Washington DC’s literary bookstore Chapters is 20 years old. But to make it to 21, the store is attempting a radical reinvention. “Without help — in the form of a fundraising drive that will allow it to be bought out by a nonprofit foundation — the bookstore may have trouble making it to 21. The strategy is similar to that employed by the Avalon Theatre Project, which succeeded two years ago in reopening Washington’s oldest surviving movie house by converting it to nonprofit status.”
Tag: 09.15.05
Vegas Gets A Face Life (For The 408,309th Time)
Big-name architects Rafael Viñoly, Lord Norman Foster, James KM Cheng, Cesar Pelli, and Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates have been enlisted to “design various parts of a $5 billion, 66-acre development in the heart of Las Vegas. Called Project CityCenter, the complex of hotels, casinos, retail and residential space is to be built by November 2009 on a site between the Monte Carlo and Bellagio hotels on the city’s famous strip.”
The Most Expensive Idol
The TV show “American Idol” is charging a record amount for ads on any American television show. “For the new fall season, the cost of a 30-second spot during the Wednesday installment of the program has surpassed the $700,000 mark. For the second year in a row, the Tuesday and Wednesday editions of American Idol are the most expensive shows on network TV.”
Naked And Pregnant In Trafalar Square
Trafalgar Square’s vacant fourth plinth gets a new sculpture, a statue of a naked preggnant woman. “The 12ft marble sculpture, ‘Alison Lapper Pregnant’, is already dividing opinion among art critics and disability campaigners. Artist Marc Quinn said he had sculpted his friend Ms Lapper because disabled people were under-represented in art.”
Rambert’s New Home
The Rambert Dance Company intends to build a new £16.5 million headquarters on London’s South Bank. “The new centre – which the company hope will be finished in 2008 – will house state-of-the-art studios, along with community and education spaces. The contemporary dance company is currently located in cramped premises in Chiswick, west London.”
Louisiana Transplants – Living It Up In Lafayette
“No one knows what will come of the dispersal of New Orleans’s artistic life, or whether the thousands of musical transients will become transplants. Like so much else in the aftermath of the hurricane, the question is unresolved. But here in Lafayette, where Cajun French can still be heard in the street, the signs are bilingual and old French Canada is the musical touchstone, musicians – locals and evacuees – are expecting a flowering of creativity.”