Vive les différances!

For example, isn’t it great that the moment kids are once again handed over from the  weirdness of nuclear, composite or other other contemporary family types to the safe hands of the collective, then the lovely lazy summer turns into absolute dismalness?

It’s a good time to reflect on other differences too. The time-place that is Finnish summer tends to throw up lovely scenes like this:

and this

Kallio or Kuhmo, Kuhmo or Kallio? Tip, you don’t need a vihta at Rytmi bar (but then you don’t need as good a lock in Kuhmo as in Kallio).

Finland also now has many types of beers. True, monopolies and mergers rules are so outrageously flaunted in little Finland (“it’s too small for genuine competition”), that you’d think there was a quasi-official drive to force us all into Hemingways pubs with their offers for loyalty card-holders. But no. We now have genuine variety!

As in a beer in Kallio (from Laitila)

and a beer in a small town somewhere on the Baltic.

(As an editorial note, Finland’s old standard beer bottles, as distinct from what’s inside them, are much loved by us here at JHJ. Apparently each one of those number 3 or 4 beer bottles is reused about 35 times.)

Then there are so many different ways to liven up a slightly tired waterfront. Here’s the temporary cafe in Kalasatama where a notice to staff reminds them to water the plants, do the washing, save the world and take out the rubbish:

 

Then there’s Cafe Tyyni, which was almost stolen from us. Helsinki’s more official but definitely zealous types wanted to close it down because of a hose pipe (as JHJ reported in April) but really because the city thought a higher-end producer might pay it a higher rent. Apart from showcasing some undersung heroes of Finnish design (Felix and Turun Sinappi), they have been offering live music and dance and good cheer of late and all that with hardly a hint (well, maybe a bit – note the English-language ad) of doing it for the tourists.

And then, for our tour de force today, a brand new beach in Eira (photographed on a Nokia phone. Sorry bout that).

Estate agents appear to think that something like this is a significant attraction to bring in new property investors (surely home buyers? ed). At a square metre in the area costing upwards of 6000 Euros, and given that it’s a rare olde worlde kind of urban environment within spitting distance of all the best retail and other services, one might think that the newly created beach isn’t that big a deal.

But what do we know?

Let’s not go drink-driving shall we?

This was the message added to the “kiosk temporarily closed” sign attached yesterday to what was once known as “Helvin kiska” on Tehtaankatu near Eira hospital.

Just a little bit of intrepid exploration yielded some interesting comments from people living nearby. Seems that far from being a thing of the past, the life of Helsinki’s lippakioski (kiosks with a canopy or a “peak” as in a peak-cap) is in rude health. Too rude, it seems, for some. People reported huge gatherings, (music, including that of the live persuasion), random opening-hours and such. And yet they all seemed pleased to have the kiosk open for summer.

These lovely bits of urban clutter or indispensable urban furniture (depending on your preference) have had a mixed past. They were introduced into Helsinki’s street scene in the 1930s as many a website will tell you, in the process making reference to the undersung hero of Helsinki architecture, Gunnar Taucher. Between, say, the 1970s and the noughties (2000s) they went into a bit of a decline, but they are back!

They are definitely funkkis as in functionalist. This refers to architecture, but it’s more general than that. What could be more functional than the ability to acquire, on the hoof, ice cream, sweets, cigarettes, tissues and all the other stuff that collects at the bottom of an urbanite’s bag? Unsurprisingly, they are mentioned from time to time by writers with an eye on unwanted change in the city like Kimmo Oksanen and bloggers with cool photos like this or by architecture enthusiasts like Anne Mäkinen.

So, was the idiot who rammed his car (or truck – whatever it was, it was big!) over the metal railings embedding a wheel of the bin into the wood panelling on the side of the kiosk, someone who doesn’t like the (endearingly unplanned) revival of kiosk life or just an idiot? Guess it could have been the latter, as although drink-driving laws in Finland are STRICT, the push to transgress is also BIG.

Oh, off to the kiosk now for some refreshments. See ya.

Embarrassment of riches

The Finnish rich (according to Taloussanomat) are poor. Everything is, obviously, relative. But even staid old YLE tells us that there’s something of geographical interest in the rich. In Finland most of them live in Uusimaa. So tells us Taloussanomat, again. Interesting how the rich are so interested in other rich people’s riches.

Apparently Helsinki city council would like many more of these people to live in Helsinki itself – a reason often given for why the council, despite its lefty-greeny looks (even among the right-wingers) keeps making decisions that bolster the good life as understood by those for whom urban-policy-words like vibrant and regenerated have not even a whiff of self-delusion, and who are oblivious to the fact that what they consider normal is actually excessively expensive – not just in money but in space, resources, other people’s energies…

What I mean is that the good life as understood in this sense takes up masses of space and uses more electricty and fuel than the rich of yester-year could ever have imagined.

