How Radical Gardeners Took Back New York City

in Environment, History, Nature, Travel | June 25th, 2021

New York­ers’ rela­tion­ship to New York City com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens is large­ly informed by how long we’ve lived here.

Do you remem­ber the 60s, when a fis­cal cri­sis and white flight result­ed in thou­sands of vacant lots and aban­doned build­ings in low income neigh­bor­hoods?

Activists like Hat­tie Carthan and Liz Christy sprung from such soil, cre­at­ing youth pro­grams, haul­ing away debris, and putting con­stant pres­sure on elect­ed offi­cials to trans­form those urban waste­lands into green oases.

Ver­dant sites like the Bow­ery Hous­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Farm and Gar­den (now known as the Liz Christy Gar­den) improved air qual­i­ty, low­ered tem­per­a­tures, and offered a pleas­ant gath­er­ing place for neigh­bors of all ages.

In the ‘80s, the city boast­ed 1000 com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens, most­ly in neigh­bor­hoods con­sid­ered blight­ed. School aged chil­dren learned how to plant, tend, and har­vest veg­eta­bles. Immi­grant mem­bers intro­duced seeds new to Amer­i­can-born gar­den­ers, to help com­bat both home­sick­ness and food inse­cu­ri­ty. On site arts pro­grams flour­ished. There were al fres­co birth­day par­ties, con­certs, movie screen­ings, hol­i­day cel­e­bra­tions, per­ma­cul­ture class­es, com­mu­ni­ty meet­ings…. Gar­dens became focal points for com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment. Par­tic­i­pants were under­stand­ably proud, and invest­ed in what they’d built.

As Yon­nette Flem­ing, founder of the com­mu­ni­ty-led mar­ket at the Hat­tie Carthan Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den and Farmer’s Mar­ket, says in the above episode of Vox’s Miss­ing Chap­ter: “Com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens grow com­mu­ni­ties, for the peo­ple, to be run by the peo­ple, for the ben­e­fit of the peo­ple.”

In the mid-90s, new­ly elect­ed May­or Rudy Giu­liani sided with devel­op­ers over cit­i­zens. More than half of the city’s gar­dens were bull­dozed to make way for lux­u­ry res­i­dences.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly low-rise neigh­bor­hoods like the East Vil­lage and Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuyvesant would become increas­ing­ly fash­ion­able dur­ing the ear­ly days of the new mil­len­ni­um. New arrivals with lit­tle inter­est in neigh­bor­hood his­to­ry might assume that the side­walks had always been lined with cute cafes and hip­ster bars, not to men­tion trees. (In real­i­ty, Carthan was 64 when she began her suc­cess­ful cam­paign to line Bed-Stuy with trees, and land­mark a ven­er­a­ble Mag­no­lia that was at risk of being torn down.)

Per­haps hop­ing to com­mand younger view­ers’ atten­tion, Vox’s Miss­ing Chap­ter opens not with the rich his­to­ry of New York City’s com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens, but rather the many recipes for seed bombs on Tik­Tok. The glass half full per­spec­tive on our 500-strong sur­viv­ing gar­dens can ring a bit emp­ty to those who lost the fight to pre­serve a num­ber of East Harlem gar­dens just a few short years ago.

Don’t for­get your roots! Christy’s type­writ­ten, hand illus­trat­ed Green Gueril­las recipe for seed bombs is below. (If you want to try it at home, please use seeds native to your area.)

