2
$6 beyond the greater New York metropolitan area. $5.00 Late Edition VOL. CLXII .. No. 55,917 © 2012 The New York Times NEW YORK, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2012 U(D5E71D)x+&!=!/!=!$ The divergent paths of two Libyan brothers — one a lawmaker, the other a jihadist — offer insights into the differ- ent strands of political Islam. PAGE 8 INTERNATIONAL 8-17 Two Paths for Libyan Brothers Members of the New York Police Emer- gency Service Unit are trained to climb to great heights to coax would-be sui- cides back from the brink. PAGE 1 METROPOLITAN Life and Death, on a Bridge Maureen Dowd PAGE 1 OPINION IN SUNDAY REVIEW By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL DICKLEBURGH, England — For Britain’s legion of gardeners, peat has long been as essential to gardening as beer is to the corner pub. So trowels flew after the British government — heeding environmental concerns — an- nounced plans to gradually elim- inate peat from all gardening products, setting off an intense battle over how to prioritize two of this country’s defining pas- sions: indulging the yard and protecting the planet. While many gardeners regard the partially decomposed plant matter known as peat as an al- most magical elixir, environmen- talists say using it is problematic because it is scraped off the tops of centuries-old bogs, which are vital ecosystems that also serve as natural stores of carbon, just like rain forests. The celebrity gardener Bob Flowerdew was shocked by the violent reaction when he said he would defy the government and continue to use peat to nurture finicky plants like azaleas. “The hate mail was quite frightening — in some circles I’ve become an outcast,” said Mr. Flowerdew, a longtime panelist on the BBC’s “Gardeners’ Question Time” ra- dio program, and a favorite speaker at women’s clubs. The debate between the gar- dening industry and environmen- talists grew so acerbic that the government appointed an emer- gency peat task force after the phaseout plan was announced last year, which delivered a first report this summer. “What I’ve done is to try to unblock an im- British Soil Is Battlefield Over Peat, for Bogs’ Sake ANDREW TESTA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES The celebrity gardener Bob Flowerdew, in Dickleburgh, Eng- land, drew criticism for opposing the plan to phase out peat. Continued on Page 14 By CHARLES V. BAGLI London, Tokyo and other me- tropolises have created central business districts with forests of skyscrapers in recent years, seeking to meet the needs of globe-trotting corporate tenants. But New York’s premier dis- trict, the 70-block area around Grand Central Terminal, has lagged, Bloomberg officials say, hampered by zoning rules, dec- ades old, that have limited the height of buildings. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg wants to overhaul these rules so that buildings in Midtown Man- hattan can soar as high as those elsewhere. New towers could eventually cast shadows over landmarks across the area, in- cluding St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. They could rise above the 59- story MetLife Building and even the 77-story Chrysler Building. Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal re- flects his effort to put his stamp on the city well after his tenure ends in December 2013. Moving swiftly, he wants the City Council to adopt the new zoning, for what is being called Midtown East, by October 2013, with the first per- mits for new buildings granted four years later. His administration says that without the changes, the neigh- borhood around Grand Central will not retain its reputation as “the best business address in the world” because 300 of its roughly 400 buildings are more than 50 years old. These structures also lack the large column-free spaces, tall ceilings and environ- mental features now sought by corporate tenants. The rezoning — from 39th Street to 57th Street on the East Side — would make it easier to demolish aging buildings in order to make way for state of-the-art towers. Without it, “the top Class A tenants who have been attracted to the area in the past would be- gin to look elsewhere for space,” the administration says in its pro- posal. The plan has stirred criticism from some urban planners, com- munity boards and City Council members, who have contended that the mayor has acted hastily. They said they were concerned about the impact of taller towers in an already dense district where buildings, public spaces, streets, sidewalks and subways have long remained unchanged. Mr. Bloomberg has encour- aged high-rise development in in- dustrial neighborhoods, includ- ing the Far West Side of Manhat- Bloomberg Pushes a Plan to Let Midtown Soar CHANG W. LEE/THE NEW YORK TIMES MAKE ROOM, OLD-TIMER The skyline near the Chrysler Building may get more dense. Continued on Page 4 By ROBERT F. WORTH RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — For months, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been funneling money and small arms to Syria’s rebels but have refused to provide heavier weapons, like shoulder-fired mis- siles, that could allow opposition fighters to bring down govern- ment aircraft, take out armored vehicles and turn the war’s tide. While they have publicly called for arming the rebels, they have held back, officials in both coun- tries said, in part because they have been discouraged by the United States, which fears the heavier weapons could end up in the hands of terrorists. As a result, the rebels have just enough weapons to maintain a stalemate, the war grinds on and more jihadist militants join the fray every month. “You can give the rebels AKs, but you can’t stop the Syrian re- gime’s military with AKs,” said Khalid al-Attiyah, a state min- ister for foreign affairs in Qatar. Providing the rebels with heavier weapons “has to happen,” he added. “But first we need the backing of the United States, and preferably the U.N.” Saudi officials here said the United States was not barring them from providing shoulder- fired missiles, but warning about the risks. The Saudis and Qataris said they hoped to convince their allies that those risks could be overcome. “We are looking at ways to put in