Coollection, a portmanteau, is the collection of cool things. I have coined it just now and the word has a geeky sound to it that I am quite fond of. This is a new kind of posts I'm doing on this blog, where every once in a while I'm going to share a few cool Rotterdam items that I've found on the Internet. Videos, pictures, websites, you name it. Actually I'll name it. Whatever. I'll also put down a few words on why they're cool so you'll have greater insight into my taste in cool things.
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These guys are doing a project where they travel around the world to shoot rollerblading videos in cities. Sometimes they do tricks. Sometimes they're just fast. They also make cities look very good. In this vid they skate through some of Rotterdam's best-looking places and it's stimulating to see our familiar sceneries re-defined by alternative sets of movements and perspectives. The tracking shots are the best parts. Without rollerblades it would be very difficult to experience these spaces in motion. I mean, sure, you can walk through the Beursplein underground passage, but that's pretty slow.
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Brett Bogart, now occasionally dubbed the Netherland's Justin Bieber, is a nascent teen-pop sensation from Brabant. He shot this music video for his new single Rooftop on top and around Rotterdam's Schieblock. The video has bright-coloured teen fashion, some cartwheels, several back-flips, and lots of dancing on the rooftop. It's kind of surreal that people born in 1999 are becoming pop stars now. In 10 years' time people born in 2009 are going to be pop stars. Wow.
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| snapshot from youtube |
Anyways Rooftop is great because while wishing for this video to be an international youtube hit, Brett (and most likely his marketing people) looked for international appeal, and decided on an urban metropolitan feel. Boyz and girlz partying on a rooftop surrounded by sky scrapers, these are colourful kids in a grey city, free and all-so-happy. Naturally they had to film this in Rotterdam because it is the only Dutch city that can pull off this look. After the war, Rotterdam was designed and re-built as the American-styled city of the Netherlands. It had been dubbed accordingly our Manhattan aan de Maas. It is, then, only fitting for the Netherland's JB to shoot his video here.
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| http://ikrotterdam.blogspot.nl/ |
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| http://ikrotterdam.blogspot.nl/ |
ikRotterdam is 3 artists who draw snippets of Rotterdam. They do places, people, objects and whatever else they like. The art is really cool and they make great use of colours to demonstrate that the city doesn't feel so grey after all. The buildings look alive. The human portraits look warm-hearted. They tag each drawing with the area in which its subject matter was seen (Centrum, Delfshaven etc), so you can go and try to find it as well. Their tagline is "I don't need to go on vacation because I live in Rotterdam". It's pretty much how I feel too, but they express it with a charismatic artistic style I wish I had. You can like them on Facebook to get regular updates. I did.
