The Red Lips at La Manigua Botanic Garden, Colombia.
They are used to make a poison—watch out. (Courtesy of Pilar Quintana)
MARCH 5, 2011—— The mirror in the hotel bathroom tells the truth. Who is that old piece of bark? Why are there dark rings of time under those eyes?
Almost all hotel bathroom mirrors are washed over with bright light. It creates an in your-face effect you don’t get at home. Sometimes it may be the luster of a clean loo, other times it could be the magical distance from a known place.
In the mid-1980s I stayed at the Covent Hotel, a men’s only pay-by-the-week flophouse near Lincoln Park in Chicago. I have seen cypress trees made [...]
Waiter crosses the street to get to the other side…..
Feb. 17, 2011—-
CALI, Colombia—-I have two nightlife memories of Cali, 2011. So far.
One involves aguardiente as it always does in Colombia.
The other is more unique.
I am on the 11th floor of the Hotel Obelisco in the El Penon hotel district of Cali. I have a balcony that looks over the Cali River and the busy Colombia avenue that coils through the dense neighborhood.
The boulevard’s speeding motorcycles and mopeds remind me of [...]
Feb. 16, 2011—
CALI, Colombia—-Across the boulevard from the briskly flowing Cali River there is a place where time stands still.
A storefront shop sits between the Nomeolvides (Forget Me Not) Floristeria where yellow roses bloom during the day and the Escoces’ strip club where black petals fall at night.
Between the passionate curtains Hugo Suarez Fiat keeps his collection of 20 vintage movie theater projectors in the small storefront on Cali Avenue.
The steel dream machines are from the 1930s, 40s, 50s and have [...]
Salsa albums I bartered for before they got ripped off at the Bogota airport.
Oct. 6, 2010
People are scared of things they don’t know.
So for most of September I was the only white guy taking introductory salsa at the Dance Academy of Salsa & Modern Latin Dance in the Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago. The storefront studio is not far from my home and before my first lesson I circled the block with the windmilled apprehension of a first date.
But on my first visit I cut the rug with awkward Puerto Rican men, a fun Cuban woman, a shy Africn-American guy and an African-American woman who said I made her laugh.I did not pursue further [...]
