The always amusing UK-based American artist Doug Fishbone continues to spread joy while tackling weighty issues. His ever popular installation Leisure Land Golf, which premiered at the 2015 Venice Biennale, is now showing at the York Gallery in York.
The fully-playable show is a cross between a serious art installation and a functioning mini-golf course. Each of the holes was created by a different artist and they all address grave issues, such as racism, climate change, rampant consumerism, and political oppression.
I’m sharing this story today because it is my late brother Steve’s birthday. A world traveler and explorer long before self-promoting travel bloggers, digital nomads and Instagram poseurs began to wring the joy out of wanderlust with their bourgeois drivel. During one of his sojourns in Africa, he realized that the continent lacked miniature golf courses and he began scheming to some day build some. Tragically, he was killed before he could make it happen. But, I know that he would have loved Doug Fishbone’s Leisure Land Golf.
The UK travel search web site Just The Flight figured out how much a flyer would have to spend on snacks and refreshments to make up the difference between economy and business class airfare. NB: 1 £ = $1.29
The floating international street art festival known as POW! WOW! has recently wrapped up a visit to Israel and Jordan. The always exciting collaborative effort is documented in the entertaining video below from director Andrew Tran.
The Village Voice, New York City’s iconic alternative weekly newspaper, has announced the end of its print publication. Co-founded by writer Norman Mailer in 1955, the Pulitzer Prize winning free paper is shifting to a completely digital platform. The paper has long been a literal voice for oppressed communities and for progressive causes, both locally and nationally, as well as a home for arts and culture coverage. As someone who has been a life-long reader, I’ll miss it.
I ran across the gif above on a book blog and was skeptical when it was described as a clip of Humphrey Bogart on the set of Howard Hawks’ 1946 film noir classic The Big Sleep. With just a little sleuthing, I found that it was actually pulled from the pre-release trailer for the film. Still, how very meta.
Historian and self-taught photographer John Margolies spent the last three decades of the 20th century wandering the back roads, small towns, and old highways of the U.S. capturing images of a disappearing culture. His saturated Kodachrome images of kitsch signage, architecture, folk art, and retail spaces document a nation before it was buried in an avalanche of cookie-cutter corporate blandness.
The U.S. Library of Congress has digitized nearly 12,000 of Margolies’ wonderful images and has made the collection available online. Before his death, the photographer graciously chose to place most of his work in the public domain.
Like many of my 20th century cohort, I miss the marvelously cheesy architecture of mini-golf courses, motels, service stations, drive-in restaurants, and roadside tourist attractions. I remember passing the top sign in the top photo when I lived in Florida in the 1980s.
Philly locals have been in on the Fishtown secret for years, but tourists are just discovering the up-and-coming riverfront district. With hot new restaurants, hip music venues, art spaces, brewpubs, fab coffeehouses, dozens of bars, and the world’s first pizza museum, Fishtown has something for every taste.
Recently, the local community group Visual Urban Renewal & Transformation (V.U.R.T) commissioned a mural to greet visitors to the neighborhood. The artwork was designed by painter/tattoo artist Evan Lovett in collaboration with local street artist Glossblack.
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