portfolio december 2015
DESCRIPTION
ÂTRANSCRIPT
The business of life & living
issue120
The
rise
of
New
Yor
k
apar
tmen
ts in
meg
a-lu
xury
Radical plans to save the planetHow it changed the film business
The fading business of lights A revolutionary in the kitchen
jAws AT 40
HoNg koNg’s NeoN cHef jeAN-geoRges
RewildiNg THe eARTH
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Our quest for perfection.PanoMaticLunar
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Hermes AD Portfolio DPS December 2015.ai 1 11/18/15 11:06 AM
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Hermes AD Portfolio DPS December 2015.ai 2 11/18/15 11:06 AM
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December
issue 120
Portfolio.
20
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Obaid Humaid al Tayer
MANAGING PARTNER & GROUP EDITOR ian Fairservice
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Gina JOHnsOn
GROUP EDITOR mark evans [email protected]
EDITOR maTTHew POmrOy [email protected]
sENIOR ART DIRECTOR sara raFaGHellO [email protected]
sENIOR DEsIGNER rOui FranciscO [email protected]
sUb-EDITOR salil kumar [email protected]
EDITORIAL AssIsTANT lOndresa FlOres [email protected]
GENERAL MANAGER – PRODUCTION sunil kumar [email protected]
PRODUCTION MANAGER r. murali krisHnan [email protected]
PRODUCTION sUPERvIsOR veniTa PinTO [email protected]
CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER anTHOny milne [email protected] GROUP sALEs DIRECTOR craiG waGsTaFF [email protected]
INTERNATIONAL sALEs MANAGER marTin balmer [email protected]
GROUP sALEs MANAGER Jaya balakrisHnan [email protected]
sENIOR sALEs MANAGER micHael underdOwn [email protected]
Emirates takes care to ensure that all facts published herein are correct. In the event of any inaccuracy please contact the editor. Any opinion expressed is the honest belief of the author based on all available facts. Comments and facts should not be relied upon by the reader in taking commercial, legal, financial or other decisions. Articles are by their nature general and specialist advice should always be consulted before any actions are taken.
Published for Emirates by
All dollar prices throughout the magazine refer to US dollars.
THE RIsE OF LUxURy TOwERs70Right now in New York there’s a luxury property boom, with the number of apartments selling for more than $15 million having risen by 49 per cent compared to 2009. Increasingly they’re in new, purpose-built luxury towers. So who is buying and why is this happening now?
The business of life & living
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Printed by Emirates Printing Press, Dubai
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OR IGI N OF A N E W T I M E
Moritz Grossmann Japan Co., Ltd., Tokyo · Leicht Juweliere, Dresden · Juwelier CW Müller, Koblenz · Juwelier Reuer, Berlin Juwelier Carl Glück, München · Juwelier Windecker, Oberursel · Juwelier Seiler, Basel · Haute Horlogerie Schindler, Zermatt Atelier Wassmann, Zug · William & Son, London · Independence Limited, Hong Kong · Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons, Dubai
PRECISELY: OUR FINGERS WERE INVOLVED IN
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DECEMBER
ISSUE 120
PORTFOLIO.
23
UPFRONT
LIVING
26INFORMATIONHow does a lift work? A lovely explanation
29CARSJuan Manuel Fangio’s Ferrari is up for sale
30DESIGNThe brilliant design of a secret bar
32VINYL REVIVALWhat really goes into to the pressing of a vinyl record
36MOST WANTEDSome suggestions for your disposable income
39AD BLOCKERSWhat the advertising industry doesn’t understand
43PRIMA CINEMAIf you have the money you can now watch first-run cinema films at home
CONTENTS
88HOTEL RESORTShangri-La in Mauritius
95SIX TIPS FROM A CEOFrom the boss at Bulgari
97INVESTMENT PIECEArguably the greatest watch ever made
99TOP TABLEEnrico Crippa’s celebrated Italian restaurant
102BOOKThe disappearing face of New York’s shopfronts
31,041 copies January - June 2015
PF_122015.P20-24_Intro_Contents.indd 23 11/22/15 9:50 AM
DECEMBER
ISSUE 120
PORTFOLIO.
24
FEATURES48THE HALF-EARTH THEORYCould giving half the planet back to nature really save us?
52THE NEON OF HONG KONGWhy one of the most famous aspects of Hong Kong is slowly dying out
58THE SHARK THAT CHANGED HOLLYWOODHow the film Jaws created the summer blockbuster and changed cinema
78JEAN-GEORGES VONGERICHTENThe chef who helped create fusion dining now has a new mission
CONTENTS
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA REPRESENTATIVESAUSTRALIA/NEW ZEALAND Okeeffe Media; Tel + 61 894 472 734, [email protected] BELGIUM AND LUXEMBOURG M.P.S. Benelux;
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TURKEY Media Ltd.; Tel +90 212 275 51 52, [email protected] UK Spafax Inflight Media; Tel +44 207 906 2001, [email protected] USA Totem Brand Stories; Tel +1 4168475100, [email protected]
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designa n d technology.
luminor 1950 10 days gmt automatic (ref. 533)
pa n e r a i . c o m
PANERAI BOUTIQUESUAE: Abu Dhabi - Avenue at Etihad Towers, +971 2 681 8660 - The Galleria at Sowwah Square, Al Maryah Island, + 971 2 491 9748
Dubai - The Dubai Mall, +971 4 339 8444 • QATAR: Doha - Villaggio Mall, + 974 4451 9866 • LEBANON: Beirut - Beirut Souks, Weygand St. +961 1 999939KSA: Riyadh - Mohamed Bin Abdul Aziz Street (Tahlia), C Center Building, +966 11 462 6558, Jeddah - Jameel Square
Tahlia St., +966 12 284 0529, Al Khobar - Al Rashid Mall, +966 13 889 4187 • KUWAIT: Al Hamra Luxury Center, +965 2 227 0218OMAN: MUSCAT - Royal Opera Galleria, +968 2200 9993 • BAHRAIN: Manama - Moda Mall, +973 1743 1166
Pan Arab_Portfolio_063897-Tecnico-SP-PAM533_265x205_EN.indd 1 12/11/2015 13:17
PORTFOLIO.
26
UP
FR
ON
TPO
RTF
OLI
O.
Ran
dal
l Mun
roe,
a f
orm
er N
ASA
eng
inee
r, ex
pla
ins
thin
gs
in s
imp
le t
erm
s
Lifti
ng R
oom
A li
ftin
g ro
om
is a
bo
x th
at c
arrie
s p
eop
le u
p a
nd d
ow
n a
bui
ldin
g. T
od
ay’s
citie
s w
oul
dn’
t m
ake
sens
e w
itho
ut li
ftin
g ro
om
s. If
we
had
ta
ll b
uild
ing
s w
itho
ut t
hem
, eve
ryo
ne w
oul
d w
ant
to s
tay
on
thei
r o
wn
floo
r, b
ecau
se g
oin
g u
p o
r d
ow
n w
oul
d t
ake
a lo
t m
ore
wo
rk t
han
go
ing
the
sam
e d
ista
nce
to t
he s
ide.
Tal
l bui
ldin
gs
mig
ht h
ave
to jo
in u
p w
ith e
ach
oth
er, a
nd p
eop
le w
oul
d m
ost
ly m
ove
bet
wee
n th
em
whi
le s
tayi
ng o
n th
eir
ow
n flo
ors
. Mo
st li
ftin
g ro
om
s g
o s
trai
ght
up
and
do
wn.
A fe
w g
o t
o t
he s
ide
whi
le g
oin
g u
p a
nd d
ow
n, t
o t
ake
peo
ple
to
the
to
p o
f a h
ill. T
here
are
als
o li
ftin
g ro
om
s th
at o
nly
mo
ve s
ide
to s
ide;
tho
se a
re c
alle
d t
rain
s. L
iftin
g ro
om
s ar
e sa
fe; t
here
’s al
mo
st n
o w
ay t
hey
can
fall.
The
re a
re a
lot
of d
iffer
ent
par
ts t
hat
help
lift
the
m, a
nd e
ach
par
t is
mad
e to
sto
p t
he ro
om
– in
stea
d o
f let
-tin
g it
go
– if
so
met
hing
go
es w
rong
.Th
ing
Exp
lain
er: C
omp
licat
ed S
tuff
In S
imp
le W
ord
s b
y R
and
all M
unro
e is
out
no
w
Ran
dal
l Mun
roe,
a f
orm
er N
ASA
eng
inee
r, ex
pla
ins
thin
gs
in s
imp
le t
erm
s
Lifti
ng R
oom
A li
ftin
g ro
om
is a
bo
x th
at c
arrie
s p
eop
le u
p a
nd d
ow
n a
bui
ldin
g. T
od
ay’s
citie
s w
oul
dn’
t m
ake
sens
e w
itho
ut li
ftin
g ro
om
s. If
we
had
ta
ll b
uild
ing
s w
itho
ut t
hem
, eve
ryo
ne w
oul
d w
ant
to s
tay
on
thei
r o
wn
floo
r, b
ecau
se g
oin
g u
p o
r d
ow
n w
oul
d t
ake
a lo
t m
ore
wo
rk t
han
go
ing
the
sam
e d
ista
nce
to t
he s
ide.
Tal
l bui
ldin
gs
mig
ht h
ave
to jo
in u
p w
ith e
ach
oth
er, a
nd p
eop
le w
oul
d m
ost
ly m
ove
bet
wee
n th
em
whi
le s
tayi
ng o
n th
eir
ow
n flo
ors
. Mo
st li
ftin
g ro
om
s g
o s
trai
ght
up
and
do
wn.
A fe
w g
o t
o t
he s
ide
whi
le g
oin
g u
p a
nd d
ow
n, t
o t
ake
peo
ple
to
the
to
p o
f a h
ill. T
here
are
als
o li
ftin
g ro
om
s th
at o
nly
mo
ve s
ide
to s
ide;
tho
se a
re c
alle
d t
rain
s. L
iftin
g ro
om
s ar
e sa
fe; t
here
’s al
mo
st n
o w
ay t
hey
can
fall.
The
re a
re a
lot
of d
iffer
ent
par
ts t
hat
help
lift
the
m, a
nd e
ach
par
t is
mad
e to
sto
p t
he ro
om
– in
stea
d o
f let
-tin
g it
go
– if
so
met
hing
go
es w
rong
.Th
ing
Exp
lain
er: C
omp
licat
ed S
tuff
In S
imp
le W
ord
s b
y R
and
all M
unro
e is
out
no
wTh
ing
Exp
lain
er: C
omp
licat
ed S
tuff
In S
imp
le W
ord
s b
y R
and
all M
unro
e is
out
no
wTh
ing
Exp
lain
er: C
omp
licat
ed S
tuff
In S
imp
le W
ord
s
LIFT
ER
Thes
e lif
ters
usu
ally
sit
in a
m
achi
ne r
oo
m a
bo
ve t
he t
op
flo
or
the
lifti
ng r
oo
m c
an v
isit
. Th
ey u
se p
ow
er t
o t
urn
a b
ig w
heel
tha
t p
ulls
a li
ne
runn
ing
bet
wee
n th
e ro
om
an
d a
wei
ght
.
POW
ER F
RO
M B
UILD
ING
Lifti
ng ro
oms
use
a lo
t of p
ower
, b
ut th
e lig
hts
and
air
syst
ems
in
the
bui
ldin
g u
se e
ven
mor
e.
LINE
H
OLD
ERTA
LL H
ALLW
AY
The
liftin
g ro
om s
its in
sid
e a
long
hal
lway
tha
t g
oes
up a
nd
dow
n in
stea
d o
f to
the
sid
e. It
ca
n b
e lo
nger
tha
n an
y of
the
no
rmal
hal
lway
s in
the
bui
ldin
g,
but
mos
t p
eop
le n
ever
see
it.
LINE
STO
PPER
This
thin
g lis
tens
to
the
diffe
rent
par
ts
of th
e m
achi
nes,
so
met
imes
with
the
help
of a
com
pute
r, an
d gr
abs
the
line
if an
ythi
ng g
oes
wro
ng.
The
line
stop
per a
lso
gr
abs
the
line
whe
n th
e ro
om s
tops
at a
flo
or to
mak
e su
re it
do
esn’
t mov
e w
hile
pe
ople
get
on
and
of
f. It’
s m
ade
so it
will
ke
ep h
oldi
ng o
n if
the
pow
er g
oes
out.
WEI
GHT
This
wei
ght
mak
es it
eas
ier
for
the
pul
ler
to li
ft t
he r
oo
m. I
t ha
ngs
do
wn
on
the
oth
er e
nd
of t
he li
ne h
old
ing
the
ro
om
, so
whe
n th
e p
ulle
r at
the
to
p
lifts
the
ro
om
, it’s
als
o lo
wer
ing
th
e w
eig
ht.
MET
AL S
TICK
PF_122015.P26-27_Upfront_Infographics.indd 26 11/22/15 9:51 AM
DECEMBER
ISSUE 120
PORTFOLIO.
27
/INFOGRAPHICS
PORTFOLIO.
27
POW
ER L
INE
This
line
brin
gs p
ower
for t
he
light
s an
d co
ntro
ls in
the
liftin
g
room
. It s
omet
imes
runs
to
the
top
of th
e ha
llway
, whe
re
the
pulli
ng m
achi
nes
are,
or
som
etim
es to
the
side
of t
he w
all
part
of t
he w
ay u
p th
e ha
llway
.
DOO
RS
Thes
e do
ors
line
up w
ith th
e do
ors
on th
e ro
om. W
hen
the
liftin
g ro
om s
tops
, bot
h do
ors
open
toge
ther
.
EMPT
Y R
OO
M
Lift
ing
room
s ar
e us
ually
em
pty
. Pe
ople
don
’t p
ut c
hairs
or
tab
les
in t
hem
exc
ept
to m
ove
thos
e th
ing
s to
oth
er fl
oors
. If
you
trie
d t
o us
e on
e of
the
se
room
s as
an
offic
e, s
omeo
ne
wou
ld p
rob
ably
yel
l at
you.
