A defaced Ottoman fountain from Üsküdar town, on the Asian side of Istanbul.
And here is what Üsküdar's main square will look like, until 2009 or even later. The reason for all this chaos is the construction of an underwater tunnel through the Bosphorus.
These guys seem to have entered a bad t-shirt contest... and won. The scariest thing is, such awful clothes can actually attract Turkish girls. From Ortaköy, a few weeks ago.
This strange engraving is set on the high, protective walls of the Genesis tis Theotokos Greek Orthodox Church. It seems to say "OMENTOIN", but that doesn't make much sense. Perhaps it is the exposed part of a much larger text.
New Career in a New Town: A glimpse from Goldsmiths College, my place of studies for the next year or so. What looks like a Space Odyssey monolith is actually a work of student art. The ivy-encrusted building is the main hall, with the seven-story library behind it.
In Cesme I kept finding many orthopterans, usually attracted to our porch lights. This huge grasshopper had newly molted, its wings were all soggy and wrinkled. Look at those wonderfully-striped eyes!
Several days later, I found this large, one-legged katydid (family Tettigoniidae) she was very friendly, accepted every kind of food we gave her, and actually stayed in her little corner of the room for more than a day. She might have stayed more had I not released her back to the garden.
If you remember my old posts, you might recall this visual survey of the wonderfully trashy Pulp rock bar in one of Istanbul's "underground" districts. Well, guess what - Pulp has undergone an extensive makeover to become... another trashy rock bar. But this time, it seems to have embraced its trashyness with such a passion that it is impossible to tell whether they did it on purpose... or by accident.
...a thinly-veiled reference to psychoactive drugs? This hypothesis is further augmented when you come face-to-face with the gothic-indiefied characters of Alice in Wonderland. You know, like, through the mirrors, labyrinths, magic potions and all? Oh, poor Alice, it must indeed be agonizing to walk around with no underwear, no neck and badly-applied KISS make-up on your face. 
Wow, and here's the magic dealer/rabbit, running away after brutally raping Alice. Judging from the extremely brief way rabbits seem to have sex, this might not be that big of a deal.
Inside, we saw many guys sleeping around on improvised beds made out of sofas, chairs and pillows. This, of course, is not the normal situation of the place. It may have more to do with the fact that it was almost seven AM when these pictures were taken.
The people that remained awake, however, made for some great company, and I ended my last night in Istanbul on the stinking-yet-lovingly-warm sofas of... Pulp bar!
In space, no one can hear you eat lettuce... very... slowly... James Cameron seriously thought about shooting another space thriller called T.U.R.T.L.E. before settling for a sequel to A.L.I.E.N.
Not only is this guy the coolest person I've ever seen on a beach, he's also passing his style groove on to his son! From Cesme, a Turkish equivalent of Miami.
The imposing facade of the Zographion Greek High School in Pera.
The entrance is artfully decorated with these sphinx reliefs. This institution is the largest and the best of the few Greek high schools that still survive in the City. Since most young Politis Greeks study in Greece these days, the entire school only has about fifty students.
Fourteen years apart: Me at Bodrum's traditional book fair today...
...and in 1997. If you look closely, you can see that I used to be quite an UFO geek when I was younger. Call it an inoculation against bullshit.
Two pieces of my favorite graffiti from Istanbul's streets. The first one is pretty obvious, the second one reads "Thank god I am an atheist!" Pious vandals have tried to remove it, to no avail.
The vibrant minibuses that run around the Bodrum peninsula are home to unforgettable memories for many of Bodrum's visitors.
This one goes to Torba; a quiet, unspoilt town with some of the cleanest beaches of the entire peninsula...
...while this one goes to Torba's polar opposite, Gümbet; a nearby town infested by cheap British package tourists and some horrible establishments that cater to their tastes.
The blue one goes to Bitez, a village right next to Gümbet. I have fond memories of almost every summer spent there, from age three onwards. Sadly, Bitez is being overrun with cheap buildings these days, and its pleasant orange groves are giving way to teeth-like series of mass housing.
Finally, the orange buses operate within Bodrum town itself. As I've told before on this blog, such minibuses are as practical as bars and clubs for getting drunk and meeting new people.
Our cat dragged in this poor juvennile snake in our summer house at Çeşme this summer.
It was so young! If cats could understand punishment, I'd really spank my cat for this heinious deed.
