Bye ‘Bai

I’ve been wondering, What happens to Dubai in a worldwide depresion? Smashing Telly says goodbye. Fun writing. A sample:

  Dubai is a place for the shallow and fickle. Tabloid celebrities and worn out sports stars are sponsored by swollen faced, botox injected, perma-tanned European property developers to encourage the type of people who are impressed by fame itself, rather than what originated it, to inhabit pastiche Mediterranean villas on fake islands. Its a grotesquely leveraged version of time-share where people are sold a life in the same way as being peddled a set of steak knives. Funny shaped towers smatter empty neighborhoods, based on designs with unsubtle, eye-catching envelopes but bland floor plans and churned out by the dozen by anonymous minions in brand name architects offices and signed by the boss, unseen, as they fly through the door. This architecture, a three dimensional solidified version of a synthesized musical jingle, consists of ever more preposterous gimmickry – an underwater, revolving, white leather fuck pad or a marina skyscraper with a product placement name that would normally only appeal to teenage boys, such as the preposterous Michael Schumacher World Champion Tower.


7 responses to “Bye ‘Bai”

  1. Wow… I love this description… People want their own Las Vegas, I guess.

    Wonder how this would stand to the radical islamists’ calls for “purity”…

  2. Ha! I resemble that remark. 😉

    I like Dubai for the trading post culture that it is. If you hang around with the locals that were here from before the “boom”, it’s pretty sane. It’s just the carpet bag speculators who have come recently that fit the description above.

  3. I like the comments by Tom S which fits in with my perspective from over here in India. I have a ton of friends working over there for a number of years. The comments between the writer and the above commentator offer much better insights than the article itself.

    Regards,
    Ravi

  4. The comment by ollysk2 might also be worth pausing to think about. The more one reads, the more it looks like the fable of the 6 blind men and the elephant 🙂

  5. I like all these responses. Never been to Dubai.

    As I said, the quoted piece was fun writing. Now I want to know more.

  6. Just prior to the latest phase of the Mammonist Looting of the World, I saw a report on the Travel Channel on the Dubai Atlantis resort hotel, with suites as high as $35,000 USD per night.

    Perhaps we should bail them out. Whenever you have any problem, just stick hand out for bail out. Welcome to the Magic Land of Infinite Stimulus Packages from the Eternal Tree of Money From Nowhere.

  7. Doc Searls,

    Ponder this; it is the collapse of Dubai that causes the depression.

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