Dear Readers,
Good afternoon and welcome back to Off The Fence: a newsletter that’s never needed therapy.
The issue has been busy as ever, racking up impressive snaps at a frankly terrifying rate. This week it has been saving brutalist architecture, witnessing the nation’s obsession, gracing the hands of a belated subscriber, ruminating on the possibility of seceding from Spain and still squeezing in a brief, beautiful holiday. It’s hard, however, to look past this striking magazine display from the top shelves of Fukuoka, Japan.
Fantastic snaps all, but which will win the fizz? To throw your hat in the ring send us a picture at editorial@the-fence.com or tag us on social media. We do love grainy quotidian entries from the UK just as much as we like hi-res beauties from across the world (truly).
And if these glorious images weren’t more than enough, the cherry on top of the cake of our week is some very kind words from magCulture’s Jeremy Leslie, who has named us as one of his 10 best designed magazines of the decade for It’s Nice That, which we reproduce in full below.
We are putting up the prices of ALL subscriptions – print, digital and both – for new customers tomorrow at 12 on the dot. So this is your absolutely last chance to save yourselves some money.
It’s time to plunge into the fray. This week we have whispers from the Azeri steppe, real estate madness, Guardian Angels and a few spins on the old log-roll. But, first let’s talk about something people don’t like to talk about in public.
Et In Arcadia Ego
Given that luxury property prices are plummeting, there’s never been a more dignified time to be open about a Rightmove addiction: a particular kink that serves zero purpose, unless you’re an aspiring landlord or write sarky newsletters for a living.
In that spirit, we polled a number of aspiring real estate magnates as to the nuttiest listings they’ve ever encountered on the website, the most bonkers des reses they’ve ever found through countless hours of fantasy-laced scrolling. In third place, we have a property that quite a few of you will have probably walked past – the Grey House in N6, a full-windowed slab of modernism located within Highgate Cemetery, so you will be gawped at by tourists by day and stalked by vampires at night.
In second, a place that we reckon no one has ever been to – Thorne Island, a rocky islet off the Pembrokeshire Coast dominated by a coastal artillery fort. For whatever reason, numerous property developers have reckoned that a collection of rainswept crenellations in a remote part of Wales would be the perfect venue for upmarket events, and it’s been tarted up over the years – it’s currently on sale for £3 million.
But our winner is, fittingly, a house that you would actually want to live in, at least for the summer months. The Tukal, near Beaulieu in Hampshire, was designed by Seymour Harris in the 1960s as his own residence, and is somehow both unlisted and also relatively unknown. A Bond Villain estate in the New Forest really is too good to be true, and the interior is just as you would hope it to be.
Sweet Tamasa, Hear Our Song
While we try not to trumpet ourselves too loudly, we are really very proud of Capital Letter, our London-centred newsletter which comes out fortnightly. You should sign up right now.
This Thursday, we have our first clubbing dispatch from a night known in queer London as ‘the KGB’, a guide to the few outposts of normality in Westminster and a brief inquiry into how Mark Godfrey is the London art world’s most promising new starfucker. It’s free to read (for now) and all you need to do is enter your email address here – we’re having a lot of fun with it.
Rusholme Ruffians
If you’re in the market for an illuminating new addition to your inbox, let us commend to you The Ruffian, Ian Leslie’s weekly newsletter on culture, politics and human behaviour. Ian is a writer we deeply admire – not least for his vigorous adoration of The Beatles, made manifest most notably in his Baillie Gifford longlisted tome, John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs. But you needn’t flock to Waterstones to read his very latest (though we encourage you to do that too). Leslie’s gloriously eclectic mailouts are tucker for anyone who enjoys smart thinking that challenges conventional wisdom. There’s even a podcast – and it’s good! Two thumbs-up from us: read The Ruffian today, for writing that respects your intelligence.
Burn Me at the Stake
Tomorrow marks the launch of a radio series on Radio 4, Anatomy of a Cancellation, which follows the case of prizewinning author, Kate Clanchy, who entered into a years-long spat with a trio of fellow writers with terrible consequences for everyone involved.
The series has been previewed with a long interview in the Times, in which Clanchy’s side of the story is very much favoured. For balance, we suggest reading this post by Esther Walker (Mrs Giles Coren). All in all, there’s a lot of glee around What This All Means from either side of the aisle; scolds and crusaders feeling equally vindicated.
We look forward to listening, and with great interest.
Idle Praise
‘In its good-natured eclecticism, The Pub winks at all of us pub-lovers like the pint of cool amber ale that now sits on the table in front of me: full of the promise of fun.’
