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#touristification
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I think it’s time to address the Mallorca lesbians comment, isn’t it?
If you’re not from a Catalan-speaking country, you won’t have heard about this, but people in Mallorca (Balearic Islands) are mad, and rightfully so.
This week was the beginning of Palma Pride Week, an event (named in English, of course) that is pretty much the textbook definition of the capitalist party Pride event. It’s held in Palma, which is Mallorca’s capital city, and organized by the association Ella Global Community.
The inauguration speech was given by Kristin Hansen (president of Ella Global Community), who has been living in the island for 15 years but was unable to give the speech in the island’s language (Catalan), because she has never bothered to learn it.
In the speech (in Spanish), she said that Pride is a good opportunity not only for LGBTI people to attend to it, but also “people from the countryside who have never seen a lesbian. They will come and say, ‘Look! A lesbian is just like any other person’. It’s important because you go 15 kilometres inside the island and the mentality changes.”
Of course, Mallorcan people have felt deeply insulted with this ignorant and prejudiced statement.
Legislation and the social normalization of LGBTQIA+ rights has been way more advanced in Mallorca than in Germany (where Kristin Hansen is originary from) for decades, and in the island there has been a grassroots LGBTQIA+ movement for longer than she has lived here. And this movement was born from the Mallorcan people, in all the island, and not from rich tourists nor only in the capital. The organization Ben Amics has been working since 1994. Same-sex marriage has been legal in the Balearic Islands since 2001, while in Germany it was only legalized in 2017.
The matter is easy: everyone wants to live in paradise, so many people from Northern Europe move to beautiful Mallorca or other sunny Mediterranean places; but nobody wants to live with its people. Hansen has showed absolute ignorance and disrespect towards Mallorcan people, accusing them falsely and acting like we need them Germans or Central/Northern Europeans to save us and bring us to progress. Well, that’s false. Mallorcans are way ahead of Germany when it comes to LGBTQIA+ rights, and they don’t go around saying “those backwards people from Hünstetten and Waltershausen will see a lesbian for the first time thanks to us!”
There are lesbians everywhere. And there are gay, trans, bi, ace, aro, intersex, questioning and queer people everywhere. But there are also self-centered and ignorant people everywhere. The Palma City Hall should not have left the organization of an event like this one to someone with this prejudiced mindset.
Mallorcan organizations are asking Ella Global Community to apologize for her words and to change the objectives of Palma Pride Week. Because, right now, this is how Kristen Hansen described the event: "We will position Mallorca as an LGBTQI destination. It's a business opportunity: LGBT tourism spends much more money than the average tourist, about 180,000 million dollars, and it's an interesting, learned, and pleasant tourism."
Exactly one day after the Federació d'Entitats Veïnals de Palma (Federation of Neighbour Associations of Palma) met with the city hall to demand measures against the massification of tourism and the gentrification it brings, Hansen said that they expect Pride Week will bring between 7,000 and 10,000 tourists to the Sa Feixina neighborhood in one week. She added "Then these people will come here and buy apartments. We make a living from tourism, from real estate, from ships", as if it were a good thing.
Palma Pride Week's programme is centered on conferences about entrepreneurship, yoga, and "soul worshipping" to make the collective visible and to make Palma "the cosmopolitan city we want it to become". No, Palma is a city where local people can barely afford to continue to live in, where massive tourism doesn't let them live their lives.
The interests shown by Ella Global Community and its wealthy members are aligned with the interests of rich owners who are making life hell for the inhabitants of the island. They don't represent the interests of Mallorcan LGBTQIA+ people. In their objective of creating a paradise for rich LGBT tourists, they are kicking out local people, including local LGBTQIA+ people.
Ben Amics organizes a Pride month too, this year titled "30 years of fight: rights and resilience", with a programme that actually aims to fight, raise awareness and discuss gender and sexual diversity and dissidence. Created by Mallorcan LGBTQIA+ people answering to their needs. If you are going to support a Pride event in Mallorca, be it this one.
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"La différence entre l'organique et le mécanique. Touristification et tentatives d'éliminer la volatilité de la vie."
Antifragile: Les bienfaits du désordre
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daughterofhecata · 3 months
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Love the Frühlings Erwachen 💜💜 do you also read Czech Books in Czech? And any Czech authors you can recommend? I'd love to diversify my reading (eyes my 200ish tbr 👀)
Full disclosure: I fucking love Frühlings Erwachen. Amazing play to read in class. Unfortunately I don't know if there are any teachers really making use of its potential as a conversation starter on sex (especially being ill-prepared for it and the importance of safe sex), pregancy, abortion, queerness, puberty as a whole, kink/S&M fantasies in particular, etc - because I know our teacher sure didn't.