place practices to prevent this type of weapon from falling into the wrong hands,” one Arab official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity in line with diplomatic protocol. American support for such weapons transfers is unlikely to materialize any time soon. The Obama administration has made clear that it has no desire to deep- en its efforts, mostly providing lo- CITING U.S. FEARS, ARAB ALLIES LIMIT SYRIAN REBEL AID HEAVY ARMS WITHHELD Terrorism Risk Curtails Saudi and Qatari Bid to Tip Civil War Continued on Page 16 MANU BRABO/ASSOCIATED PRESS Denied more weapons like shoulder-fired missiles, Syrian rebels rely on rifles like this Kalashni- kov, or AK. “You can’t stop the Syrian regime’s military with AKs,” a state official in Qatar said. This article is by Denise Grady, Andrew Pollack and Sabrina Tavernise. Eddie C. Lovelace, a Kentucky judge still on the bench into his late 70s, had a penchant for recit- ing Shakespeare from memory and telling funny stories in his big, booming voice. But a car ac- cident last spring left him with severe neck pain, and in July and August he sought spinal injec- tions with a steroid medicine for relief. Instead, Judge Lovelace died in Nashville in September at age 78, one of the first victims in a growing national outbreak of meningitis caused by the very medicine that was supposed to help him. Health officials say they believe it was contaminated with a fungus. The rising toll — 7 dead, 57 ill and thousands potentially ex- posed — has cast a harsh light on the loose regulations that legal experts say allowed a company to sell 17,676 vials of an unsafe drug to pain clinics in 23 states. Federal health officials said Fri- day that all patients injected with the steroid drug made by that company, the New England Com- pounding Center in Framingham, Mass., which has a troubled his- tory, needed to be tracked down immediately and informed of the danger. “This wasn’t some obscure procedure being done in some ob- scure hospital,” said Tom Carroll, a close friend to the Lovelace family, and their lawyer. “They had sought out a respected neu- rosurgeon who had been referred by their family doctor, at a re- spected hospital,” he said, refer- ring to the St. Thomas Outpatient Neurosurgery Center. “How does this happen?” The answer, at least in part, is that some doctors and clinics have turned away from major drug manufacturers and have taken their business to so-called compounding pharmacies, like New England Compounding, which mix up batches of drugs on their own, often for much lower prices than major manufacturers charge — and with little of the federal oversight of drug safety and quality that is routine for the big companies. “The Food and Drug Adminis- tration has more regulatory au- thority over a drug factory in Chi- na than over a compounding pharmacy in Massachusetts,” said Kevin Outterson, an associ- ate professor of law at Boston University. The outbreak has also brought Scant Oversight of Drug Maker in Fatal Outbreak 7 Meningitis Deaths From Treatment of Uncertain Value Continued on Page 27 By ADAM LIPTAK TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — On the morning of the primary here in August, the local elec- tions board met to decide which absentee ballots to count. It was not an easy job. The board tossed out some ballots because they arrived without the signature re- quired on the outside of the return envelope. It rejected one that said “see inside” where the signature should have been. And it debated what to do with ballots in which the signature on the en- velope did not quite match the one in the county’s files. “This ‘r’ is not like that ‘r,’” Judge Augustus D. Aikens Jr. said, suggesting that a ballot should be rejected. Ion Sancho, the elections supervisor here, disagreed. “This ‘k’ is like that ‘k,’” he replied, and he persuaded his colleagues to count the vote. Scenes like this will play out in many elections next month, because Florida and other states are swiftly mov- ing from voting at a polling place toward voting by mail. In the last general election in Florida, in 2010, 23 percent of voters cast absentee ballots, up from 15 percent in the mid- term election four years be- fore. Nationwide, the use of absentee ballots and other forms of voting by mail has more than tripled since 1980 and now accounts for almost 20 percent of all votes. Yet votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show. Elec- tion officials reject almost 2 percent of ballots cast by mail, double the rate for in- person voting. “The more people you force to vote by mail,” Mr. Sancho said, “the more invalid ballots you will generate.” Election experts say the challenges created by mailed ballots could well affect out- comes this fall and beyond. If the contests next month are close enough to be within what election lawyers call the margin of litigation, the grounds on which they will be fought will not be hanging chads but ballots cast away from the voting booth. In 2008, 18 percent of the votes in the nine states likely to decide this year’s presi- dential election were cast by mail. That number will almost certainly rise this year, and voters in two-thirds of the states have already begun casting absentee ballots. In four Western states, voting by mail is the exclusive or domi- nant way to cast a ballot. The trend will probably re- Error and Fraud at Issue As Absentee Voting Rises Problems With Ballots Could Affect Elections SARAH BETH GLICKSTEEN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES An absentee ballot in Florida. Almost 2 percent of mailed ballots are rejected, double the rate for in-person voting. Continued on Page 22 A comedian’s heart beats inside Dick Costolo, the nonconforming chief execu- tive of Twitter, who may well hold the key to the company’s success. PAGE 1 SUNDAY BUSINESS Twitter’s Chief, Improvising President Obama and the Democrats shattered this election cycle’s fund-rais- ing record by collecting $181 million in September. PAGE 18 ELECTION 2012 18-23 Record Haul for Democrats Today, colder, rain late morning, high 55. Tonight, evening rain at times, clear late, low 44. Tomor- row, mostly sunny, quite cool, high 60. Details, SportsSunday, Page 12.

