The coming New York Wheel, which is scheduled to launch on the New York Harbor in May, 2016, will dwarf both the famous London Eye and the Singapore Flyer.
The 625-foot tall Ferris wheel, which will be situated near the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, is expected to attract up to 4.5 million visitors each year for a 38-minute thrill ride.
Former shoe salesperson and current Google staffer Bri Hand created this wonderful, whimsical tourism ad campaign inviting extra-terrestrial travelers to drop by and visit Earth. The campaign consists of audio broadcasts and print advertizing that extolls the virtues that make our planet worth a visit, such as gravity, conviviality, science, humanity and electricity. I hope that somebody out there is paying attention.
The very imaginative folks at designhype have created a cleverly designed line of urban street and subway maps embossed on metal cuff bracelets. Metro Cuffs currently cover New York City, London, Paris, Berlin, Milan, and Chicago. The next release in the series is Brooklyn. I want to see how they fit the Moscow metro system on one bracelet. You can purchase Metro Cuffs here.
This interesting infographic is from the folks at Write Your Novel, Now ! , which is an online writing coaching service (paid of course). The graphic is packed with lots of timely information about the recent growth in e-book publishing markets around the world. I have some doubts about the figures on the global e-book market. Do they make any sense? Did 4,000 e-book titles really generate $1.8 billion in Brazil. And did the UK actually produce one million e-book titles? But all in all, it’s worth a look.
TED-prize-winning French street artist JR is bringing his widely popular Inside Out Project to Times Square, New York City starting tomorrow. The public participation art project invites folks to take a self-portrait in a customized photo booth. The 3 foot by 4 foot B & W photo posters will be either displayed in Times Square or sent home with the sitter to be displayed in their home town.
Inside Out New York City will coincide with the world premiere of the documentary film Inside Out: The People’s Art Project at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival. The film, which will also be shown on HBO in the U.S., covers the project’s visits to Israel, Palestine, France, Switzerland, Abu Dhabi and China, where 70,000 photo posters were taken.
The project’s photo booth truck will be in Times Square until May 10th, when it will then travel to the city’s other four boroughs.
You can discover more about the Times Square part of the project here and follow the ongoing events on Facebook.
Before he set out for the U.S. to promote his ongoing Inside Out Project, French street artist JR recently visited Berlin where he completed several large-scale new works. His Wrinkles of the City project explores both aging of individual Berlin residents and the transformation of the city over the past decades.
Mexico City architects Arquitectura 911sc and Fernanda Canales have brilliantly surrounded a century-old two-story, brick and stucco house with a concrete and glass frame creating a 21st century library and cultural center.
Situated in the southern district of Coyocán, the Elena Garro Center even includes the existing trees and landscaping from the old property into the complex.
According to the architects, ” The project is the idea of highlighting the existing house and making an ‘open library space. Thus, a transparent block draws books forward into the street and at the same time incorporates the trees inside.”
photos ©Sandra Pereznieto
The Last Bookshop is a charming short film that imagines a future time when physical books have disappeared. One day, a young boy’s digital entertainment fails, so he decides to explore abandoned areas of his town. On his wanderings, he finds the last standing bookshop. Inside, an old shop owner has been waiting twenty-five years for a customer.
This wonderful film was written and co-directed by Richard Dadd, and stars Alfred Hoffman as the shopkeeper and Joe Holgate as the boy.
It’s always difficult to find the right words to respond to brutal, senseless terror attacks, but Boston author Dennis Lehane got it just right on his Facebook page:
“Every thought and every prayer goes out to the victims and their families and loved ones. What a senseless act of waste and violence…. It’s hard to imagine any people more inspiring than all those people who dashed across Boylston Street within seconds of the first explosion, and rushed to the aid of the injured. Didn’t give their own safety a thought. Made me proud to be a member of the human race, which I think was the exact opposite of the effect the bomber was hoping for…. “When I watch the footage of the first explosion, I look at the Boston Public Library Main Branch across the street, and I think no matter who they turn out to be–Islamic jihadists, home grown militia, neo-Nazis, something else–what really scares them, what they truly hate, is the access to knowledge that building exemplifies…. So proud to be a Bostonian tonight. So brokenhearted to be one, too.”
Paris police have begun patrolling the Louvre in force following a day-long walk-out by museum staff in protest of aggressive gangs of violent pickpockets. Directeur de l’Office de Tourisme de Paris Paul Roll responded to concerns about museum visitor safety by admitting that the Louvre in particular has been targeted by organized gangs because it is a private institution without regular police security inside.
Museum workers have complained that the groups of pickpockets that have invaded the Louvre and other tourist attractions have become more violent during the past year, even attacking museum guards and other employees. Museum union officials blame authorities for not acting more assertively against these organized gangs.
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