If a building no longer brings you joy, you should thank it for its service, take a couple of photos, and then blow it up.
Using heritage protection for ulterior motives is definitely bad, but I suspect you get many of the same problems without the ulterior motives. Where I live, the heritage preservation folks are typically objecting to dense(er) development. It's classic NIMBY stuff. Now, they definitely care about their property values, and that drives a lot of their work, but I think that they also care quite a bit about the heritage. (They don't just object when it's on their block, so it's not *all* property values). What's frustrating is that they seem to care about heritage/property values so much *more* than they are about the importance of e.g. affordable housing, limiting sprawl, transit-oriented development, and so on. I find these people endlessly annoying, and their actions make things worse here, but I don't doubt their pro-heritage sincerity (much).
(I admit that a big part of my annoyance is that I'm a heritage snob. The stuff the NIMBYs in my city want to protect is mostly boring early 20th century single detached homes. Where I'm from, 'heritage' tends to mean 'cool 18th and 19th Century stuff that actually looks old.' So maybe that's the criteria: protect stuff MattD thinks looks cool.)
I think my neighborhood needs to find the worst conversion of a serviceable porch into a very ugly sitting room/powder room. It should be preserved for posterity to mock.
You're wise. Marie Kondo it all.
I even threw away the brain cells to remember her name.
3: Yes, with the traditional uncoordinated bricks and vinyl siding, and Venetian blinds the most prominent feature of the house. Seen inside is one ratty overstuffed chair lit by a tall floor lamp.
The Berkeley landmarks commission recently tried to designate for protection the view from the Campanile, which would have meant a new bar on downtown development. The Council was advised this was illegal and reversed.
There's a house for sale in my neighborhood that is not in good shape and is not historically interesting or attractive, but was bought by some local developers who are really strict about maintaining historical buildings and so it's just sitting empty until someone is willing to buy it under their crazy rules. I really want them to just knock it down and build a new house which looks appropriate but isn't literally the old house. Across the street we have a new construction house that's beautiful and looks appropriate to the historical appearance of the neighborhood but is larger and nicer. We could use a few more of those!
The situation is that there's an old dam which was badly damaged in the floods three years ago. Environmentally, this river is extremely sensitive - there are four species which are only found in this river. (Things like a particular salamander, etc.)
Army Corps of Engineers says that the standard practice is to remove old dams, and that it's usually better for the environment but that individual circumstances may vary. One guy's business depends (arguably) on the recreation space made by the dam. HPC has now fallen in love with this old mill that truly, no one ever gave a shit about before, off in the middle of the woods, and thus is in favor of rebuilding the dam (which would be extraordinarily expensive).
I'm trying to figure out if there's any legitimate historical reason that this old dam could rise to the level of deserving to be rebuilt, or if it's solely a question of recreation. (Which might be legitimate! Although this guy's tactics make me dislike him intensely.)
Let me clarify: One guy believes that his business is dependent on the dam, and he has drummed up the support of the HPC in a multi-year misleading campaign - using photos of a different part of the river, etc, saying we're "saving" the river, and so on.
I'm not particular. I have food allergies.
Sometimes when they demolish old dams a series of rapids (briefly) forms as the stream cuts through the sediment that's built up behind the dam. This is cool, and can sometimes be kayaked.
What's the relationship between the mill and the dam?
Mills build dams to protect their winter home and food supply.
The HPC is being ridiculous, the guy villainous.
If only there was some way the relevant authorities could quietly bribe him. It'd probably lead to a better, cheaper result.
Is there any actual historical value to the mill?
9: The obvious solution is to get some commandos played by Robert Shaw and Harrison Ford to sneak in and blow up the dam.
Or simply kick the can until the next flood washes it away.
Historically, before there was a dam, one presumes there was not a dam. Why is it not preservation to recover the historical flow of the river?
If someone pees in the river, nobody will want to save the water so everyone will be fine with destroying the dam.
I found a local Superfund site (former GE factory) where it appeared landmark status was an issue in its cleanup, and reached out to a knowledgeable local. Apparently the soil is pumped full of PCBs, and to make it suitable for housing GE would have to demolish it entirely and clear the soil; but for commercial/industrial use, they could just pave it over and build on top. And because only the second option preserved the historic facade, they supposedly had to go that route. It might have gone that was for cost reasons anyway, but it was the landmarks board that did technically so direct them (or they may not have fought it very hard).