VOL.CLXII . . No. 55,917 ©2012 The New York Times Error ... · By ROBERT F. WORTH RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — For months, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been funneling money and small

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Page 1: VOL.CLXII . . No. 55,917 ©2012 The New York Times Error ... · By ROBERT F. WORTH RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — For months, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been funneling money and small

$6 beyond the greater New York metropolitan area. $5.00

Late Edition

VOL. CLXII . . No. 55,917 © 2012 The New York Times NEW YORK, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2012

U(D5E71D)x+&!=!/!=!$The divergent paths of two Libyanbrothers — one a lawmaker, the other ajihadist — offer insights into the differ-ent strands of political Islam. PAGE 8

INTERNATIONAL 8-17

Two Paths for Libyan BrothersMembers of the New York Police Emer-gency Service Unit are trained to climbto great heights to coax would-be sui-cides back from the brink. PAGE 1

METROPOLITAN

Life and Death, on a Bridge Maureen Dowd PAGE 1

OPINION IN SUNDAY REVIEW

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

DICKLEBURGH, England —For Britain’s legion of gardeners,peat has long been as essential togardening as beer is to the cornerpub. So trowels flew after theBritish government — heedingenvironmental concerns — an-nounced plans to gradually elim-inate peat from all gardeningproducts, setting off an intensebattle over how to prioritize twoof this country’s defining pas-sions: indulging the yard andprotecting the planet.

While many gardeners regardthe partially decomposed plantmatter known as peat as an al-most magical elixir, environmen-talists say using it is problematicbecause it is scraped off the topsof centuries-old bogs, which arevital ecosystems that also serveas natural stores of carbon, justlike rain forests.

The celebrity gardener BobFlowerdew was shocked by theviolent reaction when he said hewould defy the government andcontinue to use peat to nurturefinicky plants like azaleas. “Thehate mail was quite frightening

— in some circles I’ve become anoutcast,” said Mr. Flowerdew, alongtime panelist on the BBC’s“Gardeners’ Question Time” ra-dio program, and a favoritespeaker at women’s clubs.