So a family of five who bought a flat in Eira in 1965 felt almost (not quite though) embarrassed to inhabit their 100 square metres of living space (plus two balconies, storage in the basement, shared sauna and adjacent indoor parking space with automatic door). A generation later, a family of four moved down the road (in 2005) into Eiranranta, knocked down some walls to create about 270 sqare metres, and also got space for their three cars and (you have to know this is hearsay, but still) state-of-the-art security gadgetry and more power sockets for lifestyle gadgets than can possibly be good for social skills.

But when the media reports on the drift into the rich and the poor, it only ever seems to concentrateon the poor, and how they depend on the public purse! I so wish that way of reporting would stop. Because in actual fact, the rich are also exploiting the free stuff (including the hospitals in Meilahti, like the maternity clinic, above). Much better in fact than the poor, but nobody complains about their drain on the resources. For example, Finnish health care isn’t cheap (though on the basis of your blogger’s unfortunate recent personal experience, it does look great and is staffed by remarkably cheerful people) but it is cheaper than private insurance. And that IS being brought up by more and more Finns.

Note on the weather – it be chilly out there. Hey ho, what does a woman with only one functioning leg do in such a situation? Enjoys Espoo in the best possible way – looking out at the snow-covered garden from a remarkably comfortable – and not at all small – house where she is being extremely well taken care of.

Between degrowth and under-development (underground car parks, that is)

Helsinkians disagree quite a lot about the best way to go about things. In fact, I’d say this city is pulling in opposing directions in lots of ways. It wants more local services, but also more centralisation. More sustainability, more cars and fewer buses. It follows the imperative to put more money in everyone’s pocket, but there are also some who haven’t just heard of, they want to promote, degrowth. There are those who want more stuff and bigger homes to fit it into and those who don’t. And so on.

Same thing for shops, our perennial preoccupation here at Jees Helsinki Jees. Those who want local shops and services talk about it non-stop. Meanwhile the centralised food retail system keeps us in its constantly expanding clutches. And, on the rare occasions when one ventures to read media reports (Finland’s accelerating lurch to the right means it’s better to avoid broadcast news) it doesn’t take long for either out-of-town shopping or the beloved little shop, squat in its stone-foundations, to be covered.

The same goes for the bicycle. There are those who see it as a threat or a nuisance. And there are those who are eagerly promoting it as the best, safest, most human-sized, quietest, low-emmission, healthy, city-scale, adaptable (shall I go on…?) mode of transport after walking.

Helsinkians’ bikes have always been cool and quirky, like fashion statements. This photo from Megapolis2025 is from when Copenhagen’s Mr cycle chic, Mikael Colville-Andersen, came over to try and persuade us that what (who) rides a bicycle, can be chic too. Don’t just do up the bike, do up yourself!

Alas, for all the efforts to treat cycling as attractive, Helsinki still prioritises the motor car. OK, it goes about it by helping everyone to pretend cars aren’t there and sticking them underground for the day (the ka-boom-growl-brrrm-ka-boom of those granite-exploding car-park makers tells me they’re still at it – nine in the evening!)

And then there’s a green politician using his video-blog to complain that the problem isn’t the lack of cycle provision or a safe environment created by thoughtful motorists. Nope, Pekka Sauri’s ire was reserved for cyclists who cycle too fast.

On a happier note. I returned to the safe circle of Eira (see my earlier post) briefly today. “My” old shop, Laivurin Valinta is still there, still selling all the provisions a family could want. Well, all the provisions that a family that’s happy with only about twenty types of filter coffee, three brands of tomato ketchup, one organic hummous dip and a wide selection of fruit and veg, not all of it imported.

OK, I didn’t actually count them. But compared to the football-pitch-expanses of retail space coming soon (as soon as the dregs of this recession are over with) to a former field near you, it’s pretty small but utterly adequate if not more. To my pleasure it was packed with people of all ages gathering their provisions into baskets of varying quantities before wending their way to the cheerful check-out.

Across the road I decided to forego the waffle and instead got some sweets from the kiosk. Next week it’s time to hibernate, so go get your fix now!

How many shopping days left?

It’s a November Saturday in the northern hemisphere. We all know what that means. Although most shopkeepers are desperate to get people in, not everyone is welcome. According to YLE a shopping centre in Lahti has apparently decided now is the time to try a techno-fix to get rid of adolescents who hang around, not being nice and not buying stuff. The gadget emits a high-pitched noise that adults can’t hear but young people with good hearing can. It has already been tried in Britain and Holland at least. Unsurprisingly it also has a good number of oppenents, like the campaign group Liberty, who view it as an infringement of young people’s rights.

But our concern is Helsinki. Here a few Ullanlinna/Eira window displays – photographed before any of them had time to hang up the fairy lights and other “seasonal” decorations.

Korkeavuorenkatu has long had a reputation as a top-end shopping street. Well, by some standards it’s quite small as an area, but for all that rather lively.