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 City: A Social His­to­ry (A Free Online Course from N.Y.U.) 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Sci-Fi “Portal” Connects Citizens of Lublin & Vilnius, Allowing Passersby Separated by 376 Miles to Interact in Real Time

in Art, Technology, Travel | June 9th, 2021

Can we ever tran­scend our ten­den­cy to divide up the world into us and them? The his­to­ry of Europe, which polit­i­cal the­o­rist Ken­neth Minogue once called “plau­si­bly summed up as prepar­ing for war, wag­ing war, or recov­er­ing from war,” offers few con­sol­ing answers. But per­haps it isn’t for his­to­ry, much less for the­o­ry or pol­i­tics, to dic­tate the future prospects for the uni­ty of mankind. Art and tech­nol­o­gy offer anoth­er set of views on the mat­ter, and it’s art and tech­nol­o­gy that come togeth­er in Por­tal, a recent­ly launched project that has con­nect­ed Vil­nius, Lithua­nia and Lublin, Poland with twin instal­la­tions. More than just a sculp­tur­al state­ment, each city’s por­tal offers a real-time, round-the-clock view of the oth­er.

“In both Vil­nius and Lublin,” writes My Mod­ern Met’s Sara Barnes, “the por­tals are with­in the urban land­scape; they are next to a train sta­tion and in the city cen­tral square, respec­tive­ly. This allows for plen­ty of engage­ment, on either end, with the peo­ple of a city 376 miles apart. And, in a larg­er sense, the por­tals help to human­ize cit­i­zens from anoth­er place.”

Images released of the inter­ac­tion between passer­by and their local por­tal show, among oth­er actions, wav­ing, cam­era phone-shoot­ing, syn­chro­nized jump­ing, and just plain star­ing. Though more than one com­par­i­son has been made to the Star­gate, the image also comes to mind of the apes around the mono­lith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, react­ing as best they can to a pre­vi­ous­ly unimag­ined pres­ence in their every­day envi­ron­ment.

Iron­i­cal­ly, the basic tech­nol­o­gy employed by the Por­tal project is noth­ing new. At this point we’ve all looked into our phone and com­put­er screens and seen a view from per­haps much far­ther than 376 miles away, and been seen from that dis­tance as well. But the coro­n­avirus-induced world­wide expan­sion of tele­con­fer­enc­ing has, for many, made the under­ly­ing mechan­ics seem some­what less than mirac­u­lous. Con­ceived years before trav­el restric­tions ren­dered next to impos­si­ble the actu­al vis­it­ing of human beings else­where on the con­ti­nent, let alone on the oth­er side of the world, Por­tal has set up its first instal­la­tions at a time when they’ve come to feel like some­thing the world needs. “Res­i­dents in Reyk­javik, Ice­land, and Lon­don, Eng­land can expect a por­tal in their city in the future,” notes Barnes — and if those two can feel tru­ly con­nect­ed with Europe, there may be hope for the one­ness of the human race yet.

via Colos­sal/MyMod­ern­Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Street Artist Cre­ates an Opti­cal Illu­sion That Lets Peo­ple See the Art Inside a Shut­tered Muse­um in Flo­rence

This Huge Crash­ing Wave in a Seoul Aquar­i­um Is Actu­al­ly a Gigan­tic Opti­cal Illu­sion

See Web Cams of Sur­re­al­ly Emp­ty City Streets in Venice, New York, Lon­don & Beyond

Dis­cov­er Euro­peana Col­lec­tions, a Por­tal of 48 Mil­lion Free Art­works, Books, Videos, Arti­facts & Sounds from Across Europe

The His­to­ry of Europe from 400 BC to the Present, Ani­mat­ed in 12 Min­utes

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Nov­els Sold in Pol­ish Vend­ing Machines

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 or on Face­book.

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Discover the Ghost Towns of Japan–Where Scarecrows Replace People, and a Man Lives in an Abandoned Elementary School Gym

in Travel | June 8th, 2021

In recent years, the major cities of Japan have felt as big and bustling as ever. But more than a lit­tle of that urban ener­gy has come at a cost to the coun­try­side, whose ongo­ing depop­u­la­tion since the Sec­ond World War has become the stuff of count­less mourn­ful pho­to essays. Japan is, of course, well-known as the kind of soci­ety that keeps a rur­al train sta­tion in ser­vice just to take a sin­gle pupil to school. But in many of these areas, the day even­tu­al­ly comes when there’s no one left to teach. After not just the stu­dents but the fac­ul­ty and staff have cleared out, what to do with the schools them­selves? If you’re any­thing like Aoki Yohei (known to all as “Yo-chan”), you just move your­self on in.