The debate between the gar-dening industry and environmen-

talists grew so acerbic that thegovernment appointed an emer-gency peat task force after thephaseout plan was announcedlast year, which delivered a firstreport this summer. “What I’vedone is to try to unblock an im-

British Soil Is Battlefield Over Peat, for Bogs’ Sake

ANDREW TESTA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

The celebrity gardener Bob Flowerdew, in Dickleburgh, Eng-land, drew criticism for opposing the plan to phase out peat.

Continued on Page 14

By CHARLES V. BAGLI

London, Tokyo and other me-tropolises have created centralbusiness districts with forests ofskyscrapers in recent years,seeking to meet the needs ofglobe-trotting corporate tenants.

But New York’s premier dis-trict, the 70-block area aroundGrand Central Terminal, haslagged, Bloomberg officials say,hampered by zoning rules, dec-ades old, that have limited theheight of buildings.

Mayor Michael R. Bloombergwants to overhaul these rules sothat buildings in Midtown Man-hattan can soar as high as thoseelsewhere. New towers couldeventually cast shadows overlandmarks across the area, in-cluding St. Patrick’s Cathedraland the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.They could rise above the 59-story MetLife Building and eventhe 77-story Chrysler Building.

Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal re-flects his effort to put his stampon the city well after his tenureends in December 2013. Movingswiftly, he wants the City Councilto adopt the new zoning, for what

is being called Midtown East, byOctober 2013, with the first per-mits for new buildings grantedfour years later.

His administration says thatwithout the changes, the neigh-borhood around Grand Centralwill not retain its reputation as“the best business address in theworld” because 300 of its roughly400 buildings are more than 50

years old. These structures alsolack the large column-freespaces, tall ceilings and environ-mental features now sought bycorporate tenants.

The rezoning — from 39thStreet to 57th Street on the EastSide — would make it easier todemolish aging buildings in orderto make way for state of-the-arttowers.

Without it, “the top Class Atenants who have been attractedto the area in the past would be-gin to look elsewhere for space,”the administration says in its pro-posal.

The plan has stirred criticismfrom some urban planners, com-munity boards and City Councilmembers, who have contendedthat the mayor has acted hastily.They said they were concernedabout the impact of taller towersin an already dense districtwhere buildings, public spaces,streets, sidewalks and subwayshave long remained unchanged.

Mr. Bloomberg has encour-aged high-rise development in in-dustrial neighborhoods, includ-ing the Far West Side of Manhat-

Bloomberg Pushes a Plan to Let Midtown Soar

CHANG W. LEE/THE NEW YORK TIMES

MAKE ROOM, OLD-TIMER Theskyline near the ChryslerBuilding may get more dense. Continued on Page 4

By ROBERT F. WORTH

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Formonths, Saudi Arabia and Qatarhave been funneling money andsmall arms to Syria’s rebels buthave refused to provide heavierweapons, like shoulder-fired mis-siles, that could allow oppositionfighters to bring down govern-ment aircraft, take out armoredvehicles and turn the war’s tide.

While they have publicly calledfor arming the rebels, they haveheld back, officials in both coun-tries said, in part because theyhave been discouraged by theUnited States, which fears theheavier weapons could end up inthe hands of terrorists.

As a result, the rebels have justenough weapons to maintain astalemate, the war grinds on andmore jihadist militants join thefray every month.

“You can give the rebels AKs,but you can’t stop the Syrian re-gime’s military with AKs,” saidKhalid al-Attiyah, a state min-ister for foreign affairs in Qatar.Providing the rebels with heavierweapons “has to happen,” headded. “But first we need thebacking of the United States, andpreferably the U.N.”

Saudi officials here said theUnited States was not barringthem from providing shoulder-fired missiles, but warning aboutthe risks. The Saudis and Qatarissaid they hoped to convince theirallies that those risks could beovercome. “We are looking atways to put in place practices toprevent this type of weapon fromfalling into the wrong hands,” oneArab official said, speaking onthe condition of anonymity in linewith diplomatic protocol.

