City Garden Hotel Room Service

Breakfast on Long Island.

GB on Fox News

Speaking of skeptics and goldmines, this guy left me complete shock. All flabbergasted-y. I go through stages of incessantly trolling through newspapers and flicking through TV news channels and websites. Compulsive need-to-know, you know? Very(selectively) preoccupied with the state of the world.

Now, I know Fox News isn’t taken seriously by many people, that maybe it was a little loose, alarmist, whatever.

Then I see Glenn Beck. Last week, mind you – it took me this long to recover. You know when you’re witnessing something so terrible and yet you can’t tear your eyes away? Yeah, it was like that. I guess I caught the last half of whatever that show is meant to be. So Fox has a Republican leaning.. how about you lean a bit further.. Topple over and hit your face on the edge of my coffee table, please.

He raves on and on, crazy potato-like, stabbing at his chalkboard, talking about how ‘God had a hand in the founding of America’, how China’s one child policy is ‘kooky’, how Iran is full of ‘nutjobs’.

How is he allowed on TV?? Really.

The New Rules

The NWA bomb attempt was dominating all the news channels as a breaking news story when I checked in in Chicago, and was still the major headline when I left a day later. Now that I’m home I’m trying to catch up on developments. It seems people are blogging and tweeting like crazy to ridicule the new TSA rules in place, and.. I get it. The restrictions flirt on the side of ridiculous. However, the masses ought to stop with the fun-poking and maybe try and come up with something more effective. Utilize the power of many instead of falling on a (very easy) sarcastic crutch.

A new cabin bulletin email for us included a temporary Emergency Amendment from the TSA effective Sunday, and expiring this Thursday. Another bulletin included the related PAs to be made on US-bound flights, which makes it ok by me to relay a screenshot. It’s all already accessible to the public anyway.. summarized by the typing thousands (I do realize that includes me).

The second I read the points through, all I can imagine is pax as zombies, like people in a theatre with no movie to watch. Elderly ladies shivering because we had to rip away their blankets in case they were hiding an IED under economy fleece. People banned from peeing when maybe they really have to go. Where will the hundreds of pillows and blankets be stowed when the overhead lockers are already full? Are we supposed to disable the map and communication features on the IFE system before at a specific time touchdown (and is it even possible to be that selective).  And here is no poking involved here in the above points – these are straight-faced concerns for me.

The TSA website is down, or at least it isn’t loading for me right now. Everyone wants to see the rules.

Flatiron

Locals took an immediate interest in the building, placing bets on how far the debris would spread when the wind knocked it down. This presumed susceptibility to damage also gave it the nickname Burnham’s Folley. The building is also said to have helped coin the phrase “23 skidoo”, from what cops would shout at men who tried to get glimpses of women’s dresses being blown up by the winds swirling around the building due to the strong downdrafts.

Often, I ‘tourist’ backwards, finding something by chance, by vague direction and ambiguous means, then fill in the details and story post-find. Put simply, this is me starting with a general idea of where I should probably walk, coming across something that might make me cry a little or at least provide some bubblechills, then I’ll google around when I get home. It’s not the better way to sightsee in every situation, but it can work wonderfully, like with the Flatiron (formally Fuller) building. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!!! Until I was up on the top of the Empire State building the night before and the audio guide voice pointed it out to me, I hadn’t heard of it, and the next day I walked right to it without even meaning to (not surprising as it’s on 5th and Broadway) There is such major profound satisfaction in seeing such a gorgeous man-made structure like that – of course it’s a city icon! Times Square can eat my face, it can’t compare. I get way cheesy from hereonin, beware. The style descriptions, the stories of the construction etc, are lullabies to me..

I found myself agape, admiring a skyscraper — the prow of the Flatiron Building, to be particular, ploughing up through the traffic of Broadway and Fifth Avenue in the late-afternoon light.
—H.G. Wells, 1906

On the captions on the framed pictures inside the foyer I recognized the Burnham name (the designer of the building)  from the 1909 Plan of Chicago, aka the Burnham Plan. So, planner and architect. 🙂 His other commissions include other buildings in Detroit, Washington D.C, Chicago, Pittsburgh.. which is funny as this is most of the US cities I want to see for their urban planning.

The acutely angled corners give the building an exaggerated and dramatic perspective. As the city’s “first” skyscraper, New Yorkers worried that it would topple over. In the over 100 years since its construction the Flatiron’s only problem has been that city grime has settled into the crevices of the terracotta flowers and Grecian faces decorating the building. Even this has only served to accentuate its details.

Located at 175 5th Avenue, between East 2nd and 23rd streets. Completed 1902. 87 metres high and 22 floors, with the rounded narrow top end only six feet wide. Consists of a steel frame covered with a non-load-bearing limestone and terracotta facade. Beaux-arts architectural style; combined elements of French and Italian Renaissance styles.

