- activism
- anarchy
- apocalypse
- Athens
- bicycles
- birds
- books
- Buenos Aires
- clubs
- coffee
- couple's dancing
- Dante's Inferno
- demons
- drunks
- Dyckman
- economy
- film
- fire hydrants
- graffiti
- Greek diners
- gross factor
- Havana
- idling
- immigration
- Inwood
- Ioannina
- it's a man's world
- Miami
- New York City
- Nova Speaks
- Ode to...
- odyssey essentials
- olympians
- on the subway
- Outer Space
- paradise
- police
- press
- prostitution
- public space
- restaurants
- Rio
- salsa
- school
- Sicily
- sidewalks
- Sinvergüenza
- star trek
- star wars
- stores
- street cookie
- taxis
- trees
- twilight zone
- urban confessions
- Washington Heights
- zipcar
Et en Arcadia
The most memorable moment of our recent Sicilian odyssey did not happen in a city, but between cities. We were on one of those two hour car drives, this time our destination was ceramics from Caltagirone and chocolate from the city of Modica. We were winding our way through the Sicilian countryside. Our cars followed a well paved highway. We were surrounded by fields of golden wheat, distant hills with olive trees, and flattened sun-dried grass with bundled haystacks that looked like round suitcases left long ago by the Cyclopean race. The highway served as an unlikely wormhole through an Arcadian landscape; we passed through it encased in our vehicles. For a long while the only reminder of human contact with the land was passing trucks. They swayed with heavy loads of agricultural bounties I imagined harvested from these golden fields. I was entranced by paradise. Et en Arcadia – continue reading …
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Dance here now with…
Q&A with Alex Pearce | Dance.Here.Now. @ Cielo – Thursday, July 2nd
Check out the interview on www.rhythmism.com
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Siciliano Street Cookie
Had my eye out for Street Cookie in Sicily. Surely in the land of Don Corleone Street Cookie would lurk. Spent a good deal of my excursions with a special eye on the sidewalk, looking for a face peering out from the concrete for some seemingly misplaced random object sitting lonely on the surface of the ground.
A true mafioso, Street Cookie was incognito. But I knew I found him in a market in the Sicilian city of Syracuse. Here he is: Siciliano Street Cookie – continue reading …
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Salsa puts you (ladies) in place
In my current quest to integrate women’s styling with number counting and stepping, life lessons of salsa continue to reveal themselves (or I keep looking and finding them). I’ve joked that salsa is an invention concocted by some clever men, simply because of the salacious moves a woman does in front of or against a man and the fact that it is the man choregraphing the dance to which the woman follows. What’s struck me this past week are lessons to take home from the dance floor, or, more insight into the baseness of our gender distinctions.
One complaint men have about women learning how to salsa is that we “cling to them” when dancing. Our hands should be free so that they are free to do their next spontaneous move. As a woman, you lightly hang on the man’s hands (those providing, working hands), lightly, dainty and passive. You are at his whim. Don’t hold him back. Do not cling when a man is turning you three times while you are wearing stiletto heels on a slippery dance floor. Ladies, we got it bad. We’re supposed to levitate too. Salsa puts you (ladies) in place – continue reading …
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Nova Speaks
Ciao Urban Odyssey Travelers,
How have you all been? We’re back from an odyssey in Sicily. Odyssey=stories. What’s happened?
Before I left, Body Bag Stiletto Guy was revealed in a NY Times article right after we encountered him in Cielo, begging to be stepped on by my heels. I found another great use for a Stiletto, in a public area too.
We bid you farewell with some Odyssey history on Sicily and upon returning give you a Cyclop’s view of the city of Modica. I salsa dance under an active volcano, paying homage to the natural rhythms that our music mirrors. Also pay respect to Michael. Our Ode to Series continues with, what else? Ode to Good Food, where I describe how history (or myth) almost repeats itself, our Odyssey crew narrowly escaping a firery thunderbolt from Helios for eating something we shouldn’t have. (Actually some thingS we shouldn’t have eaten. Too many thingS.) We also spot some cool bus graffiti in the city of Acireale. Nova Speaks – continue reading …
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Salsa flows from Mount Etna
How did Nova bring some NYC urbanity to Sicily? By bringing her flaming red ipod with her and dancing salsa solo during the early morning hours in an orange grove with Mount Etna in the sky line. Mount Etna! If you erupted during my visit and it’s my time, then entomb me in a really cool salsa pose so I become a new statue of Pompeii, urban odyssey style. Sure I’m able to appreciate the old World pantheon that is part of Etna’s history, but given how everything’s connected, I can also bring some New World flavor and pay homage to the drums, fire and rumbling of Chango and his lineage. Being in the isolated wilderness that exists outside of our city cage, I’m reminded of the pulse that our city emits. You might forget it when you’re there, but step out and the silence will remind you of its absence. I take being out of the city as one big meditation exercise, with Ithaca in the distance calling you back. Do you feel the call of the city when you step out?
Here’s to you, Michael. Shake your body down to the ground…
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Bus Graffiti
Seeing this mural on a bus in Acireale, Sicily made me think of NYC subway cars in the 80’s. During my brief trip I observed that the eastern coast of Sicily has a healthy appetite for graffiti, but more so “messaging” than art murals.
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Airport Talk
Being in the airport with time to spare in a sea of strangers, your ears are more sensitive in picking up other people’s conversations, your imagination kicks into high gear. Some interesting conversations are heard in airports and planes. In the airport on route to Sicily the most memorable of the trip came from a clerk at a sandwich stand. A line was formed by hungry travelers wanting to wolf something down before being encased in a tube for hours with TV dinners that taste like ass. The clerk was missing about three fingers on one of her hands, and she was lecturing the cashier on how her baby’s daddy had just completed two of his five years of mandated time for stabbing someone. The cashier was in front of the register, but head turned away to partake in the conversation. No-one dared remind the girls that customers were waiting. You just don’t get snippy with someone missing fingers and having that type of conversation, job be damned.
Airport Talk – continue reading …
Urban Tree Series
Thorn tree in Buenos Aires- they also had large cocoon like sacks hanging from branches that burst into cotton balls. Very alien-like.
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