CATC
HER
If a
liftin
g ro
om d
oes
fall,
thes
e ca
tche
rs h
it a
met
al p
late
on
the
bot
tom
of t
he ro
om a
nd m
ake
the
land
ing
a li
ttle
sof
ter.
FALL
FEE
LER
This
whe
el is
join
ed
to th
e ro
om’s
stop
ping
gra
bber
s by
a
line.
As
the
room
m
oves
up
and
dow
n,
the
whe
el tu
rns.
If th
e ro
om s
tart
s go
ing
do
wn
fast
, the
whe
el
star
ts s
pinn
ing
fast
, an
d th
e lit
tle a
rms
in th
e m
iddl
e of
the
whe
el s
win
g ou
t and
ca
tch
onto
the
teet
h ar
ound
them
. Thi
s m
akes
the
whe
el s
top
tu
rnin
g, w
hich
mak
es
the
room
sud
denl
y pu
ll on
the
line—
sett
ing
off t
he ro
om’s
stop
ping
gra
bber
s.
GRAB
BER
S
If th
e fa
ll fe
eler
p
ulls
on
the
line,
th
ese
gra
b t
he
met
al s
tick
real
ly
hard
and
sto
p t
he
roo
m fr
om
mo
ving
.
WEI
GHT
LINE
This
line
is u
sed
in
the
liftin
g ro
oms
in
tall
build
ings
to h
elp
ke
ep th
e w
eigh
t on
the
pulle
r eve
n.
Whe
n a
room
is a
ll th
e w
ay a
t the
top
or
bot
tom
, the
line
s ho
ldin
g it
add
to th
e w
eigh
t on
one
side
. W
hen
that
hap
pens
, m
ost o
f the
wei
ght
of th
is li
ne h
angs
on
the
othe
r sid
e, w
hich
ke
eps
thin
gs e
ven.
PULL
ING
LINE
S
Lift
ing
room
s ar
e he
ld a
nd
lifte
d b
y a
big
gro
up o
f met
al
lines
. The
re a
re u
sual
ly a
roun
d
four
to
eig
ht o
f the
m, b
ut it
ca
n b
e m
ore
or le
ss t
han
that
. Th
ese
lines
are
ver
y st
rong
. U
sual
ly, e
ven
just
one
of t
hem
w
ould
be
enou
gh
to h
old
the
w
hole
room
on
its o
wn,
but
we
use
mor
e ju
st t
o b
e sa
fe.
LIFT
ING
RO
OM
PRET
END
CONT
RO
LS
Ther
e ar
e co
ntro
ls o
n th
e in
sid
e o
f a li
ftin
g r
oo
m t
hat
you
use
to t
ell i
t w
here
yo
u w
ant
to g
o. S
om
e o
f the
se
cont
rols
, lik
e th
e o
ne m
arke
d
“DO
OR
CLO
SE,”
do
n’t
alw
ays
seem
to
do
any
thin
g. S
om
e p
eop
le s
ay t
hat
tho
se c
ont
rols
d
on’
t ev
en g
o a
nyw
here
, b
ecau
se t
he li
ftin
g r
oo
m’s
com
put
er k
now
s w
hen
to o
pen
an
d c
lose
the
do
or
bet
ter
than
yo
u d
o. T
his
is h
alf t
rue.
O
n so
me
new
lift
ing
ro
om
s,
the
DO
OR
CLO
SE c
ont
rol
mig
ht n
ot
norm
ally
do
an
ythi
ng. T
his
is d
iffer
ent
in d
iffer
ent
bui
ldin
gs;
it’s
up t
o t
he p
erso
n w
ho o
wns
th
e b
uild
ing
to
dec
ide
whe
ther
to
mak
e th
ese
cont
rols
wo
rk.
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the
DO
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OPE
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ont
rol
is a
lway
s jo
ined
to
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lift
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om
’s sy
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ake
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into
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ntro
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to
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the
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whi
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ce t
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ack
wal
l ins
tead
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he
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th
ink
you’
re s
tran
ge.
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e’s
a se
cond
cat
cher
for
the
wei
ght
.
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Portfolio.
december
issue 120upfront / automotive
29
$28-$32m Expected sale price of
the car at auction this month
Juan Fangio’s FerrariThis 1956 Ferrari 290 MM is one of only four ever made and was raced by Juan Manuel Fangio. It’s up for auction this month
In motor racing, names don’t come much bigger than five-time world champion Juan Manuel Fangio. The Argentine is considered by many to be the greatest of
them all and this month, one of his Ferrari race cars is up for auction.
The Driven By Disruption auction in New York on December 10 could potentially set a record price. Sotheby’s estimates that the car will go for somewhere between $28 and $35 million, but if bidding is strong it could top the $38.1 million paid last year for a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO.
For a start, this 1956 Ferrari 290 MM was designed by Enzo Ferrari himself, especially for Fangio to drive in the famous Mille Miglia road race. Add to that, the Works car is one of only four made and reportedly the one of the quartet in best condition – and it’s a piece of history as well as a car.
cars | worldwide
Fangio finished fourth in that race – despite driving solo in an open top car in torrential weather – and it was his last time in the thousand-mile road race, but the car went on to be driven by other greats.
Phil Hill drove it during the Nurburgring 1,000 km, and Eugenio Castellotti, Luigi Musso, and Masten Gregory took it to victory in the 1957 Buenos Aires 1,000 km. In 1964 it left the road and went into private collection. Until now.
Incredibly, or perhaps testament to the greats who raced it, the car was never crashed, which is why it’s in such good condition.
“It’s hard to know where to start when describing just how important this 290 MM is,” says Sotheby’s car specialist Peter Wallman. “Driven by the greatest drivers of the 1950s and built for possibly the greatest driver in history, this is a car with which Enzo Ferrari was personally involved and is a fundamental part of Ferrari folklore. Its originality, coupled with its extraordinary provenance and history, which are second to none, make it one of the most valuable cars that will ever come on the open market.”
4 Number of Ferrari
290 MM built
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Portfolio.
December
issue 120 upfront / Design
30
Shanghai currently has something of a speakeasy fascination with many late-night bars opening throughout the city, but Flask & The Press in the Xuhui
District is especially noteworthy.Designed by Alberto Caiola, the front is a
sandwich shop called Flask. It has a minimalist design with bare walls and serves classic diner grilled cheese sandwiches and Americana fare, but through a secret door – built into a Coca-Cola vending machine – is The Press, a cocktail bar.
Caiola describes it as “an intimate contemporary lounge concealed behind the facade of a cheery, sandwich shop… a juxtaposition of light and dark, elegance and funkyness, personal and playful”.
The bar itself is far bigger than the front diner and decked out in dark woods, leather and vintage telephones and typewriters on the shelves. The drinks are of the modern high-end mixology variety, and there’ll be no stumbling out to find late-night snacks after leaving, as you’ll be back in the front diner again where comfort food is served until 2am.
A clever speakeasy in Shanghai
Flask & The Press
nightlife | Shanghai
Shanghai
AddreSS432 Shaanxi Bei Lu, near Fuxing Zhong Lu, Xuhui
District, Shanghai
Beijing
Top: Flask, with secret door Coke machine in the corner
Left: Entrance to the speakeasy
Bottom: The Press speakeasy bar
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32
upfront / jobs
Revival brings record-pressing machines back to life. Words: Ben Sisario, Photos: Karsten Moran
Pressing ever onwards
Music | Vinyl
The machines at Independent Record Pressing whirred and hissed as they stamped
out a test record. The business’ owners waited anxiously for Dave Miller, the plant manager, to inspect the still-warm slab of vinyl.
“That’s flat, baby!” Miller said as he held the record, to roars of approval and relief. “That’s the way they should come off, just like that.”
Independent Record Pressing is an attempt to solve one of the riddles of today’s music industry: how to capitalise on the popularity of vinyl records when the machines that make them are decades old, and often require delicate and expensive maintenance. The six presses at this new plant, for example, date back to the 1970s.
Vinyl, which faded with the arrival of compact discs in the 1980s, is having an unexpected renaissance. But the few dozen plants around the world that press
the records have strained to keep up with the exploding demand, resulting in long delays and other production problems, executives and industry observers say. It is now common for plants to take up to six months to turn around a vinyl order – an eternity in an age when listeners are used to getting music online instantly.
“The good news is that everyone wants vinyl,” Dave Hansen, one of Independent’s owners and general manager of the alternative label Epitaph, said on a recent hot afternoon as the plant geared up for production.
“The bad news is everything you see here today,” he added, noting that the machines had to be shut down that afternoon because of the rising temperature of water used as coolant. To replace an obsolete screw in one machine, Independent spent $5,000 to manufacture and install a new one.
The vinyl boom has come as streaming has taken off as a listening format and both CDs and downloads have declined. The reasons cited are usually a fuller, warmer sound from vinyl’s analogue grooves and the tactile power of a well-made record at a time when music has become ephemeral.
Most surprising is the youth of the market: According to MusicWatch, a consumer research group, about 54 per cent of vinyl customers are 35 or younger. Hansen and Darius Van Arman, a founder of Secretly Group,
Dave Miller, the plant operator, inspects a record as he runs a test batch at Independent Record Pressing
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December
issue 120
Portfolio.
33
upfront / jobs
33
54%of vinyl
consumers are under the
age of 35
a consortium of small record companies that is a partner in Independent, said they believed their customers were often discovering new music through streaming and then collecting it on LPs.
“None of this was supposed to happen, and yet it’s happened,” said Michael Fremer, a senior contributing editor at Stereophile magazine and a longtime champion of vinyl as a superior medium for sound.
For the music business overall, vinyl is still a niche product, if
an increasingly substantial one. According to the company Nielsen, LPs now represent about nine per cent of sales in physical formats. But for indies like Epitaph and Secretly, vinyl has become essential: Both now take in nearly as much revenue from LPs as they do from CDs.
When it is operating at full capacity, Independent should produce up to 1.5 million records a year, Hansen and Van Arman said. But first the machines must be fully restored and tested.
Top: Dave Miller, the plant operator, repairs a broken shear shaft on a recored press
Middle: Noah Carmichael empties vinyl compound from a hopper as a machine undergoes repair for a broken shear shaft
Bottom: Grain-size pellets of vinyl, used to make records
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December
issue 120
34
upfront / jobs
While tweaking two machines, Miller, the plant manager, showed how many parts of the physical process must be aligned to make a record properly. Vinyl pellets are poured from a bucket into an extruder, and then formed into a small lump of vinyl that is placed between metal stampers forming the shape of each side of the record. The machine then presses the stampers together with 68 kilograms per square inch of pressure. If the temperature, pressure or consistency of the vinyl is off, the result is an imperfect record that is scrapped.
“This is the dirty, brutal side of the record business,” Miller said. “Nobody realises the work that it takes to actually make a record.”
Talk of a possible bubble hangs over the vinyl business, and some plants seem to be bracing for a decline even as they expand. United Record Pressing in Nashville, Tennessee, one of the biggest plants, has 30 presses running 24 hours a day and has acquired 16 more machines. Yet the plant, overwhelmed by demand, has stopped taking orders from new customers.
“It’s difficult to turn people away, especially when it is maybe an independent artist,” said Jessica Baird, a representative of the company. “But we are trying to do the best we can for people who have been loyal to us for years, and that we hope will stick with us when the ebb and flow comes again.”
Hansen said he was not sure whether the vinyl gold rush would continue, either, but he has staked a considerable personal investment in it and called the plant part of his retirement planning.
“The dream is to build capacity for our label and provide a service for the indie labels that I love and respect so much,” Hansen said, “and at the same time, make a few bucks, too.”
“Nobody realises the work that it takes to actually make a record”
Top: Darius Van Arman of Secretly Group and Dave Hansen, GM of record label Epitaph
Middle: Excess vinyl trimmed from the edges of a pressed record is jettisoned from a machine
Bottom: Noah Carmichael, who does inventory and assembly, tests the sealer and shrink tunnel Th
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Portfolio.
december
issue 120
36
upfront / spend
fan
cy
bu
yin
g a
bit
of
din
osa
ur
? it
’s e
asi
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th
an
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Most wanted
Lomo’instant Wide camera Instantly printed photos, but in a wide, panoramic size. There’s also a 35mm equivalent lens with optional attachments, built-in flash, three focus modes and long exposure option for creative shots. $200, lomography.com
the trunkster suitcase Designed with zipless entry for easier access, a built-in USB port for phone charging on the go, built-in scales so you can be sure your bag is never overweight and a tracker so you’ll always know where it is. $325, trunkster.co
mini museum 2 After the success of the first Mini Museum, Hans Fex is back with another collection of 26 unique specimens encased in acrylic. Items in the second edition include an asteroid, a Bronze Age dagger, fulgurite made by lightening, Neanderthal hand axe, bone from a 300-million-year-old Dimetrodon, fossilised skin from a 65-million-year-old Hadrosaur, part of the Hindenburg airship and a piece of the Cray-1, the first supercomputer. Billions of years of life, science and history in the palm of your hand. $399, minimuseum.com
raLph Lauren Lounge chair The RL-CF1 lounge chair looks stylish and is made from the same high-tech carbon-fibre material that shapes the stealth bomber. Its price is accordingly sky high, but at least your chair won’t show up on radar. $18,035, ralphlaurenhome.com
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franck namani (MEN).pdf 1 9/20/15 11:26 AM
PORTFOLIO.
DECEMBER
ISSUE 120UPFRONT / ADVERTISING
And why they show advertising doesn’t understand mobile. Words: Sam Thielman
The rise of ad-blockersADVERTISING | GLOBAL
Apple has made ad-blocking mainstream, prompting fears in the $31.9 billion
mobile ad market, but those grappling with the problem say the user must come first. The thing is, everyone hates mobile ads – even advertisers.
In the midst of the advertising industry’s annual summit in New York recently, agency directors, media buyers and other ad-world professionals were angry about ad-blocking software expanding and improving beyond their capability to defeat it. Many admitted they have no one to blame but themselves.
As executives descended on Manhattan for Advertising Week, there was one topic of conversation: Apple had made ad-blocking mainstream. The company’s shiny new mobile operating system, iOS 9, allows anyone using an iPhone to cut out ads, taking a bite out of the $31.9 billion mobile ad market, not long ago touted as the saviour of the publishing industry.