Older, newer, home decoration and antiques, fashion for him and her, old and not-so-old, a few cafes, flowers, chemist, goldsmith/watch repair shop, a few restaurants. Many of them “atelje”, “boutique” and so on, all of them kivijalka or “foundation” shops, that is independently run, of course.

It’s not obvious who the people are who have the opportunity to wear the creations on display here, but whoever they are, the window shopping isn’t unpleasant at all.

Eira to Katajanokka

An ancient pastime in Helsinki, walking around the peninsula. Even as October turns cold a lone carpet washer was in Kaivopuiston ranta scrubbing away.

Low-rise and quality of light make it special. The wrong scale, for instance on the plot in Katajanokka where the Swiss cross is being proposed, would be devastating. For now the cathedral is still the biggest and in-your-facest, a feature that somehow warms the heart. The only competitor really is the Orthodox Uspenski cathedral. (In the background of the last post’s photo).

More photos of Eira-by-the-Sea

I found what I thought I had lost, older pictures of Helsinki. Here, for example, are some pics of Eiran Ranta and its ads for “star homes” from 2007. This one shows Helsinki folks doing what they’ve been doing on their extensive, if rocky, shoreline for decades – grabbing some rays and relaxing. In the background you can see the rise of an exclusive piece of residential development/regeneration/renewal, very much in line with the international trend of “capturing” value from nice views and wealthy lifestyles.

Moving along a little, to the right of where the picture above was taken, is the row of older buildings from when Eira was planned and executed as a Finnish version of the garden suburb, though not really in the suburbs, just a few kilometres from the town centre but, indeed, on what would now be called “green field”, that is, previously unbuilt-on land.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, you can see what we mean in Helsinki by mansard roofs (as in my earlier post) – these things that fold in the middle as it were. Not quite the French chateau-look, but the principle is the same.

And here the adverts for the “star homes” on land that was, as most would admit, for years a bit of an eyesore, land in-between nicely manicured park and garden in Eira and the slowly emaciating harbour functions of Hernesaari. It needed something doing to it clearly, but there were more alternatives than homes for the super-rich vs. age-old eye-sore.

Exlusive is what we got (=it is not for everybody) but at least a doggy park is to be constructed next to it, and the former SLOAP (“space left over after planning”) to be landscaped for more inclusive use. The photo below is from 2009.

Inequality will, as a famous Jewish man once sort of said, always be with us. I just never thought that the super-rich would be so well catered for in this particular place. But then that’s why the news about Jätkäsaari (see yesterday’s entry) was so interesting.

And, finally, because I’m happy with the images, here, in the same place last week, a sign of our times: the secure vehicle for transporting that expensive commodity, one’s offspring.

These are couple of images of folks watching fireworks on this land, whose future is still rather obscure to too many of us.

The rich don’t get to be regenerated

When I was a school child, we moved to a small town in England. I was quite often home-sick for Finland, even after I’d learned the language, made friends and, as they say, settled down. But when my dad asked me who were the people I most missed, I said it wasn’t people and took some time to explain that it was bricks and mortar, streets and townscapes that I missed. His reply was not what I expected nor what I wanted to hear. He said I must have an odd psyche to miss geographical space more than flesh and blood.

Well, I lived with that sense of attachment to physical space despite my father’s comments. For years, maybe decades, at any given moment, an image or a cocktail of sensory memories would pop into my head out of nowhere. Perhaps something unspectacular, a street like this say. A photographic image is not an impression formed within a person, but perhaps it conveys some of the quality of that internal sensation, at least its visual part.

Many of those memories, in fact the vast majority, are rooted somewhere in Eira or nearby. Lukcy as I was, this is the place of my first ever memories. Because of its privileged history, not just in terms of wealth but as one of the first planned urban neighbourhoods, building conservation has been a priority. The good remains because a) it was loved and looked after but also b) because the experts in architectural history insisted it should. What you see below is Architecture with a capital A, and doesn’t the city tourist board know it!

Not that all has been a success. In the 1960s Helsinki went through a period of demolition that was criticised heavily at the time. Vilhelm Helander and Mikael Sundman, two young architects, published an angry pamphlet called “Whose Helsinki?” and laid bare some of the indefensible as well as incomprehensible crimes against not just architecture but civilised living, that the city had been responsible for. One of the buildings they mentioned was this one, here seen from the back. It replaced another decorated but, apparently slightly smaller building at a time when speculative interests in land and construction took over.

But as in so many parts of the world, the rich have the luxury not to get moved around, improved, regenerated or renewed “for their own good”, and so it is here. I can only express my gratitude and wonder whether this experience was what gradually nurtured my interest in urban life as a more academic hobby.

So I know to report the fact, for instance, that 1/3 of small flats in Helsinki are now going to investors (at least according to this morning’s paper. No reason in this instance to suspect it’s not accurate). People looking for their first own home don’t even have time to get to see the places before investors, individuals and companies, have been alerted by agents. So much easier to sell with one viewing than to have to do several.