In one of the school’s many rooms Aoki runs a café, roast­ing cof­fee on the premis­es, and in oth­ers he’s set up a hos­tel. In anoth­er space he’s cre­at­ed a record­ing stu­dio out­fit­ted with gui­tars, drums, key­boards, and much else besides. This sort of thing would hard­ly be pos­si­ble with­in the con­fines of a Tokyo apart­ment, and Aoki accom­plished it all after quit­ting his salary­man job with­out a plan.

Or rather he did it noupu­ran, to use one of the many Eng­lishisms he drops in the inter­view with Tokyo Lens vlog­ger Norm Naka­mu­ra in the video at the top of the post. The school is in Ehime, one of the four pre­fec­tures of Shikoku, the sec­ond-small­est of Japan’s main islands. Though pic­turesque, its loca­tion is also deep enough in the moun­tains to seem for­bid­ding­ly remote, but the Ehime-born Aoki seems to have had no com­punc­tion about it.

Ehime faces the Seto Inland Sea, the areas sur­round­ing which Japa­nol­o­gist Don­ald Richie described in the 1960s as pos­sess­ing “the last places on earth where men rise with the sun and where streets are dark and silent by nine at night.” But for Naka­mu­ra, nine is the hour to set out in search of unex­plained sounds and creepy vibes. Alas, even his best pro­duc­tion efforts can’t mask the obvi­ous seren­i­ty of the prop­er­ty. He encoun­ters much more eeri­ness else­where on Shikoku: Nagoro Vil­lage, the vast major­i­ty of whose inhab­i­tants aren’t human beings but ful­ly dressed, scare­crow-like dolls. Each and every one was craft­ed by Tsuki­mi Ayano, a native who returned from Osa­ka to find most every­one she’d known long gone. As for Nagoro’s own ele­men­tary school, aban­doned for some 20 years now, just wait until you see what “Ayano-san” has done with its gym.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Moun­tain Monks: A Vivid Short Doc­u­men­tary on the Monks Who Prac­tice an Ancient, Once-For­bid­den Reli­gion in Japan

Hōshi: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on the 1300-Year-Old Hotel Run by the Same Japan­ese Fam­i­ly for 46 Gen­er­a­tions

Dis­cov­er the Japan­ese Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed to Col­lect­ing Rocks That Look Like Human Faces

When Our World Became a de Chiri­co Paint­ing: How the Avant-Garde Painter Fore­saw the Emp­ty City Streets of 2020

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Revis­its Aban­doned Movie Sets for Star Wars and Oth­er Clas­sic Films in North Africa

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 or on Face­book.

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The Airline Toilets Theatre Company: Watch One Man Stage Comical Shows in Airplane Bathrooms

in Comedy, Creativity, Theatre, Travel | June 1st, 2021

When COVID 19 struck, the­ater lovers were faced with a choice.

Let go entire­ly, or expand our def­i­n­i­tions of what con­sti­tutes “the­ater.”

We’ve had 14 months to get used to the idea of per­for­mances staged in clos­ets, in pod­cast form, or as phone calls hing­ing on audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion.

We’re sick of Zoom, but we no longer con­sid­er it manda­to­ry for the play­ers to inhab­it the same space as each oth­er or the audi­ence.

This is all old news to Peter Brooke Turn­er, a mem­ber of the Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain and the founder of the Air­line Toi­lets The­atre Com­pa­ny.

The ATTC’s reper­toire con­sists of great works of lit­er­a­ture, song and dance… per­formed exclu­sive­ly in air­craft lava­to­ries, a true feat when one con­sid­ers that Turn­er, impre­sario and sole com­pa­ny mem­ber, is 6’8”.