Unfortunately, my Czech is waaaaay too bad for reading books in the original :( My focus is mostly books dealing with the (aftermath of the) Shoah due to my favourite professor specializing in that and my own interest in the topic, but if you're interested in that, Jiří Weil's Život s hvězdou/Leben mit dem Stern/Life With A Star is a really interesting look at life in occupied Prague, Karel Čapek's Válka s mloky/Der Krieg mit den Molchen talks about the rise of facism and has been on my list for years (also, the word "robot" in the sense we use it today can apparently be traced back to a different work of Čapek) and Jáchym Topol's Chladnou zemí/Die Teufelsfabrik/The Devil's Workshop is a truly horrifying story about memory and rememberance and the... idk sensationalization of rememberance? the touristification of memorials? something like that. On the other hand, there's Vacláv Havel for absurd theater, if you like that xD
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[Video] Exarcheia turned into a battleground following the State's decision to destroy its historic square
Video from the protest and the riot that followed on Saturday 25 September 2022 in Exarcheia, (Athens, Greece) against the State’s decision to destroy the historic Exarcheia Square under the excuse of constructing a metro station on top of it. This was the 3d big protest against the metso on Exarcheia Square since August 2022. In the first one approximately 1.000 people took part, in the 2nd more than 2.000 and in this 3d one approximately 4.500 protesters. Following this big protest in the streets of Exarcheia in downtown Athens, riots broke out.
How it started (through the words of the Open Assembly No Metro Station on Exarchia Square):
"It was a hot, mid-summer night in central Athens. The city was silent and residents on holidays. Shops were closed. It was at that time, on 9 August 2022 at 4:30am, that the Greek State launched an unprecedented attack on one of Athens’ iconic spaces, Exarchia square. Hundreds of police flooded the streets around the square to impose the construction of an unpopular metro station and repress the citizens’ reactions against it. They have been there ever since; so have the people of Exarchia.
On the day of the operation, more than a thousand people took to the otherwise empty, summer Athenian streets to march in protest and solidarity with Exarchia. Hundreds have joined the open assemblies. Local businesses have submitted a restraining order against the (public) construction company. Dozens meet every day at 6 a.m. opposite to heavily armed police forces. Intellectuals, academics and artists have argued en masse against the project and the government’s authoritarian practices.
Exarchia square is a breathing space for residents, children, workers, visitors – a small square breaking the concrete monotony of central Athens. It is the home of fighting youth, radical ideas, students, artists and intellectuals. It is hard to find any newcomer, excluded or marginalised, any Athenian youth that has not socialised, flirted, chatted over a casual beer or coffee with peers, any visitor that has not attended cultural activities or taken refuge from the hot Athenian sun under the shadows of the square’s trees.
Exarchia square is an international symbol of resistance and political ferment. It is characterised by class solidarity, self-organisation, antiracism, coexistence and respect for different people, driven by the dream of a world of equality and justice. Over time, it has been a reference point for LGBTQI+ struggles and a safe space for all oppressed, persecuted or marginalised identities.
ALL THIS IS CURRENTLY ON THE LINE due to the obsession of a government to proceed with a project rejected by the people and to use our square, the square of all people, as a trophy and a milestone in its exclusivist agenda.
The design of the proposed metro station will destroy one of the few public spaces in the centre of Athens and the only square in the neighbourhood. In the midst of a climate crisis, 70 mature trees that are currently in the square will be sacrificed to create escalators and concrete ventilation boxes, turning our breathing space into an urban desert. Dust, noise and heavy traffic will further aggravate the daily life of our densely populated neighbourhood. It will precipitate the ongoing, uncontrolled increase of property values thus driving current renters and small businesses out and changing the character of the neighbourhood.
The construction of the metro station on Exarchia square is the jewel in the crown of violent gentrification and touristification of Athens city centre, which also includes:
Imposed “development” of the city centre and its transformation into a Tourist Hub, forcibly displacing present citizens.
Changing buildings that are part of the social fabric into museums
"Sterilisation" of public universities and institutions, strangling freedom of thought and activism
Demolition of public spaces and destruction of green areas
Increase of rents
Offering the nearby Strefi Hill to private interests
Conversion of the residential character of neighbourhoods into commercial zones.
