Hand-made corporate logos

If phone companies don’t provide window stickers, Pakistani shopkeepers may have a go themselves.

Phone shop in Barcelona's Raval district.

Crane spirit

When I went out this morning onto the Rambla del Raval, a man was standing up on the boom of the 40 metre crane overlooking Calle San Rafael. He gesticulated and shouted at the firemen in the crane cabin and then wandered out to smoke a cigarette at the 35 metre end. Under the shadow…

Botellón

Kalebeul hopes to avoid the widescale unrest we believe will result from police action against nocturnal street drinks parties by implementing two preventative strategies: 30 years ago three gentlemen in Bar Manolo were given a monthly allowance on condition they drink all the alcohol in Spain. Project delivery date: 20:00 17/3/2006. All streeting from the…

Community leaders

Sarkozy’s going to need to look for some soon, but I fear that the current Parisian definition is the guy with the newest fridge. The earliest mention I’ve found here also floats in on a wave of urban violence: It is in the anxious and transforming 15th century that we begin to discover forms that…

Pigeon poo

Two old people were arguing this afternoon under the memorial to Joan Amades on Calle Carmen in the Raval about whether the pigeons should be fed. The argument proceeded along roughly the same lines as in the 1950s Parisian skirmish recorded in Juan Goytisolo‘s Señas de identidad (1966), in which the old man is determined…

Our next interior minister

I’m currently putting together an e-commerce site for some people here who want to sell their products abroad. Since I haven’t yet found my next fixed address, this means writing PHP in internet/phone shops. Yesterday I was in a Punjabi one in the Raval when there was a sudden bout of frenzied rustling from behind…

Pere Botero's

“On Ponent Street lived another woman known as the Queen because she was daughter of one of the Three Kings”

Boil 'em!