Mundane Thread Photographic Edition

[Sporting]

I forgot to crop out the oligarch tower.

I just came across this article:

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2...rks-super-rich

One paragraph reads:

"New York's inclusionary housing policy goes a small way to redressing the balance: developers can build taller in exchange for funding affordable housing elsewhere. Like the UK's Section 106 agreements, the policy allows at least some bounty to be creamed off from these steroidal totems for the public good. Central Park Tower, for example, gained 90,000 sq feet after it bought the rights from another developer's affordable housing scheme, while JDS contributed $9m to affordable housing in return for a bonus of 20,000 sq ft at 111 West 57th Street.G"

I could also add, playing devil's advocate, that the construction of such admittedly ugly buildings does create a lot of work for construction and other companies, not to mention labour for anyone skilled or semi-skilled in the various fields of work involved, not to mention other service industries and those who work in the completed structures themselves.

[ursus arctos]

The purpose of those agreements was to encourage developers to build housing in less affluent areas where it is very much needed, but the system has been co-opted by real estate interests who have managed to get the relevant authorities to designate other affluent areas as being in need of development and rather expensive flats as being "affordable".

They do employ people, though as you saw from your recent visit, the construction trades here are not exactly struggling.

[Femme Folle]

They could have made them more interesting looking. That's all I'm saying.

[Third rate Leszno]

I posted a couple of NYC pics from 2008 on here last night, that have now been eaten by the site rebuild - if I get time I'll dig them out again at the weekend, they're on a backup drive with some from 2011 that I quite like (and may have posted here before - memory not being as sharp as it ought to be!).

[Sits]

I saw them, they were good. Wonder if I can find mine from c. 1996.

[Lang Spoon]

The East Neuk of Fife is a wee gem, not really getting its quiet beauty from this but.

[Lang Spoon]

[Femme Folle]

Lovely photos Lang Spoon Does Kirkcaldy look like that too?

[Lang Spoon]

[Lang Spoon]

Nah, that's Crail, a quaint wee fishing village, now full of holiday home Embra types. There are bits of Kdy that look nice, but it's mostly industrial and post industrial.

[Lang Spoon]

[Lang Spoon]

[Lang Spoon]

But Ravenscraig Park and castle (two pics above) on the shore are quite pleasant, and Kirk Wynd is about the only old quaint street to survive in town.

[Lang Spoon]

[Lang Spoon]

The above is more typical, the High st earlier this year. Almost no one about but the lame and the halt. Everyone with a car shops in the retail park by the dual carriageway, the mile long once buzzing shopping drag can't even sustain a McDonalds, M&S closing was its final indignity.

[Femme Folle]

That's so sad.

[Uncle Ethan]

A pic from one of my old haunts.

[ursus arctos]

Never knew you had seven wives

[Uncle Ethan]

I don't, but on my way there I met a bloke who does.

[Nocturnal Submission]

A pic from one of my old haunts.

That's lovely. I assumed that it was somewhere in France until I saw the clue. I did parachute training just outside of St. Ives and stayed overnight in the area but didn't see much of the town and certainly not the bridge. Very impressive.

[Sporting]

Excuse me for asking what is probably obvious but how exactly do you train for parachute jumps apart from not forgetting to pull the cord and bending your legs on landing?

[Nocturnal Submission]

Excuse me for asking what is probably obvious but how exactly do you train for parachute jumps apart from not forgetting to pull the cord and bending your legs on landing?

From memory there was a lot about the actual process and the equipment we'd use, what to do in emergencies and practicing the landing, which isn't as easy as you might think and which I wasn't very good at which, as the son of an ex-paratrooper, isn't something I tend to mention a lot!

The bit that sticks in my mind was the segment about what would happen if your line got caught on the plane after you'd jumped out. The instructor said that he would "show you the knife" which was exactly what it sounds like and would precede him cutting you free and wishing you the very, very best of luck from that point onwards!

[Sits]

[Sits]

[Sits]