But don’t shoot the message-blockers, said Constantine Kamaras, chairman of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Europe. They aren’t the real problem.
“The broader problem is, in many ways, that in some cases digital advertising has not put at the forefront the fundamental truth that the user experience is paramount,” Kamaras says.
“And no advertising that does not respect the user experience, be it in terms of content, in terms of design and creative, or in terms of device functionality is going to work. It’s bad advertising.”
Apple’s move is interpreted by many in the industry as a potshot at
200m Ad-block
users worldwide
30% Internet users in Germany are using
ad-blockers
39
Google, which is the largest single player in the global digital advertising business and reaped some $5 billion last year from the digital ad market, according to then-CEO Larry Page. (Page now runs Google’s holding company, Alphabet.)
But blocking “takes the publishing experience out of publishers’ hands”, says Scott Cunningham, IAB senior vice-president of tech and ad operations, adding that it is likely to hurt fledgling e-businesses.
Cunningham, both in conversation and at a press conference last week, likened ad blocking to hostage-taking, calling the practice of approving some ads and not others hypocritical.
He is not alone – many in the industry are furious. There have even been lawsuits.
That doesn’t change the fact that most consumers loathe seeing ads on their phones. A recent AOL survey found that 75 per cent of online video ad viewers
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december
issue 120
40
upfront / advertising
complained about seeing the same ads over and over, 62 per cent were upset that there were so many ads, and nearly half thought the ads went on too long. In every category, respondents were angrier about mobile than tablet or desktop ads.
But even the makers of ad-blockers don’t think software that keeps out all advertising is a good solution. Marco Arment, the programmer behind Apple’s No1 ad blocker, Peace, pulled his product after a few days at the top of the charts.
“Ad-blockers come with an important asterisk: while they do benefit a ton of people in major ways, they also hurt some, including many who don’t deserve the hit,” Arment wrote.
Some industry observers, including Google’s Sridhar Ramaswamy, have said the ad industry won’t ultimately suffer but publishers – especially small ones – will.
“All the journalism that we love is supported pretty heavily by advertising,” Ramaswamy said at an Advertising Week session. “The real problem is that ad blockers throw out the baby with the bathwater. They remove the diversity that has enriched all of our lives.”
And ultimately, consumers and advertisers may have a common enemy in “badvertising”: some of it is virus-ridden and dangerous to both the consumer and the client.
One of Cunningham’s plans to thwart blockers was to increase security for advertisers so that lists of ad networks could be made harder for ad blockers to
download; that in turn could help cut back on rampant “click fraud”, in which viruses tell advertisers who pay by the click that their ads have been used many more times than they actually have.
That still doesn’t solve the PR problem. Nobody has a favourite web ad and, more critically, digital advertising reliant on viewer profiles has helped to lead the “big data” boom, resulting in so much valuable information housed in so many places that breaches like the recent, disastrous hack of data giant Experian have become commonplace.
Apple’s public objection – echoed by many consumers – to the big-data-fuelled ad model is, in CEO Tim Cook’s words, that “you’re not the customer. You’re the product”.
Google doesn’t break out details on its mobile advertising dollars, but its falling cost-per-click (down seven per cent year-over-year last quarter and seven per cent the quarter before) seems to indicate a less robust mobile market share and an overreliance on desktop ads (which are losing market share as mobile balloons), and thus a weakness for Apple to exploit.
“Apple is one of our largest partners,” said Ramaswamy. “We’ve had a collaborative
The moral case for using ad-blockers?People laughed when Homer Simpson once said: “Quiet, the commercials are on! If we don’t watch these, it’s like we’re stealing TV!” But that’s currently the cry of the mobile advertisers. And on top of that they are essentially charging you to view their adverts. But those who have installed mobile ad blockers notice a difference.
The blocking app Purify claims a 21 per cent battery life increase from using their app when web browsing and page-loads that are four times faster. And because the adverts have to be loaded up, it doesn’t just slow browsing, it costs. If you’re paying for mobile bandwidth then essentially you are paying to see adverts.
When blockers like Purify and Crystal can reduce user’s web data consumption on cellular by an average of 50 per cent, as well as blocking user tracking, improving speed and extending battery life, is it any wonder people use them?
relationship, but we’ve also had difficulty and competition.”
The Google executive said he thought the solution was “a conversation with consumers” about advertising and that privacy concerns were overblown.
“People are actually OK that some of their information is used to serve ads,” he said.
Ultimately, Kamaras said: “We have to reconcile the fact that user experience is paramount but also that advertising is critical in financing the ecosystem.”
Lawsuits won’t work, he said, nor will ad-blockers-blockers – “Then you’ll get ad-blockers-blockers-blockers.”
Instead, Kamaras said, advertisers are going to have to make their case to consumers.
“What I see as the best path,” he said, “is a digital entente between users and companies that is based on quality standards and codes of conduct, but also on an understanding that all these services can only be financed, today at least, by advertising.”
“The real problem is that ad blockers throw out the baby with the bathwater. They remove the diversity that has enriched all of our lives”
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Portfolio.
December
issue 120upfront / tecHnoLoGY
4343
P r i m aC i n e m a
Home cinema worthy of the name… if you can afford it
Prima cinematechnology | global
Let’s start with the bad news. There is an informal club called the Bel Air Circuit and you’re
probably not a member, nor will you ever be invited to join.
Founded decades ago by movie moguls including Louis B Mayer and Daryl Zanuck, it’s an exclusive movie distribution service provided by the big Hollywood studios to allow members – mostly industry types – to watch first-run films in the privacy of their own homes.
It’s believed that somewhere between 200 and 500 people are on the list. It includes people you’d expect to be there, like Rupert Murdoch, Sumner Redstone (Viacom), Harvey Weinstein (Weinstein Co), Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, James Cameron,
Martin Scorsese, John Lasseter (Pixar and Disney Animation chief creative officer) and so on. But one source claims that the group’s members also include less likely cinephiles such as Dr Dre, Prince Saud Al Faisal, Barry Manilow and Phil Rosenthal, creator of Everybody Loves Raymond.
In short, it’s how the highly-connected A-listers and Hollywood money men watch their newly-released films – at home on their spectacular home cinema systems on the same day the public is in crowded rooms with idiots talking and using their phones. But the industry is opening up, and non-industry people – albeit ones with money – can now watch films at home on the same day they are released in cinemas. The service
is called PRIMA Cinema and for those who can afford it, it’s perhaps the ultimate in home cinema bragging rights. But there are a few conditions…
First off, as you’d imagine, it’s expensive. The hardware you need will cost you $35,000 and PRIMA won’t even consider taking your money unless your home cinema’s up to standard.
“PRIMA is for private, non-commercial viewing in a residence,” Shawn Yeager, CEO of PRIMA, tells us. “We do not tell the client what equipment to purchase, but only that it meet minimum standards. There has to be an audio system capable of decoding 7.1 LPCM audio. There is a minimum resolution of 1080p on the display device and there can be no
$35,000 is how much the hardware to set up your
PRIMA will cost before
you even start watching films
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December
issue 120 upfront / tecHnoLoGY
44
more than 25 seats in the theatre. There also must be a static WAN IP address at the home.”
All good so far? If you meet those requirements, the hardware you get is a rack-mountable, four-terabyte hard drive with fingerprint scanner. Films will automatically download to this as soon as they’re available, so if you want to watch one it will be sitting there in its entirety ensuring you never have buffering issues.
If you decide to watch a film, it will cost you a further $500. Per film. Unless it’s a 3D film then it’s $600. And if you decide to watch the same film again tomorrow you’ll be charged another $500.
You can’t just press play, however. First you need to pass a fingerprint recognition scan to ensure that it really is you. If nothing else, it’s probably a good way of stopping your seven-year-
old daughter watching Frozen six times in a row and racking up a huge bill. But it’s also for security that’s required by the film studios: after all, if they’ve spent $150 million making a film they’ll want to protect their product.
It also features accelerometer technology that will render the system inoperable if it is moved, so there’s no taking the system to your friend’s house.
The studios don’t mind PRIMA, because the security measures to prevent piracy are good and the sort of people who would buy this are not the type who regularly go to cinemas. And just as the 3D films (with increased ticket prices) have resulted in bigger box office takings worldwide, so charging $500 per film will boost income, although Yeager tells us that how studios account for PRIMA varies from studio to studio.
PRIMA won’t tell us how many customers they currently have but the aim when they launched was to be in 250,000 homes within five years. What they did tell us was that on average, PRIMA clients view two-to-three films per month.
They currently have distribution agreements with 12 major studios including Universal (one of their financial backers), but are continually in talks with others.
Currently the service is only available in North America, but this is about to change. “We are going to be exhibiting at Integrated Systems Europe this coming February and would like to be in the EMEA region later in the year,” Yeager says, although he adds that cinema censorship in the Middle East is still being worked out with regards to how the laws apply in this situation.
The type of person this is aimed at would probably think nothing of spending $500 to watch a film. They’re spend that on a bottle of wine without blinking and being able to have a cinematic experience at home – minus the other people who ruin going to the cinema these days – is worth it.
According to a PWC study, DVD sales saw a 28 per cent drop last year. Meanwhile, digital streaming and (legal) downloads are increasing with PWC projecting that by 2018, digital video will be earning distributors more profits than theatrical box office will.
PRIMA is ahead of the curve, albeit at a premium price, but this is the direction the industry is going.
Day-and-date viewing of first-run films at home has been seen as inevitable as the time lapse between cinema release and VHS/DVD release has increasingly shortened. But until now, big blockbusters were only in cinemas.
You need serious money, but you no longer need to be mates with Harvey Weinstein and the Bel Air Circuit to see the big films at home on its day of release.
Finger print recognition scan“The biometric security for authorisation ties an instance of playback directly to a person who must have been physically present at time,” Yeager explains. “Only authorised clients are allowed to create fingerprint templates, which are registered when they sign our user agreement. When a customer purchases a film, the biometric identity is invisibly watermarked into every frame of the film on a session basis. This means that if someone were to handycam the film, we know who was responsible, when they did it, where they did it, and what device they did it from, making them accountable in a provable way.”
accelerometer technologyRenders the system inoperable if it is moved
25 Maxixmum
number of seats you are
alowed in your home
cinema seats in the
theater
$500 Per film.
Unless it’s a 3D film then
it’s $600
PF_122015.P43-44_Upfront_PrimaCinema.indd 44 11/22/15 5:39 PM
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The Australian Argyle Pink Diamond.World’s Rarest Jewel.
Portfolio.
december
issue 120
46
upfront / propertY
Penthouse in BatterseaThe top penhouse at the Battersea Power Station redevelopment in London
Battersea Power Station is at the cornerstone of the $12 billion Nine Elms regeneration site in central London.
Property at the project was always going to see high demand and it was reported that 75 per cent of residences were sold off-plan in the first week, making it the fastest selling development on record in London. There are three-bed penthouses (each $10.6 million) but this five-bed penthouse is the prime residence.
Located in the Circus West area, it comes with walnut, stained oak and Italian marble floors, a Linley-designed kitchen and bathroom with Samuel Heath, Kaldewei and Miele products. There’s a roof terrace with ‘glass-houses’ providing entertaining space against the backdrop of the London skyline and views of Chelsea, the River Thames, Battersea Park and the Power Station building itself. And despite the hefty price, the way things are going with London property prices, it would be a big shock if it turned out to be anything other an investment that increases in value.
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The Half-Earth Idea
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The Half-Earth Idea
Research scientist William Lynn on the proposal to set aside half the planet for ‘rewilding’. Could it work?
A much-anticipated book in conserva-tion and natural science circles is EO Wilson’s Half-
Earth: Our Planet’s Fight For Life, which is due early next year. It builds on his proposal to set aside half the Earth for the preservation of biodiversity.
The famous biologist and natu-ralist would do this by establishing huge biodiversity parks to protect, restore and connect habitats at a continental scale. Local people would be integrated into these parks as environmental educators, managers and rangers – a model drawn from existing large-scale conservation projects such as Area de Conservación Guanacaste in northwestern Costa Rica.
The backdrop for this discussion is that we are in the sixth great-extinction event in Earth’s history. More species are being lost today than at any time since the end of the dinosaurs. There is no mystery as to why this is happening: it is a direct result of human depreda-tions, habitat destruction, overpop-ulation, resource depletion, urban sprawl and climate change.
Wilson is one of the world’s pre-mier natural scientists – an expert on ants, the father of island bioge-ography, apostle of the notion that humans share a bond with other species (biophilia) and a herald about the danger posed by extinc-
tion. On these and other matters he is also an eloquent writer, hav-ing written numerous books on biodiversity, science and soci-ety. So when Wilson started to talk about half-Earth several years ago, people started to listen.
As a scholar of ethics and public policy with an interest in animals and the environment, I have been following the discussion of half-Earth for some time. I like the idea and think it is feasible. Yet it suffers from a major blind spot: a human-centric view on the value of life. Wilson’s entry into this debate, and his seeming evolution on matters of ethics, is an invitation to explore how people ought to live with each other, other animals and the natural world, particularly if vast tracts are set aside for wildlife.
I heard Wilson speak for the first time in Washington, DC, in the early 2000s. At that talk, Wilson was resigned to the inevitable loss of much of the world’s biodiversity. So he advocated a global biodiver-sity survey that would sample and store the world’s biotic heritage. In this way, we might still benefit from biodiversity’s genetic information in terms of biomedical research, and perhaps, someday, revive an extinct species or two.
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Not a bad idea in and of itself. Still, it was a drearily fatalistic speech, and one entirely devoid of any sense of moral responsibility to the world of non-human animals and nature.
What is striking about Wilson’s argument for half-Earth is not the apparent about-face from catalogu-ing biodiversity to restoring it. It is the moral dimension he attaches to it. In several interviews, he references the need for humanity to develop an ethic that cares about planetary life, and does not place the wants and needs of a single species (Homo sapiens) above the well-being of all other species.
T o my ear, this sounds great, but I am not exactly sure how far it goes. In the past, Wilson’s discussions
of conservation ethics appear to me clearly anthropocentric. They espouse the notion that we are exceptional creatures at the apex of evolution, the sole species that has intrinsic value in and of our-selves, and thus we are to be privi-leged above all other species.
