Barcelona city hall bans badges that portray city’s seedier side | World news | The Guardian

The badges they don't want you to buy

The souvenirs on offer in Barcelona’s gift shops range from tasteful reminders of local artists and architects such as Picasso, Gaudí or Miró to tacky, wide-brimmed Mexican sombreros and posters of footballers such as Lionel Messi.

But the latest souvenir is a set of lapel badges and fridge magnets deemed so subversive by the city hall that they have been banned from municipal museum shops.

The badges depict local scenes that are familiar to both city residents and visitors. They show bag-snatchers, prostitutes, street alcohol vendors and, in a reference to the brutality with which recent demonstrations have been treated, the local riot police.

via Barcelona city hall bans badges that portray city’s seedier side | World news | The Guardian.

Compare and contrast with this item from the City Council website and news feed – City Council launches proceedings against the Museu d’Història’s bookshop for selling badges that promote anti-social behaviour – how shocking!

Strange Random Prohibition Quote:

Why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth. – Will Rogers

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Barcelona’s whistleblower

Image via Wikipedia

A lone woman armed with a whistle and enormous courage has set herself the task of defending unsuspecting tourists from the pickpockets who plague Barcelona. Eliana Guerrero became so incensed by the way groups of thieves were able to freely roam the city’s underground network that she now patrols the metro on her own. She gives loud blasts on her whistle whenever she sees the thieves, who operate mostly in a dozen city centre stations including the Sagrada Familia and Placa Catalunya, and hands out flyers warning about the criminals.

via The lone woman waging war on Barcelona’s pickpockets | World news | The Guardian.

Strange Random Whistle Quote:

“Whistle While You Work.” – Walt Disney (American motion-picture Producer, pioneer of animated cartoon films. 1901-1966)

 

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What price fame?

This advertisement has been on several very large banners around the Diagonal Mar Shopping Centre here in Barcelona for the past few weeks. It offers people the chance to take part in a competition and win modelling prizes. Which is great, despite the fact that yours truly will not be taking part for humanitarian reasons.

Unfortunately, the people that wrote the copy may wish they had consulted their dictionaries first of all.

Whereas a SHOOTING is:

Noun 1. shooting – the act of firing a projectile; “his shooting was slow but accurate”
2. shooting – killing someone by gunfire; “when the shooting stopped there were three dead bodies”

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/shooting

the word they were probably looking for is SHOOT, which is defined, among other things, as:

Noun. [...]
6. A session in which something is photographed, filmed, or videotaped

.

So if someone approaches you in a shopping centre for a shooting opportunity, just decline politely!

Strange Random Shopping Centre Quote:
We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls. – Bill Bryson

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Recession leads to a fall in wedding costs in Spain

Finally, some good news about the economy

Image by epSos.de via Flickr

The average cost of a wedding in Spain has fallen to 14,390 €, down some 12.7% on what was spent in 2010. Generally the price range is between 8,000 € and 20,000 €. A survey from the FUCI, Federation of Independent Consumers and Users, chose a wedding with a reception for 100 guests in 30 different cities across the country and found that Madrid is the most expensive place to get married with an average cost of 17,550 €, followed by 17,000 € in Cataluña and 16,000 € in Valencia.

via Recession leads to a fall in wedding costs in Spain.

Strange Random Wedding Quote:

Look down, you gods,

And on this couple drop a blessed crown!

William Shakespeare – The Tempest

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Barcelona Chairs – Please Don’t Sit. (via Urban Travel Tales)

Great post about the Barcelona chair, part of the Mies Van der Rohe German Pavilion, from a fellow WordPress blogger.

Have you ever heard of the exclusive “Barcelona Chair”?  Most likely you’ve seen one… or a cheap reproduction.  Well, here is the original: THE Barcelona Chair(s) No really, THE original.  From 1929.  Impressed?  Maybe not.  Well, let me tell you the story of this internationally famous silla… Created for the International Exposition of 1929 (hosted by Spain), the Barcelona chair was exclusively designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for the Ge … Read More

via Urban Travel Tales

Strange Random Chair Quote:

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. – Henry David Thoreau

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