I googled "[presumably relevant Spanish name of synoptic Gospel saint] dam removal"; pages for both supporters and opponents of the dam removal turn up.
9: Yikes. Agreed with 17: the HPC group is ridiculous, and the guy is definitely a villain.
A city near mine has a very similar story, without the villainy. There's an old, crumbling dam for an old mill in town. People in town love it. Well, they love the millpond, which looks pretty I guess but as far as I can tell has no actual recreational value; the dam itself is invisible at this point. So city council decided to spend millions they don't have to repair the dam, which is at risk of failing. Environmental groups an all of the city engineers all oppose it, since the dam serves no purpose, would be very expensive to rebuild, the river is in bad shape and naturalizing it would dramatically improve its health.
As far as I can see, there are no ulterior motives here-- the people in the city are just irrationally fond of a stinky, environmentally harmful millpond. This is a poor city with some pressing and expensive social problems, but people are funny about heritage.
My cousin used to have a bumper sticker reading "Save our water. Dam it." He now has anti-abortion messages on his checks. Does this prove anything? We can't say for certain.
9 makes my head hurt. He wants the public to spend money primarily for his private benefit?
Right. Become a billionaire first like everyone else.
It seems unlikely to me that any building that is less than 100 years old has any historical significance at all. This would immediately put the Historical Preservation Societies of 2/3 of the US out of business.
In Seattle, it's usually used to save old car repair shops, though they now allow you to gut the interior as long as you leave the cornice in place. Recently, the city council violated pretty much every law on the subject to save a concert hall that, though it technically opened in 1939, has been renovated and gone out of business at least 10 times in the meantime. There is nothing historical about the building itself, just that people like to go see concerts there.
No doubt it's heartfelt by many who serve on such committees, but the feeling largely comes from nostalgia, resistance to change, and a desire to keep the city as small as it was when they arrrived here (few are natives), rather than any true attempt to judge historical impact.
29: There's a difference between global significance and local significance. (I come from a city barely over a 100, which changes one's pespective I think.)
Historical Preservation Societies in Baltimore complain when horrible brutalist architecture is removed, but are they willing to scrub filthy concrete? No they are not.
Medical Device Preservationists won't use the 1950s-era colonoscopy camera either.
The financial part is the most nuts - the Army Corp of Engineers was going to remove the dam for us and pick up the tab, but we ran out the clock on their offer. I am pretty sure there's no way in hell that we can afford to rebuild or demolish the dam properly, and so the only actual path forward is to grovel to the ACoE to please give us a second chance.
I have no idea how heavily used the mill pond is for kayaking, but that seems to be the only thing that has barely any legitimacy, but the HPC did already gold-star the dam, and it's coming down the pipeline to the planning commission, and several city councilmembers who I generally like have recently backpedaled on the issue.
Has anyone suggested importing some beavers?
"It seems unlikely to me that any building that is less than 100 years old has any historical significance at all."
Oh, come on. Bletchley Park? (The huts, at least.) MOCR at Johnson Space Center?
This report on dam removal and preservation may have some helpful information. It seems to be about this exact issue.
In Seattle, it's usually used to save old car repair shops
Eh? Why?
The problem with the Marie Kondo approach to historical preservation is that architecture goes out of style, so if we just got rid of everything when it became unpopular we'd have nothing older than say 30 years, beyond what was already being preserved when the diktat began being enforced. That said, I don't know what objective criteria you could use to preserve, say, good Brutalism and not bad Brutalism.
36: Thanks, that does look like a good resource.
37: The average house in Pittsburgh is close to 100 years old. Plenty of things get preserved because they are still being used.
Bletchley Park, certainly. What is the youngest building that we agree is historically significant and should be preserved?
I think people in the general population are starting to come back around on Brutalism. I was just reading this piece on local work by one prolific Brutalist architect; I kinda like how the Information Sciences Building looks, and I'm irrationally fond of CMU's Wean Hall.
Is there any actual historical value to the mill?
Depends on how granular your use of "historical value" is. Was it the first mill dam under very narrow geographic restrictions? Yes it was! Does it say something about how things were milled in this county back then? Sure!
But then again, if this kind of thing were routinely preserved and people were in the habit of feeling strongly about it, I probably would just nod along.
