Veritas et Venustas

The Way We Live Now

David Becomes Goliath

(The photo's been anonymously moving around the internet — see the original here.)

Travels with my iPhone

A Bedford horse farm in the early spring.

The same farm a few days later.

BEDFORD, NEW YORK is about as close as you can be to New York City with any real illusion of being in the country. I lived and worked there and should write about it and post some photos. But for now, here are some photos from my iPhone and a few earlier words (look in the second and third paragraphs).

Clark Road, facing the horse farm.

Munich, My Munich

Copyright © R. Sterflinger. Courtesy of the Fremdenverkehrsamt München.

THE NEW YORK TIMES wrote about Munich here. I wrote about it here.

NY Times: Munich Redux: Germany’s Hot Spot of the Moment

V&V: Munich, New York & Starchitects

Forever England

ENGLAND wouldn't be England without pubs and hand-pulled bitters. Some of the best pubs are in Oxford. The New York Times wrote about them here.

NY Times: Journeys / Oxford England / A Pub Crawl Through the Centuries

V&V: London Pubs

CNU XVI

Andrés Duany & Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk Win the 2008 Driehaus Prize

UPDATE: I got to congratulate Lizz & Andrés at CNU XVI. My toast is after the jump.

I'M on my way to Chicago and Austin for the Driehaus dinner and CNU XVI. I've never been to Austin, so I'm going to go straight from Chicago to get a few days to look around.

Last night at the plenary session, many of you saw me give a very impromptu message of congratulations to Lizz and Andres for winning the prestigious Driehaus Prize. As I said at the time, I had only found out that I would be delivering that message 60 seconds earlier. And as Nathan said later, “Yeah, we could tell.”

The good news is that now I get a second chance. So before I ask you to give Lizz and Andres another standing ovation – and who among us deserves it more? – I have the pleasure of saying a few more words.
I first met Lizz and Andres when my summer boss Bob Stern told me to call one of his “students,” Andres Duany, to get information about Coral Gables for the book we were writing, The Anglo-American Suburb.

Andres then was not the Andres we know now, although of course he was always the same person at his core. But public speaking, for example, made him very nervous. However, even then Andres was on a mission to change the world, and so he made himself the great public speaker he is today.

There’s a story about this that I’ve heard Andres tell in lectures. He was at a charrette in Texas that was held in a mall. And in the mall was a store that would print logos and mottos of your choice on baseball hats.
Andres got a hat for himself, a hat for Lizz, and a hat for his brother Douglas. Andres’s hat said “Sisyphus.” Telling an environmental group in Miami about this, Andres said, “I used to feel sorry for myself. I felt like Sisyphus, forever rolling a rock up the hill and never getting to the top. And then my brother Douglas reminded me that Sisyphus chose his fate, and ever since I’ve felt better about my life.”

Andres chose his life of pushing New Urbanism up the hill, and we’re all the better for it.

Lizz he gave a hat that said “Athena.” Athena, the Goddess of the greatest city in the world, the goddess of all cities, the goddess of wisdom and the daughter of Zeus. A perfect choice.

The cliché is true: We’re all the richer for having known them as colleagues and friends. Among the many things they’ve contributed to New Urbanism are its collegiality and its collaboration, so different than the egocentric model architects are taught in school.

Two last points. Lizz once said to me, “I think of Andres as a model of what not to do.” By that, of course, she meant that Andres works in public, and persuades the public, in a way that few can. Lizz has her own quiet, patient way of working, and again, we’re all the better for it. Many women I know take Lizz as their role model.

My last point is a personal one for which I hope you and they will forgive me. A few years after I met them, Lizz and Andres arranged for me to be town architect of Seaside. It was a very important moment in my life, which I owe to them. Thank you.

But what I’m talking about now is that Robert and Darryl Davis’s dog Guinness adopted me and insisted on leaving with me when I left Seaside. The dog owners among you will understand that Darryl cried that day, and I was very grateful. So when Guinness had a litter of puppies a few years later, I offered Darryl one of the puppies. She graciously declined and I gave one of the puppies to Lizz and Andres. Again, the dog owners among you will understand that I was happy to be able to do something like that for Andres and Lizz.

I’ve since learned that if you’re a dog belonging to Lizz and Andres, you are very lucky. If you are a friend or colleague of Lizz and Andres you’re very lucky. So I ask you to join me now in once again giving them a standing ovation for everything they’ve done for us.

