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For those who think of daily apocalypses
This is a silly little book (The Worse-Case Scenario Pocket Guide–New York City), but I bought it anyway because it has some funny scenarios that people like me think about. Notables: How to survive a pigeon swarm, how to deal with a rat attack (including where to pinch your fingers on the rat’s jaw to excise its razor teeth that have sunk into your arm, and a lesson on all the diseases you can get from the bite, including symptoms), how to barge through a tourist blockade on the sidewalk (sparing you from sidewalk rage and going to jail because you do something stupid as a result).
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Where is paradise?
Street Graffiti in Buenos Aires, Palermo, perhaps Hollywood. Translation not for the faint of heart or very religious:
“You exchanged the paradise of God for the paradise between my legs”.
Just the messenger.
Note the ubiquitous dog poop on the sidewalk-plopped, splattered and smeared for a nice sidewalk coating. Blog on this to come. Still love you BA- one of the most enjoyable cities I’ve visited.
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What does el coqui have to do with me?
Laying in a Spanish colonial style bed and staring at the mahogany beams on the ceiling a few years ago in the converted convent-now-luxury hotel “El Convento” in Viejo San Juan… I started to close my eyes to immerse myself in the aquatic song of el coquí. For those who don’t know, el coquí is the national symbol of Puerto Rico, known for the “co-quí” this frog makes.
Cy booked the trip there to spare me, he said, of the shame of being Boriqua and never having set foot on la isla de encanto. True, true, but Boriqua to me meant skyscrapers, not palm trees, but I suppose he could have made the same argument about Greek diners, and he was right so off we went.
What does one think when laying in a Spanish colonial canopy bed in El Convento listening to el coquí? Whether a special place is reserved for you in hell because you are engaging in pre-marital fornication in a room where a nun once pledged her virginity to Christ? Not unless you want to ruin your vacation. How about: where are all those froggies living that I hear them outside my door? Does the hotel import them into the courtyard for the benefit of tourists? Or are they really indigenous to the island and living any place they can in an encroaching concrete world?
The answer seems a little bit of both, if PBS or the nature channel is right. What does el coqui have to do with me? – continue reading …
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Nightingales of Inwood
If there are any ornithologists out there reading this, please enlighten us. When the weather warms up, the birds of Inwood seem to confuse midnight with dawn, because as I close my eyes to enter dreamland the birds break out into a twilight song. It starts with one chirp, but then it crescendos into a melodious chorus, like night has found her voice and is enticing you to find her. If you’re not a Hitchcock fan, this should be relaxing, except my circadian rhythm tells me that when I hear birds and I am laying in bed, IT’S TIME TO WAKE UP AND GO TO WORK. Oh how cruel that such beauty in nature can be raped into the modern man’s alarm clock! They sing on and on until about 3:30am when suddenly it becomes Inwood-Hill-Park-dead-silent.
It is strange because 3:30am is usually when the birds of Central Park start singing, at least in my book. Maybe it’s the same crew that picks up and takes the party there. How many nights did I wake up and cling onto the grey bars of our concrete terrace and wonder what makes birds sing at night? Is it the artificial sun our mastery of electricity makes, which also f*cks up our view of the celestial mosaic of stars? Do the birds feast on crack pebbles scattered in the scummy puddles of city West Nile-standing water? Is this what makes them party during the night and sleep away their normal call to announce day? I don’t think the nightingale is native to Inwood. Or is it? A seal has been recently spotted in the Inwood waters and they say seals once thrived here. Are animals reclaiming our cities? Someone please tell me.
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Nova Speaks
Hello Urban Odyssey bloggers. Welcome to another week of uncensored stories of urbanity, femininity, and ruckus. This past week covered posts from New York City to Athens. Dyckman Revolution revealed a spot in NYC where the last free man lives with cars from outerspace; we started a series “Ode to…” giving praise to good things and good people—this week we paid homage to Nuyoricans on their salsa-blasting-bikes; because life is about balance, someone was designated to a circle of my Dante’s Inferno in Salsa Doldrums (also to be a series); I become an accomplice in the Athenian version of “Cheaters” in the back of a taxi cab in Athens; a toxic waste site was declared in Washington Heights (here’s to Earth day!); and eco-militants in Athens know where you live, says this Athens post-it-graffiti in Gazi Gas Works.
