Deborama's WWW Number 37 - Phase2, "bubble letters", Obey Giant and other urban artifacts

I have taken to looking at the main page of Wikipedia every day, just for the serendipity of learning something new and unexpected. Today one of the pages featured was that of a graffiti artist from the seminal NYC 1970s scene, who went by the name of Phase2. He is "generally credited" with the invention of the "bubble letter" or "softies" style which is now quite ubiquitous in the urban and even suburban and rural environment.
As one does on the web, I surfed from link to link, learning about wheatpasting, which led in turn to Obey Giant (which started out as Andre the Giant has a posse.) I remember Andre from the wonderful film The Princess Bride, which due to my kids, children of the early 1980s, loving it so much, I have seen many times and pretty much know by heart.) Obey Giant also has an "official" website.
Getting back to the subject of graffiti, I see some on my way to work every day (two trains, a little over an hour on a good day, through Narborough, South Wigston, Leicester, Loughborough, Attenborough, Beeston and ending in Nottingham, which has a thriving graffiti culture. And a fair number of anarchists too.) In the rural category, just across from the Ratcliff-on-Soar coal-fired power plant, there is a graffiti (a graffitus? a graffito?) on a little hump-backed bridge that the sheep like to shelter under that says, in very crude simple letters, "Peak Power". And on the approach to Nottingham, a graffiti attributed to a group called ALF, says "Devaste to Liberate". I am pretty sure they meant to say "Devastate to Liberate" and it is a real blot on the landscape, to my mind, to have grossly misspelled graffiti. And anyway, I have never signed up to that belief anyway, despite being an anarchist. In fact, I have even come up with a minor witticism to take the piss out of such philosophy: Fuck omelettes, I just like breaking eggs.©

Nottingham, defended

If you keep up with UK news, you will have heard early last week about Nottingham being declared "the capital of crime" in the UK. Jon McGregor is a brilliant young writer (first novel If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things reviewed by Deborama's books two years ago) who happens to live in Nottingham. He has published an article defending his city which is well worth reading. Deborama works in Nottingham and can testify that it is a very vibrant multicultural city which has a lot going for it. However, McGregor says he has never seen a gun there, even in the the hands of the police, and I have to say I have seen armed police around the train station numerous times. Also, there was a gunshot murder just across the road from an office I used to work in in the city centre, on the doorstep of a popular night club (since closed).

Scene in Nottingham

On my way to the train from my office Wednesday night, I saw something mildly interesting and I said to my self, "Self, you should blog about that." By the time I got home I forgot that I had seen anything. Sometime Thursday, either on the train to work or while walking about, I remembered that I had seen something I wanted to blog about, but I could not remember what it was, or exactly where and when I had seen it. (Don't laugh, you'll be just like this when you're 51, worse if you drink too much.) I didn't remember what it was until I was walking to the train from the office tonight and I happened to glance to one side just as I was crossing a bridge over the canal. (On this map, I walk down Carrington Street and the blue line is the canal.) I happened to glance at the water and remembered: Wednesday evening there was a solitary person paddling a kayak swiftly through the swollen brown waterway. (we're having some floods just now.) I don't know why, but it struck me. I wanted to stand and watch or maybe run down to the canal and ask him where he was going and why a kayak. Of course, I didn't. If I had I would have remembered.

Why I love the internet

Here is a link in the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association website to something called the Rhythmical Time Fountain. It is only 1/2 mile from where I am sitting at work right now, and so I am going to see it today or if it is raining today, maybe tomorrow. Now, how did I happen to find this? Wonderful serendipity. There was a mention of the sculptor Rowland Emmet in a letter to Neil Gaiman that he posted on his weblog, Neil Gaiman's Journal. (I was reading that just because I am bored.) There is no link telling where in Nottingham this thing exists, and it undoubtedly never occurred to Neil or his correspondent that a middle-aged woman working in Nottingham with time on her hands would read this fragment and wonder whether she could pop out for half an hour and see the piece. But the ever-useful Google provided the answer in a few seconds. I did not even know there was this meticulous registry of all the monuments and sculptures in Britain, and that alone will give me hours of time-wasting enjoyment.