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@djelgroucho
In honour of Rosh Hashanah, I made a Mizrahi challah. Considering it was my first attempt at baking bread, it went well. Recipe courtesy of @juliamoskin at @nytcooking. Shana tova! https://www.instagram.com/p/B3BY4pfn9BE/?igshid=1fwnvossaf1hx
Pride outfit 🏳️🌈 🌈 | Credit to @fjfrancesjohnson for doing eye makeup. #me #gaypride #gayboy #lgbt #stonewall50 #seattlepridefest
A solution to the AIDS epidemic may be at hand. But not everyone who needs it has access to it.
Could This Subway Car Save NYC Transit
Urban Planning: Seattle’s Cake
If you walk through Seattle’s South Lake Union, you’ll have to avoid the hordes of tech workers on break in their natural habitat outside Amazon headquarters. What many Seattleites, in particular of certain age, may not know are the proposed and now-discarded urban planning visions once proposed that litter Seattle’s annals of history. Perhaps this is merely the condition of Seattle; a city whose dreams and self-defeating hubris are larger than its stature.
Origins
In 1851, the Denny Party landed on Alki Point. Later, the majority of the settler relocated across Elliot Bay to its eastern shore to what is today Pioneer Square, selected because it was a better harbour. The remaining members of the party named the original landing point “New York”, after one of the party member’s hometown. The settlement was later renamed “Alki”, meaning “by and by” (“someday”) in Chinook jargon and underscoring the aspirations of the settlement [1].
After the Great Seattle Fire in 1889, with the wooden city rebuilt in brick and stone, the first grand planning proposal came in the form of an opera house and 12-storey tower, where fittingly, the Benaroya Hall was built in 1998. Later came proposals of an underground subway in 1906 and 1907 [2].
Bogue Plan
In the early 20th century Seattle was prosperous from the Gold Rush [2]. In 1910 the city hired the civil engineer Virgil Bogue “to take charge of the plans for the beautification of Seattle, which the commission has undertaken, paying particular attention to thoroughfares and a uniform set of improvements of a municipal character” [3].
Borrowing from Beaux-Arts in Europe as a proponent of the City Beautiful movement, Bogue proposed in 1911 capping downtown buildings in height (like Paris), radial boulevards, and city government offices located in a civic centre south of Denny Way and from where Seattle Center now sits [3]. In the Bouge Plan [4], [5] he also proposed urban rail ( for a city then expected to have a population of over one million people [6]. Of the 90 miles, 33 were proposed to be underground. Moreover, Mercer Island would become a park four times as large as Vancouver’s Stanley Park. The Bouge Plan, though approved by the city, would be rejected by voters in 1912 who saw it as too expensive and too much work [2], [3], [6].
Bouge’s Civic Center, from the Seattle Municipal Archives [3].
Seattle Commons
In 1991, Seattle Times columnist John Hinterberger and architect Frank Bassetti proposed a 61-acre central park running from Westlake to South Lake Union [2]. The plan was to transform the then low-rise, light industrial, low-income residential area to high-rise, high-tech development with a park at its centre to satisfy a city long-deficient of a green space that are not small (e.g., Westlake Park) or distant from downtown (e.g., Seattle Center). The park would rival Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, Stanley Park in Vancouver, and Central Park in New York [7].
Draft plan from 1995 (Seattle Municipal Archives) [8].
Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen \$20 million to the Commons campaign in order to purchase 11.5 acres of land. This loan was to be forgiven if voters approved of the \$111 million property-tax levy [9]. The plan would have displaced 130 existing small businesses but was estimated to attract 12,000 high-tech and bio-tech jobs. Opponents argued that the \$250 million project would make homeowners pay \$48 a year more for nine years to subsidise developers. The measure failed twice, in 1995 and 1996 [10], [11].
Irony
Allen kept the 11.5 acres and continued to develop South Lake Union without a park [2], [11]. Jump to the present. In 2010 Amazon began to lease the properties and buildings from Allen’s Vulcan as its headquarters [9], [12]. Amazon purchased from Allen’s Vulcan the property \$1.16 billion in 2012. [13] Of course, the irony of it all is that Seattle has been unable to have its cake and eat it too. This isn’t the only example of this proverb.