Our petition aims to stop the construction of a metro station on Exarchia square on the grounds that it:
a. neglects the needs of our community; b. undermines the quality of life offered to us and our children; c. uses tax payers money to forward and ideological agenda and increase profits for private corporations; d. normalises police brutality and repression.
Sign our petition at https://www.change.org/p/saving-the-historic-exarchia-square-our-neighbourhood-s-only-breathing-space?source_location=topic_page
Help us stop their plans and resist the government’s authoritarianism and repression.
Let’s demonstrate our numbers and the power of the many!
Hold out a hand of solidarity to a neighbourhood that has always been at the forefront of the struggle for life and dignity".
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thorraborinn · 2 years
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Do you have any info on the Ginfaxi symbol? Seen a heathen who had it tattooed on their throat and immediately had alarms go off in my head.
I'll post what I know about Ginfaxi, but it won't tell you anything more about the person you saw than you already know. I like thinking and writing about this stuff so I wrote a lot but, yeah, none of this is really going to narrow anything down for you. I'm trying to put the rest behind a break but Tumblr doesn't like breaks anymore, and keeps moving this one around, so we'll see what happens.
I assume that what you mean by "ginfaxi" is this:
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This isn't the only symbol that gets called that (more on that below) but it is the most common, and it's what comes up when you Google it. I don't really know anything about how modern people are using ginfaxi but here are some off-the-cuff thoughts:
it's probably on its way into popularity because Ægishjálmur and Vegvísir are too well-known to be mysterious and cool anymore
while less common than those, it's been commercialized for just as long. You, anon, probably know this already, because you probably googled it before asking me, and turned up all the same tchotchke shit that every other "Ancient Viking Magic" symbol is slapped onto. That has more determination over how people relate to it than any 18th/19th century black book does.
there's higher-than-average risk of it being made into a symbol of "Viking warriors" or similar because of its actual historical association with glíma even though conceptually it's closer to staves for winning at chess (which do also exist) than it is to actual combat
yeah I do think it has potential to be a "swastika with plausible deniability" but I honestly don't know if people are doing that and if anything its touristification might be the thing that prevents it
it occurs to me that TikTok is probably a serious vector for how people are experiencing this stuff, and it's something I know absolutely nothing about other than that people like to put runes and stuff on their faces. So I dunno, that could be an influence here.
When you're trying to figure out what it means when you see a galdrastafur on someone, it doesn't necessarily do you any good to learn about its background and history if the person who got it inked didn't bother to research that themselves, and I'm disinclined to believe that someone who got a vaguely swastika-like symbol on their throat did that. I have no idea if the symbol has any more frequency among racists than it does among sorta "general population" heathen/viking-interested people who relate to the past basically through the lens of the tourist gift shop, who would have been getting "Celtic" symbols if it were still the 90's, which seems to be the majority of people involved with this stuff at all. A radically different group of people also comes to mind: in my experience in east coast US, some crusty gutter punk types also use symbols like Icelandic galdrastafir and runes, and they're also more likely to get a tattoo on their throat or face or whatever than the average viking enthusiast. I know a guy who used to put runes and stuff on his panhandling signs and claimed they did get him more cash, and whether it was magic or just drawing attention or what didn't really matter to him.
Anyway, the point is, I think that tattoo was a bad idea, makes someone look like a nazi, and you should side-eye them until you know better, but for better or worse there are other possible explanations for how that symbol got there. I'm not making excuses for anyone, just stating the blunt fact that there are non-nazis who attracted to this symbol and decorate itself with it without even thinking about any of this.
It shows up in that annoying graphic of "Norse" symbols with no context that occasionally makes the rounds (that manages not to include a single symbol from the actual Viking age), with an incorrect or at least misleading description:
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And as much as this sucks that is probably the main way that people experience symbolism that is related (whether in a historical or a recently-contrived way) to "the Norse."
