Estoy en Madrid

Bueno, que ya esta llegada en Madrid desde algunos dias en Inglaterra con mis amigos Kate y Dave..

Well, since most readers of this blog don´t speak Spanish, I´d better do the English thang..

I went on the Hip Hop Tour in NY led by Grandmaster Raheim from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 5, and it was great.. I then hung out with my cousin Judith´s husband Jonathon, and we went to the Nuyorican Poetry Cafe for a beat poetry night, which was excellent! Judith joined us after work, and she got to see one of the best performers of the night, which was really good timing.

My last few days in NY were filled with doing things I´d never done before - the transit museum, which was having a film and transit exhibition; catching the 59th street overpass to Roosevelt Island and wandering around (for the record, nothing much to see there), going to an absolutely awful film at the new ImagineAsia Film Centre as part of the Asian Film Festival.

Dave and I aslo caught the ferry to Staten Island, and then straight back again, because it didn´t seem like there was much to see there at all - even less than Roosevelt.

I stayed a little longer in NY just to finalise some things, and to make sure I got to see my liddle bro and Rach, as they had to go to a wedding the last weekend I was there. London was really good too. Caught up with my fabulous friends Kate and Dave, who very kindly let me stay with them, and Jasper the cat who actually remembered me from Sydney. Also saw Roz a few times for dinner, so it was just like having that old gang back, except that Dorani was missing...

London was much like I remembered it, fun but very expensive. tried to minmise costs as much as poss, but it´s just hard.. I went to the new Tate Modern, walked across the new millenium bridge, went on the London Eye, check out the surrounds of the restored Globe Theatre, Brick Lane Markets and saw a great photo exhibition by final year students, went to the Brixton markets, and checked out Marble Arch where I stayed in an apartment in 1992. So mainly things that weren´t there last time I was, or that I didn´t get to do.

Kate and Dave also took me to 2 parties/bbqs of friend´s of theirs, both of which were unique in their own way.. The first involved the roasting of a whole lamb on a spit over a pit dug in the back yard! The lamb was absolutely delicious, and watching the woman do the carving (she´s a vet by trade) is something I´ll never forget.

The second party was amazing for its venue - this incredible 2 story apartment with a pool table right in the heart of the East End, near Brick Lane. The view out the top story window of the whole city was pretty incredible. The best bit was catching up with Jeanette (who had also been Kate and Dave´s flatmate for a bit in Sydney) and also with her friend Andreina, a Venezuelen girl who´d been living in Spain. Both of them were at my 30th, so we had a big catch up and I met their friend Christina who gave me her brother´s phone number in Alicante (near Valencia).

Hanging out with Kate and Dave was great, as well as seeing them, I got to drink Belgian fruit beer, see Kung Fu Hustle which was hillarious, and then had the (not so) traditional London farewell meal - an Ethiopian dinner in a small place in Finsbury Park. Kate, Dave, Roz and I had an incredibly tasty lamb dish, and several other dishes of varying degrees of tastiness, eaten with our hands using a special bread to mop it up. Dave thought it looked like toadskin, or grey tripe, but it served its purpose pretty well. And this magnificent feast was all washed down with Ethiopian honey beer.

And then I flew to Madrid. I´ve never been here before, and so far it´s just so Spanish. The Plaza Mayor is a huge open plan square with a big statue of a man in armour on a horse, and magnificent buildings with tiny balconies that all face the square. I booked a hostal before I came, and I´m really glad I did. It meant I knew where I was going, and the metro ride with all my baggage and three changes of line at least had an end point. It´s pretty cheap for a hostal (which is a family run place - like a pension) but it isn´t hostel prices.. But - I have my own room, and it´s wonderful. I think there does come a time when you get a bit old for dorms... The couple who run it are really lovely - Angela and Alfonso. They were very suprised to find out I´m Australian and not Spanish.

Apparently my Spanish isn´t as rusty as I thought. I even managed to buy shoes today after joining a huge queue of people. Describing shoe styles in Spanish is kind of difficult, especially when there are lots of impatient people behind you in a queue, but I´m proud of my shopping achievement ;^)

The only question really is where the hell I´m going to put them...