March 27, 2008 in Architecture, Classicism, Current Affairs, New Urbanism, Travel, Urbanism | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

The Almighty Euro

In other developments on Curbed, there's news that a previously-in-contract, $150 million, three-story penthouse is back on the market at $60 million.

A reader comments, " only 500 Euro!"

O how the might have fallen under King George II.

Which reminds me of a story:

The summer after I graduated from college, I got a job at a tourist trap bar in Florence, called the Red Garter. We called it the Red Gutter. Waiters had to wear Gay Nineties vests and arm bands.

We were paid 100 lire for each non-alchoholic drink we served, and 150 lire for each alchoholic drink. I would buy a small pizza for lunch the next day and think, "That cost 50 drinks."

But I was in Florence.

At the end of a great summer, I rented a Fiat 500 and drove around Tuscany and Umbria for 10 days. At the end of the 10 days, I was flat broke. I drove to Venice, where I was supposed to meet my parents three days later. I had to go early, because getting there took all the gas I had, and I had no money for more.

When I got to Venice with a year's worth of stuff (I went on to another job in Paris until I started graduate school a year later), I didn't even have enough money to get on the vaporetto, Venice's equivalent of the bus. On a hot September day, I had truck it all myself to the Piazza San Marco, which took me almost two hours.

Once I got to San Marco, I was in like Flint. My parents would be staying at the Cipriani, and I loaded everything on the Cipriani's private launch and rode out past San Giorgio Maggiore, my favorite church, to the end of the Isola Giudecca, owned by the hotel.

I should say, my parents' Cipriani was not the Cipriani of today, happily. Signor Cipriani had started Harry's Bar, considered by many at that time the best restaurant in Italy. It had great food, snappy Italian service, was the home of the Bellini (and no one else made it like them) and a uniquely Italian combination of formality, understatement and comfort.

After decades of success, he started the Albergo Cipriani, a lovely hotel with more understated Italian luxury. The food was as good as at Harry's Bar, and they had the largest salt water pool in Europe, all a five-minute boat ride from Piazza San Marco. On the way in you looked at St. Mark's. On the way out you looked at S. Giorgio, by Palladio.

I had no money, but that was no problem. My parents would be arriving in three days with dollars, and I was welcome to check in.

So for three days, I could only do what was free or what I could charge to the Cipriani. In the morning, I would read the Herald Tribune by the pool. By late morning a poolside all-you-could-eat antipasti buffet would arrive. For 1,500 lire, it was as good as you could find in Italy.

In the late afternoon, the crowds and the heat would break, and I'd take the boat into San Marco. Thirty steps from the dock was Harry's Bar, where I could sign dinner and Bellini's to the room. And don't forget I was surrounded by Venice. Has there ever been a more blissful existence?

Today, the Cipriani is owned by an American, who's gotten rid of the old understated luxury, and staying there costs more than $1,000 a night just for a room. Back when the dollar was king, a room and three meals a day, including dinner at Harry's, was $45 per diem.

My father, no spendthrift, was glad I'd had a good time.

February 6, 2008 in Culture, Current Affairs, Travel | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Monday, January 28, 2008

Live from Santa Fe

THE COYOTE CAFE has new ownership, with the chef from Geronimo moving over to the Coyote Cafe to be one of the owners. I used to go to their Cantina, which has a nice open roof spot one floor up from Santa Fe's Water Street. But that's closed for the winter, and we ended up at the bar. Little did we know that the bar seats are now the "chef's seats," where you sit and watch the cooks at work.

We went in for Margaritas. We had the Coyote Cafe's "Senoritas," which have a foam with lime, salt and egg white instead of a salt on the rim. Then we stayed for dinner and the show.

The "short stack" of corn cakes and shrimp and the butter lettuce salad with a warm dressing were wonderful. The Niman Ranch filet mignon with a tomato hollandaise was excellent. Shown above is the well-aged 24 oz (!) "Cowboy Cut" ribeye.

Twice during the meal the chef brough amuse bouches to the fans in the chef seats. Here he's putting black truffles and a cream sauce on buffalo meat. Hold on to your liver.