In this view, we care about nature and biodiversity only because we care about ourselves. Nature is use-ful for us in the sense of resources and ecological services, but it has no value in and of itself. In eth-
ics talk, people have intrinsic value while nature’s only value is what it can do for people – extrinsic value.
For example, in his 1993 book The Biophilia Hypothesis, Wilson argues for “the necessity of a robust and richly textured anthro-pocentric ethics apart from the issues of rights [for other animals or ecosystems] – one based on the hereditary needs of our own species. In addition to the well-documented utilitarian potential of wild species, the diversity of life has immense aesthetic and spir-itual value”.
The passage indicates Wilson’s long-held view that biodiversity is important because of what it does for humanity, including the resources, beauty and spirituality people find in nature. It sidesteps questions of whether animals and the rest of nature have intrinsic value apart from human use.
His evolving position, as reflected in the half-Earth proposal, seems much more in tune with what ethi-cist call non-anthropocentrism – that humanity is simply one marvel-lous but no more special outcome of evolution; that other beings, species and/or ecosystems also have intrinsic value; and that there is no reason to automatically privilege us over the rest of life.
Consider this recent statement by Wilson:
“What kind of a species are we that we treat the rest of life so cheaply? There are those who think that’s the destiny of Earth: we arrived, we’re humanising the Earth, and it will be the destiny of Earth for us to wipe humans out and most of the rest of biodiversity. But I think the great majority of thoughtful people consider that a morally wrong position to take, and a very dangerous one.”
The non-anthropocentric view does not deny that biodiversity and nature provide material, aesthetic and spiritual “resources”. Rather, it holds there is something more – that the community of life has
Have we started the sixth mass extinction?The International Union For Conservation Of Nature evaluated 52,205 species for their ability to survive. Their findings, below, are stark – especially for mam-mals, birds and amphibians, where high percentages of known species were evaluated.
BirdsOf the 99% known species evaluated...
13% are threatened
Of the 85% known species evaluated... Mammals
25% are threatened
Of the 70% known species evaluated...Amphibians
41% are threatened
Biologist, naturalist and writer EO Wilson in his Harvard office.
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value independent of the resourc-es it provides humanity. Non-anthropocentric ethics requires, therefore, a more caring approach to people’s impact on the planet. Whether Wilson is really leaving anthropocentrism behind, time will tell. But for my part, I at least welcome his opening up possibili-ties to discuss less prejudicial views of animals and the rest of nature.
It is interesting to note that half-Earth is not a new idea. In North America, the half-Earth concept first arose in the 1990s as a discus-sion about wilderness in the deep ecology movement. Various non-profits that arose out of that move-ment continued to develop the idea, in particular the Wildlands Network, the Rewilding Institute and the Wild Foundation.
These organisations use a mix of conservation science, educa-tion and public policy initiatives to promote protecting and restoring continental-scale habitats and cor-ridors, all with an eye to preserving the native flora and fauna of North America. One example is the ongo-ing work to connect the Yellowstone to Yukon ecosystems along the spine of the Rocky Mountains.
When I was a graduate student, the term half-Earth had not yet been used, but the idea was in the air. My classmates and I referred to it as the “50 per cent solution”. We chose this term because of the work of Reed Noss and Allen Cooperrider’s 1994 book, Savings Nature’s Legacy. Among other things, the book documents that, depending on the species and eco-systems in question, approximately 30 to 70 per cent of the origi-nal habitats of the Earth would be necessary to sustain our planet’s biodiversity. So splitting the differ-ence, we discussed the 50 per cent solution to describe this need.
This leads directly into my third point. The engagement of Wilson and others with the idea of half-Earth and rewilding presupposes, but does not fully articulate, the
need for an urban vision, one where cities are ecological, sustainable and resilient. Indeed, Wilson has yet to spell out what we do with the peo-ple and infrastructure that are not devoted to maintaining and teach-ing about his proposed biodiversity parks. This is not a criticism, but an urgent question for ongoing and creative thinking.
Humans are urbanising like never before. Today, the majority of peo-ple live in cities, and by the end of the 21st century, over 90 per cent of us will live in a metropolitan area. If we are to meet the compelling needs of human beings, we have to
By the end of the 21st century, over 90 per cent of us will live in a metropolitan area
remake cities into sustainable and resilient “humanitats” that produce a good life.
Such a good life is not to be measured in simple gross domestic product or consumption, but rath-er in well-being – freedom, true equality, housing, health, educa-tion, recreation, meaningful work, community, sustainable energy, urban farming, green infrastruc-ture, open space in the form of parks and refuges, contact with companion and wild animals, and a culture that values and respects the natural world.
To do all this in the context of sav-ing half the Earth for its own sake is a tall order. Yet it is a challenge that we are up to if we have the will and ethical vision to value and coexist in a more-than-human world.
The first five mass extinctions
1 End-Ordovician, 443 million years ago.
The first mass extinction event as 60 per cent of all terrestrial and marine life was killed.
2 Late Devo-nian, 360 million years ago.
Environment turned hostile and the world plunged into the second mass extinction event.
3 Permian-Triassic mass extinction, 250 million years ago.
Around 80–95 per cent of all marine species went extinct.
4 Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction, 200 million years ago.
Half of all marine invertebrates and 80 per cent of all land quadrupeds extinct.
5 Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction, 65 million years ago.
The end of the dinosaurs. Virtually none of the large land animals survived.
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Hong Kong neon
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H O N G K O N G
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IN DECLINE SINCE THE 1990S,
THE SIGN-MAKER’S JOBIS FADING AWAY
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For nearly four decades, a giant neon cow suspended above a steakhouse in Hong Kong’s Western District was a neighbour-hood landmark. It was where, if you were giving directions, you told someone to get
off the bus or to take the next left. A glowing bovine bea-con about three metres long and two-and-a-half metres tall, cantilevered over the street, you couldn’t miss it.
It was supposed to be an Angus, said Iry Yip, the man-ager of Sammy’s Kitchen. The sign was designed in 1978 by her father, Sammy Yip, the restaurant’s founder, who at 84 still sits behind the cash register.
But the sign-maker decided that longer legs would look better, hence the world’s only known long-legged, bluish-white Angus, with ‘Sammy’s Kitchen Ltd.’ embla-zoned in green in English and in red in Chinese.
But in 2011, the city’s Buildings Department decided the sign was unsafe and ordered it removed. After an unsuccessful campaign to save it, the sign came down in August.“It feels like something is missing,” Iry Yip said. “The street has become so empty.”
Since the mid-20th century, endless towers of flashing, throbbing neon have defined Hong Kong’s landscape as
much as Victoria Harbor and the skyline of dense-ly packed high-rises.
“When you think of Hong Kong and visual culture, one of the first things that comes to the fore is neon signs,” said Aric Chen, the design and architecture curator of M+, a museum that is collecting images of Hong Kong’s neon signs online and some of the signs themselves as they
are retired, including the neon cow.The Hong Kong immortalised in the films of Wong
Kar-wai, the director of In The Mood For Love and Chungking Express, is awash in neon, Chen said.“If his representations of Hong Kong in the popular imagina-tions are seminal, which I think they are, you can’t sepa-rate that image from the neon ambient glow,” he said.
But the neon is dimming. Neon has declined since the 1990s, sign-makers and experts say, as building regulations have tightened and new signs are made of LEDs, which lack neon’s warmth but are brighter and less expensive to maintain.
The Hong Kong Buildings Department has no record of how many neon signs remain in the city or how many existed at their peak, but the department acknowledges that it removes hundreds of signs a year for failure to meet code. Signs are removed for safety and structural reasons, or when they are abandoned or unauthorised.
In a workshop with grey, peeling walls, Lau Wan, one of the last of Hong Kong’s neon sign-makers, heated a glass tube on a naked flame, effortlessly bending it into the Chinese character for Polytechnic University.
Lau, who has been making neon signs by hand since 1957, helped turn Hong Kong nights into blazing, gar-ish days. He created one of the city’s largest and most famous signs, the red-and-white Panasonic billboard that covered an entire building on Nathan Road from 1973 to 1995.
According to Guinness World Records, another Hong Kong sign, a 64x16 metre ad for Marlboro cigarettes, was the world’s largest in the 1980s. It was eclipsed here in 1999 by a giant dragon sign, about 91x46 metres, Leila Wang, a Guinness spokeswoman, said.
Now, at 75, Lau said he feared his craft was dying. “I want it preserved, but I probably won’t be able to see it.”
His colleague, Wu Chi-kai, 47, is the second-youngest of the nearly dozen neon sign-makers left in the city, and no apprentices are being trained for the next generation.
Top: Traditional neon signs mix with newer ones made with LEDs in the Yau Ma Tei area
Above: A sign-maker crafting signboards at a factory in Kwai Chung
Neon signs are so familiar to people in Hong Kong that it often takes a foreign eye to see the beauty
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“Just like every other industry, if the business is good, there must be new blood,” Wu said. “If no one is joining the industry, the reason is the lack of business.”
Neon was a western import that quickly gained its own vocabulary in China, first in Shanghai, then Hong Kong, combining the ancient Chinese art of calligraphy with modern advertising.
What the medium itself represents has changed over time. When Hong Kong first fell for neon in the 1920s, it was an indicator of urban sophistication and prosperity.
By the 1960s and ’70s, when some neighbourhoods here were as chockablock with neon as Times Square, it was considered gaudy, if not headache-inducing. By the 1980s, neon signs were often associated with urban decay and red-light districts.
Today, as they grow scarcer, they have become retro-chic artifacts and objects of nostalgia. Old signs are purchased as folk art by collectors and museums, while modern artists incorporate neon in their work.
Chen of M+ says the signs should remain in their natural habitat, suspended above the busy streets. But his museum has acquired signs to save them from the junk
Above: A sign in the Central District
Left: A neon cow suspended above a steakhouse in the Western District was a neighbourhood landmark until it was taken down
heap. M+, which for now has no space of its own, hopes to display them when its building is finished in 2019.
Plenty of handmade neon remains in the city for those who notice it. Chen says most residents do not. “Neon signs are so familiar to people in Hong Kong that, of course, they almost don’t need to think about it,” he said. It often takes a foreign eye to see the beauty.
The sign-makers, however, downplay any artistic pre-tension. As their work began to blanket the city, art was not the point. “The only require-ment at that time was to be able to immediately catch someone’s attention among a street full of signs,” Wu said. “That was the standard.”
Most of the work today, Wu said, consists of indoor deco-rative signs for boutiques, bars and restaurants.
These pieces may be lovely, and may even be art, but they are obscure. The neon signs Wu and Lau once made were seen by a city of seven million.
“When foreigners came to Hong Kong, looking at the scenery of the narrow streets, and were stunned by the neon signs, it made us sign-makers quite proud,” Lau said. “We worked so hard for Hong Kong and were actu-ally making contributions.”
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How Jaws created the blockbuster and changed the business of cinema Words: Mark Kermode
the shark that ate hollywood
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First things first: Jaws is not about a shark. It may have a shark in it – and indeed all over the poster, the soundtrack album, the paperback jacket and so on. It may have scared a generation of cinemagoers out of
the water for fear of being bitten in half by the “teeth of the sea”. But the underlying story of Jaws is more complex than the simple terror of being eaten by a very big fish. As a novel, it reads like a morality tale about the dangers of extramarital sex and the inability of a weak father to control his family and his community. As a film, it has been variously interpreted as everything from a depiction of masculinity in crisis to a post-Watergate paranoid parable about corrupt authority figures. But as a cultural phenomenon, the real story of Jaws is how a B-movie-style creature-feature became a genre-defining blockbuster that changed the face of modern cinema. In the wake of the epochal open-ing of Jaws 40 years ago, the film industry would find itself on the brink of a brave new world wherein saturation marketing and mall-rat teen audiences were the keys to untold riches. To this day, many consider the template of contem-porary blockbuster releases to have been laid down in the summer of 1975 by a movie that redefined the parameters of a “hit” – artistically, demographically, financially.
According to David Brown, one of the film’s producers: “Almost eve-ryone remembers when they first saw Jaws. They say, I remember the theatre I was in, I remember what I did when I went home – I wouldn’t even draw the bathwater.” I was no exception. I first saw the movie at the ABC Turnpike Lane in north London at the age of 12. It was a
Sunday afternoon and I’d had to catch two separate buses to get to the cinema. I sat on the right-hand side of the packed auditorium and I remember very clearly find-ing the opening sequence so alarming that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get through the rest of the film. As I told director Steven Spielberg several decades later, watching poor Susan Backlinie being dragged violently back and forth by an unseen underwater assailant, screaming blue murder, I genuinely feared that I would lose control of my bodily functions (“I like that!” laughed the director).
The lenient A certificate had meant that I’d been able to see the movie on my own, without an accom-panying parent or guardian, merely the warning that “the film may be unsuitable for young children”. But the entire cinema seemed utterly traumatised by that unforgettable opening sequence, and in the wake of this ruthlessly efficient curtain-raiser (you see nothing, but fear everything), two people hurried to the exit. As they left, I remember whispering to myself in a state of sublime terror: “I am never going swimming again, I am never going swimming again…”
This, of course, had been the reaction of millions of cinemagoers in the US, where Jaws had become a sum-mer movie sensation. In his influential essay, The New Hollywood, film historian Thomas Schatz notes that Jaws “recalibrated the profit potential of the Hollywood hit and redefined its status as a marketable commod-ity and cultural phenomenon as well”. Significantly, it achieved this success at a time when “most calculated hits were released during the Christmas holidays”. Not
Director Steven Spielberg and
camera crew on the set in 1975 in
Martha’s Vineyard Massachusetts.s
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so Jaws, which according to David Brown was “deliberately delayed until people were in the water off the summer beach resorts”. Indeed, one of the film’s most memorable tag-lines was: “See it before you go swimming!” Yet it wasn’t just the resorts where Jaws showed its box-office teeth.