American support for suchweapons transfers is unlikely tomaterialize any time soon. TheObama administration has madeclear that it has no desire to deep-en its efforts, mostly providing lo-

CITING U.S. FEARS,ARAB ALLIES LIMITSYRIAN REBEL AID

HEAVY ARMS WITHHELD

Terrorism Risk CurtailsSaudi and Qatari Bid

to Tip Civil War

Continued on Page 16

MANU BRABO/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Denied more weapons like shoulder-fired missiles, Syrian rebels rely on rifles like this Kalashni-kov, or AK. “You can’t stop the Syrian regime’s military with AKs,” a state official in Qatar said.

This article is by Denise Grady,Andrew Pollack and SabrinaTavernise.

Eddie C. Lovelace, a Kentuckyjudge still on the bench into hislate 70s, had a penchant for recit-ing Shakespeare from memoryand telling funny stories in hisbig, booming voice. But a car ac-cident last spring left him withsevere neck pain, and in July andAugust he sought spinal injec-tions with a steroid medicine forrelief.

Instead, Judge Lovelace diedin Nashville in September at age78, one of the first victims in agrowing national outbreak ofmeningitis caused by the verymedicine that was supposed tohelp him. Health officials saythey believe it was contaminatedwith a fungus.

The rising toll — 7 dead, 57 illand thousands potentially ex-posed — has cast a harsh light onthe loose regulations that legal

experts say allowed a companyto sell 17,676 vials of an unsafedrug to pain clinics in 23 states.Federal health officials said Fri-day that all patients injected withthe steroid drug made by thatcompany, the New England Com-pounding Center in Framingham,Mass., which has a troubled his-tory, needed to be tracked downimmediately and informed of thedanger.

“This wasn’t some obscureprocedure being done in some ob-scure hospital,” said Tom Carroll,a close friend to the Lovelacefamily, and their lawyer. “Theyhad sought out a respected neu-rosurgeon who had been referredby their family doctor, at a re-

spected hospital,” he said, refer-ring to the St. Thomas OutpatientNeurosurgery Center. “How doesthis happen?”

The answer, at least in part, isthat some doctors and clinicshave turned away from majordrug manufacturers and havetaken their business to so-calledcompounding pharmacies, likeNew England Compounding,which mix up batches of drugs ontheir own, often for much lowerprices than major manufacturerscharge — and with little of thefederal oversight of drug safetyand quality that is routine for thebig companies.

“The Food and Drug Adminis-tration has more regulatory au-thority over a drug factory in Chi-na than over a compoundingpharmacy in Massachusetts,”said Kevin Outterson, an associ-ate professor of law at BostonUniversity.

The outbreak has also brought

Scant Oversight of Drug Maker in Fatal Outbreak

7 Meningitis DeathsFrom Treatment ofUncertain Value

Continued on Page 27

By ADAM LIPTAKTALLAHASSEE, Fla. — On

the morning of the primaryhere in August, the local elec-tions board met to decidewhich absentee ballots tocount. It was not an easy job.

The board tossed out someballots because they arrivedwithout the signature re-quired on the outside of thereturn envelope. It rejectedone that said “see inside”where the signature shouldhave been. And it debatedwhat to do with ballots inwhich the signature on the en-velope did not quite match theone in the county’s files.

“This ‘r’ is not like that ‘r,’”Judge Augustus D. Aikens Jr.said, suggesting that a ballotshould be rejected.

Ion Sancho, the electionssupervisor here, disagreed.“This ‘k’ is like that ‘k,’” hereplied, and he persuaded hiscolleagues to count the vote.

Scenes like this will playout in many elections nextmonth, because Florida andother states are swiftly mov-ing from voting at a pollingplace toward voting by mail.In the last general election inFlorida, in 2010, 23 percent ofvoters cast absentee ballots,up from 15 percent in the mid-term election four years be-fore. Nationwide, the use ofabsentee ballots and otherforms of voting by mail hasmore than tripled since 1980

and now accounts for almost20 percent of all votes.

Yet votes cast by mail areless likely to be counted, morelikely to be compromised andmore likely to be contestedthan those cast in a votingbooth, statistics show. Elec-tion officials reject almost 2percent of ballots cast bymail, double the rate for in-person voting.

“The more people you forceto vote by mail,” Mr. Sanchosaid, “the more invalid ballotsyou will generate.”

Election experts say thechallenges created by mailedballots could well affect out-comes this fall and beyond. Ifthe contests next month areclose enough to be withinwhat election lawyers call themargin of litigation, thegrounds on which they will befought will not be hangingchads but ballots cast awayfrom the voting booth.