Our wonderful book, The Pub, has continued to attract praise for which we are very grateful. John Mitchinson was kind enough to review it for The Idler, praising it as an ‘admirable collation’ of writing ‘which creates a pleasing sense of camaraderie and affirmation’. He has much praise for Patrick Galbraith’s and Charlotte Ivers’ entries as well as our proprietary blend of ‘reflective essays, daft jokes [and] a quiz or two.’ And truly this is just the tip of the iceberg. ‘Turn up in good faith and wait to be entertained,’ John writes – and we couldn’t, nor should we for fear of hubris, agree more.
I’ll Be Mac
We really are entering the season of joy, cheer and gifts – Jimmy McIntosh’s latest piece is up on the website. It’s his brilliant feature from Issue 25, ‘The Grogfather’, in which he managed to track down and interview one of the country’s last great character publicans – Nofio Pecoraro Junior, or as he was known in the UK, John Stryker.
It’s an incredible tale of a secret life. An affable publican responsible for saving The Railway, a pub down on its luck in Hampton Wick, Nofio was really a man on the run, the son of a notable caporegime in the New Orleans mafia. Time caught up to him and his arrest proved the end of his time in the UK and an end to the pub. Jimmy managed to find him and interview him, bringing us one of the most exciting pub stories we’ve ever published, and yet another advert for that book we keep talking about, in which it first appeared. This book, below. (Click the picture).
Return of the Mac (Once Again)
And speaking of Jimmy Mac, which one cannot do often enough, is it really a surprise that such gold dust should fall from his impeccably tailored sleeves? He’s been at it with some style for some time. In fact, delving into the catalogue we had a wonderful revisit of his first-ever entry for us, a late-night foray to The Lighterman, the capital’s most isolated pub, holding the fort in Barking’s Thames View Estate with no compatriots to support it; walls adorned by the Rat Pack, Don Corleone and David Beckham.
His other tales shine just as brightly. Think on the whistle-stop tour of the capital’s most overlooked and best pub crawl, Oliver Reed’s ‘Wimbledon Eight’, which, in keeping with the man’s infamous drinking capacity, asks not just that its participants make it to all eight pubs, but that they do so as fast as possible, and that the last person back to the starting pub must pay the fine of the ninth round. Perhaps one of his most masterful is his journey to Poundbury, our king’s very own emotional fiefdom, where he had been putting his sausagey fingers to some town planning work. It is a bizarre place with bizarre pubs and a testament to the inability to conjure from nothing the ineffable, lived quality that really makes a pub a pub.
The old maxim says quality over quantity, but Gen Z could not be more right when they intone ‘get you a man who can do both’. So we can but commend to you some further nuggets from his goldmine: an examination of the lurid, pounding presence of Outernet on Tottenham Court Road, a tale of woeful parliamentary pints, a defence of the limbo-land that is King’s Cross and a search for John Betjeman’s London. Settle in for some serious reading and raise a jar to the man with the golden soda gun.
Listen to Auntie Tracey
A shout out tofriend of The Fence, Katy Hessel, who has a new book out, destined to fly off shelves as footloose and fancy-free as her first. It’s called How to Live an Artful Life, and gives you, The Reader, a series of thoughts, routines, insights and exercises for every day of the year, from some of the most talented creatives to enter the public realm. Think the Book of Hours meets The Artists’ Way, with cameos from Marina Abramović, Hilton Als, Zadie Smith, Tracey Emin and many, many, many more, all threaded by Katy’s expert commentary and analysis. It’s the perfect gift for anyone looking to bring a bit more creativity into their daily routine – even if the person you’re gifting is yourself. Go on, you’ve earned it. Get your copy!
Plus, don’t miss her monthly newsletteron the best exhibitions to see, books to read, podcasts to listen to, artists you should know about, and more. Again, it is very good.
Baku in the U.K.S.R
Let’s assume, for a moment, that you’ve never really thought about going to Azerbaijan. What in the world could compel you to visit the Land of Fire? What would it take? One dynamic, well-connected and multi-talented Azeri businessman has just the thing to change your holiday habits – if it can be completed, anyway. Introducing ‘Project Seabreeze’, a vast new set of luxury apartments and resorts under construction on the Caspian sea.
Just how large will it be? The current plans comfortably exceed the size of Manhattan and seem to involve the building of a number of artificial islands, one in the shape of a full crescent and star to reflect the Azeri flag. The rationale behind erecting several artificial islands in a country notorious for its flat steppe is one that escapes us but then again the creative vision on display here is excessive in its scope. Take, if you will, the genius of building an entire set of luxury apartments in the shape of a yacht thrusting out into the sea… and therefore requiring the massive undertaking of removing the sea from that area so as to allow the building to exist. That is liquid thinking.
