Your Take on Vienna Fringe Living: THE INSIDER TIPS: Report #1

Within hours of launching the newest in our Living On The Edge series, our inboxes were already steadily pinging to announce the arrival one great tip after another. We asked you how you live off the tourist radar, and you, White Line Hotels’ fans, have given us your edit for the cooly classic city that is Vienna.

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The Third Wave and Stumptown Coffee

The other day a friend of mine, a self-confessed coffee nerd, told me that right now we are experiencing a “Third Wave of Coffee”. Until that day I had never ever heard something like that, but being interested in all things having to do with food culture my interest was triggered right away and I was curious to find out more.

The first wave of American coffee culture started around the 19^th century and was all about serving drip coffee anywhere, anytime at low prices. With the second wave, starting in the 60s, coffee drinkers became more interested in the region or country their coffee had been imported from. This wave ended in globally franchised companies, such as Starbucks, serving overpriced espresso milk drinks.

In the third wave, however, vicinity and direct relations with the coffee farmers are now as important as putting thought and effort into roasting and brewing techniques to bring out the unique characteristics of each coffee bean.

Stumptown Coffee Roasters opened in Portland, Oregon in 1999 and has been riding this third wave of coffee culture very successfully ever since. These pioneers opened their one and only New York coffee bar at 29th and Broadway ten years later. Whereas New York used to rely on imported specialty coffee, people there finally get to enjoy the unsurpassed taste of freshly roasted beans from the nearby Stumptown roaster in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The location itself reflects the urbanity of downtown New York, with light flooding through the storefront, a dark wooden counter and a polished marble floor. With uniforms including neckties and old-timey hats, the male baristas look more like bartenders from the 1930s than your average coffee shop employee. All of it is being part of Duane Sorenson’s concept. The founder and proprietor of Stumptown Coffee Roasters wants us to see that coffee is more than just a commodity. Like wine or chocolate, coffee is very complex and coffee making a real science. It begins with the kind of varietal you decide to grow in which region, it depends on the harvesting and roasting and ends with how and from what kind of espresso machine it gets pulled.

There is too much to write about Third Waves and Stumptown’s unique way of doing business, like how they treat farmers fairly, or how employees all get full health benefits and can take time off to tour in their bands….

Stumptown is like the Portland embassy, and one of a kind for offering some of the freshest and best tasting coffee you will find in New York.

For something every bit as artisan as a cup of Stumptown’s Coffee, head over to White Line Hotels edit The Greenwich Hotel, a taste of neighbourhood heritage with a distinctive signature.

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Contributing writer: Julia Schröder

Images courtesy www.stumptowncoffee.com

Surfs up! In Sweden?!

Maybe, like me, you had no clue that Sweden has a thriving surf culture, but I’ll bet you that, considering the Swedes’ reputation for relaxed perfection, it’s totally awesome!

In kind of a backwards version of the story told in Stacy Peralta’s legendary 2001 documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, sometime in the late 70s Per Torstensson, Stisse Bengtsson, Micki Carlsson and Ake Gylling decided to take their skateboarding skills and hit the waves. The resulting, mythic Porridge Bay Surf Club was at the forefront of the sport in Sweden’s West Coast where famously tight-lipped local surfers still safeguard the hottest stretches for the areas best surf.

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Liu Bolin, The Invisible Man

There are many ways to protest, as many as there are reasons to do it for. This has been a particularly hot topic in the wake of the recent riots in London, where scattered amongst deplorable and arguably self-defeating acts of violence and vandalism, one consistent sentiment was beamed out of the city via the international press: we are now visible. For many, feeling invisible is among the worst of the spectrum of human emotions, and probably for the volume of negative emotions it incorporates: powerlessness, worthlessness, disenfranchisement, and so on. Considering the amount of destruction and violence that has taken place – not exclusive to the recent events in the UK – for the sake of feeling visible, why would anyone chose then, of their own accord, to become invisible?

One part magic eye puzzle, one part Where’s Waldo (albeit somewhat easier but with a darker background story), Chinese Artist Liu Bolin’s Hiding in the City series only needs to be seen quickly before the viewer will understand why he’s called “The Invisible Man”. The series started in 2005, when the Chinese government ordered the demolition of Beijing International Art Camp (BIAC), also known as Suojiacun Artists’ Village, which housed several studios, including Liu Bolin’s. In response, Curator Zhang Zhaohui organized the exhibition Demolish! Demolish! Demolish!. For his contribution, Liu Bolin painted himself to camouflage with the rubble of the building. That’s right, these images are not the product of Photoshop or any other form of photographic manipulation; they are the artist hand painted into the scene.

Liu Bolin maintains that his art is a protest against the actions of the Chinese government, who is known for censoring their artists. In a way it is very literal; the government tells you, more or less, to become invisible and you become, more or less, invisible. In another way, it is not so straightforward. In the family tree of protest strategies, his methods may be most closely related to the sit-in, but the visual pun of taking away his own voice hollers as loud as a rally.

Check out Liu Bolin at Fotografiska in Stockholm until September 11^th. If you’re looking for somewhere to disappear into in the city, White Line Hotels Stockholm edit Nobis Hotel, Hotel J, and Hotel Skeppsholmen provide all the backdrops you need.

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Photos www.fotografiska.eu

Work in Progress Photos: www.spiegel.de

Three Works by Hans-Peter Feldmann, or a Feldmann Triptych to Collecting?

As much as I love an exhibition title that expands on a thought, or gives a further piece of information to unlock hidden secrets in the work, there’s also something to be said for a more direct, no-frills approach. Tres Obres de Hans-Peter Feldmann (Three Works by Hans-Peter Feldmann) is one such title, but is the directness somewhat deceiving? Trios and trilogies, after all, have long held a mythic or holy position in society (the three graces, The Father, The Son and the Holy Ghost, the original Star Wars trilogy). Or, could it be that the exhibition really is just three works by Hans-Peter Feldmann, without the weight of meaning of three, the magic number?

Feldmann’s practice is generally built on collecting, ordering, and re-presenting. These three works, whether you see them singularly or as a collection among themselves, are no exception to that generality. To start with the triptych within the trio, Seated women in paintings uses the classic triptych form, but resembles more the pin-board of an obsessive than the usual alter pieces for which the form is usually reserved – once again, a case of threes falling in the realm of the holy and mythical. It begs the question, however, if collecting raises its objects to the status of the holy. If you’ve ever known an avid collector, or spent enough time on Ebay, that question might be easier to answer.

Rounding out the trio of works in the exhibition are Bookshelves, a large scale 5-panel photograph of the artists’ own bookshelves, and Amateur photos held by hand, a series of 28 photographs of the artist holding pieces of his collection of found photographs. Here our pleasure as the viewer is not in appreciating the collection, but in the peering into the life and mind of who collected it; they serve as two voyeuristic side-panels to the centerpiece of Seated women in paintings in a greater triptych alter piece to collecting itself.

The exhibition is running at Barcelona’s Projecte SD until the 10th of September. While you’re collecting memories, and maybe some souvenirs, be sure to check out White Line Hotels edit Hotel Omm. More than just a name, here you’ll have all peace to you need to meditate on life’s greater questions, or just chill out by the rooftop pool.

Photos: www.projectesd.com