906 - All Our Past Times

In a comment to “904 - The Harmony Of Industry And Nature”, Ted spoke about workplaces of the past and what might have become of them: “What’s become of the stripper palaces? The warehouses? Were they all made of wood that long ago became food for worms, bugs, and bacteria?"

Well, it is a fact that many of those places have not survived because they were not treasured for their architecture (and in most cases quite rightly so), and the factory grounds of the past have become foundations for the shopping centers of our sprawling cities.

Apart from the fact that this image is a fine example for how to not shoot people (click on the thumbnail to see a hilarious 200% detail of the central portion of the image), it also shows one of the typical areas in Vienna, that were once industrial suburbs populated by the working class. Living quarters for the poor.

Things have changed substantially since. Today Vienna’s 7^th district is one of the most expensive areas in the city and a center of art and craft. It has a high density of galleries, artisan workshops, in other words: it has become fashionable. The fact that much of the substance has survived the inferno of the Second World War only contributes to that.

Cities are layered. The most glaring example, that I know of, is Rome. There you see modern appendixes to medieval buildings that were built into ancient ruins. More than 2000 years of architectural history in one place.

It’s nowhere else that extreme, but we Europeans love our cities like that. We live with a long past and we tend to modify, not completely tear down.

The Song of the Day is “All Our Past Times” by Eric Clapton. A video on YouTube indicates that it has been played in “The Last Waltz”, but it is not on my 2CD copy. I have it on the 1980 live album “Just One Night”. Hear the original album version on YouTube.