Category: Transport

Street Art sells beer instead of political ruination – pro-political-ruination writer not happy

Christine Macdonald complains, in an article recently linked to by Arts and Letters Daily that:

Street Art Used To Be the Voice of the People. Now It’s the Voice of Advertisers.

Given what Ms MacDonald means by “the People” (the people who ruin all the places they get control of), this development is to be welcomed. Compared to ruination by a diverse array of people, all with the same ruinous opinions, advertisers trying only to sell you stuff are a breath of fresh air.

Here is an example of this process at work, spotted by me in Stoke Newington, the day before yesterday:

And here is another van from the same stable, which I spotted and photoed on the same day that I spotted and photoed these other exercises in profit seeking and actual people helping, nearer to the middle of London, while out and about a while back:

Vans like this are different, and thus attract attention. They certainly got mine. Many beer drinkers will surely have been persuaded to wonder what this particular beer tastes like. If it tastes like crap, advertising won’t save your product. But if the product is good but is being ignored, advertising is just what you want.

But, all you graffitists who have sold out or who would like to, be warned. Soon, this style will look rather ordinary, once lots of others have started doing it. At which point people like me won’t photo it any more, and commerce that is trying to attract attention will be on to the next aesthetic fad.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Vapour trail light

Further evidence (see below) that vapour trail light is my favourite sort of light:

That photo was photoed by me in June 2008. In Quimper I think, but if not in Quimper, then somewhere close.

I had been browsing through the directory in which all my photos from that expedition are stored, and I was struck by how well the best of them came out, despite the fact that the camera I was using was quite antique compared to my current camera. I had always supposed that there had been a big jump in photo quality for me when I got my Lumix ZX150, which was a few years after that. Since that Lumix ZX150, I have had a Lumix ZX200, and now use a Lumix ZX330. All of those Lumixes (Lumes?) being much of a muchness. And I think that’s right, there was quite a jump. Nevertheless, earlier cameras of mine, when the light was really good, did just as well. Where they suffered, by comparison, was when the light was merely quite good.

Vapour trails are a feature of the Brittany sky. Basically, you’re talking about half of all the airplanes from Europe to America, and half of all the airplanes from America to Europe. So, in Brittany, if the weather is vapour trail weather, there will be vapour trails. A lot of vapour trails.

France also has excellent street clutter, with lots of wires. The wires go well with the vapour trails, I think.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

X marks the spot in the sky

Was out in Bermondsey today, and as usual photoed lots of photos. But the light was dreary, so here is a photo I took in the same place just under a month ago, on February 19th:

Vapour trail weather, which I love. And not just for the vapour trails. In such weather, everything looks good. Those two birds, for instance. They look very good.

Ah, the Summer of February 2019. They don’t make them like that any more, except that they just did.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Car reflections

That car park I wrote about got me noticing car reflections, again:

I think that’s worth top billing in a posting, instead of being an afterthought in a posting about a car park.

And just now, I came across this in the photo-archives, from May 2015:

Mmmm. Cranes.

And here, taken about one hour later, is a photo with St Paul’s Cathedral reflected in a roller. Too bad I was more interested in including the photoer, than I was in St Paul’s Cathedral reflected:

Or, was I? Here’s the next photo I took:

A car park, and a cathedral. They make a nice pair, don’t they?

More car reflections, this time of Piccadilly Circus adverts, recently featured at Mick Hartley‘s.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

ULEZ?

When I saw and photoed this sign, in London, yesterday afternoon …:

…, I thought it was some kind of electronic malfunction. ULEZ? Is that real? Only one way to find out. The Internet.

And the Internet was in no doubt. ULEZ stands for Ultra Low Emission Zone. Question answered.

I just wanted to know if ULEZ was real. It is. The details, for now anyway, interest me less. If you want to know more about ULEZ, you now have the acronym and the knowledge that it stands for something real, and you can learn all you want.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The new Greenwich Peninsula

My expedition to check out the Optic Cloak got me appreciating the new version of the Greenwich Peninsula, the post-Dome version, that is now taking shape.

Here is a picture of it, one of those computer fake photo things:

The Optic Cloak is an invisible smudge of grey, just after the C of OPTIC and just above the K of CLOAK. That’s because this picture is not about the truth as such, but about new tall buildings, and the Optic Cloak, although quite tall, is not a building, so, in this picture, it is ignored.

However, what the above photo does show is the big double-barrelled road which takes traffic into and from the Blackwall Tunnel. And you get a great look at this mighty traffic artery if you climb up onto a footbridge that takes you over it. Over it if, for instance, you are walking south from North Greenwich tube station, in order to get a closer-up view, from the West, across the big road, than you’d get otherwise, of the Optic Cloak, as I was when I went there, however many weeks ago it was.

You can just about make out this footbridge in the picture above, just above and to the right of the C of COPTIC.

