Bruxelles WTF

Back in October a client/friend flew me to Berlin. We did a few days of wandering and then he went back to his lab and I took a quick train loop around Central Europe.

I got knocked out on the 3rd day in Berlin, and for the rest of the trip I was going around unshaven, with a black eye, black jeans and a black blood-flecked hoodie. When I got back to New York I was complaining about how unfriendly everybody was in Europe and finally somebody said, "You had a black eye? No wonder people were unfriendly." I guess I knew this was part of it, but didn't stop me resenting it. It's weird to be scary but not be.

From Berlin I shot up to Schwerin where some of my ancestors came from. I got icked out real quick and jumped on a late train to Aachen, - cradle of Europe, where Charlemagne had his Christ Masses - had a quick pre-dawn bomb through the fog, then got to Brussels mid-morning where I spent the day on the dérive before I got on a train for Paris in the evening.

What follows are some of the better photos I took, in mostly chronological order, with limited commentary. There are too many of them. I'm sorry.

Also, I'm a lazy photographer. I try not to let the camera take me away from the place, so I don't put much time or effort into composing my shots.

This was my first time in Bruxelles and I did zero research beforehand. I missed a lot of day one stuff, but I had big feelings exploring the streets on intuition, and I had some big(?) thoughts too which I cover in the paywalled Bruxelles WTF II.

I took these pictures in one long ass walk but you don't have to view them all at once. Take breaks. Skip around. Forget about it for a year. One of the things the wanderer is trying to do is reduce order so that the metaphysical aspects of gravity can begin to surface.

If your work is in any of these shots send me a note and I'll gladly credit you.

DF/MO

Piss everywhere but the dimpled ceiling softens the space and the mass and proportions evokes our special memory of our millennia in the caves. Some day lots of people will live here.

Not everything means something but everything has meaning.

These are everywhere around Central Europe. I saw thousands of them on my short trip. I'm in awe of them, as a visible, living scar on the people and the cities of Europe. To me they're a powerful reminder to let others live their lives, but that's the problem with the clowns in charge, they never look beyond the end of their own noses and pride themselves in not knowing what they're walking on.

Peak human civilization.

Chairs are evil but this one is cute.

The chi eddies real nice right here this is a good place to be.

This building gulps you.

This flea market at Place de Jeu de Balle had the best vibe of any public space I saw on this trip. I wanted to live here for a thousand years, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes at sunrise. The quality and patina of objects in this market were a cut above what you'd find in a comparable market in say, Sierra Vista, Arizona, or the Berkshires, or even here in Manhattan.

The neighborhood around is class to it's a big beautiful mix of people from around the world. The photos above and below are right around this plaza.

Leopard printttt.

This hulk is the Palace of Justice - built between 1866 and 1883. It's said to be the largest building built in the 19th century. It was heavily damaged at the end of WWII when the nazis set it on fire before running away, because that's what fascists do. This treachery caused the cupola to collapse. The repair and that scaffolding have been going since the 1980s.

You'll see a lot of this building in the following images, and I go deeper into its history in the paywalled Bruxelles WTF II.

I wanted to write see the ghosts? but I didn't want you to look for actual ghosts because you can't see them. But like... see the ghosts?

New shit that respects the old shit.

This person knows how to smoke cigarettes.

I came up from the back and had no idea what I was looking at.

There's this big parking lot up in the sky, and you can stand in the lot and look at the building, and then turn around and look at the city below. It's hot.

To be a cat on this roof! Bet there have been many.

Oh hey Athena.

This place eats souls.

For whatever reason I only took this one photo of the front side of the Palace of Justice.

Are we trying to intimidate you? I don't know buddy, what do you think? ARE WE?

drunk.

Just gonna take off my skin and sashay around this forest brb...

All over the landscapes of earth there are little emergency gravity buffers like this and to me it's evidence of both the thought and care of the workers keeping the industrial system running, and the lack of care administered by the purse-holders and their false-economy of 'cost-cutting' that means most things take far too long to get fixed.

These little round rooms are probably great for thinking.

idk what's going on but I wish I did.

