Peck Mural Tour of Washington DC

Last weekend, Cultural Tourism DC sponsored a bunch of tours around town. One of them was a mural tour led by artist G. Byron Peck.

If you notice a mural in the city, there is a good chance Peck did it. Pictured is the Duke Ellington mural on the True Reformer Building on U Street.

Appropriate that the mural ended up on the True Reformer Building, since it was in that building that Ellington had his first paying gig. He made 25 cents according to our guide.

Also on the tour was the Black Family Reunion Mural up 14th street, the Mayan Mural on Florida and 18th, the Columbia Heights Mural on 14th and Clifton, and the Dupont Circle Fountain Mural on Connecticut.

Truth be told, I skipped out after the first two. A tour has to be really good to keep me herded along with the crowd. It was all moving a bit slow, all the more so because one of the volunteers along for the ride kept interjecting.

Also, while I liked the murals, I didn't love them. All of Peck's murals have a very graphic quality to them. I prefer work that is a little more organic. More importantly, I found them a little topically bland. There was little passion and no controversy. Undoubtedly, the fact that many were painted with support from large organizations, like McDonalds, contributed to that.

Chinatown Gate in Washington, DC

Washington DC has a pretty sad little Chinatown. It's basically a strip of chain stores and restaurants that also have their names written in Chinese.

However, Chinatown does have one cool thin - the Chinatown Friendship Arch. The arch was designed by local architect Alfred H. Liu.

It was erected as a joint project between DC and our sister city - Beijing. It is supposedly the largest single span archway of its kind in the world. It is one of DC's more colorful pieces of public art.

London's Sci Fi Architecture

This photo really sums up London for me. To the left is the Tower Bridge. It was built in 1894 and crosses the Thames River right next to the Tower of London (circa 1078). It is, in short, the London you imagine from literature and high school history.

The kooky toppled over egg to the right is the London City Hall (circa 2002). It is like something out of Gattaca. These incongruous pairings are found all over the city. It feels a bit like Londoners are screaming out, "Look! We're modern, we're hip! It's not just Dickens and Jack the Ripper you know!"

Me thinks Londoners doth protest too much. Unlike Mexico City, where the different eras somehow work together, in London it is startling. In London's defense, I must point out that much of the city was destroyed during The Blitz and so it isn't as though they knocked down gorgeous old historic buildings to put up their (often egg shaped) futuristic experiments.

I was expecting to be transported back into a Dickens novel and ended up in a 1950s sci fi television show. Beam me up Scotty.