18 Comments
Carly Hoogendyk sends in these photos of the recent West End (er…whoops, “Havana Central at the West End”) facade unveiling with extreme consternation. “It was just too visceral an experience seeing it for the first time that…oh god,” she writes. “Just bring back the scaffolding.”
Bwog is all for the colorful vibrancy of Cuba and its culture, but we have somewhat of a reticence to embrace such, uh, radical changes. Perhaps all we can do at this point is hope that the rest of the revolu, no, renovation proceeds without the sudden appearance of stuffed parrots- or references to “Margaritaville”. Or that this is all just an elaborate Halloween prank?
-CJS
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18 Comments
@Gentrifier X Oh can it already. Today the West End, tomorrow Manhattanville!
@west end is pathetic. get over it, people. And, you know, explore the quaint little city you live in.
Good photos bwog.
@here here! The west end blows. It seems that some students want so badly to have a semi-official college hang-out. They are compelled to force the west end into that role for lack of better options.
@would it be so terrible if columbia retained neighborhood institutions with longstanding histories relating to it, as opposed to merely having morningside heights shift around it, absorbing whatever fashionable ephemera the rest of new york spits out? I say no! indeed, there is a whole island for such boundless experimentation with fickle “modernity”. let morningside stand out for its reverence for the enduring.
@*sigh* I’m kinda disgusted by just how large the words ‘Havana Central’ are in relation to the size of “The West End.”
Also, since when is Cuban architecture so similar to Victorian?
@Anonymous Bwog, any news on when the West End is going to reopen?
@it opens tuesday at 5 (so today)
@and... every 5-10 years students and recent alumni mourn the lost of their west end… the real west end.
Even before the change in ownership, the west end was not what it was 40 years ago or even 20 years ago. Regardless, it always seems to be held in such high regard by the students that go there.
I never really understood the attraction.
@meee too radical for columbia? impossible!
@The plan http://mirrorimageorigin.collegepublisher.com:80/media/paper865/documents/974wd7q9.pdf
@ugh “the west end” name has been completely tokenized
@sad ‘stend of an era
@can we all just... boycott the stend?
@Metamorphosis Transformation complete. Now we are really Bill O’Reilly’s University of Havana, North.
@actually Another upside to the Minutemen protest, providing a silver lining to the new West End. The name has an excuse, and even a proud Columbia history! It’s no longer pure, phony, Americanized-Cuban kitsch.
@Erf Touche, but we can’t be both Havana Central and Havana North at the same time!
Mayhaps if Havana Central were at one of the old Columbia campuses.
@indeed the havana central in midtown isn’t that far removed from the old madison avenue grounds…
@John Don’t worry. I worked this one out already: Havana Central is South of campus, because it is just down the road on the same side as Casa Hispanica, near Nacho Mama’s. Havana South might have something to do with those suspicipious concentrations of…what did that Hal Turner call them…Spics? Havana East is hard to explain, but Havana West, Communists don’t like the West.