I came across 'Walking off the Big Apple' by complete chance, as one does on the internet, some years ago searching for something else. From then on it was a delight to turn away from 'wars and the rumours of wars' to read something gracious, enthusiastic, informed and spiritually generous once in a while. The site was run (single handedly at that) by Teri Tynes, a New Yorker from Texas.
Subtitled 'A strollers guide to New York City', Tynes recorded her walks around Manhattan Island (and occasionally beyond), illustrated with her own superb photographs, the sheer delight city life could bring to the observant and curious mind. However, 'All life is here' wouldn't be true of 'Walking ...'. Tynes left out the soiled and gruesome to elevate her gaze just so far, far enough. Of smart restaurants and snob pleasures there were few mentions, if only to highlight the self imposed chasm that separates those whose money insulates them from experience. Her aspiration was to re-invent the 19th century flanneur, the ironic, knowledgeable and essentially sympathetic wanderer, able to delight in all the inconsequential details of modern urban life; for most of us on this planet now, this is life. She succeeded.
Her energy was prodigious; the site developed and grew in scope; the Internet add-ons (that defeat me) she had a plenty; slideshows and maps, calendars of forthcoming art exhibitions and film reviews (Tynes is an accomplished film critic); historical detail and observations on architecture and eating out; all this combined to provide a user's guide to New York City like nothing else I have seen, since it was essentially the unique product of a single mind, a particularly fine one. She even found time to encourage your humble servant.
Earlier this year the steady steam of postings declined and then halted. Now Ms Tynes has issued a post on the site to announce her retirement. Many followers have added their thoughts to her comments thread, thanking her, regretting the passing of what was, for many, an essential recreational delight. The news came with evident sadness. Reflecting on this news afterwards, I was reminded of some lines by Keith Douglas (1920-44) –
the specimens, the lilies of ambition
still spring in their climate, still unpicked:
but time, time is all I lacked
to find them, as the great collectors before me.
But she had found much, shared much. Tynes' achievement is and remains wonderful, an exemplar. My own sadness is eased by the knowledge that much of what she wrote and photographed will remain up on the Internet. Who knows someone might produce a e-book of her postings. One thing is for certain, Teri Tyne's achievement will not be soon matched nor forgot.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Ouseburn 2013: Part the Second
After a pause, I'll continue ...
Actually, my computer died and I had to bury it and get another. So I will hasten to conclude this two parter with as few words of delay as possible.
From this point of my walk I might as well been in a great forest. Huge trees above me on the bank to my right stretched branches out overhead, creating deep shade on what was the end of another brilliant day in this Summer of 2013. The second slide in the show is of a Trifid-like Giant Hogweed lingering menacingly in the shade, taken from a safe distance. One to keep an eye on ...
My walk took me along the road past the allotments ranged over a flat land adjacent to the burn; the road can be busy and sometimes very unsafe because of the lack of a proper footpath and some blind bends. It serves the emergency services well, apparently, and that has meant little can be done to divert or slow traffic down. Thankfully, the majority of vehicles using this route are driven with consideration for other road users, though, evenso, I would have liked to have seen some 'rumble strips' – raised speed bumps of a kind – just as a precautionary warning. Not that we are going to get them. Nor the other brilliant idea put forward at a public meeting by a woman who suggested decorative gates as a visual signal that this was a special road.
It is still special for all that.
My walk ended by going up onto the flyover that carries traffic through Cradlewell onwards to the junction with the Coast Road. When this flyover was built back in the last years of the past century people (young, fit people) climbed into trees to stop felling operations and to protest the intrusion of a new dual carriageway road through this idyllic dene. They were hauled out of their perches by bailiffs recruited from the climbing fraternity. But the point was made and more time and trouble spent on landscaping and some architectural details than might have once been the case. (I still feel the portico entrances to the short tunnel linking the flyover to the Cradlewell could have been more sensitively designed and built). A benefit of the flyover has been to make the dene below so much quieter and safer to walk. One local ecologist spoke of his delight in seeing fewer dead creatures, killed by traffic, that were a sad feature of the old road.
What we have now is a true 'green lung' and animals and birds can thrive here in peace as I hope these photographs show. But the price of this enjoyment is vigilance.
Monday, August 5, 2013
Ouseburn 2013
A spell of belting good weather got me out with my camera one evening late last month. Another long planned walk along the Ouseburn up stream from the culvert at Sandyford to the Coast Road flyover just before Jesmond Dene Park.
The first part in photographic terms is posted here –
As I began my 'tour' I ran into two local 'good old boys' who consented to have their photograph taken for this blog. I'm glad I stopped to chat. I learned a lot.