The version of the symbol I've been talking about is the most well-known because it comes from Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og æfintýri by Jón Árnason, the most important folklore and fairy tale collection from Iceland. I'm not sure where he got that particular image. When he was writing in the mid-19th century, he said that ginfaxi and gapaldur (which often accompanies ginfaxi) were among the most widespread symbols with the most variety of uses, and even mentions them before ægishjálmur. Ginfaxi was probably always used in glíma, and since that's the context it appears in in magic books while other uses seem not to have been recorded, the association with glíma became stronger over time. It was to be written on a piece of paper or wood-chip and put in the toe of the left show, while gapaldur was supposed to be under the heel in the right shoe (there is some variation in the procedure). According to Grunnavíkur-Jón Ólafsson (via Jón Árna) the two symbols together were also used for spookier things like going into hills (i.e. like huldufólk do, I guess, there's no additional context) and repel sendingar (sort of like ghosts raised by hostile wizards to harm someone) but I don't know where Grunnavíkur-Jón wrote about that or anything else about this. Here is a variant gapaldur from Jón Árnason:
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According to Jón Árnason (link in Icelandic), it was rumored that the two staves were composed by hiding the names of different æsir in them. To me, that implies either a method of encoding that is totally opaque to me, or that belief pertained to an entirely different set of visual symbols (either of these are highly plausible). It seems the names ginfaxi and gapaldur (or gapandi) were better-known than the actual visual symbols themselves, and there are many variants that look hardly anything like the one in Jón Arna (this is not surprising -- there are also many symbols called ægishjálmur other than the one we all know). Probably many more people suspected others of having used symbols like these to gain advantage over them, than actually used symbols themselves, so that the idea of ginfaxi would precede anyone knowing how to actually draw it, and perhaps there never really was an original or fixed shape.
Jónas Jónasson (another folklore collector) identified this one from Lbs 977 4to as another ginfaxi although I don't know how he knows it's that and not gapaldur:
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This one comes with a formula to recite that invokes Óðinn and Frigg and is specifically about winning at glíma.
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These two are from the Galdrasýning á Ströndum website (only on the Icelandic version of the page for some reason), not sure where they got them either. With these you're supposed to carve them on a piece of turf when the moon is waxing and drop some of your own blood into them, then put them in your shoes and recite a verse.
I think it's worth showing what glíma is. True, when an Old Icelandic text refers to people doing an action that is uses the verb glíma to describe, it's talking about actual fighting, but this is the stuff that the glímugaldrar ('glíma-magic') that we have is about:
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mwagneto · 2 years
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one part of thor i really liked was all the māori stuff they put in, like naming tūmatauenga, showing a god with a moko kauae, hell even the touristification of asgard felt like a deliberate reference to aotearoa
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kxowledge · 2 years
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To expand on what I said on Airbnb:
Airbnb is extremely popular nowadays (though it’s focusing more and more on luxury stays) and it’s great as a customer– you have some protection if anything goes wrong (the host cancels, the apartment is not as it’s supposed to be, etc.) and it’s extremely easy to book. As a host, you get visibility of your product (room/apartment) and income, very often much more income than you would get by renting to the local market. This is extremely significant because it impacts severely said local market – which is in effect, the people who actually live and work there. It does so mainly in two ways: (1) by making renting on Airbnb a more attractive option than renting to the local market, more providers sign up for Airbnb as opposed to the latter option, thus decreasing the number of properties available to locals, especially in specific areas of a city; (2) it increases rental and property prices for those popular areas, making them unaffordable to locals who in turn are driven out to other neighbourhoods. Essentially, touristification is gentrification caused by tourism – at least when it comes to real estate properties, though there are other socio-economic negative spillovers – and Airbnb was one of the main catalysts for it. The current increase in ‘expats’ and ‘digital nomads’ and remote workers (of which, yes I am one atm) exacerbated this. I must say Airbnb is not the only platform or intermediary that promotes this mechanism, it is by far the easiest one to sign up for as a host and it’s available worldwide. (Plus, it provides easy data points for research.)
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fromgreecetoanarchy · 2 years
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youtube
[Video] Exarcheia turned into a battleground following the State's decision to destroy its historic square
Video from the protest and the riot that followed on Saturday 25 September 2022 in Exarcheia, (Athens, Greece) against the State’s decision to destroy the historic Exarcheia Square under the excuse of constructing a metro station on top of it. This was the 3d big protest against the metso on Exarcheia Square since August 2022. In the first one approximately 1.000 people took part, in the 2nd more than 2.000 and in this 3d one approximately 4.500 protesters. Following this big protest in the streets of Exarcheia in downtown Athens, riots broke out.
