Month: July 2008

Where the streets have no shame

Modern(ish)

Like it’s not bad enough they moved their royalties company and its mountain of taxable cash to Amsterdam, now Bono and the Edge have persuaded Ireland’s planning board to let them wipe their asses with Dublin history.

The planning authority ordered the developers to preserve the facades of six buildings: the 1930s Art Deco original hotel and five other adjacent Georgian and Victorian properties being swallowed up by the future Clarence. It also ordered that an archaeologist be on the construction site at all times.

The planning panel said Foster’s envisioned hotel “would provide a building of unique quality and architectural distinction” that would “in time become a significant feature in vistas along the Liffey (River) and would ensure the continued historic hotel use of a signature building.”

Can you say rationalization, boys and girls? I knew you could. :facepalm:

The approved $235 million plan will gut the original Clarence hotel and the adjacent buildings, replacing them with a giant mongo 166-room hotel with a giant mongo glass-roofed atrium and some ridiculous giant mongo “sail” on the roof.

Two of the Georgian buildings are classified as protected, which makes this abomination a glaring violation of current conservations laws as well as good taste. According to the city regulations, no protected structure can be demolished short of “exceptional circumstances” like the building being in danger of collapse.

Lining Bono’s already fat pockets does not count as exceptional frikkin circumstances.

The tall building in the middle is the current Clarence. On the left are the Georgian buildings Bono will be gutting. On the right are the former Dollard printing works.

Last Acadian village found?

Modern(ish), Treasures

The Acadians were the first French people to establish a permanent settlement in North America at the beginning of the 17th c. They happily went about their business, staying neutral even as France and Britain duked it out all over them until 1754 when the British decided to up the ante and demand the Acadians take an oath of allegiance and fight for them.

Not wanting to kill their family members still living under French rule and having a religious problem swearing an oath to the British king anyway, the 10,000+ Acadians in British territory in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island refused and were expelled, their villages burned to the ground.

Now a Qebec archaeologist thinks he may have found La Petite-Rochelle, the last village British Commodore John Byron burned down after the ethnic cleansing of the Acadians.

“We’re pretty confident that we’ve located the village that the Acadians had fled to, to get away from the deportation,” said Michel Goudreau, vice-president of Quebec-based La Société Historique Machault, the organization that sponsored the survey.

“These are the people who did get away, and they’re why we still have an Acadian population in northern New Brunswick.”

Located in Quebec, just across the Restigouche River from Campbellton, N.B., La Petite-Rochelle was a community of about 200 houses, founded after the expulsion of the Acadians, an event that has since become known to history as the Great Upheaval.

The article is a bit unclear on the timeline. I guess Commodore Byron just kept burning even after the expelling was over?

Fun fact: John Byron was the grandpappy of George Gordon, Lord Byron, the famous Romantic poet.

Yet another Smithsonian movie tie-in

Ex Cathedra

This time it’s the X-Files donating a bunch of geegaws to the The National Museum of American History in anticipation of the upcoming movie sequel to the original tundra crapfest.

During a special ceremony today, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History received a collection of objects from “The X-Files,” the television series and movie franchise. Twentieth Century Fox together with Chris Carter, series and film writer, director and producer, and Frank Spotnitz, series and film director and producer, presented an annotated script from the series’ pilot episode, FBI badges, posters and other objects to the museum’s entertainment collections.

I’m afraid the collection of objects doesn’t look terribly impressive:

X-Files memorabilia at the Smithsonian

A scale model of the original Enterprise it ain’t. :no:

50,000 exhibits “missing” from Russian museums

Looting, Museums

A government audit of 1600 museums has found jaw-droppingly massive inventory shrinkage.

The lost items were worth a total of “several million dollars,” he said, adding most of the disappeared inventory was pre-Revolutionary and Soviet-era medals, weapons and clothes.

Precious works of art were among the missing items but separate investigations were being conducted for those, [Interior Ministry Col. Ilya] Ryasnoi said.

“Yes, there have been thefts. Museum staff have used their contacts to steal some of the artifacts without a trace,” he said. “But most has simply been lost during transportation.”

Wow. I thought “they fell off the back of a truck” is what the thieves are supposed to say, not the victims.

A hundred museum employees have been charged with various minor infractions, but it looks officials are writing the bulk of this one off as “the Soviets lost them”. They don’t have a lot of choice, really, given the deplorable record-keeping at most of these museums.

Hopefully this inquiry will inspire Russian museums to take inventory for real now.

No gelato on the Spanish Steps?!

Modern(ish), Roma, Caput Mundi

What the hell kind of Roman summer will this be?

City Hall is banning all those enjoying a Roman holiday this summer from snacking near the sights in Rome’s historical center with fines up to $80.

Officials say they want to preserve artistic treasures and decorum in a city that has millions of visitors every year.

The ordinance also bans the homeless from setting up makeshift beds and cracks down on drunks, litterbugs and nighttime revelers loitering in central areas.

It says unless the situation is “kept under control” misbehaving visitors will “irreparably damage the preservation of historical and art areas and monuments and the possibility to enjoy them.”

The ban, passed on July 10, began this weekend and stays in effect until the end of October.

Police are actually making people throw out their drinks and snacks when they’re perched on the Spanish steps or hanging out after throwing a coin in the Trevi Fountain.

Jesus, what’s next? Fingerprinting and registering all the gypsies? Oh wait.

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