Why is it not preservation to recover the historical flow of the river?
The argument that is given is that the river is dammed up in a few other spots throughout the town, and thus wouldn't be free-flowing anyway.
"[presumably relevant Spanish name of synoptic Gospel saint] dam removal";
Heh.
Every structure of historic significance was once less then 100 years old.
Agreed with 30. I'd wonder if this is a trans-Atlantic thing if not for 35. The example that came to mind some old saloon I saw on my trip to New Mexico and Colorado last winter to visit family. It's not "old" in a fraction-of-human-civilization sense, but there are lots of relics of the 19th century and earlier that still exist but only for their historical appeal.
Wean Hall had the coffee shop moved from the right of the entrance to the left of it. Totally ruined the aesthetics.
Holy hell the building at the top of the link in 40 is ugly. I'd say burn it down but Brutalist buildings won't even burn.
It's actually pretty striking in its setting.
29: Hey now, wait a minute. My partner is a historical architect. So I myself do not actually know this stuff, but I overhear some of his work. There are real standards! Like, written down, mostly in CEQA. I don't know if they are overly broad, and there is certainly a 'save everything' contingent, but I am certain that there are actual criteria and not everything qualifies just out of nostalgia. Certainly, he sometimes has to do work to see if something qualifies and doesn't always succeed. He can also show that stuff doesn't meet the criteria.
I think people in the general population are starting to come back around on Brutalism
But that's what I mean in 37. There's lots of stuff that we now recognise as having both historical and aesthetic value that people thought was a horrible carbuncle 20 years ago. Much of it gets destroyed even without an explicitly Kondo-esque approach to preservation. I think there has to be an explicit "We're preserving this not because it gives us joy but because it is a striking exemplar of an architectural style/artistic trend/political movement/whatever" mandate for historical preservation.
What is the youngest building that we agree is historically significant and should be preserved?
Probably this year. I don't see what age has to do with it. To pick an arbitrary example, if Hyperloop ever becomes a thing, we probably want to preserve the test tunnel that was just completed..
There are definitely real standards for determining if something qualifies as historic for preservation purposes, but they vary by state and there's yet another set at the federal level. Different jurisdictions' historic preservation laws are all over the map in terms of what they require/allow.
49.1: I think the missing part of that argument is it's only after and because so much of it gets torn down that people appreciate what is left.
37
Oh, I forgot, lots of old parking garages too.
There are definitely real criteria and the committees do real work. I just think the criteria are too lax.
The link about the architecture of Tassos Katselas is interesting. I am familiar with most of those buildings and never heard of him.
Now pretty sure that if a brutalist architect, like he mostly did, sells out his principles and follows the edict "Put in the minimal effort of having it be cladded with bricks, or have some contrast of materials, instead of literally nothing but hideous gray concrete", his building will not be universally loathed by the townsfolk and it may have a chance of being beloved.
Certainly, he sometimes has to do work to see if something qualifies and doesn't always succeed. He can also show that stuff doesn't meet the criteria.
He can, but I bet he can be overruled if the right people complain enough at the right hearings.
49: I was agreeing with you w.r.t. to Brutalism. With my youngest question, what I meant is: what's the currently actually existing youngest building we here could actually agree upon? It's easy to recognize the historic value of older buildings, but it's difficult to think of new ones that need to be preserved forever. To pick a random new building, I don't see any historic noteworthiness in Salesforce Tower, beyond it being taller than anything else in San Francisco (and there's not a precedent that every once-tallest building has to be preserved).
So you have this tension between current noteworthiness and likely future noteworthiness. The Hyperloop tunnel only makes sense if you assume Hyperloop does becomes a thing, but on the other hand it was clear from the moment it happened that the Moon landing (not a building, but still a place capable of preservation) deserved preservation, regardless that Moon colonization hasn't panned out.
So can we think of anywhere since, say, 2000 that satisfies that?
I don't like living in a designated historical home for NIMBY reasons, even though it hasn't really caused any problems for us yet.
Here's a prelapsarian view of our home:
http://www.nj.searchroots.com/EG/images/Clarksboro-funeral.jpg
In context:
http://www.nj.searchroots.com/EG/clarksboro.htm
We got it cheap because it was falling apart, and with the historical designation, couldn't be torn down. That charming porch with gingerbread molding had rotted away to the point of being a safety hazard, so we requested the Board to let us take it down and replace it with something less charming that we could afford.