How it started (through the words of the Open Assembly No Metro Station on Exarchia Square):
"It was a hot, mid-summer night in central Athens. The city was silent and residents on holidays. Shops were closed. It was at that time, on 9 August 2022 at 4:30am, that the Greek State launched an unprecedented attack on one of Athens’ iconic spaces, Exarchia square. Hundreds of police flooded the streets around the square to impose the construction of an unpopular metro station and repress the citizens’ reactions against it. They have been there ever since; so have the people of Exarchia.
On the day of the operation, more than a thousand people took to the otherwise empty, summer Athenian streets to march in protest and solidarity with Exarchia. Hundreds have joined the open assemblies. Local businesses have submitted a restraining order against the (public) construction company. Dozens meet every day at 6 a.m. opposite to heavily armed police forces. Intellectuals, academics and artists have argued en masse against the project and the government’s authoritarian practices.
Exarchia square is a breathing space for residents, children, workers, visitors – a small square breaking the concrete monotony of central Athens. It is the home of fighting youth, radical ideas, students, artists and intellectuals. It is hard to find any newcomer, excluded or marginalised, any Athenian youth that has not socialised, flirted, chatted over a casual beer or coffee with peers, any visitor that has not attended cultural activities or taken refuge from the hot Athenian sun under the shadows of the square’s trees.
Exarchia square is an international symbol of resistance and political ferment. It is characterised by class solidarity, self-organisation, antiracism, coexistence and respect for different people, driven by the dream of a world of equality and justice. Over time, it has been a reference point for LGBTQI+ struggles and a safe space for all oppressed, persecuted or marginalised identities.
ALL THIS IS CURRENTLY ON THE LINE due to the obsession of a government to proceed with a project rejected by the people and to use our square, the square of all people, as a trophy and a milestone in its exclusivist agenda.
The design of the proposed metro station will destroy one of the few public spaces in the centre of Athens and the only square in the neighbourhood. In the midst of a climate crisis, 70 mature trees that are currently in the square will be sacrificed to create escalators and concrete ventilation boxes, turning our breathing space into an urban desert. Dust, noise and heavy traffic will further aggravate the daily life of our densely populated neighbourhood. It will precipitate the ongoing, uncontrolled increase of property values thus driving current renters and small businesses out and changing the character of the neighbourhood.
The construction of the metro station on Exarchia square is the jewel in the crown of violent gentrification and touristification of Athens city centre, which also includes:
Imposed “development” of the city centre and its transformation into a Tourist Hub, forcibly displacing present citizens.
Changing buildings that are part of the social fabric into museums
"Sterilisation" of public universities and institutions, strangling freedom of thought and activism
Demolition of public spaces and destruction of green areas
Increase of rents
Offering the nearby Strefi Hill to private interests
Conversion of the residential character of neighbourhoods into commercial zones.
Our petition aims to stop the construction of a metro station on Exarchia square on the grounds that it:
a. neglects the needs of our community; b. undermines the quality of life offered to us and our children; c. uses tax payers money to forward and ideological agenda and increase profits for private corporations; d. normalises police brutality and repression.
Sign our petition at https://www.change.org/p/saving-the-historic-exarchia-square-our-neighbourhood-s-only-breathing-space?source_location=topic_page
Help us stop their plans and resist the government’s authoritarianism and repression.
Let’s demonstrate our numbers and the power of the many!
Hold out a hand of solidarity to a neighbourhood that has always been at the forefront of the struggle for life and dignity".
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aaronstjames · 2 years
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Gentrification Endangers Historic Exarcheia Square - UNICORN RIOT
:(
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helenflaneur · 2 years
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All rivers lead to Paris....
24th - 30th June 2022
In the last week of June we motored down the Oise River to Compiegne where Jimi fans are well catered for. 
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As well as filling our fuel tanks at Compiegne we spend a little time touristificating.
Napoleon III particularly liked to stay at his Compiegne Chateau in the Autumn with his court and attend to some administration in his spare time. 
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He instructed his interior designer to go the full frou-frou in the chateau with OTT decor including love seats for two and also three….ooh la la! 
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It is hard to believe anyone could have restful dreams in this bedroom decorated for the Emperor.
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Mark found a friend in the Chateau.
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The Chateau also included a rather fabulous car museum opened in 1927. It contains horse drawn coaches from the 17th century to early cars and bicycles. There was an electric land speed racer from 1899 that reached 105.88 km/h, the La Jamais Contente, driven by Belgium daredevil Camille Jenatzy as well as early pushbikes with extra style.
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 If you look closely you can see Imogen in this bike race. 
