—Federico Fellini, I'm a Born Liar
]]>Nate
: ?A very cool, multicontinental tale of artistic culture-keeping: an Italian town run by artists steps in to save, relocate, and reimagine a Netflix-imperiled New York video rental institution.?“Kim’s was the cutting-edge; that was always the business concept,” Mr. Kim said the other day in one of a series of conversations about the fate of his video collection. “But ironically, I didn’t prepare.”
Last September, in a move that swept through the Internet at viral speed, he issued a public challenge. In a notice pasted on a wall inside the front door, he wrote, “We hope to find a sponsor who can make this collection available to those who have loved Kim’s over the past two decades.” He promised to donate all the films without charge to anyone who would meet three conditions: Keep the collection intact, continue to update it and make it accessible to Kim’s members and others.
Offers poured in. Every one failed on one count or another. Every offer, that is, except one.
Nate
: ?Just up the street from the lake: now that's a gate!?Nate
: ?Google Street View's European march continues; here the camera'd car pauses on the medieval bridge over the Arno. The shops on the bridge, as any tour guide will tell you, used to house butchers (easy offal disposal), but are now, of course, given over to jewelers and other merchants of tourism.?