Despite the fact that the summer months had traditionally been slow for cinemas (why go to the movies when the sun is shining?), Spielberg’s brilliantly constructed shocker struck a nerve with young audiences whose natural environment was not the beach but the shopping mall. Between 1965 and 1970, the number of malls in America had grown from 1,500 to 12,500 and Jaws rode high on the growing wave of multiplex cinemas that these urban spaces increasingly housed. Along with confirming “the viability of the summer hit, indicating an adjustment in sea-sonal release tactics”, Schatz also argues that Jaws struck a chord with a new generation of moviegoers who had “time and spending money and a penchant for wandering subur-ban shopping malls and for repeated viewings of their favourite films”. It didn’t hurt that these malls were air-conditioned, with the multiplex cinemas they increasingly housed providing a cool alternative to the sweltering summer heat.
In the wake of Jaws’ extraordinary success, film-makers and studios started to see the
summer months not as dog days but as prime time, something that had previously only been true for the declining drive-in market. “The summer blockbuster was born on 20 June 1975, when Jaws opened wide,” wrote the Financial Times’ Nigel Andrews, adding: “In the years after Jaws, the entire release calendar changed.”
This change was apparently confirmed two years later by the May 1977 opening of George Lucas’ Star Wars, with its sequels The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi setting new benchmarks for seasonal franchise profitability. In the process, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas became two of the most influential people in Hollywood, the men who, according to popu-lar folklore, had invented the “summer blockbuster”.
Jaws opened across North America on 464 screens amid an unprecedented publicity blitz: $2.5 million was spent on promotion, a sub-stantial chunk of which went on TV advertis-ing, still a novelty at that time. Promotional tie-ins, including Jaws-themed ice-creams, were everywhere. I remember being on holi-day in the Isle Of Man long before the film’s UK opening (it didn’t arrive in the UK until December) and buying the novel, the T-shirt and a garish Jaws pendant, all on the strength of the insane levels of news coverage that the film’s US opening provoked. “Lifeguards were falling asleep at their stations,” remembered the film’s other producer, Richard Zanuck, “because nobody was going in the water; they were on the beach reading their book.” In the first 38 days of its release, Jaws sold 25 million tickets; its rentals in 1975 were a record-breaking $102.5 million. When adjusted for inflation, the film’s total worldwide box office is now estimated at close to $2 billion.
Such staggering success proved game-changing, establishing the financial merit of the “front-loading” strategy, which used saturation marketing to turn a movie into an event. According to Carl Gottlieb, who shares Jaws’ screenwriting credit with Peter Benchley: “That notion of selling a picture as an event, as a phenomenon, as a destination, was born with that release.”
Today, received wisdom has it that Jaws essentially redefined the economic
First edition cover
of Peter Benchley’s
novel in 1974.
It would go on to sell
more than 20 million
copies worldwide
“JAWS WAS DELIBERATELY DELAYED UNTIL PEOPLE WERE IN THE WATER AT SUMMER BEACH RESORTS”
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models of Hollywood. This change led to some stag-gering box-office bonanzas, but it has come at a price. “My husband keeps citing this as the movie that changed the way movies are made,” says Jaws actress (and wife of former Universal boss Sid Sheinberg) Lorraine Gary (Ellen Brody) in the 1997 BBC docu-mentary In The Teeth Of Jaws. “It got us to where we are today, which is, if it’s not a hundred-million-dollar movie, it doesn’t get the kind of support it needs from the studio. It was a good thing at the time [but] it’s an awful legacy to now have everyone used to an enor-mous hit-you-over-the-head television campaign that costs so much money.”
Whether or not Jaws really did change the film industry for ever is one of the subjects to be debat-ed at the Jaws 40th Anniversary Symposium at De Montfort University, Leicester, later in June. Here, prominent academics Peter Krämer and Sheldon Hall will go head to head on the still-heated question of whether Jaws was indeed the “first blockbuster” (Hall thinks not), while others debate subjects as esoteric as “masculinity and crisis in Jaws”, “Jaws and eco-feminism” and (most tantalisingly) “Jaws: the case of the archetypal American vil-lain as queer dissident attacking the heteronormative”.
Conference convener Ian Hunter says that the purpose of the event is to investigate the movie’s pro-gress from popcorn hit to cinema classic. “The thing about Jaws is that it’s open to so many inter-pretations,” says Hunter. “It can be about Watergate, or the bomb, or masculinity, or whatever. Some critics have claimed that it marks the point that Hollywood became more interested in archetypes than characters, but it was also the birth of a new kind of family film. I remember seeing it in Plymouth on Boxing Day 1975 and thinking that this was really a film for us, for the generation of The Towering Inferno and Earthquake, offering the kind of thrills that had previously been the domain of X-rated movies. For me,
it remains one of the truly great and lasting classics of American cinema, a perfect piece of movie-making.”
Jaws began life as a 1974 novel by Peter Benchley about a seaside resort named Amity that is terrorised by a great white shark. Police chief Martin Brody, played by Roy Scheider in the film, orders the beaches to be closed, but the mayor and local businessmen insist they stay open – with tragic results. Eventually, Brody is forced to take to the sea with professional shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw) and ichthyologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) to hunt down the shark and save the town.
Film rights were secured by Zanuck And Brown for $150,000 (plus $25,000 for a first draft of the script) before the novel had been published (the book sold 5.5 million copies before the movie opened). After potential director Dick Richards reportedly blew the assignment by repeatedly referring to the shark as “a whale”, the producers turned to rising director Steven Spielberg, who had just finished work on his feature debut, The Sugarland Express, and had made waves with the TV movie Duel, which pitted an emasculated Dennis Weaver against a giant, predatory truck.
“I always thought that Jaws was kind of like an aquatic version of Duel,” Spielberg told me in 2006, when I interviewed him for a BBC Culture Show special on the eve of his 60th birthday. “It was once again about a very large predator, you know, chasing innocent people and consuming them – irrationally. It was an eating machine. At the same time, I think it was also my own fear of the water. I’ve always been afraid of the water, I was never a very good swimmer. And that probably motivated me more than anything else to want to tell that story.”
Steven Spielberg sets
up a close look into the
monster’s jaws
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The production of Jaws proved problematic from the outset. First, there was the screenplay, which was still in flux when principal photography began in May 1974 (Richard Dreyfuss famously declared: “We started without a script, without a cast and without a shark”). Three drafts of the Jaws script were produced by Benchley before playwright Howard Sackler was brought in to do uncredited rewrites. But still things weren’t quite right and ten days before the shoot Carl Gottlieb was enlisted to work with Spielberg on some dialogue scenes, bringing more warmth and “levity” to the often unlikable characters. Gottlieb would continue to do rewrites throughout the production, often incor-porating material improvised in rehearsal by the cast, with added input from John Milius.
With a projected budget of between $3.5 million and $4 million, filming got under way at the Massachusetts resort of Martha’s Vineyard. Several residents were cast in minor roles, but a few feathers were ruffled by the prospect of a Hollywood produc-tion rolling into town. “Martha’s Vineyard is a very upmarket place,” says Nick Jones, producer/direc-tor of In The Teeth Of Jaws. “There is a somewhat snobby element of the super-rich, but the businesses rely on tourist dollars. So there was a little tension between those who wanted the film crew there and those who didn’t. For exam-ple, when the production needed to build Quint’s shack on a vacant har-bour lot, they were refused planning permission even though it was only a set. Finally, they were allowed to continue on the proviso that they put everything back exactly the way it was, including the trash.”
Nowadays, Martha’s Vineyard attracts tourists eager to visit the locations where Jaws was filmed. “It really is like walking around a movie set,” says Jones. “Before Jaws, there was a certain noto-riety from the Ted Kennedy Chappaquiddick scandal, but the movie eclipsed that. When we were making the documentary, we went with Lee Fierro [the Martha’s
Vineyard resident who plays Mrs Kintner] to the stretch of coast where the beach scenes for Jaws were filmed. It’s very exciting to see those vistas that have become so iconic. And we got taken out to the wreck of the Orca [Quint’s boat], which was just a shell sticking out of the edge of the water. It was bizarre; we stood in it and touched it – it was like touching a piece of the true cross.”
The Jaws shoot was originally scheduled for 55 days, but the production swiftly turned into a logisti-cal nightmare when the mechanical shark (three full-size, pneumatically animated models were constructed) consistently failed to play ball. Nicknamed Bruce after Spielberg’s lawyer, Bruce Ramer, the shark had been built by Bob Mattey, who had created the giant squid for 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. The models worked fine in the warehouse, but the minute they were dumped into seawater, they started to malfunction. Day after day went by without any usable footage being shot, storms and seasickness the film-makers’ only reward.
Recalling the ordeal of the shoot, Spielberg told me: “Jaws to me was a near-death experience – and a ‘career death’ experience. I went to a party on Martha’s Vineyard and a very well-known actress came over to me and said, ‘I just came back from LA and everybody says this picture is a complete stinker. It’s a total failure and nobody will ever hire you again because you’re profligate in your spending and you’re irresponsible. Everybody’s calling you irresponsible!’ I had
“We started Without a script, Without a cast and Without a shark”
HigHest-grossing films of 19751.JaWs $260,000,000
2.the rocky horror picture shoW $112,892,319
3.one FleW over the cuckoo’s nest $108,981,275
4.dog day aFternoon $50,000,000
5.shampoo $49,407,734
6. the return oF the pink panther $41,833,347
7. Funny lady $39,000,000
8. the apple dumpling gang $36,853,000
9. aloha, BoBBy and rose $35,000,000
10. the other side oF the mountain $34,673,100
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never heard the scuttle before, I didn’t ever hear the noise that was coming from Hollywood about me. So I was halfway through shooting the picture and this person tells me that my movie’s a disaster, and I am a disaster, and it’s over. And I really believed for the second half of the film that this was the last time I was ever going to shoot a film on 35mm.”
The lengthy shoot took its toll on the cast too. In particular, tensions emerged between Dreyfuss and Shaw to match those between their respective char-acters, ichthyologist Matt Hooper and crusty shark-hunter Quint. Partly modelled on local character Craig Kingsbury (who has a small role in the movie as the ill-fated Ben Gardner), Quint is a hard-drinking troublemaker who takes pleasure in taunting his city boy colleagues. It was a role into which Shaw threw himself with scene-stealing gusto, to the alarm of Dreyfuss. “There was a kind of sparring that went on between us,” Dreyfuss told the BBC in 1997. “It was both playful and – on my part – desperate. [Shaw] knew how to dish it out so you had to learn how to dish it back. He could be very vicious and his humour could be very cutting.” And, like his character, Shaw enjoyed a drink.
But while Shaw proved a somewhat volatile presence, his work on screen was note-perfect, which was more than could be said for the shark. By the time the film-makers had enough usable foot-age in the can, the production was more than 100 days over schedule, with the budget spiralling toward the $9 million mark, $3 million of which had been blown on what Spielberg derisively called “the special defects department”. Yet Bruce’s failure to function proved the making of the film. Unable to get the action shots he wanted, Spielberg was forced to take a more Hitchcockian approach, working with editor Verna Fields to conjure tense sequences in which what we don’t see is more important that what we do. Meanwhile, composer John Williams filled in the gaps where the shark should be with an ominous score that has become as synonymous with screen terror as Bernard Herrmann’s themes from Psycho. The result was magic, caus-
ing Spielberg to concede that “had the shark been working, perhaps the film would have made half the money and been half as scary”.
It wasn’t until Jaws was test-screened at the Medallion theatre, Dallas, in March 1975 that the filmmakers got the sense that they were on to a hit. “That was the first time I realised that the shark worked, the movie worked, everything about it worked,” Spielberg told me. “The audience came out of their seats. Popcorn was flying in front of the screen twice during the movie. And then I got greedy and thought, gee, could I make the popcorn fly out of their boxes three times? And that’s when I shot that scene in my editor Verna’s pool. I had this idea that maybe when Richard [Dreyfuss] goes underwater to dig the tooth out [of the sunken boat], what if Ben Gardner’s entire head comes out of the hole? And so I shot it in her pool with a prosthetic head and a plywood boat.”
The scene of Ben Gardner’s mutilated head floating into view did indeed prove a showstopper. It was just one of a number of intense, gory sequences that
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“had the shark been working, perhaps the film would have made half the money and been half as scary”
The most famous reaction shot in cinema. Test audiences
screamed so loud and long
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earned Jaws the reputation of being the most shocking movie ever to be awarded a family-friendly PG rating in the US. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, critic Charles Champlin complained that “the PG rating is grievously wrong and misleading… Jaws is too gruesome for chil-dren and likely to turn the stomach of the impression-able at any age”. (The Motion Picture Association Of America defended its lenient rating by pointing out that “nobody ever got mugged by a shark”.)
All of which brings us back to the thorny question of what Jaws is really about. For years, I have insisted that Jaws is a classic monster movie “morality tale” in which the watery fate of potential victims is sealed by their on-land behaviour. Stephen King memorably wrote: “Within the frame of most hor-ror tales we find a moral code so strong it would make a Puritan smile,” and that certainly seems to apply to Jaws. Key to this reading is the character of Hooper, who [plot spoilers ahead!] dies in the novel after having a sor-did fling with Brody’s wife, Ellen, but miraculously survives on screen, largely because the affair doesn’t happen in the film. Benchley, who makes a cameo appearance in the movie as a news reporter, remembers that the very first thing Zanuck told him when writing the script was to lose “that love story, the whole sex nonsense”. Spielberg agreed, confirming to me that “my first impulse was to get rid of the melodrama and the soap opera aspects of the novel, the whole love affair with the ichthyologist and the police chief ’s wife”. Instead, he wanted to “go right for that third act”, cutting to the chase with dramatic results. But once the affair had been removed, so too was the subtextual jus-tification for Hooper’s violent death.
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Although the official explanation for Hooper surviving the shark-cage attack was the unplanned wrecking of the empty cage by a real-life predator (and stuntman Carl Rizzo’s understandable reluc-tance to get back in the water), it seemed clear to me that without the infidelity subplot Hooper became a heroic character who had to live. When I interviewed Spielberg in 2006, he reluctantly conceded that there was some logic in this. But by the time I spoke to him again in 2012, for BBC Radio 5 Live, he wasn’t buying it.
