whitebait

photo stats

Just noticed during the upload of some Sydney photos that my typepad host has separate stats for photo albums. For no other reason besides the fact that Whitebait is bloggin' (relatively speaking) like a madman at the moment ... here are the numbers of page loads associated with each album.

5678  - Chicago
371    - Singapore
344   -  Hiroshima
300    - Tokyo
242    - Yokohama
205    - Nagasaki
180    - Kyoto
102   -  Osaka

How interesting! (for Whitebait anyway). The Chicago album has been up the longest time but the number compared to the others is still suprising (especially given that these are mostly architecture photos that aren't particularly brilliant). Go windy city!

the way of the tuna

While Whitebait gets his Sydney photos sorted and loaded check this story (via Asaipundit) from the land where capitalism and religion continue to walk hand-in-hand in interesting ways. This Chicago Tribune feature traces the business savvy of the Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon-headed Unification Church and its significant interests in the American sushi industry:

On a mission from their leader, five young men arrived in Chicago to open a little fish shop on Elston Avenue. Back then, in 1980, people of their faith were castigated as "Moonies" and called cult members. Yet the Japanese and American friends worked grueling hours and slept in a communal apartment as they slowly built the foundation of a commercial empire.

[...]

Adhering to a plan Moon spelled out more than three decades ago in a series of sermons, members of his movement managed to integrate virtually every facet of the highly competitive seafood industry. The Moon followers' seafood operation is driven by a commercial powerhouse, known as True World Group. It builds fleets of boats, runs dozens of distribution centers and, each day, supplies most of the nation's estimated 9,000 sushi restaurants.

[...]

"I have the entire system worked out, starting with boat building," Moon said in "The Way of Tuna," a speech given in 1980. "After we build the boats, we catch the fish and process them for the market, and then have a distribution network. This is not just on the drawing board; I have already done it."

skylines

A recent post saw Whitebait misreading Myrick at Asiapundit and initially missing a great link to Diserio's 'Top 15 Skylines in the World'. It is the kind of list that makes grown anal-retentive bloggeurs go weak at the knees.

His list (including excellent images):
1. Hong Kong
2. Chicago
3. Shanghai
4. New York City
5. Tokyo
6. Singapore
7. Toronto
8. Kuala Lumpur
9. Shenzen
10.Seoul
11. Sao Paolo
12. Sydney
13. Frankfurt
14. Dubai
15. Seattle

Well, Whitebait certainly agrees on his number one and the top four overall. But to W's mind, New York should go to number two, Shanghai three and Chicago fourth. Tokyo, as readers will know, is a much beloved city for Whitebait but it doesn't rank as highly for this bloggeur in the skyline stakes. The dispersion of its skyline into multiple nodes produces a different kind of urban effect that almost takes it out of a consideration of 'skylines' in the conventional sense (though the view from the Rainbow Bridge is outstanding). In a different way places like Rome and Paris, which have sublime cityscapes, are similarly ineligible for this list. But that is a discussion for another post.

Back to the list then.  Sydney seems a bit hard done by here and to Whitebait's mind should probably pip SIngapore. As for the rest ... erm, he isn't sure as he hasn't had a chance to visit those cities and assess yet. Research funding offers welcomed.

BTW, he is not meaning to damn with faint praise when he says if we were to start a 'boutique skyline' list, Whitebait would be nominating Brisbane (viewed from Storey Bridge) as a top contender. It is certainly the best Australian city skyline after Sydney. Biggest ain't necessarily the most impressive.

what's in a name?

Today Whitebait is chained to his Tokyo desk, taking his turn working on a draft of a major university grant application that he is putting in for with his colleague, the Sheepwoman. These applications require an horrendous amount of work (and only have a 27% success rate which is further mitigated by a number of formal and informal factors including your relative seniority and track record, the 'class' of institution you belong to, the quality of your project, and the random luck of draw of who ends up assessing it on the day and whether they got out of the right or wrong side of bed). Overall, pointy-heads in Australia like to grumble about many aspects of them (e.g, they suck up time otherwise reserved for doing actual research), but the applications do at least have a clearly useful function in making the applicants think long and hard about their bigger project, its relevant literature, research questions and methodologies etc.

