DAVID ADAMS writes about the odder side of life…
• A poster depicting two Asian males eating McDonald’s which hung on the wall of a Texas branch of the fast-food chain for months wasn’t put up by staff but by a uni student looking to address issues of diversity. In a YouTube video, the student, Jevh Maravilla, said he wanted to increase the representation of Asians in posters at McDonald’s so, posing as an employee, he added a fake poster depicting himself and friend Christian Toledo eating the company’s fries on the wall of the restaurant at Pearland, south of Houston. On Sunday – 51 days after the poster was put up, he sent out a tweet posing with it. McDonald’s, in a statement, said they applauded the “student’s creativity” and that the company took “pride in highlighting diversity in every aspect of our restaurants”.
• And the award for the worst building in Britain goes to…Redrock Stockport, a leisure complex and car park in Greater Manchester. The UK publication BD announced the winner of the Carbuncle Cup, a prize for the building judged the UK’s worst, after its judges selected the entry from a shortlist of six. The shortlist also included two residential tower developments in London, a red brick house (also in London), a two storey extension to an historic building in the centre of Liverpool and a student housing project in Plymouth. The judges said they took into account readers’ comments about the Stockport building in making their decision including one in which the writer said they’d “seen better-looking prisons” and another calling it an “abomination”.
• A church in New York City has three new members in its flock – and they’re actually sheep. The three sheep – Houston, Prince and Spring – do actually have a job: they will reportedly spend the next six weeks working as ‘lambscapers’, munching grass in the grounds of St Patrick’s Old Cathedral in Soho in a bid to keep the churchyard tidy (while also bringing a nice rural flavour to the urban setting). It’s the fifth group of sheep to be hosted at the historic church – the idea apparently started when a groundskeeper announced he was planning to retire and Monsignor Donald Sakano jokingly replied: “What do you expect me to do now, get sheep?”. “The second I said it I thought, ‘That might be a good idea,’ even though I knew nothing about sheep-keeping here in New York City,” he said. The church are seeking people to contribute to the cost of keeping the sheep, which are, incidentially, an Australian breed.