In 2008, 18 percent of thevotes in the nine states likelyto decide this year’s presi-dential election were cast bymail. That number will almostcertainly rise this year, andvoters in two-thirds of thestates have already beguncasting absentee ballots. Infour Western states, voting bymail is the exclusive or domi-nant way to cast a ballot.

The trend will probably re-

Error and Fraud at IssueAs Absentee Voting Rises

Problems With Ballots Could Affect Elections

SARAH BETH GLICKSTEEN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

An absentee ballot in Florida. Almost 2 percent of mailedballots are rejected, double the rate for in-person voting.

Continued on Page 22

A comedian’s heart beats inside DickCostolo, the nonconforming chief execu-tive of Twitter, who may well hold thekey to the company’s success. PAGE 1

SUNDAY BUSINESS

Twitter’s Chief, ImprovisingPresident Obama and the Democratsshattered this election cycle’s fund-rais-ing record by collecting $181 million inSeptember. PAGE 18

ELECTION 2012 18-23

Record Haul for Democrats

Today, colder, rain late morning,high 55. Tonight, evening rain attimes, clear late, low 44. Tomor-row, mostly sunny, quite cool, high60. Details, SportsSunday, Page 12.

Page 2: VOL.CLXII . . No. 55,917 ©2012 The New York Times Error ... · By ROBERT F. WORTH RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — For months, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been funneling money and small

10 TR THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2012

The scene resembles a religious pro-cession, not the opening salvo of a 22-course degustation menu. As images ofcandles flicker on the walls, a bell be-gins to toll and an angelic hymn fills theroom. Ten servers wearing ball capsand blue aprons slowly enter from aside door, heads bowed reverently overthe silver bowls in their hands.

Then the mood suddenly changes.The opening strains of the AC/DC song“Hell’s Bells” rip through the room asthe servers place the bowls before the10 diners seated around the stark whitetable. Inside, a green disc meant toevoke a Communion wafer is suspendedon a silver prong, illuminated by agreen spotlight from above. The firstcourse, a wasabi-flavored frozen apple

bite, is served.Such theatrics are all part of the show

at Ultraviolet, an experimental new res-taurant opened in Shanghai by theFrench chef Paul Pairet, whose aim is todeliver a multisensory eating experi-ence that goes beyond the mere taste ofthe food. Served in a dining room thatmore closely resembles a movie theater,with 360-degree video screen walls, sur-round-sound speakers and high-techoverhead lighting, each dish is accom-panied by a carefully choreographed set

of sounds, visuals and even scents, allintended to create a specific ambienceto enhance the flavors of the meal.

The goal is to break down the con-straints of the typical restaurant and in-tensify the focus on the food, not dis-tract from it, said Mr. Pairet, who is alsothe head chef of Mr & Mrs Bund, the ac-claimed French restaurant in Shanghai.

Speaking rapidly in sometimes im-perfect English, he explained: “I reallythink that we never lose the focus of thedish. I would not even say that the dish-

es are better, but to a certain, the memo-ry of the dish is stronger.”

The four-hour meal is high on whimsyand imagination. Mr. Pairet’s play onfish and chips (a single, battered caper-berry stuffed with anchovy paste andpaired with a Scottish beer) emerges ina dreary storm with images of rain-drops on the walls and the sounds ofthunder, before a British flag is illumi-nated on the table and the Beatles’ “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” begins to play.

Diners are transported to the beach

for the steamed lobster course, sur-rounded by crashing waves, the cries ofsea gulls and the scent of seawater fromthe steam of a pressure cooker the hostof the dinner, Fabien Verdier, whisksaround the room. With each meal pricedat 2,000 renminbi per person (or $314 at6.35 renminbi to the dollar), the successof Ultraviolet ultimately depends on thequality of the food. Mr. Pairet has al-ready received a glowing review fromone noteworthy critic: Alain Ducasse.After his visit last year, the chefscrawled “C’est magnifique” on a wallreserved for comments from guests.

Mr. Ducasse understood that Ultravi-olet wasn’t trying to be “a restaurant ofthe future,” Mr. Pairet said. “What weare doing is really anchored in the res-taurant just trying to bring the things abit more relevantly around the food.”