2015’s inau­gur­al pro­duc­tion, above, remains among the company’s most ambi­tious —  a 50th anniver­sary recre­ation of Bob Dylan’s 1965 pro­mo­tion­al film clip for Sub­ter­ranean Home­sick Blues, shot on var­i­ous flights through­out the Ukulele Orchestra’s US tour.

Before long, Turner’s car­ry-on was stuffed with props and cos­tumes — a toga, three self-adhe­sive Abra­ham Lin­coln beards, a fat suit, a plas­tic cig­ar, card­board face masks of Jimi Hen­drix and Queen’s Bri­an May, and a num­bers of inflat­a­bles, includ­ing a woman, a horse, and a not par­tic­u­lar­ly real­is­tic hand­gun.

Stag­ing solo, site spe­cif­ic mini pro­duc­tions struck Turn­er as a far more amus­ing prospect than remain­ing in his seat, watch­ing a movie:

I don’t like pas­sive con­sumerism — I’d rather make my own movie than watch some CGI block­buster on a plane. 90% of tour­ing is NOT per­form­ing but sit­ting around on a plane/train/bus star­ing into space — I’m just try­ing to do some­thing cre­ative to make the time pass. 

With advance plan­ning, the sim­pler pro­duc­tions can make it into the can on a sin­gle take.

The James Bond Trib­ute, below, which called for cos­tume changes, pup­pets and card­board masks of Sean Con­nery, Roger Moore, and Daniel Craig, was shot in seg­ments — Lon­don to Frank­furt, Sin­ga­pore to Auck­land, and Sin­ga­pore to Lon­don.

Rather than pro­ject­ing for the ben­e­fit of folks in the non-exis­tent back row, Turn­er prefers to lip synch pre­re­cord­ed lines, fed to him via ear­bud. This helps dial down the sus­pi­cions of flight atten­dants and fel­low pas­sen­gers. Once the “occu­pied” light comes on, he reck­ons he has between 7 to 10 min­utes to take care of busi­ness. Should any­one ques­tion the length of his stay, or his large bag of cos­tumes and props, his excuse is that “I suf­fer from haem­or­rhoids and need to change my pants. (Believe me, this is a con­ver­sa­tion no one wants to take fur­ther.)”

Watch a playlist of the Best of the Air­line Toi­lets The­ater Com­pa­ny here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Drift: Pas­sen­ger Shoots Strik­ing Short Film Out of Air­plane Win­dow

Pre-Flight Safe­ty Demon­stra­tion Gets Per­formed as a Mod­ern Dance: A Cre­ative Video from a Tai­wanese Air­line

Artist Nina Katchadouri­an Cre­ates Flem­ish Style Self-Por­traits in Air­plane Lava­to­ry

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her June 7 for a Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain: The Peri­od­i­cal Cica­da, a free vir­tu­al vari­ety hon­or­ing the 17-Year Cicadas of Brood X. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Largest Free Kitchen in the World: Discover India’s Golden Temple Which Serves 100,000 Free Meals Per Day

in Food & Drink, Religion, Travel | May 19th, 2021

If you find your­self hun­gry in Amrit­sar, a major city in the Indi­an state of Pun­jab, you could do worse than stop­ping into the Gold­en Tem­ple, the largest Sikh house of wor­ship in the world. It thus also oper­ates the largest com­mu­ni­ty kitchen, or lan­gar, in the world, which serves more than 100,000 free meals a day, 24 hours a day. Any­one famil­iar with Sikhism knows that, for its believ­ers, serv­ing food to the hun­gry con­sti­tutes an essen­tial duty: not just to the poor, and cer­tain­ly not just to fel­low Sikhs, but to all com­ers. Wher­ev­er in the world you may live, if there’s a Sikh tem­ple or shrine in the vicin­i­ty, there’s quite pos­si­bly a lan­gar you can vis­it as well.

