urban75 blog

It seems a weird combination, but allow me to explain!

On Wednesday, the BBC effectively paid me to have Hugh Grant look at one of my pictures, when they interviewed him for the BBC One TV show.

The picture was of Garth Mountain, near Cardiff, which featured in a film he made in 1995. Here’s the photo and background to the story.

Just scraping into the official mountain category, Garth Mountain (also called Garth Hill) is a mountain north of Pentyrch village, south Wales.

Visible for miles around, the mountain lies in the Taff Vale and looks down onto the small village of Gwaelod-y-Garth.

At the top of the mountain can be found several tumuli (ancient burial sites), dating back from the early to middle bronze age, around 2000 BC.

The mountain caught the public eye after a book called, “Ffynnon Garw” was made into a popular film called ‘The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain’ (1995), starring toff heartthrob Hugh Grant.

Set in 1917, the film tells the story of two English cartographers arriving at the fictional Welsh village of Ffynnon Garw who cause local outrage when they reveal that their mountain is in fact only a hill because it just falls short of the required 1,000ft.

Villagers then construct a tall cairn to ensure that the hill is high enough to be classed as a mountain.

The movie has since made Garth mountain a popular walking destination, adding to the regular annual pilgrimages from stoners keen to exploit its plentiful supply of magic mushrooms.

Feature on Garth Mountain/ Mynydd Y Garth

The Newnight connection comes from tonight’s TV transmission.

I was out in the pub celebrating the successful completion of my bastard tax return, but apparently there was a feature on UK internet takeup and a discussion about upgrading the UK broadband infrastructure.

Part of the report was an update to a 2006 story about a home where the teenage son was using broadband but the mother wasn’t interested. The story was updated to 2009, to show the mother now using online and shown logging onto Urban75 – which she mentioned was her ‘favourite website’

Nice!

On the 28th January, 1807, the gas lamps on Pall Mall were lit, making it the first street in the world to be illuminated by the warm glow of gas light.

Incredibly, several areas of London are still lit by gas, including a large part of Covent Garden, the Royal Parks and the exterior of Buckingham Palace.

Gas lamp man, Green Park
There’s a small workforce kept to maintain London’s gas lamps with duties including checking the mantles and giving the lamps a weekly wind-up (the timer is controlled by a clockwork mechanism).

I got chatting to this Gas lamp man in Green Park and he told me that it’s such a popular job that workers rarely leave.

One of the largest and oldest institutions in the US dedicated to contemporary art, we checked out the non-profit P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center during our winter stay in New York.

Situated in Long Island City in the borough of Queens, New York City, it’s a really fantastic gallery, and some of the work was exceptional.

Created by the Buenos Aires artist, Leandro Erlich, the Swimming Pool is a devilishly clever installation that gives the appearance of fully clothed people moving under water.

This fantastic piece by Norwegian artist BØrre Sæthre was fantastic, with a beautiful white unicorn displayed in a glass box. As you moved closer to the box, that glass would turn opaque at certain angles.

Danish-Iceland artist Olafur Eliasson had installed a piece involving a large, slowly spinning circular mirror suspended from the ceiling (similar to his excellent Weather Project in the Tate Modern in London in 2003.)

This was my favourite piece. You enter into what looks like an ordinary room, and at first it seems that everyone is looking up an opaque panel.

It was only after a few moments that I realised that I was actually looking straight up at the open sky, so that the artist had effectively turned the sky into a piece of moving art.

More photos here: P.S.1 MoMA Contemporary Art Center

Our first Offline of the year saw us pull a huge crowd into the Albert for a fantastic free party. Here’s a few photos of the madness!

Americans go berserk for their national flag – wherever you look in new York, you’ll see a giant size Stars and Stripes or two flapping away in the wind.

Here’s a few from central Manhattan.

New York photo gallery

One of London’s finest music venues is set to be demolished by the summer, thanks to the long-delayed CrossRail project which needs the land.

I’ve seen some great gigs at the Astoria and it also used to be a bit of a regular haunt in my RAWWWCKKK! phase, where I hung out with hard drinking, poodle-haired chums in the upstairs club getting on down to Rage Against the Machine, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Guns and Roses and other fist in the air head-shaking types…

So now the Astoria joins the Hammersmith Palais as another great lost London gig. Bummer.

Read more…

Some photos from the 3rd National Demonstration For Gaza: “Israel Out Of Gaza Now: Lift The Blockade,” Trafalgar Square, central London.

The police had decided to pen everyone into the square so tempers were rising.

I was taking pictures from outside the cordon and nearly got nicked:

Stroppy cop: “You! Get off the grass area”
Me: “I’m trying to but you’re now pushing me back on to the grass”
Cop: “Get off the grass NOW!”
Me: “I am trying to comply but you are continuing to push me in the wrong direction. I am press phoographer. (shows press card). I am trying to do as instructed”
Cop: “Get off the grass then.NOW! NOW!”
Me: “Well stop shoving me back on to it then”

*cop finally stops shoving me into the grass area, and I step on to the pavement..

Fucking prick.

