Category Archives: Urban scene

Aug 08 2012
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Daily Post, Urban scene

Tampere

Wednesday 8th August 2012, 6.15pm (day 349)

Tampere, 8/8/12

Tampere is the largest inland city in Scandinavia and known as the ‘Manchester of the North’ as it was the cradle of the Industrial Revolution in this region. Unlike Manchester itself it does still have a sense of industry about it, like things continue to be actually made here. I’m here for a conference (which traditionalists will say has nothing to do with ‘making’ anything, and they’d probably be right). This is the city’s second appearance on this blog, the first being way back in September 2011.

 

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Aug 08 2012
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Daily Post, Urban scene

Four-legged beast, Helsinki airport

Tuesday 7th August 2012, 3.40pm (day 348)

Four legged beast, 7/8/12

I’m away again. When heading east most of the day is spent travelling and there wasn’t much to see today. Snapped this while sat on the Finnair bus waiting to head into Helsinki city centre from the airport.

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Aug 05 2012
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Daily Post, Hebden Bridge, Transport

Hebden Bridge Vintage Car Rally

Sunday 5th August 2012, 12.55pm (day 346)

Vintage rally, 5/8/12

This is one of my town’s more pleasurable regular events and was thankfully blessed by good weather. I no longer have an interest in cars as a means of propulsion but any one built before about 1965 just has such a damn fine look to it. And when they come out to events like this they’re all looking their best, polished and chrome and curvy and well, dammit (Janet), rather sexy. But I only look. I don’t want a relationship with one of these things again. Too complicated.

(PS technically this is a self-portrait: look carefully.)

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Aug 04 2012
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Daily Post, Urban scene

The CIS building, Manchester

Friday 3rd August 2012, 3.40pm (day 344)

CIS building, 3-8-12

This  building is only a couple of hundred yards from Victoria station but I never have normal cause to go past it. Today, after I had a meeting nearby, was an exception. When built in 1962 it was the tallest office building in the UK, at 399 feet, and it remained the tallest in Manchester until 2006 when the Beetham tower (510 feet) was built on Deansgate. It’s one of the group of buildings around this site that are the headquarters of the Co-operative Group (bank, stores, insurance, etc.).

I’ve never been inside it but it does have a significant role to play in my life. My mother and father both worked for the CIS but in separate buildings and only when this was built (when they were 18) did they begin working in the same place – and thus met. Arguably, then, if this hadn’t been built, I wouldn’t be here.

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Aug 01 2012
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Daily Post, Urban scene

Manchester ‘Olympic village’

Tuesday 31st July 2012, 3.50pm (day 341)

Manchester Olympic village, 31/7/12

In some city down South the Olympics are on, and Manchester (which is hosting some of the football tournament’s games) gets in on the act with a ‘village’ built around Exchange Square, where the wheel used to be (see previous photos). Judging from this shot, it is doing about as well at filling its seats as London is.

Cynical? No, I’m not, not about the athletes anyway. But we all knew that the promises of a ‘people’s Games’ were rubbish when they were made in 2005, so why are we surprised it’s turned into a corporate love-fest in which the relatives and friends of athletes can’t see them perform, while swathes of corporate junket seats sit empty, because bigger profits are made that way? I also remember hearing that the ‘brand poiice’ don’t want anyone to link to the official Olympic site if they are going to be critical of it.

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Jul 30 2012
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Daily Post, Hebden Bridge, Urban scene

Unity Street, Hebden Bridge

Monday 30th July 2012, 6.00pm (day 340)

Unity Street, 30/7/12

Hebden Bridge, and the British summer, and I have had a bit of a falling out over the last few weeks. It kind of started around June 21st and has gone on from there. Today, we all started toward a reconciliation of sorts. Let’s hope it continues.

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Jul 24 2012
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Daily Post, Hebden Bridge, Landscape

The Nutclough stream, later

Tuesday 24th July 2012, 4.40pm (day 334)

Nutclough stream, 24/7/12

On a pleasant summer’s day, here is the Nutclough stream, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in its flow. (It probably wouldn’t.) This is the stream that turned into a torrent on 9th July and took out a couple of houses two hundred yards downstream. More before and after comparison pictures are on the Facebook album, as linked.