“The shark doesn’t care whether you’re married or single,” he laughed. “It just wants to eat ya!” But what about Hooper’s survival? I insisted. Surely that only makes sense because you cut out the affair? “Well, I cut the soap opera because I wanted to go out and do a sea-hunt movie,” Spielberg demurred. “I wasn’t interested in doing Peyton Place.”
So, Jaws isn’t a film about infidelity? (Or mas-culinity? Or Watergate? Or whatever?)
“No,” replied Spielberg definitively. “It’s a film about a shark.”
Jaws is showing on this flight on ice Film Club Classics
On set with lead actor Roy Scheider and below with ‘Bruce’ the shark
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If one city in the world has embraced meat-free eating then it’s Los Angeles. And the result means some thriving businesses and outstanding places to eat. No, really.
New York has always attracted wealth and been the home of some of the most expensive real estate on earth. But right now there’s a luxury property boom in Manhattan in the form of skyscrapers with the likes of 432 Park Avenue setting new standards. So why is this happening now, who’s buying and what does it mean for the city?
Words: Matt Pomroy
At 10.30am on the brightest and crispest of New York autumn mornings, the view from the upper floors of 432 Park Avenue is so elevated and so clear you can actually detect the curvature of the Earth.
You can see as far as Connecticut to the north, way past Brooklyn and Queens to the Atlantic Ocean to the
east, while southern-facing windows overlook every part of Manhattan below 56th Street. And in the same way that tilt-shift photography makes everything look like a model, so being up here makes the city below look like miniatures of the huge buildings they actually are. The apartment takes up the entire floor, so it means you get 360° views out of huge 10-foot-by-10-foot windows. It is, however, a view that will cost you $95 million.
That’s a price as breathtaking as the view, although it could be argued it’s about the same as a Mark Rothko painting and cheaper than a Picasso. Unlike a Picasso the image changes with the seasons and unlike a Rothko you can actually tell what you’re looking at. And you’re not just looking at something, you’re looking down on it, and what you’re looking down on is one of the most iconic pieces of land on the planet – Manhattan. And right now it’s in the midst of a luxury property boom.
Amid this new scramble to build incredible high-end apartments, 432 Park Avenue is the big, grand statement, which is, as The New York Times pointed out, “redefining the aesthetics of affluence in a second Gilded Age”. It’s currently the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere – a lean, 426-metre tower on Park Avenue at 56th Street.
Designed by Uruguayan architect Rafael Viñoly, the tower has 106 luxury condominium complexes that either occupy a full floor or half-floor, 12-and-a-half-foot ceilings, private elevator landings, heated bathroom floors, swimming pool, screening room and gym. It even has its own top-class restaurant on-site just to cater to the residents, so if you don’t live here, you won’t ever be able to get a reservation.
Developed by CIM Group and Macklowe Properties, the man behind the building is legendary real estate developer Harry B Macklowe, one of the characters of New York real estate and a smart businessman. He owns around 12 million square feet of office space in the city and made his name in 2003 when he paid the Trump Organization and Conseco $1.4 billion for Manhattan’s General Motors Building. Today the building is worth more than double that. But 432 Park Avenue – on the site of the former Drake Hotel – is one of many luxury towers being built (albeit arguably the most high-end) and they’re not just tall homes, they’re monuments to modern wealth.
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At the last count by Forbes, there were 1,826 billionaires in the world, the highest number ever recorded
Perhaps significantly, according to one report, small studios to be used as staff quarters at 432 Park Avenue are going for between $1.53 million to $2.8 million. You can only buy one if you’re already a resident and just need somewhere for the nanny (or whoever) to be on hand. Other new properties One57 and 15 Central Park West also have them, and it’s actually these staff quarters that have seen the biggest increase in price since initial launch because they’re surprisingly hard to find. Most staff quarters in older buildings were converted into offices or extra bedrooms many years ago, but it seems that wealthy residents who have staff are on the rise once more.
So why is this high-end property boom happening in Manhattan right now?
Richard Wallgren, vice president of sales and marketing for Macklowe Properties, is the man charged with selling the apartments to the tiny sliver of the global population who can afford one. The fraction of the one per cent – those who almost certainly can buy without having to raise the cash by doing anything as prosaic as selling their current home.
“I think it’s just the general globalisation of the world economy and New York in particular has been the hub for wealth for many, many generations,” he says. “It was the hub for American wealth initially, the Fords from Detroit or the Carnigies, they all had major houses and apartments in New York as a symbol of their wealth and achievement. And that now gradually has expanded to other parts of the world, beginning with England, with France, with Italy, many of those scions of industry from all of those countries have had apartments in New York. And as further industrialisation and wealth creation has occurred in Russia, China, India and South America, it’s just a natural progression of wealth creation.”
At the last count by Forbes, there were 1,826 billionaires in the world, the highest number ever recorded. The 2015 list included 290 newcomers to the “three comma club” and no matter what you think about the distribution of wealth or the one per cent, it’s clear that properties like this are becoming increasingly viable.
Asked to describe the sort of person who buys the property Wallgren is in little doubt:
“Our buyer has New York, has East Hampton, has Aspen, or maybe it’s not Aspen, maybe it’s Vale, and then of course they never go to Kennedy Airport, they go to Teterboro Airport with their private planes. They also have a yacht, they have a helicopter and an apartment in London. They may be Indian by birth, but they live in London and they have a country home in the South of France and a city home in New York – because they probably have some type of business operations in the United States.”
The über-wealthy are now global citizens. Those who have bought include the Indian owner of a pharmaceutical company, a Greek in the shipping industry, a Turk who owns a major conglomerate; the ultra rich are from all over, but it seems that Manhattan and London are primarily feeling the effect of their wealth. Anywhere else is an addition, as Wallgren points out: “Miami’s become very popular, but most people of wealth who are considering Miami, probably already have New York. It’s more of a playground as opposed to a sort of grown up wealth. Anyway, the super wealthy citizen goes not to Miami, but to Palm Beach.”
The effect on Manhattan has been significant. In late 2003 the average price for a Midtown condo was around $666 per square foot, but by the start of 2015 it was $2,395. The increase of 260 per cent is partly down to demand, but also the arrival of new luxury apartments that are commanding big fees. And there’s no great shortage of consumers. The buyer of that $95 million
111 W57th Street77 stories [open 2016]
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53w5382 stories [open 2018]
Seven of the high-profile Luxury-towers currently being constructed or proposed in midtown Manhattan
Central Park Tower77 stories [open 2016]
520 Park Avenue54 stories [open 2017]
432 Park Avenue96 stories [open 2015]
One5790 stories [open now]
220 Central Park South66 stories [open 2016]
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misses the point because this is impossible to reproduce. It’s a tiny island that doesn’t have any problem of sprawl and it has its energy. Manhattan has a capacity to present itself as an urban object as opposed to a typical city.”
Viñoly points out that the top of the Empire State Building generates more money than the rest of the building combined, simply through people visiting there to enjoy the view from the top. This is another reason the new luxury properties are being built so tall – the value of the view. While the typical ratio for tall buildings (width to height) is 11:1 his building is nearer to 19:1 with each floor a perfect square stacked upon the next. The openings you see every eleven floors allow the wind to go through and diminishes the vortex effect, which is something that pushes and moves the building – like an airplane wing creating pressure on one side.
It was an economic decision as well as a design one. In order to have the views you have to be tall, and because there are tall buildings already there new developments need to grow even taller to create that prized view.
Deborah Berke is the design architect for 432 Park Avenue, responsible for interiors, whose design brief was simply “no set budget, make it look fantastic” but she adds “I honestly think that the two great luxuries in urban life – beyond obvious ones like the size and the location of your place – are natural light and distant views, because not everybody has them. In the city, natural light and distant views are hard to come by on dense streets.
“New York is a skyline-driven city – and if the image of Paris is the Eiffel Tower then the image of New York is the skyline – being part of that you have these two symbols of luxury, light and view, and then you’re a part of something that is signature New York.”
The recent new money, however, has not always found it easy to buy in New York. Like the social difference between East and West Egg in The Great Gatsby, so there’s still an element of that in Manhattan, with the Upper West Side being the home of old money while these modern luxury condominium towers represent the home of new money. There’s also an interesting reason for that: the co-op system.
Many other places around Central Park were created in the last Great Prosperity building boom of the late 1920s and like the famous Dakota building, have a co-op that
“Access to good education is now one of the drivers at the fore-front of a buyer’s decision”
penthouse at 432 Park Avenue is a Saudi Arabian retail magnate, Fawaz Al Hokair – his new penthouse cost just over $11,500 per square foot. The average asking price in the building is around $7,000 per square foot.
Strangely, one of the driving factors for sales has not been the world-class entertainment and dining, investment, nor that Manhattan is a global centre of business, but the fact that some of the best schools in the world are on America’s East Coast.
The Chinese lady in big expensive looking shades being given the tour just ahead of us is apparently looking to buy a place so she can be near her children who are starting at a nearby University. She’s not the only one.
“Access to good education is now one of the drivers at the forefront of a buyer’s decision,” Wallgren says. “I think as our school systems have continued to improve and expand, we’re seeing a situation, particularly from China and the Middle East, where boarding schools and the private schools – Andover, Exeter, Choate and so on - are very appealing to super high-end purchasers and families. If you look on a map it’s very handy to be in New York and have your children meet with you on holidays and weekends.”
It may seem strange that the battle to get children into top schools is driving a luxury property boom but Wallgren met with one buyer simply because he wanted to get his very young children acclimatised to the American way of life, with a view to eventually getting into one of Manhattan’s prestigious private schools and eventually gaining a college education in the country. “Some of them are coming to New York because their children are going to places like Harvard, and they want a family place to meet as the children go to school in America.”
The city has always drawn in the wealthy, but there’s been a recent shift. Speaking to Portfolio in his Manhattan office, architect Viñoly is more than aware of the explosion of density and growth as increasing numbers of people move to cities. “If you remember the ’70s, then everyone was leaving and going to the country, well, everybody is back!” he says.
“And this town is about verticality, it’s in the DNA of the city and New York has proven since its inception that it can absorb that in a brilliant way. People talk about the Manhattanization of other cities but whoever uses this term
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use it as their home holds some weight, but Portfolio is told that over half the buyers are based in America despite varying nationalities. In addition, Viñoly says, “There are not a lot of foreigners if you look at the roster of owners for 432, this is an important thing in terms of addressing what you may believe.” And the idea that it will never be more than a quarter full?
“There’ll be periods in January, February, March, or in July and August, where there’ll be few people here or they’re here for a few days on their way to somewhere, although we do have people that regard this as their primary residence,” Wallgren says. “There’ll be peak areas of the year where it will be fully occupied, particularly during holiday season or during the art auctions, which are extremely popular at Sotheby’s, or Christie’s, depending on what is up for sale – contemporary, classic, watch collections, these people are significant art collectors.
The ultra-rich are collecting art now more than ever, and the earlier comparison of the apartment’s price to a Rothko or Picasso is valid. For some owners, the apartment itself (even at these prices) will be overshadowed by the value of the art hanging on the wall and the large wall spaces were created intentionally by Berke for the placement of art. It could turn out that – unbeknown to individuals in each apartment or the outside world – this building as a whole will come to house a collection of fine art that surpasses that of many galleries.
And that’s the world these people live in. Some have pointed out that throughout history, the rich have always built big towers to get away from the poor, but this new extravagance is something different and happening in such quantity as to be notable of the times we are now living in. Although the architect himself points out that “at the end of the day everyone has to come down and walk on the street”, these towers are a whole new level of design, luxury and price. And it’s something that is only going to continue.
“Because the land costs are so expensive in Manhattan and continuing to appreciate,” Wallgren states, “that $95 million could very easily become $105 million before you know it. It’s not long ago when it was unusual for an apartment to trade for $25 million – these days, that’s just a yacht.”
He smiles and shrugs, “People are getting comfortable with these new numbers.”
have to approve you before you’re allowed to move in. The likes of Cher, Billy Joel, Madonna, Carly Simon, Alex Rodriguez and more recently Judd Apatow and Téa Leoni have all reportedly been rejected from the Dakota. And that’s just one building.
As Wallgren points out: “The structure of the co-op makes it difficult for many global residents to tolerate the process, because there’s complete transparency in terms of your rent condition, your taxes and so on. You’d need several letters of recommendation and those letters are key, in terms of the right schools, the right synagogues, the right churches, tennis clubs, golf clubs, all of those things. Obviously in a condominium it’s not necessary. You can’t shield the identity of your ownership in the co-op, whereas you can in a condominium and that’s enormously appealing to many international residents.”
Now that it’s easier for the ultra-wealthy to move into prime areas of the city, these buildings are proving hugely profitable and there’s a growing market for ultra luxury in a place with hugely limited land. It’s spreading, and the part of Harlem along Central Park North looking downtown has now become much more expensive, so there is a further gentrification of Manhattan, but the prime spots are increasingly sought after.
The neighbourhoods that people want to be in are tightly defined like Park Avenue, Fifth Avenue and the area ringing Central Park and there are very few development sites remaining and that’s one of the reasons why prices have continued to increase – the wealthy community wants to be in very prescribed neighbourhood. They want to “ring the park” and that means that land costs are extremely high and development sites are rare because they’re historic districts, or it’s already been developed by a co-op.
Plus, no-one wants to be a standalone at $50 million if everything else trades for $20 million. And that’s what’s significant about 432 Park Avenue – all apartments are expensive. They sustain each other. “One of the adages of real estate”, Wallgren says “is you don’t want to be the most expensive on the block and have everything else be considerably lower, because the lower will pull you down as opposed to being sustained.”
The prevailing idea that these towers will be bought up by foreigners who will never
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If one city in the world has embraced meat-free eating then it’s Los Angeles. And the result means some thriving businesses and outstanding places to eat. No, really.
Jean-Georges Vongerichten
The chef who led a fusion revolution is now aiming to start another one – sustainable,
GMO-free and all organic. Words: Matt Pomroy
T he back-to-nature, farm-to-table locavore movement is not one that can really claim to have a single founder, just an increasing num-
ber of chefs and restaurants that are moving that way. But when one of the best chefs in the business decides to go in that direction, we really should take note. Especially when he’s a chef who helped change the course of modern dining once already.