A few years later we requested Board permission to replace the charming nineteeenth century windows, and their rotting frames, with windows that keep the heat in and the rain out. One contractor insisted that we get Board approval to replace rotten Cedar clapboards with non-cedar, even though this kind of Cedar is endangered and cannot legally be harvested.
Getting Board approval is just a minor inconvenience but if someone on the committee didn't like us, it would be a serious problem.
The designation also lowers the property value and limits our ability to sell, particularly since we're in a good location for retail but most possibilities would require a tear down. Admittedly, we saved on the original purchase.
Looks like a beautiful house in the old photo!
Another home of historical interest in our town, less than a mile away.
https://www.app.com/story/news/local/new-jersey/weird-nj/2017/08/20/weird-nj-bowling-ball-house/582052001/
59: God, could you imagine if you bought that house and it was historically designated?
59 is crazy. So why is it called the bowling ball house?
59: "No. We're fine now. They're both dead."
Somebody needs to investigate.
49. I'm old enough to remember when people were pulling down serviceable Victorian buildings and replacing them with brutalist stuff which is now having to come down because the concrete has rotted already.
They wanted to pull down the St Pancras hotel for god's sake. It took a huge campaign to rescue it.
Ironically enough, the restored Midland Grand would be one of my post-2000 buildings to preserve, though it t is cheating somewhat. So I'll go with the Viaduc de Millau instead.
It's easy to recognize the historic value of older buildings, but it's difficult to think of new ones that need to be preserved forever.
How about Oriole Park at Camden Yards, which was build in 1992.
After all, its the place where Cal Ripken Jr. broke Lou Gherig's consecutive games streak, which was the single most important thing that happened in the 1990s.
Maybe the pictures aren't clear, but it's an unexceptional post-war bungalow with hundred of bowling balls on sticks along the driveway. Not yet historically preserved.
That seems like a good idea. Except for full-service gas stations, New Jersey is really short on tourist attractions.
Its always a challenge to make it all the way to Delaware on one tank, as to avoid having to wait through the gas station line in New Jersey.
Is there some reason you're calling "historic preservation" "historiCAL preservation"? Is this a Texas thing?
As per 68, the important thing here is preserving the history of Cal.
71: Calm down, you're being hysteric.
Maybe the pictures aren't clear, but it's an unexceptional post-war bungalow with hundred of bowling balls on sticks along the driveway. Not yet historically preserved.
It was clear! I was just teasing.
I'm old enough to remember when people were pulling down serviceable Victorian buildings and replacing them with brutalist stuff which is now having to come down because the concrete has rotted already.
My hometown (a very young city, by "Old World" [Euro and UK] standards), used to have a lot of serviceable, and often quite lovely, and sometimes even a little bit quirky, Victorian buildings. Post-World War II, the bureaucrats went in for "rationalism," and for automobiles, in a big way. They embraced concrete and brutalism; with the result that too much of Canada's capital now looks like a dystopian Stalinist dreamhellscape.
It's it usually buried in snow regardless?
I go to the annual water law conference every year, and every year this one lawyer gives us a lecture on historic vs. historical. She's very adamant.
They are different words with different meanings, and if you use the wrong one, you should be embarrassed. Or disbarred. Or something.
Yeah, the snow hides a multitude of sins, including sins against humane notions of "lived environment" architecture.
Actually, I probably have some further explanations, but they're all in French (because: Canada).
"Historic preservation" is when you preserve something so well that your actions were worthy of recording for posterity.
Brutalist buildings have notably inhospitable indoor spaces as well, so that's good for winter.
I, too, associate historic preservation fanatics with NIMBYS. Case in point: https://la.curbed.com/2018/6/7/17438750/silver-lake-gas-station-landmark-historic-texaco
40: Thanks, that was interesting. Points:
1. The author apparently continues a discourse that has vanished so far up its own ass that the correct response appears still to be, of all people, Tom Wolfe in From Bauhaus to Our House (37 years old).
2. The buildings linked are almost uniformly hideous.
3. The public housing the author praises is the kind of design that gave public housing a bad name.
4. While the architect's own house is not without virtue, I would have many questions before living in it, starting with the heating bill.
