So Cultured

I read in the Daily Mail (London paper) that a hot dog vendor or some kind of stall vendor had graffiti on his stall. Some man came to him and offerred him £1,000 (~$2,000) for it. So the vendor cut out the graffiti and sold it. It took £600 to fix the wall and so he netted £400. TURNS OUT...the graffiti was a Banksy, this really famous graffiti artist, (I think I saw one in Vienna, remember?) so the piece is worth about £500,000. Poor hot dog vendor sold it for £1,000. I thought this story was interesting because it shows the value of being culturally aware.

Speaking of which, I had a very "cultured" weekend. Started with Thursday night when Magda and I went to a gallery opening at a small basement gallery in Fitzrovia. Magda's boyfriend's an artist and it was some artist friends of his. The exhibit was on text messages. And we just hung around and mingled and drank free wine.


My friend Magda.


People mingling.


Tracey Moberly in front of her samplers stiched with her personal text messages from famous friends.

The funniest part of the evening, though, was when me and Magda were standing outside the gallery having a smoke and we see this posh looking woman walk past talking into her cellphone really loudly. Then she sees this man and starts going crazy. She was KICKING HIS ASS. She's kicking him with her stilleto boots in the groin and just going cagefighter on him. The people in the restaurant in front of where they were fighting ran out and pulled her off of him. And she kept slipping out of their grip and continued to beat the shit out of the man. Then she walks off and he follows. After a second though, the man turned around and started running in the opposite direction away from her, and then she starts chasing him down the street yelling "Get the fuck back here, James!" It was a great little moment.

ANYHOW, the next day, the director of my program arranged a tour of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre for our class. I hadn't been there yet. It was the only part thing I wanted to see that I missed on my sightseeing tour back in September. So the tour was great. Because our program deals a lot with the operation of cultural organizations, that was primarily what we discussed during our tour. The interesting thing was that the Globe Theatre was rebuilt in 1997 by an American, so the business model they follow is very American. They don't rely on public grants. They are completely run on corporate sponsorships and self-generated income. I've just spent the last six months being brainwashed into the European model so it was interesting to see the American model implemented in Britain.


Shakespeare's Globe


Inside the Globe. If it looks familiar, it's because Shakespeare in Love was filmed here.


Our tour guide talking to our class.





After the tour, Magda and I went to the Tate Modern. I hadn't been there yet. Usually, contemporary art museums can be kind of bullshit, but the Tate Modern turned out to have a really great collection. They had a few Jackson Pollacks, a great cubist Picasso, an abstact Matisse, etc.


The Tate Modern


This was an installation inside the museum. You can slide down it. I didn't.


This is a recent acquisition called "Sliding Doors." It's a series of moving mirrored doors.


I got these two pictures and then security came and said "No cameras."

After the Tate, we walked along the South Bank because it was such a beautiful day. The weather has really turned over here. It's almost spring! It's still a bit chilly, but I no longer need to be wrapped up in coats and scarves and gloves anymore. It's great.


A view of the Thames and North from the South Bank.


The Millenium Bridge.

Along our walk, we stopped at the.gallery@oxo because there was an photo exhibit called "Britain of View." It was a series of photographs of the British countryside and coastline.

Note that all the pictures in this entry were taken with my new cellphone! :) I got a new cellphone this week, so if you want the number, let me know. It's the hot pink version of the LG Chocolate and I named it Cherie after the Mon Cherie chocolates.

So that was my cultured weekend in London. If anyone tries to offer me £1,000 for graffiti, I know better than to accept.