Its sharp, angry-looking "eagle eyes," combined with its brown-spotted skin pattern, suggest that this probably was a juvennile blacksnake, Coluber jugularis. (I can be wrong, of course.) Although not poisonous, these snakes are very aggressive and bite like psychos when handled. They are nevertheless beneficial creatures for keeping pest rodent populations in check. Blacksnakes can grow up to two meters long, but this one only got to thirty centimeters. Rest in peace, friend.
I dream of Smyrna: A beautiful Greek house shimmers in the midday sun like a mirage. From the Konak district.
I have nightmares about Smyrna: One of the run-down favelas that surround Smyrna's hinterland. Such ugly buildings are a by-product of internal migration from the villages, layers of them surround every large city in Turkey.
What's this? Gray-brown foamy mud swamping a local park in a stinky mess? Why? Who might have done it?
Oh, I see... Somebody is digging a water well without bothering to warn anyone about it, or cleaning up after themselves. Life as usual in Turkey.
Every two years, Istanbul gets caught in a wave of artsy-fartsy as the Istanbul Biennial explodes like a bomb. Until last week, so many other exhibitions, openings, projects and other things co-incided with the Biennial that even the artsy-fartsy nighthawks got tired of partying around. I couldn't cover them all, but here are some glimpses of the City under the invasion... of contemporary art!
The picture above was a glimpse of the Istanbul Modern, the City's much-vaunted modern arts center. This picture shows what it looks like from the inside, with a special "10 years of the Istanbul Biennial" exhibition held up just for the occasion.
Other places, like Garanti Bank's Platform Gallery are also running exhibits that are unrelated to, but certainly enjoying the popularity of the Biennial.
An influx of foreign artsy-fartsies means that you can find people of every nationality drinking around and having a merry time in the city streets. Some New Yorkers in this bunch were amazed that they could walk around with their beer bottles in Istanbul's streets, something which is punishable by a fine in New York.
They also had a spankin-new Mac which they used as a portable boombox. Better watch out for thieves!
Another artsy, but not fartsy spectacle of the last week was the opening of Santral Istanbul, Bilgi University's monumental new humanities campus and fine arts museum. Why do all of these places have "Istanbul" attached to their names? Do art people constantly forget which city they are in? Or do the Turkish artsy-fartsies still retain a bit of nationalistic place-name jingoism despite their incessant, obligatory attacks on everything associated with patriotism? Nevertheless, this new campus will be a very beneficial addition to Turkish education as a whole.
Santral Istanbul also has its own Otto pub-grill-bar inside, with strange, jellyfish-shaped lamps overhanging a massive dancefloor. Those lucky kids at Bilgi University literally have their own club on their campus. During the opening night, free drinks meant that Otto Santral witnessed strange encounters between thousands of people coming in from the surrounding slums, and the cream of Istanbul's art-and-design communities. Needless to say, it was a slightly uneasy coexistence.
The local municipality also sponsors its own art projects for the beautification of the town, but such works are generally ill-conceived and end up being eyesores instead. Take this piece-of-shit iron door with baskets of bread attached, for example.
Wow, the bread is real and people actually nibble on it as they pass by. I wonder what it is supposed to mean? The title of the 'work'? "Door of Bread"! You get it? It's a door that's full of... bread! Ha. Ha.
No thanks go to Mimar Sinan University member Maryem Denizkran for this truly uninspired piece of crap art.
The owners of the Exodus Cafe-Bar-Club in Pera must be under the impression that writing their name three times in neon letters will somehow lure in customers. EXODUS! EXODUS! EXODUS! It's the only way!
Got blood? A Turkish "red crescent" (it's like the red cross,) blood donation center sits next to a kiosk that sells all kinds of drinks in Besiktas. Feel free to load up on juice and donate some sugary, sweet blood to the needy!
Record-breaking temperatures meant that a lot of large Turkish cities faced drought this summer. Istanbul, while not hit as hard as Ankara, (where water was provided on alternating days and the mayor advised people to "go on a summer vacation") still had a lot of poor people lining up for water in front of old fountains Ottoman like these.
I found this small wall lizard (Podarcis muralis?) by my garden door this August, quietly lapping up water from the sprinklers. I'd never seen one of these wall lizards active at night, nor have I read any such account. Perhaps it was really thirsty?
When driving from Smyrna to Bandirma this summer, me and my dad ran stopped by this strange, abandoned gas station.
Inside we found this sad, forgotten portrait of Mustafa Kemal, as well as abandoned account books.
It looks like this place was selling fuel for cargo trucks when sometime around 2001, business suddenly stopped. Perhaps this was due to the huge market crash that took place in Turkey in the same year.
Whatever the reason, the place was a true ghost house. Even the trucks parked outside were dead and rusty. We took a leak and moved on.
