#london free school benefit concert

[lovemesomesurveys]

Which K word are you? 🤪💋🛶 by joybucket

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚 Kayak 🛶 You've gone kayaking before. You enjoy kayaking. You own a kayak. You've been to a sleepaway summer camp as a kid. 🪵🔥 ....and you absolutely loved it. 🤸‍♂️🥰 You've worked as a camp counselor. You still remember some of the songs you learned at camp. 🎶 You enjoy camping in the woods. 🏕 Your name has a Y in it. You've been to an exercise class at the Y. Total: 0 ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚

Kazoo 🎶 You've played a kazoo. You like to watch Elise Ecklund on YouTube. You're still a kid inside. 🤸‍♂️ Your name has a Z in it. You're listening to music right now. Music was your favorite class in school. 🎼 You've been to the zoo in the past year. 🦒🦚🐘 You've been to a Kidz Bop concert. You like to drink Capri Sun. ☀️🏄‍♀️ You know the Spongebob theme song by heart. Total: 3 ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚 🛒 Kmart 💃 You've shopped at Kmart. You've worked at Kmart. You spend a lot of your time shopping at department stores. You've shopped at a Kmart's closeout sale. Your favorite color is red. ❤️ You're wearing something red right now. You've named something after yourself (whether it be a doll, stuffed animal, imaginary friend, etc.). You grew up in the 90's. You were very popular back in the 90's. ...and you're less popular now than you used to be. Total: 2 ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚 🛖 Kiosk 💁‍♀️ You know the meaning of the word "kiosk" without looking it up. You've used in the "Information Desk Woman" emoji. 💁‍♀️ (A kiosk is "small, free-standing physical structure that displays information or provides a service.") You've used a digital kiosk at a store to make prints of photos. You've ordered food at McDonald's using the self-service kiosk. 🍟 🍔 You've worked at an information desk. 💁‍♀️ You've been inside a red telephone booth in London. You've purchased tickets for rides at kiosk. 🎟 🎡 🎢 You've purchased something from a kiosk in the center of the mall. 🛍 You've played the computer game Roller Coaster Tycoon. 🎢 You often use the self-checkout lane at the grocery store, using a kiosk to scan your items and print your receipt. 🏬 Total: 7 ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚 Kite🪁 You've flown a kite. You've flown a kite recently. You like the name Skye. Sometimes your life gets really difficult, and you feel like you're just barely hanging on by a string. You want to fly! You are living your dreams and feel like you're flying high! Your name consists of four letters. You sometimes wear bows in your hair. 🎀 Little kids like to play with you. 👧👦 You've had to wear a bow tie as part of a work uniform. Total: 4 ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚 Karate 🥋 You're a blackbelt in karate. 🥋 You've taken a martial arts class. You know basic self-defense. You're Asian. You like Asian food. 🍱🍜 You like to wear white. You're strong both physically and emotionally. 💪 You've broken something recently. You've recently kicked a vending machine. You are strong, resilient, and determined, and you will keep on fighting until the end. Total : 0 ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚 Kale 🥬 You like kale. Kale is your favorite vegetable. You like to eat salads. 🥗 You're known as a "health nut." Your favorite color is green. 💚 You love nature. 🌲 ✨ You've either grown your own vegetables or you've purchased fresh produce from a Farmer's Market. 🌽 🥕 🥬 You've been to an exercise class. You're physically in good shape. 🏋️‍♀️ 🤸‍♂️ 🏃‍♀️ You love to help other people, and you have a lot of gifts that you know others could benefit from, if they would only accept you.....but many people don't like or accept you. Total: 1 ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚 Kiss 💋 You've recently finished reading a juicy romance novel and/or you're in the middle of a good romance novel now. 📕 You like to wear lipstick. 💄 You've had a kiss that felt magical. 😘 You like to eat Hershey's Kisses. You've had your first kiss. You're very kind and affectionate. You like public displays of affection, and you think it's so romantic when you see old people kiss. You've been to Paris. 🗼☕️ You played with Bratz dolls when you were younger. 👄 You've written "xoxo" at the end of a card or letter. Total: 5 ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚 Klutz 🤪 You've knocked something over recently. You're always running into things. You've fallen flat on your face. You've slipped and fallen in public, and it was embarrassing. 😳 You've recently experienced vertigo. 😵 You get motion sickness. 🤮 You've fallen down an entire flight of stairs. You've accidentally fallen into a swimming pool with all of your clothes on. You've spilled a drink on yourself. 🍹 You like to make fun of yourself. 🤪 Total: 6 ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚 Kickball 🔴 You've played kickball in gym class. You enjoy playing kickball. You've been hit in the face with a kickball. You enjoy playing ball sports. You've kicked someone or something recently. You like to bounce around. You've used one of the colored circle emojis. 🔴🟣🟢 Your favorite class in school was gym. You can run fast. 🏃‍♀️ You've been used in many different ways. Total: 1 ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚 Which K word are you according to this survey? A: Kiosk.  ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚

Are you happy with your result? Meh. Have you heard that K word before? Yes.  Do you like that K word? It’s whatever.  What are three ways in which you are like that K word? I don’t know. I want a different one, ha. ....and what are three ways in which you are not? -- What is your favorite word among the ones on this survey? Klutz.  Does your name start with a K? No. What are three words you would use to describe yourself that start with a K? Kid at heart, klutz... I don’t know.  Do you like to eat Kellogg's cereal? 🥣 Yeah.  When was the last time you shopped at Kmart? 💃 🛒 Like 15 years ago or more. Ours closed a longgg time ago.  When was the last time you flew a kite? 🪁 When I was a kid. What's your favorite kid's movie? 🍿 I have several.  Which one of these names do you like best for a girl: Kiara, Kaori, Kendra, Kaya, or Kamri? Kiara.  ....and which one do you like best out of these: Kaylee, Kennedy, Kylie, Kendall, or Kenzie? Kylie.  Do you keep up with the Kardashians? Yes I watch their show.  Which one of these names do you like best for a boy: Kevin, Kayden, Kyle, Kris, or Kory? Kayden.  What was the last thing you purchased from Kmart? I don’t recall.  Have you ever driven a Kia? No. Do you ever misplace your keys? 🔑 No. What does your favorite keychain look like? I have a shit ton of keychains and they’re all my favorite.  Are you Korean? 🇰🇵🇰🇷 No. Have you ever had to wear khaki pants as part of a uniform? No. Have you ever been to Kentucky? 🍗 No. ....Kazakhstan? 🇰🇿 No. ....Kalamazoo? 🚗 No. ....Kansas? 🌪 No. .....Kuwait? 🇰🇼 No. Do you like Kentucky Fried Chicken? 🍗 I like their chicken strips.  Which one of these words would you say describes you best: klutzy, kind, Karen, kinky, or kooky? Klutzy and kooky. Do you like koala bears? 🐨 Sure.  Have you ever met anyone with the last name Kozemzak? No.  Do you like shish-kabobs? 🍡🍢 I’ve never had one.  Have you ever had a friend named Katie? No. Did you own a Ken doll when you were younger? Yes.  Did you go to morning kindergarten or afternoon kindergarten? Morning.  Who was your kindergarten teacher? 👩‍🏫 Mrs. P.  Do you have a favorite kid's book, and if so, what is it? I had many. I loved books.  Do you wish you were still a kid? Yes. :( And last but not least, did you enjoy this survey? Mhm. ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚 I hope you have a kind, kissable, Karen-free day! 🤪 ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🧡💛💚

#themed #k words #survey #surveys #personal #text

[more-relics]

Roger Waters and Syd Barrett. Pink Floyd, London Free School Benefit Concert. All Saints Church Hall, Notting Hill, London. 21 October 1966. © Graham Keen.

#roger waters #syd barrett #pink floyd #all saints church hall #notting hill #london free school benefit concert #london #uk #oct.1966 #graham keen #1966 #my edit

[protytwo]

Why join Interlac and do I really need another G’damn hobby? Spoiler: yes you do!

When I first joined in 1983, it was a bit daunting, but quite exciting. Interlac had a full roster of 50 members. I couldn’t join immediately, and hung out on the waitlist, where I contributed fanzines, and received most of the issues. The first issue I contributed to was over 400 pages, with zines from almost 50 members and fellow waitlisters. They were writing about the latest Legion issues, and older Legion stories. They were writing about other comic books, and movies, and TV, and concerts. And they were sharing their lives: writing about work or school or current events.

One of the unique features of an APA, the lifeblood so to speak, is the mailing comments. Most folks, in their zines, would respond to the zines they had read in the previous issue. These comments could go back and forth over the course of months. It was all a bit heady. Imagine you arrive late to a large party that’s in full swing. In one corner a woman is telling a funny story. Elsewhere a fellow is talking about a busy newsroom. Over there two fans are in polite disagreement over this months new comics. And over there a bunch of fans are speculating on what could have become of a minor villain from the Sixties.

Interlac is always open to new members. I was welcomed in the bulletin at the start of my first mailing, and waded right in. I introduced myself, discussed my thoughts about the Legion, and responded to the ongoing conversations, and shared my fan art. And immediately I was part of the group and the group conversation.

When I excitedly told my friends about the fun I was having, several of them up and joined Interlac. At one point my hometown was represented by myself, my brother, my brother’s best friend, two of his friends, two of the women who worked in the comics shop, and one of their boyfriends. (The Legion was kind of popular in 1983-1985.)

Nowadays there are more immediate options for sharing fandom than printing a paper APA zine and waiting every two months for the finished mailing. The Internet and social media are both a blessing and a curse, encouraging knee jerk responses, hot takes, and outrage. While it’s possible to seek out the kinder, more thoughtful corners of online fandom, it’s all too easy to run into hostility.

