In an attempt to join the urban aesthetic of Brazilian graffiti and the countryside elegance of one of the oldest inhabited castles in Scotland, we have the Graffiti Project. Four well known Brazilian graffiti artists were invited to live in Kelburn Castle for one month and cover the whole thing in their work (seen in this video and well documented on their website). The project isn't just about the urban/rural dichotomy--we've also got permanent vs. temporary art, tradition vs. innovation, and Scottish vs. Brazilian cultural values battling it out here. In addition to the finished castle and the killer video, part of the project involves the artists and the castle residents living together and trying to make it work Real World style. See what happens when people stop being polite and start tagging the shit out of an ancient castle...
The Graffiti Project [Official Site]
No corporate sycophants us, we're leery to heap praise on the multinationals but, Sony deserves huge kudos for their latest Bravia ad. The first ad in the Bravia series, as all will remember, featured Jose Gonzales singing sweetly as millions of superballs bounced down San Franciscan streets in slo-mo. An ad that spawned various hilarious YouTube spinoffs.The latest, shot in Glasgow, used 70,000 liters of paint and enough cluster bombs to destroy a small village. We posted a lo-fi Youtube preview months ago but now slick finished version is up, complete with vaguely martial classical music.
Previously: Bravo Bravia, Sony SF Superball Swarm Shown, SF Superball Swarm, The Cottier Bar, Glasgay Art Fest, That's It For Europe, Glasgow Deep-Fried Pizza
It's a bird. It's a plane. No, it's a fleeting deal. Fleeting or not, Gridskipper brings you these super deals culled from the cheapo-deal muck.
$499 - 4 Nights in Budapest (R/T Air included): This baby comes flying our way courtesy Gate 1 Travel. Fly on Tuesday and Fridays from November to March.
$737 - Australia from California (R/T) Good News: $737 to Sydney from LAX or SFO. Bad News: Sale Ends Tomorrow (Aug. 4th) Depart through September 15th.
$407 - JFK to Glasgow (R/T)-Iceland Air is running a sweet sale for Shoulder season. Fly from many United States metropoli to European ones for between $407 to $819 (San Fran to Amsterdam). Book by August 6th for travel between Sept 2 and October 31st.
$115 - Ft. Lauderdale from Baltimore (R/T): Go from John Waters to Tropical Waters thanks to the benevolence of Expedia. Travel in October.
$199 - New York Millenium Hilton 1/2 Off: Oh Travelzoo shmucks. In the course of introducing this sweet deal, Travelzoo wrote of the 4-Star Hilton: It's not in Midtown, but that's not a bad thing. Of course, it's not a bad thing, ass. Rooms at the tricked-out Financial district hotel are half-off during August 4-6, 11-13, and September 1-4
$499 - 4 Nights in Budapest (R/T Air included) [Travelzoo]
$737 - LAX/SFO to Sydney (R/T) [Travelzoo]
$407 - JFK to Glasgow (R/T) [Travelzoo]
$115 - Ft. Lauderdale from Baltimore (R/T) [Travelzoo]
$199 - New York Millenium Hilton 1/2 Off [Travelzoo]
Top 20 [Travelzoo]
[Video: Unfold]
Bravia Advert [Official site]
Previously: Sony SF Superball Swarm Shown, SF Superball Swarm, The Cottier Bar, Glasgay Art Fest, That's It For Europe, Glasgow Deep-Fried Pizza
The Roundup Roundup collects recent "roundup" articles or general material about cities and city travel worldwide.
Beijing
Still Hungry? The Dish on Six Beijing Restaurants [Washington Post]
Chicago
A marathon trip to Chicago [Times]
Festivals
Summerfest '06 [Daily Candy]
Flights
'Open skies'? Not across the Atlantic [IHT]
Glasgow
Going To: Glasgow [NYT]
Guides
How do they keep guidebooks current? [Chicago Tribune]
For centuries, guidebooks have led the way [Chicago Tribune]
Helsinki
48 Hours: Helsinki [National Geographic Traveler]
iPod
Travels with iPod [National Geographic Traveler]
Las Vegas
Outside Las Vegas, a Game of Skill [NYT]
Maastricht
Going To: Maastricht [NYT]
Madrid
The personal concierge [Guardian]
Metropolis
The summer's hottest cities [Sunday Times]
8 great American cities [Chicago Tribune]
Mumbai
My kind of town [Telegraph]
Museums
Five 'Don't Miss' Exhibitions This Summer [NYT]
New Orleans
Big Easy's broken but unbowed [LAT]
New Orleans Right Now [Budget Travel]
New York
NY's Green Horizon [Metropolis]
Nightlife
Europe's Best Wine Bars [T+L]
Paris
Cultural News in Paris [Budget Travel]
Postcard from Tom [Washington Post]
Seattle
Streetless in Seattle [Metropolis]
Security
Passport: Don't leave home without it [Chicago Tribune]
Sydney
On the beaches [Guardian]
Transit
More options for traveling by rail [Chicago Tribune]
Venice
Take a bow, Venezia [Telegraph]
Vilnius
Baltic city that stands apart [Guardian]
Zurich
Swiss Bliss [T+L]
Glasgow's currently hip West End contains a host of different bars, restaurants, and hipster-y stores. One of the coolest bars is a converted church, which is sure to excite any blasphemous types. Named after the guy who designed the stained glass over 100 years ago, Cottier's offers boozy delights night and day, with a beer garden open during the sunny hours. They've got a darn respectable menu as well, and a venue for musical acts.
