travel

Placeology #12: Neon Heaven, Instagram Hell

In Petula Clark’s 1964 smash hit “Downtown,” she advises a down-in-the-dumps friend to head to the titular location and rejoin life’s rich pageant. Along with the suggested activities like people-watching, movie-going and bossa-nova dancing, Pet also recommends that her pal “linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty/How can you lose?”

How indeed? Not long after the invention of electricity, entrepreneurs realized the innate appeal of plus-sized illumination. Coney Island’s Luna Park—opened in 1903 when only about 6% of American homes had electricity—was lit up at night with no less than 250,000 light bulbs. In the decades that followed, many major cities developed entertainment districts marked by illuminated marquees and huge advertising signage done with a new and (literally) flexible commercial artform: neon tubing. Places like London’s Picadilly Circus, New York’s Times Square and Paris’ Pigalle (topped off with the Moulin Rouge windmill) became world famous.

Luna Park in 1905

Japan’s capitol followed close behind. Firstly famous was the Ginza shopping corridor, where the closely packed-in business signage made for many archetypical zoom-in photos of Tokyo’s bustling and crowded metropolis. In the hypermodern Tokyo of today there are several such super-luminous areas. Perhaps none bigger than crazy-wonderful Shibuya. On my recent long-awaited first trip to Japan, we stayed at the elegant but not too expensive Hotel Indigo, where one of the draws is that it starts on the 14th floor, a good buffer from the district’s chaotic energy. On my first night, I finally got my chance to go boldly where all photographers have gone before and get this this telephoto image.

In Shibuya, as in similar Tokyo location like Shinjuku, Akihabara and Ueno, most of the lights looming over the countless restaurants, bars, shops, karaoke clubs and gaming parlors are not neon anymore. They have been replaced by more versatile and energy efficient LED displays. Back in Times Square—where I have seen the transformation more first-hand—LED has completely replaced what was once the area’s 200 miles of neon. In Japan, where fondness of tradition can cut across generational lines, a surprising amount of handcrafted neon remains.

In the banner photo at top, an exquisitely detailed neon promotion for a classic “Fruits & Parlor” dessert cafe and pulsing logograms sit next to a Shibuya Crossing LED with the month and year helpfully included as a selfie background to show your friends and/or followers that you really were at the world’s wildest 5-way crosswalk. But my favorite old-school neon sign may have been in Osaka, where the cryptic display pictured below almost floated in the sky above that city’s busy Dotonbori district.

Dotonbori is home to maybe the most well-known of Japan’s lighted sign. It’s the Glico candy company sign, showing a runner triumphantly crossing the finish line (because their caramels allegedly give you enough energy to sprint 300 meters!). It has been there in some form since 1935 and now is an LED landmark where two facing walls of advertising radiance are split by a canal.

When we took 30-minute canal tour, the boat stopped so anyone who cared to could stand up and imitate the runner’s stance for the inevitable photo op. Back on shore, many people on the opposite bank or on a nearby bridge could do the same pose. Like, MANY people. I started to wonder: if you didn’t throw up you arms and bend a leg, would the sign have any reason to exist? I’m starting to wonder.

I have written before on the topic of overtourism, nowadays almost any popular/famous place in the world will have ton of people there. I don’t mind; I’m part of it myself (though I always make time for detours off the beaten path). Millions of people in developing nations have been lifted out of poverty in recent decades and they want to travel. This is a great thing and people all over the world have always taken snapshots of themselves on vacation. But little did I ever imagine it would be become a pathology. The Plague of the Selfie.

Japan is a perfect place for this unsettling social virus. It has lovely landscapes, majestic castles, inspirational shrines and an exotic pop culture that is second to none. Each place is ganged up on by tourists from every part of the world, blocking views and being a constant distraction for people who might have more of an interest in the actual place being visited and less of an interest in themselves.

A beautiful Zen garden in Kyoto. I long ago learned to be patient and wait until people are gone so I can get my artsy photo.

We took maybe three standard group selfies in the 12 days we were there. For many others, three selfies would be one minute, not 12 days. Instagram and other social media platforms have brought about a regrettable commodification of experience. In one respect, I get it. Who wouldn’t want a picture of themselves with a 40-foot LED image of their favorite anime character? But the inability of many visitors to hold back on this witless narcissism makes you almost yearn for the days before digital photography, when a 36-exposure roll of film, along with the processing and prints, would set you back more than twenty dollars.

