"Who's Paul Simon?" I ask, balancing my backpack between my shins as we sit under an exhibit called "Yoko Ono's Wish Trees". Connor and I are in on the north end of Greenwich peninsula, well past the cute markets and parks, at a place called The Tide, a concrete-glass-art-path-condo-juice-bar-type of plaza.
"He's a folk rock musician, have you heard of Simon and Garfunkel?" Connor says.
"Yeah."
"He's Simon."
"But his name is Paul… oh wait Paul SIMON. I understand now."
We laugh.
"Anyway, yeah, it's incredibly tone deaf to play him here, when you have all these incredible black artists playing live."
The Tide is... weird. Its extravagance feels especially tied to 2019--it looks plain on purpose, aligned with the idea that the best way to showcase your wealth and secure your status among your peers is to have fewer items and spend more on services. Only one condo is occupied in the building in front of us (I assume it's the model unit) and its decor looks like someone stacked the first 500 images from #LiveAuthentic and melted them into an average. I know model units need to have some amount of sterility in order to try and sell the most units, but this one looks especially plain.
In front of us are two boys who look like they're twelve (maybe 16). They brought sixteen bottles of Budweiser, got drunk enough from two bottles, dropped and broke the third, and are getting escorted away by security.
There's a gondola sponsored by Emirates that takes people from The Tide, across the Thames, and disappears behind some skyscrapers.
I've been thinking about how a city tells its story after visiting the Museum of London yesterday. I wanted to refresh my memory on the city's timeline so I could better contextualize the architecture of the various neighborhoods we are visiting. My feet were aching by then, so I wanted to skim the parts that would have otherwise been lovely but aren't what I'm looking to learn right now. Connor and I moved through the exhibits on Paleolithic to Iron Age to Bronze Age pretty quickly. We spent the bulk of our time between the Roman colonization of Britain and the Medieval era. Then, we agreed that we know enough about the Victorian era, so we sped up again, but once we got to the post-war era, I had to slow down because I was surprised. The modern exhibits were almost entirely about activism and how communities responded to new forms of poverty created by industrialization. The artifacts were ones that described the lives, hardship, and joys of those who didn't hold much political power. Everything they chose to remember of the last 60 years was about progress made by marginalized people.
There's the story of London where rich people own a lot of land and Emirates has a friggin gondola taking you across the river. There's the story of The Tide, the story of a soulless condo looking down on ugly sculptures. There's the story of people eating restaurant food 200 feet in the air while listening to songs that were on the billboard charts 5 years ago.
But I don't think that's the story they'll choose to remember.
"He's a folk rock musician, have you heard of Simon and Garfunkel?" Connor says.
"Yeah."
"He's Simon."
"But his name is Paul… oh wait Paul SIMON. I understand now."
We laugh.
"Anyway, yeah, it's incredibly tone deaf to play him here, when you have all these incredible black artists playing live."
The Tide is... weird. Its extravagance feels especially tied to 2019--it looks plain on purpose, aligned with the idea that the best way to showcase your wealth and secure your status among your peers is to have fewer items and spend more on services. Only one condo is occupied in the building in front of us (I assume it's the model unit) and its decor looks like someone stacked the first 500 images from #LiveAuthentic and melted them into an average. I know model units need to have some amount of sterility in order to try and sell the most units, but this one looks especially plain.
In front of us are two boys who look like they're twelve (maybe 16). They brought sixteen bottles of Budweiser, got drunk enough from two bottles, dropped and broke the third, and are getting escorted away by security.
There's a gondola sponsored by Emirates that takes people from The Tide, across the Thames, and disappears behind some skyscrapers.
Two ugly Damien Hirst sculptures are somewhere along the walkway. (Before you "but Grishma!!" me, do you think an artist is capable of creating something good and say this about their work? "In an artwork you're always looking for artistic decisions, so an ashtray is perfect. An ashtray has got life and death.")
I've been thinking about how a city tells its story after visiting the Museum of London yesterday. I wanted to refresh my memory on the city's timeline so I could better contextualize the architecture of the various neighborhoods we are visiting. My feet were aching by then, so I wanted to skim the parts that would have otherwise been lovely but aren't what I'm looking to learn right now. Connor and I moved through the exhibits on Paleolithic to Iron Age to Bronze Age pretty quickly. We spent the bulk of our time between the Roman colonization of Britain and the Medieval era. Then, we agreed that we know enough about the Victorian era, so we sped up again, but once we got to the post-war era, I had to slow down because I was surprised. The modern exhibits were almost entirely about activism and how communities responded to new forms of poverty created by industrialization. The artifacts were ones that described the lives, hardship, and joys of those who didn't hold much political power. Everything they chose to remember of the last 60 years was about progress made by marginalized people.
There's the story of London where rich people own a lot of land and Emirates has a friggin gondola taking you across the river. There's the story of The Tide, the story of a soulless condo looking down on ugly sculptures. There's the story of people eating restaurant food 200 feet in the air while listening to songs that were on the billboard charts 5 years ago.
But I don't think that's the story they'll choose to remember.
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