The client is Emin Agalrov, son of a Russian oligarch and former son-in-law to the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, and he has sought the expertise of Scott Brownrigg, the oldest architectural practice in the UK, to realise the dream. They’re an odd combination. Emin, alongside planning vast construction projects, is focused on his burgeoning career as a singer, the highlights of which have included a BBC 2 Album of the Week nomination, as well as this music video that ends with a pre-President Trump cameo. This is a product of both father and son’s close relationship with the POTUS, which included a handwritten letter of congratulations from Emin in 2016. Scott Brownrigg, on the other hand are perhaps excessively proud of their history, and claim their guiding principle is to ‘enrich lives through the built environment’.
The unlikely due makes more sense when one thinks of the money and realises that the venerable world of British architecture is very interested in the whims of anyone with cash to spare. Indeed, the UK government is now the largest contributor of Official Development Assistance in the region and it seems many are spotting a lucrative opportunity. ‘Enrich’ is certainly the operative word in Scott Brownrigg’s ethos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuZUNjFsgS8
All this leaves us with an appreciation for the new (!) and exciting (!) sources for revenue for British firms, such as Emin, with all their associated idiosyncrasies and fun moral quandaries. We have especially been enjoying Emin’s AI promotional posts for his vast construction projects. These depict nonsensical and nonexistent fleets of machinery, strange hover-vehicles and AI imaginings of himself instructing his architects on some necessary changes, turning to them and saying, ‘You see this beam? It’s carrying the pergola beams’, something that any architect will tell you makes zero sense.
The whole thing is brilliantly ridiculous, although it should perhaps be another reminder about how unsevered the UK’s relationship with Russian-linked money is.
In Case You Missed It
Elon Musk wins the award for the most depressing tweet we’ve ever seen.
An incredible new genre with a BPM in excess of 180 is coming out from South Africa and it’s called Shangaan Electro.
A very interesting interview on the state of the UK music industry (and the perils of a methamphetamine addiction) with Saul Adamczewski.
Amanda Petruisch speaks to David Byrne, and at some length.
Our friends at Pellicle have dropped an extraordinary guide to pub etiquette which invokes Belloc and Manet to decry poor pinting behaviour.
Nick Tenconi has no idea how to fake a photo.
And Finally
Breaking news, revealed exclusively here: The New York mayoral race is over and the sharp-suited millennial Gooner, Zohran Mamdani, has won it. The only real disappointment of this is that we are going to be seeing a lot less of Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, the man obsessed with the mafia, cats, his red beret and whose last name means ‘plum tree’ in his ancestral Polish.
What those who’ve come across him recently might not know is just how long and just how persistently Curtis has been at his shtick. He has worn his beret for so long now, it has produced a sharp tan line that cuts across his forehead; no wonder, if you look at this newsreel from 1979 where a 23-year-old Plummers – then a McDonald’s night manager – is rocking it. This garb came to him as the ideal uniform for the Guardian Angels, New York’s on-and-off-again vigilantes who patrol the New York subways in fits and starts whenever a bad spate of street crime grips the public’s attention.
It was in this capacity as a beret-toting, martial-artist street tough that Sliwa made a slew of ridiculous appearances on multi-media channel, Big Think. Here he is talking a mile a minute about how to make a citizen’s arrest on a variety of potential suspects using an unfortunate and very tired-looking PA as his stunt double. The targets include ‘the new-agey, crystal-balancing, Oprah fan’ and ‘the cretin with chromosome damage’ – titles that tell you these videos are 14 years old without you needing to check the description. We’ve skipped you ahead to the third example, though, for good reason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NVLZIDg31M
If this all feels like a uniquely American aberration, we invite you to rethink. The power of this kind of vigilantism proved international, as these incredible pictures on the 80s London Underground prove.
Equally thrilling is his recitation of the time he was shot four times by the New York mob, after his consistent coverage of them and their crimes on his radio show. It’s a great story, if not one he does seem to crowbar into any and all speeches he has made, over the course of his endless campaign against New York’s grubby crims.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoCtjhwt6Zc
This election may not have been a winner for Sliwa, and the man is, shall we say, complicated. But, as even Mamdani-heads have appreciated, it is hard not to be fascinated by one of the most intensely Nu Yawk people to grace the public sphere. In fact, we can think of only one man whose fundamental Nu Yawkness might outdo him, and can’t help but think that when Sliwa makes mention of ‘the big man upstairs’ – as he is often wont to do – he isn’t thinking of God but rather Michael Caracciolo, aka The Big Man, aka The Kid From New York, a Peter Griffin-esque Yankee monologuer seen here ranting to webcam about Quaaludes. Concrete jungle where dreams are made of.
That’s that for this week, if you would like to speak to us about an order, do email at support@the-fence.com. If you’ve got tips or issue snaps, fantastic: editorial@the-fence.com, please. Biologically speaking, there’s no such thing as a fish – a cuttlefish and a salmon are as far apart as a bee and an eagle. Until next week.
All the best,
TF