nice ending to a not-so-stellar week

First and foremost, I would like to thank Head Stapler for jumping in for me last week with absolutely no notice. Talk about having mastered the Art of Crisis Management.

And secondly, can anybody guess based upon the photos above, where I had to go for a wedding this weekend? You have until I finish typing my post to figure it out. Hint: the third photo down is a give-away if you know what you're looking at in the background.

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Ok, I’m not gonna say what city this is ‘cause that would spoil my fun, and will instead try to give more clues that can’t be googled too easily.

All you cityplanners and parks people, [city x] has found the answer to that troubling question of What to do with a large, underappreciated Ca**** (wait, that could be googled) sculpture and underutilized park space just across the river: let a couple of promoters set up a fantastic sound system and invite everyone over to have a picnic. This particular picnic weekend that my friend Richard and I happened upon was sponsored by Ninja Tune.

Our currency is crap in this country, pretty much a par exchange- which means since their prices haven’t changed, getting my usual caffeine fix with steamed milk set me back $4.75. However, Ninja Tune had set up a table selling their wares for $5 apiece, so I was able to pick up a couple of Wagon Christs, a Coldcut, Hexstatic, a DJ Food and Super Numeri for $30 total without feeling too bad about what all of those bad loans in the subprime market are doing to our ability to travel.

[City x] also has a new library. As amazing as the architecture is (just one of the details: glass-enclosed traction elevators without a shaft?!), it is outdone by the music and film collection on the top floor. The collection is larger than that of a Virgin Megastore, without the duplicates. The wiki link says its holdings include 70,000 music CDs, 5,000 music scores, 16,000 films. It is my understanding that people in this particular country can simply check out cd’s from this vast public resource and return them in a week or so. Coming from the good ole United States of America where supposedly we prize ‘freedom’ above all else, I have reached the conclusion that we have a fairly limited concept of what ‘free’ might mean.

Alright, you’re all either asleep or you have no idea or you can’t be bothered. Here are a few more clues:

Ninja Tunes has a satellite office here.

When I took the second photo above, I was standing on the thing which gives the name to the city.

The building in the background of the third photo was designed by Moshe Safdie. I’ll post a closer view below.

And, finally, that surfer is not in the ocean; that’s a standing wave in a rather large river.