I’m not going to pretend like APAs are free of heated disagreements. But almost everybody in Interlac understands that they are there to share a fandom and their lives, and make friends. I’ve met a few fellow Interlacers at conventions. I’ve got a standing invitation to annual parties in the Midwest and East Coast. And if I needed a place to crash for a night in London, I suspect that that could be arranged. Any history of Interlac is not complete without stories of lifelong friendships, marriages, births, and professional contacts that began in Interlac.

Interlac currently has 18 members, and no waiting to become a full member. A few of the membership are very inactive, and a few of them are very regular contributors. In the latest mailing Chris reviews Pennyworth, Ken discusses problems at his radio station, Kevin offers perspective on Dallas police and 911, Marc talks about the Zero Hour Legion, Mike writes about his students, Tom does a report of his visit to the Pocono Indy Car race, Rick writes briefly about family, and I talk about science fiction fandom of the Fifties and Sixties. That’s just scraping the surface. Not every zine has Legion content, but most everybody mentions the Legion, writes mailing comments about the previous issue, and a few of us even discuss the current Legion.

 So do you need a new hobby? Do you want to share your ideas, opinions, and fandom with a receptive audience? Do you want to read 100-160 pages of fannish natter? I can’t answer for you. All I know is the benefit and enjoyment I’ve received from being a member, the fun I have contributing to the APA every other month, and the fact that I for one would like to see what you, a fellow Legion fan, have to say.

#Interlac #Legion of Superheroes #c'mon you know you want to

[dramatispcrsonae]

I’ve seen posts going around the rpc with people giving tips about their cities as a resource to folks who write characters from those places. Here is my small contribution for Washington, DC. This is particularly relevant for people who write political characters or fic in fandoms such as The West Wing, Scandal, Bones, The Blacklist, House of Cards, etc. It’s too long and in no particular order but HERE GOES:

The Mall/Monuments. No one goes here unless your parents are visiting. End of story. There are some exceptions to this, of course: the occasional free concert or protest or an inauguration, etc. but generally it’s avoided. It’s rife with tourists, capitol police, and there’s not a lot to do if you’ve already seen it. TV shows so often have their characters hanging out together on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial or sitting on benches along the Mall…. No. Maybe your character will go jogging there but that’s about it.

Here’s a big one. If your character works in DC, odds are they don’t live in DC. They live somewhere in the DMV (District of Columbia/Maryland/Virgina). There are DC suburbs in VA and MD that are accessible on the metro that are often more affordable than living in the District. Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in MD and Arlington and Fairfax counties in VA are heavily populated by people who work in DC. If you live in the District, you’re probably a) a college student, b) a twenty-something living with about 3 other people, or c) extremely wealthy. As always, there are exceptions to this, particularly in regards to certain neighborhoods, but more on that later. Also, if your character lives in, say, Rosslyn and works in DC, they will tell people not from around here that they live in DC. It’s not technically true, but it’s kinda true...

DC is a reputation-conscious city. The first things you find out when you meet someone are where they went to school, where they work, and what they do. You sort develop a sense of what the Important Person Hierarchy is very quickly. It’s squicky but it’s real.

It’s a company town and that company is the government. It’s not a capital city like London or Paris or Berlin that grew organically and has a larger identity. It’s a tiny place that was designed specifically to be the capital (see “The Room Where it Happens” from Hamilton). Certainly not everyone works for the government, but most people’s lives are touched by it in some way. This could be anything from when a non-profit’s office closes (many follow the federal government’s schedule), to dealing with traffic from protests or motorcades. There’s so much more to the city, but it would be silly to pretend that’s not The Biggest Thing here. 

People are ferociously career-oriented, there is an absurdly high concentration of people with law degrees, and other graduate degrees. Most people are thinking about what their next thing is or how X or Y will look on their resume. Basically it’s a city of Type A over-achievers. And yes that can be as unbearable as it sounds.  

It’s a small c conservative city. People dress conservatively, behave conservatively. Especially if your character does anything related to the government. Do not have your OC show up to their first day as Chief of Staff to Congressman Whoever with pink hair or a nose ring. Not gonna happen. Like I knew an intern who was once sent home for wearing khakis to the office….

If you work in politics or the non-profit world, it’s genuinely surprising to meet someone who is a DC native. Most people are transplants from elsewhere in the country who came for school or a specific career-related reason. 

Sports teams! The Redskins are (well were) beloved but suck. The Nationals are the new kids on the block who everyone now pays attention to (for obvious reasons). Like, if your character is a Hill staffer they probably love going to Nats games. And then there are the Capitals. I think everyone likes the Caps???

Quadrants. The city is broken up into four quadrants with the Capitol Building as the center point. These are NW, SW, NE, SE. These are a part of every address in DC and they all have reputations. NW is the biggest quadrant and probably where your character will work/spend a lot of time. SW is the Waterfront area and has recently become more of a hotspot. It used to be very sketchy. SE is still a pretty iffy place -- i.e. people don’t walk home alone after dark, etc. I have a co-worker who lives there and once came home to find a bullet hole in her living room. It’s that kind of place. BUT it is a big residential area and a lot more affordable than other places in the District. Your character totally might live there. NE is recently becoming quite gentrified.

Related to this are the streets. Downtown DC has a numbered grid-system like NYC, but… then you have the avenues (all named after states) that cut across the grid diagonally. It’s confusing and stupid but at least semi-reliable. Outside of Downtown though? Lol good luck. 

DC is a diverse city. It’s nearly half African-American, and something like 60% of the population is under 35. That said, though there is diversity, it’s not evenly distributed. You will definitely see a difference based on neighborhood. Ex: If your character lives in Georgetown, they’re surrounded by rich white people. If they live in Anacostia, it’s likely the opposite. 

Public transit! Driving in DC sucks! Most people avoid it! There is the metro (the subway but don’t call it that) and then there are buses. Metro lines are coded by color and the final stop in whichever direction you’re going. Metro… sucks. It’s not as frustrating as other cities, but it’s over-priced, and constantly on fire/broken. Complaining about metro is basically hobby here.

Know your neighborhoods. Downtown (where you’ve got the federal buildings and monuments) is nothing like, say, Adams Morgan or Anacostia. You could easily think it’s a different city. That’s actually one of my favorite things about this place...

There are so many fucking police forces: Capitol police, DC Metro police, park police, secret service, uniformed secret service, uniformed FBI, and that’s not even half it. Basically it’s small area FILLED with cops. 

It is an EXPENSIVE city. Sure, every major metropolitan area is like this, but it’s worth noting that if your character is a 20 something Hill staffer, they will 100% have roommates (or live in a roach-filled matchbox of an apartment), and they will totally know every good cheap happy hour menu within walking distance. Food trucks are also a big thing here -- like they line up downtown and sell anything from pizza and burgers, to Greek and Ethiopian. Food trucks are a CULTURE. 

Hill staff culture. This could be its own post honestly Most people are crazy young (like a 28 year old chief of staff is not even a little bit unusual) and are there to get to their next thing. Often people on the hill end up in lobbying or consulting before too long. The money is garbage, the hours are garbage and the turnover is high. A Hill internship sounds fancy to people outside of DC, but you’re basically the lowest of the low and you should know that everyone hates you lol. There’s a hierarchy here too, of course: House isn’t as cool as Senate, committees are more prestigious than members offices, unless your member is famous and on TV a lot, etc, etc. On the other hand, there are also Hill staffers who are ‘Hill Rats.’ In other words, they stay forever and never move to the private sector. These people are weird, and of the decidedly Josh Lyman type personality...

People who work in federal agencies tend to stay much longer in their jobs -- the money is better, the hours are better, and the benefits are better. But these are much harder jobs to get and it takes much longer to rise the ranks. 

The colleges. Georgetown is the fanciest and most prestigious. Also the most expensive. It’s the one that has the most caché. After that would probably be George Washington University and to a lesser degree American University. There’s also Catholic University, Howard University (an HBCU with a great law school), and Gallaudet University which is a school for the deaf and hard of hearing. But if your character is here to be a politics person, they probably went to Georgetown or GW. 

Going out. The hotspot areas are Adams Morgan, U Street, H Street, and to a lesser extent Dupont. The Waterfront area is becoming more popular too. The Kennedy Center is where fancy touring companies and operas perform (i.e. your rich socialite might have season tickets there). But there are other theaters in town and lots and lots of concert venues. The most iconic rock venue is the 9:30 Club, but Black Cat and U Street Music Hall are pretty good too.

Anyway, this is already way too long and by no means everything, but it’s a place to start! Also,I really need to add that this is from the perspective of a comfortable straight white girl who works in a government-adjacent job. This is by no means representative of what it’s like for everyone in DC or the surrounding area, particularly lower income folks or people of color. It’s a city with very wide and noticeable divisions on those fronts and I don’t want to presume to know things that I don’t. So if others want to add to this post, please do!!!!

#anyway here's my 'so you want a political oc' 101 post! #i. ｢ ooc. ｣ #i'm also a little tipsy so #what is coherence?

[inala-live-blog]

INALA TO PLAY ROYAL ALBERT HALL FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY

INALA TO PLAY FOR ONE SPECTACULAR NIGHT ONLY AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL, Wednesday 23 October 2019, to Celebrate World Ballet Day and Black History Month.

With Special Guest Dancers from the Royal Ballet and Rambert.

INALA, the critically acclaimed South African Dance-Musical sensation, will celebrate World Ballet Day on Wednesday 23 October with a concert spectacular at the Royal Albert Hall, bringing together the South African choral legends, Soweto Gospel Choir with multi-award-winning choreographer Mark Baldwin OBE in this unique artistic collaboration.  A celebration of South Africa today, INALA delivers all it promises; an uplifting cultural experience, powered by an explosion of live music, song and dance.