In 1970 Seattle voters rejected the Forward Thrust [14] measure that would have raised \$400 million in local bonds for a \$1.3 billion regional transit system, 90% of which would have been financed by the federal government [15]. Instead, voters opted for highway and automobile-centric urban planning [10]. The 3-mile tunnel connecting the University of Washington and Capitol Hill to the 16 miles of Link light rail track to SeaTac cost \$1.8 billion alone [16].
Are the NIMBYs and anti-tax activists to blame? No, according to Dan Savage. He writes [17]:
The person at most fault for the failure of the Seattle Commons is Paul Allen. The billionaire co-founder of Microsoft asked voters to approve \$250 million in new taxes to build the park. During the second Commons campaign Allen made \$1 billion during a stock rally on a single day. If Allen had any sense—or any decent advisors around him—he would've cashed out a quarter of that day's haul and given the city the \$250 million and asked the mayor to name the park after his mother. Allen Park would've been his legacy.
That didn't happen, of course, because Allen is more carny than Carnegie. The Experience Music Project and Totally Awesome Science Fiction Stuff and Museum—what Allen thinks of as his legacy—will be a Taco Time fifteen minutes after he dies.
And, yes, Allen would've benefited from the construction of the Seattle Commons. But he was going to be benefit—he was going to make money—one way or another.
References
[1] https://www.historylink.org/File/303
[2] https://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/the-seattles-that-might-have-been/
[3] https://www.historylink.org/File/9779
[4] https://archive.org/details/planseattlerepo00bogugoog/page/n5
[5] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Bogue_Plan_of_Seattle
[6] https://www.seattlepi.com/seattlenews/article/The-grandest-plan-for-Seattle-6399834.php
[7] https://crosscut.com/2015/12/south-lake-union-could-have-been-seattles-central-park
[8] http://lulab.be.washington.edu/omeka/items/show/832
[9] http://pcad.lib.washington.edu/building/13448/
[10] https://crosscut.com/sponsored/walking-tour-south-lake-union-might-have-been
[11] https://www.historylink.org/File/8252
[12] https://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Allen-displays-his-vision-for-South-Lake-Union-1171298.php
[13] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon-gobbles-up-campus-for-1-billion/
[14] https://www.historylink.org/File/3961
[15] https://www.seattlemag.com/article/seattle-could-have-been-now-mohai
[16] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/university-link-light-rail-service-starts-march-19/
[17] https://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/10/06/we-really-showed-paul-allen
Owen Jones speaks to Mary Lou McDonald about Brexit, the implications for the peace process and the possibility of a united Ireland, and tries to answer once and for all why her party will never take its seats in the British parliament
See also https://theconversation.com/brexit-is-a-rejection-of-the-good-friday-agreement-for-peace-in-northern-ireland-114965
“Gayle” by Chris Fleming and Melissa Strype
Yanis Varoufakis: “Democracy is a very fragile flower”
Financial Times, 28 March 2019
https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2019/04/05/ft-alphachat-28-mar-2019-on-democracy-europe-the-uk-and-greece/
In the film, the real tensions of gay life in the 1980s – from government apathy towards the AIDS crisis, to rampant anti-gay prejudice – don't get their due.
Eating peas, lying down, baby goats and snoring dogs - it’s not an exhaustive list and it’s in no particular order
Openly gay performing arts leaders are still rare. So it was a breath of fresh air to chat about coming out and Celine Dion with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and his partner.
Rebuttal: https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/01/met-opera-gay-music-director-yannick-nezet-seguin-new-york-times-closet.html
Paradoxically, while the current Brexit impasse is pregnant with risk, the British should welcome it. Their discontent with the choices before them is an opportunity, not a curse, and more democracy is the antidote, not the disease.
Lynes was a highly sought-after commercial and fashion photographer in the 1930s and 1940s. But he had to keep his most important body of work hidden away.
Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren’t lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live
Resumé by Dorothy Parker
Marcel Proust playing air-guitar with a tennis racket on the opening day of Wimbledon, 1892.
Marcel was the first rock star.
Whither @gretagarbeige?
The far right is rising in Europe, most recently in Spain, where the anti-immigrant, anti-abortion Vox party won multiple seats in a regional parliamentary election in Andalusia on Sunday. It was the first successful election for the far right in Spain since the country returned to democracy in the 1970s after the death of fascist military dictator Francisco Franco. We speak with economist and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, who is launching a movement with Senator Bernie Sanders and others to fight right-wing forces around the globe.
REBLOG IF NAZIS OFFEND YOU MORE THAN NIPPLES.
