Dubai is Insane
January 3, 2007
Dubai’s Future ‘iPad’I first started noticing after looking at the photos in this month’s National Geographic article* about the city, or emirate, technically. A decade ago it was a relatively bleak and beige grid of low buildings, now it has a giant hotel that looks like a sail, entire archipelagoes of man-made islands (think real estate, beachfront, and lots of it, right?)–the latest of which is clumps islets into something that resembles a map of the world, sort of.
Of course then there’s the rampant underclass of foreing workers living alongside open sewers. But then that would be distracting from the point, which seems to be one of sheer excess. Dubai keeps surpassing the unfeasible. Oh, and they’re also building the world’s tallest building.
So what’s next for the city that has fulfilled so many dreams the rest of the world never really had in the first place? How about the iPad, a building designed after an iPod, complete with a six-degree lean to imitate being docked? Or, keeping with the theme of things that would seem awesome if conceptualized in 1962 but now seem kind of sad, the world’s first luxury underwater hotel, Hydropolis.
Then again, I’ve never been there. Maybe it’s awesome. Anyone been there? Is it insane or just interesting?
* Look, I read enough. National Geographics are for lookin’ at pictures, not actually reading, at least in my life.
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February 22, 2010
Well, as you know, I was there in the good old days, of 1992, when it was just stores selling pirated tapes and bad electronics. It wasn’t really a hellhole, but just another dirty city surrounded by goats and desert. Every block covered with huge signs for various products for sale in different shit-shops, I think you’ve seen my pictures. Very much the kind of place that gives you culture shock, because it has so much stuff you kind of recognize, but none of it seems to belong.
Dubai is insane. i watched some newsmagazine program, 20/20 or primetime or some other such show i would never normally admit to watching, and they remarked about how the stable for the sheikh’s horses is about 100 time nicer than where all of Dubai’s workers live.
it just looks like a more opulant Vegas to me…
I work with an interesting character who is a convert to Islam. When I showed him this article the other day he told me that “The Prophet Mohammed said that it is a sign of the end times when men try to build the highest towers in the desert.”
I say its just a sign of high fuel prices.