Following INALA’s smash hit run at the Peacock Theatre earlier this year, INALA was performed at HRH Prince Harry’s Hampton Court Palace Sentebale Concert in June, as well as in Singapore at Marina Bay Sands.   The production, which premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2014, has now also enjoyed a sell-out run at London’s Sadler’s Wells, two UK tours and a Royal Variety Performance appearance, in the presence of TRH The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

The three-time Grammy® Award-winning Soweto Gospel Choir will return to London with a company of 16 singers, joining the nine-strong band and 13 international dance stars on stage.

INALA, meaning ‘abundance of goodwill’ in Zulu, was originally conceived and developed to mark 20 years of South African democracy with a glorious collaboration by four-time Grammy® Award-winning South African choral legends Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the British composer Ella Spira and former First Artist of the Royal Ballet Pietra Mello-Pittman.  The music for INALA was recorded at Abbey Road Studios and was Grammy® Award nominated in 2016 for Best World Music Album.  Baldwin, who headed Ballet Rambert for 15 years winning a host of awards, was subsequently awarded an OBE for Services to Dance.

Blending the intricate rhythms and infectious harmonies of Soweto Gospel Choir’s native musical roots with live percussion, piano and strings, Mark Baldwin’s choreography unites Zulu traditions with classical ballet and contemporary dance.

Featuring world-class international dancers, the production embraces an exhilarating fusion of South African and Western cultures live on stage, to create a unique and vibrant immersive experience.

Confirmed dancers for INALA at the Royal Albert Hall include BBC Young Dancer 2017 winner Nafisah Baba (Chrysalis London, Phoenix Dance Theatre), Elly Braund (Richard Alston Dance Company), Joshua Harriette (Michael Clark Company, Ballet Black, Matthew Bourne New Adventures, Richard Alston Dance Company), Sharia Johnson (Michael Clark Company, Richard Alston Dance Company, Rambert), Nahum McLean (Richard Alston Dance Company, West Side Story tour), Hicaro Nicolai (Voices of The Amazon, Hoje é Dia de Maria Musical, É Proibido Miar The Musical, Ballet Jovem Minas Gerais, Voices of the Amazon), Yasmin Priyatmoko Bohn (ŻfinMalta Dance Ensemble), Nicholas Shikkis (Richard Alston Dance), Adelene Stanley (Frontier Danceland) and Jason Tucker (DeNada Dance Theatre, Arielle Smith Company, Richard Alston Dance Company) and Ashleigh Wilson (Peter Schaufuss Ballet/International Arts Collective),

INALA’s costumes are designed by acclaimed designer and former taxidermist Georg Meyer-Wiel, and the show has sound design by Adrian Rhodes and lighting by Ben Cracknell.

INALA has a dynamic social impact and schools programme and has drawn in audiences who number an average of 37% first time theatre attendees.

For the Royal Albert Hall performance, with the added relevance of falling in both Black History Month and on World Ballet Day, the producers are offering 1,000 tickets free of charge to London communities who would not normally have the opportunity to attend a ballet or West End show.

This initiative to ensure their audience is representative of the diverse, multicultural makeup of the capital city mirrors their work – their outreach programme at The Peacock, partnered with Mosaic, a Prince’s Trust initiative, saw around 1,000 secondary school students schools from under-privileged areas of London to attend to the performances free of charge. The young people had opportunities to meet and ask questions of the cast as well as use the visits to develop artistic ideas in their schools. Many of the attendees had never before had an opportunity to see any form of live theatre, dance or music. The programme was a great success and the impact evaluation saw teachers and students feeding back a range of benefits, including improved wellbeing, a greater interest in pursuing creative subjects and also an improved connection to other cultures:

‘I would watch INALA again due to the fact that it separated us from the outside world and words would not be able to contain how I really feel about the show other than it was AMAZING’. – Student, Lambeth College

Performance Date(s):

Wednesday 23 October 2019

Performance Time(s):

7.30pm

Address:

ROYAL ALBERT HALL

Kensington Gore London, SW7 2AP

Box Office:

020 7589 8212

URL:

https://www.royalalberthall.com/tickets/events/2019/inala/

#royalalberthall #south-africa #london #inala-live #sistersgrimm #performance #onceinalifetime

[lilyvandersteen]

What shortish (under 10k) one shots would you recommend that are meet-cutes and/or pining? Thanks!

Oooh, this is going to be a long list, Nonnie! Thanks for asking :-) Hugs, Marjan

Accessories by @hazelandglasz

Inspired by @tacogrande’s art on Tumblr : http://tacogrande.tumblr.com/post/156495579892/i-also-did-a-lil-au-where-blaine-is-just-always

All The Toys by Petalene

Fill for the GKM.  The five times Blaine went into a sex toy shop and the one time he came out with something really good. 

Auto Shops, Show Tunes and Happiness by @sunshineoptimismandangels

This is for coffeegleek wo prompted:Kurt has had to take over his dad’s shop & Blaine comes to get his car fixed, hears Kurt singing - AU meet cute, they’re 20-30+. Maybe Kurt does local community theatre. 

Blind Date by @bookqueen101

Tumblr Prompt: We’re both meant to be going on blind dates with other people but we sat down at the wrong table and got our hopes up.

Connections by @alilactree

A prompt from imnotimperfectlyperfect, Klaine alternate meeting: Blaine sees Kurt on the subway and misses his chance to talk to him, so he resorts to using an ad to find him again. This probably turned out to be a lot sillier than you were hoping, sorry about that. Warnings: Blaine goes on faily dates with other canon characters.

Dial 1 for Kurt by @starangel148

One day, as luck would have it, Kurt answered a call to his dorm phone even though he call was most likely for his playboy roommate. The rest is serendipity. AU Kurt/Blaine, set in college. 

Don’t make me over by @klaineanummel

Kurt thinks today will just be an average day; he’ll go to work, he’ll pine for his friend-with-benefits Blaine (who he desperately wants to become more), and he’ll remind his boss for the millionth time that he doesn’t want to be set up with her son. It goes pretty much as he expects… well, sort of.

Flowers Verse by @hazelandglasz​

Blaine just wants to get a bunch of flowers to his grandma.Little did he know that the Subway can lead to some interesting meetings … 

Fools Rush In by @black-john-lennon

Elvis once sang “Wise men say only fools rush in, but I can’t help falling in love with you”

Blaine and Sam might be those guys.

Free Pizza to Make You Smile by @princehummel

A short, cheesy (pun super intended) Valentine’s Day meet-cute. A bit late, but whatever.

It’s Valentine’s Day, but Kurt has too much homework and not enough boyfriend (in other words, no boyfriend) to properly celebrate. But there’s no law that says he can’t celebrate with himself, his laptop, and a special pizza.

Getting Out the Vote, 2016 – Feel the Bern! by @nightingale63

Klaine AU – Kurt and Blaine never met in high school, and are college students in New York who return to Ohio for spring break to volunteer for Bernie Sanders’ campaign. Meet cute entails! 

Gift with Purchase by @lady-divine-writes

To prepare for a big audition, Tina takes Blaine to Sephora for a little freshening up, where Blaine meets the sales associate of his dreams. 

Got A Sweet Tooth For You by @hazelandglasz

anonymous asked:I have one I have one! So, it’s AU. Blaine is scared to go to dentist (feel you, bb) and his tooth hurts more and more everyday. So finally, he mans up and goes. And meets the sexiest dentist ever.

Here Comes The Sun Salutation by @invisibleraven

Blaine has a work mandate to lower his stress levels by attending a yoga class. Which he goes to straight from work in a suit… 

Here to fix all of your problems by @fictionallylost

Rachel calls for a handyman to come and fix her and Kurt’s loft’s heating problems, then leaves Kurt home alone to await the assistance. Who do you think comes to his rescue? ;)

Hold Onto The Handrail by @antarcticbird

hazelandglasz prompted: the subway brakes too strongly and bam, au meeting ? 

If These Pages Could Tell A Story by @controlofwhatido

Isabelle Wright has written another book and is about to go on tour with it. Kurt’s job, as her assistant, is to make sure every location is up to speed with Isabelle’s requests. When Kurt e-mails Anderson’s Bookshop, he certainly doesn’t expect their correspondence to go past the first couple perfunctory responses…

Instant Boyfriend by @scrapmom2112

One minute Kurt is having coffee and minding his own business and the next he has a boyfriend…what? AU. Just another way for Kurt and Blaine to meet, and it’s at the Lima Bean, of course.

Kink(O)s by @hazelandglasz

Prompt : one of them want to print something, maybe a calendar with hot guys and the other one is the hot printer? 

Let It Snow by @antarcticbird

Snowed in at an airport on the 24th of December, with no cell phone reception and Cooper + family for company. 

Love Shack by @hkvoyage

On a sweltering hot summer’s evening, Kurt discovers a new cheesecake bakery in his Bushwick neighborhood. He soon realizes the true meaning of Valentine’s Day. An alternative meeting, written for the 2016 Klaine Valentines Challenge on Tumblr.

Night Work by @honeysucklepink

This was written for the KBL Reversebang Hiatus Challenge. I got a photo of a dog with a pumpkin and three items/things to include in my story: “Pharmacy,” “Sweats (clothing),” and “Stars.” And then on top of that I got awesome art from Jen (homemadedarkmark)! Thanks Jen! Also thanks to kurtswish for the beta. This is a simple “meet-cute,” hope you enjoy (in spite of it being Halloween-themed while way past Halloween)! 

Of BFF’s and Shoes by @a-simple-rainbow

I decided to mesh together a fuckload of tropes/prompts. From the text to the wrong number, to meeting in an elevator. Mostly it’s funny and stupid. Apologies to anyone who likes high heeled converse all stars. 

Of Sad Movies and Kind Strangers by @hadelli

Kurt’s week couldn’t get any worse.Because is there anything more pathetic than crying in a movie theatre, alone?Probably not, right?Right??

