I along with Ryan have 5 reasons as to why running launched itself off of a low base of worn out luminous Polly Shortts, torn, old sweat stained t-shirts, waffled flat trainers, Casio stop-watches and Bar-ones to become a phenomenal craze in which all of a sudden no one asks, ‘but what about the damage to your knees?’
The GPS watch. The watch which at the outset tended to be the size of a washing machine thrust one-self into tracking one’s own performance. The runner could document every run, it’s distance, it’s time and it’s speed. SPEED.And with that one could evaluate performance and improve on ability. Today it’s not uncommon for table talk to include the, ‘so, what pace you running?’ question.
Nike. By creating a running shoe that didn’t look like a platform, that expressed colours prominent in an LSD trip, and that looked good both as you flexed your calves in the vegetable section of Woolworths and on the tar, an attraction between running and street cred was created.
Lycra. Sweet Mary Jane, Lycra. From its heady days in the 80’s when big hair, leg warmers, Jane Fonda and VHS died, Lycra has had a somewhat religious resurrection. Today, typically called leggings, women have adopted them like white on rice. They’re loved and adored for their form hugging properties, for the bragging rights afforded one should you look like a stealth missile wearing them, and for their comfort factor. Some women can wear them, and others are driven to wear them. Given our woke generation, even guys are known to romp around town in a pair, though apart from Kipchoge, they shouldn’t be worn by guys. It’s borderline blasphemy.
A late comer to the list has to include, Strava. This is the Facebook of running. If your run ain’t on Strava, it pretty much didn’t happen.
On every other Thursday I’d clock out of the office and head to an art gallery.
I was lured by the artwork, I was lured by the crowd and ofcourse I was lured by the open bar.
I loved it. I’d ask my mates to join and they never would. ‘sorry chaito, I’m at gym spinning’, or ‘call me when you’re done scouring art’, and once, having taken a girl on a date to the gallery, after about 18 minutes she said ‘take me home……NOW’
Art galleries weren’t cool. Even free tipple couldn’t attract a crowd.
And then came the evolution of art gallery, the rebirth of cool, the serrated, truncated aeroplane wing of a building that sits on the corner of Jellicoe and Jan Smuts Ave high on its elevated perch. The Circa art gallery.
The Circa formed the iconic catalyst of the Keyes Art Mile. The Keyes Art Mile is a superlative stab at urban planning on a small scale. As one hops and skips along it’s spine, tasty Hansie and Grietjie crumbs - the green, soft-to-the touch, buoyant, blossoming St Teresa’s parking lot, the ever steady Everard Read Gallery , The Trumpet and Circa gallery-dot the street. All waiting to be devoured by passers-by as a ravenous intermittent faster.
The Circa gallery is a simple building, perfectly executed, beautifully located.
It’s a solid, mottled, oval form making a powerful statement deflecting ones pre-conceived notion of what a building ought to look like. Even its internal experience is unfamiliar. It’s corkscrew stair sweeps its way up to the midriff where the main exhibition space sits continuing further onto the roof-scape where masterful views of a setting sun await.
The Everard Read Gallery plays its role as a further player in this interactive video game. It is a good space. It harboured at different times some of my most favoured local artists and it was here that I invested in one of my first pieces. The gallery is a meandering maze of different rooms, levels and displays. It’s size and configuration-not too small, not too big, but Goldilocksian ‘just right’ allowed me much time to drift, drink and dabble.
With these spirited efforts dressed each in their own unique garb lining the drag, they are in-fact presenting the street as the architecture, the place for play. The buildings become the theatrical backdrop in which social interactions, pleasant strolls, seats to sit or bacchanalian frivolities are to be played out.
Though First Thursdays destroyed my special place, the galleries spill out a-gush with both artoes, winoes and hipster o’s mingling over street cart food, beverages and chin wags. The cascading stairs offered by the Trumpet become Joburg’s Spanish Steps, dripping with star spangled revellers, Doc Martin goths and plaid pretenders.
The natural interaction of the buildings and the landscaping offer all that Sohosian streets deliver to the people of London. I know. I’ve imbibed the spirit there.
The cobbly road and the rough crushed river stone’s are an aural experience. The pre-historic, giant rocks are seats and car crash barriers adding an earthy palette to a grey scape. The Mile shuns the vehicle for paving and wild and untethered flower beds anchored by skeletal trees skinned in flaking bark. And the smooth textured larger-than-me Eduardo Villa’s educate the First Thursday boozing masses. These elements/ ingredients ‘reduce’ the street width becoming the lacing binding, weaving the buildings either side of the street together like a tethered corset embracing a buxom bust.
All components in creating an architecture for people.
Apart from Melrose Arch, pre-planned, implemented urban schemes are few and far between in our town. They demand a long term vision, they demand buy-in from a number of stakeholders and they demand big loot. It’s visionary-Elon-Musk-kind-of stuff. But if you look closely you’ll see this small experiment being amoebic in Rosebank.
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