Month: January 2024
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Jean Blanc Sports
Shot on a Fujifilm X-T3 and iPhone
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3 degrees
Yesterday, my knee started acting up again on the mountain. It (sometimes they) has a tendency of doing that. Supposedly it’s my IT (iliotibial) band. But I’m not exactly sure. So I had a low-impact snowboarding day and a high-impact aprés ski day, instead. However, when I was training with Noah Mandel last winter, one of the things that he suggested was rotating my snowboard binding to take some of the pressure off of the side of my knee and move it toward the front. So I did that. I rotated it exactly 3 degrees. And then today, I had one of my best days on the mountain. Sometimes all it takes in life is 3 degrees.
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The après table test
There are a number of ways to evaluate a good après ski spot. There’s the food. The drinks. The views/sun exposure. The overall atmosphere. And the simple test of: Am I having fun here? But another important telltale sign is the tables. Yes, the tables. What you want to do is inspect their structural integrity. If they were carefully engineered for dancing upon, then bingo — you’re more than likely at a good après ski spot. And it probably means that at some point in the afternoon or evening, you are going to end up on top of one of them. See above video. If you happen find yourself in this fortunate situation, then there’s no better place than one of the locations of La Folie Douce. I have been to a number of mountains, and I can confidently say that, so far, nothing comes even remotely close. Their tables are robustly engineered.
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Tornado column
Lyon is located at the confluence of two rivers: the Saône and the Rhône. And where these two rivers physically merge in the south is a neighborhood called La Confluence:
A former industrial area and urban renewal project since 1999, La Confluence is now home to world-class architecture, a broad mix of uses, and a club called Le Sucre.
The most important piece of architecture is probably the Musée des Confluences, which was designed by the Austrian firm Coop Himmeb(l)au. It is situated at the very southern tip of La Confluence.
And at the very south end of the museum is this column:
It feels like the exact right place for a column like this.
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Do not park
This is my first time seeing a device like this.
Also, it’s solar powered.
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The opposite of fast fashion
I just discovered and purchased a pair of pants from this French brand called 1083. They specialize in jeans and everything they sell is, for the most part, made in France.
The name 1083 refers to 1083 kilometers, which is the longest possible linear dimension within the “hexagon” of France (a hexagon is often used to describe the geographic boundaries of continental France).
As an example, their shoes have a message on the insoles that says “this shoe was produced within 1083km of where you are right now.” I thought this was a cool brand story and so I wanted to share it with all of you today.
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Street-level offices
One of the things that I have noticed while walking around Lyon is that there seems to be a lot of office space right at street level.
And most of it does not seem to have a consumer-facing element where people just walk in off the street.
There’s something nice about seeing beautiful spaces and people sitting at their desks (I walked past people sitting on exercise balls). It’s another way of animating the street.
Personally, I’d love to have an office right at ground level, similar to the above. But it’s not usually where our minds immediately go. We usually default to retail. Or at least I do.
So I’m going to work to remove this blind spot from my mental models. Office right on the street can clearly work really work.
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Skinny fabric building
This skinny 8-story building caught my eye in the Place des Terreaux in Lyon. I think a lot about these sort of small infill buildings because it is generally not how we build, today, in Toronto. But it’s a workhorse of a “fabric building”, and I can think of many streets that would be made better if only we encouraged this kind of built form. Truthfully, it’s probably most streets.