Yes, your curmudgeonly blogger would have more “Joy Joy” in his life if people would put down their so-called smartphones for even two minutes. (Photo is of karaoke center in Matsumoto).

This social trend is more than an annoyance. A full understanding of one’s surroundings, whether on an overseas trip or back in the hometown, goes a long way to making life more pleasurable and harmonious. In his 1990 book “The Experience of Place,” author Tony Hiss explains his concept of simultaneous perception, the idea that people can be “of the world” while also attending to their own affairs. He writes:

“With the help of this extra sense, the familiar hard-and-fast boundary between ourselves and our surroundings seems softened…and uncovering normally ignored patterns of relationships make us part of larger groups and events. It’s simultaneous perception that allows us a direct sense of continuing membership in our communities, and our regions, and the fellowship of all living creatures.”

My photo from under the Eros statue in Picadilly Circus in 1976, my first solo trip abroad. My own “simultaneous perception” would notice a few things here: The post-hippies still clinging to this Sixties counterculture meeting place, the awesome billboard for “Death Race 2000” at the London Pavillion and the Wrigley’s Spearmint gum sign, which was up there forever.

Of course, this type of experience happens more often than one might think. It’s why hundreds of thousands of people can gather every New Year’s Eve in Times Square without major incident. It can happen with a smaller group’s shared pleasure at hearing a great street musician or watching a summer screening of “The Wizard of Oz” at the local town park. But it will definitely not happen often enough if we keep pointing a phone at ourselves with a landmark in the background that is nothing more than another notch-in-the-belt for social media posters and hot-girl travel influencers.

Shinjuku’s beloved 3-D cat shows how cutting-edge technology can coexist with the square’s traditional signage.

But let’s leave that voidosphere and get back to the neon. In a recent article, Japanese photographer and blogger Nakamura Osamu wrote about the sharp 10-15 year decline in the sales of crafted neon, which was made worse when the Covid-19 pandemic hit. But in its aftermath, he says, there has been an uptick in demand for smaller scale neon.. Younger owners of cafes and shops have opted in, moved by the “wistfulness of neon, utilizing its cozy, inviting light to beckon patrons to step inside.” In an observation that Tony Hiss would surely love, Osamu says, “I see the youthful embrace of neon as a (post-Covid) attempt to establish new spaces where people can interact and be themselves.” (For the full article, which features 20 of his eye-candy photos, go to http://www.nipon.com/en/images/i00060

“So maybe I’ll see you there,” Petula Clark concludes in “Downtown,” We can forget all our troubles, forget all our cares.” All of them? Probably not in this day and age, but you’re halfway there when under the bright light of the big city. As one New Yorker said to Hiss, “The switch that turns on the lights seems to turn on a light within.”

Text and photos (except Luna Park) by Rick Ouellette

Placeology #5: Up, Up and Away into Hotel Heaven

An instant induction into the “Placeology” Hall of Fame goes to the TWA Hotel at the JFK Airport in Queens, New York City. Eero Saarinen’s Jet Age/Space Age masterpiece, opened in 1962, now serves as a gigantic retro-futurist lobby for a hip but friendly destination hotel. The actual guest rooms are in two curved buildings that overlook the great sculptural form of Saarinen’s creation, made to resemble a bird taking flight. You reach the rooms by walking up the terminal’s two iconic red-carpeted tubeways, which may make you feel like you’re living inside the space station scenes in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001.”

Those ramps once led directly to the jet doors, previously passengers had to head out on the tarmac and climb the roll-up stairs in all sorts of weather. They’re indicative of the efforts of Trans World Airlines, with Howard Hughes still as principal owner, to popularize and glamourize the growing airline industry. The sunken lounges, curvaceous stairways, giant viewing windows, in fact everything down to the chic uniforms and pillbox hats worn by the stewardesses, led to a total implied package of adventure and elegance. (Compare to today!).