His current status as one of the most important modern chefs working today is not the result of reality TV deals, book sales or hype; it’s the result of starting at the bottom, working hard and absorbing as many influ-ences as possible. Here’s a recap of how he altered the way we dine…
Jean-Georges Vongerichten was originally headed towards a life of an engineer when, on his 16th birthday, his parents took him to Michelin-starred restaurant Auberge de l’ill
in Illhaeusern, France. “Eating there opened my eyes,” he says. “The ballet of the wait-ers, the incredible food, the silverware, the glasses, the whole show.” He waves his hand, in that very French of ways that says “incroy-able”. His father, however, thought 16-year-old Jean-George was less than incroyable.
“My father said to the owner, ‘My son is good for nothing, do you have any openings for someone to help in the kitchen and wash dishes or peel vegetables,’ and the owner said they were looking for an apprentice. It was luck, in a way, because we never usually went to restaurants like that… we usually ate at home.”
At the time studying as a trainee at a res-taurant – even a three Michelin-starred one – was not a glamorous thing to do. “Unlike today, being a chef was really one of the bot-tom of the jobs you could find, but I learned everything about cooking there as an appren-
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tice, they really took care of me and put me in the right direction.”
That direction eventually took him to Bangkok and it completely changed his life. It would latterly also have a huge influence on the course of modern dining.
Like a second apprenticeship it gave the young Frenchman a chance to learn a new cuisine, something that few were doing at that time. If ever there was an example of how taking an overseas job can benefit your career then Jean-Georges is it.
“In 1980 not too many chefs were travel-ling, they tended to stay in their region and learn there so to go to Thailand at the age of 23 it was unusual, especially Bangkok, as at the time there were only three top hotels there so the city was very wild and untapped. All the smells – coconut, lemongrass, ginger – I was captivated, it was a kind of culture shock to arrive there from France. I’d never experi-enced anything so exotic, not just the food, but also the religion and the people.
“I was cooking French food because I was a chef at the Normandy, a restaurant in the Orient Hotel, but I wanted to learn about Thai food. I had a team of 20 chefs and every
day I would say to them I want to eat Thai food for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and I want to learn every aspect of the local food.
“It really helped because six months later I was doing a blend of French and Thai food – things like seared foie gras with ginger and mango, lobster with a light curry sauce, mixing things up, you know? It changed my life completely. I went in a totally different direction.”
After Bangkok Jean-Georges went to Singapore, Hong Kong and Osaka in Japan, perfecting the blend of old and new world cooking. Then he took all he had learned to the most important global city for food.
“In 1986 I arrived in New York, but after five years in Asia the only place I was com-fortable was Chinatown,” he says. “New York was overwhelming. There were not too many new style restaurants and it was mostly clas-sical. Thirty years ago it was very unusual to find what I was doing.”
“Thirty years ago it was very unusual to find what I was doing”
Top: crab and squash blossom tempura, cherry tomatoes,
raspberry vinegarBottom: sea urchin, sourdough
bread, jalapeno and yuzu
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WORLD MAP OF HIS RESTAURANTS Jean-Georges’ empire – 30 restaurants worldwide
JEAN-GEORGES’ FAvOURITE RESTAURANT
My favourite meal is probably sushi because it’s such a pure form of eating fish. There are many places that are good, but my favourite is a place in Tokyo called Matsue Sushi.
The chef there is incredible. He’s a magician. But also I’ve noticed that the older the chef the better the sushi. Not only because of the experience but because of the body temperature. Whenever I go there and shake his hand on the way out his hand was cold. As you get older the temperature of your body gets colder. Young chefs make sweaty, warm sushi, older chefs don’t.
All the sushi masters are over 60 years old and the temperature of their bodies is absolutely perfect. If you’re going to a sushi restaurant, look for one with an old master. It sounds crazy but I’m telling you this is the truth.
USANEW YORk 11CHICAGO 1LAS vEGAS 2MIAMI 3
FRANCEPARIS 1
CHINASHANGHAI 3
JAPANTOkYO 1
MExICOLOS CAbOS 2
WEST INDIESST bARTS 2
bAHAMASPARADISE ISLAND 2
UAEDUbAI 2
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Fusion restaurants and mixing cuisines is pretty much the norm these days, from five-star to food-truck, but Jean-Georges was one of the pioneers. He was doing this back when his countrymen were still revel-ling in the butter-heavy world of Escoffier.
“I wanted to re-invent French food, but with the influence of the colonies, follow the path of the spice road and the silk route. My five years in Asia helped me develop my personal revolution. In New York there were lots of Italian, American and fast food restaurants, so blending up French and Asian, I was one of the first.
“It was really well received, I was sur-prised. Whenever people at that time started mixing things up it was called confusion and not fusion. But for me I was never in doubt, there was no way back.”
The New York Times said his food was a “radical imaging of the grand style of French dining” and the fusion style spread. Now, it sometimes feels like you have to try hard to find a restaurant that isn’t fusion.
“The world was getting smaller and smaller – especially the food world and more people are now mixing things,” he says, adding that the blend he is current-ly seeing a lot of is Peruvian-Japanese. What he pioneered is now the norm. But now he’s on-board with the new direction food it taking, Jean-Georges is more than just a convert to the locavore movement, he’s one of the biggest names leading the charge.
“There are always people inventing new ways of eating, but I feel that people now are going back to real thing,” he says and points to the ground. “Yes it’s a carrot, but people want to know where it grows, is it organic, how? What soil? Traceability is the future of food.”
His goal in all of his restaurants is to be GMO-free, only use organic products and to be as sustainable as he can. He admits that won’t be easy.
“Nobody wants to eat meat with hormones anymore, but it’s more difficult for things like oil for frying, flour, sugar, the common things you use every day – it’s hard to find them GMO-free.
“I’m really pushing my producer and grower in that direction. The role of a chef is to create food but also to help farmers be sustainable and look at the future of food as well in terms of health.
“I don’t want to eat something that’s no good for me and I don’t want my customer to eat anything that’s no good for them. It’s a response to what customers increasingly want but also as I’m growing older as a chef I want to live longer and live better. The reason there are so many food allergies these days is because there are so many things in food that are not natural.”
As is increasingly the way of things at top restaurants, Jean-Georges is also a big fan of the three-ingredients policy. Three ingre-dients, not including spices or seasoning, cooked exceptionally well rather than loading the plate and over-complicating the dish.
“People want incredible quality to their ingredients. They want a scallop to look like a scallop, taste like a scallop and not have it turned into a noodle or something else. People are becoming more purist, so as chefs it’s for us to add a touch or combination to make it personal.
“I’ve been cooking for 42 years and there’s always something to learn – my mind and palate are always open,” he says with a smile. “There’s always a new combination.”
“The reason there are so many food allergies these days is because there are many things in food that are not natural”
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The legendary Le Touessrok resort in Mauritius has just re-opened after an extensive six-month renovation by new operators Shangri-La. Now called the Shangri-La’s Le
Touessrok Resort & Spa, the refurb has seen the already famous resort elevated to Shangri-La’s exacting standards of hospitality and design.
Located on the east coast of Mauritius in the Trou d’Eau Douce Bay, the 200-room hotel is ideal for water sports and scuba diving from a luxury base, while just off the resort’s shore, there are two islands: Ilot Mangénie is open exclusively to Shangri-La guests and features a beach club with 3.5 kilometres of beach and on-island butlers. Guests also have access to the 18-hole, par 72 championship golf course designed by Bernhard Langer (considered a ‘Top 10 Course In The World’ by Golf World magazine) that is located a few minutes away by boat on Ile aux Cerfs.
The resort has, for more than 40 years, been one of the favourite destinations for those seeking winter sun. Now renovated, you can enjoy it in a bit more style.
Trou d’Eau Douce, Mauritius
Price From $800 per night
rooms 200
letouessrok- resort.com
MRU
Le TouessrokMauritius’ best resort reopens
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issue 120
Suites with direct access to the beach of Trou d’Eau Douce Bay
CHI, The Spa offers eight treatment rooms set within a secluded area
An 18-hole, par 72 championship golf course designed by Bernhard Langer
featuring...
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winter marketsIn the centre of the Stockholm Old Town area at Stortorget Square (close to the Royal Palace) is the winter market. The little red stalls sell Swedish Christmas sweets, smoked meats including reindeer and elk meat as well as other Christmas delicacies,
glögg (mulled wine), and a range of Swedish handicrafts and decorative arts. But really, this is just a lovely place to wrap up warm and wander about for an afternoon. The market opens daily from 11am until 6pm and will run until December 23.
additional info
...for cold weather in Stockholm, and beyond
Chance of snow: 42%
W
citylook
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1. Stone Island wind-resistant quilted jacket $1,085 2. The Kooples watch $405 3. Beams wool jumper with suede elbow patches $180 4. Canada Goose fur-trimmexd aviator hat $225 5. Fjallraven messenger bag $182 6. Chuck Taylor All Star Tekoa $100
ac
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Hackett, Mayfair lamb leather gloves $215
Bally, leather wash bag $405
Tom Ford Black Orchid $100Easy Money by Jens Lapidus $10
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More than a million people will be making their way into the city for New Year, so book a good harbour-view restaurant upfront
Quay Innovative and modern Australian menu by award-winning chef Peter Gilmore in a light and airy room with Opera House views. Regarded as one of the best restaurants in the country.quay.com.au
The Dining RoomWithin the Park Hyatt hotel, this restaurant has spectacular harbour views across to the Opera House and contemporary French cuisine with a six-course tasting menu from chef Franck Detrait. sydney.park.hyatt.com
aRiaMatt Moran has a hugely deserved reputation as one of the best chefs in the city and his ethos of seasonal ingredients works perfectly with his modern Australian food. ariarestaurant.com
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additional info
...for New Year in Sydney, and beyond
citylook
Sunshine: 9hrs
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PORTFOLIO.
ISSUE 120
DECEMBER
4
1. Elisabetta Franchi $680 2. Alexander McQueen bag $5,800 3. Versace red suede pointed sandals $1,174 4. Graff Disco Butterfly watch $131,000 5. Emillio Pucci belt $450 6. Manis Arora studded top $865
ACCESSORIES
Geurlain Rouge G Merveilleux Rose
$55
Aesop Tacit fragrance$110
Lanvin Minaudières evening clutch in Art Deco-inspired
gold detail$5,750
1CITYLOOK
6
Magerit ‘Zen’ diamond and ruby earrings
$17,700
5
2
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From Abu Dhabi
Gate No. 5
J a f z a N o r t h
J e b e l A l i P o r t
J a f z a S o u t hExit 22Exit 20
Exit 13
Exit 18Gate No. 4
Shk. Zayed Rd (E11)From Dubai
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SET UP YOUR COMPANY IN Jafza Oneand connect with over 7,000 leading companies.
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DECEMBER
ISSUE 120LIVING / ADVICE
VISIT Kathmandu. I have been there perhaps as many as 15
times in the last 30 years, and every time I am as surprised as a child, despite the poverty and the earthquake.
ARTIST You really should find
some time to see Vincent Van Gogh’s work up close,
for its unique blue and yellow and his incredible
madness.
APP Skyscanner. It allows me to check all the
flights availabilities and possible connections.
For personal and business trips, it saves a
lot of money.
CAR I’d have to say my Ferrari 599. It’s a treat for the senses in every
respect. The V12 engine is just music!
RESTAURANT I Due Ladroni in Rome. It is ten minutes’ walk from our office, and seems like the
luxury canteen of Bulgari, but it has the best fresh fish and
excellent staff.
Jean-Christophe BabinCEO of Bulgari
TIPS FROM A CEO
CAR CAR I’d have to say my Ferrari 599. It’s a treat for the senses in every
BOOK Manual Of The
Warrior Of Light by Paulo Coelho.
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The Center for Cancer Care at American Hospital DubaiCancer not only affects your health, but also your family and lifestyle. Understanding this, the Center for Cancer Care at American Hospital Dubai has launched the first Linear Accelerator Unit serving Radiation Therapy patients in Dubai.
The Center delivers advance and multi-disciplinary cancer care and is directed by Dr. Salim Chaib Rassou, a Radiation Oncologist who undertook specialties in Radiation Oncology, Breast Pathology and Breast Imaging and has garnered years of experience in France prior to joining American Hospital Dubai in 2011.
With the addition of the RapidArc® Linear Accelerator, Dr. Chaib Rassou and his team can offer radical treatment options. This technology delivers treatments faster and with more precision, a winning combination that enables physicians to improve the standard of care and treat patients more comfortably.
American Hospital Dubai remains the destination for cancer treatments, helping patients to live life with the best possible health.
First. Attentive. Precise. Effective.Cancer Treatments.
Call us for an appointment today on +971 4 377 3030/31 or visit www.ahdubai.com
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American Hospital Dubai accepts most major health insurance plans, please call (+971) 800 - 5500
issue 120
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Patek Philippe Nautilus
In the world of watch design, one man stand above all others: Gérald Genta. And of all his creations there are two that have endured and become genuine classics, not just of watches but of modern design. The first is the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak from 1972, and the second is the Patek Philippe Nautilus from 1976. Horological types have argued the merits of both, but it’s the Nautilus that is largely regarded as superior. There have been many variants of the Nautilus over the years (the 2006 jumbo in a larger 43mm case is also lovely) but it’s the original that is the best of the lot. They don’t come cheap, but hold value and if looked after should appreciate. Priced at $3,100 upon launch in 1976, you can pick one up good condition one for around $50,000.