On Boundaries and Harvard Law by @klaineanummel

Burt gives Kurt’s number to a total stranger.

Overcoming a Break-Up by @mailroomorder

Kurt knows what it’s like to lose a nicely tailored jacket in the city, and he wouldn’t want that to happen to someone else. So when someone leaves their jacket at the restaurant Kurt works at, he figures the least he can do is return it to its rightful owner. Even if said owner did dine and dash, forcing Kurt to pay his bill.

Overcoming Gravity by @alilactree

From @prompt-a-klainefic:

I just discovered that you can buy vibrators at the airport, but while i was trying to load my bag into the overhead compartment on the plane, it fell out and landed right in your lap.

Poke-Klaine by @nightingale63

AU where Blaine went to NYADA but Kurt went to FIT (and Kurt never went to Dalton). A fun, fluffy meet-cute – enjoy!

Raspberry Rain by @lovetheblazer

kurt-and-blaine-anderhummel prompted: I haven’t slept in like 3 days everything is funny and your hair smells really good (where Kurt is the one that hasn’t slept and Blaine sits next to him in class and he keeps leaning his head on Blaine’s shoulder and keeps telling Blaine that his hair smells good from his scented hair gel). Klaine Alternative Meeting AU

Return to Sender by @skivvysupreme

Kurt’s shifts at the Spotlight Diner keep turning into complete trainwrecks, and it’s all the hot UPS guy’s fault. Sort of. (Though, in all fairness, Kurt has always had a certain weakness for men in uniforms.) 

Tell Me All Your Secrets by @lady-divine-writes

After being cheated on by his boyfriend for the tenth time, Kurt comes home, ready to surrender to a good cry and sleep. But when he can’t sleep, he checks his voice mail and finds a bunch of drunken messages from a wrong number, but his mysterious caller might be the answer to getting over his scumbag ex.

The Bookshelf by @klainjel

In which Blaine stumbles into a bookstore in search of a birthday present and finds so much more 

The Concert Experience by BlurtItAllOut

Wes and David have a spare concert ticket, and asks Blaine to tag along. He may not be so very interested in the headliner, but there are others to feast his eyes on. This will be a concert experience to remember. 

The Effects of Cookies on Shy Teenagers by @musiclovingbitch

ADJACENT STANDS AT THE FARMER’S MARKET AU

The Man With The Hippo-Head Brooch by @borogroves

A passing encounter on the London Underground leaves Blaine trying to track down a beautiful stranger.

Welcome to the New Age by @itspartofmyjealousy

A love story told through NYADA’s Snapchat

What Dreams Are Made Of by @bluecloudsupabove/ca_te

Just when Kurt thought New York couldn’t get more perfect, he stumbled upon Blaine.

#klaine fanfiction #meet cute fic recs #pining fic recs #under 10K #enjoy!

[architectnews]

Philip Johnson Glass House, New Canaan

Philip Johnson Glass House Connecticut, 20th Century American Building, Modern Home America

Philip Johnson Glass House : Modern Connecticut Architecture

20th Century American Property: New Photos – home design by Philip Johnson Architect

post updated June 26, 2021

Johnson House

Location: New Canaan, Connecticut, USA

Date built: 1949

Design: Architect Philip Johnson

photographs : Simon Garcia | arqfoto.com

The Glass House was completed in 1949. It is a National Trust Historic Site on a 49-acre campus.

Inspired by architect Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House (Plano, IL, USA), its exterior walls are made of glass, a radical departure from houses of the time.

The Glass House was the start of Philip Johnson’s fifty-year odyssey of architectural experimentation in forms, materials, and ideas, through the addition of other structures. These include the Brick House/Guest House, Pond Pavilion, Painting Gallery, Sculpture Gallery, Ghost House, Library/Study, Da Monsta, and the methodical sculpting of the surrounding landscape.

Sep 13, 2018

Philip Johnson Glass House News

A Conversation with Frank Gehry + Paul Goldberger

The Glass House welcome two distinguished names in architecture for cocktails, lunch, and a conversation about the state of architecture and the history of the Glass House as we commemorate its upcoming 70th anniversary.

This event will be held at the newly reopened Four Seasons Restaurant designed by architect Isay Weinfeld. Ticket sales benefit important preservation projects at the Glass House.

Tickets include reception, conversation with Frank Gehry and Paul Goldberger, and seated lunch featuring Krug Champagne.

Ticket Levels $500 – Individual ticket $10,000 – Ten premium tickets at a prime location table

Tickets, tables and donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowable by law.

For inquiries, please contact Isabel Richards at [email protected] or 203.978.3011.

The Glass House presents A Conversation with Frank Gehry + Paul Goldberger

photograph : Simon Garcia | arqfoto.com

About the speakers

Raised in Toronto, Canada, Frank Gehry moved in 1947 with his family to Los Angeles where he subsequently received his Bachelor of Architecture degree at the University of Southern California in 1954. Upon graduating, he enlisted in the US Army and with the assistance of the GI Bill, he studied City Planning at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design until 1957.

Since then, Frank Gehry has built an architectural career that has spanned over six decades and he has produced public and private buildings throughout the world. His work has earned Mr. Gehry several of the most significant awards in the architectural field, including the Pritzker Prize.

Notable projects include Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California; Eight Spruce Street Residential Tower in New York City, New York; Opus Hong Kong Residential in Hong Kong, China; Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, France; the Biomuseo in Panama City, Panama; the Dr. Chau Chak Wing Building for the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia; the West Campus for Facebook in Menlo Park, California; and the Boulez Hall in Berlin, Germany.

Current projects include the King Street Development in Toronto, Ontario; the Grand Avenue Project in Los Angeles, California; 8150 Sunset in Los Angeles, California; the Ocean Avenue Project in Santa Monica, California; the World Jewish Museum in Tel Aviv, Israel; the Los Angeles River revitalization project in Los Angeles, California; a new center for the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA) in Inglewood, California; and single-family residential projects in Atherton, California; Los Angeles, Californi; and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

Projects under construction include the LUMA / Parc des Ateliers in Arles, France; Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Facebook Campus in Menlo Park, California; the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington D.C.; La Maison LVMH – Arts, Talents, Patrimoine in Paris, France; the Battersea Power Station Development in London, England; and the Louis Vuitton Gallery in Seoul, South Korea.

photo : Simon Garcia | arqfoto.com

Paul Goldberger, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, spent fifteen years as the architecture critic for The New Yorker and began his career at the New York Times, where he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism for his writing on architecture.

Paul Goldberger is the author of many books, most recently Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry, Why Architecture Matters, Building Up and Tearing Down: Reflections on the Age of Architecture, and Up From Zero. Goldberger is also completing a new book on the architecture of American baseball parks to be published next year. He is also the chairman of the Advisory Council of the Glass House and the Joseph Urban Professor of Design and Architecture at the New School.

Frank Gehry Architect

Sep 21, 2017 Talks by Norman Foster and Robert A.M. Stern

Friday, October 27, 2017 5:00pm – 8:00pm Tickets: $350

photo : Simon Garcia | arqfoto.com

The Glass House is proud to announce an opportunity to hear from two of the world’s most preeminent architects, Norman Foster and Robert A.M. Stern. Beginning with their youthful relationship studying architecture at Yale in the early 1960s, these men have known each other since the very beginnings of their illustrious careers.

Each has exerted a global influence on buildings as well as the urban environment overall. For this fundraising event, they will discuss both their shared history as well as their vision for how architecture can contribute to a more sustainable environment and how the role of the architect is evolving in response to global issues today.

Preservation, this intimate conversation and dinner benefits preservation at the site.

Ticket includes cocktail reception, conversation with Norman Foster and Robert A.M. Stern, and dinner featuring Krug Champagne.

Aug 14, 2017 September Programs at the Glass House + Lynn Davis: On Ice

Noyes House: photo : Michael Biondo

September Programs at the Glass House

Study Tour: Glass House + Noyes House

Monday, September 11, 1:00 – 5:30pm

Tickets for Study Tour: Glass House + Noyes House

Visit two important examples of New Canaan mid-century residential architecture on a half-day study tour of Philip Johnson’s Glass House (1949) and the Eliot Noyes House (1954). Tickets for this program include tours of both sites, shuttle transportation between sites, and light refreshments.

Glass House Presents: Frederick Noyes on the Noyes House

Tuesday, September 12, 6:00 – 8:00pm

New Canaan Library

Register for Frederick Noyes on the Noyes House

Join architect Fred Noyes at New Canaan Library for a free lecture about his childhood home, the Noyes House (1954) in New Canaan. Designed by Eliot Noyes and included on the National Register of Historic Places, the house’s unique composition – two enclosures for public and private functions connected by an open air courtyard – remains highly provocative. Fred will analyze the intent and design of the house in comparison to the Glass House (1949), designed by Philip Johnson.

Study Tour: Philip Johnson in Manhattan

Saturday, September 23, 2:00 – 5:30pm

Tickets for Philip Johnson in Manhattan

Hilary Lewis, Chief Curator and Creative Director of the Glass House, will lead a study tour of several important examples of architecture designed by Philip Johnson in midtown Manhattan, including the Museum of Modern Art’s Sculpture Garden, the exterior of the Rockefeller Guest House, and more.

Glass House Presents: The Modern Interior

Thursday, September 28, 5:30 – 8:00pm

Tickets for The Modern Interior

Join curators David A. Hanks, Juliet Kinchin, and Hilary Lewis for a discussion about the furniture inside the Glass House, much of which derives from Philip Johnson’s 1930 New York apartment designed by architect Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich.

