ancient Rome: A Free Online Course from Sapien­za Uni­ver­si­ty of Rome 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Great Art Cities: Visit the Fascinating, Lesser-Known Museums of London & Paris

in Art, History, Travel | January 28th, 2022

Gal­lerists James Payne and Joanne Shurvell under­stand that insti­tu­tion­al big goril­las like the Lou­vre, the Musee d’Or­say, Tate Britain, and London’s Nation­al Gallery require no intro­duc­tion. Their new art and trav­el series, Great Art Cities Explained, con­cen­trates instead on the won­der­ful, small­er muse­ums the big­gies often over­shad­ow.

First time vis­i­tors to Lon­don and Paris may be left scram­bling to rearrange their itin­er­aries.

The first two episodes have us per­suad­ed that Sir John Soane’s Muse­um, Ken­wood House, the Wal­lace Col­lec­tion, Le Musée Nation­al Eugène Delacroix, Le Musée de Mont­martre à Paris, and Ate­lier Bran­cusi are the true “don’t miss” attrac­tions if time is tight.

Cred­it Payne, whose flair for dishy, far rang­ing, high­ly acces­si­ble nar­ra­tion made his oth­er web series, Great Art Explained in Fif­teen Min­utes, an instant hit.

The three British insti­tu­tions fea­tured above were once grand pri­vate homes, whose own­ers decid­ed to donate them and the mag­nif­i­cent art col­lec­tions they con­tained to the pub­lic good.

What­ev­er moti­vat­ed these wealthy men’s gen­eros­i­ty — van­i­ty, the quest for immor­tal­i­ty, or, in one case, the desire to cut off a churl­ish and moral­ly lax son whom Payne com­pares to the cen­tral fig­ure in William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress, a Sir John Soane’s Muse­um favorite — Payne holds them in high­er regard than today’s invest­ment-obsessed art col­lec­tors:

The world needs more men like (William) Mur­ray, (Sir John) Soane, and (Sir Richard) Wal­lace, men who saw that art can tran­scend social class. They under­stood that art should enrich the soul, not the bank bal­ance.

His peeks into their cir­cum­stances are every bit as fas­ci­nat­ing as the tid­bits he drops about the artists whose work he includes.

Rather than giv­ing a sweep­ing overview of each col­lec­tion, he focus­es on a few key works, shar­ing his cura­to­r­i­al per­spec­tive on their his­to­ry, acqui­si­tion, sub­ject mat­ter, cre­ation, and recep­tion:

Rembrandt’s Self Por­trait with Two Cir­cles (1669)

Vermeer’s The Gui­tar Play­er (1672)

Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress (1732)

Canalet­to’s Venice: the Baci­no di San Mar­co from San Gior­gio Mag­giore and Venice: the Baci­no di San Mar­co from the Canale del­la Giudec­ca (c. 1735 — 1744)

Fragonard’s The Swing (1767)

Frans Hal’s Laugh­ing Cav­a­lier (1624)

Payne’s rol­lick­ing approach means each episode is crammed with plen­ty of art­work resid­ing out­side of the fea­tured muse­ums, too, as he com­pares, con­trasts, and con­tex­tu­al­izes.

One of his most inter­est­ing tales in the Lon­don episode con­cerns an 18th-cen­tu­ry por­trait of William Murray’s great-nieces, Dido Belle and Eliz­a­beth Mur­ray, raised by their abo­li­tion­ist great-uncle at Ken­wood House:

Dido Belle was the ille­git­i­mate daugh­ter of a Black slave and William Murray’s nephew and was raised by Mur­ray as part of the aris­toc­ra­cy. By all accounts, Dido and her cousin were raised as equals and this por­trait of the two was seen as an image of sis­ter­hood, reflect­ing their equal sta­tus. But look­ing at it with mod­ern eyes, we can see it more in the vein of tra­di­tion­al ser­vant and mas­ter por­traits of the time. Belle’s exot­ic cloth­ing is designed to dif­fer­en­ti­ate her from her cousin and the paint­ing reflects the con­ser­v­a­tive views of the time.

Artist David Mar­tin places the cousins on a bench out­side the Hamp­stead Heath man­sion, with St. Paul’s Cathe­dral in the back­ground. For years, it was the only known por­trait of Belle.

It hangs, not in Ken­wood House, but in Scone Palace’s Ambas­sador’s Room.

