slovenly BLARF

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2010-12-01T23:32:00.003-08:00

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Pete(r) Menchetti wants to chat

2010-12-01T23:32:00.001-08:00

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Pete(r) Menchetti wants to chat

2010-12-01T23:31:00.001-08:00

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Pete(r) Menchetti wants to chat

2010-12-01T23:06:00.001-08:00

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Pete(r) Menchetti wants to chat

2010-11-25T23:30:00.003-08:00

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Pete(r) Menchetti wants to chat

2010-11-25T23:30:00.001-08:00

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2010-11-25T23:29:00.001-08:00

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Pete(r) Menchetti wants to chat

2010-11-25T17:20:00.001-08:00

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WAU + MAGNETIX

2009-09-22T18:59:00.000-07:00

Eating mariscos in America

La guerra continua

2009-09-16T18:15:00.000-07:00

"San Francisco Here We Come" or "La Guerra"

2009-09-16T02:09:00.000-07:00

WAU en Puerto Rico

2009-09-14T13:53:00.001-07:00

Rotterdam

2009-06-27T20:40:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend in Rotterdam for the Primitive festival, thus completing the month-long rock marathon. I think I overdid it these past few weeks, because I really had a hard time getting into the music. Too much of a good thing; too much of the same thing. Despite seeing bands I've seen fifty times before (even if it was really the first) and hearing the DJs play the same old records, I had a pretty good time, mainly because of the company. Lots of familiar faces from around Europe.
I brought a bunch of records with me to sell and sold quite a few of them. I turned around right away and spent the loot on a few carefully selected stacks of records from neighboring dealers' stands. All of it, to the tune of 140 eucks.
Unfortunately, my bag full of all those records, my bitchin' new (not cheap)sunglasses, and my PDA was stolen out of a friend's car. So I'm headed home to Amsterdam empty-handed, and with a bad taste in my mouth.
It could have been much worse, of course. At least I pulled my jacket and my keys out of there -- as if I knew that I was about to lose that bag -- so I'm not going to be on the street in my t-shirt, locked out of my house. But what a colossal drag that I never get to play those records.
Maybe it's a sign that it's time to focus on doing something entirely different for awhile. Until my old records start moving me again.

Midsommar Day

2009-06-20T06:53:00.001-07:00

Drinking gin and juice in a can with Sean and some Fins in a Swedish graveyard

Stockholm

2009-06-18T05:52:00.001-07:00

I'm sipping a 10 dollar Fernet (guess I should have asked the price), trying to figure out what the Swedes say instead of 'hello'. It's really cute, sounds something like "hey ho". Let's go...

I flew here from Sardinia. Sunny Sardinia. I just bought an umbrella. Doh...! But I can tell it's gonna be a good time. I got a week here. I'm going to attempt to stay on top of my writing here, and at the same time, digest the amazing two weeks I just passed in Sardinia by recalling it all and recording it here.

I should also reach back into the last few months and pull out the amazing moments and record them here. This winter and spring was probably the dreariest period of my life, but it wasn't all bad.

It would be good if I manage to write it all down...but if I don't, it probably means I'm having too much fun. Let's see what happens.

Waiting for the Cemetery

2009-04-17T11:00:00.001-07:00

In the sleepy little town of Camigliano, Italy, which is the next town over from the one my mom grew up in, and the town in which her mother, and her mother's father grew up in, we took a walk with some relatives to the cemetery. On the streets all that could be heard was the sound of the warm breeze blowing between the buildings, birds singing in the distance, and the occasional car passing on a parallel street. It was so quiet that the sound of the rubber squeaking against the pavement could be heard as tires rotated to steer through the town's narrow passages.

We happened across a few people, none of them under fifty years of age. Each of them said something to us about the cemetery, without our asking.

"It's closed."

"It opens at 4 o'clock."

"Is the cemetery open?"

It was 3:15. As we walked towards the cemetery, I wondered to myself,

"Are we really going to go there and just wait forty five minutes for it to open?" Apparently so – after our leisurely, elderly stroll, we arrived at 3:30 and sat down. And I thought to myself,

"Waiting for the cemetery, just like my poor old grandma."

Every time you see her, the first thing and the last thing she says is that she wants to die – she's waiting for la morte. And as we sat there waiting for the cemetery to open, I couldn't resist but to say sarcastically to the others,

"Aspettiamo il cimitero" – we're waiting for the cemetery.

In this old town of old people, I was struck by the irony. The people there are devout Catholics who live a very simple, very quiet life based around God and family, good food, and good wine. Hidden in the middle of Italy, far from international culture and institutions of higher education, I was struck by a feeling that all of these old folks living this simple, quiet life, seemed in a way to be waiting for the cemetery. And then Rosa said,

"It's important to pay respects to the dead," and as I nodded in agreeance, my mother commented, half-jokingly,

"Around here, there's more respect paid to the dead than to the living!" And here with the deteriorated family situation my grandmother lives in, it's an unfortunate truth. She'll only get the respect she deserves when she's in the cemetery. But she's also to blame for her sad fate – one of the main reasons she doesn't want to go to live with my mother in the USA, where she would receive the care a ninety year old woman needs and deserves, is because her death here in Italy is already arranged and paid for. Apparently there's no refund on the funeral, the coffin, and the place at the cemetery, and her well being after la morte is more important to her than being happy while she's alive.

We waited only five or ten minutes, when the gatekeeper of the cemetery, a young, slick guy in sunglasses arrived early to open up, and to my great relief, we're in by twenty till four. I was also relieved to see someone young in this town, who came early to fulfill his duty to open that gate so that he could sooner get on with the rest of his day. Right after opening the gate he hopped back on his scooter and sped off.

Belfast, Ireland

2009-03-24T07:24:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I went to Belfast, Ireland. I stayed for two nights. I didn't really know anyone or any place, but it was a good trip. Strangely enough, I made a new friend the night before I was to leave, and she's from a town from near Belfast. She put me in contact with a few people, and sure enough there was a "music industry meetup," so I ended up having someone to meet after all. I spent most of my time there alone anyway, which was good. I climbed Cave Hill, and drank lots of Guinness. It really is better in Ireland...

Here's something I posted to facebook while I was there. Written in the pub with my phone on my second night over a third pint of Guinness:

I'm only ordering PINTS tonight... because last night, some Irish kids were making fun of me for ordering half-pints. I had had two or three full pints already and just wanted to slow down a bit, so it seemed totally normal to me to switch to half-pints...

But it just now occured to me, almost 24 hours later, that "half-pint" can also be an insult...! So I looked it up on good'ol wikipedia:

"half-pint" or "half pint": a small or short person. A person of insignificance.

I'll drink this last pint to experiencing the etymology of that little bit of slang first-hand.

But wow, I wonder if I ever heard the term used anywhere besides maybe in cartoons? in my head, I hear "half-pint" in a voice resembling that of Bugs Bunny's.

I think I'm going to start using it as an insult myself.

By the way, among these kids I was hanging out with was a gay couple. I chatted with these two guys for a better part of the night. One was very sweet, a bit meek. We're both having, er, troubles. Me, girl troubles, and he, boy troubles. The other kid was quite probably his new boy to be troubled by -- he had two broken hands and bruises on his face from the last time they'd been out drinking (pints) together.

Thirty five, still alive

2009-02-22T16:09:00.001-08:00

Yup, I turned 35 a few days ago... and now it's time to start the next part of my life. It's is a significant age for me. For most, it's 30, but my 30th birthday didn't phase me in the slightest. That was largely because of a friend's advice, who told me when I worried to her -- in my late 20s -- about what I would do with the rest of my life, that she didn't plan on worrying about that until she was 35. So I've happily spent the last eight years or so since then doing what I've been doing, without worrying too much about the future. I'll worry about that when I'm 35, I told myself.

That's not to say that I'm worried now, or going to start worrying. But I am taking some pretty significant steps. Only one day after my 35th birthday, the negotiations ended and we made an agreement. Tomorrow I should sign on the dotted line...! I've only thought twice about it once or twice.

And that's about all to report since the last time I wrote here. My birthday was great, there just so happened to be, the night before, a reunion of a friends' band (THE AMOKS) from a few years back, so all of our friends were there and word that it was my birthday got out. I got a few gifts... a book, some good coffee and tea, and polka dots... and at midnight, a cold kiss from the mouth of Menno, who arrived just in time. And then we ended up at the Heartbreak Hotel (the unfortunate nickname we've come to use for the house that Leandro and I are subletting until the end of March) for an afterparty with a handful of friends and a crate of beer.

The following night, the night of my birthday, I was treated to drinks and dinner, and it was great... until midnight. The birthday was over, and reality struck. It all seems like a bit of an illusion now... it's as if I had a really nice dream. You wake up, and it's over.

And now it's time to move on. At 35, I'm moving on in life... I'm not sure what I'm going to do, and I'm not too worried about it. My friend only said "when she's 35" she'd decide what to do with the rest of her life. That means I've got another 360 days or so to figure it out.

Winter in Amsterdam

2009-02-11T17:33:00.000-08:00

It's been far too long since I've written here. It's time to start again. It's winter in Amsterdam, and it's much nicer to be inside than out. I actually appreciated the dreary weather here when I studied here in 2005 -- it feels better to stay in and read and write while freezing rain and winds slap against those unfortunate enough to need to be out.

I've been busy looking for a permanent home here, and in the meantime living in various friends' and friends-of-friends' houses while they're off vacationing in warmer places. I feel like a bit of a sucker having paid for my current landlord's airfare to Panama in exchange for the keys to his poorly-heated house. But I was there last year. Now it's my turn to suffer.

I'm not suffering because of the house, that's an exaggeration. Things are, for the most part, actually going my way. My plans are all falling into place: I've got an office; am busy officially establishing myself as a tax-paying resident; and am in negotiation to buy a home. Unfortunately, the unplanned development (my favorite kind) of the past few months seems to have fallen apart. But life goes on.

I've got a radio show with some friends here. Here's a direct link to the latest show.

Euskadi

2008-06-21T15:05:00.001-07:00

Tonight we're in Bermeo, a nice little town near Bilbao, in the Basque country. In a brand-new, government funded, slick concert hall. Within 150 miles or so, the Dirtbombs, Neanderthals, Viva American Death Ray, and two reformed 70s punk bands from Madrid are playing. Too much to do in one night, but nevertheless, there's a pretty good crowd here.

Last night we were in Gijón, in another slick joint -- a casino. Nice places, but I can't help but miss the filthy little clubs and basements that I grew up with. Punk rock in a place as clean as this one sort of feels like a lie. Call me crazy, but when we're afraid to duct-tape some shirts to the shiny walls, isn't that a good sign that maybe we don't really belong?

Today we also had a quick swim in the Atlantic... and tomorrow we'll be jumping into the Mediterranean. It's not the best time of year to be on tour in Spain, but it's a great time to be on vacation here. Too bad we're not!

Our first night in Spain

2008-06-20T08:20:00.000-07:00

Madrid... again!

2008-06-19T21:11:00.001-07:00

I just landed after about 5 nights in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I went for my good friends' wedding and it was a great time. I usually make far too many plans for my time when I take trips...but this time around I had little on the agenda, and so I mostly just hung around with Joe and Christine, catching up, hearing their banginest new 45s, helping out a little for the wedding, and meeting the whole family. Because, of course, everyone came to town -- moms, dads, stepmoms and stepdads, uncles, sisters... even Joe's grandpa Amos who is a WW2 hero.

