Guests who stayed recently at Liz at Lancaster went off to Katzys in Rosebank for live music and had a great evening.  Situated in the Firs , a mall in nearby Rosebank, right next to the well-renowned Grillhouse –this is the place to be seen.  Resident bands perform 5 times a week , and patrons can order off  the Grillhouse food menu [...]

Clustered around the lower Rosebank/Parkwood border on Jan Smuts Ave is a number of galleries which offer an exciting range of exhibitions  http://www.rosebank.co.za/view/index/rosebank_joburgs_art_destination/62/1/153   Tessa Cuncliffe includes 3 of them in her top 5 galleries ‘for the not so arty’   http://www.jhblive.com/kultcha/features/the_top_5_jozi_galleries_for_the_not_so_arty/136012
Showing at Everard Read from 11th April to 4th May are Pappetti’s large scale canvases [...]

Although it’s on until the 30th June make sure that you aren’t lulled into a lack of urgency to see this amazing exhibition, waking up at the end of its run to realize that you have to rush to see it in time before it ends.   Dr Gunther von Hagens’ plastinated bodies provide an extraordinary [...]

South African Fashion Week  launches the Spring/Summer 2013 Collections at the Crowne Plaza, The Rosebank, Johannesburg from 11 – 13 April 2013. Designers include Black Coffee, Rubicon, Colleen Eitzen, Ephymol, Naked Ape, Lunar, Vesselina Pentcheva and Clive Rundle.  The SAFW Buyers Lounge will be open for a closer viewing of the collections [...]

The Grace hotel in Rosebank started as part of the Brand’s family-owned and run group of hotels.  The first of these hotels was the Mount Grace in the Magaliesberg.   In 1983 Chippy Brand and his wife, Cynthia, with no training in the hospitality industry, transformed the venue from a run-down church camp into a popular [...]

 
“White Man Walking” is a project which combines three of my pet hobby horses:  the amazingly creative and innovative projects that come out of the Goethe Institut; the problem of pavements which deny pedestrian access and force people to walk in the streets; and alternative ways of experiencing the city.  The project arose out of [...]

I’m a sucker for second hand bookshops, actually I’m a sucker for bookshops, period. But if you want a real experience visit the Collectors’ Treasury in Commissioner St in Joburg’s eastern inner city.  It is located in an 8 story building – a very unprepossessing post-war structure, which is slightly further west of Arts on [...]

Which comes first – the chicken or the egg?  In the case of the built environment it is surely the buildings which must precede the functional possibilities they offer.  So as the supply of  high rise inner city developments has increased,  so the demand for a venue with a view has grown.  And there is [...]

Park Station then and now:
 
Currently seen opposite Brickfields in Newtown and just south-west of Mandela Bridge
Johannesburg’s first railway station ,  commissioned by the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek and designed by the Dutch architect Jacob Klinkhamer, was  manufactured in Rotterdam in 1895.  It was brought out to the Transvaal and was re-erected at Park Halt (as Park [...]

 
Neil Fraser who is a private consultant in the field of urban renewal, writes an amazing newsletter Citichat.  Sadly since he has left Johannesburg to take up life in Montagu, these newsletters are less frequent than they were.  Citichat is a Joint Venture with Urban Genesis Management an organization which works to  strengthen [...]