Here are a couple of photos that I photoed of this footbridge:

And here are a couple of views from it, of the Optic Cloak:

But I especially liked the sort of views you get from this footbridge, looking north, towards the Blackwall Tunnel:

Most of the towers in the distance there are across the river, in Docklands, and already that view, as you approach the Blackwall Tunnel is quite something. As the Greenwich Peninsula itself fills up with more towers, it will look even more mini-Manhattan-ish.

Here are photos I took from the bridge of a couple of interesting vehicles, going north (left) and south (right):

Plus, here is a close-up of that roof clutter, in the left hand of the two looking north photos, above:

This roof clutter makes a point, as do those two views looking north, and the traffic. This new Greenwich Peninsula has the feeling of old-school work getting done, just as I presume the old one had. Stuff that really hurts if you drop it on your foot is being made, modified, bought and sold, in this particular part of London, just as it always was. Noxious gasses and fluids are being propelled hither and thither, in pipes and cans and lorries. You get the feeling that this isn’t going to stop any time soon, the way it has in Docklands.

It could just be all that Blackwall Tunnel traffic thundering by which gives off that feeling. However, I don’t think so, if only because the thundering traffic creates the sort of place where the Financial Services Industry wouldn’t want to be.

Here, finally, is the kind of close-up of the Optic Cloak that I had come for …:

.. with a lorry roaring by, full of noxious fluid.

There can be no higher praise for the Optic Cloak than to say that it fits right in with all this hustle and bustle and noise. Indeed, it dominates it. It presides contentedly over it. Most “Art” in such a place would look ridiculous.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A different way to open a car door

Today a friend needed some rather dramatic medical attention, and I dropped by to provide what I hope was a little moral support. Outside the place where this was happening, I encountered this cute little vehicle:

Two interesting things about this little gizmo. First, there is the way that its door opens. The door on its right is open, in the above photos. Useful in a tight space, I should guess.

And second is what it does, there being a website on it which enables you to learn about this. It takes tissue or samples from sick people to a lab, where the lab decides its opinion about the nature of that sickness.

I like these little cars, which are so small they are almost motor bikes. I certainly prefer them to those huge Chelsea Tractors, which look like they’re for doing bank robbery getaways or off-roading or maybe both at once. Which, let’s face it, most Londoners do neither of, ever.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A model of a building that never happened

I took this photo of the big 3D map of London that is in the Building Centre, Store Street, in 2010:

And here is a close up of that distant City Cluster that you can vaguely discern in the distance, above:

Gherkin, tick. Cheesegrater, tick. Crossrail, semi-tick, still slogging its way towards belated completion. But, note the Helter Skelter, which never happened. That’s the tall and twisty one in the middle there, that looks like a helter skelter. They started it, but then they (presumably a different they) turned what they had into something different, 22 Bishopsgate.

Some photos get better with the passing of the years. Soon, the Helter Skelter will be largely forgotten.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The Welbeck Street Car Park then and now

Well, well. Look what I just found in the photo-archives. I wasn’t looking for this photo. I just found it, while looking for just anything interesting to stick up here, instead of a proper posting, which I don’t have the energy for:

That photo was photoed on April 20th 2006, according to my computer.

The reason I was so pleased to find the above photo is that I was photoing the very same edifice, this very afternoon. This was a resolution I proclaimed to the world in this posting here, a few days ago.

I can now report that the Welbeck Street Car Park is, as of now, still there. There’s no P on it, like there is in the above photo. There are now, I believe, no cars in it. It awaits demolition. But it has yet to be demolished. It is still all there.

Here is the similar photo I took today, that makes it look like the car park that it is:

No P. Different light. Otherwise little seems to have changed.

Here is this same car park, bounced off the front of a car.

That takes me back. Time was when I was fascinated by what you could see in the shiny bits of cars. But I don’t recall ever doing a car reflection photo as fun as that one. It’s the pattern of the concrete that makes it.

This Welbeck Steet Car Park thing is very interesting I think. I mean, why the fuss about some manky old car park, just because its facade is made of triangular concrete lumps instead of the usual rectangular concrete lumps? I promise nothing, but may even supply the answer to that question, some time.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

More photos from Monday January 28th

The Monday before last really was a very good photoing day. (I’ve been calling it Sunday but actually it was Monday, Monday January 28th. I remember at the time being confused about what day it was.)

First, seconds after I had stepped out into the sunlight, there was this:

That being me, in among the branches of the tree.

Then, following further excitements yet to be revealed, there was this lighting effect. And then there were these smartphone-photoing ladies. And then these guys, also photoing, with another shadow selfie added by me onto their backs.

Then I went past the Wheel, and gave that the Wheel and Tree treatment:

And just before it got dark, I ended up at the top of the Tate Modern Extension.

When it was dark, I climbed into Blackfriars Station, and walked over the river to Blackfriars Tube. And enjoyed the view, with its weird reflections of the station in the sky above the City Cluster:

I love how the black sky turns blue in that.

But before I went home, I dropped in on Waterstones, in Piccadilly, to see if the newly released paperback version of The Devil’s Dice was on show. And it was:

I am finding it exhausting just thinking about that day, and how it ended. It was very cold, and the cold takes it out of you, by which I mean me.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog