Jumping Through Hoops

On July 5, 2005, the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, took up his pen to make official his city’s agreement with the International Olympic Committee. The 2012 Olympics had not yet been awarded to London—it would be, the following day—but the I.O.C. insists that candidate cities sign an official Olympic contract before the vote is taken, while all the leverage remains on the committee’s side. The contract is an epic masterpiece of micro-management. Its supporting materials, a set of 33 “Technical Manuals,” take up more than four feet of bookshelf space.

As Livingstone prepared to sign, he paused for a moment. Then he looked up at the I.O.C.’s executive director, Gilbert Felli, who was standing by his side, and said, “My lawyers advised me not to sign this contract. But I don’t suppose I’ve got any choice, have I?”

“No,” Felli answered, “you haven’t, really.”

Livingstone told me later that he had just been joking, but second thoughts would have been understandable. The full stipulations of the Olympic contract, which were made public in December 2010 by an East London activist and researcher named Paul Charman, following two years of Freedom of Information requests, contain tens of thousands of binding commitments. To comply with its terms, London must designate 250 miles of dedicated traffic lanes for the exclusive use of athletes and “the Olympic Family,” including I.O.C. members, honorary members, and “such other persons as may be designated by the IOC.” (These traffic lanes are sometimes called “Zil lanes,” alluding to the Soviet-era express lanes in Moscow reserved for the politburo’s favorite limousines.) Members of the Olympic Family must also have at their disposal at least 500 air-conditioned limousines with chauffeurs wearing uniforms and caps. London must set aside, and pay for, 40,000 hotel rooms, including 1,800 four- and five-star rooms for the I.O.C. and its associates, for the entire period of the Games. London must cede to the I.O.C. the rights to all intellectual property relating to the Games, including the international trademark on the phrase “London 2012.” Although mail service and the issuance of currency are among any nation’s sovereign rights, the contract requires the British government to obtain the I.O.C.’s “prior written approval” for virtually any symbolic commemoration of the Games, including Olympic-themed postage stamps, coins, and banknotes.

by Michael Joseph Gross, Vanity Fair |  Read more:
Photo: Gerry Penny/EPA/Landov; by Jeff Gross/Getty Images

Where Food Comes From

[ed. Click on the graphic for a larger version. Per Mark Bittman: It seems like nearly all of the products we consume are produced by 10 companies.]

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David Shrigley
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Edward Hopper - People in the Sun, 1960. Oil on canvas
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Their Last Winter: Remembering Two Old-Timers from Eagle

Every spring, I think of the old-timers who didn’t make it through yet another Alaska winter. This year, I lost two such friends. They lived in Eagle, a town of 135 people on the Yukon River. These are their stories.

Some would call Dave a hermit. Others might call him a gentleman. His home was an eight- by 10-foot cabin made of plywood five miles up the Yukon River from Eagle. His previous dwelling—a drafty log cabin not much larger—had been too big, “Like living in a ballroom without a dancing partner,” he said.

In the winter, Bill, my boyfriend, and I would check on Dave every few days, walking the mile and a half from our cabin to make sure he had enough wood and food as the temperatures fell to negative 30, 40, 50 or below. Our visits always followed the same pattern as we fit into the simple rhythm of his day.

We hailed his cabin as we approached on the narrow trail through the woods. Dave, a gaunt figure in his 70s with an erect bearing came to the narrow doorway dressed in heavy wool pants and sweater. “Greetings,” he called out in a gentle voice, giving us a slight, but welcoming, nod. Dave rarely received visitors—most people were deterred by the Keep Out sign at the entrance to the trail. His unwashed hair stood up stiffly and around his mouth his tangled gray beard had yellowed from decades of pipe-smoking. Dirt thick enough to have been laid on with a palette knife covered his face, already discolored and scarred by frostbite. Soot ground into his pores stippled his face with black dots. It was commonly known that Dave didn’t take a bath all winter, but that was not considered particularly odd behavior in Eagle, where many people lacked running water. The road to Eagle closed every winter, and the effect was always a delicious feeling of isolation from the outside world, which suited Dave, and us, just fine.

Our neighbor invited us into his cabin for tea. With a courtly gesture, Dave offered me the best seat in the house: the end of his army cot closest to his tiny woodstove. He sat on an overturned bucket and Bill sat next to me. Dave always apologized for having only one cup, but we came prepared. Bill pulled a tin cup from the pocket of his parka, along with half a loaf of homemade bread or, Dave’s favorite, a hunk of cheddar cheese.

Throwing a handful of loose tea leaves into a pan, Dave would let the tea steep while he filled his pipe from a pouch of Prince Albert tobacco. He took his time, as he did in all things—what did time matter in a place like Eagle, where life moved according to the seasons? Dave was also slowed by his right hand, which had been impaired by a stroke some years earlier. And yet, somehow he still managed to cut all his firewood with a bow saw, haul water from town, and do not-always-easy tasks, like refilling the kerosene lamp.

I never tired of looking at the simple setting. A dented wash basin. A cast iron skillet. A single shelf held his meager larder: oatmeal, corned beef hash, canned peaches, and not much more. Wool socks dried on a line above the stove. A trapper’s hat made of marten fur hung on a peg on the door. The few people Dave accepted as friends often passed things on to him, but he refused to accumulate more “scatter,” as he called it; new things didn’t stay long before he gave them away. We never left his cabin without a used sharpening stone, a handful of .22 shells, a can of evaporated milk.

by Louise Freeman, Anchorage Press |  Read more:

Château Sucker

Even at Rudy Kurniawan's coming-out party in September 2003, there were questionable bottles of wine.

A score of Southern California’s biggest grape nuts had gathered at the restaurant Melisse in Santa Monica that Friday for a $4,800-a-head vertical tasting of irresistible rarities provided by Kurniawan: Pétrus in a dozen vintages, reaching as far back as 1921, in magnums.

Although Pétrus is now among the most famous wines in the world, it gained its exalted status relatively recently; before World War II, it was virtually unheard of, and finding large-format bottles that had survived from the twenties bordered on miraculous. Paul Wasserman, the son of prominent Burgundy importer Becky Wasserman, is something like wine royalty, but before this event, the oldest Pétrus he had tasted was from 1975.

Nonetheless, two bottles left him scratching his head. The 1947 lacked the unctuousness of right-bank Bordeaux from that legendary vintage, and the 1961 struck him as “very young.” He briefly entertained the idea of “possible fakes”—’61 Pétrus in magnum has fetched up to $28,440 at auction—and jotted, in his notes on the ’47, “If there’s one bottle I have serious doubts about tonight, this is it.”

But in the rare-wine world, doubts are endemic; murkiness is built into a product that is concealed by tinted glass and banded wooden cases and opaque provenance and the fog of history. At the same time, the whole apparatus of the rare-wine market is about converting doubt into mystique. Most wealthy collectors want to spend big and drink famous labels, not necessarily ask questions or hear the answers. Guests at tastings don’t want to bite the hand that quenches them. Auctioneers may not want to risk losing consignments by nitpicking ambiguous bottles. Winemakers don’t like to talk about counterfeiting, for fear of the taint. Also, one thing not high on the FBI’s list of investigative priorities: billionaires getting snowed by wine forgers. It’s clear to everyone on this rarefied circuit that wine fraud is rampant. It’s also clear not many insiders feel an urgency to do anything about it.

Wasserman ended up convincing himself that the wines must be legitimate. Another guest who had tasted the ’61 many times said this one was “absolutely consistent” with his experience. And there was nothing suspect about the wines’ appearance. The colors were appropriate; the corks, even those that looked young, were plausible (it was standard historical practice for wines to be recorked). As for the hodgepodge of inks and paper types used for the labels, Wasserman wasn’t qualified to judge. But Kurniawan, usually soft-spoken and reserved, held forth with great assurance, in his lightly accented English, about the variable labeling of old Pétrus. As Wasser­man told a popular online wine board a few days later, “Rudy has become quite an expert on the subject.”

by Benjamin Wallace, New York Magazine |  Read more:
Photo: Jeffery Salter/Redux

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Currently terrorizing Lake Washington.
Photos: natek

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A Day in the Life

If you imagine the 4,500-bilion-odd years of Earth’s history compressed into a normal earthly day, then life begins very early, about 4 A.M., with the rise of the first simple, single-celled organisms, but then advances no further for the next sixteen hours. Not until almost 8:30 in the evening, with the day five-sixths over, has Earth anything to show the universe but a restless skin of microbes. Then, finally, the first sea plants appear, followed twenty minutes later by the first jellyfish and the enigmatic Ediacaran fauna first seen by Reginald Sprigg in Australia. At 9:04 P.M. trilobites swim onto the scene, followed more or less immediately by the shapely creatures of the Burgess Shale. Just before 10 P.M. plants begin to pop up on the land. Soon after, with less than two hours left in the day, the first land creatures follow.

Thanks to ten minutes or so of balmy weather, by 10:24 the Earth is covered in the great carboniferous forests whose residues give us all our coal, and the first winged insects are evident. Dinosaurs plod onto the scene just before 11 P.M. and hold sway for about three-quarters of an hour. At twenty-one minutes to midnight they vanish and the age of mammals begins. Humans emerge one minute and seventeen seconds before midnight. The whole of our recorded history, on this scale, would be no more than a few seconds, a single human lifetime barely an instant. Throughout this greatly speeded-up day continents slide about and bang together at a clip that seems positively reckless. Mountains rise and melt away, ocean basins come and go, ice sheets advance and withdraw. And throughout the whole, about three times every minute, somewhere on the planet there is a flash-bulb pop of light marking the impact of a Manson-sized meteor or one even larger. It’s a wonder that anything at all can survive in such a pummeled and unsettled environment. In fact, not many things do for long.

~ Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
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Image via: Magnified World

Joe Jackson

Keiko Gonzalez, found at salart.org

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Lucy Dominga by Brian Matthew
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When He Dined, the Stars Came Out

On May 18, 1962, readers of The New York Times woke up to learn that of all the Chinese restaurants in the city, “there is probably none with a finer kitchen” than Tien Tsin, in Harlem. The same article praised four other places to eat, including Gaston, on East 49th Street, which “may qualify as having one of the most inspired French kitchens in town,” and Marchi’s, on East 31st Street, “one of New York’s most unusual North Italian restaurants.”

The author of these judgments was Craig Claiborne, the newspaper’s food editor. He prefaced his article with a short note: “The following is a listing of New York restaurants that are recommended on the basis of varying merits. Such a listing will be published every Friday in The New York Times.”

And that is just what happened, first in what were called the women’s pages (“Food Fashions Family Furnishings”), and then, after 1976, in the Weekend section; by that time, the column was not a listing but a review of one or two restaurants. In 1997, with the invention of the Dining In/Dining Out section, it jumped to Wednesdays, where it still lives.

Some American writers had nibbled at the idea of professional restaurant criticism before this, including Claiborne, who had written one-off reviews of major new restaurants for The Times. But his first “Directory to Dining,” 50 years ago this month, marks the day when the country pulled up a chair and began to chow down. Within a few years, nearly every major newspaper had to have a Craig Claiborne of its own. Reading the critics, eating what they had recommended, and then bragging or complaining about it would become a national pastime.

As the current caretaker of the house that Claiborne built, I lack objectivity on this subject. Still, I believe that without professional critics like him and others to point out what was new and delicious, chefs would not be smiling at us from magazine covers, subway ads and billboards. They would not be invited to the White House, except perhaps for job interviews. Claiborne and his successors told Americans that restaurants mattered. That was an eccentric opinion a half-century ago. It’s not anymore.

by Pete Wells, NY Times |  Read more:
Photo: Paul Hosefros

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Claudia Rogge, Circulate I 2008, found at claudia-rogge.de
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Caribbean starfish (via Topyti)
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Arts and Crafts and Money

When “small batch” equals big dollars and one-person companies are supported by corporate-size websites, is “hand-made” what we think it is? A report from North America’s largest consumer craft fair, where the competition for puppet dollars is intense.

I ate dinner recently at a pop-up restaurant. It’s the latest thing for urban foodies, at least in Toronto, where I live: Individual chefs doing small, high-concept dinners in fly-by-night venues. People at the dinner were young and chic and talked about websites like Pinterest and Etsy. Interest in all things local and small batch was intense: clothes, home décor, jewelry, desserts. My impression was that everyone who’s anyone makes a life from this, or strives to. All things artisanal have become the default preference, unambiguously good and worthwhile and “with it,” supportive of creative people and communities, the best of all possible worlds. 

Does any of the following sound familiar? The interpretable gist of a dozen people talking at once: “There’s a guy in my neighborhood who does tremendous book rebinding.” “My grandmother knitted this sweater for my grandfather.” “I only eat Ontario tomatoes.” “I like being able to have a conversation with somebody who cares as much about coffee as I do. Who cares that I like good coffee [full stop].” Being a bit of a slow thinker, I spent the dinner mostly listening, but admittedly I liked what I was hearing. My neighborhood in Toronto is determinedly un-franchised, small business, a summertime surfeit of farmers’ markets and outdoor craft stalls. Bikes can seem to outnumber cars, the best bars are the worst preserved. The neighborhood’s more shabby than chic, and that’s why I moved here.

It’s also why suburbanites arrive by the SUV-load on weekends, new coffee shops are designed to look vintage, and jeans so tight they squeak end up costing a week’s pay. Something for everyone, maybe, depending on where your interest lies, but unanimous enthusiasm always makes me nervous, and some post-prandial web searching didn’t help this feeling.

The clearest indicator of ur-commercial preference is probably handicrafts, which preference turns out to be serious. According to the Wall Street Journal, in 2011, the worldwide market for handmade sewing, woodwork, jewelry, and the like was roughly $30 billion. The largest growth is happening online: Sales of $1.4 billion in 2011 are expected to reach $2.2 billion in 2016. The website Etsy.com is the biggest online player, accounting for nearly half of 2011’s revenue. Consumers want “a sense of authenticity and buying from people who they know,” Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson told the Journal, all but channelling the guests at my boutique dinner.

There’s something incongruous and strange about large-scale interest in stuff that’s ostensibly small-ish and personal, literally handmade. Not quite the irony of mass-market expressions of self, but something like it, maybe, lurking and dissonant. But it’s hard to figure just what when you’re sitting at a restaurant table set for 12, even harder when you’re online and alone. It so happens that during the winter I attended the One of a Kind Christmas Show and Sale, North America’s largest consumer craft fair, perhaps the clearest example of contemporary interest in handicrafts. It’s certainly the most tangible: Featuring 800 booths erumpent with creativity and charm, the show is both corporate and non-, providing a unique vantage from which to view what might be called the “new commercial life.”

by Christopher R. Graham, The Morning News |  Read more:
Illustration: Skip Sterling

Murali Cheeroth, Untitled (blue flood) Oil on canvas 60” x 60” 2007
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