Of course, no oth­er lan­gar match­es the scale of the Gold­en Tem­ple’s. As explained in the Food Insid­er video above, it oper­ates with a per­ma­nent staff of 300 to 350 employ­ees as well as a large num­ber of vol­un­teers, all of whom work in con­cert with machines around the clock to pro­duce an unend­ing stream of veg­e­tar­i­an meals, which include daal lentil stew and cha­p­ati bread. There’s always been a mar­ket for free food, but recent years have seen increas­es in demand great enough to neces­si­tate the con­struc­tion of addi­tion­al din­ing halls, and total oper­at­ing expens­es come to the equiv­a­lent of some US$4 mil­lion per year. (Every day, $5,000 goes to ghee, or Indi­an clar­i­fied but­ter, alone.)

Apart from the peo­ple of Amrit­sar and pil­grim­age-mak­ing devo­tees, the Gold­en Tem­ple lan­gar has also drawn the atten­tion of culi­nar­i­ly mind­ed trav­el­ers. Take the Cana­di­an Youtu­ber Trevor James, bet­ter known as the Food Ranger, to whose taste for extreme scale and quan­ti­ty the oper­a­tion no doubt appeals. His vis­it also affords him the oppor­tu­ni­ty, before his meal, to be out­fit­ted in tra­di­tion­al dress, up to and includ­ing a Sikh tur­ban. (The Gold­en Tem­ple requires its din­ers to wear a head-cov­er­ing of some kind.) James’ stock of trav­el-vlog­ger superla­tives is near­ly exhaust­ed by the splen­dor of the tem­ple itself before he steps into the kitchen to observe (and even lend a hand in) the cook­ing process. “Look at this,” he exclaims upon tak­ing his seat on the floor of the hall with a tray of his own. “This is an almost spir­i­tu­al meal” — an aura exud­ed whether you believe in Wahe­gu­ru, the gods of street food, or any­thing else besides.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn the His­to­ry of Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy in a 62 Episode Series from The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps: The Bud­dha, Bha­gavad-Gita, Non Vio­lence & More

Intro­duc­tion to Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Online Course

Al Jazeera Trav­el Show Explores World Cities Through Their Street Food

When Al Capone Opened a Soup Kitchen Dur­ing the Great Depres­sion: Anoth­er Side of the Leg­endary Mobster’s Oper­a­tion

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 or on Face­book.

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Rick Steves Tells the Story of Fascism’s Rise & Fall in Germany

in History, Politics, Television, Travel | May 14th, 2021

“Healthy, vig­or­ous, respectable: every­one’s favorite uncle.” How many of us hear these words and think of that most beloved of all Amer­i­can trav­el-tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ties, Rick Steves? Indeed, in the video above they’re spo­ken by Steves, though to describe a fig­ure very dif­fer­ent from him­self: Adolf Hitler, who con­vinced his peo­ple not to tour Europe but to invade it, spark­ing the dead­liest con­flict of all time. How and why this hap­pened has been a his­tor­i­cal ques­tion writ­ten about per­haps more volu­mi­nous­ly than any oth­er. But the Stevesian method of under­stand­ing demands first-hand expe­ri­ence of Ger­many, the land in which the Nazi par­ty came to pow­er.

Hence “Ger­many’s Fas­cist Sto­ry,” a 2020 episode of Rick Steves’ Europe whose itin­er­ary includes such des­ti­na­tions as Nurem­berg, site of the epony­mous Nazi ral­lies; Hitler’s moun­tain retreat in Bercht­es­gaden; the Gestapo and SS head­quar­ters in Berlin. We’re a long way indeed from Steves’ usu­al cir­cuit of cathe­drals, mar­kets, and bed-and-break­fasts.

Enriched with the his­tor­i­cal footage and the reflec­tions of Ger­man inter­vie­wees, this trav­el­ogue explains the rise in the 1930s and fall in the 1940s of a pow­er­ful Euro­pean strain of fas­cism. This man­i­fest­ed in pop­u­lar capit­u­la­tion to race-based, nation­al­is­tic, and ulti­mate­ly total­i­tar­i­an state pow­er, not just in Ger­many but oth­er coun­tries also once regard­ed as the cen­ter of Euro­pean civ­i­liza­tion.