The Cottier Bar [Official Site]
Itchy Glasgow
Previously: That's It For Europe, 230 Fifth Rooftop Bar, Double Wide , Pecha Kucha, Standings Sports Bar
German discount airline Air Berlin is offering a wide range of €1 one-way fares on many of its European routes. The sales are actually more widespread than you might think on first glance -- the Air Berlin website only displays the special offers in departure cities appropriate for the language you've selected on the site itself. For example, English shows you fares originating from London, Belfast, Glasgow, etc.; French shows a couple departing from Paris. Destinations include Düsseldorf, Berlin, Vienna, and others. Taxes and fees generally add €28 to the €1 price, which still makes it a steal. Fare availability varies, but most work through October.
Vols Paris - Düsseldorf pour 1 euro [berlin]
Specials [Air Berlin, in English]
Specials [Air Berlin, in French]
$138+ Round Trip to Dublin: This one is frankly a bit hard to believe, and I'd dearly like to hear of anyone successfully booking the $138 fare (in the comments below or at tips@gridskipper.com). But anyway, Orbitz is pushing these Aer Lingus discounts, and even though I couldn't find the $138 fare, I was able to locate several NY-Dublin round-trip fares during ideal travel times for less than $250, which is still pretty damn good. The cheapest fares are from Boston and New York to Dublin; other departure cities are Chicago and Los Angeles, and other destination cities are Birmingham, Glasgow, Liverpool, London, Manchester, and Shannon. Travel's good January 1 through February 28, 2006. Taxes and fees come to about $150 additional. Even if the $138 fares are already gone, anything on these routes at under $300 will likely sell out close to instantly.
Incredible Fares to Ireland and Beyond [Orbitz]
TravelFinds [SideStep]
There's still two more weeks left in Glasgay, the huge annual gay arts fest in Glasgow, with more than 30,000 visitors expected. The extensive program covers more than 200 performances spread over 16 venues, including dance, comedy, theater, movies, art, readings, parties, and so on, and forth, and so on some more. A particular highlight is the musical remake of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. But you are in that chair, Blanche! The festival runs through November 20.
Glasgay!: Europe’s Biggest Gay Arts Festival [TravelPost]
Glasgay [Official site]
Previously: That’s It for Europe, Glasgow III: Celtic, Rangers Make Sober Peace, Glasgow II: Deep-Fried Pizza, Glasgow I: Itouring with Franz Ferdinand, L.A. Letter: Wilshire Turns Love Box into Love Circuit
The New York Times unloaded a big blob of travel content this past weekend, and even though I gave headliner Istanbul a separate post, it would seem cruel and unusual to dwell individually on Europe's other "It Cities," as the NYT declares them. Therefore, I present these quick, easy thumbnails of the NYT city coverage. "It-itude" reveals the "It" category awarded by the NYT; "Competing Cities" consists of other cities beaten out for the honor; "Name Checks" counts the number of relevant venues for the category named for the city at hand; "Nut" condenses the article's thesis; and "Key Terms" reprises all the words and phrases you need to hold forth knowledgably at the water cooler. Enjoy.
London
It-itude: Modern art.
Competing Cities: None.
Name Checks: 16.
Nut: Cheap real estate = good art.
Key Terms: Happening, aesthetic, antics, gritty, gentrification, prices, generation, magnets, sparkle, afresh.
Berlin
It-itude: Music.
Competing Cities: None.
Name Checks: 8.
Nut: Commies coming back = good classical music.
Key Terms: Endowed, contraction, flagship, injected, acoustics, neo-Baroque, adventurous, aficionados, improbable.
Brussels
It-itude: Shopping.
Competing Cities: Paris, London.
Name Checks: 4.
Nut: Boring city = hot shopping.