January 28, 2008 in Food and Drink, Travel | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Friday, November 23, 2007

It's The Place, Stupid! (*with explanation, below)

THANKS to some YouTube videos, I think I finally understand the problem surrounding the New Acropolis Museum in Athens. A lovely street has had a cancerous hole torn in it so that there will be an unobstructed view of the Acropolis from Bernard Tschumi's new museum. Now the cancer may be spreading: the museum has asked and received permission to tear down two more buildings that previous negotiations had specified must stay. That destruction would double or triple the size of the hole in the street wall and further damage the street.

The hole in the street reveals Bernard Tschumi's New Acropolis Museum, a behemoth completely out of scale with the buildings that shape the street. The museum is very tall, so that museum goers can look over the roofs of the buildings in front of it and have an unobstructed view of the Acropolis. But the poor people eating in Tschumi's cafeteria, while they'll have an unobstructed view of the Parthenon, will have a a partially blocked view of the Acropolis. Obvious Question: if it's really so important to have a full view of the Acropolis while you chow down, why didn't Tschumi design the cafeteria differently? On the other hand, as I think you've guessed, II don't believe it is so important.

I haven't been to Athens in 25 years, so I can't comment on Nikos's commentary on the pervasiveness of the destruction of the old courtyard buildings and their replacement by flimsy Modernist apartment buildings (other than to say that knowing Nikos I'm sure he's right). But having seen these grainy images on YouTube, what strikes me is the importance of the street and the place, not just the building.

The building seems lovely. A good deal of its charm comes from its place on a wonderful, well-proportioned street, shaped by appropriately sized Neo Classical buildings with detail and grace, stunning trees that cause a wonderful dappled light on the stone surface of the street, and a blessed absence of cars. The whole is greater than the sum of the excellent individual parts.

Tschumi's building is an alien invader that smashes the space, looms over it with no human scale and makes a terrific regional place look like any crass development anywhere. If the two buildings are destroyed, the continued assault on the character of the place would cause even more damage to Athens than the loss of a fine individual building.

One can tear down even a very fine building if the trade off is that it is replaced by a good piazza and a great civic monument. But what is proposed is a destructive and lopsided trade. Doubling or tripling the size of the hole in the street, and further exposing the UFO behind it, would be ten or twenty times worse, not just twice as bad.

Video links and other photos after the jump

* Since this post is now circulating around Athens, let me explain the title. When Bill Clinton was first running for President, his staff would debate the issues of the day and how to present them to the voters. A list of the most important campaign issues was kept on a blackboard and regularly updated. One day Clinton's chief campaign advisor came in, erased the list, and in large letters wrote, "It's The Economy, Stupid!"

November 23, 2007 in Architecture, Classicism, Culture, Current Affairs, Travel, Urbanism, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

”Architectural Cannibalism in Athens“

NIKOS SALINGAROS's article on the Acropolis Museum

November 21, 2007 in Architecture, Classicism, Culture, Current Affairs, Education, Travel, Urbanism, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

You Never Know What You'll Find On The Web, Part II

Jeff Shelton is a Santa Barbara architect who seems to be a child of the Sixties. On the basis of these photographs, I love his work.

Jeff Shelton Architect
Cota Street Studios
Jeff Shelton books

November 14, 2007 in Architecture, Classicism, Travel, Urbanism, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Pahk the Depahted in the Mystic Rivah

OF COURSE I wanted the Yankees to win the World Series, but I love New England, I love Bahston and Hahvahd,  I love Fenway, and I don't even mind the Sawx when they're not beating the Yankees — but my recent trip to Fenway reminded me there are certain Sox fans I don't like. Those would be the young, male, white guys in the young, male, white guy Southie uniform (skin tight t-shirt and Red Sox hat with the identically rounded bill and cap) who chant "The Yankees Suck" at the drop of a hat.

A lifetime of never seeing the Sox win the World Series (while the Yankees won 27 times) made a lot of Yankee haters in New England, but that calmed down a lot after the Sox won in 2004, and will undoubtedly calm down more now (Congratulations New England). But as films like Good Will Hunting, The Departed, Mystic River and now Gone Baby Gone show, there has been a poor white class in Boston that's had a chip on its shoulder for a long time. Generational poverty and signs saying things like "No Irish Need Apply" can do that to you.

In the following segment from Studio 360, Dennis Lehane, the author of the novels Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone, describes them as people who feel like they don't "belong at the pahty."