They had seen both Kingfishers and Dippers this year, as recently as a few days before. Sadly they reported that one young Kingfisher, obviously from a nest nearby, had come to grief by flying into a window pane. However, the fact that these 'exotics' still use the river (I myself have not been so lucky to see them this year) is good news indeed.
One of my new found friends showed me where, as a child, he had climbed across an old iron bridge over the Ouseburn (now replaced by a stone one) and how, if one looked carefully, the site of an old 19th century grinding mill could be found in the woods ... I'll save that story for another post.
I was amazed (as many friends have been) by the extravagance of the foliage and flowers now following our 'start stop start' Spring. Parts of the Ouseburn gorge look like a jungle and only shafts of sunlight filter down to sparkle on the thin flow of water that the Ouseburn can manage after weeks of sunshine. Many woodland birds are still calling high in the treetops above. My two new pals told me a heron, a young one they thought, had clumsily landed in the burn only to be chivvied by the resident crow's, none too pleased to see it arrive in their patch. A heron would look like a Pterodactyl in such a confined space...
The birds I could hear were Chaffinches, Chiff Chaffs, Wrens and perhaps a Wood or Garden Warbler – a clear, liquid, lovely song. It is as if having despaired of the cold static days in May they have extended their breeding season to cash in on these extended, hot, days of High Summer.
I have noticed before how easily one looses any sense of being within a few hundred yards of a crowded, busy city, down here besides the Ouseburn. Huge plants have sprung up; spreading leaves of umbelliferas like oversized rhubarb packed alongside the stream. I spotted a Giant Hogweed poised and slightly menacing in the shade of a grove. Every part of this plant is bad news to touch; it's sap is stinging and burns human skin, requiring a visit to the hospital. It might easily have been the inspiration of a science fiction writer.
Despite the heat of another hot day making itself felt even under these massive trees along Ouseburn 'Road' (no where wide enough for all the vehicles that come along; happily, most behave impeccably and slow for other road users), cyclists were out in force and the scent of barbecues was on the breeze.
To be continued.
The first part in photographic terms is posted here –
As I began my 'tour' I ran into two local 'good old boys' who consented to have their photograph taken for this blog. I'm glad I stopped to chat. I learned a lot.
They had seen both Kingfishers and Dippers this year, as recently as a few days before. Sadly they reported that one young Kingfisher, obviously from a nest nearby, had come to grief by flying into a window pane. However, the fact that these 'exotics' still use the river (I myself have not been so lucky to see them this year) is good news indeed.
One of my new found friends showed me where, as a child, he had climbed across an old iron bridge over the Ouseburn (now replaced by a stone one) and how, if one looked carefully, the site of an old 19th century grinding mill could be found in the woods ... I'll save that story for another post.
The Woodlanders.
I was amazed (as many friends have been) by the extravagance of the foliage and flowers now following our 'start stop start' Spring. Parts of the Ouseburn gorge look like a jungle and only shafts of sunlight filter down to sparkle on the thin flow of water that the Ouseburn can manage after weeks of sunshine. Many woodland birds are still calling high in the treetops above. My two new pals told me a heron, a young one they thought, had clumsily landed in the burn only to be chivvied by the resident crow's, none too pleased to see it arrive in their patch. A heron would look like a Pterodactyl in such a confined space...
The birds I could hear were Chaffinches, Chiff Chaffs, Wrens and perhaps a Wood or Garden Warbler – a clear, liquid, lovely song. It is as if having despaired of the cold static days in May they have extended their breeding season to cash in on these extended, hot, days of High Summer.
I have noticed before how easily one looses any sense of being within a few hundred yards of a crowded, busy city, down here besides the Ouseburn. Huge plants have sprung up; spreading leaves of umbelliferas like oversized rhubarb packed alongside the stream. I spotted a Giant Hogweed poised and slightly menacing in the shade of a grove. Every part of this plant is bad news to touch; it's sap is stinging and burns human skin, requiring a visit to the hospital. It might easily have been the inspiration of a science fiction writer.
Despite the heat of another hot day making itself felt even under these massive trees along Ouseburn 'Road' (no where wide enough for all the vehicles that come along; happily, most behave impeccably and slow for other road users), cyclists were out in force and the scent of barbecues was on the breeze.
To be continued.
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Amor by Derlon
Amor ... Love.
That I got fairly quickly. I even tumbled after a while to the subject in hand; Adam and Eve and the Fall from the Garden of Eden. However, this is no lamentation when applied to a fine mural that's gone on to a specially created site next to the Byker Bridges.
The next time I wandered down the mural was completed and signed. I take the artist's name from his signature.
Sunshine, days of it and the wonderful sense of the transformation of space that art brings.
