Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 30

Rudolf Schlichter (German, 1890-1955). “Portrait of the journalist Egon Erwin Kisch” (1927). H/t @adamtooze.bsky.social

My God, the set and costume designers of Babylon Berlin really did nail the look and feel of urban Weimar.

Oil painting1 of a Weimar German journalist on a sidewalk, in front of a Cafe, posters behind him.

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 30

Hanging on my dining room wall:

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 30

You totally held out on me on this one. And, really, who among us would not immediately want to make a chariscuro Euro film noir when presented with an art nouveau police station like this?

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 30

SWOON.

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 30

Goodnight, Park.

Sunset after a storm at North Point State Park.

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 22

Marylebone a la nuit, one last stroll.

Corner by St. Mary's Church, palimpsest of 150 years of architecture.

Huge paper flowers and print dresses in a shop window at night.

Night travellers at Marylebone Station archway.

Victorian canopy from station to grand hotel, Marylebone. Doorman in tophat talking with two young boys.

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 22

One moment of beauty snatched from the hellscape of LVMH Parade. Uh, I mean, Kensington High Street.

Flower market in front of Gothic arch, Kensington High Street.

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 21

Spare ribs and dear friends.

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 21

Night stroll around Marylebone and Edgeware Rd.

St. Mary's Church, Bryanston Square. Neoclassical portico and Italianate spire.

Pizza smotor. Night, with delivery drivers by the curb on motos.

Arabic grocery storefront at night, with patrons and passers by, Edgeware Rd.

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 21

Is being American enough to qualify? Asking for a friend.

Metropolitan Police anti-social behavior special enforcement zone placard on a council housing estate back of Marylebone Station.

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 21

I'll see what I can do.

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 21

Friends: old and new. Also the trio of devils who somehow persuaded me to buy a shockingly nice, and shockingly spendy, linen jacket at Oliver Spencer.

Oliver Spencer at Lamb's Conduit, purveyors of lovely clothes.

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 21

Out and about in Bloomsbury, including the inaugural Lamb's Conduit Waiters' Race.

Former art deco petrol station, sensitively adapted to new use.

One of London's last remaining timber cab ranks. From the horse-drawn hansome "Black Beauty" era of cabbing.

And they're off! Waiters carrying trays of glassware in a footrace along Lamb's Conduit.

Finishing in style, a waiter waves while carrying her tray to the finish line in the Lsm's Waiters' Race.

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 21

More railway stations: Marylebone, loveliest, least altered and most overlooked of London's great termini, and Russell Square on the Tube, an art nouveau classic. Lynn is giving me side eye for more station facade pictures. Reader, she married me anyway.

Street facade of 1899 Marylebone railway station. Later HQ of Brtish Rail.

Art nouveau Russell Square tube station.

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 21

Lynn is re-reading Pattern Recognition. I'm wearing a pair of well-worn Buzz chinos. As one does when you're back in Gibson's London. @greatdismal.bsky.social

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 21

Hardly at all. I'll tell you about it in a few weeks.

Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 20

And a bit more Grand Canal. Still life with bench.

Deserted plaza on Grand Canal, early evening.

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 20

Out and about in Marylebone, Bayswater and the Grand Canal.

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 20

Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Paddington Train Shed. As a onetome history of technology major, this is one of the industrial cathedrals of my secular religion.

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 20

The first night I ever spent in London was behind one of these stucco porticos in Lancaster Gate, Christmas 1986. It was stuffy and dusty and caught somewhere between Fawlty Towers and Margaret Thatcher. Now, apparently, being refitted as luxe condos.

Victorian townhouses, later hotels, now condos. In Bayswater, London.

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 20

London skyline.

London rooftops, looking from Edgeware Road toward Canary Wharf in the far distance.

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 20

Coots! And cootlings!

Eurasia Coot mom and adolescents swimming in Paddington basin

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 20

When I first saw Paddington Basin in 1984 it was all stygian old warehouses, basically a good place to be murdered in a Le Carre novel. Now it's all steel and glass, except for this lone survivor.

Paddington Basin warehouse, Westminster, London

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 20

Returning to our common gene pool.

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Erik Ledbetter @bandoblue.bsky.social · Jun 20

London called. I came.

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