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Jul 22 2012
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Daily Post, Friend, Hebden Bridge, Portrait, Urban scene

The ‘Save the Railway’ meeting

Sunday 22nd July 2012, 3.10pm (day 332)

Save the Railway, 22/7/12

Here is not the place for the fine detail, but the ‘significant’ news that hit on my first day in Tuscaloosa, mentioned below, was that the giant ‘pubco’ (pub ownership company) that owns the Railway has decided that it is unwilling to stump up the cost of a refurbishment following the damage caused by the floods on 22nd/23rd June and 9th July. They want to sell the pub, but no one is particularly convinced that they have an interest in keeping the pub in the hands of someone who will, well, keep it as a pub and not convert it into something else. The last few years in the UK have, to say the least, not been kind to the pub trade.

Well, we – the customers – want to keep it as a pub, so today we had a meeting there to discuss what we were going to do. It was a lovely sunny day and there was also a social aspect to it – no one wanted their last drink here to be that horrible 22nd June. But it shouldn’t have to be the last today, either. We’ll try not to make it the last.

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Jul 20 2012
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Daily Post, Urban scene

The legacy of 27 April, 2011

Thursday 19th July 2012, 6.55pm (day 329)

Tornado legacy, 19/7/12

This is not a particularly ‘good’ photo in aesthetic or technical terms but it is the most meaningful picture I took today.

I said a few days ago that Tuscaloosa is not a very eventful place, and this is true generally, but an exception to the rule came on 27th April 2011 when it was hit by an utterly devastating tornado. 47 people died in the early evening of that day. I remember when I heard about it on the news, and the fact I had visited here previously and knew Angela (my research colleague) gave the disaster a personal dimension that it might not otherwise have had for many people. Angela, her husband, and their house, were all fine, but therein lies the scary nature of this particular natural phenomenon. Less than a third of a mile from her place – and we drove through these districts today as I went to dinner at her house – there were these scenes of total destruction, and I mean total. The narrow line that the storm took remains completely visible on the ground fifteen months later, marked by shattered trees and empty lots (like this one), even where houses literally on the other side of the street are OK.

What with my visit to New Orleans (still with visible signs of damage from Hurricane Katrina in 2005) and the Hebden Bridge floods I know I am developing a recurring ‘natural disaster’ theme here: but believe me, I don’t want to. I just have a sudden sense of the arbitrary power of these things. You can’t protest against it, can’t vote against it, can’t cancel it; it just happens, and it’s a terrible thing when it does. I’m not a particularly religious man but I guess this is why people sometimes feel the only response is just to pray.

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Jul 18 2012
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Daily Post, Urban scene

Idiosyncracies of the US university system, part 1

Tuesday 17th July 2012, 3.20pm (day 327)

Bryant-Denny stadium, 17/7/12

There have been significant developments at home in Hebden Bridge today but here is not the place to discuss them. You will doubtless hear more about it after I am back in the UK on Saturday.

Anyway, here in Tuscaloosa, I had to include a photo of the Bryant-Denny stadium, home of the Crimson Tide, the University of Alabama (American) football team. Those of us who are not from the US have this vague idea that college sports is somehow important here in a way it is not in most other countries, but largely we do not recognise the astonishing scale of it. To put it in perspective, the population of Tuscaloosa, AL, is about 90,000. The capacity of this stadium is over 101,000. If it were in the UK – or most other countries in the world – it would be the largest stadium in the country. The whole state of Alabama treats the Tide (national champions many times, and most recently in 2009 and 2011) as if they were not only their favoured sports team, but were part of their whole cultural identity, in a similar way to Barcelona for Catalans or Celtic for Irish/Scots Catholics. At times it feels as if the college were just something that existed to support the team, rather than the other way around. The coach is the single best-paid employee of the whole university, at around $7m/year. I understand why it happens, but the scale of it continues to amaze me, even after several years of visiting US campuses to work.

And yes, I do intend to do a ‘part 2’ to this post: tomorrow or Thursday, hopefully…

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