This Monday, Bill Murray popped-up at SXSW in Austin, Texas for an impromptu street poetry reading of the great Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s short work “Dog”. The reading was not spontaneous, but part of a national promotional campaign for director Wes Anderson’s new animated film Isle of Dogs. Still, Bill fucking Murray reading Ferlinghetti, how cool is that.
The dog trots freely in the street
and sees reality
and the things he sees
are bigger than himself
and the things he sees
are his reality
Drunks in doorways
Moons on trees
The dog trots freely thru the street
and the things he sees
are smaller than himself
Fish on newsprint
Ants in holes
Chickens in Chinatown windows
their heads a block away
The dog trots freely in the street
and the things he smells
smell something like himself
The dog trots freely in the street
past puddles and babies
cats and cigars
poolrooms and policemen
He doesn’t hate cops
He merely has no use for them
and he goes past them
and past the dead cows hung up whole
in front of the San Francisco Meat Market
He would rather eat a tender cow
than a tough policeman
though either might do
And he goes past the Romeo Ravioli Factory
and past Coit’s Tower
and past Congressman Doyle
He’s afraid of Coit’s Tower
but he’s not afraid of Congressman Doyle
although what he hears is very discouraging
very depressing
very absurd
to a sad young dog like himself
to a serious dog like himself
But he has his own free world to live in
His own fleas to eat
He will not be muzzled
Congressman Doyle is just another
fire hydrant
to him
The dog trots freely in the street
and has his own dog’s life to live
and to think about
and to reflect upon
touching and tasting and testing everything
investigating everything
without benefit of perjury
a real realist
with a real tale to tell
and a real tail to tell it with
a real live
barking
democratic dog
engaged in real
free enterprise
with something to say
about ontology
something to say
about reality
and how to see it
and how to hear it
with his head cocked sideways
at streetcorners
as if he is just about to have
his picture taken
for Victor Records
listening for
His Master’s Voice
and looking
like a living questionmark
into the
great gramaphone
of puzzling existence
with its wondrous hollow horn
which always seems
just about to spout forth
some Victorious answer
to everything
It seems that Banksy is not done with NYC yet. This weekend more works attributed to the notorious British street artist appeared in Manhattan and in the Borough of Brooklyn. “Free Zehra Dogan” surfaced on the famous Bowery art wall to raise awareness about the plight of the imprisoned Turkish-Kurdish journalist who was jailed for adding images of Turkish flags to a painting of the destroyed Kurdish city of Nasyabin. Banksy’s tribute depicts hash marks representing the 272 days that she’s been jailed. At night, the wall at Houston Street and the Bowery, also has a projection of the painting that got Dogan her prison sentence.
Another purported Banksy work surfaced in Midwood, Brooklyn showing a suited business type cracking a whip over a group of escaping people. The “whip” in the mural looks like a graph from a business graph.
Look out Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island, Banksy may be heading your way this week.
Chinese bookstore chain Xinhua has opened the nation’s first employee-less, 24-hour bookstore, in Tongzhou, a district in southeast Beijing, and plans to open another 19 similar stores in the city before the end of the year. The bookshops, which are part of the “Xinhua Lifestyle Store” brand, will be placed close to universities, government offices and shopping malls.
To access the fully automated bookshops customers must register with their real names through WeChat, a messaging and social media app developed by Chinese software company Tencent, and also have their faces scanned before entering the store. Instead of having staff members in place to recommend books, the stores will offer “precise and humanized” book suggestions based on customers’ purchasing history and also have a robot consultant on hand.
photos : © China Daily
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, illustrator Rockwell Kent
Love him or hate him, the world’s most notorious street artist always manages to keep his brand alive with timely pieces. Banksy is apparently back in New York City this week with his trademark Rat. The famous rodent is now adorning a clock face on a former bank building at 14th street and 6th avenue in Manhattan. But catch it while you can because the entire structure is due for demolition any day now.
As a life-long coffee addict and devoted aficianado, I was thrilled to get turned-on to a periodical that is “about coffee, the people who drink it, and the cities they inhabit.” Drift magazine is all about the joys of wandering great cities, learning about the local cultures, and using coffee to chart the urban geography of places. Who could ask for more?
The New York City-based, coffee-centric, travel magazine comes out twice annually in January and September. You can find it in many bookstores, or you can subscribe online right here.
The most recent issue, Volume 6, focuses exclusively on Mexico City. Previous versions have profiled coffee culture in Stockholm, Havana, Tokyo, New York City, and Melbourne.
I love a clever travel promotional campaign or film. Travel Oregon has made a wonderful anime-style promotional video called “Only Slightly Exaggerated” for their newest campaign. The short was created by Psyops and Sun Creature Studio with music by the Oregon Symphony. The animation shows typical Oregon recreational activities, such as white-water rafting, mountain biking, ballooning, boating, and riding giant rabbits through tulip fields. I dare you not to smile.
The last few times that I’ve been in Paris I’ve been disappointed to find that the traditional bouquinistes or booksellers along the Seine have been slowly replaced by vendors of tourist tat. This photo from 1931 by Jean Pierre Yves Petit (aka Yvon) is a souvenir of that lost world of book selling in Europe.
The Folio Society, 2017, Illustrations by Chris Skinner and Andrew Archer
Travel Between The Pages 