The wedding was real pretty, real simple, and real fun. About 75 people attended-- friends, family, the A-bones, and DJ Tim Warren. A pretty allstar cast... Billy wrote a special Wheel of Fortune / G-L-O-R-I-A schtick about a fleabrained get-rich-quick scheme of Joe's that was hilarious. Who's got video??

After the reception, we had an afterparty in my hotel room. Half-naked fools splashed around in the tub while I jumped/danced on the bed in the middle of a giant cloud of smoke to the badassed 45s that kid from Baltimore was spinning on my GP-3, which was hooked up to my coolest recent purchase -- a battery-powered sound system on wheels! it's the size of an LP box but it's loud enough to get people moving just about anywhere you bring it!!

That's it for now. I'm back in Spain and on tour with the Spits. We're in Palencia, and it's time to go play records at the afterparty.

in Amsterdam (after touring Italy, and a weekend in Madrid)

2008-05-28T02:29:00.000-07:00

Well. I've been neglectin this whole blarf business for awhile now... but I've decided to sit down and type a bit about what I've been up to since the last time I posted... which, I believe, was in Rome. Since then, I've done a little tour with THE ANOMALYS and LOW POINT DRAINS in Italy... I just sort of showed up with a couple of boxes of 45s and announced that I was the DJ for the tour. Funny thing is that the guys in the bands, who are mostly friends of mine from Holland for many years now, had no idea that I would be on the tour. But Tommy from Rome who booked the tour had alerted most of the promoters, so I had turntables waiting for me each night. We had a blast. Especially the first night in Turin, when kids hung out and danced til 4 in the morning. We also hit Valenza Po, Florence, Naples, and Rome. I stayed in Rome and the boys headed back north to La Spezia for their last show -- and then sped through the night back to their swamp home in the Netherlands, with some stuff of mine in tow.

I hung around Rome for one more night (or was it two?) and took it easy. I decided to hit Naples once more, there was just one more little thing I needed to do there, and BOB LOG III was playing a gig that Massimino organized -- which meant that I got to see his hilarious one-man-band play: NUMBER 71 BAND. Card number 71 is the card, in that Napoletan card game, which signifies shit. So Massimino in this band is the uomm'e merd', which is Napoletan for "man of shit", and which when spoken sounds something like "one man band" if spoken by a belligerent, drooling drunk. Always fun, and definitely worth looking up... he's on myspace...

Next day I flew to Amsterdam, into the best weather of the year. The Dutch summer, they joke, lasts about two weeks. It usually starts around Queens Day (end of April) and lasts sometime into May. When I arrived it was bea-fucking-utiful and Amsterdam seemed like some sort of fairy-tale wonderland... even with the almost constantly grey weather it's still one of the most beautiful towns you could imagine. But when the sun is shining, everyone gets out their grills and shorts and tank tops and just flops their asses onto the nearest patch of green (Amsterdam is full of parks) to soak it up. The Dutch capitol becomes a world of smiles... except for me. Why? Because my return to Amsterdam was soooo full of fun parties (at night) and friends who I haven't seen in awhile who, in the fine barbaric beerswilling Dutch tradition, immediately buy a beer for me and put it in my hand, that I barely saw the day. I woke up each day, never before 2pm or so, with painful hangovers. And when I got out into that sun, which is somehow stronger on those rare occasions that it decides to shine here, I wasn't loving soaking it in -- quite the opposite. Also because since I've spoiled myself over the last year (spending four months in South America while all of these poor souls here were pedaling their wet asses through freezing winds and hail) the sunshine didn't seem so special to me.

I had a blast, and mostly neglected what I should have been doing, which was finding a place to work and a place to live in this town, since my intention is to settle here... or probably better said, to establish Amsterdam as my European home base. And before I knew it, it was time to leave for Madrid...

Bjoern (aka Bone) is a friend of mine from here in Amsterdam, and we were both called upon to play records at the Go Sinner Go festival in Madrid. Strange name it's got, but it's a good time. Let's get the quips out of the way: the club is great, but the staff was fucking uptight and the soundman didn't have a clue. And organizers Edu & Marta are looking for a new place for next year. Nevertheless, it was still a great party, with plenty of great bands. I'll name the ones that I remember most: THE RIPPERS, who as usual, destroyed; WAU Y LOS ARRRGHS!!!, for whom it wasn't the best show of their 'careers', but it's always great to see them (maybe if they had played second, or last, which would have given them more time to, uh, warm up backstage, they would have been hotter); HANGEE V, fuzz-drenched, instro-surfin sards that somehow I never saw play in all my visits there; and THE GORGONS, aging fun Frenchies.

Since we were DJing, Bjoern and I stayed each night until the bitter end of the party, and of course, ended up ridiculously drunk, and when we were finally ushered out of the building always had a posse of others with us... with whom we roamed the streets of Madrid looking for another place to continue the party. It's not an uncommon ritual... and I was armed with a GP-3 and a box of 45s. But we were all a bit too wasted. Here's a couple of scenes from the metro ride:

Okay, I think that's all I've got time for tonight.... ha ha..... I'll write more later about Madrid (which is a great!!! town!) and what's happenin' here in Amsterdam. G'night

In Rome

2008-04-26T19:18:00.000-07:00

I was writing a friend and realized it should be posted here too:

I'm a little tired of travelin... I'm looking forward to staying put in one place for a while...! It feels almost like an addiction... like a drug... it's great fun but in the long run sometimes I think it's not that good for me -- because I do it too much. A trip every now and then is great... but I feel like I've been traveling almost nonstop since I left Valencia. It's like I've been eating really great meals for almost a year without swallowing. Chew it up, spit it out, prepare the next meal, repeat. Sooner or later I'm gonna have to digest it all too...

I feel like a jerk when I complain about the life I'm living, which is one that most people dream about... when people ask me what I've been up to, and I tell them, they often remark that I'm "living the dream"...

It definitely is a dream... I remember when I lived a more normal life, I dream about having the freedom to travel, to live and work wherever I wanted... paradoxically now that I have that life I dream of having stability... all of my records in one place... a band... a family? Don't get me wrong, I still dream about travels and adventure -- I don't think that will ever end! But there are certain things that I'm missing out on by never stopping. And I dream more and more often of those things.

Last night I was one of five DJs at an art opening / concert / party here in Rome. Pretty cool. Tonight we do it again, but I think it's going to be better -- the bands seem like they'll be more my speed. The bands last night were good, but I've never been that into the pop-punk. Especially Italian pop-punk. I liked Screeching Weasel, but never any of their imitators. And the Italian pop-punkers ripped off the Screeching Weasel look and sound more blatantly than anyone else on the planet. I always tell my friends in bands over here, "you're Italians, sing in Italian!!" There's nothing special about your band if you imitate the yankees -- except that your English is even more fucked up.

Time to go.

Texas... Reno... Spain... Italy

2008-04-21T11:21:00.000-07:00

Rome, Italy -- Tommaso & Marcella's apartment in Pigneto
I don't know why I only feel the need to write in this here blarf when I travel... for a guy like me, what exactly constitutes travel? Ever since I left Valencia last July, when people have asked me where I live, I've not really known how to respond. "Uh, here? Nowhere." I mean, Reno is without a doubt my hometown but if I'm only there a total of about three months out of the year, I'd hardly say that I live there. And it's quite unfair to Reno to leave it out of my blarf. I understand why I have left it out, of course -- because since it's the one place I've lived the most, it's a place where I'm normally living more of a routine life, and therefore, there's not as much to write about. Or is there? I mean, in the 90s when I was living there I was pretty busy making stuff happen, and I was actually writing quite a bit, publishing a newspaper, doing colums for Maximumrocknroll, etc. I guess ever since I've started traveling extensively (around 2001), my time in Reno has largely consisted of getting ready to leave.

After I left Colombia at the end of February, I dedicated most of the month of March to Reno. Aside from a couple of short distractions in the form of trips to San Francisco and Sacramento, I devoted myself to organizing the best party ever. Sticker Guy! was turning fifteen and I had planned to have a party... but I had no idea how big it would end up being. What I intended to be a semi-intimate yet still-greasy party all just sort of came together, and before I knew it I was selling tickets, looking for a bigger venue, and hearing from friends that I haven't seen in ten years. Thanks to the reformation of Scared of Chaka, The Gain, Scurvy Bastards, and The Troublemakers; and the added attractions of the other eleven bands (most notably The Spits and Dragonfire), people were booking plane tickets and hotels to come spend the weekend in Reno. Great!

It was without a doubt the best party I've ever been to in Reno, and I will definitely be doing it again (though it would be unrealistic to expect it to be half as good the next time). In fact I've already got some dates saved, in September 2008. The Underground is a fine venue and Reno's lucky to have it. Remi is from Paris and he loves a good party. In Nevada you can drink all night long and Reno is full of cheapish hotels so while most people don't realize it, we've got one of the best spots in the nation, if not the world, to throw a big fuckin party. Check it out the site I threw together for the party at http://stickerguy.wordpress.com for photos and whatnot. Thanks to all the bands for getting together and coming to Reno to play, and to everyone who came -- especially everyone who keeps talking about how much fun they had!

Also in March, Peppe and I went to Austin, Texas for SXSW. It was my first time there and thanks to Jeff & Sherry there was actually a showcase for Slovenly Recordings. We had The Spits, Okmoniks, Slab City, Hipshakes and the Rippers with guests Nobunny and Terrible Twos all on one bill in a record store, Cheapo Discs. I wanna thank Jen in particular for hostin us (and the Hipshakes) and lettin us make a mess of her apartment. SXSW was cool, but I was a little overwhelmed. If I go again, I know how to be more prepared next time... first thing that comes to mind is to bring a chair (!). I don't think I've ever spent that much time standing around watching bands and drinking beer. The most fun I had was the first night, with Hex Dispensers and Municipal Waste; the second night when the Spits killed at Emo's; and the backyard houseparty the Okmoniks played.

After the Stickerguy party madness was over, I busted ass in Reno gettin ready to head back over to Europe. I left without saying proper goodbyes to hardly anyone... my brother and my sister included. I got stuck at work all night finishing stuff up, went home and packed my bags, and headed for the airport on no sleep. Typical. Luckily I managed to snooze through almost the entire plane ride though, and when I got to Valencia, I was able to defy / ignore jetlag and head straight for the gig. Psycho-a-go-go was playing at a club called Flow with Digger and the Pussycats. Great night -- lots of old friends from Spain including Lluis and Isa, who moved to Australia a few months before I split town! Valencia was action-packed, and Leandro and I tore it up for a few nights, ending up at a club called Excuse Me to shake it til late in the morning before heading back to his pad in Bunyol. We saw Los Assdraggers, who played a rough but great and fun set at Flow... and then Saturday I checked out Fela Borbone playing in some posh yuppie joint in El Carmen. Molongui was cool enough to put me up at his place after we hung out with some friends of his. On my last day in town, I went to my storage unit and grabbed records, since I'll be DJing here in Rome on Friday and Saturday and then on tour with the Anomalys and Low Point Drains... and then in Madrid at Go Sinner Go. Then I went to Xirivella and checked out Wau y Los Arrrghs!!! at practice. They've got some great new, original (!) songs so if you get a chance to see them live, GOOOOO...

