Coffee-Table Notes

People mattered to Fred Moten when he was growing up in 1970s Las Vegas. As a black kid living in a segregated area of the entertainment capital of America and beyond, Moten and his friends made their own fun. At home too, growing up with his janitor father, a school-teacher mother who campaigned for desegregation and a lively coterie of activists, artists and bohemians, the social scene on his doorstep was an important influence on the man named by Art Review as the tenth most globally influential people in the arts.  “I grew up around people who were really interested in the arts and beauty, and who always had interesting things to say about it,” says Moten. “As a kid as well, I was part of this really intense social group, and we would always embark on these collective projects with bike ramps or whatever, and we’d do things together, which was great. I’d much rather do something together with someone than by myself.” It’s not difficult to see the long-term

By rights, those in charge of Leith Depot should have been in mourning this weekend. As the long-running battle for the heart and soul of Stead’s Place, the two-storey 1920s sandstone block on Leith Walk in Edinburgh threatened with demolition by developers, looks towards some kind of endgame, its last remaining tenants were set to close the doors on one of the city’s finest small music venues for a final time. As it is, the series of gigs that were originally supposed to be a last gasp wake for the bijou upstairs room of what was formerly regarded as Edinburgh’s worst pub before being reinvented as Leith Depot will now have something of a triumphal air. This is down to a last minute decision to extend Leith Depot’s lease for another month.   Up until this week, Stead’s Place owners Drum Property Group appeared determined to stick to an eviction date of October 1 for all sitting tenants. This was despite the fact that City of Edinburgh Council had unanimously rejected Drum’s p