All Things to All Men

Hidden Cities

In Olinda, if you go out with a magnifying glass and hunt carefully, you may find somewhere a point no bigger than the head of a pin which, if you look at it slightly enlarged, reveals within itself the roofs, the antennas, the skylights, the gardens, the pools, the streamers across the streets, the kiosks in the squeares, the horse-racing track. That point does not remain there: a year later you will find it the size of half a lemon, then as large as a mushroom, then a soup plate. And then it becomes a full-size city, enclosed within the earlier city: a new city that forces its way ahead in the earlier city and presses its way toward the outside.

Olinda is certainly not the only city that grows in concentric circles, like tree trunks which each year add one more ring. But in other cities there remains, in the center, the old narrow girlde of the walls from which the withered spires rise, the towers, the tiled roofs, the domes, while the new quarters sprawl around them like a loosened belt. Not Olinda: the old walls expand bearing the old quarters with them, enlarged but maintaining their proportions an a broader horizon at the edges of the city; they surround the slightly newer quarters, which also grew up on the margins and became thinner to make room for still more recent ones pressing from inside; and so, on and on, to the heart of the city, a totally new Olinda which, in its reduced dimensions retains the features and the flow of lymph of the first Olinda and of all the Olindas that have blossomed one from the other; and within this innermost circle there are always blossoming--though it is hard to discern them--the next Olinda and those that will grow after it.

(Words by Italo Calvino, photo by Mitchell Miller)

Welcome To Tokyo

(from Chris Marker's Sans Soleil)

Planet Manga

He wrote: Tokyo is a city crisscrossed by trains, tied together with electric wire she shows her veins. They say that television makes her people illiterate; as for me, I've never seen so many people reading in the streets. Perhaps they read only in the street, or perhaps they just pretend to read—these yellow men. I make my appointments at Kinokuniya, the big bookshop in Shinjuku. The graphic genius that allowed the Japanese to invent CinemaScope ten centuries before the movies compensates a little for the sad fate of the comic strip heroines, victims of heartless story writers and of castrating censorship. Sometimes they escape, and you find them again on the walls. The entire city is a comic strip; it's Planet Manga. How can one fail to recognize the statuary that goes from plasticized baroque to Stalin central? And the giant faces with eyes that weigh down on the comic book readers, pictures bigger than people, voyeurizing the voyeurs.
At nightfall the megalopolis breaks down into villages, with its country cemeteries in the shadow of banks, with its stations and temples. Each district of Tokyo once again becomes a tidy ingenuous little town, nestling amongst the skyscrapers.

Excerpt from Sans Soleil by Chris Marker, photo by Matthieu Kasimiri

Full script can be found here

Bye Bye Pride

A white moon appears

Like a hole in the sky,

The mangroves go quiet

In la brisa de la palma

A teenage rasputin

Takes the sting from a gin,

When a woman learns to walk

Shes not dependent anymore

a line front her letter, may 24...

And out on the bay

The current is strong

A boat can go lost.

(Words by The Go-Betweens, photo by Stefano Orazzini)

After Dark - Deny's Cafe

The music playing at low volume is “Go Away Little Girl” by Percy Faith and His Orchestra. No one is listening, of course. Many different kinds of people are taking meals and drinking coffee in this late-night Denny’s, but she is the only female there alone. She raises her face from her book now and then to glance at her watch, but she seems dissatisfied with the slow passage of time. Not that she appears to be waiting for anyone: she doesn’t look around the restaurant or train her eyes on the front door. She just keeps reading her book, lighting an occasional cigarette, mechanically tipping back her coffee cup, and hoping for the time to pass a little faster. Needless to say, dawn will not be here for hours.

She breaks off her reading and looks outside. From this second-story window she can look down on the busy street. Even at a time like this, the street is bright enough and filled with people coming and going—people with places to go and people with no place to go; people with a purpose and people with no purpose; people trying to hold time back and people trying to urge it forward. After a long, steady look at this jumbled street scene, she holds her breath for a moment and turns her eyes once again toward her book. She reaches for her coffee cup. Puffed no more than two or three times, her cigarette turns into a perfectly formed column of ash in the ashtray.

(Words by Haruki Murakami, photo by Kalua k Krynska)

Halloween Parade

Theres a down town fairy singing out proud mary As she cruises christopher street And some southern queen is acting loud and mean Where the docks and the badlands meet This halloween is something to be sure Especially to be here without you Theres a greta garbo and an alfred hitchcock And some black jamaican stud Theres five cinderellas and some leather drags I almost fell into my mug Theres a crawford, davis and a tacky cary grant And some homeboys lookin for trouble down here from the bronx But there aint no hairy and no virgin mary You wont hear those voices again And johnny rio and rotten rita You'll never see those faces again This halloween is something to be sure Especially to be here without you Theres the born again losers and the lavender boozers And some crack team from washington heights The boys from avenue b and the girls from avenue d A tinkerbell in tights This celebration somehow get me down Especially when I see youre not around Theres no peter pedantic saying things romantic In latin, greek or spic Theres no three bananas or brandy alexander Dishing all their tricks Its a different feeling that I have today Especially when I know youve gone away Theres a girl from soho with a teeshirt saying I blow She's with the jive five 2 plus 3 And the girls for pay dates are giving cut rates Or else doing it for free The past keeps knock, knock, knocking on my doorAnd I dont want to hear it anymore No consolations please for feelin funkyI got to get my head above my knees

But it makes me mad and mad makes me sad And then I start to freeze In the back of my mind I was afraid it might be true In the back of my mind I was afraid that they meant you

The halloween parade At the halloween parade

See you next year, at the halloween parade

(Words by Lou Reed, photo by bugged out cars @flickr)