Bilbao Song

“Bilbao Song,” written by Kurt Weil and Bertolt Brecht, translated by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, recorded by Marianne Faithfull, with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra,1998. Originally recorded (in German) by Lotte Lenya in 1929.

Brecht’s lyrics describe the Spanish city’s gentrification:

“Bill’s beer hall in Bilbao
now they’ve cleaned it up and made it middle class
with potted palms and ice cream
very bourgeois, very bourgeois
just another place to put your ass!”

The lyrics themselves get gentrified in the bourgeois translation by Johnny Mercer, which omits Bill’s bar entirely, substituting “Tony’s Beach Saloon” to make the cheap rhyme with “moon.” It was recorded in Archie Bleyer‘s potted-palm arrangement by plain-vanilla Andy Williams in 1961:

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DC Gentrification Displaces Bluegrass Music Radio

WAMU, the Washington public radio station owned by American University, has broadcast Bluegrass music since 1967, but that will end on New Year’s Eve 2017. On Thursday afternoon the NPR affiliate announced it will stop over-the-air broadcasts of the “High Lonesome Sound” and seek a buyer for its online music service Bluegrass Country due to “tremendous demographic shifts” in the Washington DC area.

“From 1967 through the 70s and 80s, generous support from the bluegrass community allowed WAMU to expand. Today, WAMU’s Bluegrass Country is a 24/7 bluegrass music service broadcasting at 105.5 FM, HD on 88.5-2, and streaming on http://bluegrasscountry.org . Bluegrass Country’s social media includes a YouTube channel with over 4.4 million views.”

— “WAMU Seeks New Owner for Bluegrass Country,” WAMU website (links added)

Hey buddy, want to buy a radio station? Look here. If nobody buys Bluegrass Country by the end of December, the service will close, so listen while you can, right here (click on “listen live”).

More:

“WAMU Will Sell or Close Its Bluegrass Station,” Andrew Beaujon, Washingtonian

“Bluegrass Country seeks new owners,” John Lawless, Bluegrass Today

Related:

“Washington D.C., The Bluegrass Capitol – The Story of Bluegrass in Washington, DC,” a film by G.T. Keplinger [24:27]

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SoDoSoPa: City Living

South Park takes on the hip New Urbanism.

More:

“The SoHo Effect,” 99% Invisible

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Brooklyn: ‘Do The White Thing’

An all-star cast (including Flavor Flav) updates Spike Lee’s Brooklyn classic for Jimmy Kimmel.

” … 26 years after the original, we finally have a sequel that we think does an equally good job of reflecting the spirit and feeling of Brooklyn today.”

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Bayou Bakery Opens on the Hill

Celebrity chef David Guas has a new DC outpost of his Arlington café on Capitol Hill. The Bayou Bakery, Coffee Bar & Eatery has just opened at 901 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, in the carriage house of the historic Old Naval Hospital, built in 1866.

The carriage house has some more recent history. In 1990 the nonprofit Community Action Group began operating out of it. CAG, affiliated with Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian Catholic Church, an African American parish, ran a program helping homeless men and women with drug addictions find treatment, housing, and employment. In 2007, when the city and private donors paid millions to turn the main building into the Hill Center, a nonprofit facility teaching kiddie yoga and French cooking, the program for the homeless was evicted from the carriage house to make space for a profit-making restaurant.

Bon appétit.

The New Gentrifiers

“Look out, gays and lesbians – the straight people are coming for your real estate. In There Goes the Gayborhood, a new book for the Princeton Press, author and University of British Columbia associate professor of sociology Amin Ghaziani explores whether venerable ‘gayborhoods’ like San Francisco’s Castro and New York City’s West Village are disappearing in ‘a new post-gay era.’ As demographics shift, is it a sign of acceptance of a community – or the dilution of it? Is it possible, as the New York Times once so damningly put it, that ‘gay neighborhoods face the prospect of becoming passé’?“

— “Are America’s ‘gayborhoods’ dying out?” Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon

 More:

“The rise and fall of American gayborhoods,” Matthew Yglesias, Vox

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Bicycles = Elitism?

It’s back! That 21st century city transportation question:

“Are urban bicyclists just elite snobs?” Will Doig, Salon.

Earlier iterations:

“Are Bike Lanes Expressways to Gentrification?” Paul M. Davis, Shareable

“Bike Lane Backlash, Even in Portland,” Sarah Goodyear, Atlantic Cities

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