Ultraviolet, (86) 21-6142-5198,uvbypp.cc. Guests depart from Mr &Mrs Bund, 18 Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu,Shanghai. Reservations made online atuvbypp.cc/bookings.

JUSTIN BERGMAN

PHOTOGRAPHS BY SCOTT WRIGHT OF LIMELIGHT STUDIO

At Ultraviolet, video-screen walls and music produce different moods for a multisensory eating experience.

Bites SHANGHAI Ultraviolet

By RACHEL B. DOYLE

THE show was about to beginat a Soviet-era playhouse witholive-green seats, antiqueCaucasian rugs and a tiledceiling, in Yerevan, the Arme-

nian capital. I was with a man almost 50years my senior who, while giving me atour of an experimental art center in aformer disco that morning, had asked ifI would join him at the State Theater ofthe Young Spectator that night.

Invitations like this are not uncom-mon in this country of 3.3 million, wheretourists are still treated as guests to beinvited home for coffee and sweets, or,as in this case, to be taken out to anavant-garde pantomime performance.

As the play began, it quickly becameclear that this was nothing like the pan-tomimes put on for children in the West.This was a thrilling interpretive danceperformance about a third-century mar-tyr, St. Ardalion, his death suggested bythe ribbon looped around his wrists andankles. Ardalion had been hired to per-form in a play that mocked Christianity,but he was inspired to convert onstage,and died for it instead.

The play aptly summed up Armenia,which is considered to be the first na-tion to adopt Christianity as its state re-ligion, in A.D. 301, and which has perse-vered through the centuries despite be-ing conquered by the Romans, the Per-sians, the Arabs, the Mongols, the Turksand, of course, the Soviets. It is a coun-try that has not forgotten the Armeniangenocide of the early 20th century, andwhose national symbol, Mount Ararat,where many Christians believe Noah’sArk landed, is now on the other side ofthe closed Turkish border.

Yet the play was also very much aproduct of contemporary Yerevan,where ancient traditions are juxtaposedwith a vibrant arts scene and where anewly renovated airport is not far fromseveral stunning cathedrals that dateback more than a thousand years.

The creative energy is palpable: Thecity is filled with colorful stencils of fa-mous writers spray-painted on build-ings. A souvenir shop I wandered intohad an abstract-painting gallery, DalanGallery, hidden away on the secondfloor, as well as five yellow and greenparrots.

The Armenian Center for Contempo-rary Experimental Art took over a cav-ernous Soviet-era dance club after thecountry gained independence from theSoviet Union in 1991, and it now hostsabout a dozen multimedia art exhibi-tions and festivals every year.

The first thing I noticed about Yere-

van, speeding from the airport in a taxiat dawn, was that it was by no means agrayish post-Communist city. Buildingscombine classic Soviet architecturewith the striking pink and orange vol-canic tuff rock native to the country.“Russians call it the pink city,” saidMane Tonoyan, a tour guide.

No personal connections had drawnme to this mountainous country. Brush-es with the Armenian communities inBeirut and Istanbul had piqued my curi-osity, but it was an urge to go some-where that still felt like a secret, to ex-plore a place most travelers knew littleor nothing about, that led to my visit.

Indeed, despite offering a multitudeof impressive historic sites, including amuch older version of Stonehenge,called Karahunj, Armenia is barely onthe radar of tourists, who visit neigh-boring Turkey in droves. That meansthat the services and accommodationsset up for visitors can be rudimentary,though sometimes that just adds to itscharm. On one tour I went on, the vandriver suddenly stopped to chat andbuy fresh eggs from a woman on theside of the road. After another excur-sion, a family of four invited me in totheir apartment and plied me withstrong coffee and traditional grape andwalnut candy.

Armenia’s old monasteries andchurches are perhaps its greatest cul-tural treasures and account for a num-

ber of Unesco World Heritage sites. Oneof the most intriguing monasteries isGeghard, a complex of churches andtombs carved into rocky cliffs 25 mileseast of Yerevan, long known for housingthe spear said to have pierced Christ onthe cross. (The spear is now in a cathe-dral museum at Echmiadzin, west of Ye-revan.)

