January 29th, 2012
Exit Shinjuku
Outside exit A9, Shinjuku Station, Tokyo
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Asia Pacific, Public Space, Transportation
January 10th, 2012
Montreal by Bike
My love affair with Bixi remains undiminished. This despite the wear-and-tear its popularity has caused — I have been left frustrated by broken docks and bikes on more than a couple of occasions — and the fact that accessibility on the fringes of its service areas is a bit spotty. (It’s no fun to bike home to Park Extension at 3am only to find out there’s no docking spots left at Parc metro, the only Bixi station in the entire neighbourhood.) I love the convenience of being able to cycle without worrying about a bike, the heft and stability of the big Bixi bikes, and even the name, which rolls off the tongue so easily and can be used as both a verb and a noun.
While Bixi has made cycling an even more assertive part of Montreal life, this was a bicycle city long before the first bike share stations opened in 2008. It’s one of the only places in North America where you see lots bikes used not only by students and cycling enthusiasts, but also by parents with children, deliverymen riding specialized three-wheel bikes and people hauling stuff around. I’ve put together a handful of photos, mostly taken last summer, of Montreal by bike. Take a look.
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Canada, Public Space, Society and Culture, Transportation
December 29th, 2011
The Other Side of Hong Kong Nightlife
Nobody really remembers how they first discovered Sense 99. Usually, they hear about it through a friend, who heard about it through a friend, who heard about it through a friend and so on. It is not quite a bar, not quite a private club, not an art gallery or a music venue, but it combines elements of all of these. To get there, you must make your way down Wellington Street, past the green-painted stalls of Hong Kong’s oldest street market, until you arrive in front of a worn metal door at the base of an old stone shophouse. Press the second doorbell from the top and a tinny voice will greet you through a speaker in the door.
“Wai?”
There is no secret password. Say pretty much anything and you will be greeted by a loud buzz. The door unlocks. Head up to the second floor, towards the sound of conversation and live music, until you enter a room that appears not to have been touched since the early colonial days of Hong Kong: green-and-white tile floors, wood windowframes, French doors opening onto a narrow balcony. There is a small bar on the right and a collection of stylishly mismatched furniture on the left. Upstairs, another balcony and a lounge where musicians bring their instruments and jam until the early hours of the morning.
This is not a typical Hong Kong bar.
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Art and Design, Asia Pacific, History, Society and Culture
December 5th, 2011
Mahjong in the Rain
The raucous clatter of tiles was unmistakable as I approached the corner of Zhijiang Lu (芷江路) and Xizhang Bei Lu (西藏北路) in Shanghai’s Zhabei district.
In a public playground, groups of middle-aged to old people were lazily gathered for an afternoon of mass mahjong and card games. A large group of spectators followed like moths to a flame.
It was a typical way for the community to pass the Saturday afternoon and enjoy the fickle spells of cool summer sprinkles. It hardly bothered the patrons who sheltered themselves under makeshift tarpaulin tents.
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November 21st, 2011
Portraits of Beijing Cyclists
Beijing’s rate of cycling has dropped dramatically over the past two decades, as the economy has developed and more people buy cars. As a result, the city is mired in horrendous gridlock and some of the worst air pollution on earth.
But cycling is still an important mode of transport in China’s capital; according to most estimates, it’s how 25 percent of the population gets around. Now that the government is placing restrictions on car use and ownership, cycling seems to have reversed its decline, even if it still isn’t an attractive option for the newly-monied classes who see car ownership as an essential status symbol.
One thing you continue to see in Beijing that you don’t notice in emerging cycling cities like Montreal is a real diversity of cyclists. People of all ages get around by bike, including people from a wide range of backgrounds: schoolkids, restaurant workers, well-dressed old women, and of course that most global of cycling creatures, the fixie-riding hipster.
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November 17th, 2011
Photos of the Week: From the Hip
This week, three photos from New York photographer Keith B. Goldstein.
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United States
November 14th, 2011
Saturday Morning Flying Machines
Sunny skies made for perfect flying weather this Saturday in downtown Toronto. As pictured in the background, a large HVAC unit as long as the 18-wheeler it’s seated on was being ferried up to the rooftops via helicopter. With many roads along University Avenue closed for the afternoon, passersby gathered happily to watch the work and wander the deserted streets.
November 7th, 2011
Photos of the Week: Shadow Life
This week’s photos were taken in São Paulo by Hudson Rodrigues.
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Latin America
September 27th, 2011
Airing Your Laundry in Public
When I first came to Hong Kong, one of the most perplexing of park rules was “No hanging of laundry.” Surely that isn’t a problem, I thought. Do people really bring their wet laundry to the park to dry?