Anyway, I´m going to head back to my hostal now - just have to work out where it is from here...

New York New York it's a wonderful town..

well, New York City here I am..

Dave, Rach and I returned via Canada, where we saw Niagara falls, and visited Niagara-on-the-lake, and the Inneskillan vineyard (thanks Jo for reminding me what it was called!)

We drove back into NY at around 2am on Tuesday, so needless to say I slept most of Tuesday and then Rach and I had dinner at Cafe Reggio in the Village, which one of my favourites - the delicioso ice coffee is to die for. It's also the Cafe in the original Shaft movie. That night, one of my favourite groups just happened to be playing in the Village, and so we went to see them at the Lion's Den. I'm talking about Cat Empire. Yes I know I've seen them many times and they are Australian, but I sent their CD to my brother after I first saw them at Womadelaide, telling him that he'd probably be the first person in NYC with the CD, and that they were amazing. So when he found out they were coming, he got us tickets, and it was great!! Best of all, because they aren't all that well known here, the tickets were $10, and we were about 5m back from the stage...

So far NY has been mostly about catching up with people and places. I've been here many times before, and I love it, but it means I don't have to do mega touristy things, and I get to spend time hanging out and spending time with my little bro and Rach. Dave's moved since I was last here, and he's now on 108th street between Amsterdam and Broadway, which is a much more happening area, even thought his last place was only 8 blocks south, and closer to the park. The subway on Broadway is better too, so it means getting around is usually quicker, even late at night. The neighbourhood is very latino, and so far the fire hydrant has been spraying water every afternoon and kids have been playing in it, so it's kind of Sesame Street, very NYC.

The area is apparently now called SOHA (South of Harlem), to add to SOHO, NOHO, Nolita and Tribeca. I also visited DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) when I went to Brooklyn, which is entirely renovated since last I went there and it was just old abandoned buildings. There's now even a park where you can get as close to the water as you're ever going to in New York. In fact we were looking over at Manhattan when the Parks guy came over and told us there'd been a helicopter crash, and we could see all the emergency vehicles racing to Pier 11. Turns out there were a whole lots of Australians on the helicopter... when the news report said "filthy polluted East River", Dave just looked at me and said, "and you wanted to dangle your toes in that?" Kind of missing the water, especially as it has been stinking hot and if I was home I'd be at the beach for sure..

Despite the heat, I walked back over the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan, which is now a bit of a ritual for me. I took my iPod and maintained the tradition of listening to Brooklyn Funk Essentials Stickman Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge as I walked.

The main difference between last time I was here and now is the absence of the Twin Towers. I went down to Ground Zero in the first few days, and it was really strange. It's hard remembering exactly where things were when they're gone. And in terms of photography, absence is one of the hardest things to capture. It does leave the city skyline without a major distinguishing feature, and finding South when you step out of the subway is a totally new experience too. The mood changes I noticed elsewhere aren't as obvious in New York, which is strange considering that the biggest impact was here. But NY has always been different, and in some ways more resilient and in tune to the rest of the world.

I've also done some cultural activity, but not quite as much as I had thought I'd get to. One of the exhibitions I saw was at a small gallery called the Powerhouse, which also publishes a lot of photography books. It was by a photographer called James Shabazz, and was titled A Time Before Crack. The difference one drug has made to the city is really extraordinary. Of course it's not the only thing to have changed, but just looking at kids on the streets, people getting down, doing their thing, it all seems so much more innocent.

I also finally visited the Guggenheim, something I've often planned on doing here but never got around to. Unfortunately, like a lot of the place I've visited, they were renovating and installing a new exhibition, so I didn't get to see as much of the museum as I'd have liked, and there were just a little to many Kandinskys for my liking. However Moma is brand new and open in midtown again, so I go tomorrow to check it all out after a visit to the lower east side and Katz deli for lunch - my absolute favourite.. I've been dreaming about the sandwiches and the pickles...

