Hotel San José has mastered the art of hospitality in an inspiring, creative fashion – which is why it’s called “a hotel with a soul.”
In all of these films there is a looming presence of places: real streets, cafés, and bits of geographical lore that persist beyond the imagination of these storied tours. They are films intent on celebrating their chosen landscapes rather than using them to concoct the kind of infectious screenscapes Baudrillard discovered all over Hollywood. And though only one of these films actually takes place in an American city, they inform us nonetheless. We step out of theaters after films like this into St. Louis, Boston, Austin, or any other hazardously American city armed with ways to look at our neighborhoods and daily routines in similarly thoughtful ways.
Does a lack of belonging breed materialism which leads to neuroticism which leads to paranoia which leads to believing that this downward spiral of material obsession will continue and Steve Jobs will eventually create a troop of iPod robots so sleek and desirable that they will seduce us into being their slaves?
New Orleans lives and still breathes. It stays up all night dancing. It best showcases the problems and hopes most relevant to the United States today, and despite how old it sometimes look, it constantly stays young at heart.
Whether or not Pandora released all evil on mankind, she did manage to lend her name to a much more worthy project – the Music Genome Project’s Pandora internet radio.
I have a hunch that the aesthetics of online space may contribute more to the friendliness and maturity level of a place than we suspect.
Photo: Sean Talbot It didn’t surprise me when Marc Smith, founder of the poetry slam movement and host of the Uptown Poetry slam, told me that ministers sometimes “lurk in the shadows” of the Green Mill Lounge, a prohibition-era Chicago speakeasy, during the Sunday night poetry slam. When I first moved to Chicago, I, too, [...]
It was a delicious and unique adventure, a special opportunity to broaden my experiences – to have hot water that’s dripped over ground, burnt beans change my worldview.
Vassar Miller’s body was out of order, but her soul held rhyme and reason.
Whenever I walk towards the austere building, I’m struck anew by the genius of its placement in a cozy neighborhood where people live, the true life of a city. The idea of sanctuary comes alive between the quiet streets.