No Wars for Alex

Here you find an ad realized by Obama’s supporters against John McCain’s enthusiastic statements about the Iraqi war. Click here to visit the website.

Betcha I can tell ya where ya got dem shoes – New Orleans / 4

New Orleans photos: gallery - slide show

I made some research about the shoes thing.
Before carrying on with the story, let’s reveal the mystery.
It’s a very “smart” trick to squeeze money out of unwary people. Those guys I was talking about asked me to bet; I didn’t get it, because I didn’t understand all they were saying.
They come and tell you “Betcha I can tell ya where ya got dem shoes”. The unfortunate who takes the bet up and find himself forced to pay 10$ or so when the guy tell him something like “you got them on your foot” or “you got them on Canal Street in New Orleans”. Needless to say, it’s not advisable to walk away without honoring the bet once you lose it.

New Orleans is one of the poorest cities in the USA and it’s even worse after Katrina.
The economy is slow and corruption among politicians doesn’t help change course. New Orleans is a city where you can see poverty in the streets more than somewhere else, where poverty is less confined to the degraded areas, it mingles with tourists and “good people”.
New Orleans is a city full of weirdos who stop you in the street. Likethe guy who asked me if I was a local, and when I told him I wasn’t asked me to take a picture of him a bring it home; and then got down on his knees, smiling, with his hand on the chest, to “give me a good shot”.

Vaughan’s Lounge – New Orleans / 3

I got to the hotel, checked in and put my stuff in the room.
Among the event people suggested me there was a jazz night on Thursdays and I wouldn’t miss it.
I set off for it. The hotel was close to the French Quarter, the historic centre of New Orleans. I have to say initially I was a bit worried: it was 10 pm, some streets were dark and all the warnings were influencing me, and so were the newspaper full of news about shootings.
Actually, the worst thing I went through was a guy telling me something about my shoes. It was not going to be the only time: the day after another guy told me “I know where you got your shoes”. I didn’t understand and kept on walking.
I headed for Bourbon Street, famous for the bars and the beads people throw from the balconies. This beads thing comes from the Mardi Gras, when people toss them from the floats to those in the street. Nowadays people toss beads every night on Bourbon St., where guys rent balconies and buy dozens of necklaces and throw them to girls who shows their charms. Sometimes the parts are reversed, the main thing is to collect beads, drink and make a racket on Bourbon St.
At the end of the street I took a cab and went in the Bywater, to the Vaughan’s Lounge. It looked like a bad place. I mean, if you see it you don’t really see the point of paying the 10$ cover and get in. The inside isn’t that better: it’s a dirty bar, ruined walls and a few tables. It’s all about jazz! What makes it special is the music, the three black musicians and the guy who plays the trumpet and makes the crowd dance. And you can not be really still, at least you have to tap your fingers on the bottle of beer or a foot on the floor.
There is a jukebox with CDs and a old cigarettes dispenser, with the handle you have to pull to make the pack fall down.
And there was a Times Picayune on the floor, to remind, just in case you needed it, we are in New Orleans, where the jazz was born.

I’m jazzed I’m here – New Orleans / 2

Taking off from Washington it’s always touching. From the Reagan National Airport you can see all the monuments and the Pentagon and the green stretch over the city.
I stayed attached to the window as always, till the clouds hid the scenery below. Then, I started reading again the “Letters from New Orleans” by Rob Walker, I just missed the last few pages. I was reading the letter about “St. James Infirmary”, a song with a odd story I’ll write about later.
Then Beatles’ Help! in the iPod, I just had the time to listen the album and the plane started going down in the swamp. It went along a street that runs suspended on the marsh, green like the moss and brown like water, stretching as far as the eye can see.
It looked as if we were landing into it when we got to the New Orleans Airport, the Louis Armstrong International Airport. “Welcome to New Orleans, we’re jazzed you are here!” it’s written on the yellow-blue signs. “Thanks – I thought – I’m jazzed to be here too!”.

I found the shuttle I already paid and would take me to the hotel. But I hadn’t print the voucher, so it was necessary to call the company and ask them to fax it. I asked the lady at the front desk to do it for me and she kindly accepted. “It will take half an hour; I’m sorry, you can go to the bathroom or take something to drink if you want…”. I went to get a copy of the local newspaper instead, The Times Picayune, because you can understand many things from a local newspaper, and above all I was looking for obituaries.
My expectation were just in part frustrated: it had two page and a half of obituaries (as many as the following days), and each one had its own photo, and I read them all looking for at least one jazz funeral. Unfortunately, I didn’t find any, I would satisfy myself with “live” music…

In the meantime, we had a good laugh with the lady of the shuttle company and another worker of the airport, who randomly mangled my name.
I had read almost all the newspaper and I had been there for about a hour when finally I got my ticket. The waiting was not that weight anyway. It was raining on the street to the town and it was going to rain all night long.