Today, the Flatiron Building is frequently seen on television commercials and documentaries as an easily recognizable symbol of the city, shown, for instance, in the opening credits of The Late Show With David Letterman. It is depicted as the headquarters of The Daily Bugle, for which Peter Parker is a freelance photographer in the Spider-man movies.

It is a popular spot for tourist photographs and also a functioning office building which is currently in the process of being taken over as the headquarters of publishing companies held by Macmillan. Macmillan is renovating some floors, and their website comments: The Flatiron’s interior is known for having its strangely-shaped offices with walls that cut through at an angle on their way to the skyscraper’s famous point. These “point” offices are the most coveted and feature amazing northern views that look directly upon another famous Manhattan landmark, the Empire State Building.

In January 2009, an Italian real estate investment firm bought a majority stake in the Flatiron Building, with plans to turn it into a world-class luxury hotel, although the conversion may have to wait 10 years until the leases of the current tenants run out.

**

http://commkey.net/daniel/flata.htm
http://www.nyc-architecture.com/GRP/GRP024.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatiron_Building#Architecture
http://www.emporis.com/application/?nav=building&lng=3&id=114793

Codeshare with Etihad and AA

We have announced today (July 7) a proposed codeshare agreement with American Airlines, subject to regulatory approval by the US government.

Under the arrangement, Etihad Airways will place its ‘EY’ code on a number of transatlantic services operated by the US carrier between Europe and the United States. In addition, we will codeshare on selected domestic services operated by American Airlines beyond New York and Chicago.

In turn, American Airlines will place its ‘AA’ code on services operated by Etihad Airways between Abu Dhabi and New York JFK, Chicago, Paris Charles de Gaulle, Dublin, Frankfurt, Manchester and Milan.

The American Airlines domestic routes within the US covered by the new codeshare arrangement will initially include flights between New York JFK and Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco and Chicago to Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Houston.

The transatlantic services include American Airlines flights between Paris Charles de Gaulle and Boston, Chicago and Miami; Dublin and Chicago; Frankfurt and Dallas Fort Worth; Manchester and Chicago; and Milan and New York JFK.

Subject to gaining US government regulatory approval, the start of the new codeshare agreement is expected to coincide with the launch by Etihad of its new service to Chicago at the beginning of September, 2009.

Tunnel to a Dream

Satellite image of The Bering Strait, with Siberia on the left, Alaska to the right, and the Diomede Islands situated a beautiful dead-centre.

There’s a competition underway to design a bridge linking an 85km gap between the United States and the former USSR. This is around twice the length of the Channel that links Britain and France. The reality is that it’s highly improbable that any physical structure would ever actually come of this… But that doesn’t stop one being totally oh-so hooked on the idea. A distance of a measly 85km (give or take a few clicks) seems downright goofy in its shortness?

This project is a dream project attempting to connect two continents. In a wide sense, it includes building a tunnel or a bridge at both ends of the strait, extending an existing railways of the United States and Russia, and laying a world highway around the coasts of the world, which require a massive amount of construction.

Once the connection is made, the railway will go through both Uelen of Russia and Cape Prince of Wales of the United States linking the North American Rail System. A new highway will link the existing coastal highway of Uelen – Dezhnev – Tunytlino at Russia and Wales – Tin City – York at the United States.

There has been scientific stirrings that perhaps, in the past, lower water levels would have exposed a ridge allowing our ancestors to stroll between what is now Siberia and Alaska. This would also have been how the North and South American continents were originally populated.

It just seems particularly interesting to imagine a connection of the world’s extremities. Not counting the fact that these aforementioned extremities are but an illusion stemmed from the reproduction of a ubiquitous world map projections. Rarely would you stumble on a 2D global image in where Australia, for example, is ‘centered’ on the sheet. Rather Australia, more often that not, maintains a rather forlorn far-right posting. And why is this, anyway?

Further reading on the Bering Strait here at BLDG BLOG, and the Discovery Channel website.

Plan of Chicago

Painting by Jules Gurein for Burnham’s ‘The Plan of Chicago’ (1909), one of the most influential documents in the history of urban planning.

Woooooohoooo!!

Just opened my crew mail for the first time in a week and see ‘Chicago Route Announced’ in the subject headline of an email from James Hogan, our CEO. So I open it up and am seriously screaming and squealing like a (deliriously happy) schizophrenic (that’s not very PC, sorry). I had no idea they were even considering Chicago, this is the first I’ve heard anything of it?!! You cannot even imagine how excited this makes me!!

By September 2009 I will absolutely have my US crew visa by then and will absolutely be doing this route no matter what I have to do!! Woop woop!!! Love. It. So like, ignore what I said before about a loss of interest in urban planning. If there’s any stateside city to reignite it it’d be Chicago. Oh, or New York. Or Portland, Oregon. Or….. 🙂

Interesting article from the Chicago Tribune here.