Tuesday, September 07, 2004

And speaking of weird stuff

(Via Polipundit) The Ryugyong Hotel:
The Ryugyong Hotel is, in my opinion, the single most unsettling structure ever erected by the hand of man. It's 1,082 feet tall, has 105 floors, and encloses 3.9 million square meters of floor space.

And it is completely empty. It doesn't even have windows.
...
The Ryugyong Hotel looms over Pyongyang like some kind of slumbering bat. Something deep inside my brain tells me that the 75° angle of the hotel's outer walls is exactly the wrong angle; it says sinister, it says creepy, it says get away.
...
The same sense of pride that drove them to build the Ryugyong has driven the North Koreans to an almost pathological level of denial about the building. It's no longer on the city's maps. Guides claim not to know where it is. No one speaks of it. This state of affairs is made all the more surreal by the fact that the almost incomprehensibly massive Ryugyong is visible from every part of Pyongyang. It hangs over the horizon, never far out of sight. The ultimate expression of the idea of the elephant in the corner.
Much more by following the link including photos.

Hey, every Pharoah needs a pyramid! Too bad "Dear Leader" isn't using his.