Glad to see our readership growing, but my, my, my… don’t we have a shy group…? I’ve been hearing your comments via email, phone calls and texts. Posting your first comment can be hard, I know. But it can be rewarding. Think of yourself as tagging, or a dog marking up a tree. I’ll know you were there.
Greetings to Luxembourg, the Czech Republic, Germany and Ukraine.
Some of you asked for a way to be notified when the next post is up! Well I answered your call and added a “subscribe” button in case you want the news delivered to your email front door.
I also posted music.
Share the love.
-Nova
Salsa Doldrums
So now that you know some of the ins-and-outs of couple’s dance classes, let’s delve deeper into what I will now call the Salsa Saga. Partaking in your dance class with an instructor is just the icing on the cake. There is a hidden, even stranger world that is a part of couple’s dancing, and it’s the social hours that studios host where you’re supposed to practice.
Imagine it as training wheels for club life. You make a fool of yourself behind studio closed doors. Sounds somewhat benign, except that when you show up you’ll find that you’ll be an even bigger ass than you imagined, because the joint is run by intermediates and advanced.
It’s prom all over again. All the cool kids are near the DJ, spinning triple turns on two and twisting some mean Sussie Q’s, razor-sharp splits under the guy’s legs (I like that), and other crazy shit. The beginners and pre-intermediates and salsa-on-one morons like myself huddle by the door. Salsa Doldrums – continue reading …
Post Earth Day posting
Random post-it-graffiti in Gazi Gas Works, Athens, Greece 2007.
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Riding in Ruins: A Taksizis in Athens
I’m probably going to have a number or Greek city stories, so I might as well start with one of the first to stand out in memory. Every city boasts taxi cab stories, and I’m not here to rerun that cliché. I will, though, tell you some Athenian taxi cab flavor that I’ve enjoyed. Not talking about the smoking in the cab with the windows closed. (Don’t smoke? Well you are a smoker by default in Athens. Spend some time living there, and cigarettes look mighty good by the time you leave. Don’t be surprised if you need a nicotine patch to get you through the first two weeks back home.) I’m not commenting on the fact that you share your cab in Athens with whoever can fit and is picked up on the way. That, to me, is a delightful way to minimize traffic, greenhouse gases, and is just plain common sense. Let’s get the rest out of the way so I can get to my story: a lot of them are Mercedes Benzes and a lot are not, you often yell your destination to them as they pass to see if they are going your way… Greeks on this blog-you fill the rest in. Meanwhile, here’s one of my first rides in an Athenian cab: Riding in Ruins: A Taksizis in Athens – continue reading …
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99-Cent Store Burns: Superfund Site declared by EPA
The local Washington Heights/Inwood newspaper reported that a 99-cents store burned down in the neighborhood. The introductory paragraph to the story reads lightly. Not quite comical, but suggestive in its tone that human life wasn’t lost. Unexplored in the story is the sinister element cloaked in the description of what the brother of the store owner was surrounded by when the flames suddenly rained down from the (probably) fluorescent light above him: “he was alone with the stationary, shower curtains and low-priced toys.”
There is nothing innocent about that burnt stationary, shower curtains and low-priced toys.
99-Cent Store Burns: Superfund Site declared by EPA – continue reading …
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Ode to…
Ode to the old-timer Spanish Harlem Nuyoricans out there who pilgrimage through the neighborhood on your decked out, bejeweled, banana-seat bicycles with a PR flag planted on your trumpet blasting 1980s stereos strapped down with elastic ropes, like Neil Armstrong landing on the moon. Ode to you, I say, because I now see the light of your ways. The haughty smile contained behind your shiny oversized sun glasses, your tropical colors swimming through a sea of gray cement and grind. You are your own universe, inviting everyone in. I used to snicker at you as a NY anomaly, with pride. Now though, I understand that you’re Paul spreading the gospel of salsero life, alluring us with your Taíno, African and Spaniard beats.
I do it now too, in my own way, via ipod in the subway and streets, horrifying those next to me, practicing my 1-2-3’s and 5-6-7’s. So what that I’m learning it on 1 in a city of 2? Hats off to you. Looking forward to seeing you again in the summer.