Key Terms: Artery-clogging, aficionados, fashionable, teeming, bargain, multicultural, boutiques, Bauhaus, Master of the Universe, pedigreed, laminated, colonized, psychedelic.
Copenhagen
It-itude: Design.
Competing Cities: London, Bilbao.
Names Named: 6.
Nut: Danes = funky buildings.
Key Terms: Buzz, hype, gawked, heavyweights, spine-tingling, iconic, vertiginous, exoskeleton, upstart, showstoppers, oozes, dazzling, steeped, retrofitted, gashed, bulging.
Glasgow
It-itude: Clubbing.
Competing Cities: New York, Las Vegas.
Names Named: 5.
Nut: Scots = hard clubbers.
Key Terms: Tougher, trappings, infectious, aggressively, mindset, petri dish, tucked, overpass, barnlike, mish-mash, black-framed glasses, candelabras, cherubs, pleather, yawned, messy, nu metal.
San Sebastián
It-itude: Dining.
Competing Cities: London, Paris, Turin, Barcelona.
Names Named: 3.
Nut: Crazy Spanish chefs = good eats.
Key Terms: Gastronomic, innovation, transcendence, gussying, appetite, trailblazing, flock, unfussy, the ham of his or her dreams, galaxy, derring-do, exploding dessert, epicenter, laboratory, liver-transplant clinic.
Previously: Persian Art and Artifacts, Berlin’s Artistic Re-Renaissance, The World’s Best Beer Store, Danish Design Turns Deadly, Glasgow I: Itouring with Franz Ferdinand
Glasgow is a city divided by soccer/football teams—Celtic traditionally is the team of Glasgow's Catholic community while Rangers gathers its fans from a mostly Protestant background. There's no love lost between Celtic and Rangers supporters: Soccer violence still kicks up from time to time there.
But neither team is immune to the lure of sweet, sweet money: Both Celtic and Rangers are offering special advertising-less replica jerseys to sell to Muslim fans.
Worried about potential customers passing up the chance to buy Rangers and Celtic jerseys due to the presence of Carling Lager logo on both, the teams decided to put out the special editions in an advertising blitz that would leave no portion of the population jerseyless.
Rangers drop Carling shirt logo for its Muslim supporters [Evening Times]
Americans have turducken and the Scots have deep-fried pizza. Why? It's simple, ultimately. Cheap foods taste better deep fried, and when you take cooks disconnected from the culinary heritage of what they're cooking, why not deep fry a slice of pizza? It's disturbing and kind of repulsive... But it sells and Glaswegians love it like Los Angelenos and their al pastor tacos.
Here's how The New York Times describes the dish:
But another was staring her in the face: deep fried pizza, covered in a coating of batter for added crunch, sometimes doused with salt and vinegar or soupy gravy."It soaks up the grease like a sponge," Ms. Ski said. "It's heart attack material there."
Or as one deep-fried pizza fan page puts it: "When asked if you want salt and sauce, say "Yes," Watch as they drown your food in the shit."
To try some deep-fried pizza, locallife.co.uk offers a directory to takeaways in Glasgow. However, we don't recommend the most disturbing Scottish creation of all: The doner kebab pizza.
Deep-Fried Pizza [Slice]
Glasgow Fish & Chip Directory [locallife.co.uk]
Poor Glasgow gets a reputation for being a city filled with violence, poverty and alcoholism. But frankly, the place gets a bad rap. So in the spirit of trans-continental love, we're having a Glasgow day. Maybe it was the years of living in Philadelphia, a city with problems of its own when it comes to violence, urban decay and football violence, but we think it's time to give Glasgow some respect.
An American-Scottish duo created a podcast tour of Glasgow's music scene aka the "iTour". The two-hours tour covers everything from where Franz Ferdinand buy their clothes to which pubs Travis and Teenage Fanclub got started in to the history of Glasgow music venues like King Tut's Wah Wah Hut and Nice n' Sleazy. Interestingly, the project has serious bucks behind it: The iPod tour is being promoted by Tennents Lager and the Glasgow City Marketing Bureau.
The free podcast has gotten press in both The Observer and The Scotland Sunday Herald, but the actual iTours site looks to have some technical problems. Buyer beware. appears to work perfectly fine as of now.
Tennents iTour [Official Site]
iPod, therefore I am, a tourist [The Observer]
Virtual tour is digital music to visitors' ears [Sunday Herald]
Emma Caldwell was a prostitute murdered in Glasgow at the start of the month. In an attempt to turn up clues, the local police recently projected her face on an abandoned building in the area she used to work. It'll be interesting to see if this method is imitated by police elsewhere.
Police go big with victim picture [BBC via Wooster Collective]
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