Lynn Davis: On Ice

August 24 – November 30, 2017

Lynn Davis: On Ice presents a selection of photographs from the artist’s longstanding engagement with the icebergs on the sea outside of Ilulissat, a small town on the edge of a glacier off the west coast of Greenland. Developed over the course of six expeditions that began in 1986, Davis’s photographs evidence strong affinities with the spare geometry of minimalist sculpture and track the dramatic transformation of the natural environment.

As the Glass House commemorates its 10th year as a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the exhibition additionally celebrates Davis’s friendship with David Whitney and Philip Johnson, both of whom collected the artist’s work.

Lynn Davis: On Ice

Previously on e-architect:

Jul 8, 2017 New Exclusives at the Glass House Design Store

We are celebrating the 111th anniversary of Philip Johnson’s birth this Saturday, July 8th with the release of the new Modernist Paperweight designed by Werkstätte Carl Auböck Vienna exclusively for the Glass House Design Store.

Inspired by Philip Johnson’s iconic glasses, these life-sized “spectacles” were lovingly created for us by Carl Auböck lV and are available in patina or polished brass. Each piece bears the official Auböck stamp and comes with exclusive certification from the Werkstätte Carl Auböck. Truly an amazing “must have” for any mid-century aficionado, architectural enthusiast, design lover, or collector. Limited quantities available.

May 21, 2017

Hermès and the Glass House present Centered Rhyme

Hermès and the Glass House are honored to introduce Centered Rhyme, a limited-edition 90x90cm silk twill scarf featuring a design by the late American artist Elaine Lustig Cohen (1927-2016). The design is based on a large-scale 1967 painting by the artist.

To purchase, please contact the Glass House Design Store via phone at 203-594-9884 x0 or email at [email protected]. A portion of the proceeds from the sale the Centered Rhyme scarf will go towards the preservation of the Glass House.

Elaine Lustig Cohen was highly regarded as a graphic designer, artist, and rare book dealer throughout her career, which spanned over fifty years. In 1955, she began her design work in New York by extending the idiom of European modernism into an American context for her diverse clientele of publishers, corporations, cultural institutions, and architects. Her first client was Philip Johnson – architect of the celebrated Glass House (1949) in New Canaan, Connecticut – who commissioned her to design the lettering and signage for the iconic Seagram Building.

The two forged an important bond that resulted in a variety of projects for the Glass House, Yale University, and Lincoln Center, among others. As a painter, Lustig Cohen developed a hard-edged style in the 1960s and 1970s that asserted the canvas’ flat surface. She continued to experiment with bold colors, linear patterning, and abstract shapes in a variety of media including collage and three-dimensional objects.

Following a 2015 exhibition of the artist’s early paintings and graphic design at the Glass House, Pierre-Alexis Dumas, artistic director of Hermès, met the artist at her Manhattan home and conceived of a scarf based on her painting Centered Rhyme (1967). Pierre-Alexis and Elaine discovered a deep intellectual and philosophical connection while touring her remarkable personal collection of eclectic art and artifacts, including ancient printed silks.

The project was made in collaboration with the Glass House, a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, that in alignment with Hermès values is dedicated to the promotion of cultural and architectural preservation, artistry and craftsmanship.

The limited-edition Hermès 90cm x 90cm silk twill design, $395.00, will be presented in Lustig Cohen’s original coloration; crème/jaune/rose, and sold at the Glass House Design Store and Hermès boutiques.

Apr 18, 2017

Recent Glass House News

10th Anniversary Glass House Summer Party

10th Anniversary Glass House Summer Party, June 10, 2017 – Tickets on sale now!

Sep 21, 2016

Philip Johnson Glass House Photos

New Photos of Philip Johnson’s Glass House

Photographs: Simon Garcia | arqfoto.com

The campus serves as a catalyst for the preservation and interpretation of modern architecture, landscape and art.

Photos: Simon Garcia | arqfoto.com

To learn more about the Philip Johnson Glass House visit philipjohnsonglasshouse.org

Philip Johnson Glass House information from National Trust for Historic Preservation / Philip Johnson Glass House, 270812

Philip Johnson architect, USA

Johnson House, New Canaan – News Archive up to and including 2016

Location: 199 Elm Street, New Canaan, CT 06840, USA

Connecticut Architecture

Another famous Modern American House on e-architect:

Farnsworth House, Plano, Illinois, USA 1950 Architect: Mies van der Rohe picture © gm+ad architects Farnsworth House

American Houses photo : Michael Moran

Modern Houses photo : Biff Henrich / courtesy MHRC

Recent Connecticut Building

Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges, Yale, New Haven 1962 (Eero Saarinen) Renovation + new-build in 2011: KieranTimberlake image from FD Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges This project won the Gold Medal from the AIA Philadelphia Chapter and was shortlisted in the New/Old Category at the 2011 World Architecture Festival.

Connecticut Houses

Major 20th Century Connecticut Houses, alphabetical:

Brant House, Greenwich 1972 Design: Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates

Breuer House II, New Canaan 1948 Design: Marcel Breuer Architect

Stillman House III, Litchfield 1972-74 Design: Marcel Breuer Architect with Tician Papachristou

Gagarin House II, Litchfield 1973-74 Design: Marcel Breuer Architect with Tician Papachristou

House VI, Cornwall 1972-75 Design: Peter Eisenman

Smith House, Darien 1964-67 Design: Richard Meier Architects

Connecticut Architecture

Connecticut Architectural Designs Selection

Yale Arts Complex – Paul Rudolph Hall renovation Date renewed: 2009 Design: Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects photo : Peter Aaron Paul Rudolph Hall

Yale University Art Gallery Date built: 1953 Design: Louis Kahn / Polshek Partnership Architects, LLP Yale University Art Gallery : Modern US building

School of Architecture in Connecticut Yale School of Architecture Events

Another Modern American house on e-architect:

Miller House, Columbus, Indiana Design: Eero Saarinen photo Courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art Miller House Columbus

Frank Lloyd Wright house : Zimmerman House, Manchester, New Hampshire, north east USA

Comments / photos for the Philip Johnson Glass House – 20th Century Connecticut Architecture page welcome

Website: Philip Johnson Glass House

The post Philip Johnson Glass House, New Canaan appeared first on e-architect.

#e-architect

[hopefulfestivaltastemaker]

May 23, 2021

My weekly roundup of things I am up to. Topics include the age of civilization and three aspects of urban density: environmental, affordability, and lifestyle.

How Old is Civilization?

Samo Burja has another good piece on Palladium this week, Why Civilization Is Older Than We Thought. In it he makes the claim that in the coming years, we will find evidence that what we think of as civilization, including cities, goes back tens of thousands of years farther than currently believed. He may have been inspired by a recent trip to Göbekli Tepe, a site in modern-day Turkey that predates by about 5000 years the city-states in Mesopotamia that were once regarded as the first cities.

In the same vein, there is a recent paper, which I found through Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution blog, that finds widespread evidence of large scale cooperation--that is, cooperation among weakly related or unrelated individuals--in forager societies, including those of the deep Paleolithic. The authors, Boyd and Richardson, find evidence of cooperation in hunting drivelines, trap fishing, warfare, diplomacy, and other areas.

The prevailing view, at least as I understand it, of large scale cooperation is that humans are not equipped for it, only for small scale cooperation based on kin ties and personal relationships, limited by Dunbar’s Number of about 150 for the size of cooperative ventures. Going past this limit requires various forms of social technology, most of which were developed shortly after agriculture, such as currency, writing, and legal codes. Since humans are not biologically equipped for large scale cooperation, the technologies that foster it create an evolutionary mismatch.

As Boyd and Richardson themselves admit, the evidence in their paper is not conclusive. But it does provide an intriguing case against the evolutionary mismatch view. Since widespread cooperation dates back perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, there is enough time for evolution, rather than just social technology, to make it a natural behavior for humans.

As Burja points out in his piece, our understanding of history, including prehistory, has unavoidable political implications for the present. In recent years, evolutionary psychology explanations have been marshaled behind nationalism, partisan politics, and other kinds of “tribal” behavior on the grounds that they tap into natural human behaviors of prehistory. I have some problems with the evolutionary psychology explanations, in that they tend to be “just so” explanation of current behavior, and they can easily fall into the appeal to nature fallacy. Add to that list of problems the fact that many basic questions about prehistoric human societies and human evolution remain unsettled.

Considering the Case for Urban Density - the Environmental Argument

I’ve written a lot about cities, and density in particular, in recent weeks, as this is the current project I am tasked to do in my work. This time I thought I would take a step back and look at the broader case for density, as well as its weaknesses.

There are many facets to the debate, but I see three main points for the pro-density case. First is the environmental argument that, all else being equal, denser living arrangements tend to have smaller environmental impacts. Second is financial: that by putting more people into a given space, we can lower the cost of housing. Third is lifestyle, that density, at least if done the right way, supports a better lifestyle than suburban living. I’ll address each of these points in turn.

Regarding the environmental effects, it seems to me that there is indeed an environmental case to higher density, though the case isn’t as much of a slam dunk as some advocates believe. For every doubling of urban density, if paired with other good design decisions, total driving should be reduced by up to 40%. Smaller units, and especially apartments that share walls, tend to have lesser heating and cooling needs, and density enables district heating and cooling systems that tend to be much more efficient than stand-alone units. Where the ambiguity comes into play is that people in denser living arrangements often make up their energy and emissions in other ways, such as more air travel. For obvious reasons, denser cities save habitat as well.

There are two major problems with the environmental argument. First, most of the environmental objectives of density can be better accomplished by other means. A concerted effort at increasing density in the United States would, over 50 years, reduce driving by what I estimate to be maybe 10%, or 20% if we’re really being generous. We could reduce emissions from cars more and faster by promoting electric vehicles and low-emissions power, both of which I expect will be widespread in 50 years. Greater land use savings are possible through cultured meat, greenhouses, and hydroponics than through density.

