Cimetière Père-Lachaise is on everyone’s top ten lists of Paris attractions. Tourist flock to see the stunning funereal architecture, while art and music lovers make solemn pilgrimages to the graves of Chopin, Bizet, Piaf, Proust, Balzac, Delacroix, Oscar Wilde, and of course the great Jim Morrison. The marvelous time-lapse video below was directed by Mathieu Stern.
The Los Angeles-based screen writer and street artist known as WRDSMTH has been dropping thought-provoking pieces all around Melbourne, Australia. The well crafted works combine stenciled typewriters with cleverly worded paste-up.
Last weekend, hundreds of moronic tourists invaded Playa Ostional near Sarara, Costa Rica. They came to “observe” the annual mass migration of sea turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs. Brought to the national wildlife refuge by paid tour guides, the thoughtless mob swarmed the beach, disturbing the turtles and disrupting their nesting. Five park rangers from the Refugio Camaronal tried to move the crowd back off of the beach to no avail. The gormless cretins took selfies, turned over turtles, and even put children on to the backs of the struggling animals.
Many years ago, when I lived in South Florida just a few blocks from the beach, local residents would guard the shore each year when the turtles returned to lay their eggs. And after the turtles completed nesting and returned to the ocean, volunteers protected the nests with fences and signs. When the babies hatched, we rushed to the beach to help them into the surf and to protect them from sea gulls. Has the world changed that much ?
I love a good map, especially a cleverly designed useful transit network map. And, of course one of my favorites is the Harry Beck design classic London Tube map, with its clear cartography, straight lines and 45-degree rounded corners. But now it appears that Transport for London has been hiding a secret version of the tube map that shows a more real world version of the system.
The TfL London Connections Map, which wasn’t available until a Freedom of Information request, reveals the network overlaying main roads, rivers, parks, and boroughs. This version makes it much easier for visitors to London to estimate distances to sights and journey lengths. You can explore—and download—an excellent pdf version of the “secret” map at this website.
Some of us are well and truly over the artisanal everything movement. If that includes you, please enjoy this hilarious little gem from Vancouver, BC.
Many years ago, while visiting the ancient walled town of Óbidos on the central coast of Portugal I was intrigued by a padlocked church in the heart of the old Roman town. Being the nosy tourist that I am, I managed to get a peek inside of the rundown building set in the town walls. It was clear that the church had been abandoned decades, even centuries before, but no one that I asked could explain why it was left in such a sad state. So, I was pleased to recently discover that the Igreja de São Tiago has been restored and turned into a stunningly beautiful bookstore.
The Livraria de Santiago, which was created out of the 18th century church, is run by the management of Lisbon’s wonderful Ler Devagar bookstore. Since its opening two years ago, the bookshop has turned Óbidos into a thriving literary destination, with multiple booksellers, a new museum, and even an annual international book festival each summer.
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If you are easily offended by salty language, please do not watch this video. But if you’re up for a good laugh, enjoy. One benefit of international travel is not understanding when you’re being insulted by a local. Although, I usually get the drift.
The always cutting-edge French multimedia artist Julien Nonnon has created a marvelous new video-mapping street show in Paris. Called “Safari Urbain”, the pop-up projections of animals dressed as hipster poseurs is a wonderful, tongue in cheek commentary on both the fashion scene and human conformity. You can follow the project through an interactive map on Nonnon’s website.
