USA
There are [0] photos and [9] stories about USA
Saturday, 31 Dec 2011 | Views [632]
Roosevelt Island only gained its current name in 1973. Before that this sometime prison, infectious disease hospital and lunatic asylum was known as Blackwell's, then Welfare Island. A shunned place, in other words. It made sense. The island is a narrow ... Read more >
Saturday, 24 Dec 2011 | Views [541]
The New Jersey Turnpike is twelve lanes wide and runs 200km north south between Fort Lee and Carneys Point. While not the busiest highway in the USA it is still heavy with traffic. Cars and buses, vans and trucks hug its gently engineered curves and lanes ... Read more >
Saturday, 17 Dec 2011 | Views [612]
Much has been said of the United State's militarism. Robert Fisk writes of the necessity of any empire – be it Roman or British – to exert power abroad. For domestic political consumption as much as to provide access to raw materials and resources. The ... Read more >
Saturday, 10 Dec 2011 | Views [660]
In the opening passage of Rudyard Kipling's Kim the Lahore Museum is described as "the old Ajaib-Gher - the Wonder House". Which is true, as this museum contains many a forgotten treasure. Dusty, yes. Neglected, somewhat. But that is easily ... Read more >
Saturday, 11 Jul 2009 | Views [600]
Many people, but especially Calvino, have written of the formlessness of Los Angeles; the endless centreless sprawling web of streets and roads and sub suburban housing.
And indeed at many levels this is true. There is no single plaza train ... Read more >
Saturday, 4 Jul 2009 | Views [574]
In San Francisco you reach finally the Pacific, that vast unquiet ocean whose waves hammer also on my next and then final destinations, New Zealand and Australia. The water is cold, and wreaths the land in layers of fog and mist that separate the ... Read more >
Saturday, 27 Jun 2009 | Views [1388]
Chicago has two tall buildings. Actually it has many, for its downtown rivals only Manhattan for density, but two stand above the rest in their efforts to thrust up into the sky.
One, the Sears Tower, was for many years the tallest in the world.... Read more >
Saturday, 20 Jun 2009 | Views [607]
In the 1950s Philadelphia was one of the largest cities in the USA, and in the previous century had even briefly eclipsed New York as the largest in the country. Then began a slow, catastrophic decline that saw its population contract by 40% from ... Read more >
Saturday, 13 Jun 2009 | Views [741] | Comments [1]
New York, while not infinite, at least aspires to that
condition, and the narrow island of Manhattan is filled with regular
rectangular iterations of crystalline concrete growth, rhomboid and enormous at
the northern and southern ends, and dipping ... Read more >