Safety comes up a lot, though I’m not sure how strong the safety case is for greater density, given that biking is a relatively dangerous form of travel, even if separated from cars. In the time it takes for any pro-density policy to have a major effect, I would expect self-driving cars to be common, and that should do much more than the reduction in driving in promoting safety. Aside from that, we could do a lot of simpler things like better traffic enforcement, use of pedestrian overpasses, and other measures to promote safety.

My second problem is when people hear about the environmental benefits of density, it sounds like--whether or not the speaker intend it--“you have to give up your lawn for the planet”. Sacrifice for environmental causes is bad politics and goes against what I believe in.

For these reasons I tend to deemphasize the environmental case when talking about density.

Urban Density -- the Affordability Argument

It sounds very intuitive, and urbanists like Brent Toderian make this argument all the time. Urban space is expensive and a premium resource, so the more people who can fit in a city, the lower housing prices should be through the magic of supply and demand. Therefore, zone for small houses and apartments, reduce the amount of space for cars in favor of housing, and housing prices should go down.

The main flaw with this argument is that it treats urban space as a fixed commodity. There tends to be a tradeoff between space and speed in transportation. By speed I mean how far a person can get in a fixed amount of time, so the “speed” of buses and rail would account for the time that a person spends waiting. Cars take up more space per traveler, but they allow a person to go farther, compared to other modes of travel. Car-oriented cities tend to be spatially bigger than transit-oriented cities, but they can support about the same number of people. Greater populations are possible when all modes are combined, which is why almost every large city in the world has a mix of modes.

There is a good case for cutting back on zoning regulation, which in many cities has become excessive and serves an explicitly nativist purpose. But cutting back on zoning regulation also entails liberalizing the spatial growth controls that are also common. It also means addressing environmental reviews and labor restrictions on new roads and rail, since infrastructure is necessary to allow cities to grow and infrastructure should be available at a reasonable price.

It’s not just urbanists who are a fault. Joel Kotkin, among others, makes a cargo cult argument that since suburbs tend to be cheaper than inner cities, more zoning restrictions should lower prices.

Urban Density -- the Lifestyle Argument

Environmental and affordability issues aside, I think the real animating force behind much modern urbanism is lifestyle. To many urbanists, the well-designed density of London, Rome, or Paris is much to be preferred to the dreary nondescript suburbs that characterize the fringes of American cities, or the dazzling skyscrapers of Hong Kong or Singapore provide much more excitement and opportunity than alternatives.

There is nothing wrong with this argument per se, and I am sympathetic to it as well. But people like the aforementioned Kotkin will make similar arguments about suburbs. Suburban life offers the space and privacy necessary for happiness, especially for children, that is unavailable in dense cities. Suburbs generally offer less crime, less pollution, better schools, and otherwise better metrics on most quality of life factors.

The problem is that I don’t know what principle to appeal to to distinguish between the above arguments. Thus so many decisions about urban planning devolve into a “he said/she said” situation that is basically unresolvable.

If we had a truly free market in cities, that would be one thing. People can sort themselves out by preference, and truly inferior arrangements will die by market discipline. But most urban planning decisions are made through political processes, and for a variety of reasons individuals can’t just pack up and leave easily for better living.

I suspect that density is the wrong question to be asking about urban planning. Density or sprawl are the result of good planning, not the objectives of planning.

[more-relics]

Pink Floyd - London Free School Benefit Concert. All Saints Church Hall, Notting Hill, London. 21 October 1966.  © Graham Keen.   

#roger waters #syd barrett #pink floyd #all saints church hall #Notting Hill #london #graham keen #1966

[xornwaswrong-blog]

Bootlegs!

I would love to trade, but I can gift if you’re new to the bootleg world. I did not film any of these. Please don’t try to “trade” YouTube videos with me. Also, respect NFT dates. If I forgot to include one, please message me nicely and I’ll put it up. Feel free to ask whatever questions you need to ask. If you’re only interested in VOBs, please ask if I have VOBs of what you want, because I have them for a lot of the shows I have, but it’s easier for me to access my mp4s and I may forget.

Abbreviations I use: OBC = Original Broadway Cast OOBC = Original Off Broadway Cast OBRC = Original Broadway Revival Cast NFT = Not For Trade

3 Musketeers with Aaron Tveit

9 to 5 OBC

13 OBC

1776 (1997 Cast)

21 Chump Street

25th Annual Puntnam County Spelling Bee OBC

A Bronx Tale

A Christmas Story OBC

A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder OBC

Aida with Idina Menzel

A New Brain Original Cast

A New Brain Jonathan Groff

Annie Get Your Gun Bernadette Peters

Annie Get Your Gun Megan Hilty

Aladdin OBC

Altar Boyz

Annie OBRC

Anyone Can Whistle Patti Lupone, Michael Cerveris and Audra McDonald (Ravina production)

Anyone Can Whistle Donna Murphy, Raul Esparza and Sutton Foster (Encores Production)

Anything Goes with Stephanie J. Block

American Idiot Broadway

American Psycho OBC

Anastasia Hartford

Anastasia OBC (NFT until Nov. 1)

Avenue Q OBC

Bandstand OBC

Bare the Musical Off Broadway

Bat Boy Kerry Butler

Beauty and the Beast OBC

Blood Brothers 1989 Proshot

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson Broadway

Book of Mormon OBC

Book of Mormon Nic Rouleau Ben Platt

Book of Mormon London Gavin Creel

Book of Mormon Workshop

Bridges of Madison County OBC

Bright Star Closing Night

Bring It On OBC

Cabaret 1987 (Joel Grey)

Cabaret (Raul Esparza)

Cabaret (Emma Stone)

Cabaret 2014 OBRC

Camelot Richard Burton and Christine Ebersole

Carousel 1994 (Audra McDonald)

Carousel Live from Lincoln Center (Kelli O’Hara, Jessie Mueller)

Carousel (Steven Pasquale Laura Osnes)

Carrie (Off-Broadway)

Catch Me If You Can OBC

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Broadway

Chess in Concert

Chicago OBRC (Ann Reinking, Bebe Newirth)

The Color Purple OBC

The Color Purple OBRC

The Color Purple with Heather Headley

Come From Away OBC

Company in Washington DC (John Barrowman, Alice Ripley)

Company Raul Esparza Proshot

Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime OBC

Dear Evan Hansen OBC

Debbie Does Dallas Sherie Rene Scott

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels OBC

Dog Sees God OOBC

Dogfight OOBC

The Drowsy Chaperone with Bob Saget

Evita OBC (Patti Lupone)

Evita Tour (Raul Esparza)

End of the Rainbow with Tracie Bennet

Equus with Daniel Radcliffe

Falsettos OBC

Falsettos Mandy Patinkin

Falsettos OBRC (2 angles and the proshot rip)

The Frogs Nathan Lane

Fun Home OBC

Fun Home Tour Kate Schindle and Carly Gold

Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (Nathan Lane revival)

Grey Gardens OBC

Groundhog Day OBC

Guys and Dolls 2009 Revival

Gypsy with Tyne Daly

Gypsy Bette Midler movie

Gypsy with Patti Lupone

Gypsy London proshot

Hair (Encores with Idina Menzel and Jesse Tyler Ferguson)

Hair Actors Benefit Concert (This cast is crazy awesome, PM me for details)

Hairspray OBC

Hairspray OBC conductor cam

Hairspray Aaron Tveit

Hairspray Andrew Rannells

Hairspray OLC

Hamilton OBC

Hamilton OCC

Hamilton Javier Munoz u/s

Hamilton Javier Munoz & Lexi Lawson u/s

Hamilton Act 1 Andrew Rannells

Hand to God (Jim Parsons and Sean Hayes)

Hands on a Hardbody

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Heathers (understudy Heather Chandler and JD)

Heathers Full OC (bad angle, bad filming, only Act 1)

Hedwig and the Angry Inch Off Broadway proshot, JCM

Hedwig and the Angry Inch Andrew Rannells

Hedwig and the Angry Inch Darren Criss

Hedwig and the Angry Inch Jason Cameron Mitchel (Crate Show)

Hedwig and the Angry Inch Taye Diggs

Hedwig and the Angry Inch Lena Hall as Hedwig

Hello Dolly Bette Midler OBRC

Hello Dolly Donna Murphy (NFT until October)

Honeymoon In Vegas

How To Succeed… Daniel Radcliffe

If/Then Jackie Burns

In The Heights OBC

In The Heights Krysta Rodriguez

In The Heights London (a LOT of understudies, though. PM me for details)

Into The Woods 2002 OBC Off-Broadway

Into The Woods Regent’s Park

Into The Woods (Amy Adams, Donna Murphy)

Into the Woods (Heather Headley, Rob McClure)

InTransit Broadway

Jersey Boys with Andrew Rannells

Jesus Christ Superstar Arena Tour proshot

The King and I Donna Murphy

The King and I Kelli O’Hara

The King and I Marin Mazzie

Kinky Boots OBC

Kinky Boots Brendon Urie (starts at Sex is in the Heel)

Kiss Me Kate Rachel York proshot

La Cage aux Folles (both revivals)

Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill

The Last Five Years Norbert Leo Butz and Lauren Kennedy

The Last Five Years OOBC

The Last Five Years Betsy Wolfe Adam Kantor

The Last Five Years Katie Rose Clarke Adam Halpin

Legally Blonde OBC (proshot)

Les Miserables (Sutton Foster as Eponine)

Les Miserables (Drew Sarich as Valjean)

Les Miserables (Lea Salonga as Fantine)

Les Miserables (Kerry Ellis as Fantine)

Les Miserables 2011

Les Miserables Dallas

Les Miserables 2014 OBRC

Les Miserables 10th Anniversary Concert (proshot)

Lightning Thief Concert

Little Foxes (Laura Linney as Regina)