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The chateau has seen some action over the years from various wars.
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From the River Oise we turned left onto the big wide Seine but didn’t get very far as the perfect pontoon beckoned. It was right alongside a charming Italian restaurant with a river terrasse and vines to keep the sun at bay. Didn’t even have to lock the boat when we went out for dinner.
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We didn’t mean to travel 65km and 4 locks the next day but some plans just don’t work. At the start of the day we intended to take the short cut through Paris along the St Denis canal and then the St Martin canal to the port at the Bastille. But commerce barges and broken locks put an end to that so we motored the serpentine loops of the Seine instead. 
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Just what every music and performing arts centre needs: a moose. This one can be found at La Seine Musicale.
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Coming into Paris at any time is a treat but coming up the river at 7pm on a warm June evening when the river is awash with tourists and locals waving and drinking and partying and visiting the Tour Eiffel on those dreaded Bateau-Mouches and Bato-bus and everyone is having a great time was wonderful.
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Mark at the helm negotiating the river traffic.
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Our Paris odyssey ended with an insistent barge powering up our bum. He was unable to pass in the narrow waterway alongside the Ile de la Cite and Ile St Louis but also did not want to slow down for us. When he was able to overtake he didn’t wave unlike every other barge on the Seine. (It’s name is Pen Duck.)
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Entering the Port de Paris Arsenal at the Bastille we were directed to tie up to another boat who just happened to be flying the Australian flag. 
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bibliomancienne2 · 11 months
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Promenade de Jane 2023 (Plateau Mont-Royal, Montréal) par Marie D. Martel Via Flickr : Promenade de Jane 2023 avec Richard Ryan (Plateau Mont-Royal). « LE MILE END, LES RISQUES ET LES SOLUTIONS DE LA GENTRIFICATION D'UN QUARTIER ». Description : « Le Mile End a connu une transformation par une gentrification en accéléré au cours des années 2000 et 2010, bien avant qu'on ne parle du Mile Ex, d'Hochelag ou de Verdun... SI certains aspects de la gentrification sont recherchés et peuvent paraître positifs, d'autres comme l'accès à un logement abordable, le maintien d'une identité et des commerces de proximité, restent des défis. Touristification, changements dans le pôle d'emploi, hausse phénoménale des valeurs foncières... comment garder un tissu social dans un quartier avec toute cette attractivité? Richard Ryan habite depuis plus de 35 ans dans le quartier, il a été conseiller municipal de 2009 à 2021 avant de devenir consultant sur des enjeux d'habitation. Il a été au coeur des tentatives de maintien des ateliers d'artistes, de projets d'habitations communautaires, de préservation de 1,4Ha en biodiversité urbaine (le champ des possibles)... maintenant avec son retrait de la vie politique, il vous propose, sous le chapeau de l'organisme Mémoire du Mile End, un regard sur toutes ces années d'effervescence en projets, en réflexions et de luttes au coeur de ce quartier montréalais. »
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useless-catalanfacts · 10 months
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An important reminder of the disastrous consequences of touristic massification.
I translated another article about the housing emergency in the Balearic and Pityusic Islands.
The Balearic Islands are Mallorca (sometimes known in English as Majorca), Menorca (sometimes known in English as Minorca) and includes the Pityusic Islands, which are Eivissa (usually called Ibiza in English) and Formentera. All of them are found in the Southern Europe, in the Mediterranean sea, and are extremely popular holiday spots, particularly for German and British tourists, but also tourists from the rest of the world. Their local language is Catalan, in which this article is originally written.
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Sad is he who without love has to search for a home (in the Balearic Islands)
Opinion piece by Sebastià Alzamora
The housing emergency in the Balearic and Pityusic Islands has existed for some time and it's taking more dramatic tones every day. From teachers who have been destined to Eivissa as a substitute and spend their weeks in the island sleeping in their car (because with a salary of 1,000€ it doesn't make sense to rent even just one room for 700€ or 800€ per month) to the situation showed by a recent Caritas report on poverty in the Balearic Islands: many low-income families, or with uncertain incomes (often hotel workers) who cut the money they should spend on food to be able to pay rent (with all the consequences of cutting short your food, specially for children). Also, the explanation of the "no vacancies" mysterious phenomenon that the Balearic Islands, and particularly Mallorca, achieved last summer: since everyone knows that the housing prices in these lucky islands are unfeasible, hotel owners this season take advantage of local workers (paying them a salary so low that doesn't allow them to move out of their parents' home or, even worse, their ex-spouse, as it also happens often).