Then on a night when I thought I'd be turning in early, to get some sleep before catching my early-ish flight the next day, I ended up hanging out with Juanito all night and didn't get to bed til 4am. I think in four days in Valencia I slept a total of maybe 16 hours. But I wasn't sleepy...

Of course it all caught up with me as soon as I got to Italy... I just spent four nights in Vitulazio, and I swear my relatives must all think I'm on drugs or something, because I was falling asleep left and right. At dinner tables, in cars, wherever. It didn't help that I was eating like a king... multi-course meals at lunch and dinner! I didn't eat much in Valencia either... and I like the food much better in Italy... so I made up for it at grandma's house. Mmmm... spaghetti with octopus... frittata con asparagus (and ricotta?)... broccolini... per quattro giorni, ho mangiato per due. Unfortunately though, the air was heavy in Vitulazio. Between family problems and the anniversary of the death of our friend Mike Martone, it was a bit of a challenge to relax and just enjoy the company of loved ones.

Here I am now in Rome, waiting for Friday night when I'm to play records at that party called... Here I Am. It's an art opening and concert all rolled up in one, organized by my friend Simona. I'll spend this week working, trying to get caught up on the 400+ emails I've got hanging around in my inbox... and dealing with some record label stuff.

on my way to Florida...

2008-02-26T16:13:00.000-08:00

... to see my pops. He lives in a suburb of Tampa. I'm going to stay three nights with him before I head back to Reno.
        I'm on an Avianca jet above the Caribbean. I'm simultaneously sad and glad to go. Sad because I really like Colombia -- it's a beautiful place with really great people; glad because I'm a bit weary from all the travel and ready to get back into, uh, real life. I've definitely got plenty waiting for me to do...
        So before I go and get busy with life again, I'll try to spill my brain into my laptop before the memories become fuzzy. My memory is really bad, by the way, and I think that one reason for this is because of my tendency to go, go, go without taking time to reflect on all the things I did, all the people I met, etc.

Cartagena
        I spent a couple of nights here, just sort of walkin around, establishing myself in Colombia (got the SIM card for my cell), running errands (laundry, fixed my sunglasses, developed my film), and having lunch in a really nice little cafe with working class Colombians. There was a big demonstration the day after I arrived against the FARC, the guerilla movement with an agenda that no one seems to be quite sure of. One thing for certain is that they have kidnapped plenty of people, lending to Colombia's horrendous reputation (which prompted everyone who I told I was going to Colombia to either tell me I was crazy or plead with me to be careful).
        I was a bit on edge in Cartagena, especially at night... the guidebook warns against walking alone, but the owner of the pension I was staying in swore that it's safe if you use a bit of streetsmarts (don't flash money or jewelry, etc). It was definitely safe in the historic center, which is just a bit too touristy (featuring a new Hard Rock Cafe), but definitely a nice place to wander around... though it's definitely one of those romantic places that is a bit depressing to be alone in. As lovers passed by me hand in hand, I dodged shady men offering me drugs and hookers. One of them irked me good -- as I was passing by, he said, in the most ridiculously forced yankee accent I've heard in a while, "hey man, what're you lookin' for?" I ignored him, but when he kept following me, speaking Yankee to me (he obviously assumed I was from the USA, which of course is correct), I turned to him and answered him in Italian... just to mess with him. He didn't speak Italian so he switched to Spanish and asked me where I was from. I told him New York. He was confused, and I made my escape...
        The scariest thing that happened to me was when a barefoot black man came charging in my direction wielding a splintered slice of wood. My heart dropped into my pants and my pace quickened, and he swung towards the ground wildly, striking the street twice and sort of squealing. He was chasing a rat.
        That aside, Cartagena was great, full of cool little restaurants and bars (my favorite being Donde Fidel, a traditional salsa bar run by an obviously passionate music fanatic... sort of the equivalent of De Diepte in Amsterdam, Gabba Gabba in Valencia, and of what I had hoped to do in Naples with the Slovenly Bar), and I would have liked to have stayed longer... it's on the list of places I will visit again when I return to Colombia. Yeah, a return trip to Colombia is definitely in my future.

Barranquilla
        I arrived on the last night of Carnaval. Actually it was the evening after the last day of carnaval. There wasn't much going on, though I did see some diehard partyers dancing their asses off out in front of a computer store (?). The town is pretty drab, just like the book said... I went to a cumbia performance, mainly to try to get an idea of what the hell cumbia is (I still couldn't differentiate merengue from salsa from vallenato from cumbia from porro). It was "folkloric" cumbia, which apparently is quite different from modern cumbia, adding to the confusion. But it wasn't really my thing, it was actually quite annoying and repetetive. I walked around for a bit looking for a beer, and then a toilet, but when I found neither I just split. I did some research at the internet cafe and found a rock bar, the first of several venues that could be part of a South American tour... yeah, I think I have a pretty good idea of how to do a tour in S. America now, is there a band out there adventurous enough to try it?

Taganga
        I already wrote about this place. I spent two relaxing nights here... I was the DJ in the "Garaje", a cool little bar with no DJ equipment, which meant a pretty lackluster DJ set. I met an older guy named Pedro, and spent quite a bit of time with Leticia from Argentina, a really special woman with a really lucky boyfriend (doh!)

El Viaje de Infierno
        Yes, that means "the trip of hell". And I purposefully wrote almost nothing about it here because I didn't want to make my mom (and all of those people who warned me to be careful in Colombia) worry. It's amazing how many times, while traveling, I read the same page in the Lonely Planet -- days before arrival, day of arrival, just before traveling. Even more amazing is how things still manage to slip by me, like in this case. The caption on this Colombia-Venezuela border crossing spelled it all out for me: take a bus from Santa Marta to Maicao, and then from Maicao to Maracaibo. But the last bus leaving Maicao is at 3pm, and you don't want to even leave the bus station in this seedy Colombian border town -- especially at night. Simple enough, but I left Santa Marta at 2:15pm, and when I got to Maicao, guess what? There were no buses. To my relief, though, there was a guy awaiting the arrival of our bus who was looking for passengers to Maracaibo -- in what he called a buseta, little minivans used to shuttle around groups of 8-10 people. I went with the guy out into the dark streets of Maicao, which is as seedy as the book described, and, as instructed, waited by a fried chicken stand for the buseta. This fast talker had told me that the bus was leaving right away, but the truth was that we had to wait for enough passengers to fill all the seats. In the meantime he had also changed my 50,000 Colombian pesos into 75,000 Venezuelan bolivares. A few kids around me suggested under their breath that I should have gotten closer to 100,000 per the current exchange rate, and when I asked the fast-talker to explain himself, he pulled out a calculator and just pecked furiously at it until the display read 75,000. Out there in the street with all of my luggage, and all of these creepy characters lurking about, I was real hesitant to make a stink. So I didn't -- but my gut began to turn as I wondered how badly I was going to be ripped off by the end of this ordeal. It gets worse.
        A half an hour later, I'm nervously but cautiously asking more questions. "Where is the buseta?" "Who is the driver?" "Where are the passengers?" And, as if in answer, the fast-talker would run off chasing an arriving bus yellow "Maracaibo! Maracaibo!" Supposedly he was looking for more passengers, but since he had just ripped me off I wondered if it was all part of an act, and if all of his buddies who were hanging around were playing along to get a piece of my pie. Turns out, the vehicle we were to travel in was not at all a little bus but a rundown old car, into the trunk of which fast-talker dumped my biggest piece of luggage. He carefully closed the trunk so that it was still open and invited me to get into the car. There I sat, alone in this junky car, clutching my little backpack which contains my most valuable effects, and watching the scene. Why did he leave the trunk open? Who is that back behind the car? I envisioned the loss of my first bit of property, as some younger cousin of the fast-talker, supposedly just one of the town's many thieves, rides off on a moped with my suitcase. I got out of the car and was standing by the door, keeping a close eye on that trunk, when our first passenger arrived.
        Almost an hour later, we had a full car. Three young Colombians, all without passports or permission to enter Venezuela were the passengers. (!!) They had each paid over USD $100 for the trip. Lovely. Visions of losing not only my stuff, but my freedom stirred in my gut. Would I end up in some jail cell at the border? Or kidnapped by guerillas looking for young recruits? But somehow, I was relieved that we were finally leaving Maicao, and that all of my stuff was still with me -- oh wait, is my suitcase was still in that trunk...?
        The border was about 5 kilometers away, and it was a scene out of a movie. Flatbed trucks, overflowing with men, some carrying machine guns slowly creeped by in both directions. Border guards with rifles stood around joking with each other (but somehow simultaneously managing to give us hard looks). The 100 meters/yards in between the two borders was a desolate, a potholed, black no man's land. And since the driver neglected to stop to get my exit stamp from the Colombian authorities, I had to walk back through it, or face deportation. Yes, the Venezuelan border guard actually said, "te vamos a deportar." They couldn't find the entry stamp either, but it was there, and after I pointed it out to them, they requested 100 dollars. I didn't have it, and then the driver appeared and cracked some friendly jokes with the guard, and I was on my way... back to the post, to be searched. All of my luggage was opened and spread on the table, for all of the creepy passersby to see. The fact that my luggage had a dollar value probably equivalent to what most of these people earned in a year was on showcase. Lovely. They unpacked all of my stuff, and then just left it there, for me to hurriedly repack, out of the sight of all of those eyes.
        Then we were ushered into a little room. Me and the four undocumented Colombians. We were ordered to drop our pants. I had just come from the beach and was wearing swim trunks -- no underwear. My scared weenie has probably never been smaller in its life. I was relieved that there was no anal probe. No rubber gloves. No cavity search. All stuff one might expect on the border of the world's largest exporter of cocaine.
        So anyway, after showin everything I've got, we finally got back into the car and drove off, after the driver greased the palm of the border guard with several crisp bills. I was relieved, because I thought that that was the end of our sketchy ordeal. We were in Venezuela, so it should have been smooth sailing to Maracaibo from there. I was wrong. Apparently, one border checkpoint isn't enough to keep the coke and the undocumented Colombians out of Venezuela. So there were about ten of them, one every few miles it seemed, and at each one the driver thumbed out more bills. Apparently all machine-gun toting Venezuelan border guards can be bribed to look the other way. A comforting thought... I wonder what else you can pay them to do...
        After about the 4th checkpoint bribery, an older man came running towards the car (which of course caused my gut to sink quickly into my pants). Turns out he's a colleague of the driver -- he was driving some other undocumented kids and had his car confiscated. It wasn't clear to me just why, because the way he spoke Spanish was a slurred flurry of slang and euphemisms, all shouted at the top of his lungs, which prompted me to sort of cover my ears. At one point during his nonstop chatter, he explained that the border guard who confiscated his car thought he was yelling at him, and that he tried to explain to the border guard (apparently in an ever-louder voice) that he's not yelling, he just has a loud voice! Everyone else in the car remained silent as he jabbered on. At one point, he called the Macaio-Maracaibo trip, "el viaje del infierno". I couldn't agree more.
        And then, as if on cue, we approach... flames! At this point, I'm laughing. On either side of the road are 10-foot tall flames stretching for about 10 yards/meters. So close to the road that we could feel the hot as we passed. We went through about three of these flame tunnels. And then -- yes! it gets even better -- the scariest moment of the trip: a car passes us, and gradually slows down, until we're both stopped. The driver is vocally nervous about what's going on here. My heart pounds, and I envision guys in machine guns ordering us all out of the car, stripping us naked to be sure they get all of our valuables, and then driving away, leaving us on the side of the road in our birthday suits. Turns out, it's yet another driver, who noticed how the six of us were crammed into the car that was already cramped with five. He had an extra seat in his car. So loudmouth got out and rode off with him, and we were off.
        After a few more checkpoints, we reached a highway that brought us all the way to Maracaibo without stopping. I was still nervous about getting ripped off -- since the driver had a good look at all the stuff I had in my bags, I didn't write off the possibility of his trying something funny, like pulling out a gun and bringing me to a cash machine, making me withdraw as much cash as my card allows, and then, at gunpoint, forcing me to stay at the machine while he drove off with all of my luggage. At this point, I was ready for just about anything. Since I thought I'd be arriving at around 8pm, and then meeting up with a guy I found on couchsurfing.com, I figured I'd get his recommendation and just walk into a hotel. So I had no reservation, but I didn't want the driver to know that I was so disorganized. And I was hoping he'd drop me off at the hotel so I didn't have to find a taxi. It was almost 2am by now...!! Yeah, the two hour trip ended up taking eight hours, and I missed my Friday night on the town in Maracaibo with Luis and his (girl)friends. But I was happy to be alive and still have my bags under my arms. Now all I needed was a hotel and a beer.
        So I stealthily thumbed through the guidebook, found a hotel, and asked the driver to bring me there, telling him that I had a reservation. After driving around for a half an hour looking for it, asking various people for directions, we found it. It was closed for renovations. Now he knows I'm lying to him... so I take the first safe opportunity I can find to get out and be done with this creep. He lets me off on a corner where some kids are hanging out near a food stand. They warn me that walking around alone at this time of night with all my luggage in Maracaibo is not safe. So I grab a taxi, coughing up 5,000 of my last 10,000 bolivares, and ask to be taken to a hotel the kids told me about. I get out at the hotel and the taxi drives away. The hotel is full. They don't even invite me into the lobby for a second, so I'm out on the street, with all of my luggage, about to have a breakdown. Finally, a couple appears and I follow them to another taxi, who drops me off at Hotel Golden Monkey for my last 5,000. The bar in the hotel is still open, and let's me take a beer on the room tab. I'm safe and sound, extremely relieved, and the beer tastes extra good.
        In a funny way I'm glad I had this horrible experience... it's a good story to tell, and it reminds me that I should really appreciate the freedom to travel that I have. As a citizen of the USA and Italy, I can freely enter and exit almost every country in the world without a visa. Outside of the states and Europe, I'm only allowed to stay for 30 days, but having two passports makes it easy to juggle entry/exit stamps to stay for as long as I like. It's really a horrible shame that millions of people around the world can't leave their home country. For Colombians, it was explained to me many times, the US Consolate charges around $150 just to apply for a visa. If you are rejected, you don't get a refund. And usually the ones that don't get rejected are the ones who can afford to lose that application fee. I realize that it's unrealistic to just open borders and let people move about freely -- some control is necessary to prevent disorganized floods of immigration which make life miserable for both current residents and immigrants -- but I really feel bad for people who aren't even given the possibility to travel beyond their borders.
        That said, I feel worse for someone from a smaller country, like say, Serbia -- they've got a lot less to explore within their borders than a Colombian. Colombia is as big as Spain, Portugal, and France combined, has miles of coastline on both the Pacific and the Caribbean, an Amazon basin, and plenty of mountains and jungles to climb and explore.