We all know how World War II end­ed, and the blue-jeaned Steves sums up the rel­e­vant chap­ter of the sto­ry while stand­ing atop the under­ground bunker in which Hitler killed him­self. But such a defeat can nev­er tru­ly be con­sid­ered final, an idea that under­lies the con­tin­u­ing encour­age­ment of tourism to places like Berlin’s Memo­r­i­al to the Mur­dered Jews of Europe and the con­cen­tra­tion camp of Auschwitz-Birke­nau, which fig­ures briefly into this episode despite being locat­ed in Poland. As any ded­i­cat­ed “Rick­nick” knows, the pur­suit of any giv­en cul­tur­al or his­tor­i­cal inter­est inevitably leads the trav­el­er through a vari­ety of lands. Hence a project like The Sto­ry of Fas­cism, Steves’ hour­long doc­u­men­tary on that ide­ol­o­gy’s traces as found all through­out his favorite con­ti­nent. As he him­self has put it, trav­el is a polit­i­cal act — and it’s one nec­es­sary to under­stand­ing both the pol­i­tics you like and the pol­i­tics you don’t.

For those inter­est­ed in how Steves built his trav­el empire, we’d rec­om­mend lis­ten­ing to Guy Raz’s lengthy inter­view with Steves, one episode in his How I Built This pod­cast.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Fas­cism: Rick Steves’ Doc­u­men­tary Helps Us Learn from the Hard Lessons of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Rick Steves’ Europe: Binge Watch 9 Sea­sons of America’s Favorite Trav­el­er Free Online

20 Lessons from the 20th Cen­tu­ry About How to Defend Democ­ra­cy from Author­i­tar­i­an­ism, Accord­ing to Yale His­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der

How Did Hitler Rise to Pow­er? : New TED-ED Ani­ma­tion Pro­vides a Case Study in How Fas­cists Get Demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly Elect­ed

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

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 or on Face­book.

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A 5‑Hour Walking Tour of Paris and Its Famous Streets, Monuments & Parks

in Travel | May 13th, 2021

“We’ll always have Paris,” Bog­a­rt tells Bergman in the final scene of Casablan­ca, a line and film insep­a­ra­ble from the grand mythol­o­gy of Paris. The city still inspires non-Parisians to pur­chase Belle Epoque poster art by the shipload and binge Net­flix series in which Paris looks like a “city where the clouds part, your brain clears, and your soul finds mean­ing,” Alex Abad-San­tos writes at Vox. It’s also a place in such media where one can seem to find “suc­cess with­out much sac­ri­fice.”

Paris was the city where Hem­ing­way felt “free… to walk any­where,” he wrote in A Move­able Feast; where James Bald­win wrote in his 1961 essay “New Lost Gen­er­a­tion” of “the days when we walked through Les Halles singing, lov­ing every inch of France and lov­ing each oth­er… the nights spent smok­ing hashish in the Arab cafes… the morn­ing which found us telling dirty sto­ries, true sto­ries, sad and earnest sto­ries, in gray workingman’s cafes.”

The image of Paris has not always been so full of romance and escapism, espe­cial­ly for Parisians like Charles Baude­laire. “For the first time Paris becomes the sub­ject of lyric poet­ry” in Baude­laire, wrote Wal­ter Ben­jamin in The Arcades Project, a major, unfin­ished work on Paris in the 19th cen­tu­ry. Like the expats, Baudelaire’s imag­i­na­tion strolled through the city, freed from respon­si­bil­i­ty. But “the Paris of his poems is a sunken city, and more sub­ma­rine than sub­ter­ranean.”

