Dips ahoy!
Had to look up what a bollard is to write this one.
This is Cocktail Charm, a weekly email filled with delicious little things to talk about at parties. In today’s edition: Amsterdam al fresco, backstroking to happy hour, and some top-tier scandalmaking from competitive chess.
Personally, I’d really like to get into this Amsterdam al fresco situation.
A video demo comes from Netherlands-based hospitality agency Piekfijn, where you can see how just one novel object can totally transform these posts — used for tying up boats and guiding traffic — into renewed places for gathering. And while I can’t find more about the prototype online, I think it’s worth giving some pause to a project like this — taking an overlooked urban feature and repurposing it for public spacemaking.
As it turns out, these tiny metal posts have been considered by more than some Dutch creatives. Bollards have been turned into benches in Naples and bartops in New Orleans. Even McDonald’s has gotten into them.
Today I’m thinking a lot about the landscapes we can transform in place, as you’ll see down below: the city train lines being reinvigorated for arts and culture, the urban waters being refreshed for public respite. And as our cities debate whether we still have a place for the gathering spaces we put up in pandemic years — I’m looking at you, streeteries — it’s worth considering how even small-scale changes to small features can recast the purpose of our shared places.
Any others you can think of? Hit reply and let me know.
Up for discussion
Abu Dhabi bid up the auction house. A UAE sovereign wealth fund announced a $1 billion deal with Sotheby’s last week, making it the auction house’s biggest minority investor. What could possibly go wrong?
These self-portraits are worth spending time with. When photographer Anthony Luvera began working with people experiencing homelessness, he was offered a job capturing their portraits. “I declined the invitation, saying I’d prefer to see what the people I met would photograph,” he said. The pieces are beautiful.
Public art takes the L. Here’s one way Chicago welcomed the Democratic National Convention this week: with an art show riding its rails. Now a number of Chicago’s metro trains have been wrapped in murals by local artists, each loosely themed around democracy. Look at that cling work.
This one makes deflated footballs look like amateur hour. What, you’ve never been a Russian chess player who tried to slip your opponent some minor mercury poisoning?
Security camera footage shows the incident where Abakarova calmly walked over to the board where Osmanova was supposed to appear 20 minutes later. It was reported that she'd previously asked if cameras were in operation and been told that they weren't. She then smeared what is said to be potentially deadly mercury from a thermometer.
Dips ahoy. Have you seen how Zurich office workers commute home on the Limmat River? Drop everything, click this, and then meet me back here.
It turns out more cities are looking to follow the Swiss on this one. Out in the world of urban landscape design, there’s a campaign to transform polluted city rivers into waters you actually want to splash around in. The Guardian has a fascinating profile on its progress.
Meanwhile, these people are fine with murkier waters. Never thought I’d read “Big Apple” and “local diving scene” in one sentence. Apparently more than 5,000 shipwrecks lurk in the waters around New York. In New York City, a fifty year-old scuba club has been leading plunges to see them — and the sharks, seahorses, and sunfish that make up the aquatic citizenry. “It’s like an underwater scavenger hunt,” Big Apple Divers instructor Harris Moore says in this lovely little story. Come for the Coney Island characters; stay for the sublime diving footage.
Parting thoughts
It’s a shorter letter today! I hope this week wades by happily for you, sunfish discoveries or not.
Clink clink!
Gabriela
Thanks for being a reader of Cocktail Charm! Has this newsletter helped you out at happy hour? Let me know; I’d love to hear it.