About half a roll. And then some.

Restaurant Sini offers “delicious water pipes in an oriental atmosphere”, and is also “gemütlich, comfortable, quiet, relaxing and fascinating”. Almost as long as this list of adjectives is their sensational strip of ’Stro™, which has to be the longest in the city. I defy anyone to install a lengthier piece in front of their restaurant without resorting to calling it ‘art’.

Interesting to note that Gemütlichkeit is fully compatible with an oriental atmosphere. But I expect oriental Gemütlichkeit has more to do with red cushions and a haze of grape flavoured tobacco smoke, and not some band of dirty fake grass.

… a wall mounted barbecue.

In fact, come to think of it, people with tiny apartments and very small kitchens could just store all of their kitchen utensils, plates, bowls and glasses, on the outside of the building. All you’d need is a securely fastened, weather-proof shelf, with access from the inside of the building. If you had a nice collection of crockery, you could even glaze the shelves from the outside so that neighbors and passers by can appreciate your impecable taste.

Hay-on-Wye, Wales

A cursory image search for “outdoor shelving” reveals little of real interest, but did remind me of the Welsh book village, Hay-on-Wye, where outdoor shelving isn’t uncommon.

Rucksack house [Photo from www.convertiblecity.de]

Exterior attachments to buildings do exist. Stefan Eberstadt’s Rucksack House is a radical way of expanding your living space. But this isn’t the kind of small-scale intervention I’m thinking of. I mean building façades covered in a crust of cuboid micro-structures; alcoves pushed out through the walls …

This one’s all about Gemütlichkeit, which is German for ‘comfort’, but actually entales a whole lot more than just a state of momentary comfort you might experience in a comfortable chair, and is closer to a kind of holistic, unsurpassable form of comfort, which, when sought after in every waking moment with a sense of spiritual purpose, becomes an entire way of life.

A few idle observations to conclude:
– The astroturf has been augmented by a strip of red carpet
– The periphery of the astroturf has been marked with plants, which further underlines the extent of the restaurant’s territory, and also provides guests with a sense of shelter
– The square astroturf offcut in the foreground isn’t trying to escape, it is covering an unsightly manhole, which potential guests might find offputting

You want some more AstroTurf? Yeah, we thought so. So how about this grassy runway in front of the Orient-Lounge? There’s something about the precision with which this specimen has been fitted around the steps and bollard that says this piece of AstroTurf was installed with Big Love.

The propriertors might however like to take note of the disturbing invasion of real grass at the foot of the wonky bollard. Obviously this needs to be treated with some very harsh chemicals indeed if order is to be restored.

Two things might conceivably happen here: 1) you slide through the dirty, rain-sodden strip of AstroTurf and fracture your hip; or 2) you sit for so long waiting to be served that you contract dengue fever from a swarm of virulent mosquitos which consider the dirty, rain-sodden strip of AstroTurf to be their rightful home.

The first in a nauseatingly protracted series on the phenomena of AstroTurf carpeting on city streets. What is it about a strip of mildew-ridden faux-grass that makes us feel all cosy and rural? To what degree is the gastronomic experience enhanced by its presence under foot? Is there a correlation between zoning laws and carpet size?

SLAB will help to find some answers in the coming months. Keep it here.

This is one hell of a tasty table. Rough, super-thin concrete slab on top, bandy steel legs below. The dreamy thing about the legs is that they’re made of hot dip galvanized steel bars, commonly used in reinforced concrete. So-called “rebars”. The table is one of about twenty examples to be found on the terrace of Hotel Diogenis in Tsagarada, all hand made by the proprietor’s brother-in-law.