October 31, 2007 in Baseball, Culture, Sports, Travel | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Friday, September 28, 2007

Moblogging - Live from Camden, ME

sent from my iPhone

September 28, 2007 in Travel, Urbanism | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Hubville

A friend invited me to last night's Sox game in his box at Fenway. Cowabunga, those were good seats, even better than they look in an iPhone snapshot.

Meanwhile, the Yankees were clinching the Wild Card spot in Tampa. Quote of the Day, from A-Rod:

“This feels like home. It’s hard to believe that I played for another two organizations. So much has happened to me here, adversity, some success, that I feel like anything but New York feels weird for me now.”

The game was the day after my birthday. In 2004, we saw the Sox clinch the Wild Card on my birthday, and they acted like they'd just won the World Series. Little did we know. So this year we've got some reverse Mojo going.

September 27, 2007 in Baseball, New York, Quote of the Day, Sports, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Cherry Valley, New York

THIS OLD HOUSE is in Cherry Valley, New York, seven miles along a beautiful old road from Cooperstown, New York (where I went because Phil Bess was leading a charrette for the Notre Dame urban design graduate students). The house is at the southern end of the main street, a short walk from the center of town. When the Erie Canal was young the area was rich for a short time, and the area has some excellent Greek Revival houses.

I put more photos of Cherry Valley here. All the photos were taken with my iPhone, so some leave a little to be desired.

September 16, 2007 in Architecture, New York, Travel, Urbanism | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Red Sox Reflections

from my iPhone*

Before, last night's game, future Red Sox Hall of Famer Roger Clemens wasn't getting the job done. The Yankees paid him more per start than any other pitcher in baseball, because early in the season they used more than 20 pitchers, who because of injuries, freak injuries, and lack of experience, weren't getting the job done. But going into last night, Rocket's record was 5 and 5, his era was well over 4, and he was making short starts that were wearing out the bullpen.

Last night, Rocket went up against his old team, and it was like old times. Josh Beckett faced his fellow Texan and childhood hero, who pitched a no-hitter until David Ortiz hit a home run to the upper deck. Beckett showed a lot of guts, but he had the same success as other Sox starters this year:

Josh Beckett, 1 - 1, 5.49 era

Dice K, 2 - 1, 6.98

Curt Schilling, 0 - 1, 7.00

Tim Wakefield 0 -3, 10.93

We're liking Chien Ming Wang against Curt Schilling this afternoon. If the Yankees can win, they're in good shape for the last month of the season and making the playoffs, when Andy Pettitte, Chien Ming Wang and Roger Clemens looks like it might be a pretty good trio to go with Mo, Joba and Vizcaino.

Brian Bruney, who hasn't pitched yet in the series, has a 0.00 era against the Sox in 6.0 innings this year. So does Kei Igawa.

Red Sox castoff Johnny Damon had another big hit against is old team.

* No, that's not Yankee Stadium. I was at the Mets - Phillies game last night (the Mets wuz robbed on the final play). That's the view from my seat — pretty good seat.

August 30, 2007 in Baseball, New York, Sports, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Britain's Past Is Our Future — Idiot of the Month, Part III

Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby. - The Times of London

THREE DECADES AGO, I was an exchange student in England. We, Americans, used a lot less energy then than we do now. But any American living in Britain then couldn't help but notice how much more frugal the Brits were.

In the winter, their rooms were colder than ours. Instead of turning up the thermostat (if they had a thermostat), the English would put on heavier sweaters and wear warm pants and skirts. In the summer, it would sometimes turn hot, but very few people had air conditioning. More common was to head to the garden at the pub.

Petrol (gasoline) was so so heavily taxed that you would think twice before driving anywhere. Alternatives were walking or biking, or taking the bus, tube or train. Shops, houses and offices were arranged so you could walk.

Engine sizes were progressively taxed too, so that many Brits who did own cars (a much lower percentage than in the US, and we had far fewer cars per person than we have now), would buy three-wheel cars or kit cars, with engines 85% smaller than many Americans had in their Fords or Chevies.

Because of global warming and climate change, Britain's past is our future. It will make our towns and cities better, and attack the social isolation of sprawl.

ALSO: The Funny Old English

August 7, 2007 in Culture, Current Affairs, New Urbanism, Travel, Urbanism | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Sunday, August 05, 2007

Idiot of the Month: Chris Goodall

From yesterday's London Times:

Walking to the shops ‘damages planet more than going by car’

Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.