Maracaibo
        Luis came to meet me the following day at the Golden Monkey. I was still quite shaken from the night before, and disoriented, in yet another country. I had walked around and around looking for a cash machine... and once I found one, I struggled with it for 15 minutes until a girl finally pointed out that I was trying to withdraw the equivalent of USD $100,000 -- the cash machine displayed amounts in bolivares fuertes, which dropped three zeros. Right... woops!
        Luis took me and a French couchsurfer whose name escapes me around the town, showing the sights... not that there's too terribly much to see in Maracaibo... we went into a mall and had lunch, and later went and found me a hotel for the night, as I decided to leave the Golden Monkey. I ended up in the hotel that, the night before, had been full and left me on the street. Later on we went out with several of his (girl)friends, in a sheik bar full of high-heels and collars, buzzing with music that I mostly hated. It was actually a really fun night -- thanks again Luis!

Merida
        The next morning I was on a bus to Merida. Eight hours, freezing my nuts off. The French kid said it -- the only places in Venezuela that are cold are buses and movie theaters. Pleading with the driver didn't help, he claimed to not have control over the AC. Whatever... when we finally got to Merida I grabbed a cab to Yolanda's place. She's my dad's cousin. I barely know her, but have fond memories of hanging out at my great Aunt Florence's house -- Yolanda's mother -- in New York as a kid. We chat about the fact that Florence's father, Giuseppe Menichetti, is who I owe my Italian citizenship to, and that she might also be eligible. She also tells me some things about my great grandfather that I'm definitely not proud of.
        Merida is nestled in the Andes mountains, and home to the world's longest cable-way -- the teleferico -- which shuttles tourists and daytrippers from the center of town, over the adjacent valley, and up to the peak of one of the highest mountains. It's incredible and, according to the guidebook, "the highlight of any trip to Merida". It's what I was looking forward to most, besides seeing Yolanda and her setup in Venezuela. But it's closed on Monday and Tuesday in the low season. I arrived Sunday night and had to leave Wednesday morning, so I was SOL. (Non-yankees: that stands for "shit out of luck") Apparently the high season had ended the day before I arrived, culminating in a big festival with tons of bands and people in the streets having a great time. Had I known...
        The sudden arrival of the low season (about which it said nothing in the guidebook) seemed to mean that all of the adventure sports tours that Merida is famous for were on vacation. So I just walked around the town, looking for records, eating interesting food, and running some errands. I got a haircut, clothes washed... and lots of work done at Yolanda's place. She's got a fast internet connection and I was in dire need of figuring things out for the Sticker Guy 15th anniversary party in Reno at the end of March.
        My stay in Merida was pretty uneventful. On my last day there, I rented a bicycle and rode about four hours uphill, to La Culata (heehee -- see photo, below!). I was supposed to meet up with a girl I found on couchsurfing.com, but without a cellphone, it was difficult to arrange a meeting. It was raining almost every afternoon and well into the evening, which also made going out less appealing. I went to check out "the best bar in Venezuela" (according to the guidebook), but it was quite uninspiring. Maybe if I was a college-aged reggae fan I would have liked it. I've learned to take Lonely Planet's advice, when taste is involved, with a grain of salt.

Bogota' and surroundings
        I traveled by bus from Merida to Cucuta, where I caught a plane with landed me in Bogota' just in time to meet up with David Bruce. We hung out for five days in Bogota', staying the whole time in the quite nice Hotel Ambala, which is in the center of La Candelaria, which is also where the university is. That meant that in the morning and the evening, when students were going to and leaving classes, the streets were full of pretty young girls (and of course, guys... but they have tough competition for a moment of my attention). Unfortunately we got a lot of rain, which put a damp-er (hee hee) on our sightseeing and evening boozing, but we still had a great time.
        We hung out at El Gato Bardo, which seems to be Colombia's only rock'n'roll bar, and is a really cool place. Eliz is the owner and a really sweet lady. Martin is my contact and plays in a band called Los Neuronas. He organized the party that Dave and me DJed, the flier for which was posted on this blarf a few days before the gig. He turned out to be a particularly good guy to meet. Besides being a swell guy, he's highly motivated and wants to represent Slovenly in Colombia. He got me an interview at the national independent radio station, Radionica, and put me in touch with a reviewer for the South American edition of Rolling Stone magazine (I know... corporate, but there isn't much else happening in Colombia... which seems to be proven to me by the amount of interest in a little label like Slovenly!). I was really well received, which is in part due to the hospitality and warmth of most Colombians, but also because almost no one dares to go there. At our gig, there weren't a lot of people, but the ones who did show up were very enthusiastic, buying records and dancing and having a great time... for most of them, they were hearing the songs Dave and me played for the first time.
        We went on a couple of field trips, to the salt cathedral of Zipaquira (see ominous photo) and to Villa de Leyva, where we hiked up a mountain on my birthday, and Dave didn't vomit. It was cool to get out of smoggy Bogota' and check out a bit of rural Colombia.
        Dave split the next day, and I got busy with the geeky urban planning & alternative transportation stuff that he probably wouldn't have cared much about. You see, Bogota' has become famous in the last ten years or so because it's ex-mayor, Enrique Penalosa, radically changed the urban planning of the city to be more 'egalitarian', which is a revolutionary, but very right-on concept for a mayor to be pushing. Especially in Bogota', where the vast majority of people don't have the money to own a car. It means taking space away from private automobiles (occupied by the wealthy) and giving it to pedestrians, cyclists, and mass transit users, which is everyone else. And on the margins of this 'everyone else', are the ones who can't even afford mass transit. It was explained to me that the bicycle paths that extend out to the poor suburbs on the edges of town get a lot of use from people who can't even afford bus fare. This is the sort of thought process that motivated Penalosa's policy decisions, which make mobility financially possible for everyone and, by extending sidewalks and rearranging the urban landscape in a way that keeps cars in their place, create a lot of beautiful public spaces for everyone to enjoy.
        Thanks to Oscar and Andres of the ITDP, my favorite NGO and one I donate most religiously to, for their hospitality in Bogota'.

Medellin
        After a last-minute rush around Bogota' to hit a couple more record stores, I grabbed a flight to Medellin. I had arranged to meet with Erika, who I found on couchsurfing.com, but she was stuck at work and couldn't make it. So I headed out to the Zona Rosa (which thankfully was much cooler than the one in Bogota' that Dave and I both hated) to check out the "rock" bar from the guidebook (grains of salt taken). Not surprisingly, this so-called rock bar looked more like a yuppie dive -- all white, minimalist, and square. It's called "Blue" and I hear hiphop from outside the front door. I don't go in, and decide to get a bite to eat and check out the "misfit biker bar," Berlin.
        While I'm waiting for my arepas, I check my email on my phone. There's a mail from a guy named Nicolas, who heard me on the radio and heard that I would be in Medellin. He wants to give me a CD to check out. So I call him, and he comes to meet me at Berlin, which turns out to be much more of a rock bar than Blue (and not a biker in sight... whatever, LP!). I like the place, and Nicolas is a really swell guy. We hit it off quickly, and later his lovely girlfriend Viviana joins us at a place called Gallery 10-45 or something like that. She's real sweet, real pretty, and has an interesting story to tell. She was born in Chile, daughter of a Colombian UN worker, and has lived all over the freakin place -- Caracas, Belgium, Florida, and New York City. She speaks perfect English and I relate to a comment she made about getting a feeling in her gut about Medellin when riding in on the bus from the airport. It's a stunning city, surrounded by high, green mountains...
        I end up extending my stay in Medellin and hanging out with Nico & Viviana the entire weekend. We ventured out to Girardota, where Nico's band "Los Perros Calientes" practices in a country house on the weekends. I thought it was going to be a big crazy party, but it was quite relaxing and mellow, which wasn't a bad thing. Whiskey and "agua Hoffman" flowed.
        I also got to meet Erika from couchsurfing for dinner. She's really interesting and we hit it off instantly. It was a little awkward because her boyfriend couldn't come to dinner with us... and I probably would have been jealous too. His name escapes me now but he was quite a cool guy awkwardness aside -- into some good music and also a Holga user... except he's a real photographer.
        Medellin quickly became my favorite Colombian city, or at least the one I felt most at home in. I'm definitely going back.