A Little Night Music Bernadette Peters

The Little Mermaid (Broadway, not out of town tryouts)

Little Shop of Horrors Florida Tryouts (Alice Ripley, Hunter Foster, Billy Porter)

Little Shop of Horrors OBC

Little Shop of Horrors Jake Gyllenhaal

Love Never Dies

Man of LaMancha (2002)

Matilda w/Lesli Margarita

Memphis OBC (proshot)

Merrily We Roll Along Raul Esparza

Merrily We Roll Along 2013

Miss Saigon Lea Salonga Will Chase

Miss Saigon London Revival (Proshot)

Miss Saigon London Revival (bootleg)

Miss Saigon Broadway Revival

The Music Man (Robert Sean Leonard and Rebecca Luker)

The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Revival Cast)

Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 OBC (two of them, one from December)

Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 Scott Sangland

Newsies OBC

Newsies Jeremy Jordan Kara Lindsay (proshot)

Next To Normal OOBC

Next To Normal OBC

Next To Normal OBC (Matinee, VOBs)

Next To Normal 2nd Broadway Preview

Next To Normal Alice Ripley, Jennifer Damiano, & Brian D'Arcy James’ Final Performance

Next To Normal Jessica Phillips & Kyle Dean Massey

On Your Feet OBC 10/17/15

Once OBC

Once with Arthur Darville

Once Upon A Mattress OBRC (Sarah Jessica Parker)

Pacific Overtures OBC (proshot)

Pajama Game Kelli O'Hara Harry Connick Jr.

Parade in Concert (Jeremy Jordan and Laura Benanti)

Parade 2009 LA Production

Passion Patti Lupone 2005 (Lincoln Center)

Pippin Toronto (proshot)

Pippin 2013 OBRC

Pippin with Kyle Dean Massey and Ciara Rene

Phantom of the Opera 25th Anniversary (proshot)

Phantom of the Opera Norm Lewis and Sierra Bogress

The Pirate Queen OBC

The Prom World Premiere

The Producers OBC

Priscilla Queen of the Desert

Ragtime OBC

Reefer Madness OOBC (Kristen Bell)

Rent OBC Opening Night

Rent 10th Anniversary Reunion Concert

Rent Closing Cast with Renee Elise Goldsberry (proshot)

Rent Hollywood Bowl

The Robber Bridegroom (Steven Pasquale)

Rocky OBC (Andy Karl)

Rocky Horror Show OBC (Daphne Rubin-Vega and Joan Jett) [yes, that Joan Jett]

Saved! (Aaron Tveit)

Scarlet Pimpernel

School of Rock OBC

Scotsboro Boys OBC

Secret Garden Concert

Seussical (Rosie O’Donnel)

Side Show OBC

Sister Act OBC

Shuffle Along OBC

Something Rotten OBC

Something Rotten Rob McClure

South Pacific Kelli O’Hara (bootleg)

SpongeBob Musical Chicago Tryout

Spring Awakening Krysta Rodriguez (PM me for details on the understudies)

Spring Awakening Deaf West

Streetcar Named Desire John C. Reilly and Natasha Richardson

Sunday in the Park with George OBRC (Jake Gyllenhaal & Annaleigh Ashford)

Sunset Boulevard 2017 (February 24th)

Sweeney Todd OBC

Sweeney Todd Angela Lansbury proshot

Sweeney Todd 2012 (Imelda Staunton Michael Ball)

Sweeney Todd Concert (Emma Thompson, Christian Borle)

Sweet Charity with Sutton Foster

tick… tick… BOOM OOBC

[title of show]

Thoroughly Modern Millie OBC

Twelfth Night (1998)

Urinetown OBC

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike OBC

Violet OBRC (Sutton Foster)

Waitress OBC

Waitress Sara Barellies

War Paint OCC

War Paint Broadway previews

We Will Rock You (Kerry Ellis)

The Wedding Singer OBC

West Side Story with Karen Olivo OBRC

Wicked OBC previews

Wicked OBC but Taye Diggs is Fiyero

Wicked Kristin Chenoweth’s Last

Wicked Shoshana Bean, Jennifer Laura Thompson, and Joey McIntyre

Wicked Idina’s “Last performance” Joey McIntyre’s last performance (Shoshana Bean, Jennifer Laura Thompson, and Joey McIntyre)

Wicked Julia Murney Broadway

Wicked Victoria Matlock

Wicked Megan Hilty’s Last Broadway Show with Eden

Wicked Eden Espinosa’s Last Broadway Show

Wicked Eden Espinosa and Megan Hilty LA

Wicked Stephanie J. Block and Analeigh Ashford

Wicked Dee Roscoli

Wicked Willemijn Verkaik and Katie Rose Clarke

Wicked Mandy Gonzalez and Andy Karl

Wicked Lili Cooper and Kara Lindsay

Wicked Laurel Harris and Kara Lindsay

Wicked Kerry Ellis

Wicked Jackie Burns (no fly)

Wicked Jackie Burns 2010

Wicked Donna Vivino tour

Wicked Donna Vivino and Ali Mauzey

Wicked Rachel Tucker and Jonah Platt

Wicked Kara Lindsay and Jennifer DiNoia

The Wild Party Encores!

Wonderful Town Donna Murphy

Xanadu OBC

You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown Revival

I haven’t watched all of these yet, so I may have some cast details slightly wrong (understudies and the like). Please PM me for trading. Be sure to follow me.

Wants:

Avenue Q with Rob McClure

Any Carousel I don’t have

Evita with Eden Espinosa (ready to kill to get this)

Last Five Years with Samantha Barks (one of the only audio trades I will accept)

Any Last Five Years I don’t have

Les Mis in general

Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 w/ Oak and/or Ingrid Michaelson once the NFT date passes

Any Natasha Pierre…. I don’t have

Next to Normal Marin Mazzie

Any Rent that I don’t have (especially if it’s with Sherie Rene Scott)

She Loves Me in general (not the 2016 livestream)

Sunset Boulevard in general

Wicked with Susie Mathers

Wicked in general

And generally anything I don’t have

#broadway bootlegs #Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 #great comet #n2n #next to normal #broadway #broadway boots #les mis #les miz #les miserables #wicked #kara lindsay #jennifer dinoia #she loves me #hedwig #hedwig and the angry inch #hatai

[ericfruits]

Covid-19 challenges New York’s future

Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our coronavirus hub

BY NIGHT, Manhattan holds 1.6m souls, a large number for a small island. In the morning over twice as many more rush in like a tide, filling up office blocks, coffee shops and spin classes. In the evening this tide drains back out over bridges and through tunnels, leaving just a thin residue of small-hours stop-outs and shift workers. The ebb and flow is shallower at weekends, and in summer. But it has held its rhythm for more than a century.

In mid-March the tide stopped. Following stay-at-home orders issued by Andrew Cuomo, New York’s governor, workplaces shut down as hospitals filled. The city became one of the deadliest hotspots of the covid-19 pandemic, with 20,000 dying over three months. Times Square emptied, the museums and concert halls closed.

At the end of May the streets came to fitful life as thousands protested against racism and police violence in the wake of the death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minnesota police officer. Bill de Blasio, the city’s mayor—and, as a newly enthusiastic backer of the police department, one of the targets of the protests—instituted a curfew which lasted until June 6th, two days before the city began its official reopening.

Construction and manufacturing have now restarted; shops offer pavement pickups. But many businesses are still shut, and most office workers at home. Broadway will stay dark until at least September. The schools’ chancellor has said that there is a 50-50 chance schools will reopen in the autumn. The city that never sleeps looks as if it will be sedated for much of the rest of the year. If covid comes back in a big way, or if workers stay in front of screens at home, it could become moribund.

All the mystery and beauty

Nowhere represented the 20th century’s love affair with the idea of the city better than New York. In size—surpassing London, the previous top dog, in 1925—grandeur, cultural attainment and animal spirits of all sorts it was for decades the toast of the world and a model to emulate.

Over the century more and more cities grew large, dense and rich. By 2016 more than a fifth of humankind was living in cities of 1m people or more. The largest 300 metropolitan areas now generate half the world’s GDP and two-thirds of that GDP’s growth. And New York remains at the tip of the top tier. At almost $1.8trn its GDP is the largest of any city in the world. It is home to as dense a cluster of globally important firms as you can find anywhere.

Workers and firms have continued to pile into cities like New York, even as travel and telecommuting have become easier, because there is so much to be gained by proximity to other human beings, especially when it comes to the “knowledge economy” reliant on highly skilled, highly educated and highly productive workers. Geoffrey West, a physicist at the Santa Fe Institute, has shown that these benefits in terms of wages and innovation grow faster than the cities which provide them.

Edward Glaeser, an economist at Harvard University, has shown that urban density increases workers’ productivity and minimises their carbon footprints. Americans who live in big metropolitan areas are, on average, more than 50% more productive than those who live in smaller metros. This holds true even for workers with the same education, experience, working in the same industry and boasting the same IQ. Much the same is true in other rich countries. In poorer ones the advantages of city life are even greater.

Closing down such powerhouses in the face of covid-19 was a dramatic and expensive step for the governments that did so. But it was at least conceptually simple. Reopening them is harder, in large part because of the conflicting requirements of amenity and transport. For almost all cities reopening will see increased congestion as people who previously used mass transit commute by car and on their own. New York—big by European standards, uniquely mass-transit dependent by American ones—will have those problems on a scale all of its own. “A 1% decline in transit use into Manhattan would translate into a 12% increase in car traffic,” says Nicole Gelinas of the Manhattan Institute, a think-tank. Corey Johnson, the city-council speaker, warns of “Carmageddon”.

