At least this one is, the one we can see from the little terrace of the micro-apartment DD and I are occupying during my sabbatical here in Salzburg…Kapuzinerberg, named after those Capuchins (doubtless swilling capuccino all the way). We can’t see their craggy outpost from here — a bit to the right, out of frame of our apartment block — but the hill’s pretty nice anyway. Bare trees when we got here april 1, just about all leafed out already (but everyone says it’s been the warmest april on record, we thought we were just doing a favor by bringing that L.A. sun with us…).
No sign of Julie Andrews so far, though many roaming flocks of Italian teenagers.
April 24th, 2009
Well it’s a new year, and it took some technical tweaking and my usual long learning curve, but here finally is a link to the slides I put together of the work of the Amsterdam grafitti artist Laser 3.14…whew! [Click here for Laser slides]
p.s. for best (quicker) download use a high-speed connection, and open .zip file to retrieve the QuickTime slide show…L
January 8th, 2008
[in which your correspondent demonstrates that if she had to write to deadline to make a living, herself would have starved by now]
Decided today that it was time to tidy up the ol’ bloggish sitting room, it’s a bit dusty in here… and after looking at my last post [August, for god’s sake] I also decided that I could do a niftier job showing my loyal readers [all 1.6 of them] what Laser 3.14 is about. As soon as I figure out how, I’ll post a humble slide show. L
November 4th, 2007
In the spirit of trickle-not-surge…some August-type thoughts on a cultural favorite of late, graffitti artist in Amsterdam, nom de spraycan Laser 3.14.
Story for me goes back about four years, to Sept 2003…was in A’dam for an academic conference, traipsing around the P.C. Hoofstraat area one afternoon, didn’t know much about the burg yet, maybe my first time in town and was just taking it in, tourist-mode…a district often described in English-language guidebooks as the “Rodeo Drive” of Amsterdam (for those who don’t understand the innate tackiness involved, well…)
anyway turned a corner into a side street between P.C. Hooft and the van Gogh Museum, across from a tidy preschool playground full of lively, cranking kids. Garage door, neon paint, downstairs from a lovely townhouse, saw the tag: “they want you dead or in their lie” — and shot a picture.
I’ve been back to Amsterdam plenty since then, and have been so intrigued by these little thoughts (almost always appearing on temporary construction materials or sites) — it’s almost like the tags are saying ‘welcome back!’ I’ve collected a bunch more pictures in four years, but never actually found any background on the tagger or the work until I was just back from another trip earlier this summer, and found his very snazzy website, http://www.laser314.com, with plenty of details and scores of great pictures of the work by the artist and enthusiasts — great stuff.
L
August 22nd, 2007