Cali
        My trip ends in Cali. On Sunday evening I flew in, a quick 45 minute flight in a plane with propellers. I grabbed a taxi to the hotel, checked in as quickly as I possibly could, and then rushed out to meet Carlos of Fortaleza Empirica. The drummer of his band had heard my radio interview, in which I mentioned that I would be in Cali, and told him to write me. They arranged to practice the night I was in town, and came to pick me up at the hotel, and brought me to the singer's house where they practice. The singer lives with his mother, a very sweet woman who was hanging around smiling and offering me juice and chicken. The kids offered grass and whiskey.
        I could tell right away, from the looks of the members and the way their practice room is decorated, that this band is not the kind of stuff I'm looking for for Slovenly. They confirmed my suspicion when they started playing a sort of reggae / 70s rock hiphop fusion. It actually wasn't bad -- the singer in particular is extremely passionate about the music and the lyrics. They all struck me as overly serious, to the point of almost being scary -- none of them were smiling, they were all real hard-looking before and while playing. I don't know if it's because they were nervous to be playing for the owner of a record label from abroad, or because their modern music role models all look hard and pissed off in their videos. But after they played they gathered around me, all smiles, to see what I thought of the music, and share some drink and smoke with me. I was honest with them, I told them that it was original and that I liked the guitar solos, and that they should check out Pappo's Blues from Argentina (I told lots of people in Colombia that they should check out Pappo's Blues. You should too -- the first six volumes are 70s rock classics). When I told the singer that I had been in Colombia for a month and was leaving at 10am the next day, he correctly concluded that their little private concert was the finale for my trip, and he was happy about it. Me too, it was a fine way to spend my one night in Cali.

Drugs
        Since Colombia is famous for being the source of the world's cocaine, you might be wondering whether it's real prevalent at home. Surprisingly, I never once saw it, and only once did I hear the sound of sniffing, from the nose of a dreadlocked rastaman in the bathroom of a club. I don't think he was Colombian -- I saw him on the street and I'm pretty sure he was traveling. I was sure that at our DJ gig in Bogota', people would be going in and out of the bathroom and we would also be invited to partake. But apparently, Colombians don't use their #1 national export much. It's not because it's expensive -- I heard that you could get, for 10,000 pesos ($5), what in the US or Europe costs $50 and up.
        So once again, I am exposed to a country in which a drug is easily acquired and cheap, but it's denizens don't seem to care. Most of my friends who live in Holland don't smoke much marijuana either. Studies show that a higher percentage of Dutch youths have tried marijuana than their counterparts in France, Italy, and Spain -- but a much lower percentage uses it on a regular basis. From what I've seen in Colombia, my guess is that studies would produce similar statistics. Nevertheless, the Colombian government is submitting to US government pressure to eradicate the coca plant, hence the controversial, ridiculously shortsighted, Plan Colombia.
        Political reasons, in fact, could be the real factors motivating young Colombians to abstain from cocaine use -- because monies from its sale around the world don't come back into the country's economy -- but into the pockets of corrupt druglords who spend it on mansions, fancy cars, and arms. These are the same people who are likely responsible for kidnappings, guerilla violence, etc.: aka the FARC. I'm definitely not an authority, though, these are just some observations -- so read up if you want to know more.

        It's been a great trip. I highly recommend a visit to Colombia. Yeah, be careful. Don't take the viaje del infierno. But don't avoid this great country either. It's one of the best ones I've been to... check my flickr site for photos...

Medellín

2008-02-22T16:12:00.001-08:00

Wow... I like this town... it's not at all what you might expect of Colombia...

Well, I haven´t been writing much. There's lots to say about my time in Bogotá... now I've already moved on and tomorrow I'm probably going to be hitting Cali. Two more nights there and then I leave for Florida. Goin´ to visit my pops. Then on the 28th I'll be back in Reno.

I was on the radio in Bogotá talking about Slovenly... broadcast all over Colombia... and I got some emails, including one from a kid named Nicolas from here in Medellín. He and his girl Viviana are really good people... so I've been hanging with them. I might just have to stay an extra night, because there's some big party Saturday in someone´s country house.

ahhh! I don't wanna go.

DJ Dabib Brustafa

2008-02-17T16:19:00.000-08:00

BogotAHH!

2008-02-16T12:18:00.000-08:00

Here we are in Bogota', this city is cool, big and full of people and life... except that it seems to die relatively early! Last night at 2:30am everyone was already goin' home. Dave and me were roaming around looking for more action but, nada. This city looks and feels quite a bit like Madrid but, sadly, it does not have Madrid's all-night party atmosphere. We were wondering if it's because, up until about three years ago, this place was really unsafe. Maybe staying out past midnight feels like a lot to people here??

Anyway tonight we're playing music at a party, in the Gato Bardo, a cool little bar that we already checked out the other night... great people runnin' the place... it's a little hideaway, muy escondido... let's hope that some people know about the place!

Zipaquirá Catedral de Sal

2008-02-16T07:03:00.000-08:00

La Culata??

2008-02-12T22:36:00.000-08:00

Taganga, Colombia... Maracaibo, Venezuela

2008-02-10T19:48:00.001-08:00

After a mostly uneventful stay in Barranquilla, I went to a little fishing village on the beach called Taganga. Ultra-relaxing. I'll miss that place, and the friends I made there. I also DJed in a bar called Garaje, but that pretty much sucked -- their equipment was shit, and people kept asking me to play -- guess who? -- Bob Marley. And music that isn't old. Christ. On Friday, I left Taganga and headed for Maracaibo, Venezuela. My plan was to go out Friday night in Maracaibo and then grab a bus or a plane to Merida. But the trip was a nightmare. Nuff said. I didn't get into Maracaibo until 2am. So I grabbed a room in whatever hotel I could find and crashed.

Apparently I was really exhausted, because I didn't wake up until after 11am. Too late to get the bus to Merida. So I get in touch with a couchsurfer named Luis. He shows me around his town (which looks amazingly like Los Angeles) and helps me find a hotel (Thomas from France already had his couch). Later on we go out to a fancy discoteca with guys in suits at the door. A place I would never enter -- and they didn't want to let me in. I had a lot of fun though, except for when Luis's girlfriends kept insisting that I dance. To reggaeton? You gotta be kidding. Actually I know I'd have more fun if I did, but... uff... I guess I'm not THAT desperate to have fun. Besides, I was havin a swell time sittin in my chair and watching the throngs of slick-haired, button-up shirt dudes and their high-heeled, totally made-up (and quite hot) lady friends arrive while I sipped my tequilas and beers.

We stayed out pretty late, and got pretty drunk. The music was all the same crap that I've been hearing on this trip -- especially in Panama. The same pop, reggaeton, and commercial techno-salsa hits, oh joy. Then we went to another bar, and -- guess what? -- they played exactly the same songs. My new friends didn't care -- they danced to them all again. Good for them. After that was finally over, we went to eat some late night greasy grub. I had a patacon, which was a sandwich with carne asada inside, but instead of bread, there was fried smashed bananas. Una bomba atomica in the stomica.

At 9:30 this morning I got on a bus bound for Merida. Nine (!) hours later I arrived, and I'm now hangin in my dad's cousin's apartment. Tonight it's raining.

Barranquilla

2008-02-05T16:25:00.000-08:00

Colombia

2008-02-05T15:53:00.001-08:00

I made it to Colombia and got a chip for my phone. The number is +573126279591 if you want to reach me quick by phone or text message.

I just spent two great days in Cartagena. A beautiful town. I could have definitely spent more time there, but I'll be back... now I'm in Barranquilla, and it's the last night of Carnaval here. Supposedly, it´s the biggest Carnaval party in South America after Rio DJ´s. So far it looks pretty dead, but I guess the action finished up at 4am this morning. It sounds like it was definitely more my speed -- instead of discotechno parties, all of the best bands from around Colombia played in the streets. Now I know... and if I'll be back in Cartagena, I can be back here too.

Tomorrow I'm headed for a little beach town called Taganga.

Carnaval - Las Tablas, Panama

2008-02-03T15:04:00.000-08:00

I made the trek (crammed into the back of a mini-SUV that was hauling a total of 8 people) to Las Tablas, the town with the most famous party during Carnaval. I was going to stay for four nights. I was told in advance what it would be like: lots of drinking and dancing and people getting wet in the streets. Sounds fun, and it was at times, but it wasn't really my thing. Maybe I'm growing out of this kind of mindless party? Las Tablas's carnaval party revolves around a sort of beauty contest between two 'queens' -- one of Calle Arriba, and one of Calle Abajo. They ride around on floats (that were quite obviously conceived by gay designers -- this was pointed out to me) all decked out in ultra-flamboyant feathery gowns and doing that wave. You know the one. 30 piece marching bands (cool!) follow the queens on gaudy floats covered in advertisement banners, and people dance around and yell, either in support of their queen or obscenities towards the other. Water cannons rain down on the crowds, and little kids with giant squirt guns (why didn't those exist when I was a kid?) help out. I dug the action by day much more than the action at night. In the late afternoon yesterday I found a 4-piece band playing in a bar. Old guys with older instruments. They were fun -- the frontman was great on his accordian.

After a lull in the action while people ate dinner and rested up, the night started at around 10pm. Parades with more floats and tons of people in the street dancing to really bad music. Yeah, I take it back -- I don't think I've outgrown crazy street parties. But I just can't get down to the mix of techno, commercial salsa, and (barf) reggaeton they were throwing at us. Sorry, call me closed-minded, but... hmm, there's so much more than this. I was particularly disappointed because I've actually -- finally -- started to find some 'latin' music that I like, and this comp, which is all I've been listening to lately, is 100% Panamanian. On the trip there, squeezed into the back of the car, I asked Jose, one of the (really cool) Panamanians who was nice enough to have me along, "what kind of music do they play at Carnaval?" And he replied,
"oh, everything."
"Everything? Even death metal? Country!?"
"No, no! You know, electronic music, house, techno, salsa, reggaton, etc"
Right. So I handed a copy of the Panama comp CD that I had burned up to the front, swearing that they would love it. They pretty much skipped through the tracks and put the commercial radio station back on (boom boom boom). Since the woofers were right under my ass, the bass blared right into my bowels, reverberating through my entire body. Is this the kind of thanks I get for offering a little bit of music??

I'm at the airport, waiting for my plane to Cartagena, Colombia. Carnaval wasn't really for me, but Panama's been good -- otherwise I wouldn't still be here. I definitely wasn't planning to stay for two full weeks.

Kuna Yala

2008-01-31T12:58:00.000-08:00

I'm back in Panama City after two unforgettable nights on the island of Nalunega in the Comarca Kuna Yala. The Kuna is one of the world's most successful self-governing indigenous tribes.