Food is the one thing I've experienced a lot of... oh yes.. to the point where my clothes are just a little tighter than before.. but I figure it will balance itself out in London & Europe where I'll only be able to afford one yoghurt a day, and maybe eat some free tapas with my beverage in the evening in a bar..

I've done many of the things I had planned to do in terms of shopping - jeans, check - books at the Strand - check, gold earrings on Canal - check, shoes on 8th street - check. However money is a little tight, and it's not like our dollar is at the heady heights of the early and mid nineties, so I have to keep myself in check and remember there are still 2 continents to go.

I went to 2 big social events with Dave, Rach and their friends. One was a big party at a huge 2 storey apartment in Alphabet City, and the other was Smash's birthday, at a great Turkish restaurant, followed by drinking at 2 bars. The first bar was very cool - I really would have liked to stay there, but we ended up at the place across the road, as there was more space and people could actually talk, instead of listening to the very buff guy playing the djembe along with the DJ while you sipped US$15 cocktails.. Spent a lot of time talking to a really interesting friend of Dave's called Oscar, played a bit of pool, and then we all headed off to Smash & Dave's new apartment - they bought it - near Hell's Kitchen.

I've also caught up with my Cousin Evelyn, who is 91 and has lived in NYC all her life, including 64 years in the Village. It's always great to see her, and she send her love to all the family back home. My cousin Judith and her husband Jonathan were also part of our brunch last Sunday, and I may be seeing them again on the weekend to see a play, which will be good. I'm catching up with my cousin Marty and his family for dinner tomorrow night, so family reunions are well and truly underway.

I went to see Opera in the Park last night - the Metropolitan Opera did Tosca for free, and it was great to be outdoors watching Opera in Central Park, eating fabulous deli food as the sun set. Not sure that I'm a huge fan of that particular opera, but the atmosphere was good, and Dave had a whole bunch of friends who'd gotten there a bit early so the stage wasn't a tiny speck in the distance.

Rach and I went to one of my favourite Jazz venues - Cleopatra's Needle - to check out the jam session on Monday night. It was really good, because there was no cover, and most of the musos were incredible, especially one trumpeter, who sat down and shmoozed 2 girls at the table near us after his turn. One older guy tried to do this whole thing with sheet music that was a little too orchestrated for the night, but overall it was very hard to leave to go home and get some sleep, as we were both so tired, and Rach had started a new job that day.

Things I'm annoyed I missed out on in NYC:
- Ashes & Snow an amazing photographic exhibition that ended the day I left Canada for NY
- Basquiat exhibition in Brooklyn - ended while I was in Detroit
- Chaka Khan at the Apollo - waaayyy to expensive, especially as the only seats left were way up the top at the back.
- New Wong Kar Wei film 2046 on tonight at the Walter Reade Cinema, with the director himself in attendance - all sold out before I even knew it was on.

I will however be going on a Hip Hop Tour of NY on Saturday, led by Grand Master Raheim and possibly Kurtis Blow, so that should be excellent.. just need to get a ticket tomorrow....

Motor City, 8 Mile, Motown and More..

I flew out to Detroit on Wed June 1. Took the Super shuttle, so got to see a whole lot more of DC while we travelled around picking up everyone from private residences to go to the airport. Our bus consisted of a John Hopkins PhD biology student on her way home to Korea for a holiday; a veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars who we picked up from the veterans' retirement home on his way to Boston to visit his brother, watch the Red Sox Baseball games, and eat lobster ("3 tails for $12.00 - I've made a booking already"); a woman who didn't tell us much, but was editing a powerpoint presentation on rebuilding communities and combating AIDS in Sierra Leone; and finally an older lady and her son who were on their way to Chicago for her sister's funeral, and to settle her estate.