As it turns out, they do. Though most people here have a washing machine in their apartments, relatively few have dryers, and Hong Kong’s tiny apartments lack the outdoor space needed to effectively dry freshly-washed clothes. Some people take their laundry up to rooftop clotheslines; those who live in buildings without an accessible roof simply hang their clothes next to an open window, hoping they won’t get that awful damp smell that comes from taking too long to dry. Others take a different approach: they dry their laundry in public space, hanging it on sidewalk railings and chainlink fences.
This happens almost exclusively in public housing estates and working-class neighbourhoods, which is an important point to consider. Outdoor clothes-drying is seen by many of the world’s middle and upper classes to be distasteful and unsightly, from North America, where hundreds of communities ban the practice, to Hong Kong, where affluent people cling very tightly to symbols of affluence and class identity, perhaps because they are only a generation or two removed from poverty. Once, a middle-aged professional man I know was looking outside at a luxury apartment tower when he noticed that some apartments had clothes drying outside, on the building’s small balconies. “They’re rich but they still dry their clothes outside,” he said with evident distaste.
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September 25th, 2011
Photo of the Week: Striped
West 56th and 8th Avenue, New York. Photo by Simon Garnier.
Every week, we feature striking images from our Urbanphoto group on Flickr. Want to see your photos here? Join the group.
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September 10th, 2011
The Sounds of Hong Kong
Street performer on Sai Yeung Choi Street, Mongkok
Hong Kong is rich in visual symbols: a glittering skyline, red market lamps, green trams. But when you close your eyes and think of Hong Kong, what do you hear? That’s what Lawal Marafa, a professor of geography at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, is trying to figure out by studying Hong Kong’s soundscape.
Together with another CUHK professor, Lam Kin-che, Marafa is trying to chart Hong Kong’s sounds and identify those that people like the most, with the goal of making the city a more tolerable place to live. It all comes down to the issue of noise pollution: the cacophony of roaring buses, endless jackhammering and mobile phone chatter that seems to dominate so much of Hong Kong. Instead of trying to make everything quieter, Marafa hopes that particularly pleasant sounds can be isolated and used to design better parks and urban spaces.
He points to Diamond Hill’s Nan Lian Garden as an example of how sound can be used to mask noise. Located next to Lung Chung Road, one of Kowloon’s busiest thoroughfares, the Tang Dynasty-style garden makes abundant use of fountains and waterfalls to fight the din of traffic. Even though the environment is still loud, says Marafa, the sound of rushing water puts people at ease, whereas the sound of traffic stresses them out.
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September 7th, 2011
Chinese Gods, Good Fortune and a Waterfall
It was the perfect setting for a picnic. Under the shade of a few trees, next to the sloshing waves of the East Lamma Channel, we set down a blanket, some wine and some snacks and spent an afternoon watching the ships pass by. What more could we ask for?
How about a waterfall? Oh, and some World War II ruins. And a resting spot for Chinese gods. And to be able to get there from Causeway Bay in less than twenty minutes.
Not only does Waterfall Bay have all of this, it’s one of the most peaceful places you can go without venturing more than five minutes from the nearest bus stop, Wellcome or 7-Eleven.
August 31st, 2011
Somewhere to Sit
As befits a city with a tropical climate, in Kuala Lumpur there is always somewhere to sit and, for a small price, slurp a well-spiced laksa or an earthy teh tarik. Indoors, outdoors, it doesn’t really matter — with restaurants spilling into the street and hawker stalls operating inside restaurants, there’s very little distinction between the two.
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August 30th, 2011
Photo of the Week: Eshete
This week’s photos were taken Chris Arnade in Brooklyn. He writes:
I have known Eshete, the “cat man” of Columbia St. for over three years, walking by almost daily, and look forward to our chats. Despite having some serious issues, he has always been super sweet and nice to me. He is obsessed with his cats, riding his bike from upper Manhattan every day to spend afternoons with them.
I don’t know his full history, I am polite enough not to pry. I do know that he’s had a rough life. He was the only member of his family to survive the Ethiopian civil war and spent many years after as a refugee in Northern Sudan.
A geography nut, every one of his cats is named after a place: Congo, Damascus, Venice, Rico (Puerto that is), etc.
I went to the waterfront to see how Eshete was doing as [Hurricane Irene] approached. Not surprisingly, despite being in an evacuation zone, he was there taking care of the cats. I asked him if he needed anything, he said no, and then we chatted about cats.
“The cats are like lions, very intelligent. Mysterious creatures, the Pharaohs buried them. Independent, but if they need you they come. Cats are beautiful intelligent comedians.”
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