Even though I read the Lonely Planet section on a trip there 3, 4, or maybe even 5 times, I somehow overlooked the importance of the line that read, "you'll want to hit an ATM before heading to the Kuna Yala". You'll want to? How about "you had better be sure to carry cash for your stay in the Kuna Yala, at least $50 per night, because there are no ATM machines. If you arrive with $27 dollars in your pocket you will be screwed. Any hotel owner you try to make arrangements with will send you to the police."

This is exactly what happened to me. My attempts to get the owner of Cabanas Ukuptutu to accept credit cards, promises, and Brazilian Reals all failed. At what point he asked me what I know how to do, but he quickly changed his mind and sent me back on a boat to the main island to figure out what I was to do with the police.

I had come here to spend a night or two with the Kuna and then hop on a sailboat bound for Cartagena, in Colombia. The trips are usually arranged in a Panama City hostel, but they all depart (or at least stop) in El Porvenir, the same island divided by the tiny airstrip my plane landed on; the same island on which the Kuna police outpost I was being sent to was stationed.

The police weren't able to do much for me. They sent me to talk to Alexis, who was in charge of all the boat traffic in the Kuna Yala. Before leaving Panama, every captain and crewmember had to visit his offices to get an exit stamp. Unfortunately, my three leads for sailboats (a Frenchmen named David; another Spanish, name unknown; a catamaran called the Mystic Wind) were nowhere to be found. My only possibility at this point was to... wait. I didn't have enough to pay a night in a hotel (the cheapest I heard of was $35), no one accepted credit cards or promises, and there really were no cash machines -- except in Nargana', which was about a 2-hour (or 4-hour? No one seemed to agree) boat trip away. One idea that the police chief had was that I pay a boatman to take me to Nargana, where I could get cash. Gasoline is $5/gallon and it's a 4-gallon trip (8-gallon?) trip, so I'm looking at $20 ($40?) fare... if I can get my boatman to trust me that my card will work, and that the money will be there.

Waiting on this gorgeous island on this sunny morning wasn't so bad. And all of this was kinda funny to me. I can't help but reflect on some of my other recent travel experiences, in which I suddenly found myself without access to any of my cash, and about how my joking around about "having money -- just no cash!" are hardly funny to those that hear it. Suddenly I'm broke, counting my nickels and dimes... and it's actually somehow refreshing. It's easier to haggle over a price when you really can't afford more. I really savor my last beer if I know I don't have money for another.

While waiting, I decided to check out the museum of Kuna culture that's near the police outpost. I cough up two bucks (now down to $25) and a nice guy named Faustino gives me the tour. Afterwards, when he asks me about myself and where I'm from, I explain my predicament. And then I join him at his spot by the beach, where he sits all day (CTFO) waiting for the next museum-goers. There aren't many. Finally, when I'm about to get up and go for a swim, it comes to him: he has a friend on his island who rents rooms for $7 per night. So after some more (very enjoyable) waiting around, he flags down a boat for me and I'm off.

Also hopping on this boat is Julian, a mochillero (backpacker) from Argentina who had been in Bocas del Toro visiting his brother. He ends up getting off the boat with me on Nalunega, to look for this friend of Faustino. I think he had other plans, but mine probably sounded more intriguing. After all, Faustino's friend was named Archimedes.

And he just happened to be the first guy I spoke to when I got off the boat. After a firm handshake and a few laughs (his jokes never stop cracking), we make the 3-minute trek to the other side of the island and his home. He introduces us to his senora, quite a lovely woman in traditional Kuna dress (the women dress traditionally; the men and children dress like westerners), shows us to our room (we got to choose between beds or hammocks -- we chose the latter), and we were off in his kayak to get dinner.

Yes, the deal was even sweeter. Not only did he loan us his kayak, to try our hand at island transport on our own (women in passing kayaks laughed at us), but for $12.50 per night we got dinner too, and the first night we got comida de dioses: lobster! With rice cooked over a wood fire, some lime, and some hot sauce. It really is food of the gods, because after fighting all the meat out of it's spiky shell and down my throat, I felt great and had tons of energy. Just enough energy to go sit on the pier, drink a beer (I could only afford one... okay, I splurged, I'll admit it -- we each had two), and watch the local teens fish. They have a fishing competition, which is actually somewhat brutal. While pulling each fish out of the water, the kid will yell "big mama!" and then swing it over his head, slamming it against the concrete pier repeatedly until it stops flipping about. Whoever catches the most and biggest fish is the winner, and then all the fish are kicked back into the sea. I have a hard time understanding, having read that National Geographic about fisheries worldwide going 'dry', and having argued with Italian waiters over the bill after they try to charge me 35 euros for much smaller ones than these kids were thoughtlessly wasting as they sweep them back into the sea. But apparently this goes on every night, and there's no shortage. Maybe, I wondered to myself, the fish that are kicked back into the sea act as bait for the bigger fish that the Kuna eat. These bigger fish are lured closer to the island, and the grown-up fishermen have to paddle a lot less to catch them...?

Julian turned out to be a pretty cool guy, and he actually exchanged my 50 Brazilian Reals for $23! He'll have a much easier time exchanging them when he returns to Buenos Aires in two days than I or any Kuna ever will. We sat on the pier talking for awhile, and after the sun was almost all the way down, one of the Kuna teens came over and sat with us. Jose is 19 and lives part of his time in Panama City. I don't think he likes it or his friends, who are self-proclaimed "bad boys" (he asked me to translate, and I confirmed that it meant chico malo). He's a good kid, and as I translated "motherfucker" for him, I could tell that he feels much more at home on his native turf. Jose gave us a real good idea of what it's like to be a Kuna teen. Courtship is watched over very carefully (he's not allowed to be alone with his girlfriend -- if they're caught he'll be fined $10, she $5). Not surprisingly couples marry at a much younger age -- but only then are they allowed to really get to know each other -- I wonder how happy couples end up...?

Jose hung out with us the entire next day and we had a great time kayaking around, meeting his friends, drinking beer, swimming by the airstrip, and CTFO.

I'm out of time. Ask me if you want to hear more, or if you're planning to go. I've got Archimedes and Jose's phone numbers.

Ciudad de Panamá

2008-01-28T08:10:00.000-08:00

Yeah I'm in Panama City. The Miami of Central America... with a casco viejo (old town) that resembles Havana, Cuba. I stayed one night in that old town but the taxi driver who dropped me off there asked me if I valued my life, so I decided to move on to safer pastures. Now I'm in a hostel in a highrise with a guard outside. Yesterday, after a fascinating and educational visit to the Canal Museum, I went to the 'causeway', which is an artificial road along side the mouth of the Panama Canal created with the removed earth by the 'gringos' who dug it.

Today I'm headed back to the canal to check it out some more, and tomorrow morning I fly to El Porvenir, in the San Blas islands, which is part of the Comarca de Kuna Yala, an autonomous indigenous nation, one of the world's most successful. From there I hope to sail to Cartagena, Colombia.

Gotta move.

Panamá

2008-01-20T16:51:00.000-08:00

I made it to Bocas de Toro, Panamá. Cool little town. Gonna hang here and work and try to surf for a few days. Gotta wait for my luggage anyway which is still at the airport I flew from in Costa Rica. The plane was full and at maximum weight capacity (the majority of the passengers were from the USA) so we had to leave the luggage behind. All of it.

Something that I'm liking more here than Costa Rica already is that it's decidedly less yankee. Okay, so they were playing baseball in the field at the end of airstrip, they use U.S. dollars as their currency, and the owner of my motel here is a retiree from Denver -- but at least they don't answer me in English when I ask for help in Spanish. That always bugs me and creates distance between the local and myself. It makes me feel like they see me as another tourist they are working for -- instead of a traveler who they are happy to help and might even like to meet.

Drake Bay

2008-01-19T15:10:00.000-08:00

I'm still in Costa Rica, in Bahia Drake, favorite resting spot of that pirate Sir Francis Drake, and [Fabio voice] there are no phones. (hee hee) Seriously! I had to hike a mile down the beach to this yuppie resort and I'm paying $5 for 30 of internet. Man, this place actually looks like a place with no phones. It's great. Maximum CTFO.

Yesterday hiked thru the rainforest in Corcovado Nat'l Park. Saw lots of critters. We're making a list.

Costa Rica

2008-01-15T18:18:00.001-08:00

Travelin again... currently in Dominical, Costa Rica... got a sunburn. Prior to here visited Quepos and Manuel Antonio... tomorrow leaving for Sierpe and Drake Bay. Gotta run!

HAPPY HOLIDAZE

2007-12-27T20:50:00.001-08:00

HAPPY HOLIDAZE from Peter... all the best
http://menchetti.blogspot.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/menchetti

back in Reno

2007-12-27T08:45:00.001-08:00

Buenos Aires was cool -- really cool. My room and my housemates were awesome. But I was sort of out of steam. Then my mom called and left me a message asking, even though she knew that I wasn't planning on it, "aren't you coming home for Christmas?"

I got to thinking that the best possible thing to do at this point was to go back to Reno, see my family and old friends who would all be back in town for the holidaze, recharge, work, go see the taxman who recently made a personal appearance in my place of business (!), and get some work done. Then maybe I could head back out in January. I could also look for and reserve a place for the big fuckin party I plan to throw to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Sticker Guy! in March.

So here I am in Reno. I surprised the shit out of my mom (but didn't give her a heart attack after the taxi driver, who was also a mother, warned me that she would think she was seeing ghosts), went out and saw old friends at the bar (and almost got into a fight with a really stupid fucking kid), and just slept 14 hours. Now I guess I should go to work.

First I'll say a little about my ten days in Buenos Aires. 15 million people, big fuckin' city. I had a really hard time orienting myself for some reason (usually I'm pretty good at that). I found a GREAT color lab to develop my weird outdated professional 120mm slide film rolls (I'll eventually post the pix to my flickr page www.flickr.com/photos/menchetti). I met Pirulo, owner of Rastrillo Records, and his girlfriend Vanesa, who had me over to their house for an asado (all Argentinians eat is meat, it seems). They were super cool and so were all their friends. I saw LOS PEYOTES in their hometown -- they were great, though they didn't blow my mind as much as the first time at the Funtastic in Spain (but there were other reasons my mind was blown there). I met Nico and saw his band MOTORAMA, who played with the SICK SICK SINNERS, a psychobilly band from Brazil who I also saw at the Goiania festival and walkin' down the street in their hometown of Curitiba. I had sort of made fun of them because they have that haircut and all the tattoos and talk in these corny psychobilly voices on stage -- but they were extremely cool guys and I actually got to like their band a bit the last time I saw them, when the sound was exceptionally clear (and apparently somehow they got the message because they spoke in a normal voice between songs).

I walked around BA a ton and biked some too. It's definitely worth a visit, but plan on partying all night and doing some shopping by day, because there ain't much to do to cool off -- no beaches or anything like that, and the river is ridiculously polluted. I snapped a picture of a shoe and a dead animal of some sorts floating in the brown water.

I really dug the Argentinians and their Spanish accent is the coolest sounding that I've heard. It's got a real singsong rhythm -- the millions of Italian immigrants in the 20th century definitely left their mark. They even say "que cosa?", which is 100% Italiano. They also say "vos" instead of "tu" (you) which must be some sort of Portuguese (from você) influence?