Whitebait and Sheepwoman's project is on the notion of urban rivalry and comparison.  Something W. was very interested in as part of his recent (see below) trip to Osaka. Amongst the comparisons spotted in some of the literature include historical references to Osaka as the 'Manchester of the East'. This led him today to google 'Paris of the Orient' while wondering how many of these imperial/colonial forms of comparison existed. Answer: a number. And he then found this fascinating wikipedia page which list city nicknames. It is a wonderfully eccentric list. Some surprises, old favourites and bizarre ones :

Melbourne: 'Bleak capital of the world' [does anyone know the origin of this? - W]

Auckland: 'Sydney for Beginners'

Chicago: 'Paris of the Midwest', 'Second City', 'City of Big Shoulders'

Dipolog City, Zamboanga del Norte, Philippines: 'Locust City'

Messina: 'Rebirthing City'

Warsaw: 'Default City' (popular in Polish usenet community)

Farjado, Puerto Rico: 'Hardface city'

 

'I cried myself to sleep last night ...'

Whitebait has been working his way through one of those ritual 'best albums of 2005' lists helpfully posted at Scratchin' the Surface. While Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine leaves him cold, he is absolutely blown away by Sufjan Steven's Illinois (listen to some brief samples here). Words fail the Whitebait in trying to describe how good this album is and how long its melodies and lyrics resonate in his mind. It is one of those albums that while being brilliant in itself also somehow inspires you to go out and read/make your own creative histories of the world or whatever it is that takes your interest.

Stevens is a new find for Whitebait. Evidently he made a Michigan-themed album last time around and plans to do one for every American state in future. How can you not love that ambition? Not everyone will be into the 'literary' qualities of this album but even if you are usually suspicious of such praise of pop music (idiots!) you should listen to this for the beautiful combinations of piano, banjo, strings, choir, flugelhorn, etc and the singer-songwriter's engaging voice. Damn it is good. Check out the selection of reviews here at the useful metacritic site.

And it gets a special plug here at Whitebait because it contains a suitably epic and wonderful song about The World's Columbian Exposition/The Chicago World's Fair held in that magic city in 1893. And Stevens calls it 'Come On! Feel the Illinoise!: The World's Columbian Exposition / Carl Sandburg Visits Me In a Dream'! And he appears to slot in a quick Cure reference in the instrumental bridge.The lyrics alone don't really catch its excellence but W. will quote an extract from this jaunty track just for the hell of it:

Oh great white city

I've got the adequate committee
Where have your walls gone?
I think about it now

Chicago, in fashion, the soft drinks, expansion
Oh Columbia!
From Paris, incentive, like Cream of Wheat invented,
The Ferris Wheel!

Oh great intentions
Covenant with the imitation
Have you no conscience?
I think about it now

Oh God of Progress
Have you degraded or forgot us?
Where have your laws gone?
I think about it now

Ancient hieroglyphic or the South Pacific
Typically terrific, busy and prolific

Classical devotion, architect promotion
Lacking in emotion. Think about it now.

Chicago, the New Age, but what would Frank Lloyd Wright say?
Oh Columbia!
Amusement or treasure, these optimistic pleasures
Like the Ferris Wheel!

'I am a drinker of American aquarium ...'

Whitebait just spent an exciting three days in the fabulous Chicago. Strangely enough, this terrific city has some interesting resonances with Melbourne. Both are known in popular mythologies as 'second cities', something which gives them a distinct charm. While the inhabitants of second cities are often anxious and sometimes even neurotic about their status (a key giveaway are tourist brochures that emphasize how 'world class' the cities attractions are), they also lack the perceived arrogance of a typical 'first' city (New York, Sydney etc). A gross generalization maybe but it needs to be put forth on this blog in its embryonic form as it is about to form the basis of multiple grant applications designed to further important comparative research around the world (by whitebait!).
Whitebait's time in Chicago basically involved an architecture binge. This is a brilliant place to walk around (while the weather is warm), or to take a rivercruise: the downtown area is an extraordinary lesson in the history of the skyscraper. (I'll put up some images when I return to Melbourne). And while you are at once recognising the glories of Mies van der Rohe you are simultaneously in the Blues Brothers' film or a Wilco album cover. Meanwhile in the suburb of Oak Park you can check out America's finest in the form of Frank Lloyd Wright's home, studio and a number of houses. His work lives on in Melbourne and Canberra through the efforts of his Prairie-school students, Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin. Just connect.

And what damn fine people Chicagoans are - a shout out from whitebait to the most friendly and helpful bus drivers on the planet. Slightly lower marks re awareness of world accents (whitebait is continually being assumed to be English).
Weirdest sight in the city: being passed by a dude on a Segway in a funky restaurant area. Whatever happened to the revolution?

CORRECTION: I should check these things (but it was hot in America, y'know): the Wilco lyric is in fact 'I am an american aquarium drinker'.