It was precisely at the beginning of last summer that the Valencian and Balearic governments met to work together on the housing emergency. [...] they agreed to ask Sareb to give them some flats to be used as public housing. In fact, the Company for the Management of Assets Proceeding from the Restructuring of the Banking System (also known as Sareb, also known as the bad bank) has over 8,500 houses in the Valencian Country and over 1,000 in the Balearic Islands. Since Sareb took these apartments when their inhabitants were evicted as a result of the trash mortgages given by banks during prosperous years, it makes sense that now they will be destined (at least some of them) to housing.
I don't know how these good intentions have evolved, but the search and/or building of protected housing, even though it might be necessary as an emergency measure, is nothing more than a palliative or a patch to a situation with well-known causes. This is what's behind the problem: the overexploitation of the land, the urban speculation, a market with out-of-control prices, and a touristic saturation that makes guiris [tourists] literally invade the towns, neighbourhoods and areas that not so long ago were still the indigenous population's.
The famous quality tourism has turned out to be European multimillionaires, often with fortunes of a suspicious origin, who buy or order to build their mansions with heliport for exorbitant prices, bursting the local price for square meter. This is the strict market logic, but if the market logic isn't somehow corrected, we can find ourselves in a triple massive migration: for climate reasons (the Mediterranean is one of the places in the world where global warming is most noticeable, and the Balearic Islands are one of the most heated places in the Mediterranean), for the lack of job opportunities (also for the young people whose university degrees aren't about tourism, and who can't find work here), and for lack of access to housing.
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hotelsmarket · 1 year
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Study: Policies Needed to Protect Athens from Touristification
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erraticunicorn · 1 year
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beach bum. hopping from beach to beach looking at the sun looking at the stars looking for cold brews and hot meals for cheap but only if the vibe is right not too touristy dining with the locals feeling like an outsider a harbinger for further touristification of the local eatery because the mole (pronounced mo-le) is just that good but anthony bourdain said dine like a local so isn't it what you should do when traveling or should the beach bum stay quarantined at the pool surrounded by four pallid hotel walls alone with his thoughts but hey you are probably overthinking things so walk to the beach overhear the drunk tourists with their “brahs” and “chug”s and backward hats look up at so many people crowded around towels around bodies around hawkers around drunkards around lovers around cigarette butts all around you everyone talking in a chaotic hum turning discordant buzzing and buzzing but don’t forget to
breathe.
look out and watch the sunbeams break through stratus clouds, making the water gleam and glitter, now look down and see rivulets in parallel being birthed behind the retreat of the wave allowing for a beautiful gradient of hydrated sand to form behind the tiny, little dunes; creating a perfect geometry only to return to the sea as the next wave crashes upon the shore. beach bum.
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analogsapeka · 3 years
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architectuul · 4 years
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Working With The 99% Architecture
Ateliermob was founded in 2005 by Tiago Mota Saraiva and Andreia Salavessa with the aim of designing new forms of architecture, in particular exploring the context of social architecture and strategic planning. In Lisbon, I met Tiago and he explain me about the importance of their work and how is emerging social architecture within their cooperative.
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Community Kitchen with Colectivo Warehouse. | Photo © FG + SG
What is an architectural cooperative? How do you organize your work? Why did you decide for this organization?
In 2005 we started to work as an architectural firm and during the crises we started to work more with people that has no money to pay for our work. This were different projects organized in a group working with the 99%, saying that this is the number of the people, which cannot afford to have an architect to work with them. The main issue is that we are not volunteering but apply for different funding. This can pay our work to do with communities. Because this group of projects became a main core of our work in the office, we organized it in another way. Conventional architecture work we do within the firm; besides we open the cooperative. This means that people we are working with are inside the cooperative. They are cooperants. In such way it is a more shared platform to work together with 99%.
Is there any model of founding urbanism, how do you reach the budget you need?
At the beginning the way we get jobs was applying to public competitions. Now we apply to fundings. When you apply to competitions and you don’t win, then the project goes to the garbage. You cannot reuse it. On the other hand, with the cooperative ideas we have the folder with the project that we want to apply to different projects, funding and applications. We are for example running the application for cultural, administrative and security areas. In EU there are right now many projects promoting the security and we are going to this funding that we can bring the safety to the local commons and neighborhoods. We are trying to be fluid to include all areas, so that we can in a certain way do the things we want to do. We are quite clear when we start to work on the neighborhood, what are their problems and what are their questions. Then we use it to the goals of different fundings, being very pragmatic on what we want to do.