The Paris of rev­o­lu­tion­ary fer­vor, com­munes, bar­ri­cades, and cat­a­combs… of Rim­baud, Coco Chanel, the Sit­u­a­tion­ists…. There are too many ver­sions of the city of lights; we can­not have them all. For the past year, we have not been able to see any part of it but from afar. Thanks to the mag­ic of YouTube, how­ev­er, we can walk the city for hours — or watch some­one else do it, in any case. The five-hour walk­ing tour at the top may skip the places a mod­ern-day Baude­laire would want us to see, but it does include “the most famous streets, mon­u­ments and parks,” notes the descrip­tion,

You’ll also find here short­er video walk­ing tours of Mont­martre, the Eif­fel Tow­er, and Lux­em­bourg Gar­dens, where Hem­ing­way would often meet Gertrude Stein and her dog, and where he found him­self “learn­ing very much “ from Cézanne about how to move beyond sim­ply “writ­ing sim­ple true sen­tences.” We are unlike­ly to have these kinds of expe­ri­ences on our video walk­ing tours. But we can get a taste of what it’s like to briskly cruise Parisian streets in the 21st cen­tu­ry, an expe­ri­ence increas­ing­ly like­ly to become a vir­tu­al one for future writ­ers, poets, and expats and tourists of all kinds.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of the Paris Cat­a­combs

Take an Aer­i­al Tour of Medieval Paris

Down­load 200+ Belle Époque Art Posters: An Archive of Mas­ter­pieces from the “Gold­en Age of the Poster” (1880–1918)

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

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A Relaxing 3‑Hour Tour of Venice’s Canals

in Travel | April 27th, 2021

Expe­ri­ence Venice in this boat tour through 17 miles (27 km) of canals. “You will see the full Grand Canal going in both direc­tions, nav­i­gate through the small canals and under bridges and see sites that you can­not see by walk­ing.” It’s qui­et, med­i­ta­tive, a men­tal escape from the tedi­um of quar­an­tine life.

Right below, you can find a list of the stops along the way…

1:32​ Con­sti­tu­tion Bridge

2:02​ The Grand Canal (Full Tour)

3:23​ San­ta Lucia Train Sta­tion

13:33​ Rial­to Bridge

23:28​ Ponte del­l’Ac­cad­e­mia

30:38​ Piaz­za San Mar­co

36:08​ Small Inside Canals & Bridges

41:05​ Libre­ria Acqua Alta

44:08​ Cam­po San­ti Gio­van­ni e Pao­lo

47:16​ Open Water — Skip ahead to the next sec­tion

57:25​ Canal of Saint Peter

58:18​ Build­ing Bridges Sculp­ture

1:09:55​ Bridge of Sighs

1:16:15​ Rial­to Bridge & Grand Canal

1:18:39​ Small Inside Canals & Bridges

1:23:04​ The Grand Canal

1:27:14​ Pont del­l’Ac­cad­e­mia

1:34:44​ Rial­to Bridge

1:43:34​ Ponte delle Guglie

1:46:04​ Tre Archi Bridge

1:48:38​ Lib­er­ty Bridge (Ponte del­la Lib­ertà)

1:54:18​ Con­sti­tu­tion Bridge

1:58:38​ Close Call!

2:04:43​ Squero di San Trova­so (gon­do­la boat­yard)

2:07:23​ Grand Canal (short sec­tion)

2:10:44​ Small Canals and Bridges

2:17:14​ Grand Canal (short sec­tion)

2:20:14​ Mag­is­ter Cano­va

2:22:04​ Open Water

2:26:14​ Small Inside Canals & Bridges

2:30:44​ Piaz­za San Mar­co

2:33:04​ The Grand Canal (Full Tour)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Venice Works: 124 Islands, 183 Canals & 438 Bridges

Venice in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images 125 Years Ago: The Rial­to Bridge, St. Mark’s Basil­i­ca, Doge’s Palace & More

The Venice Time Machine: 1,000 Years of Venice’s His­to­ry Gets Dig­i­tal­ly Pre­served with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and Big Data

Pink Floyd Plays in Venice on a Mas­sive Float­ing Stage in 1989; Forces the May­or & City Coun­cil to Resign

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