The sums were done by Chris Goodall, campaigning author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, based on the greenhouse gases created by intensive beef production. “Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere,” he said, a calculation based on the Government’s official fuel emission figures. “If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.

“The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better.”

If Goodall is not an idiot, he's an irresponsible publicity monger.

Even taking his argument at face value, someone walking slowly uses few if any more calories than someone driving a car. And while Goodall would be closer to being right if we got all our calories from agri-business beef — we don't.

More importantly, almost no one walks three miles to buy their groceries, while Americans routinely drive 30 miles or more to go to Sam's Club for their Agribeef, which can come from 3,000 miles away. Walking three blocks does not equal driving 30 miles. And local, organic produce would solve more energy problems.

More on this later today, when I update this post.

For now let me comment that the Times, which hates Prince Charles, has commissioned Goodall to make a carbon audit of Prince Charles. I wonder how that will turn out? Yet Charles's Prince's Foundations has hired some of the world's leading experts to study solutions to global warming and climate. And oh, what a coincidence, his development at Poundbury is a sustainable model which reduces driving. Charles also campaigns against agri-business, which uses energy-intensive methods. See Michael Pollan's great The Omnivore's Dilemma.

I noticed a few years ago that whenever Prince Charles criticized Modernist architecture and planning, the next day the Times would have unflattering stories about Camilla.

That's not cricket, old chaps. And this is the group that just bought the Wall Street Journal.

August 5, 2007 in Architecture, Culture, Current Affairs, Food and Drink, New Urbanism, Quote of the Day, Science, Travel, Urbanism, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Thursday, August 02, 2007

Because I'm such a cool, international guy,

I have British, Italian and Belgian (don't ask) SIMs for my unlocked cell phone. And I know all about changing my the numbers in my cell before I call them, so that 1 212 555 1212 becomes 001 212 555 1212 if I want to call that number from Europe, and 011 44 20 7555 1212 becomes 020 7555 1212 if I want to call that number while I'm in the UK.

What I didn't know until recently was that that's all unnecessary. When I got my iPhone, my brother told me to change the numbers in the Apple Address book I would synchronize with my phone to this system: plus sign, country code, area code and number. Then they work both in Europe and the US.

In other words, the New York number above becomes +1 212 555 1212, and it works anywhere in the US, including New York, and also anywhere in Europe. And the London example becomes +44 20 7555 1212. That works from here in the US, and from anywhere in Europe. (Why the Brits write that as +44 20 7555 1212, rather than +44 207 555 1212, is another story.)

August 2, 2007 in Current Affairs, Travel, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Book Soup

UPDATE: I was recently in Lenox, Mass, and wanted to use my iPhone and the WiFi at The Bookstore to show the store's owner that I had put his store on my blog. But I discovered that I had somehow left it off the list. That error is hereby corrected.

A GOOD BOOKSTORE is a great thing. It's a center of civilzation and a community center, one of the prime examples of Ray Oldenburg's Third Good Places.

A bookstore's an indication of local culture. When I was at Harvard, there were three all-night bookstores within a stone's throw of Harvard Square. You slept better knowing they were there.

The internet and the big chains have been a mixed blessing for book lovers. On the one hand, you can get any book quickly and buy books for less, and who doesn't like that? (Answer, authors, because they get less per book — on the other hand, maybe they'll sell more books.)

Strikingly, hundreds of places in the US that had a mediocre bookstore or no bookstore at all now have chain stores with 100,000 titles that are open from 9 am to 11 pm. The mega-stores even let you sit and read in comfortable chairs, with WiFi and perhaps a cup of coffee. The best Barnes & Noble I know of is in a four-story loft-building on Union Square in Manhattan, with hundreds of thousands of books, hundreds of magazines and a large cafe. Many people use the store like a library, reading books and magazines for hours that they have no intention of buying.

But obviously most of these mega-stores have no in-house expertise and about as much soul as Starbucks. And they put better bookstores out of business.