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Internal courtyard of the Community Kitchen. | Photo © FG + SG
How do you choose locations and communities to work with?
We don’t choose but, right now, they come to us. From a neighborhood, which is a shanty town, the president of this neighbor association had heard about us and she established the connection. We want to be seen as a problem solver, which has a lot to do with manage expectation of this neighborhood but on the other hand we want to re-establish the connection in-between people and the State showing that working together we can solve more problems. That are the links we want to establish.  
Do you absorb different initiatives and marginal groups into your projects and how do you implement this idea to maintain spaces public?
There is a lot of problems that cannot be solved with our know how, like domestic violence, but we have the networks that can start to enter the project on this level. We work a lot with networks helping us dealing with that. We want to refuse the idea that we are competing with everyone because we are very clear on what we are doing and we show this via our blog or media that wants to talk with us. We want to have the transparency on what we are doing and we want more collectives to join our projects and to work on the same fields of action.
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Sul Seller Amphitheater | Photo © Valter Vinagre
You are active online; is this a way you create an online community and develop new ways of communication?
We tend not to use the architectural ways of communication. We use more generic ways, like publishing articles on generic media. Today I published an article on funding housing cooperativism. As there is a huge problem of housing in Portugal, a lot of people would like to join cooperatives and from this point we need to study. But government answer is that there is no money for that. On the other hand, we have one worldwide tourism company collapsing and you have millions for helping it. That was my article published today.
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Planing for Protest Exhibition at the Lisbon Triennial of Architecture. | Photo © Max Rosenheim
You were one of the architects collaborating within the planning for protest project?
We were very engaged on criticizing during the time we were under external interventions. Portugal was on chaos and it was times of protesting. What we found after these 4 years of nightmares, how to create maps and plans of protests, how people move through the city and how they were connected. After these 4 years we learned we need to start going political. We want to help the National Parliament to produce good laws and programs, that can be much more used on the neighborhoods. We started to pressure the political ambiences to work on locations out of their minds of work.  
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Planing for protest exhibition and catalogues. | Photo © Max Rosenheim
How did you present it?
We asked to meet in the Parliament with the Comition of Housing. We presented a survey of several neighborhoods from the north to the south of the country that need answers. They understood we have a map of problems and start to call us asking us to be part of the solving team. So first we protest, that we need to construct our ways of working.
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Planing for Protest mapping. | Photo © Max Rosenheim
Your office is going to move from the city centre of Lisbon because of touristification effect; do you have any idea how to create more sustainable tourism?
There are some cases of social engaged touristic projects running in Porto and Lisbon but they are not clear to someone who is searching it on maps. We have to start to think on how this can become presented via strong international European networks. I think we can have more tourist in Lisbon but I am afraid of touristophobia, which is growing very fast. Tourist arriving to Lisbon have to choose sustainable tourism.
We cannot assume that tourism is going to decline. Lisbon is an easy and friendly city for European citizens, for example, and the city has to have an answer to this. Tourists are coming here to consume and I think the way around, tourist can be part of the city, so it need to be present them how to live the identity of the city. It shall be spread on the areas that are not very touristic.
How do you implement participation?
We work a lot with the marginalized communities. In Portugal, the most marginalized are Roma communities, as they don’t have access to housing, kids are not going to school. Some are outside of the society and easily absorbed by crime networks. This is a consequence not an identity. Normally we manage to mix cultures, like we helped a group of Batucaderas, where women get together talking about their problems. 
We are trying to avoid establishing a link between the most marginalized communities and the State. That is the most effective way to avoid racism and the appearance of right wing movements, which I am afraid of. 
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Tiago Mota Saraiva has a degree in Architecture and specialization in Architecture, Territory and Memory. He worked in several offices in Lisbon, Rome and Vicenza. He is an invited Assistant Professor at Universidade Moderna (2007) and at FAUTL (2007-2008), in Ordem dos Arquitectos National Executive Board (2003-07) and National Treasurer (2005-2007). Tiago is managing partner at ateliermob; president of Working with the 99% cooperative. He is a board member of SOU Largo Residencias cooperative, re:kreators and Editorial Board of Le Monde Diplomatique (Portuguese Version). 
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