I visited Geghard on my second dayin the country. As I wound my way un-der the arches of the 800-year-oldchurch’s candlelit stone chambers, Iheard chanting growing louder andlouder. Soon, I came upon a crowd gath-ered in an inner sanctum, and saw amonk in a black hood and a golden capesinging in a rich baritone, his voice

echoing off the rock walls. I must have looked a bit puzzled be-

cause just then a teenager in a lavenderdress held her smartphone out to me.Using an Armenian-to-English diction-ary, she had typed in the word for “bap-tism.” As a young boy clad in whitestepped forward, I edged out of the red-curtained room so as not to intrude.

Outside in the square three musicianswere playing the duduk, a traditionalwoodwind instrument made from thewood of an apricot tree; children werewandering about wearing crowns offlowers; sellers hawked white doves, tobe set free after visitors made theirwishes. On a platform off to the side,men in boots gutted a hanging lamb, itsbright red blood spilling onto a stone; awoman in a head scarf told me theywould give the meat to poor villagers.Save for the black-robed student monkstexting on mobile phones nearby, thewhole scene could have been a tableaufrom a thousand years ago.

That evening I watched a Franco-Russian violinist named Fédor Roudine,the grand prix winner of the Aram Kha-chaturian International Competition,performing concertos in an elegant1930s concert hall. My ticket cost just2,000 dram (or $5 at 400 dram to the dol-lar). When Mr. Roudine finished, twocannons on either side of the stage shotout bursts of glitter in red, blue and or-ange, the colors of the Armenian flag.

Like Mr. Khachaturian, the composerwho was once denounced as “antipop-ular” and sent back to Armenia for “re-education,” the country’s artists oftenhad to deal with government repres-sion. The Soviets banned Sergei Paraja-nov, the legendary Armenian director,from making movies for 15 years afterhis critically acclaimed film, “The Colorof Pomegranates,” was released in 1968.

To fill the void, Mr. Parajanov beganto make collage art. Hundreds of hisunique assemblages are collected in theMuseum of Sergei Parajanov, an odd-ball standout of Yerevan’s rich housemuseum scene. One room is devoted toworks Mr. Parajanov created during hisnearly five years in prison, like bottle-cap carvings that look like old coins.

Despite the danger, Armenian intel-lectuals continued to test boundaries.During an era when “unofficial art” —anything besides Socialist Realism —was anathema to the Kremlin, and exhi-bitions of it were being bulldozed inMoscow, the authorities somehow al-lowed a modern art museum to open inYerevan in 1972. “Even some artistsdidn’t believe it would open,” said NuneAvetisian, director of the Modern ArtMuseum of Yerevan.

The city’s Modern Art Museum wasthe first state institution of its kind inthe Soviet Union. It is still hard to fath-om how it was permitted to displayworks like Hakob Hakobyan’s “In aCity,” a 1979 painting that shows a crowdof headless men raising handless armsin a Soviet-style square.

Perhaps the freedom the authoritiesallowed the museum was simply the re-sult of the city’s geography: “It was sosmall and very far from the center inMoscow,” Ms. Avetisian said.

On my last day in town I traveledsouth to the Khor Virap monastery,passing deep gorges and endlessly roll-ing hills that seemed to touch theclouds, red-roofed houses and purplewildflowers sprouting from cracks injagged volcanic rock walls. The snow-capped peak of Mount Ararat was al-ways in the distance.

As I entered Khor Virap, where themain draw is a deep dungeon whereGregory the Illuminator, Armenia’s pa-tron saint, was imprisoned in the thirdcentury, a young man brandished alarge rooster at me, smiling mischie-vously. I had been keen to go to a coun-try that still felt undiscovered, andwhile the rooster-seller might haveguessed that the redheaded womanwith a camera was not really in the mar-ket for a blood sacrifice, I appreciatedthe gesture. Æ

N E X T S T O P

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JUSTYNA MIELNIKIEWICZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT By Geghard Monastery; statue of an Armenian hero; sculpture of an actor; Hakob Hakobyan paintings at the Modern Art Museum.

Armenia’s ‘Pink City,’ in the Shadow of Ararat

Ara Alekyan’s “Spider” by Cinema Moscow in Yerevan, Armenia, which has ancient sites and a vibrant arts scene.

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