Petit Sablon. OG map nerd Gerardus Mercator lurking in the back left. These dudes are the Count of Egmont and the Count of Horn. They were executed by Phillip II (King of Spain) for opposing the introduction of the Inquisition into The Netherlands, while remaining faithful to the king and the Catholic Church during the Beeldenstorm of 1566 (rampant destruction of religious symbols).

Also, Goethe wrote a play about Egmont. Beethoven did the music. I shit you not. The moral of the story is you never trust your friends. No comment on those fucking tights.

Church of Our Lady of Victories at the Sablon, built in the 1400s when the sablon was the fashionable quarter for the nobility. I get into it a little more in Bruxelles WTF II.

Bright pink is one of the greatest inventions of industrial society.

Lions vs. lift.

These building are identical and frame the lead-up to European Parliament's complex a few blocks away. I spent some time trying to understand why they diverged in appearance but I forgot to take more pictures. Again more rad apartments.

European Parliament.

Leopold Park (above and below) is a hugely influential science/medicine/economics park built in the late 1800s, with monumental buildings scattered around a very inviting park. This building hosted the famous 5th Solvay Conference on Physics that solidified quantum theory and made it part of mainstream science.

I had a whole life here with this lamp post.

Eastman Dental Hospital in Leopold Park, set up by George Eastman who founded Kodak and advanced public health and so far is just about the most humanist industrialist I've run across (other than our man Peter Cooper). After developing a painful spinal disorder he shot himself in the heart in 1932. Sort of like his company would do at the birth of digital photography.

Those look like really comfortable apartments. What a balcony.

When your big brother gets ugly pants but you copy him anyway.

Brute

Look up, look down, look all around. It's what creatures do.

Bring back Art Nouveau!

RE/MAX was founded in Denver in 1973.

The bricks! Notice how much more beautiful things get when they're integrated into a spot, rather than just placed on it.

Shoulda walked over and read that plaque.

Paul-Henri Spaak building in the background - where the European Parliament debates. More in part II.

Parc du Bruxelles. There were a bunch of people drinking beer it was so chill and so booooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrinnnnnnnnngggggg. 10x more boring than Madison Square Park.

Could not be fucked to learn about this dude. Terrible pants.

King's official palace. But he lives somewhere else.

My dad's been trying to produce a sharper version of this chair on/off for a decade, but he couldn't find a manufacturer. After I sent him this he tracked down the people that made it but they didn't want to get involved. It's a sweet chair really nice bounce and a great give vs. resistance ratio.

The chairs look out over the building that's really famous but I can't remember why. Around this time I started to get a little more focused on finding the train station again.

Yeah cool man good for you.

The sound of ten carriages and a hundred hooves clattering around this square carrying some fussy, be-wigged people off to do some fussy, brutal shit. (Mont des Artes)

"Then an angel came down and put the crown on my head and told me I'm in charge forever. I'm not making it up."

Wrong train station. Also how do these seats work they seem so absurd.

Agree.

In 1999 Manolo Paz and the city of Bruxelles installed 50 of these leading from churches and out of the city towards the pilgrimage route of Santiago de Compostela as a tribute to centuries of nameless Catholic pilgrims.

Better with bicycles.

Skate park.

These dudes are across the street from each other. I wonder how they get along.

I love this shit. I love it. It sends my eyes to Pluto. You guys are amazing. All of you who contribute to this. Thank you.

Agree.

Brussels is just full of these warm little moments that cleanse the visual palate and invite the body to linger. Even these windows in the foreground... so much of the city just looks like it was built for today people and tomorrow people and not just to grab a quick buck. Places meant to last far into the future filled with the ghosts of the fat, happy, and satisfied. There is comfort and safety and space behind the walls.

But this intersection belongs in Phoenix. WTF.

These apartments! Give me a brown corduroy couch and a type writer and let me pace around while looking out those windows, pretending to write. Heaven.

Back to the cave.

Great snakes!

Waiting for the train to Paris. You made it to the end. Remember, we don't know what we don't know, which is usually what we need to know most. Wandering helps us find it.