Excluding the testerone-charged police, there was certainly a few ‘hotheads’ in the crowd including a fabulously hysterical woman who was dramatically pleading to the police outside the cordon, “WHY WON’T YOU LET THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN GO FREE?!” as people were happily walking out of the cordon next to her.

Union Square, New York, 28th Nov 2008

On the day that a Walmart worker in Valley Stream was crushed to death by a stampeding mob of frenzied shoppers, the Rev Billy and his motley group of elves held an anti-consumerist gathering in Union Square.

The Reverend, looking dapper in an all-white suit, delivered his sermon a the circle of listeners, all holding hands.

The Revd told the crowd that he’d been to Macy’s at Herald Square and noted that the Black Friday shoppers were twenty five per cent down from last year – news that sent the crowd a-whooping.

“Something very exciting is happening,” he bellowed. “This economic system… is stunned, in retreat.”

A brief prayer was held for the killed store clerk, before the Rude Mechanical Orchestra started up, “turning Union Square into a dancing zone and not a shopping zone” as the band lead a conga line around the perimeter.

More photos here: Reverend Billy Buy-Nothing event, Union Sq

Central Cardiff is changing so fast, I have trouble recognising some parts now, especially in the area where the monolithic St Davids Centre 2 is going up. I can’t say I’m feeling the love for that vast temple to consumerism either.

Here’s some pics from my late December stroll on a sunny but freezing cold afternoon. You can see the full photo feature here: Cardiff city centre photos.

After the death-by-yuppie demise of our favourite Williamsburg cafe, the Read Cafe on Bedford, we’d been looking for a good hang out cafe in Brooklyn.

We still like the Atlas cafe Havemeyer St, but when it comes to tasty veggie/vegan food, Boneshakers has become our number one neighbourhood cafe.

The menu has a great choice of sandwiches named after famous cyclists and as keen cyclists, we liked all the bike references.

It may be a far way off the beaten track, but the the friendly staff and pleasant laid back atmosphere makes for a rewarding visit – and there’s free wi-fi too.

The range of food on offer was interesting and tasty. Here’s a selection from their bike-themed menu:

Merckx Werkx tofurky, sham, olive tapenade, chipotle mayo, lettuce, tomato, on a ciabatta hero
Da’ Crank sham & cheddar, lettuce, tomato, on rosemary foccacia
Peleton pesto, provolone, lettuce, tomato, sprouts, on a kaiser roll
10 Speed veggie patty cheese, lettuce, tomato, on a kaiser roll
Hill Bomber veggie patty, avocado, lettuce, tomato, on a kaiser roll
Training Wheels side salad with mixed greens, sprouts, carrot, tomato, red onion, with balsamic vinegrette

Cafe info:
Cafe hours:
Mon-Fri. 7:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m.
Sat. 9:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m.

Boneshakers
134 Kingsland Ave
(between Beadel St & Lombardy St)
Brooklyn, NY 11222
(718) 963-0656
brooklynboneshakers.com 

Drop me a line  if you ever pay a visit and tell me what you think!

The end of an era on Brixton Road.

Situated in the heart of Philadelphia and only a short walk from the City Hall, is the Space 1026 gallery and workshop.

It’s not an ‘official’ gallery as such, but more of a collective space used by artists, although even their own website seems confused as to what they actually are:

Space 1026 is a community – a creative community – not an institution.

Space 1026 is not a collaboration! Yes it is! No its not! Yes it is! Exactly.

Whatever it is, we popped in to say hello and have a look around and found a friendly bunch of artists inside.

Anyway, here’s some photos.

More Philadelphia pics here:: Philadelphia photos. More to come soon!

Some photos from my Christmas trip to Porthcawl, on the south Wales coast. It was chuffing freezing!

The lighthouse, which dates back to 1860.

Lifeguard’s lookout tower.

The 1930s Pavilion.

This luxury development may have impressed the Royal Society of Architects in Wales, but the locals have remained unimpressed, dubbing it it ‘the bottle bank’.

We were on Box Hill this weekend and there were some lovely, super-expensive, drool-inducing road bikes with state-of-the-art gearing and featherweight frames, but this was the one I *hearted* the most:

I got chatting to the fella and he said he’d got the 50 year old petrol-driven ‘Mini Motor Gearless Cycle Outboard’ engine from eBay, and it had successfully powered him to the top of the hill.

In true Brit eccentric style, he was also building five other bikes at home (including one for his girlfriend who had arthritis and couldn’t pedal any more).

He had to drive the bike over to the licensing place to get it registered (it has a 50cc engine running hand-mixed two stroke fuel), so it has a numberplate on the back and a tax disk on the front too.

The bike’s motor runs against the rubber of the back tyre and apparently hits around 18mph max, notching up around 250 miles to the gallon.

I love it!

Close to the southern outskirts of London, Box Hill stands on the North Downs of Surrey, overlooking Dorking to the south-west.

Named after the box trees on its steep southern and western flanks, Box Hill occupies around 490 hectares of wooded downland and is a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest and Special Area of Conservation.

With the New Year’s hangovers still hurting, we took a bracing walk around the top of Box Hill:

Pile on!

More walks here: urban75 walks