After picking me up at the airport, I was driven to downtown Detroit by my Uncle Lowell (Dad's brother) and my cousin Randy (yes... his name is Randy Rodd.. hey I know...). My dad grew up in Detroit - actually in the city of Detroit itself, on a street called Leslie. Nowadays the city of Detroit is fairly run down in parts. Some streets have lots and lots of boarded up houses, sometimes there are also lots of empty blocks too, and sometimes some of the boarded up houses are being used as crack houses. There are also some inner city streets where the trees are still beautiful and the street looks much like it did when my dad and uncle were growing up. The difference is that most of the people who were living there then have now moved to the suburbs, where my Uncle Lowell, Aunty Lynn and cousins Ryan and Randy live now, and rarely come into the city of Detroit via the extensive freeway system, if at all. The whole 8 Mile thing is actually the road the divides the city from the suburbs, and forms the northern boundary of Detroit itself.

The problem, therefore, is that each time I go to Detroit, I tend to spend my time hanging out in the suburbs and rarely get to see the any interesting things that are actually downtown. So this time I actually emailed in advance with things I wanted to see, as I had no way of getting to them without being driven, as the limited suburban public transport system doesn't extend to the city, and the city transport doesn't extend to the suburbs.

So I got to reaquaint myself with the Diego Rivera murals at the Detroit Institute of Art, as well as see some of the rest of their collection, and the Motown Museum, where I got to see all the memorabilia, as well as tour the building and actually stand in the studio where all those great songs were created. The tour was kind of fast, so I did it twice, and on the second time, there were enough of us that the tour guide divided us into different groups and we had to sing an excerpt from a famous Motown song on the studio floor. So I have officially sung at Motown ;^) (For those who are curious, it was The Supremes Stop In The Name of Love).

And I finally got to visit the Charles Wright African American Museum and see the main exhibition as well as The American Show by an artist called Tyree Guyton who works with found objects.

Turns out that Tyree used to get some of his materials for his huge public art projects from my uncle when he was involved in a scrap metal business. It also just happened that it was the first day of the exhibition and so Tyree himself was actually there at the museum. So we chatted for a while, and it turns out he'd just spent some time in Australia working with communities there, after an invitation from Aku Kadogo. His main project is called The Heidelberg Project . Check out the website, but it's basically the transforming of a whole street into a giant outdoor art project. Some articles on his Australian experience are here, here and here.

So as I was leaving Detroit, at his invitation, I met Tyree downtown on site at the Heidelberg Project, and he showed myself, my brother David and David's partner Rachel around the site. We also met Aku who was in town and grew up only a few streets away from Dad. I immediately recognised her from arts events such as Red Ochre and others at Ozco, and we chatted with her and also with her daughter Zanzi, who works at the Pilates studio on Holt Street, for those of you Ozcoers who remember going to lunchtime classes. Such a small world, isn't it...?

The Heidelberg project is really amazing, and I have some pictures, which I'll work out how to get them up here soon enough.

So Detroit ended up being really interesting. I also managed to catch up with a whole lot of family - 1st and 2nd cousins who have grown up a whole lot since I last saw them, and my dad's cousins (my first cousins once removed for those of you who care about genealogy), and my late Grandfather's brother and sister, my great aunts and uncles. It was really special to see everyone.

I also visited the graves of my grandfather and great aunt who passed away within the last few years, and being able to go and visit them with my brother was really important to me, so I'm very glad we managed to do that.

Dave & Rach drove from New York to Detroit to meet me, and we hung out with the family and then drove to New York via Niagara Falls..

more about our adventures in Canada tomorrow...

BTW - the settings have been changed so you don't need to register with blogger to comment - didn't realise I'd set it up in that way, so apologies to anyone who tried and had problems..

Last Days of DC..

Unfortunately my friend Jioni, who I sayed with in DC had to go to NY for work, so that meant I was in DC for several days on my own. Luckily I'm getting used to this travelling on my own thing, and I had some people to meet up with, so I managed to make the most of the remainder of my time in DC.