A city with personality – New Orleans / 1

I’ll gather my thoughts about New Orleans soon… I came back from there on the last Monday. Just a short consideration now.
Some days before I left, I went to a bookstore. I was holding 3 books: a Frommer’s guidebook and two books by authors who lived in New Orleans and wanted to tell stories about it. After a moment’s hesitation, I left the guidebook and bought the other two books. Then some tips by people who went there before me and a map were all I needed.
You can go to New Orleans with too different states of mind: I want to drink and have fun is the first; I want to understand this place is the other. I think I managed to melt both those aspects, even though the second was my main concern, was the one I privileged.
Actually, I am not sure I understood New Orleans. But I can certainly say that the books I read before I left and when I was there were right: New Orleans is a place one of a kind, a city that can not leave you cold, “a city with personality”.

Rob Walker – Letters from New Orleans
Tom Piazza – Why New Orleans Matters?
[William Faulkner - New Orleans Skecthes]

Prettyyy prettyyy prettyyy good

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Sakura Matsuri

I shot this photo at the Sakura Matsuri, the Japanese Festival that took place in Washington DC last Saturday. What a shame! They run out of sushi and ticket for the sake tasting…

Washington: bullets and metro colors

One of the firt place I used to go when I got to Washington was the Steam, a little cafe on 17th NW at R street. I went there often, because it was close to the hotel. The place is cosy: the counter with stools and a case for sweets, a dozen tables in the room and wide windows giving onto 17th street.
This is the Dupont Circle area, on of the most “chic” of Washington. We are in the North West of DC: this is definitely not one of the areas concurring to make the Capital one of the city with highest homicide rate. DC was 13th in this ranking in 2005, with 35,4 homiceds for 100,000 inhabitant; but the record is much worst and not so long time ago Washington was a violent and racist city.
Bill Bryson, in “The lost continent”, report his childhood memories about the Capital, a hot and dirty city, where he saw a dead man who had been shot in the head and was lying in his own blood. A place where whites could eat at tables in restaurants, while blacks used to take away their foods, waiting for it standing and then go and eat it at home, in the car or in the street.

Nowadays is no more like that of course. People say, and they are right, that Washington is a very clean city and, by the way, it is not so hot how Bryson remember it, since his childhood memories are all linked with his summer vacations in August!
On the other hand, the homicide rate is still high and the dispute about fire arms is still on the agenda (the Suprem Court is going to pronounce about the District ban of handguns, a reasonable decision that collide with the “cowboy” emendament about the right to carry weapons and above all with weapons industry). Only ten years ago the Washington basketball team changed the name from Bullets to Wizards to dinstance themselves from the rampant violence in the streets.Actually, Washnington is not a great example of racial integration yet. Just try to ride the metro and you’ll see how faces and colors and sounds change according to the line and the direction you are going.
Many asians on the yellow line, that stops in Chinatown. On the blue and orange lines, coming from Virginia, most of the people are white (in Virginia 73% are white, while in DC they are less than 40%). The red line too is mostly “white”; nevertheless, here you can hear more spanish. The green line goes to the South East, the most degraded: on the green line blacks are the majority by far.
Even mixed couples are rare, and you can feel the separation in the nightlife too: Georgetown is white as the limousines that drive around all these upper-classes sniffy boys and girls from a bar to another; Adams Morgan is just a little less white (and, above all, without limo’s boys and girls!); U Street and Chinatown are definitely black and Virginia is as white as the milk.
Yes, I know, the division is less sharp than I am decribing here, but I think you can really feel it anyway.

So, what was I talking about?! …oh yeah, the Steam cafe…

Cherry Blossom Festival

In 1912 the City of Washington received from Tokyo’s mayor 3000 cherrys as a symbol of friendship and good relationships between USA and Japan. A few dozens of years later the US returned the gift with two rare (and little less friendly) “mushrooms”: anyway, this is another story…
The exchange continued in 1915, when the US Government gave to Japanese people the “dogwood tree”. In 1981, the City of Yoshino lost her cherrys in a flood and Washington sent there the cuttings of the cherry’s that were vigorously blooming on the Potomac’s banks.
Finally, in 1999 new trees from the japanese province of Gifu were planted around the Tidal Basin.

Every year Washington celebrates the cherrys’ blooming with the “Cherry Blossom Festival”. Dances, concerts, fireworks follow one another for as long as two weeks.
On the Festival opening day I took a stroll in the famous National Mall. Armed with my photo camera, I headed for the National Building Museu, where the opening ceremony was going to take place. The programme was not really exciting: a Miss Universe presents a jazz orchestra and just at the end some more tuned japanese performance.
Anyway, I didn’t feel like staying inside a museum, while the cherry’s were blooming out there…

I walked toward the “Washington garden”. The park was full of kids who were making their colorful kites fly. The first pictures, with the Capitol in the background, did not came out well. I went through the huge park between the Capitol and the Washington Monument, taking photos of the children and their kites and two guys with long dreadlocks.
The National Mall is full of people and there is a long line even at the metro enter. Near the Washington Monument, I see the first clump of flowered trees and many people taking pictures. I took some shots too and then I keep on walking toward the Jefferson Memorial, where most of the trees are, around the artificial basin.
Of course, even in this bucolic scenario, they put the inevitable danger sign. In the bus “watch your step”, everywhere after just a couple of raindrop “attention, wet floor”, on the escalator “attention, lace up your shoes”, on the frozen food “attention, remove all the wrapping before putting in the oven”…
And now: “CAUTION, LOW TREE LIMBS AHEAD”.

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