h a l f b a k e r yA dish best served not.
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There are many, many travel guides that feature the
picturesque and happy parts of cities - parks awash with
flowers, smiling shoppers in clean cafe-filled streets, sunsets
over spectacular skylines.
The "The Ugly Parts Of" series is very similar, but the
opposite.
Each finely crafted hardback
volume will feature
photographs of
the truly crappy bits of the city in question, with captions.
Vast traffic jams
on a grey rainy Tuesday rush hour; the hideous Travelodge
that
should never have got planning consent; a moodily-lit black-
and-white close-up of the kicked-in, duct-taped glass panel
in
the door of the betting shop; a swirl of fast-food wrappers
driven by gusty winds... you get the idea.
In part, the books would seek to treat these Ugly Parts as
photographic challenges, aiming to render each eyesore as a
perfect visual poem. Mainly, though, they would just draw
attention to the crappy bits of Cambridge, Edinburgh,
Lewes...
A prospective tourist buying the relevant Ugly Parts book
will
either find beauty in the ugly bits, or will be pleasantly
surprised if they find any non-ugly bits in the city they're
visiting.
Like this, but a travel guide
https://www.amazon....-Live/dp/0752215825
[hippo, Oct 04 2019]
[link]
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The crappy bits of Edinburgh are all the bits of Edinburgh. |
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Over the last while I have been spending more time in the
centres of various English and Scottish cities and, revolting
aberrations such as Aberdeen aside, I have come to think
that there is
very little difference between any of them. Yes, the river
might be in a different place, and this one or that one
might have a volcanic plug in it but when you boil the piss
right down, what you have is a scattering of Victoriana,
some bus stops, eight or nine Wetherspoons and a
pedestrianised zone. So, I think that the Ugly Parts series
should be on a country by country basis. I'd hope that the
crappy bits of Basse-Terre would look a bit different to
those of Cardiff. |
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// Each ... hardback volume // |
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<Envisions the "London" edition being delivered Britannica-style, in many volumes, on a series of pallets unloaded from an articulated truck/> |
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You probably need to go to Blu-Ray ... |
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//I think that the Ugly Parts series should be on a country by
country basis.// |
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Are you insane? Think of the revenue you'd be missing
compared to a city-by-city series. |
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Monetizing the narcissism of small differences, ok. I can get
on board with that. |
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Great idea, that's why there are several books in
existence that only show the crappier side of most
places, and numerous photographers use this as an
ongoing theme to their work. (myself included) I
only ever take pics of the most bland, or dismal
places. Atlantic Ave Brooklyn is a particular
favourite and never fails to impress with its
dystopian vistas. |
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Naples is truly awful and even has a shanty-town. |
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Vista was bad enough, windows 8 was a bag of nails ... |
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//Atlantic Ave Brooklyn is a particular favourite and never
fails to impress with its dystopian vistas.// How can you
possibly say that about Atlantic Avenue? It's got all those half-
timbered buildings that overhang, red clay tiles interspersed
with thatch and slate, a duck pond full of happy overfed
ducks, the ruins of a castle, markets three days a week in the
square by the town hall - I can't think of a single thing not to
like about it. Sometimes I just don't understand you. |
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No, wait, I was thinking of Saffron Walden. |
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// Naples is truly awful and even has a shanty-town // |
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Look on the bright side; it's intrinsically time-limited. The next Plinian eruption will do more urban redevelopment in a few hours than the government has managed since 1945 ... |
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May we ask, is your species secretly running an International Urban Stupidity competition ? |
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San Francisco, Tokyo; built in top of major tectonic faults.
Naples; built right next to a notoriously active and destructive volcano.
New Orleans, London, Amsterdam; below sea level, and still sinking.
Lisbon; just waiting for the next tsunami from the offshore fault
Paris; built in france.
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Wouldn't it be more sensible (although admittedly less entertaining) to have a "Build A Major City In A Rational Location" competition ? |
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How can London be dry if it both is below sea level and has
a river running through it connected to the ocean? |
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// How can London be dry [...] // |
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The manic energy of cockneys and several immigrant
communities is sufficient to fool the Thames water into flowing
uphill for the last ten miles and, by the time it realises it's been
cheated out of several MJ/K of entropy, it's back in the North
Sea and it's too late to argue about it. |
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Sea level is usually given as "mean" to smooth out small short-term cyclical variations caused by waves, tides, and interglacials. |
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