Stet » Kingston

Sidi Mansour vs Ma Baker

Ria — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 21:51:40 +0000

Life in Kingston, Jamaica was sometimes like living in a war zone: occasional bursts of excitement — driving after dark through a ghetto zone, boarding up the windows as a hurricane approached — interspersed with long periods of boredom, for the city does not offer much in the way of amusement for a young family

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Shaking Up Orange Street

Ria — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:22:23 +0000

Part II of my downtown tour should be loading below. It took a little longer to finish than I’d hoped, partly because I wanted to make it look better than my previous clip, and partly because uploading it to YouTube is very very slow.

As I’ve recommended previously, if your bandwidth is as bad as

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Driver! Don’t stop at all

Ria — Fri, 25 May 2007 15:34:31 +0000

Drawing to the end of my series of images of downtown Kingston, I post below the first part of a drive I took last week with my good friend, Barry White.

I know, it’s the voice.

If all goes according to plan, Part II will include a drive round the main square, Sir William Grant

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De time so bleaky

Ria — Tue, 15 May 2007 04:58:02 +0000

The title of this post refers to the overcast skies we’ve been having lately in Kingston. For photography, the stark whiteness is something terrible to deal with. No amount of fiddling with contrast or brightness can save the sky because there is simply no data recorded. This means an extra step or two in the

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I cover the waterfront

Ria — Wed, 09 May 2007 17:01:36 +0000

Downtown Kingston ends at the waterfront and the wide expanse of the seventh largest natural harbour in the world. Morris Cargill, veteran journalist at The Daily Gleaner, described it more equivocally as “the world’s most beautiful sewer”, as tons of garbage are washed down the gullies running through the city, straight into the water; and,

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Direction: Downtown

Ria — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 04:19:14 +0000

After last week’s panoramic introduction to downtown Kingston, let’s continue the journey down the major thoroughfare leading south … King Street.

Watch out for the bucket!

This part of the drive always gets me down — I expected all of the downtown neighbourhoods to be bustling hives of criminal activity, but the reality is

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Cross Roads

Ria — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 17:59:30 +0000

While other place spellings may vary in Jamaica (Savannah-La-Mar, Savanna-La-Mar or Savanna la mar; Acadia or Arcadia), Cross Roads in Kingston is defiantly two separate words. A few years ago, it was considered to mark the frontier between uptown and downtown Kingston, although these days, one could argue the urban decay is still creeping northwards.

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Fact of life

Ria — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 05:01:43 +0000

Not every ugly duckling grows up to be a swan.

And that’s just fine.

Related posts: Jamaica rundown Life imitates art Old for new

Business as usual

Ria — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 05:14:24 +0000

(click to enlarge)

North Street marks the top of the grid layout of downtown Kingston, running west from South Camp Road, where I took another photo recently.

Unlike the road to the cricket ground, used by visitors to the cricket world cup, North Road has literally been bypassed. The only sign of improvement is

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View from the hills

Ria — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 04:22:39 +0000

If you are patient enough for the panorama to load (1.42MB; need free Quicktime player?), you’ll see a view from the northern foothills looking south towards Kingston harbour. You can move the panorama using the controls indicated in the bar at the bottom, or just click and drag the image around. You may also notice

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