A multi-city ticket was less than half of what a oneway ticket would have cost me (and also cheaper than a roundtrip, for some reason) -- so on the 9th of January I have the option to fly back down south to San Jose, Costa Rica. I think I'll bust my ass and get my work done so I can do that. It's cold here. Then I can continue my South American trip, heading south again, but this time on the west side through Colombia, Peru, Chile, etc.

Oh yeah -- and since both my mom and my dad told me they read this blog I have officially changed my mind and don't feel like a total geek writing it. So there.

Uruguay... Buenos Aires

2007-12-17T00:54:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted in a while. That's largely because I was completely unable to. After I left Porto Alegre, I went to La Paloma. Crossed the border on a very comfy night bus, on which I made a new friend that was to be my travel companion for Uruguay. Funny: when we got off the bus Monday morning, it was sunny and warm. It took us about an hour and a half to get to La Paloma, where it was also sunny and warm. I was really psyched to get out onto the beach and try to surf. By the time we checked into the hostel, and put on our beach clothes, the clouds had rolled in and it started to rain. The weather on this trip has really not been good to me... geez! Any time I get near a beach everything turns grey. It's as if God wants me to drink all night and sleep all day...

Anyway, La Paloma was pretty cool. There are a lot of really interesting, imaginative houses there. I suppose most of them are vacation houses, since the town felt really deserted still in early December. Apparently it gets full around Christmas and through January. This would be a great place to come with a group of 4-10 friends. You can rent a whole house with a barbeque in the forest with the sea visible about 200 yards/meters away for less than US $20 per night. And while there wasn't much to do at night while we were there, you could tell that there would be during the season. We walked past a construction site of a REALLY cool beach bar/discoteque/concert space. All wood, with straw roofs... very aesthetically pleasing, like most of the little houses in the area.

The real highlight of the Uruguay beach stay was a place called Cabo Polonio. Not listed in any guidebook, as if some sort of traveler's secret, it is undoubtedly one of the weirdest and coolest places I have ever been. To get there, you have to take a 4x4 taxi, because you have to get over South America's largest sand dunes. Cabo means cape; a piece of land jutting out into the sea. This cape is a nature reserve, so the land is owned by the state. But for years a colony of hippie / fisherman / weirdos has lived here in homemade little houses. Without running water or electricity. We rented a little house to spend the night in; the owner had to do more than leave us the keys and some towels -- he had lots to explain. Like how to pump the water into the tank for the shower, or how to get the water from the well to dump down the toilet when it's time to 'flush'. He left us with a few candles, loaned us a lighter, and pleaded with us to be careful not to burn his little place down.

Adding to the weirdness and coolness of Cabo Polonio was the colony of sea lions that live out on the rocks out past the lighthouse and on a pair of islands just off the coast. The ones by the lighthouse are quiet -- sleeping? The ones out on the islands are all wailing about something. And you can hear it all the way in 'town'. So it sounds like there's always either a party or maybe a football match going on in the distance. It's sort of eerie. But it's a good thing that the sea lions are in the distance, because they smell really bad. Swines of the sea?

Nightlife in CP was strange too. We went to a bar, where the walls were made of plants and the blind owner had a pet penguin (!?!). We didn't hang out too long there -- we were beat because we had walked all the way to the end of the dunes some 5 kilometers down the beach. But it took us an extra hour to get to our house because, in the dark, we couldn't fuckin find it for the life of us.

Next stop was Montevideo. We spent two nights here. Stayed in a hostel -- a really good one, but I still was left swearing that it would be the last one I stay in. I just don't ever want to hear another dude with an acoustic guitar play Bob Marley songs again -- ever! I'm always tempted to stay in hostels because besides it being cheaper, there's a much better chance that you'll meet some other travelers -- which can be nice if you're traveling alone. But with a few exceptions, I never seem to find anyone that I really want to meet in the hostels. It's sort of a catch22 -- I definitely want to meet people, but I'd prefer that they be locals. Part of seeing a place is meeting its people -- not just other travelers.

Anyway Montevideo was cool. Went to a bar called Clash City Rockers and saw a band. They were okay. The bar was really cool. I ran into Marcos from Motosierra there who informed me that I was to be the DJ the following night at their gig in a joint called Barraca. Nice! That gig ended up being good, Motosierra was of course great, as well as the band before them, Oro Tractor. Pappo's-inspired S.American Sabbath-flavored blues rock'n'roll! They were awesome enough to talk about making records with. Unfortunately my DJ set was a total no-go, because the mixer was totally fucked. The only way to get a decent sound out of it was to push down on the gain knob. With your finger. The place emptied out onto the street between bands before my futile attempts to balance some sort of weight on the knob could produce a decent sound.

I ended up staying up all night with Marcos and friends of Motosierra... when I got back to the hostel it was 10:30am. I packed my bags and split on a bus for Colonia. After a quick walk around the town I got on the Buquebus for Buenos Aires. I write from my room in San Telmo -- an extremely spacious, relaxing room with a double bed, a couch, and a cat. I think I'll hang out here for at least ten days...

Porto Alegre

2007-12-09T12:30:00.001-08:00

This is my last stop in Brazil! I don´t really want to leave but I´ve got to keep movin´, I´m already wayyy behind, uh, schedule. Waitaminute, I don´t have a schedule! I don´t even have a return ticket... that´s the way I wanted it... that´s the way it´s gonna be!

Anyway, this place is alright, strikingly different from beautiful Florianópolis... Floripa is clean full of gorgeous, healthy people... Porto Alegre is sleazy and full of hobos with physical deformations. No jokin´! Amazing to see such a difference after just a 6-hour bus ride. But P. Alegre is decidedly more rock´n´roll, tons of bands come from here, I found a gig with 5 bands playing just walkin´ around the town... and instanly made friends... so it´s a shame that I´m not gonna spend more time here.

Last night I spun records (er, CDs... ugh) in a bar called Beco, great party, people seemed to dig my 60s shit after they got over the inital shock of hearing songs with regular instruments. And hey, I realized after the gig that I´ve DJed the last three nights in a row. This trip has turned into somewhat of a DJ tour for me...

Sao Paulo - Astronete

Curitiba - Kitinete

Florianópolis - Blues Velvet

Lagoa da Concecao - Clube de Sinuca

Porto Alegre - Beco

Tonight I´m gettin on a night bus, tomorrow morning I´ll be in La Paloma, Uruguay.

Florianópolis

2007-12-05T04:55:00.001-08:00

I arrived in Florianópolis the other day. I'm actually staying in a cool little town called Barra da Lagoa. Taking some surf lessons... gettin' better... I think I'll be DJing in a club in town called Blues Velvet tomorrow night... and riding bikes with the fine folks from VIACICLO ( www.viaciclo.org.br). Gotta run!

2007-11-29T17:38:00.000-08:00

Curitiba

2007-11-29T04:49:00.001-08:00

I'm in Curitiba now, and am feelin' much better. I like this town, feels good. And i got a DJ gig in a really cool little bar... it's called Kitenete, some guy posted some photos here. And the owner is gonna take me to all the best record stores tomorrow! I'll stay til saturday and then continue on to Florianopolis.

Goiânia (Noise)

2007-11-26T04:58:00.000-08:00

For some reason I've gotten into the habit of
updating this thing as I leave places... I've
been in Goiânia (which is pretty much smack in
the middle of Brazil) for three days... I went to
that festival, pretty cool... saw lots of bands,
a couple of which I liked. Tonight I saw
SEPULTURA, "a banda rock mais conhelcida do
Brasil!" All I could think while I watched them
was, "_______ was better" and I filled that blank
with Megadeth, Testament, Metallica, and a couple
of other metal bands I used to listen to, back in the day...

Tomorrow afternoon I fly back to Sao Paulo, and then grab a bus to Curitiba.

Salvador (Bahia)

2007-11-22T17:23:00.001-08:00

Oh yeah so I´m in Salvador, in the practice studio of THE FUTCHERS (www.myspace.com/thefutchers). I´ve been in Salvador since Monday... and tomorrow I´m leaving for Goiania. I´m going to the www.goianianoisefestival.com.br

basta Rio!

2007-11-19T11:19:00.000-08:00

Alright I´ve had enough of this place... I´m booked on a flight to Salvador this evenin´. The gig the other night was cool, the bands were cool, real nice kids... I also found one of the coolest neighborhoods ever: Santa Teresa. Up on a hill overlooking the city. It was dubbed rio´s most "bohemian" neighborhood by Lonely planet... whatever that means...

There are lots of artist types with funny hair walkin around in their sandals... I guess that makes it Bohemian... I was really into the rickety old tram that brings you up there, that feels more like a roller-coaster at times, with the little barefoot black kids jumping on and off and all around it... and the beautiful, crumbling old buildings, and great little bars and restaurants. Rather than "modernizing", people up here have chosen to preserve. Beautiful place, if I ever come back here I´ll be staying there without a doubt.

still in Rio... still raining

2007-11-16T21:13:00.000-08:00

I'm still in Rio and there's not much of a music scene in this town. They all
told me, but I didn't wanna believe it. There's a pretty cool band called Os Azuis
playin around the corner tomorrow night... it's been raining almost
the whole time i've been here, so what i'd hoped would be a more
sane healthy kinda stay here (on the beach, hiking, surfing, stuff like
that) has been more of the usual -- drinking til 5 and sleeping til noon.

Still in Rio

2007-11-13T09:18:00.001-08:00

I´m gonna stay here for a couple more nights... at least... I´m stayin at this cheesy, but cozy & friendly joint: http://www.ipanemahouse.com/

Last night a guy from here in Rio was complaining about that song Copacabana... it was hilarious... who the fuck is that song by? Neil Diamond?? Turns out it´s one of Rio´s more violent neighborhoods these days... Ipanema is known because of a song too... it´s kind of an upscale area, which makes me wanna puke with all it´s fancy yuppies shopping for boring clothing... but at least it´s safe.

Blogs are for dorks - Rio de Janeiro

2007-11-12T10:57:00.001-08:00

Okay, so it wasn't hard for me to be convinced that blogs are totally lame. Actually, I had sort of already convinced myself. But a friend of mine's confirmation drove the point home.

SO... I'll keep posting here but mostly just to send links to photos and such... and give a quick update on where I'm at.

Here are some pix from Sao Paulo

I'm in Rio de Janeiro and it's raining. Which is fine, cuz I've got 500 emails to go through...

I've got a Brazilian cell #... +55 11 8214 4715

Almost forgot... Last night

2007-11-10T21:44:00.000-08:00

So last night was good too, by the way... I spun some records in the Astronete around 12.30 -- but just for about a half an hour. I only had the little box of 45s that I bought during my week in New York, along with some Slovenly stuff. I think I did alright, the people that were there seemed to be into it. (This is kind of a boring post, but that probably has something to do with my being bored. I'm at the Inferno club and there's a hardcore punk band playing that is pretty good but they've been playing for an hour already. I had had enough 20 minutes ago.) After me Claudio played and ruled again, though it wasn't the same as Thursday -- the sound ain't bad at Astronete, but Las Vegas's system was really pounding. Next came a duo onstage -- a drummer and a singer playing a moog. They make a horrible first impression by starting their set with a Nirvana cover. They never really made up for it. All night I'm getting a crash course in Portuguese from the Brazilians I'm trying to interact with. Despite my knowledge of Italian and Spanish, it ain't going too well. Like with French, I can understand much of written Portuguese. But I've got no clue how to pronounce it. Or decipher it when it's spoken to me. I'm trying, but it's telling that the phrase I remember best from last night's lessons is "foda se" -- FUCK IT. It was dawn before I snapped the last picture on my Holga and stumbled back to the air mattress at Claudio and Naomi's.