But making mass transit safe in a world of social distancing is hard. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which is run by the state, is responsible for the city’s buses and a subway system which boasts more stations than any other in the world. It was already in poor financial and physical shape before the pandemic; during the covid closure it lost 90% of its riders and more than $2bn in revenue. Though it is working on new ways to clean subway cars and distance passengers, it cannot put on enough services to keep commuters safely distanced. Indeed, if it does not get a substantial bail-out—which the state says it cannot afford—it is likely to have to cut jobs and services, worsening the problem.

Very careless and confused

Mr de Blasio has done little to help. Asked for 100km (60 miles) of new bus lanes to help with the situation he has provided just 30km. He has also been grudging when it comes to pedestrianising streets so that people can keep a respectful distance from each other while getting around and increasing provision for the use of bicycles.

This all means that New Yorkers cannot safely return to work in one fell swoop. But the point of a dense city is that it needs density to work. According to Enrico Moretti, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, each of the “knowledge jobs” that make cities like San Francisco or New York so successful supports five service jobs, some high paying—lawyers—some much less so—baristas. If office workers stay at home, the workers who depend on them being in town have no income. If, faced with half-empty offices, such service workers do not come back for want of custom, that will add to the commuters’ disinclination to return. If the businesses providing services actually go bust waiting for the tide to turn things will go even worse.

Even if reopening goes well, the hole in the city’s finances will be vast. The declines in sales, income and property taxes that came with the shutdown will result in a $9bn tax-revenue hit over the next two fiscal years, according to Mr de Blasio. The city’s independent budget office, which said on May 18th that the city’s fiscal situation is one of “absolute gloom and uncertainty”, thinks employment will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2024 (see chart). Without federal support, Mr de Blasio has said “any and all options will be on the table” for spending cuts, including laying off city workers. The state is unlikely to be able to bail out the city, given its own shortfalls.

Despite these dire straits, there are two good arguments for expecting New York to come back after covid. First, cities in general have proven inordinately resilient to enormous shocks. In 2002 Donald Davis and David Weinstein, both professors at Columbia University, looked at Japanese cities bombed during the second world war and found that “temporary shocks, even of frightening magnitude, appear to have little long-run impact on the spatial structure of the economy.” It took just 20 years for Nagasaki’s population growth to get back to the trend line it had been on before America dropped an atom bomb on it.

And if cities are resilient in theory, New York has also proved so in practice. The attacks which brought down the World Trade Centre in 2001 were estimated by the city’s comptroller to have cost $83bn-95bn in lives and property. Lower Manhattan, where the twin towers had stood, lost almost 30% of its office space, temporarily displacing 100,000 workers.

But in 2002 Michael Bloomberg, the city’s newly elected mayor, began offering incentives to companies to move downtown, and commercial occupancy rebounded. The population in the area has more than doubled since the attacks. By 2007 the employment rate had recovered to what it had been before. The next year Lehman Brothers collapsed, and the city’s flagship industry, financial services, looked hugely vulnerable. But though by 2018 it accounted for just over a third of jobs in lower Manhattan, down from 55% in 2001, it is still there. Even the $19bn of damage done by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 amounted to only a glancing blow. Property values on the Manhattan waterfront now stand 70% above the pre-Sandy level: on the Queens waterfront they are 128% higher.

What, though, if covid is not just the latest in a series of shocks? Cities that can shrug off a disaster can still fade if their economic base—and with it their tax revenues—suffers a structural shift. Again, New York has the history to prove it.

Like other American cities, New York saw rioting in the 1960s. Between 1969 and 1974 two recessions saw New York City lose almost 300,000 manufacturing jobs. Most American cities experienced some “white flight” during that period. New York saw a lot. The city lost 1.3m net residents during the 1970s, almost all of whom were white, more than the number lost by Los Angeles and Chicago combined.

Its tax base shrinking, by 1975 the city could not pay its bills or service its debt. Asked for help, Gerald Ford, then president, demurred. “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD” the front page of the Daily News bellowed in 144-point type.

Can’t repeat the past?

In the budget cuts which followed 13,000 teaching jobs were lost. For four years no police officers were hired; arrests fell by a fifth as crime, already bad, got worse. The subway was unsafe, there were graffiti everywhere, parks became drug dens. Today, St Mark’s Place is lined with busy bars, chic coffee shops and yoga studios. Then it was grimy enough to supply an album-cover image of urban decay for Led Zeppelin and hosted crimes that ranged from mugging through murder to cannibalism.

But the city still had the advantages that come from packing knowledge workers together. In the 1980s Michael Milken of Drexel Burnham Lambert invented the junk bonds that enabled Henry Kravis, a co-founder of KKR, a large private-equity firm, to pull off the first leveraged buy-outs, revolutionising corporate finance. This was not without its controversies—some of Mr Milken’s financial activities landed him in prison—but it did help the city regain solvency, not to mention pizzazz.

New York is in far better shape now than it was in the 1970s. But some 900,000 workers are expected to file for unemployment by the end of June, a level far higher than that seen in the Great Recession or after the attacks of 2001. Many businesses have closed thanks to covid-19; some may never reopen. And the workers to start new ones might be sorely lacking. Immigrants make up almost half of small business owners in New York, and it is unclear when restrictions on immigration will be lifted.

Even if the federal government is generous—the $7.5bn provided so far has not been seen as such by Mr Cuomo, who thinks almost ten times that amount is needed—there are sweeping budget cuts to schools, health care and local government on the way. Poorer services may keep those who have fled the virus from coming back. One in 20 New York City residents have left the city in the past months, taking up residence in single beds in childhood homes in all America’s contiguous states. For Manhattan, the richest borough, the proportion is a sixth: in its swankiest zip codes it is more than a third, for all that most of the deaths have been in poorer neighbourhoods in the outer boroughs.

A further outbreak of disease would both worsen the economy and weaken the urge to return. Mr Glaeser thinks that an enduring threat from SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes covid-19, “could lead to a serious and long-standing reorientation—at least for those that could afford it—towards de-urbanising of people’s lives.” It is worth noting that, pandemics apart, diseases generally tend to spread well in cities; Mr West finds that a city’s propensity for infection tends to grow faster than the city itself, just like wages and productivity.

And in a future where the virus remains under control the economic benefits of being packed tight, a boon in the city’s renaissance, might still be lost if some mixture of personal convenience and corporate strategy sees distance working turned from a temporary expedient to a lasting change in the way the urban economy works.

Take financial services, which account for a third of the Manhattan payroll. Barclays, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, three banks, employ more than 20,000 workers in Manhattan and occupy more than 930,000 square metres (10m square feet) in its office blocks, an area roughly equivalent to all the office space in downtown Nashville. James Gorman, the boss of Morgan Stanley, which occupies much of a tower that looms over Times Square, has said that the company has “proven we can operate with no footprint. That tells you an enormous amount about where people need to be physically,” though he has since stressed that most of the firm’s jobs will still be in offices. Jes Staley, the chief executive of Barclays, has said that “the notion of putting 7,000 people in a building may be a thing of the past.” In an internal memo JPMorgan Chase, one of the largest office tenants in New York, said the firm was reviewing how many workers would be allowed to return.

“Office space is where the biggest debate is,” says Ken Caplan, who runs the property investment arm of Blackstone, a New York-based private equity firm. Compliance with social-distancing measures seem likely to require more space per worker for many months. That will give companies a reason to encourage some workers to stay away some or all of the time while not changing the demand for office space much; Mr Caplan is confident in long-term demand.

Borne back ceaselessly

If workers can conduct their jobs from home permanently, some will leave the city for good. According to a survey conducted by Redfin, a property platform, more than half of those currently working from home say they would move away from their city if given the opportunity to work from home permanently. This may be an exaggeration. Thinking you might like to move and moving are quite different; searches on property websites do not show an immense appetite for life in the boondocks (which, to true New Yorkers, basically means all parts of the country outside the city’s limits). Scott Stringer, New York City’s comptroller, for one, thinks flight to places like Austin, Texas, is unlikely. “You know why?” he laughs. “Because they’d have to live there.”

What is more, an entirely decentralised workforce, however Slacked, Teamed, Hung-out and Zoomed it might be, cannot capture all the benefits the city has to offer, either for its members (in terms of finding better jobs) or its employers. Paco Ybarra, an executive at Citigroup, another bank, has said that firms might be able to work remotely now because they have already built up client and team relationships face-to-face in the past, but that this would “erode over time”.

Supposing you brought the light inside?

There may thus be a new balance to be found as individuals and companies seek to meld continuous online connections with an adequate exposure to the physical serendipities and contacts of city life. Office attendance will become a memory for some, a daily delight for others and a movable feast for most.

This will encourage a new sort of sprawl. Living near the heart of the city has long seemed worth it—in terms of high property prices and rents, and therefore small apartments—because the job opportunities and amenities are so valuable. If the daily tide of commuters weakens, so will some of those benefits, because the customer base will have shrunk, and the attraction of moving somewhere larger will grow. “If you only need to commute two or three days a week, you can spend the same total amount of time commuting but live much farther out in a bigger house with space for an at-home office,” says Taylor Marr, an economist at Redfin.

For their many flaws, cities have been an engine of prosperity, as well as a way of reducing the damage modern lifestyles do to the environment. In prior episodes of turmoil cities like New York have bounced back because their people have been drawn together more than they have been pulled asunder. Stepping onto a crowded subway or elevator was an act of defiance in the face of terrorism fears.

This time around the city’s leaders will not be able to rely on the gritty resilience of its inhabitants to restart the city. They will need to create inventive schemes that help workers travel safely and make sure the city has the contact-tracing and testing capacity to prevent a second outbreak. They will also need to keep a close eye on how the ways in which people work, and the places where they do so, may change. If New York can increase its telecommuting while keeping its vibrancy, it may again be a model to cities around the world. If it cannot, density will return—either there, or, if the city fails this latest test, elsewhere. ■

This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline "The destiny of density"

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