What's wrong about that exactly?
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Portland Road Revisited
This is turning out to be the kind of summer we all felt we would never see again. It may only last a week but while it lasts it's welcome.
Much has happened around the piece of open space I call 'Battlefield' this past year. Another vast new Hall of Residence has reached the point where we can see it almost in it's finished form. Whatever my reservations (and I have some) these have altered the perception of this part of Portland Road.
A photographic album of a stroll in the sunshine (external link) –
Builders Metnor were specialists in warehouse construction; they were the proposed builders for seven large blocks to be constructed over the site of the former paint factory and their public relations advisers held a public preview of the plans for local residents, attended by a befuddled Anton in the early stages of influenza. I did not appreciate having 'Battlefield' open space described to me by a P.R. man present as "threatening". Our meeting did not get off to a happy start. In fairness, the two completed blocks are not as bad as I once feared. True, they may not look quite so trendy after a few years wear and tear, but overall I think they have added rather than detracted from what was here previously.
Something I (and many more before me) have noted is the way a new building articulates the other, pre-existing buildings around it. This effect can sometimes be profound. On one hand one has the design of the new building and that may or may not be successful; yet, on the other, there is also the visual impact the building has upon it's neighbours. The most striking example I have ever seen of this effect is Daniel Libeskind's extension to the Royal Toronto Museum, Toronto. A fairly lacklustre street was transformed by Libeskind's inspired intervention. A case of two plus two makes five if ever I saw one.
As I strolled up the street past the pioneering and very successful Biscuit Factory Arts building, I came across a mural being painted on newly erected panels across the front of an old abandoned premises expressly for the purpose. I met the artist also, taking a break from his efforts in the shelter of a wall. This encounter will be a separate post to follow. I hope it demonstrates the effectiveness of engaging with the arts in stimulating regeneration, a fact sadly lost on many in positions of influence if not direct power.
Newcastle is a city under going transformation. Several large bilding projects are underway. (Tell that to motorists caught up around the Central Station!) In Shieldfield another site is being developed where a gravel company previously had works over looking the Byker road and rail bridges. The site always looked ripe for re-development.
Work on the paint factory site (which is where I came in) seems permanently to have stalled. Difficulties with the sites historic pollution by heavy metals and the collapse of the overseas student bubble, seems to have put paid to the latest of three schemes to develop this site since I took note. Battlefield itself looks better than ever.
Oxford ragwort Senecio squalidus
Much has happened around the piece of open space I call 'Battlefield' this past year. Another vast new Hall of Residence has reached the point where we can see it almost in it's finished form. Whatever my reservations (and I have some) these have altered the perception of this part of Portland Road.
A photographic album of a stroll in the sunshine (external link) –
Builders Metnor were specialists in warehouse construction; they were the proposed builders for seven large blocks to be constructed over the site of the former paint factory and their public relations advisers held a public preview of the plans for local residents, attended by a befuddled Anton in the early stages of influenza. I did not appreciate having 'Battlefield' open space described to me by a P.R. man present as "threatening". Our meeting did not get off to a happy start. In fairness, the two completed blocks are not as bad as I once feared. True, they may not look quite so trendy after a few years wear and tear, but overall I think they have added rather than detracted from what was here previously.
Something I (and many more before me) have noted is the way a new building articulates the other, pre-existing buildings around it. This effect can sometimes be profound. On one hand one has the design of the new building and that may or may not be successful; yet, on the other, there is also the visual impact the building has upon it's neighbours. The most striking example I have ever seen of this effect is Daniel Libeskind's extension to the Royal Toronto Museum, Toronto. A fairly lacklustre street was transformed by Libeskind's inspired intervention. A case of two plus two makes five if ever I saw one.
www.ourstudioltd.com
As I strolled up the street past the pioneering and very successful Biscuit Factory Arts building, I came across a mural being painted on newly erected panels across the front of an old abandoned premises expressly for the purpose. I met the artist also, taking a break from his efforts in the shelter of a wall. This encounter will be a separate post to follow. I hope it demonstrates the effectiveness of engaging with the arts in stimulating regeneration, a fact sadly lost on many in positions of influence if not direct power.
Biscuit Factory Arts
Newcastle is a city under going transformation. Several large bilding projects are underway. (Tell that to motorists caught up around the Central Station!) In Shieldfield another site is being developed where a gravel company previously had works over looking the Byker road and rail bridges. The site always looked ripe for re-development.
Work on the paint factory site (which is where I came in) seems permanently to have stalled. Difficulties with the sites historic pollution by heavy metals and the collapse of the overseas student bubble, seems to have put paid to the latest of three schemes to develop this site since I took note. Battlefield itself looks better than ever.
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