August 25, 2017

As I walk through Manhattan’s East Village towards the studio of Cai Guo-Qiang, I pass brownstones, hair salons and some guys hanging around speaking Italian. The first sign that I might be nearing the studio is a mirror-box sitting on the sidewalk, underneath the window beds, that doesn’t quite blend in. Then a red door, guarded by a little stone lion and the Chinese character for luck. I’ve come to the right spot.

I’m meeting Cai (pronounced “Tsai”) for lunch at his studio in New York, where the Chinese artist has been based for more than a decade, because I’m told this is where he always eats lunch. He is looking relaxed, wearing a brown T-shirt and close-cropped grey hair, and greets me with a firm handshake that hints at how much time this 59-year-old spends at the gym.

Although you wouldn’t know it from the unmarked door, Cai is one of the most remarkable artists working today. He specialises in gunpowder, and creates firework art on an unparalleled scale — think of a chain of explosions that extends the Great Wall of China by 10km, or a flock of black “birds” appearing in the desert in Doha. In 2008 he launched the giant footsteps that marched over Beijing during the opening ceremony for the Olympics.

More recently, he created a “Sky Ladder” that sent fiery rungs climbing half a kilometre into the clouds. Not all of these projects succeed (“Sky Ladder”, an obsessional quest that was the subject of a documentary film last year, took three attempts.) But they have pushed an old medium in new directions — Cai even makes paintings with gunpowder, to explosive and ethereal effect.

A sweet, oily aroma is wafting across the office, so while Cai finishes a meeting, I wander over to the kitchen to see what’s cooking. One of the cooks points out the day’s dishes: pork ribs made with Coca-Cola, steamed cod, water spinach with garlic, lily bulbs with celery and sausage, green beans and an unusual crêpe made from lotus root, which turns out to be a studio speciality.

My mouth waters as we discuss the food and, as if on cue, an assistant appears to steer me into the main gallery. The room is huge — big enough to hold a dozen of Cai’s giant gunpowder works, which are resting on the floor and leaning against the walls, some more than seven metres long. At a distance the paintings appear as colourful, explosive blooms, so that the bright room feels almost like a garden. In the centre, a table has been laid for two.

Read the full piece here.

A deserted coast evokes the 1967 Summer of Love

July 26, 2017

On the most famous stretch of California’s coast there is hardly a soul in sight, even at the height of the tourist season. The central portion of Big Sur, usually overrun at this time of year, is quiet except for the crashing waves and the occasional hooting seal.

After a series of biblically proportioned natural disasters — fires, floods and mudslides — a 35-mile stretch of California’s Highway One has been largely cut off since February, and is now accessible mainly by foot.

I went to see it for myself, hiking in with my bicycle along a steep trail that goes around a washed-out bridge. When I got to the other side it was like stepping back in time. A languid shuttle bus carries tourists and workers to their destinations, along a road that has almost no traffic. (There is one way to drive in, but the road is so treacherous that few attempt it.)

For cyclists, the open highway feels like a dream. There’s no need for reservations at even the most spectacular restaurants — the dining room at Nepenthe, a Big Sur classic, is only half full on a Saturday evening. For local residents, the steep hike to the outside world is a nuisance, but they’ve got used to it.

The slower pace that’s been imposed here restores one of the attributes that once defined Big Sur — isolation. The craggy coast was where people came to get away, a place that didn’t even have a telephone until 1958. After the second world war it became a magnet for beatniks and Bohemians, and during the 1940s, 50s and 60s Big Sur was at the heart of California’s New-Age movement.

Philosophers and humanists like Alan Watts and Abraham Maslow, who both taught in Big Sur, as well as writers Henry Miller and later Jack Kerouac, fuelled its reputation as a countercultural haven. On the wall at Nepenthe is a photo of Miller drinking at its bar. His move here in 1946 helped put Big Sur on the map. Despite the fact that his novels were banned (or perhaps because of that), Miller’s interests in anarchy, sex, and Buddhism helped set the tone for an entire generation — and his fans flocked to Big Sur to find him.

One of these was the journalist Hunter S Thompson, who worked as a security guard on a local estate. Thompson, alcoholic and erratic, was not a great security guard, but he published his first paid magazine feature during this time.

“If half the stories about Big Sur were true the vibrations of all the orgies would have collapsed the entire Santa Lucia mountain range,” Thompson wrote in the piece, which appeared in Rogue in October 1961. “It’s not likely to happen, however, because almost everything you hear about Big Sur is a rumour, legend or an outright lie.”

Read the rest of the column here.

 I write the Tech World column in the FT Magazine roughly once a month.

Why Silicon Valley has embraced the ‘office dog’ (May 12, 2017) Dogs are an antidote to all things digital

Mark Zuckerberg and the perils of livestreaming (Aug 1, 2017) It is impossible to avoid humiliation on social media, even for someone like Mark Zuckerberg

Why Uber has been forced to U-turn (June 20, 2017) The company considers its values a proprietary trade secret.

How Silicon Valley brought haute cuisine to the office canteen (June 8, 2017) The battle for talent has created an arms race for perks — and Michelin starred deserts 

FT Magazine, June 2016

In Uber’s new offices in Guangzhou, China, occasional screams of delight erupt from the workers at their desks as they spot the office cat, a shy thing that mostly hides under furniture and causes uproar whenever she appears. Her name is Qianwanliang, or “10 million rides”. It’s a rather grand name for such a timid creature but this is Uber, and ambition is inescapable – even for office pets.

Read the full piece here.

Published: March 19, 2017

For Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive, “stepping on toes” is a good thing. In fact, at a lavish company retreat in Las Vegas two years ago he listed this as one of Uber’s core values — along with slogans such as “always be hustlin’” and “let builders build”.

His hard-nosed attitude has helped propel the ride-hailing business to a global company over the past seven years. With a valuation of $70bn, Uber is bigger and wealthier than any other start-up in Silicon Valley history. Mr Kalanick’s swagger has come to define the company, for better and for worse.

Full story here.