Barcelona

Dear Josh:

I have been alone in Barcelona for about eight hours, the last three of which were spent sleeping in my little hotel room. It's 8:30 P.M. and the sun is still fairly high in the sky, thanks to the absence of daylight savings time. My room overlooks a paved and red-painted play yard. Right now there are several teenage girls on old-school rollerskates out there, practicing their moves and wearing identical blue skating skirts. It's really warm here. Those fleece-lined track pants felt so right in the Sam Adams bar at Newark, but became so wrong at the Barcelona taxi stand.

I was sick on the flight from Newark to Frankfurt. Which part of whiskey, Ambien, gin and red wine do you think was the problem?  read more »

Young men and women in Barcelona have made a real commitment to the mullet. It's hard to say whether they're being ironic or earnest.

In recent years, the Spanish city has restored the public use of a beach, built a highway to connect the town center with the outskirts, converted a power plant and, well, just made themselves look sexier. The urban renewal initative has even attracted a number of investors into those outskirts.

In contrast, Bloomberg News decries the lack of design, the staid towers, and the unsexy disconnect of the planned Ground Zero construction with downtown Manhattan.

"In the urban-design studies that actually excited people, way back in 2002, we saw some hints of what Lower Manhattan's commercial future could be: offices designed to recognize that business today is about interaction, not chaining people to desks; architecture that soared gloriously to take full advantage of one of the world's great harbor locations.

Learning a few lessons from Barcelona could not only dissolve the sclerosis downtown, it could create a district that truly honors the thousands who lost their lives on 9/11 just because they turned up for work."

The Mies Barcelona chair.

• The man to blame for Mies Barcelona chairs disappears to Miami, land of tawdriness, to dispense a lesson, we assume. (New York)
• New York and London are boring. It's those "backwards" cities that are the future now--not those troubled ones, the ones with an elite class. And, now that we're scared of immigrants and terrorism, attention must be paid to foreign cities, like, not Paris. Is that what New Statesman means?
• Now that it has been confirmed that NYC is dirty, Transportation Alternatives is campaigning for a car-free summer. (TA)
• The Related Companies has a new project, the Caledonia, which will boast its own entrance onto the new High Line park. (Scroll past the picture of Scarlett Johansson's cleavage.) (The New York Times)
• Brooklyn Bridge Park is a "sweetheart deal" for developer Robert Levine. (New York Post)
• Bruce Jones of Poseidon Resorts is inspired by Jacques Cousteau and is building an underwater hotel. The Poseidon rests 60ft below the surface beside a coral reef near Fiji. Guests will enter the linked pods by submarine or through a beachside tunnel. (Times)
• A terra cotta image of a 1922 Ford Model T on the Tunnel Garage in Tribeca may be destroyed. (Forgotten NY)
• Did you know? "This is a city that once had a tavern with a door that connected directly to the municipal court. Later, it passed out tavern licenses to widows, seeing it as a cheap form of relief." Gotham Gazette on the history and future of New York nightlife.
• The City and State are in a land battle over an Upstate watershed that allows the city to avoid building a water filtration plant. (Daily Freeman)
• People, parking is free on Sunday. Stop paying! (Newsday)
• The Municipal Art Society and Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance host an exhibit that imagines the future and presents the past of Todd Shipyard in Red Hook through photographs and alternative site plans. (MAS)

Outside Looking In. Ian Schrager and Aby Rosen Offer A Sneak Preview of 40 Bond

Today, developers Ian Schrager and Aby Rosen, the stylish duo profiled last month by The Observer, were on hand to entertain real estate and luxury living reporters. And there was more food from Nobu for the starving scribes.

Mr. Schrager, accustomed to catering to the beautiful people, briefly ran through his resume since co-founding Studio 54. There were a few jabs at the hotel industry for stealing his ideas, whereby a Schrager project was treated like a "candy store" to grab from freely.

But that's all in the past now, right? Now, Mr. Schrager admits to "having a ball" since hooking up with Mr. Rosen on smaller scale projects, yet with big name architects like Herzog and de Meuron.  read more »

Tomorrow, the rest of a the rabble (and by rabble we mean wealthy condo buyers) can peruse models encased in glass. Or they can simply look at samples of glass--the "luminescent curved glass" that was flown in from Barcelona. It's certainly worth a peak, even if all the sushi is gone.

One Star

225 Park Avenue South (at 18th Street)

212-533-2500  read more »