Beginning a four-week run at the top of the UK singles charts on this day in 1979 (also a hit internationally and inscribed on the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress for its cultural and artistic significance) the disco anthem about discovering personal strength in the face of breakup owes its origins to the dismissal of principal lyricist Dino Fekaris, partnering with Freddie Perren—also a former co-worker out of a job—and the resolution to bounce back, as a song-writer no less. With the working-title “Substitute,” performer Gloria Gaynor immediately recognised it as a hit. Played first by DJs in Studio 54 before the record was released, the accompanying promotional video, filmed in competing night club Xenon Discotheque and features a troupe of dance skaters.
Friday, 17 March 2023
at first i was afraid, i was petrified (10. 615)
Tuesday, 12 July 2022
7x7
smacs 0723: astronomers unveil the first colour pictures from the James Webb Space Telescope—see more, see previously

ecovado: a sustainable, locally-sourced alternative to the imported avocado
empire rollerdome: New York street photographer Patrick D Pagnano captures 1980s roller disco—via Messy Nessy Chic
€/$: euro, US dollar at parity
maps mastery: a profile of expert-level GeoGuessr players—via Waxy
zero-g: researchers at Kyoto University design artificial gravity architecture
Sunday, 3 July 2022
8x8
el vehรญculo compartido: personal aerial shots by photographer Alex Cartagena in pickup truck beds reveal the hidden lives of day labourers off-duty
skate expectations: concrete sculptural parks by Amir Zaki—via Present /&/ Correct

rosรฉwave: a playlist from NPR to invoke relaxed summer afternoon vibes
press key when ready: the 1985 British children’s sci-fi series The Whizz
i am your atypical neighbour: in an exhibit, Her Window, artist Dayu Ouyang broadcasts bold statements from her bedroom’s view
hot slot: the escapingly small feasibility that Jeff Goldblum could have uploaded a computer virus to alien technology and win Independence Day plus other dei ex machinis
friend-shoring: reprioritising globalisation and a metallic NATO to ensure critical rare-earths supply chains are kept viable
a rising tide lifts all boats: laid out in a grid meant to resemble brain coral from above and protected by the sinking atoll, the Maldives is building an ingenious floating city that will rise with the oceans as perhaps a model for other threatened communities
Sunday, 27 March 2022
rolling stock
Retelling the story of the “Little Engine that Could” with love-interest and with due inspirational credit given to Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, the Andrew Lloyd Weber and Richard Stilgoe musical spectacle with all principals and dancers portraying locomotives on roller skates had its debut on the West End in the Apollo Victoria Theatre. Following a year-long run on Broadway, the show came to the industrial city of Bochum in 1988, and hosted in a custom-built theatre (designed like a skating rink) has become the most attended musical in Germany, still running and seen by over seventeen million. Much more, including the original cast recording of the musical numbers and various performance highlights at the link above.
Thursday, 27 May 2021
panorama
Among many other anniversaries of the great and good, on this day, as our faithful chronicler informs, in 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge linking the San Francisco Bay with the Pacific Ocean, was opened to pedestrian traffic—the longest and tallest suspension bridge in the world at the time.
First conceived in 1916, ambitious engineer and pontifex Joseph Baermann Strauss (1870 – 1938) answered the call having proposed a similar railroad bridge to cross the Bering Strait and connect Alaska with Russia and oversaw the construction of some four hundred draw bridges in a major infrastructure overhaul, and in collaboration (which ended unfortunately acrimoniously) with Charles Alton Ellis, completed it in four years (see also). During the week-long opening ceremony, more than two hundred thousand visitors crossed the mile-long span or foot or on roller skates. The particular shade of vermilion is called international orange, chosen to compliment the bridge’s natural surroundings and improve its visibility in fog, and is a unique hue differing from aerospace or safety orange.Thursday, 5 April 2018
candles in the rain
Sunday, 7 January 2018
carhop
In order to make visiting a charging station less of a chore and more of a treat (though I imagine that such a congregating place might be short-lived with exponential improvements to battery life and duration of recharging times), the entrepreneur behind Tesla electric vehicles and several other enterprises besides will transform one of his service points in the Los Angeles area into a classic bit of Americana, making it into a drive-in restaurant, complete with a (robotic?) waitstaff/pit-crew on roller skates. That’s a pretty clever idea—we think, the set-up is already familiar and seems conducive to powering-up one’s car and we wonder if a resurgence of drive-in theatres might not be in the offering soon.