Public Enemy Number One in San Francisco is not BALCO labs or George W. Bush (we're as surprised as you are). No, it's a graffiti artist, who is tagging BNE stickers all across the city. Mayor Gavin Newsom has posted a $2,500 award for his capture; we can only assuming that he's hiding in a cave somewhere in the hills of Berkeley, if CIA intelligence is to be believed.
Actually, we were most entertained by the quotes from the man tasked with catching the BNE tagger, who is (we're not making this up) named Officer Putz. According to the Times, Officer Putz is consumed with his duties:
Officer Putz, who has been on the graffiti beat since 2001, takes his work seriously; he will not allow his face to be photographed and he gives his age merely as "in my 30's," for fear of tipping his hand. "It's a chess game," he said.
Sure, San Francisco has a big homeless problem, and there's that whole earthquake thing. But stickers? Now that's a chess game.
We complained earlier this week about tourists getting lost in northern Australia. Ironically down on the southern end of the country, the latest tourist campaign is suggesting this is not such a bad idea.
The It's Easy to Lose Yourself in Melbourne campaign suggests that visits to Victoria's capital should look beyond the standard tourist attractions to the "hidden treasures" like shops in small alleyways and other unusual places. The tourism minister said:
We are encouraging visitors to lose themselves physically and emotionally in this great city.
Hopefully they won't need too many expensive helicopter searches to find the physically lost visitors.
UNESCO's The Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity awards cities "with established creative pedigrees" designations in several categories: Literature, Cinema, Music, Folk Art, Design, Media Arts, and Gastronomy.
In May, Montréal became the third city to receive a City of Design award, following Buenos Aires in May 2005 and Berlin in November 2005. Once cities are awarded these designations, they become members of the Alliance's "Creative Cities Network."
Other cities appointed to the network include Aswan, Egypt (as a City of Folk Art), Bologna (as a City of Music), Edinburgh (as a City of Literature), Popayan, Colombia (as a City of Gastronomy), Santa Fe, NM (as a City of Folk Art), and Seville (as a City of Music).
Note that Media Arts and Cinema remain, as of yet, unawarded designations.
We'd like to suggest a new category: City of Untrammeled Coolness. We nominate Ljubljana and Melbourne.
Luigi Di Serio's list of the top 18 city skylines in the world goes for the big and the bold, with Hong Kong, Chicago, and Shanghai taking up the first three positions. One surprise, although maybe it shouldn't have been, was "Big D," Dallas, at #18, and Pittsburgh, at #16. But no love at all for either London or Paris?
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by AVB
