New River Path

I’m doing a bit of research on some topics for my soon-to-be-unveiled professional blog, provisionally called spatialist. One thing I’ve been interested in for a while is the comparative design of council estate maps across London, and I wanted to broaden my sample size. Another potential subject (or series) would be a catalog of London’s “unsung” public realm. Not Southbank, the Royal Parks, Trafalgar Square, Broadgate Arena, and the like, but rather the uncelebrated publicly accessible spaces in their almost limitless variety of scales, typologies, and conditions. I combined these two areas of interest on a walk yesterday from Green Lanes Overground to Liverpool Street Station, including a stretch of the New River Path.

Figuring stuff out...

That slideshow thing on the right seems to show my 20 most recent pictures from Flickr, in reverse order. It could be a neat feature to use on my new “professional” blog, but I think I’ll have to set up another Flickr account so I can control the images that appear there... But that would mean 20 different pictures for every entry, a potential hurdle I don’t really need.

Culture alert: Anybody in or visiting London before August 25th should go see the Psycho Buildings exhibit at the Hayward Gallery! It’s great!

Look, Ma, no hands!

Wow! Check out the little Flickr slideshow thingie over there in the right-hand column. Now I don’t even have to choose photos and think of things to write about them. Instead, I guess I can just write. Maybe that will be easier. Also new in the right-hand column is a list of Blogs. It’s not like the list of Blogs I had before, which was just a plain old list of links, but now contains the titles of recent posts. Neat-o!

So now I guess I can just blab about stuff that’s going on over here. Like we went to Jane’s for Sunday roast last week. Um... It’s really hot in London right now (poor Olive is slinking around the house looking for breezes to flop in)... Last night we went to see The Dark Knight, which was beautiful and fun and Heath Ledger’s performance was fantastic. We’re not going to Lisbon this week/end. And stuff like that.

We’ll see how this goes. I’m also in the process of setting up another Blog. It will either be called “spatialist” or “social designer” and it’s going to be for writing about urban-type stuff. So stay tuned. I might even get the first installment, about London’s council estate maps, written today!

Stay tuned...

My clicky knee

Originally uploaded by noisycorner.

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve had a clicky knee for a few years now. Lately, however, the clicking has gotten worse and the associated pain has become almost unbearable. A couple of weeks ago I went for a MRI scan of my left knee and the results are now in: I’ve got a bucket-handle tear of my medial meniscus. Yippie! Now I’ve got to go talk to an orthopedic surgeon about arthroscopy. Woo-hoo! General anesthesia! Hooray! But at least it’s something hypothetically treatable. So... Stay tuned.

Oh, and BTW, look at me blogging with somebody else’s picture!

And the Budweiser takeover? News? Really? Come ON!!! How many local companies has Coca Cola gobbled up all over the world? Has that ever made global headlines?

Ahhhh, London...

Originally uploaded by sf2london.

... where there's someone ready to sell you any good or service you can imagine!

48 kilos of love

Originally uploaded by geatchy.

In this shopping cart are two dozen 2-kilo bags of ice. That’s about 105 lbs. We did think of asking the caterer to bring ice, and they initially said they would. But at the last minute there was an emergency “no ice” call (possibly part of the truckers’ fuel price protest aftermath), so we drove to the supermarket in Sant Pere de Ribes and cleaned ‘em out. The result was that our celebration had 48 kilos more DIY love...

aniversari4020

Originally uploaded by sf2london.

Lately I’ve been focused on organizing the party we threw outside Barcelona on June 21st. So... if I haven’t been keeping up with the blog and stuff, well... I’ve been kinda busy.

But now our weekend of celebration is over. Our guests seem to have had a pretty good time. Steven and I certainly did!

Creating the context took a lot of effort: several reconnaissance trips, many phone calls and emails, excel spreadsheets, the website, the book, catering, logistics, sneaking 15 wigs past Steven, hunting down adequately dim lighting (at BHV in Paris), foraging for wildflowers at the last possible moment (thanks to Neil Stock), decorations (which Steven stayed up til 3am one night to paint), etc.

In the end, the event itself was actually the result of several collaborations (ranging in duration from a few hours to a lifetime). Our most obvious collaborators were our guests, who endured any small technical glitches with grace and elegance, and who played their roles admirably well (I’m sure it took a great deal of self-control for some not to flee when the wigs came out). Perhaps slightly less obvious were Silvia Roig from Parés Baltà winery, and of course Neil and Iain who put up with months of antics concluding in our three-day takeover of their amazing Masia Sumidors. Finally, we owe thanks to friends and family who weren’t with us in Spain, yet who inspired us and influenced the sensibilities that guided many of our choices.
I am now in the process of getting everyone’s party pictures onto a flickr group. It’s private, so if you want to take a look just let me know. We will also be making some changes to the website, and I’m going to look into putting the book online somehow (once it’s finished, that is). If you haven’t already submitted something for inclusion and would like to do so, please contact me ASAP!

And now, back to real life (more or less)...

;-)