h/t Grant Snider
Like many folks, I’ve had to forego any travel plans this summer and kickback at home for the duration of the pandemic. That doesn’t mean that I’ve not indulged my travel dreams on lockdown. If you visit TBTP on a regular basis, you are aware that my travel itineraries always include local coffee roasteries and coffee shops wherever I go. Although it’s been a minute since I’ve been in Copenhagen, it’s one of my favorite Nordic cities. So, I was intrigued to learn about the city’s fine roaster Coffee Collective’s brilliant new shop.
Housed in a 19th century baroque phonebooth Coffee Collective has created a miniature specialty coffee shop.These telefonkiosken were built between 1896 and 1910. They were designed by architect Fritz Koch to house the first public telephones. An operator would run the booth and for 10 Danish Øre (1 Øre is 0.01 kroner) you could make a call. They were open from 7:00 in the morning to 11:00 in the evening. In 1896 four of them were put up and seven more followed. The booths were an excellent representation of the national romanticism of that time, with its attention to crafted details.
They are hexagon shaped, nine meters tall with a copper roof and granite base. There’s wood carvings with different motifs and at the very top a clock to show the time. The Coffee Collective’s newly renovated kiosk Convenient is located right next to Denmark’s busiest station, Nørreport.
I know where my first stop will be on my next visit to Copenhagen.
A new book called Banksy: You Are An Acceptable Level of Threat and if You Were Not You Would Know About has just been published. The book features a huge collection of photos highlighting some of the most iconic works by the secretive street artist. From his early days tagging graffiti in Bristol in the 1990s to his more recent efforts, the new book chronicles Banksy’s celebrated street art career.
The book also covers Banksy‘s self-destructing Love is in the Bin artwork which Sotheby’s described as “the first artwork in history to have been created live during an auction.” It also has images of my favorite, his monumental Dismaland show, paintings and mixed-media sculptures from The Walled Off Hotel, Basquiat-inspired artworks on the walls of the Barbican, as well as new works from around the world.
Accompanying text provides descriptions to assist readers in understanding the context behind the artworks. Banksy: You Are An Acceptable Level of Threat and if You Were Not You Would Know looks like a must read for street art fans.
After many delays, New York City’s historic Strand Bookstore has opened its Upper West Side location at 450 Columbus Avenue, between 81st and 82nd Streets in Manhattan. The store features a combination of new, used and rare books of all genres, as well as a children’s section in the basement. Also, through July 31st, they’ll be offering shoppers a free branded tote bag with purchases of $75 or more
The Strand’s new Upper West Side space was previously occupied by Book Culture, which closed earlier this year.
Learn more: www.strandbooks.com
“Photograph of a Gathering of People Waving”
by
Clarence Major
based on an old photograph bought in a
shop at Half Moon Bay, summer, 1999
No sound, the whole thing.
Unknown folk. People waving from a hillside of ripple grass
to people below in an ongoing meadow.
Side rows of trees waving in a tide of wind,
and because what is moving is not moving,
you catch a state of stasis.
Opposite of this inactivity
you imagine distant music and buzzing and crickets
and that special hot smell of summer.
To the garden past the Bay to the meadow,
cliff sheltered with low clouds, offset by nodding thistle.
Tatter-wort and Stinking Tommy along footpath
worn down by locals. But who and why?
In the photograph itself you’re now looking the other way
to unknown clusters of houses.
Where forces are balanced to near perfection.
Who could live
in such a great swollen silence and solitude?
You hear church bells
from Our Lady’s Tears breaking that silence nicely
but just in the right way so silence continues
as though nothing else matters day after day.
And anyway, each face seems so familiar.
What do you do when you wave back?
You wave vigorously.
You remember your own meadow,
your cliffside and town,
photographs forgotten,
the halfhearted motion of your hand,
your grandmother’s church-folk
gathering on a Sunday afternoon in saintly quietness.
You name the people
whose names are not written on the back.
You forgive them for wrapping themselves in silence.
You enter house after house and open top-floor windows
and you wave down to future generations like this.
These days I spend an inordinate amount of time on my coffee roasting obsession. When I’m not researching green beans to buy, I’m looking for books and articles on coffee in general. I recently stumbled on this unusual artist book about coffee. Florida artist and rapper Jon “Ditty” Didier’s artist book “Cocaine for the American Ambition: A Coffee Table Pamphlet” is a social commentary of America’s dependency on coffee. The artist book consists of images created with traditional and digital printmaking and text from an original rap song written by the artist. An accompanying CD recording of the song performed by Jon Ditty is included.
The NYC-based street artist known as “Almost Over Keep Smiling” gave a minor update to slightly reinterpret this 19th century warning poster telling anybody who was Black in a “free” state like New York to stay away from the police because the federal government had passed a law empowering people to capture them and return them to slavery.
The Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers.
The Act was one of the most controversial elements of the 1850. It required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate. Abolitionists nicknamed it the “Bloodhound Bill,” for the dogs that were used to track down runaway slaves. The Act contributed to the growing polarization of the country over the issue of slavery, and is considered one of the causes of the Civil War.
The Japanese tech start-up Donut Robotics has upped the game for the face mask by creating a “smart” version capable of translating and transmitting messages from Japanese into eight other languages. The “c-mask” (made from plastic and worn over a regular cloth mask) connects to an app on your phone or tablet “that can transcribe speech into text messages, make calls, or amplify the mask wearer’s voice.” Although it has been in development for quite some time, the smart mask itself was invented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As Donut Robotics chief executive Taisuke Ono says, they have used their robot technology “to create a product that responds to how the coronavirus has reshaped society.” The masks will sell for around $40 each and should start shipping in Japan by September, with other countries to follow. Read more at Reuters.
The New York Times magazine recently published a Decameron for our plague times. The 29 free short stories were written by some of today’s most acclaimed writers. The project editor wrote:
Inspired by Giovanni Boccaccio’s “The Decameron,” a 14th-century collection of tales told by a group of 10 characters taking shelter in an Italian villa during the Black Plague, this [collection] features stories from Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell, Téa Obreht, Karen Russell, Tommy Orange, Yiyun Li and others. The so-called Decameron Project is the first time in the magazine’s modern history that an entire issue is devoted to new fiction.
You can read the stories online here. And also listen to recordings of two stories read aloud by Tommy Orange and Edwidge Danticat here.
Travel Between The Pages 