So you will see walls lined with photos of the Beatles, Muhammad Ali, Presidents Kennedy and Truman and movie stars ranging from Marilyn Monroe to Paul Newman. Of course, you don’t have to be a big shot to stay at today’s TWA Hotel. It’s a bit pricey but not exorbitant when compared to far less attractive places. Since airports are not standard vacation destinations, the people who are staying at the TWA are usually there because they appreciate it (an exception may be if your flight at the adjacent Jet Blue terminal was cancelled until the next day).

There is certainly lots to appreciate. The hotel is fun and distinctly non-snobby, as amenable to young families as it is to couples on a romantic getaway. The latter can enjoy a drink in the sunken lounger under one of the terminal’s two giant elliptical Arrivals & Departures boards, while the former can entertain themselves by checking out the Twister game room, the many vintage automobiles and the free photo booth. Aside from the soft clattering of electro-mechanical A&D boards, the main sound you’ll hear is the continuous sound of Sixties pop music over the PA, just loud enough to be a nostalgic soundtrack of your stay. Along with the sounds of the British Invasion, Motown, surf, early rock ‘n’ roll and the occasional Frank Sinatra croon, you get a couple of tunes from the girl-group pride of Queens, the Shangri-Las.

A big attraction for many is a restored propeller-driven Lockheed Constellation, an airliner that was produced between 1943-58. Its bold profile dominates the view outside the terminal’s huge oval rear window. Affectionately known as “Connie,” any guest is free to go outside and walk up the steps, where the interior is now an informal lounge (expect a crowd). But there will much less of a crowd in the terminal’s “hidden” nooks and exhibit rooms, where the hotel’s playful quality really hits a peak. There’s the “Pope Room,” a tiny vestibule where Paul VI decompressed in October of 1965 after becoming the first pontiff to set foot in the U.S. At the end of one of the tubeways you can visit (and hang out in) a recreated Sixties living room, a TWA executive office, and a simulation of Saarinen’s studio.

After settling into the fantastical realm of Eero’s creation, you may notice something which is the most gratifying feature of this whole experience: that to whatever extent possible, the developers of the TWA Hotel left this architectural gem as is. The building had been essentially vacant since the terminal was last used in 2001 until it opened as a hotel about five years back. But there was no Disneyfication in the rehab: the carpets, seat cushions, tiling and concrete sheathing are all original and a bit timeworn, even a little tatty in places.

It cost a little more for a room with a “historic view,” but it is worth it.

That’s a good thing. We are invited into (for the price of a room) a real and vital piece of design history, not a replica. As you walk towards the hotel, you will enter this rarefied air with the help of outdoor speakers playing the 5th Dimension’s bouyant hit version of Jimmy Webb’s “Up—Up and Away” which was adapted into a memorable TWA television commercial. Along the way you will see translucent posters, partially blocking views of the construction of a new international terminal, that feature press testimonials of New York’s “sexiest” hotel. The one that stuck with me was from the Wall Street Journal: “They don’t build them like this anymore, and they never will again.” Truth.

Photos and text by Rick Ouellette

Placeology #1: Psychogeography and You

The places we walk through or drive past, the sites we visit or that simply fall into our frame of vision, all have a heritage and inner spirit of their own. Even in our familiar everyday world, we are often just steps away from some location rich in hidden history and forgotten associations.

The ideational term “psychogeography” refers to the attainment of deep connections with man-made environments, usually by way of unplanned walks thru cities. It has been described as a “charmingly vague” practice by no less a man the French Situationist philosopher Guy Debord, who coined the phrase himself in 1953. It can also be seen as a more risk-averse cousin of today’s urban explorer subculture, which I’ve written about many times in this blog.

The preserved archway frame of Pier 54, where survivors of the Titanic disembarked from the Carpathia, now serves as the south entrance to New York’s Little Island.

But there is also a very practical side to psychogeography, that would do us all good to be aware of. The theory goes that the distractions and pressures of modern society have caused people to become disconnected from the public realm, leaving the one-percenters to run roughshod over the greater public interest. Understanding and appreciating our common built heritage can lead to thoughtful historic preservation and the design of more livable cities thru greater community involvement.

Winter’s bare trees reveal the vestigial facade of a paternalistic institution on Hawkins Street in Boston.