Saturday night in Sao Paulo

2007-11-10T18:42:00.001-08:00

Claudio talked me into staying another night here (it wasn't hard) and I'm gettin ready to head out again and see what's happenin out there. The streets are loud and full of people. I'm gonna grab me another Brazilian pizza and head to the Infierno bar.

Tomorrow we're going to eat in an Italian restaurant on top of a tower with a view of all of Sao Paulo. Actually, supposedly this city is so damned big that even from way up there you can't even see the whole thing... it never ends... it's the 3rd largest city in the world after Mexico City and Tokyo, I believe.

Brazil - Sao Paulo

2007-11-09T09:49:00.000-08:00

I made it to Brazil after a crazy trip which I wrote nothing about except in emails to friends. Here's a good synopsis of what I've been doing since I left Reno in late September:

- buffalo (visit grandma, dad)
- memphis (goner fest - garagerock festival)
- italy (naples, rome, milan... visiting friends and takin care of business)
- valencia (play a gig with my band, record, hang with friends, take care of business, DJ the funtastic festival)
- milan (do laundry, mail a package, see a friend, catch a train to...)
- zagreb (visit a croatian friend I know from Amsterdam)
- belgrade (meet up with my friends from Rome's band, THE INTELLECTUALS, they play here and...)
- sofia (that's bulgaria, second gig of the little balkan minitour)
- crete (one of the southernmost and largest greek islands, to meet up with the "Ship of Fools")
- rhodes (another large greek island, south of turkey. spent a night in the beautiful 'capital' and then caught a ferry to...)
-bodrum (turkey. hung out a few hours here, ate a kebab, checked out a bitchin museum in a castle, caught a plane to...)
- istanbul! (amazing gigantic town, 20mil people (who knew there were so many turks?), met up with a guy from a garage band I found via another friend on myspace, ate a bunch of great food, drank a lot, walked a lot, saw a lot, wow! gotta go back)
- new york city (stayed a week, halloween, the Cavestomp festival to the THE SONICS (they were great!!), friends from Reno and all over comin' too

Here I am now in Sao Paulo, Brazil! I have a 1-way ticket, I'm going to relax and enjoy the spring (!) and investigate tour possibilities for the bands on my label... THE SUBSONICS... THE SPITS...

I'm recovering from last night... first off went and had some Brazilian pizza, which is surprisingly good, they cook it in a wood-fired oven, with a sesame-seed crust, and topped with the hearts of palm trees. Mmm. Bohemia is my beer of choice down here, a nice lager.

Then to the ASTRONETE club, great place owned by my new friends Claudio and Noemi. Thanks to Joe & Xtine for putting me in contact with them... I'm staying in their place, and I'm DJing in their bar tonight (with what few records I found in NYC)!

There was an AMAZINGLY good Clash tribute band playing the 'Nete... they rocked!! Then I ran over to a club called, er, LAS VEGAS (! - don't you think RENO is a better name for a club? It rolls off the tongue much more nicely...) and, wow, there's a band on stage tearing up "Psychotic Reaction" by the Count Five! And as soon as they're done, Claudio starts his record and I swear he was watching my applause for the band because the beat was synced with my claps. Ridiculous! He's a great DJ and I shook it til 5am. Now I gotta recover for tonight. And figure out where I'm going tomorrow. I'm thinking of heading to Rio...

Rocktocycle / Septocycle blog moved!

2007-09-14T11:52:00.000-07:00

I didn't know you could do this...

rocktocycle.blogspot.com

That's where I'll post all Rocktocycle / Septocycle news, photos, videos from here on. WOW! Last night we had the one and only BOB LOG III on the Rocktocycle. He was great! He said, while pedaling, through his plugged-in mic on his helmet (cuz otherwise we just couldn't hear him), that it may have been the weirdest thing he's ever done. The video will be up (there) soon!

Techno Ain't Music

2007-09-11T13:31:00.001-07:00

This was written for the last issue of Piss Clear at Burning Man 2007, but they ran out of space and couldn't run it. (geez why don't my freakin tabs show up on this thing??!?

TECHNO AIN'T MUSIC
by Pete Stickerguy

First of all, I know that techno is only one of many types of electronic dance 'music' -- the stuff that you hear pounding out across the playa from all of those giant rave camps on the edges of Black Rock City [BRC], and from the sound systems of the majority of the theme camps and art cars of this godforsaken town -- but for simplicity's sake, I'll just use that term. What I'm referring to when I say "techno" is ALL forms of rave 'music' -- trance, house, breakbeat, jungle, drum&bass, happy hardcore, etc, ETC.
A friend of mine once hit the nail right on the proverbial head when I watched him argue to a raver that the stuff he was dancing to was, in fact, NOT MUSIC. He said:
“Okay then, hum your favorite trance 'song' for me.” The raver was stumped for a second. He was smart enough to realize that actually trying to hum a trance beat would have made him look the fool... and then he replied,
"If it has a beat that you can dance to, then it's music."
"No, it's NOT music, it's a BEAT. It's not a song, but a VIBE."
And it couldn't be better explained than that. Because since about 1996, the soundscape of BRC has increasingly become a chaotic clash of thumping vibes. Anyone who has been here a few years can attest to that. On paper, it sounds kind of cool -- chaos is a big part of what attracts me to the desert for this festival year after year. But the omnipresent techno beat can wear on a man, and might make him want to fight.
Last year was the closest I've come to fighting. Someone had the nerve to park their techno camp right behind ours, with the stated intention of having parties from 5AM until "?", so that each morning they could celebrate another sunrise by jouncing up and down to seemingly neverending prerecorded 'songs' on compact disc. For most of the week, I tolerated it, even though, I thought to myself,
"Shouldn't they have been placed on the edge of town like the rest of the big rave camps who have sunrise parties?" Of course they should have. But lucky for them, I was usually out and about during their pathetic, mindnumbing ritual, and by the time 9am rolled around and I was crashing, so were they.
Until one of the last mornings, after one of those restful, mellow nights of sitting around the fire and just chatting with campmates and new friends. I had gotten to bed 'early,' but just two hours later at 6am I was awoken by the thumping of their sound system. Not one to complain, I put my earplugs in and went back to sleep. When I awoke at 9am, I wanted to take my earplugs out, but I wasn't going to do so with their crap still blaring. So in good fun, I donned my gorilla suit and went over to them to ask them to cut it. They said they would, but fifteen minutes later when they hadn't, my friend stormed over there and pulled their plugs. A fight nearly ensued; the music never came back on; she became camp hero for the day.

mu·sic [myoo-zik]: the sounds produced by singers or musical instruments.

That's how one dictionary defines music. So now I can hate techno not only because it annoys the hell out of me and makes me want to fight, but because it is, by definition, NOT MUSIC! A techno DJ is not a musician, he's a turntablist, which one DJ Babu once defined as "One who uses the turntable in the spirit of a musical instrument." Noise artists like Merzbow or Masonna don't call the screeching, hypnotic, sonic distortions they make music -- they call it NOISE! (as an aside: the term 'DJ' was coined in 1934 in reference to radio announcer Martin Block, who played records over the airwaves between news flashes. The D and the J stand for 'disc jockey,' and if you see a DJ listed for a party, it does NOT mean that you should expect a rave party. I can't count the times that I've had to explain to people that I'm still a DJ even though my records feature things like guitars, vocals, horns and organs).
Don't get me wrong folks -- I do believe that there is a place for everything at Burning Man (and I'll admit that there are many different, debatable ways to define music). But that's exactly my problem -- if the vast majority of what you hear out here is techno, then what we'll essentially be left with is an 'arts festival' WITHOUT MUSIC! Instead of catchy tunes and killer riffs, all we get pummeled with is a barrage of conflicting beats, which leaves us with a big fuckin' headache. I would never advocate an outright ban on techno -- but I WOULD advocate the imposition, by the powers that be, of guidelines for musical diversity. The BRDMD (Black Rock Department of Musical Diversity) -- who wants to sign up!? We'll rove the playa distributing permits for all of the genres of music that our citizens deserve to be able to choose from, thereby preventing the same old techno crud from emanating from every camp.
Anyway, I'd be willing to bet one of my hairy nuts that the majority of theme campers and artcar drivers who bring techno out to the playa don't even really like it. Okay, so you danced for three hours to it while you were high on ecstasy, but was it because of the 'music,' or because of the vibe created by the entire situation around it: the intense volume that you feel in your organs; the quivering flesh surrounding you; and your intoxicated, pulsating neurons? Are you sure you REALLY like it, people? Wouldn't you prefer to hear some real music performed by some real, LIVE musicians amplified over those towering speaker stacks? You would dance, and you would get off harder. Because recorded music can be good, but it's nothing like a live band, with real instruments. It's like the difference between jerking off and a great fuck.
So we'd be welcome. People would be happy to have us snap their trance CDs in half and hand them a Nathaniel Mayer CD to help fulfill the Soul requirement. Or a Hasil Adkins CD to fill that Hillbilly Country gap, or a copy of the Fucking Champs 'IV', vital for providing our citizens with their Instrumental Metal fix! (I highly recommend seeking all of these artists out, it's well worth the trouble). Violators would simply have their plugs pulled. On the second offense, cords cut!
I, for one, am ready to go to work. If you are too, then stop by Jub Jub (2:00 & LANDFILL) Thursday just before sundown for our first meeting. Tuition is one bottle containing at least 16 ounces of the intoxicant of your choice. You'll be trained and suited up, and by midnight, you'll be ready to hit the field.

FOR THOSE ABOUT TO ROCK,
WE SALUTE YOU!

For those about to rave...
we're coming for you.

the SEPTOCYCLE

2007-09-11T11:53:00.000-07:00

Ok so before the ROCKTOCYCLE was the SEPTOCYCLE... here are some videos of it. Here's a photo of us out in the desert:

And here is text from a flier that I handed out this year at Burning Man '07:

More accurately called a seven-seat quadricycle, this thing was built in Germany. It was dreamt up by Eric Staller, an New York artist based in Amsterdam who specializes in urban UFOs. If you’d like to know how much they cost, check out:
www.conferencebike.com
Please don’t ask me, I’m trying to forget how much I paid for it. Actually I have no regrets. It’s way more fun than a sports car!
The real name is Conference Bike, but that sounded a little too official so I started calling it the Septocycle. Then after mounting a kiddie drumset on the back I started calling it the Rocktocycle.
Unfortunately, I can’t answer your technical questions, because I didn’t build it! The bike is propelled entirely by pedaling. The music is powered by a little boat battery in the back. It was shipped from Germany to NJ on a boat, and then to Reno in a truck! more info:
menchetti.blogspot.com
www.ericstaller.com

THE ROCKTOCYCLE

2007-08-23T18:09:00.000-07:00

I'm going to start a little blog here about the Rocktocycle. This just has to be documented. If you want a sneak peak, take a look at this video link.

(If that doesn't work, go to video.google.com, and search for ROCKTOCYCLE).