5. The one decent building mentioned (a) isn't Brutalist and (b) has leaky windows.
It's easy to recognize the historic value of older buildings, but it's difficult to think of new ones that need to be preserved forever.
Depending on your definition of new, the Guggenheim Bilbao springs to mind.
To power the mill, you needed the water to have a sufficient drop to turn a water wheel. If there was no such drop naturally occurring, you make a dam to create one.
89: I am aware. There are several possible configurations of dam and mill, including ones where the two are separated by considerable distances.
OT: Somebody is trying to assassinate George Soros. Trump's followers really do listen.
What's the relationship between the mill and the dam?
I really can't figure this out. Looking at photos and footage, there's no obvious mill. There's another part of town where a bunch of things are named after an old mill, and I'm not sure if the distance means these are definitely distinct, or what.
Wow:
There used to be many more dams on the [local] River than there are now. Most became damaged and removed over time. Without the need of the mills, the dams weren't really necessary either. Yet, even with only a part of the mill remaining, Knight argues, their historical value is worth preserving to piece together the evolution of the [region].
"If we only saved things that were whole, then we wouldn't know anything about Native Americans," she said. "Most of their things are partial."
Inarguable.
More complete answer to 17:
The concrete structure at the end of the mill race shows us how people adapted to a little later technology. Instead of the big mill wheel, there are metal turbines inside the concrete structure, allowing faster turning, and therefore, more efficient power. Coupled with other knowledge of the time period, like photos of later cotton gins, historians can piece together the development of [the area].
Before the railroad came in 1880, settlers [here] needed a way to cut lumber for their houses. Knight believes it was originally a sawmill for that purpose, and often, mills were used for multiple purposes, including cotton ginning and grist milling.
Because the main structure of the mill is gone, we don't know for what this particular mill was purposed over the years. Mills were as essential to a community as a sewer and water system are to us today, Knight said. There used to be many mills on the river, even as many as a dozen in [here].
So by "mill" we are in fact referring to parts of the machinery of a no longer extant mill?
And the millrace is immediately below the dam, like a spillway?
What happens if your city fixes the dam and, hopefully decades down the road, it collapses? In terms of legal responsibility, is fixing the dam going to make you responsible for a Texas Johnstown? Or are you already responsible?
Anyway, if you don't want people to do something, a good way to stop them from doing it is to make hard-to-disprove statements about potential future lawsuits. I think with all the flooding, maybe people will worry about the dam more than they did a few years ago.
Is there a reason why 98-100 are presidential? I suppose now you have to stick with it through the thread.
From 100 source:
Without the water, the well-established banks of the mill race will erode over time - tree roots will become exposed, plants will die [...] those same banks of the mill race hold up the concrete mill wall. As the channel walls erode, the wall will destabilize, and, Knight predicts, will likely collapse into the pool below.Engineers here, does that make any sense? And if true, could the banks not be stabilized at a fraction the cost of repairing the dam?
Covering something with moving water to prevent erosion seems nuts.
Also that is the same Knight that made the insightful point in 99.last.
Ok, de-anonymizing, is the dam here? If so, the mill races are the two small channels you can see running SE, and the actual mill structure is somewhere on those channels. I can't see anything on satellite, trees everywhere (the woods in the OP?). Alternatively, here? If so, the same applies, but there's only one channel. Either way, the mill structure is considerably removed from the dam itself. Without the dam the mill race dries up, and the mill structure eventually will fill with dirt, but that won't destroy it. In any event, if the thing isn't even marked on the map no-one much cares about it.
Neither of those. Look up Thomp/son's Island.
You can see my house in the first link of 109, for funsies.
Fuck. Is the end of the mill race here? If so, the mill race appears to be lined with fucking concrete. And the mill structure highly undistinguished. And far removed from the dam.
112: The graffiti on the left side of that photo merits historic preservation.
I think so, yes. I've never been there. I went looking for it once or twice (pre-Google Earth) and couldn't find it.
The last dozen or so comments have further convinced me that my suggestion back at 19 is the way to go.
Also, everyone trying to rehabilitate brutalism is sick and wrong.
87: Enh, I think they have a quirky charm, but I admit I do prefer earlier architecture. (I might be projecting, as I live in a weird but not interesting midcentury modern house in a neighborhood full of lovely foursquare and other early 20th century styles.)