Went to the new Spy Museum and the Museum of the American Indian, caught up with my friend Natasha, her husband Dan and their 2 kids, Sam and Kylie. Natasha and I have know each other since 5th grade when she came to Australia for a year with her family when her Dad was on Sabatical from Kent State University. She's actually Australian, but has lived in the States all her life except for that one year, and numerous visits. We'd lost touch for a while, but she's still the same person as ever, and it was great to see her and the family. (Siobhan - she send you her love)

Sunday May 29 was a perfect DC day - I went to Eastern Market, and did some shopping, ate some famous crab cakes, met a graphic artist who has done an amazing Jazz series, of which I bought 2 postcards, and met an Indonesian guy who was selling handicrafts, so got to hang out and speak a little Indonesian which made me feel right at home. I then wandered around Capitol Hill which has some gorgeous houses, and hung out in the park near Jioni's place, checking out the statues of Lincoln (funded entirely by funds from emancipated former slaves) and the statue of Mary McLeod Bethune.

Monday was Memorial Day, a public holiday to celebrate veterans, and a day for everyone to enjoy a bbq (seems like public holidays have similar qualities all over the world). I hung out with my cousin Michael and his wife Carmen, and we went to Great Falls, which is part of a huge National Park near DC, and then went to a block party in their street, where we had the afore mentioned bbq.

While chatting to the neighbours, I noticed one of the guys nearby was wearing an All Blacks jersey. So I asked the obvious "you're not a New Zealander, are you?" question. Turns out he actually "worked for the government" (a euphemism here for working in intelligence, complicated by the fact that many people do indeed actually work for the government). He works on Donald Rumsfeld's staff in the Pentagon, and is a specialist in South East Asia. He was actually in East Timor helping with the reconstruction after the gaining of independence from Indonesia. He'd also previously been stationed in Singapore, and had a New Zealand counterpart who gave him the jersey.

It was fascinating to talk to him, and also his sister, who had also been very involved in the reconstruction in East Timor, and knew the Gusmaos. She had a contact in Cambodia, and was going to email me the details, so I could meet up with them in Phnom Penh. So meeting them was really interesting. I said if they needed a dual US/Australian citizen who could speak Spanish and Indonesian, they should give me a call - but so far there've been no offers of work coming my way..

Michael, Carmen and I then went to Georgetown, where Hillary has a house when she's being a Senator and not hanging with Bill at his Harlem office in NY. It's also a beautiful area, with very expensive shops and houses that you can peek in the windows of from the street and imagine you're a millionaire and could even afford to live in one.

I had been speaking to my parents, and happened to mention that it looked like I was going to be on my own for a while in DC, and so my Dad convinced me to call his very old friend Allan who had also "worked for the government". I was a little unsure - because I wouldn't get my parents to call up my friends in countries they went to visit, but I'm glad I called, because I went to lunch with Allan and his wife Patricia, and they were lovely. He and dad had known each other from primary school, and also went to the same high school and briefly university, before Allan went off and got involved in government work. He'd actually been posted in Miami during the Cuban missle crisis, and spent some years in Germany as well.

So my last few days in DC were very busy with cultural and social activity. Also went to a really good Cuban restaurant on my last night, where I had mojitos, ropa vieja, plantain, frijoles negros and yucca.. mmmm.. huge serving which I couldn't finish, so I brought leftovers back to the apartment and left them in the freezer. Would have loved to have them for breakfast the next day, but just knew that would have been a bad idea..

DC was a really beautiful city - I'd expected much more of an urban feel, and some parts definitely had a little more of that, but it had some cute little neighbourhoods, and all the old buildings in the centre were impressive - probably the most impressive was the Supreme Court for its sheer imposing facade, and of course the Capital, which stands out from the skyline from many directions.

more on motor city and NYC tomorrow..

Check this out!

I'll do a long post from NY all about my last days in DC and Detroit, but in the meantime, check out this article, in which my friend Tom (legendary underground muso that he is) gets special mention.. check out his music too - with links from the article.

BTW Tom, love the "dingy downstairs room" - I thought it was quite nice myself, but that probably would have hurt your cred, huh? ;^)

http://www.smh.com.au/news/Icon/Homemade-music/2005/06/02/1117568310806.html