So while coming to understand the effects of the built environment can lead to a greater good, psychogeography can be both a passive pleasure or a wildcat experience. It’s something almost everyone has experienced, whether consciously or not. It can be the satisfaction of finding a great hole-in-the-wall eatery or tucked-away antique store because you wandered away from a usual walking route. It could mean tiptoeing into an off-limits but unguarded location to do a photo session with friends or discovering a fascinating historical vestige steps away from a throng of selfie-taking tourists, as in my photo below.

This statue of Ethel Barrymore, and of two other former stage icons, evoke an earlier era of Broadway, just a few feet away from the back of a gigantic electronic billboard in Times Square.

In his 2006 book “Psychogeography,” writer Merlin Coverley, traces this concept back to its immediate roots: French Marxists and Situationists. But he also vividly  digs back to an earlier era and the “urban gothic” stylings of authors like Charles Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson, showing how their “obsessive drifting (yielded) new insights.” Poe’s 1840 story “The Man of the Crowd” is perhaps the first examination of the mysteries and perplexities of the modern teeming metropolis. In “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Stevenson shows not only the duality of man’s nature but the stark dichotomy of the different parts of London his split protagonist inhabits. Dickens was a famously keen observer of the same city (often engaging in all-night walks) and had the fame and power to influence social reforms in the darker aspects of the city he witnessed, the exploitation of children, the workhouses, slum conditions etc.

I stumbled on this Dickens landmark during a London walkabout in 1994.

It’s Baudelaire, quoted by Cloverley, who has the most telling description of the psychogeographer, which has as its alpha the Parisian flaneur (or boulevardier). “For the perfect flaneur it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude… to be away from home and yet to find oneself everywhere at home… to be at the center of the world and yet remain hidden from the world.”

Sounds cool? If so, try out some psychogeography yourself. Put away the GPS and get to know your town. Stick up for livable cities and against gentrification. Patronize independent small businesses and out-of-the-way points of interest. Lastly, LOOK UP AND AROUND to see what I call the Museum of the Street, and feel a little of what it means to be “everywhere at home.”

All photos and text by Rick Ouellette. Top Photo is Radio CITY Music Hall, NYC.

More info on my “Placeology” photo series coming soon!

Placeology #3: The Alcatraz of the East

The Portsmouth Naval Prison is located on Seavey Island in New Hampshire. Dark, forebidding, isolated and pointedly medieval, it served as a max security jail for the U.S. Navy from 1905 to 1974. At its peak around World War II, the capacity of the prison (nicknamed “The Fortress”) was 3,008 inmates.

“Impregnable” would be another word for it. To escape this so-called “Alcatraz of the East” (assuming you made it out of building) you’d have to get past the guardhouse on the bridge to the mainland base or make an unlikely swim across the notoriously turbulent currents of the Piscataqua River just east of the cold Atlantic.

But perhaps more interesting is the question, why did the Navy need such an enormous prison? Turns out that around the time of max capacity in the Forties, as much as 40% of the inmates in this brig were in there for sodomy-related offenses. Yikes! This was enough for the top brass, even way back then, to reconsider their policy on homosexuality in the ranks. But it was still decades before even “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and reform likely meant a discharge instead of a lengthy stay in this hellish jail.

The Portsmouth Naval Prison has been closed now for fifty years, but you can’t visit it. Unlike the similarly decommissioned Alcatraz, sitting out there in the middle of San Francisco Bay, you’d have to pass thru the active Naval Shipyard to get there. Too bad, as it would probably be a great tourist attraction for historic and hip Portsmouth, just as the fascinating Eastern States Penitentiary has in central Philadelphia. Oh well. You can still get a good view of it from Route 1B going from Portsmouth to the seaside village of New Castle. Nearby is Fort Stark and Ordiorne State Park, both featuring the remains of giant gun batteries and other WW2 ruins. That could be another entry for this new series, where I will review many of the interesting places, famous or obscure, that I have photographed.

About “Placeology”

The places we walk through or drive past, the sites we visit or that simply fall into our frame of vision, all have a heritage and inner spirit of their own. Even in our familiar everyday world, we are often just steps away from some location rich in hidden history and forgotten associations. Through this “Placeology” photo series, I will strive to give fresh agency to locales both grand and humble, uplifting and foreboding. More coming soon!

Remains of World War 2 gun emplacement. Battery Seaman, Rye NH

All photos copyright Rick Ouellette