Carhenge is a replica of the 4,500 year old Stonehenge ruin in England. It was built by Jim Reinders in Nebraska, USA, using 38 vintage automobiles spray-painted gray and posed after the original sarsens, lintels, and altar stones of Stonehenge. Now the work is surrounded by a ring of ‘portal’ cars, dinosaurs, and giant fish, spray-painted in gaudy colors and forming a wider ‘Car Art Reserve’. Altar ‘stone’. Photo by Jeremy Burgin. Carhenge consists of 38 automobiles arranged in a circle measuring about 29 metres in diameter. Some are held upright in pits 1.5 metres deep, trunk end down, and arches have … Read More
Aral: the sea that vanished overnight
The Aral Sea was once one of the four largest lakes in the world, situated between Kazakhstan in the north and Uzbekistan in the south. In the 1960’s the Soviet Union redirected its tributary rivers into irrigation projects, and as a result by 2007 it had shrunk to 10% of its original size. Once prosperous fishing towns like Muynak were left stranded miles from the retreating waters, their boats high and dry on the salt-encrusted desert sand. Photo by Urban Explorer.
Dunes envelop the Namibian toytown of Kolmanskop
One day a giant went to play in the Namibian desert. He made a toytown village out of bits of things he found lying around; the husks of scorpion shells, desiccated bones, sand-sifted diamonds, and brightly colored plaster. He lined up his toytown houses in neat little rows, serviced them with a tinker rail-line, then sat back and sighed in contentment. The next day he walked away and left the toytown to the sands. Kolmanskop is a ghost town in the deserts of Namibia, built by the DeBeers mining company in 1908, abandoned in 1956 after diamond prices crashed. The … Read More
The half-built ruin of the Dreamer’s Gate
Before you stands a gate. It rears 7 meters high and the fence it bifurcates stretches on for as far as the eye can see. Its walls glisten and seem to move with a life of their own. Across their endless expanses giant figures burrow, retreating behind blankets of spiders webs, emerging again down spiral staircases far off in the distance. Through the gate you can see the Dreamtime. You see the pattern of the land, and the Songlines that have sprung up around it. Gaze into it for long enough and you might even catch a glimpse of the … Read More
The lava-engulfed ruins of Paricutin cathedral
The sky is black with ash-fall. People are standing in the streets, looking up into the fog. They hold out their hands, and little mounds of grainy black stone gather. Down the clay-walled guinnels of the town you hear the cathedral bells ringing a discordant pattern, as though God himself is beating the life out of them. The ground jumps and growls underfoot. You look around, into the faces of your neighbors, and wonder what sin you have committed to deserve this. Then you see the first of the slow-rolling waves of lava, inching their way down the mountainsides towards … Read More
Star Trek: The Next Generation #4 Survivors
Survivors by Jean Lorran really took me by surprise. It’s a great book, a refreshing new take on both Data and Tasha Yar. Did anybody else know Data had ‘flirtation routines’ that made him more popular with the ladies than even Riker? Not me. The story is about a lot of things; Tasha’s early life, Tasha’s death at the hands of Armus, ethical dilemmas, and Data’s gradual emotional awakening, all sewn gracefully through a narrative that sets Tasha and Data off on a mission together, to look into the cries for help coming from a fringe non-Federation planet.
Weekender Interview and Cover
A few months back Elisabeth Lambert of the Tokyo Weekender (one of several free English magazines available in Tokyo) got in touch with me about haikyo. She was doing research for an article, and we went back and forth with a few sets of interview questions. It’s always interesting for me to talk about haikyo, especially if the person ‘gets it’- compared to people who (and I understand this view too) think ‘why would you want to go to dirty old buildings full of trash’? The magazine came out this week, and it turns out the haikyo piece is the … Read More
Hotel Queen Haikyo
The Hotel Queen is another abandoned love hotel on the banks of Lake Tama. I first saw it the first time I went out there to shoot the Akasaka and the Red Blossom about 2 years ago. At the time it looked semi-abandoned, with a chain roping it off. I tentatively strode over the chain only to be blasted by a motion sensor alarm. I froze like a deer in the headlights, saw a nearby open door, shoes on the ground beside it, and decided not to push my luck any further. I cycled off, heading for the real meat. … Read More
Jethro’s Fall
JETHRO’S FALL is a novel, the story of two polar opposite brothers in a post-apocalyptic city, striving to hang onto what humanity they have left while fighting Biotic racism, corporate lies, and the fallacy at the heart of it all. Jethro lives in a dystopic future city where the only choice for happiness and a baby mansion is to follow the corporate ladder to the top. After 5 years in the Tower he realizes the ladder is a lie, and decides to get out while he still can, but his Biotic brother, his racist friends, and a mysterious woman named … Read More
Remnants of the US Air Force Base in Tachikawa, Japan
The abandoned US Air Force (USAF) base in Tachikawa is a bramble-choked memento from the early days of Japanese/American war and peace. It was annexed by the USA shortly after World War II, in co-operation with the still-active nearby Japan Army (SDF) Base, then abandoned in the 1970’s as the Vietnam war came to a close. Its three huge chimneys are still visible from the exterior, brick-red and lined up like masts on a rudderless ship, slowly sinking deeper into the smothering sea of green jungle. Its airstrip now swims with weeds, and bamboo forests have grown through the foundations … Read More