The 1976 Nautilus 3700/1A, arguably the greatest watch ever made
1
The casing has a mix of brushed and
polished steel
investment piece
4
While later editions tried out Roman
numerials or dots, the white gold
batons in place of numbers (with
double at midday) is clean and iconic
6 The black dial with horizontal embossed bars has become one of the signature features of the Nautilus
7
Nautilus bracelets are notably thin and sleek, unlike most of the other sports watches from that era
2
Although not a diving watch, the design of
the casing ensures that is it water-
resistant up to 120m
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The original was notably thin for a watch of this type with a height of just 7.6mm
3
Unlike the later models, the original
has no seconds hand, and as a result the
design is cleaner and more relaxed
5
The porthole shape design, with bezel and case, are screwed to each other, just like an actual porthole
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Piazza Duomo’s head chef, Enrico Crippa, has a reputation for
experimental cooking. The Italian attributes this to the formative years he spent running a restaurant in Japan, and the time he spent working with culinary greats such as Ghislaine Arabian at Ledoyen in Paris, Michel Bras in Laguiole, and one of the modern masters, Ferran Adria at El Bulli
But what makes this restaurant work is the simplicity and attention to quality. Many of the vegetables used are grown in their garden at the back of the restaurant and, unlike some other places, Crippa resists the temptation to pile on too many ingredients. The restaurant opened in 2005 and this year it received its third Michelin star.
A two-hour drive from Milan, the Alba region is certainly worth a visit if you have an interest in fine dining, and this restaurant is the pinnacle of modern Italian.
Top tableThree Michelin-starred restaurant in the heart of truffle country
Alba CN, Italy
piazzadoumo.it
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Cod stock
Pressed caviar
Lamb cooked medium with camomile drops and light greens. If you order the full tasting menu, this will be the ninth course.
Fresh caviar
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LAMB AND CAMOMILE
EGGS AND EGGS SALAD
3
A dessert created to resemble a painting by Henri Matisse, this uses a panna cotta base with coloured shapes made from jellied fruit.
PANNA COTTA MATISSE
Green salad dressed with butter and sage
Sour cream
Marinated egg
CHEF’S RECOMMENDATION | ENRICO CRIPPA’S PICK OF THREE RESTAURANTS TO TRY
1. Ristorante Uliassi (Senigallia, Italy) “To try one of the best fish restaurants in Italy and Europe” 2. Maison Troisgros (Roanne, France) “Three Michelin stars over 30 years, taste a piece of their culinary story.” 3. The Ledbury (London) “Brett Graham is one of most talented chefs in Europe. Try the Australian touch in the heart of the UK.”
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L ondon 1798, sometime around lunch. A ruddy-faced man is sat browsing
a newspaper in Thomas Rule’s new restaurant on Maiden Lane. Admiral Nelson’s fleet has just destroyed the French ships at the Battle Of The Nile, and to help pay for this forthcoming war, prime minister William Pitt The Younger has announced that from next year there would be a new levy called income tax. Two pence in the pound? Oh, that won’t last. In other news, Edward Jenner has just published some interesting findings on his smallpox vaccination. But the table is now ready. Paper is folded and the pre-lunch snifter is downed. It’s game season. And that means grouse.
More than 217 years later that restaurant at 35 Maiden Lane, in Covent Garden, is still running. It’s London’s oldest restaurant and still one of its greatest. Lauded when it opened, writers of the day were singing the praises of Rules’ “porter, pies and oysters” and remarking on the “rakes, dandies and superior intelligences who comprise its clientele”.
Over the centuries noted acolytes have included Evelyn Waugh, John
35 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden,
London
12pm - Midnight daily
rules.co.uk
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nRules of the gameLondon’s oldest restaurant is still one of its greatest pleasures, especially in game season
Betjeman and Graham Greene, who wrote about it in The End Of The Affair and would celebrate his birthday here. Charlie Chaplin ate here, as did Charles Dickens, and even the current James Bond film has a scene where M meets Moneypenny and Q at the restaurant. It’s as if Rules is the centre-point of a Venn diagram of Englishness, both past and present.
It’s a rare chance to spend a few hours living in an England that ceased to exist in all but a few rare corners of the country. That they
chose Rules as a setting for an episode of Downton Abbey is one thing – many places in the UK are used in period dramas – but the fact it’s still a working restaurant just as you saw on screen is entirely something else.
The political cartoons that adorn the walls are a reminder of leaders gone by, while politicians still favour the place and come here to trade gossip and argue over a long lunch. And it doesn’t close between lunch and dinner, meaning a late lunch can drift into the territory of
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“Game birds may contain lead shot,” the menu warns – more a sign of authenticity than serious concern as grouse, partridge, mallard, pheasant, teal, hare, rabbit and deer all appear on the menu, plus other traditional courses including oysters, salmon, potted shrimps and some brilliant pies and puddings.
It won’t win Michelin stars, it won’t change the way we eat (its menu rarely changes), and it won’t start trends in the dining scene, although it’s been doing “seasonal and local” for more than two centuries. Crucially though, it won’t let you down. Rules is a constant in British dining, an edible museum of how nobility once ate, a national treasure and a reminder that few things can top a well-mixed drink, followed by hearty food and a bottle of red on a cold December day in London.
the second helping, the third bottle and the forthright opinion.
And this time of year is the season to visit. It’s game season after all and this is what Rules is famous for. Rules also owns The Lartington Estate in the High Pennines so the farm-to-table ethos that others consider trendy is merely the way things have always been here.
TradiTional dishes…
Rib of beef with Yorkshire pudding
Wild mallard with berries and nuts
Steak and kidney pie
It’s as if Rules is the centre-point of a Venn diagram of Englishness, both past and present
Charlie Chaplin, Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene are among the rich and famous to have been to Rules
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1
Fares Deli Grocery on Avenue A in the East Village. Photo from 2009. No longer in business
2
M&G Diner at 383 West 125th Street at Morningside Avenue. The building is now empty
3
The Lenox Lounge in Harlem. It closed on December 31, 2012, after a lease dispute
J ames and Karla Murray have been capturing images of storefronts since the 1990s and their second collection of images and interviews is
out this month. “These family-run businesses started out as
traditional mom-and-pop stores passed down from generation to generation, and there was a time when they defined our neighbourhoods,” James says. “Many were humble stores tucked away on narrow side streets, while others had become well-known institutions on historic avenues. Each store turned out to be as unique as their customers, run by owners with a commitment to tradition and special service. Not only are these modest small businesses falling away in the face of modernisation, gentrification, and conformity, the once unique appearance and character of our colourful streets suffers in the process.
“Almost two-thirds of the stores from the book are now gone, which is extremely sad. The largest factor as to why stores have been rapidly closing is when the shop owner does not own the building they are located in, due to increasing real estate prices, their lease often does not get renewed or their rent is tripled, quadrupled or raised to such a high rate, that they can no longer stay in business.”
Store warsThe battle to survive as a small business in New York is getting harder every year, but as tradi-tional stores vanish from the city, there are two people ensuring they won’t be forgotten
Store Front II: A History Preserved is out now
living / books
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Ralph’s in Tribeca closed in 2007 for conversion into a luxury condo
5
Katy’s Candy Store on Tompkins Ave near Vernon Avenue, in business from 1969 until 2007
6
Zig Zag Records at 2301 Avenue U closed in December 2010 after 35 years of business
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Down to the Details Luxury hotels tick the same boxes, but some five-stars manage to set themselves apart through an original Service or amenity that reflects their destination or DNA. Here are five examples
1 The vinTage fashion Trunk aT The Berkeley, londonThe Berkeley Hotel is just a stiletto-throw from some of the best shopping destinations in London and the hotel plays to its fashion credentials by offering Berkeley Suites guests complimentary access to its Vintage Fashion Trunk. Edited by Carmen Haid, founder of the Atelier-Mayer vintage boutique, the cream calfskin bespoke trunk features one-of-a-kind luxury accessories such as a 1970s Yves Saint Laurent handbag, 1970s Chanel quilted mini flower ear clips and a red Nina Ricci pillbox hat from the 1950s, stunning finishing touches to any outfit. If the guest finds that she cannot live without an item, The Berkeley’s concierge will arrange for its purchase and delivery.the-berkeley.co.uk
1
2 The arT concierge aT The royal Monceau, ParisParis can claim the title of art capital of the world with some justification. The problem for the visitor is that there is just so much to see. The Royal Monceau placed art and culture at the heart of its redesign by Philippe Starck. It proposes a unique and exclusive service to guests – the Art Concierge. Art Concierge Julie Eugène shares her insider knowledge of the best Parisian exhibitions and cultural events, organises private tours and viewings, and advises guests on investing in art. She can arrange for museums and galleries to be open after hours, invite an artist or curator to join art lovers for tea, organise studio visits, or even assist guests in starting their own collection.raffles.com
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Luxury hotels tick the same boxes, but some five-stars manage to set themselves apart through an original Service or amenity that reflects their destination or DNA. Here are five examples
3 Part-time Pets at the Fairmont Hotel, VancouVerThe loneliest part of long-haul travel is often leaving the family pet behind. The Fairmont Hotel in Vancouver employs Mavis and Beau, two yellow labrador golden retrievers, as canine ambassadors on alternate duty at the reception to meet and greet guests. Both Mavis and Beau are happy to accompany guests on a walk or jog and are philosophical about being petted by small children. Many other Fairmont Hotels worldwide have recruited canine ambassadors. Guests who form a lasting attachment can stay in touch with the ambassadors (yes, we know... ) through e-mail, letter or Facebook.fairmont.com/hotel-vancouver
5 the control tablet at the Peninsula, Paris and worldwideThe Peninsula Hotel’s in-room technology is perfect for the tech-minded, thanks to owner, Sir Michael Kadoorie, who is not. He tested the tablet personally while it was under development in Hong Kong until he was completely satisfied with the intuitive simplicity of its design. It provides some of the fastest complimentary Wi-Fi of any hotel in the world, allowing you to control everything in the room from dimming lights, regulating the temperature, drawing the curtains and summoning housekeeping in your language of choice. The tablet streams international TV channels and new-release movies on the flat-screen, entirely free of charge. It includes the in-room dining menu, a section on what’s on in the hotel and in the city, and flight tracking for inward and outbound flights. The bathroom tablet offers a spa experience with dimmed lighting and relaxing music. Local and international VoIP calls are complimentary whatever the duration, as is the non-alcoholic mini-bar.
many of the Fairmont Hotels worldwide have recruited canine ambassadors
4 the Platform greeting at the sHangri-la Hotel, tokyoThe Shangri-La Hotel in Tokyo takes welcoming travellers to the nth degree.The hotel is located above Tokyo Station, the 100-year-old home of the bullet train, newly reopened as part of the mammoth Marunouchi renewal project. Guests can SMS the hotel concierge their seat number from the Narita Airport Express and a Shangri-La greeter will be at your precise alighting spot on the platform to welcome you to Tokyo in the best Japanese tradition and whisk your luggage straight to your hotel room.www.shangri-la.com/Tokyo
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ISSUE 120
PORTFOLIO.
DECEMBER
LIVING / COLUMN
I first came to England at the other end of my life, when I was still quite young, just 20.
In those days, for a short but intensive period, a very high proportion of all in the world that was worth taking note of came out of Britain. The Beatles, James Bond, Mary Quant and miniskirts, Twiggy and Justin de Villeneuve, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor ’s love life, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, suit jackets without collars, television series like The Avengers and The Prisoner, spy novels by John le Carré and Len Deighton, Marianne Faithfull, Petula Clark, Dusty Springfield, quirky movies starring David Hemmings and Terence Stamp that we didn’t quite get in Iowa, Harold Pinter plays that we didn’t get at all, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, That Was The Week That Was, the Profumo scandal — practically everything really.
Advertisements in magazines like The New Yorker and Esquire were full of British products in a way they never would be again — Gilbey’s and Tanqueray gin, Harris tweeds, BOAC airliners, Aquascutum suits and Viyella shirts, Alan Paine sweaters, Daks trousers, MG and Austin Healey sports cars, a hundred varieties of Scotch whisky. It was clear that if you wanted quality and suavity in your life, it was British goods that were in large part going to supply it.
Not all of this made a great deal of sense even then, it must be said. A popular cologne of the day was called Pub. I am not at all sure what resonances that was supposed to evoke. I have been drinking in England for 40 years and I can’t say that I have ever encountered anything in a pub that I would want to rub on my face.
Because of all the attention we gave Britain, I thought I knew a fair amount about the place, but I quickly discovered upon arriving that I was very wrong. I couldn’t even speak my own language there.
In the first few days, I failed to distinguish between collar and colour, khaki and car key, letters and lettuce, bed and bared, karma and calmer.
Needing a haircut, I ventured into a unisex hairdresser’s in Oxford, where the proprietress, a large and vaguely forbidding woman, escorted me to a chair, and there informed me crisply: “Your hair will be cut by a vet today.”
I was taken aback. “Like a person who treats sick animals?” I said, quietly horrified.
“No, her name is Yvette,” she replied and with the briefest of gazes into my face made it clear that I was the most exhausting idiot that she had encountered.
In a pub I asked what kind of sandwiches they had.
“Ham and cheese,” the man said.“Oh, yes please,” I said. “Yes please what?” he said.“Yes please, ham and cheese,” I said, but
with less confidence. “No, it’s ham or cheese,” he explained.
“You don’t do them both together?”
“No.”“Oh,” I said, surprised,
then leaned toward him and in a friendly but confidential tone said: “Why not? Too flavourful?”
He stared at me.“I’ll have cheese then,
please,” I said contritely.When the sandwich came, the
cheese was extravagantly shredded – I had never seen a dairy product distressed before serving – and accompanied by what I now know was Branston pickle, but what looked to me then like what you find when you stick your hand into a clogged sump.
I nibbled it tentatively and was pleased to discover that it was delicious. Gradually it dawned on me that I had found a country that was wholly strange to me and yet somehow marvellous. It is a feeling that has never left me.
“I had found a country that
was wholly strange to me
and yet somehow marvellous”
First impressions...By Bill Bryson
airliners, Aquascutum suits and Viyella shirts, Alan Paine sweaters, Daks trousers, MG and Austin Healey sports cars, a hundred varieties of Scotch whisky. It was clear that if you wanted quality and suavity in your life, it was British goods that were in large part going to supply it.
Not all of this made a great deal of sense even then, it must be said. A popular cologne of the day was called Pub. I am not at all sure what resonances that was supposed to evoke. I have been drinking in England for 40 years and I can’t say that I have ever encountered anything in a pub Bill Bryson’s books include
A Walk In The Woods, Notes From A Small Island and A Short History Of Nearly Everything. The Road To Little Dribbling is his first travel book in 15 years
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