Hole in the Clouds

Tag: cityscape

Sun Sets on the Souk

Apr 23, 2014

Up the road a ways past Casablanca in Morocco is the ancient Berber city of Marrakech, famed for its gardens and palaces and especially for its sprawling, labyrinthine markets.

Click on the picture to, um, biggenize it, to glimpse what's on display in this souk and also, perhaps, to check the accuracy of our unofficial count: mounted on rooftops visible here are at least 104 satellite dishes.

landscape   cityscape   birdseye view   sunset   market   Morocco   Marrakech   North Africa   souk   (Image credit: Trey Ratcliff via Stuck in Customs)  

Scissoring

Nov 6, 2014

Two cranes get their act together high in the sky above New York City's High Line promenade.

Many, many cranes are hard at work these days in that neck of the woods; apparently, real estate developers are firmly of the opinion that people will pay even more than the usual Manhattan rates to live in an apartment or condo near the High Line. They may be right; nobody's yet found the ceiling on what New Yorkers will pay for anything.

New York   Manhattan   cityscape   cranes   skyline   skyscrapers   High Line   (Image credit: Fuji T)  

Dusk Descends on the City

Jun 6, 2016

An old skyscraper, the Art Deco Suburban Station building from 1930, peeks out at left from behind Philadelphia's newest and tallest skyscraper, the Comcast Center, completed in 2008. Reflected in the angled blue glass of the Concast tower are the upper floors of the Mellon Bank Center across the street.

Behind the 'scrapers is lots and lots of city sprawling into the night across the Delaware Valley.

Comcast is currently building itself a newer and even taller tower, which is rising off to the right of the buildings seen here. The lower floors will be occupied by Comcast and Telemundo, and the upper floors will be rooms with a view in a Four Seasons Hotel.

cityscape   birdseye view   sunset   Philadelphia   skyline   Center City   Comcast Center   windowscape   Mellon Bank Center   Suburban Station   architectureskyscrapers   (Image credit: Fuji T)  

The Good Winter

Jan 18, 2017

There was a leetle, teeny bit of snow in Seattle, and then a taste of sun. Fine winter days.

But that was then; now, the snow has melted and it's raining hard, and predictions are that it will rain forever. It's easy to see why Lewis and Clark, after they spent a long, wet winter in the Pacific Northwest, judged their entire expedition a failure; this part of the world that they'd struggled so hard to "discover" was chilly and gray and mildewy and just plain unliveable.

cityscape   winter   Seattle   wires   Maple Leaf   across the street   (Image credit: the phone)  

Monday Lineup

Mar 20, 2017

In 1960, British photographer John Gay (who was actually born Hans Göhler, in Karlsruhe, Germany) shot these clotheslines in front of the chimneyline of Islington, London.

A confession: I miss clotheslines. Don't miss lugging baskets of soggy clothes up the basement steps and out across the yard. Don't miss slapping at mosquitoes with a mouthful of clothespins. Don't miss convincing myself it won't rain when of course it will, and it does. Don't miss how stiff the clothes are when they're finally back inside.

I just miss seeing clotheslines when I walk the streets and alleys of my neighborhood, or any neighborhood. Nowadays, backyards look lifeless and uninteresting. Doubtless, this is a small price to pay for progress, and this nostalgia of mine is a small and silly thing, but still.

So now and for a while to come, Monday will be laundry day on Hole in the Clouds.

cityscape   laundry   London   skyline   clothesline   roofscape   1960   Islington   chimneys   (Image credit: John Gay)  

Teneriffe

Apr 9, 2017

The sun sets on the other side of the International Date Line, in Teneriffe, a riverside suburb of Brisbane, Australia. Or so they say; this post is yet another in a long irregular series spouting off about places we've never seen and about which we know next to nothing.

But we persist.

In the early twentieth century, Teneriffe was the wool-export center of the universe, with warehouses that could store tens of thousands of bales of Australia's wool. During World War II, the country's largest submarine base was located here. But in recent years, shipping has moved to container facilities at the mouth of the Brisbane River, and Teneriffe has assumed more of a residential character.

cityscape   night   sunset   Australia   palm trees   pavement   Brisbrane   (Image credit: IBazzil)  

Speculation from Ignorance

Apr 7, 2018

Apparently, this picture has been all over the web for a few years now. My lackadaisical research was unable to turn up anything at all about who made it or when or why.

You know how when people are showing you around a city they know well, they keep pointing at places and saying, "This used to be a bowling alley"? In Philadelphia, it's always, "This used to be a Wawa."

cityscape   surrealism   time   warp