While the old high-rises in East Liberty (it's not clear to me if he had anything to do with them, the article reads ambiguously to me) were AFAICT awful and isolated minority communities while at the same time cutting them off from ownership--think Red Road Flats, on a slightly smaller scale--Penn Plaza is a huge point of local contention in terms of gentrification. Sure, the building might have little architectural merit, but the people who lived there actually liked the community that developed, reinforced by the quasi-public recreational space nearby. JRoth can speak to this better than I can.
115: In slogan form, "Yes to Brutality! No to Brutalism!"
Ok, got it. The dam is here, the end of the millrace is at 112. The millrace isn't marked on the map, but if you switch to satellite you can see it running in a relatively straight line on the right, the river meandering everywhere on the left. Assuming the remnant mill machinery is at 112, where the head is at its maximum, it's nearly 500m from the actual dam. And the lower millrace is definitely lined with concrete. In sum, the preservation case is total bullshit.
There's also an aspect of historic preservation that has almost nothing to do with the actual significance of the architecture itself, but with whether something significant or someone famous spent time in a place. We've been seeing this a lot in NYC, where decrepit buildings are about to be torn down, and at the last minute, some group comes in and demands preservation because Edgar Allan Poe or Dorothy Parker lived there for six months when they were children (these are both real things that have happened - the Parker one is on my street).
These are the sort of things that are deserving of a historical marker, certainly, particularly if something actually historic happened on the site, and I certainly think we should preserve places like Fraunces Tavern (!), and the place to *obviously* preserve (if any) that is Dorothy Parker related is the Algonquin Hotel, but no, the decrepit brownstone that she lived in for six months when she was a child, and did absolutely nothing of significance in, that is now fronting a cheapo nail salon?
It got torn down.
I hope somebody at least made a salacious quip first.
119: The proposed plaque read, "The Tonstant Weader Fwowed up here."
"New Jersey frat boy pissed here also."
119: This. The idea that important people leave a sluglike trail of historicity wherever they go is bad. In this part of the country, it's "Washington slept here" signs at every old inn. Some important buildings need to be preserved, and the Fraunces Tavern clearly satisfies that. For less important events that important people took part in, a plaque might be appropriate, like the one on a local skyscraper that says la Fayette did something-or-other on that site on his 1830s reunion tour. But cities are for the living. There's a reason San Francisco banished their dead to Colma.
118: This has clarified tremendously for me what on earth is going on, no joke. Just in terms of the topography.
Time well spent! Now go burn that bullshitter's ass.
How was I supposed to know that?
119; E.g., There is some interest in official historical status for the birthplace of at least one of the Three Stooges.
||
Crime spree in New Hampshire: "Police are looking for a youth they say vandalized a police cruiser late Saturday or early Sunday by pouring maple syrup on it."
There's video.
|>
Did they actually test that it was maple syrup instead of just the maple-flavored corn syrup?
I would trust the Rindge, NH police department to know the difference, though it does strike me as rather extravagant to use the genuine maple stuff.
Correction to 119 - she lived there for four years as a child. Here's the article about it being torn down and a whole bunch of agita (in the comments particularly).
https://www.westsiderag.com/2018/09/06/dorothy-parkers-former-home-is-being-demolished
The place was a shithole. I'm all for preserving beautiful architechture, but the facade had been completely destroyed by a succession of cheapo businesses, and the entire stretch of buildings from Columbus to West End is really due for a revitalization (I say this as someone who lives in a 90 year old building, but on one block further east that is within the historic district, so we can't put neon signs and shit all over our facades).
Paul McCartney's childhood home, now the property of the National Trust. Good, innit? I feel a little sorry for the neighbours.
I would mention that when the Trust was first given the thing they advertised for a caretaker to live in it and hired a guy called John Halliday, but most people won't get the joke.
I don't get the joke either. I'm told that if you go see Andy Warhol's childhood home, the old lady who lives there will come out and yell at you to go away.
Is she his auntie? I can't say I blame her.
136.1: Probably family. I don't blame her either.
136.2 I suppose the joke would have worked better if it were for a caretaker for Elvis's childhood home.
Someone in high school gave me a cassette tape of his stuff. I still remember such classics as "Je ne prends LSD" and "riviere ouvre ton lit"
I had no idea Elvis could sing in French.
On his day Halliday was pretty good. It is however an article of faith in Britain that all French singers are rubbish unless they're called Piaf.
