Whatever your stance on animal rights or the ethics of eating meat, you can’t deny that this is a bold, beautiful, and rather ingenious way of getting a vegetarian message across. This demonstration, put into action by Spanish animal rights group AnimaNaturalis, put a plateful of living human into the busy streets of Barcelona, flanked by clothed accomplices who held up a banner reading “How Much Cruelty Can You Swallow?” While the use of sexy, naked females to sell something, whether product or idea, isn’t the least bit new, we think the presentation in this case is quite striking. See the full photo (which may be slightly NSFW), and watch a video of the demonstration after the jump. Read More »
Is there any way that you’d rather spend the rest of this work day than virtually traipsing with us through the streets of Spain, looking for art? No, you say? Good! “Barcelona is known to have some of the most interesting and abundant graffiti in the world,” writes Theodora Shure in her photo essay on Barcelona graffiti. “While I was there, I would run back and forth through the narrow streets and alleys hoping to find something plastered on the next wall, the next corner. I would go on and on, because if I stopped there would be no way of knowing if I had been just a few steps short of seeing something spectacular.” Head over to the Huffington Post to check out the full gallery of images.
Anyone who has ever attempted to travel through Europe on a budget has probably ended up staying in some fairly strange places. But nothing we’ve ever experienced can top this proposal for “Barcelona Rock,” Poland-based UGO Architecture‘s entry in an international competition to design a “bohemian hostel for backpackers.” While from the outside the building looks like a strange part of the natural landscape, the structure contains fifty rooms with windows, a swimming pool, spa, gym, cinema, pub, and a small climbing wall for beginners (advanced climbers are meant to scale the hostel’s exterior). Click through for additional images and let us know in the comments what you think of the concept.
Read More »
On his Twitter profile, DJ /rupture, aka Jace Clayton, lists “dj * writer * jetlag king” as his occupations. And though he’s best known as the turntable mastermind behind albums like Uproot and Special Gunpowder and his latest release with Brooklyn producer Matt Shadetek, he wouldn’t be much of a DJ without the latter gigs. All three are intertwined: he’s written regularly for magazines like The Wire and N+1; and his recent piece for the latter, which landed in the 2009 Best Music Writing compilation, begins “I’ve DJed in over 20 countries…”
Read More »
Colm Tóibín deftly combines creativity and criticism in his work — a covetable skill he gained from a life spent as a journalist, critic, travel writer, playwright, and novelist. With his new novel, Brooklyn, now available, the award-winning Irish writer chatted with our sister publication Boldtype about crossing mediums, dealing with identity labels, and why being a novelist is your parents’ worst nightmare.
Read More »
Several hours earlier the central avenues of Barcelona had been clogged with tourists, exchange students, and businessmen on bicycles, and now the streets have been flooded by thousands of protesters. At 8 p.m. last Thursday night, I made my way down Paseig de Gracia, the Broadway of Barcelona, weaving through people eating gelato, toward the low hum of thousands thronging in the Plaça de la Universitat in the center of the city. Some protesters had come in response to the police suppression of the preceding week’s protest. Some had come to demonstrate against the European Union’s Plan Bolonia. Finally, and most fundamentally, they were all there to support the timeless right to peacefully take to the streets. Read More »