Mean­while, one of Ken­wood House­’s lat­est acqui­si­tions is a 2021 por­trait of Belle by young Jamaican artist Mikéla Hen­ry-Lowe, on dis­play in the library.

Next up on Great Art Cities Explained: New York. Look for it on this playlist on Great Art Explained’s YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

What Makes Basquiat’s Unti­tled Great Art: One Paint­ing Says Every­thing Basquiat Want­ed to Say About Amer­i­ca, Art & Being Black in Both Worlds

Mark Rothko’s Sea­gram Murals: What Makes Them Great Art

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

How to Be a Samurai: A 17th Century Code for Life & War

in History, Life, Travel | December 2nd, 2021

Many today draw inspi­ra­tion from Bushidō, the Way of the War­rior, a com­pre­hen­sive code of con­duct for pre­mod­ern Japan’s samu­rai (or bushi).

The above install­ment of His­to­ry Broth­ers David and Pete Kel­ly’s pri­ma­ry source web series Voic­es of the Past sug­gests that some aspects of the samu­rai code are more applic­a­ble to 21st cen­tu­ry life than oth­ers.

For instance, when was the last time you slaugh­tered some­one for ren­der­ing offense to your Lord?

Not that the best prac­tices sur­round­ing such an assign­ment aren’t fas­ci­nat­ing. Still, you’ll prob­a­bly ben­e­fit more from incor­po­rat­ing the samu­rai approach to deal­ing with gos­sips or clue­less col­leagues.

If you want to adapt Mas­ter Nin­ja Natori Masazu­mi’s Edo peri­od instruc­tions for clean­ing blood from long swords, with­out dam­ag­ing the blade, to pol­ish­ing your stain­less steel fridge, have at it:

Place horse drop­pings inside some paper and wipe it over a blade that has been used to cut some­one. This will leave traces of the wip­ing and the blood will no longer be seen. If there are no horse drop­pings avail­able to wipe the blade with, use the back of your straw san­dals or soil inside paper.

The video draws on his­to­ri­an Antony Cum­mins and trans­la­tor Yoshie Minami’s The Book of Samu­rai: The Fun­da­men­tal Teach­ings, a repro­duc­tion of two scrolls con­tain­ing Natori Masazumi’s direc­tives for samu­rai con­duct in times of war and peace.

The sec­ond scroll, “Ippei Yoko,” con­tains some explic­it march­ing orders for the for­mer.

If you’re squea­mish — or eat­ing — you may want to duck out of the video before Natori Masazu­mi’s gran­u­lar instruc­tions on the sev­er­ing of ene­my heads. (15:30 onward.)

Alter­na­tive­ly, you could make like an inex­pe­ri­enced young samu­rai and hard­en your­self to the graph­ic real­i­ties of blood­shed by attend­ing exe­cu­tions and vio­lent pun­ish­ments in your down­time.

Again, the more every­day wis­dom of “Hei­ka Jodan,” the first scroll, will like­ly prove more per­ti­nent. A few chest­nuts to get you start­ed:

Don’t say some­thing about some­one behind their back that you are not pre­pared to repeat to their face.

Keep your dis­tance from “stu­pid” asso­ciates, but also resist the urge to make fun of them.

Nev­er shy away from an act of virtue.

In an emer­gency, exit in a swift, but order­ly man­ner.

Com­pli­ment the food when you’re a guest in someone’s home, even if you don’t like it.

If you’re the host, and two guests begin fight­ing, try to help set­tle the mat­ter dis­creet­ly, to avoid last­ing injuries or grudges.

Don’t pass the buck to excuse your own mis­deeds.

Don’t pan­ic in an unex­pect­ed sit­u­a­tion — the first thing you should do is take a breath and set­tle your mind.

Whether trav­el­ing or just out and about, be pre­pared with nec­es­sary items, includ­ing, pen­cil, paper, mon­ey, med­ica­tions…

When tempt­ed to regale oth­ers with any super­nat­ur­al encoun­ters you may have had, remem­ber that less is more.

Watch more Voic­es of the Past on their YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Hyp­not­ic Look at How Japan­ese Samu­rai Swords Are Made

An Origa­mi Samu­rai Made from a Sin­gle Sheet of Rice Paper, With­out Any Cut­ting

A Demon­stra­tion of Per­fect Samu­rai Swords­man­ship

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast