Fotos de La Coruña
The Glass City en junio.
Fellow Beboppers, it’s your Reese.
A couple of weeks ago, mi mujer y yo took the train from Santiago de Compostela to La Coruña for a day trip (it’s just A Coruña in Galego). One-way, this is a thirty-minute journey. Multiply by two and voilà: the feeling of floating on a cloud… while reading about an extraterrestrial pathogen spreading across the world. Next to my videojuego-playing wife, no less. Now that’s my kind of trip for only twenty euros total. With that being said, people capable of doing things before 10am can find cheaper tickets.
We are not those people.
Oh. I must address the wrinkled elephant in the room: you thought I didn’t go anywhere, didn’t you? Well, I do, when I’m not fantasizing about hexagons. As long as the destination is within a 50-mile radius I mean 80.4672-kilometer radius of my secret evil world headquarters. I consider anywhere farther from me than three times the radius of the Large Hadron Collider to be really out of the way. La Coruña falls within this area I’ve deduced from pure logic; I took pictures of what I saw there.
You can look at them if you want. Commentary included.
How about that? No lifted pickup truck to roll coal upon the pedestrians, or plow into them. Wow. Seriously, consider the design of the newly renovated passageway pictured above. As those trees grow, they will absorb sound and carbon while providing shade for passersby and bench-warmers. The benches double as barriers. Combined with the trees, they narrow the paths. This narrowing has the psychological impact of slowing drivers (those driving only authorized vehicles in this case).
You don’t need an urban planning degree or certification to notice these features, but you do need people with such education to make these decisions and implement them for the rest of us. You also need urban cheerleaders to spread the word. Who plans your city? Are they doing a good job? Let me know in the comments.
Following a supersized lunch topped off with flan de café near Praza de María Pita, I was thrilled to discover that Dr. Seuss’ spirit lives on in these red lamps hugging the Atlantic coast. They accompany spacious walkways, bike paths, and serpentine streets punctuated by joggers and cyclists. The lamps really are peculiar. If you look closely…
You’ll notice different artistic renderings on them. They correspond to local history. I was going to take a picture of every individual lamp, but cease-and-desisted after receiving credible threats.
Despite the hOuSiNg ShOrTaGe exclusive to the country I’m living in and nowhere else, as the media has so informed me, there are just loads of wonderful apartments everywhere. And city-managed e-bikes. Wow, they don’t look like they’ve been chucked into the ocean even once. It’s as if the people living here enjoy having nice things. I saw a few people riding these bikes.
There are cool murals around the ciudad. If you walk around a lot in urban Spain, you’ll occasionally encounter a street artist in the act. Near my apartment in Santiago, por ejemplo, we have a Transformers-themed rendition that has evolved since we moved here last fall. But if there’s anything renovated more than the street art, it’s the apartment facades, mainly in the spring and summer.
La Coruña’s facades, particularly those facing the ocean, are well renovated. You’ll also find: palm trees adjacent to parks; cemeteries that look like parks, but with the restful dead smiling underneath at the life above; utilitarian low-bed utility vans; flower stores.
The red lamps, safe streets, and bike lanes wrap all the way to the Tower of Hercules. Nearby, there’s a visitor center where you can buy tickets for tours. We just walked around without paying, because inevitably a family member will drag us back here to breach the tower’s interior and have a professional photograph taken when I’m having a bad hair day. (En realidad, a Bad Fur Day.)
It’s a bit of a steep incline to the tower, hence there being a Segway-rental truck just past the visitor center. Too many early 2000s references… let’s bring back the singing, wall-mounted bass while we’re at it. Anyway, locals go up and down just for the exercise, by bike and on foot. There are also well-trodden paths much closer to the ocean, saved for next time. We saw people strolling along those.
Abusing my non-camera’s camera zoom along the steep way to the tower, I present the Horn of Gondor, which La Coruña must have borrowed from Santiago.
And see that jagged rock formation out in the distance? Such is the natural habitat of goose barnacles called percebes, a delicacy boiled in salt water at local restaurants. Percebeiros collect them, scaling down to the thrashing waterline of rocks like these in the Costa da Morte… the Coast of Death. You can only imagine how it acquired that name. It’s just west of the city.
Ah, the Tower of Hercules. I submitted an invitation to assume the oldest Roman lighthouse, A.K.A. Farum Brigantium, as my permanent living quarters for my fully immersive Skyrim cosplay. The city declined my offer, despite my having told them in the email that I would clean the inside — and only with vinegar-based solutions. No harsh chemicals. I told them: “If the toilet stops flushing, I’ll let you know.” No response, not even an automated reply. WHY DOES EVERYONE IGNORE ME? WHAT DOES THEIR SILENCE MEAN?
Anyway, between the tower and coast there’s a compass rose pointing toward different Celtic peoples. People, Celtic or not, like to stand on it. I took a picture of them. I have no idea who they are, but now they’re on this blog forever. How honored they would feel if only they knew.
The skull points toward the Coast of Death.
Can you guess where the clamshell points? (Hint: no hints.)
Pictured: more rocks that spell certain muerte for those who would purloin their winking barnacles, and another sailboat for you sailboat addicts out there. I know at least one reader of this blog is into sailboat life. After watching Waterworld as a child, however, I swore off boat-based modes of living. Don’t expect that kind of thing from me, okay? I suppose I could live in a sealab as portrayed in Sealab 2021, though…
A friend recently brought to my attention the floating hotel being constructed in Vancouver. I could live in that too, actually. Or a lighthouse. Hm, why not all of them? I really need to start planning this shit out. First: become a trillionaire.
Ethically, of course.
Sometimes you think you’re in San Francisco, but actually you’re in La Coruña. I could live in all of these places… Don’t mind my perfectly harmless, intrusive thoughts. They’re instinctual carryovers from pre-agricultural nomadic life, which I clearly would have excelled at. But, if there’s anything our species has learned post-agriculture, it’s that we can solve any problem with technology. And when technology causes problems, we can just add more technology to solve them. Basically, what I need is a Holodeck.
Holodecks are still in development, and I couldn’t afford one anyway. Instead, I spent at least twenty minutes imagining what it would be like to purchase limited-run plastic that has absolutely no cultural connection to Galicia whatsoever. This resulted in a complaint from my manager.
Point is, La Coruña has something for everyone.
On the way back, I couldn’t help but compare La Coruña and Santiago. To tell you the truth, the visit made me appreciate Santiago even more than I already do. Yes, I imagined myself puffing smoke rings out of my pipe from the top of the Farum Brigantium, wearing a wizard cloak. It’s true. Verdad. But I need not acquire smoking habits out of vanity when forest fires can do it for me. Indeed, I could see and smell a ginormous smoke column from my apartment as I was editing this post on the evening of June 13th. Galicia’s entered fire season.
But in spite of the onslaught of novel experiences that make me uncomfortable, Santiago’s home. It just feels like it. Especially when a thunderstorm abruptly rages through, snuffing out the smoke. Then everyone panics… to bring their laundry inside.
La Coruña: it has around 250,000 people compared to Santiago’s 100,000. The Glass City is named for its galerías reflecting ocean waves through brilliant facades; a gorgeous city with all of the hallmarks of grand urban design; an awesome place to live, it seems, but there is sprawl beyond my liking in order to accommodate the larger population. My preference for lean planning is copacetic with Santiago’s compactness. I don’t have much reason to think about locking up a bike, or studying a bus route. I could appreciate more anonymity instead of being the Perpetual-Tourist-Who-Is-Really-Weird. In any case, I wouldn’t trade Santiago’s personal charm for more venues to run my rotation of craziness.
I do plan some things, like having a secret evil world headquarters a short ride away from places I’d enjoy visiting every now and again… no doubt La Coruña. I don’t live in a city connected by high-speed rail for no reason. And you never know, I might even go somewhere more than three Large Hadron Colliders away.
Dear reader, I wish you an incendio forestal-free summer of love from the Iberian peninsula. Pursue your dreams. Even if they involve sealabs or sailboats. Or hexagons for whatever reason…