Here in Coral Gables, I can walk to a great bookstore, Books & Books. Just a few minutes away, they have lots of books, knowledgeable staff, a good cafe and lots and lots of speakers and books signings. So that got me thinking about bookstores I've known and loved:

Baldwin's Book Barn, West Chester, Pa
Blackwell's, Oxford
Book Soup, Los Angeles
Books & Books, Coral Gables, Fla
BookCourt, Brooklyn
Bookhampton, Southampton
The Bookstore, Lenox, Mass
Buchhandlung L. Werner, Munich
Collected Works, Santa Fe
Corner Bookstore, New York
Crawford & Doyle, New York
Dedalo, Rome
E Shaver Booksellers, Savannah
Feltrinelli, Florence
Foyles, London
Garcia Street Books, Santa Fe
Gotham Book Mart, New York
Hans Golst Kunstbücher, Munich
Hatchards, London
Hennessey & Ingalls, Los Angeles
Housing Works Book Cafe, New York
La Hune, Paris
Librairie du Moniteur, Paris
Librarie Galignani, Paris
Maple Street Bookshop, New Orleans
Montague Book Mill, Montague, Mass
New Canaan Bookshop, (RIP) New Canaan, Conn
New Dominion, Charlottesville
Politics & Prose, Washington
Prairie Avenue Bookshop, Chicago
RIBA, London
Rizzoli, New York
Scribner's, (RIP), New York
Shakespeare & Company, Paris
Spring Street Books, (RIP) New York
Stanford's, London
Sundog Books, Seaside
Square Books, Oxford, Miss
The Strand, New York
Taylor Books, Charleston WV
Tattered Cover, Denver
Waterstone's, London (Picadilly)
Weyhe, (RIP), New York
William Stout, San Francisco
Zwemmer, London

In the post Barnes & Noble / Border's / Amazon era, Blackwell's has gone global and lost some of their charm. But I still have fond memories of when the Dollar Was King and I could order books from Blackwell's that would come over on their weekly plane to New York and still cost half what they sold for here. Foyles, which before the internet was the largest bookstore in the world, has also lost a lot of their old, peculiar (they shelve by publisher rather than subject) charm.

Waterstone's is a large British chain that sold the management of its internet business to amazon.co.uk, but it has an excellent bookstore in an old Art Deco department store on Picadilly (the largest bookshop in Europe). A cafe and bar on the top floor has great views. Down the street is Hatchards, the royal bookseller. Somehow they're never quite as good as I imagine they should be.

Recommended By Others (I haven't been to these):

Antigone Books, Tuscon
Beckham's Books, New Orleans*
Boulder Book Store, Boulder
Chaucer's Bookstore, Santa Barbara
City Lights, San Francisco**
Dutton's, Los Angeles (Brentwood)
Globe, Prague
Jackson Street Books, Athens, Ga
Joseph Fox, Philadelphia
Kepler's Books and Magazines, Menlo Park
Lemuria, Jackson, Miss
Malaprop's Bookstore/Cafe, Asheville
Northshire, Manchester, VT**
Powell's Books, Portland
Prairie Lights, Dubuque
Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh
The Regulator, Durham
Sam Weller's Zion Books, Salt Lake City
Seminary Co-op, Chicago
Village Voice Bookstore, Paris**
Vroman's Bookstore, Pasadena

* I didn't list any of the used book stores in New Orleans, because there are many good ones, and I couldn't remember the names.
** Actually, I have been to these three, but can't really remember them.

July 25, 2007 in Books, Culture, Education, New Urbanism, Travel, Urbanism | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBack

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Zoom, or not so much?

SUMMARY: An all-economy fare French Canadian airline called Zoom started New York to London Service in June. I bought a ticket on very short notice, and on balance the experience was a good one.

ZOOM UPDATE: The flight coming back was better than the flight going over (see below). For starters, I sat next to a petite, polite Indian woman, rather than an American widebody male, so there was a lot more room. And then we didn't fly via Bermuda, so that was good.

And then there's the odd route we flew, because Zoom is a small economy airline from Canada that's new to New York service and that doesn't have the expensive routes. But somehow, the Zoom flight doesn't take any longer than the what seems like the much more direct American and British air flights (7 hours and 45 minutes from London to New York for all of them).

Instead of flying to Bangor, Maine and then flying down the coast to New York, Zoom flew way into Northern Canada and then turned left and headed what seemed like due South. For hours we flew over tundra and scattered ice patches, and then over vast forests with little sign of settlement. Eventually, logging roads could be seen. After a long time I looked out the window and amazingly enough saw something I recognized, the race track at Lime Rock, Connecticu