Fly Brother

Fly-Brother.com is Now Live!

2010-06-26T22:15:00.003-03:00

Ladies and gentlemen, my tenure at Blogger has come to an end. Fly Brother has flown over to WordPress, with a new URL: fly-brother.com. The new site will continue to give you the fly international flavor you've come to expect from Fly Brother travel posts, plus offer links to podcasts, videos, books, and music that will lift you whether you're in the air or the armchair.

So, please update your links and subscription feeds to reflect Fly Brother's new address:

I Love What You Do For Me, FEE-atchee!

2010-06-22T17:50:00.010-03:00

I bought a car. Finally, after taking three hours to get to the doctor's office, or seven hours to do three things by bus in Brasília (which really means Orlando in Portuguese), I have my 2011 Fiat Palio Fire Economy. Fiat (pronounced FEE-atchee here) is an Italian car company that doesn't exactly make Ferraris, but keeps me from having to hoof it around the Brazilian capital. I financed the $18,000 thing for sixty months, which means my monthly payment is about 10% of my pre-tax salary, but I think I got a good deal, all things considered; cars are a luxury Brazil. Anyway, I would write more, but I gotta put some kilometers on my new baby. She's preto vulcão, which means volcanic black* (or, Black Like Me, as I like to say), but I need a name for her. Suggestions?

*Y'all know I'm taking it over to somebody's cousin's house in the hood to get a spoiler and that darkboy tint on the windows, right?

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Impactful Author José Saramago Dies at 87

2010-06-18T14:49:00.009-03:00

Portuguese author and Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, whose chilling Ensaio sobre a cegueira was published in English as Blindness, and later made into the movie of the same name, died today at his home in the Canary Islands. Usually, his stories analyzed human behavior in the face of incredible circumstances, such as the plague of sudden "white blindness" that hits an unnamed city in Blindness. Saramago outlined the disintegration of society as both the inability to see and the accompanying wave of uncertainty sweeps through the population, with the book being much more disturbing and graphic than the film (i.e. read the damn book, slackers!).

The movie version, released in 2008 with Julianne Moore and Danny Glover, was filmed mostly in São Paulo because of the city's relative lack of distinguishable landmarks (for most people outside of Brazil), which supports an atmosphere of urban placelessness that is the reason for Saramago's omission of proper nouns in the novel; the events portrayed could essentially happen anywhere.

Like Gabriel García Márquez, Saramago was a master of magical realism, making fantasy tangible in the lives of his protagonists, but unlike Gabo's fanciful Caribbean dreamscapes, Saramago danced around the fringes of nightmare and sometimes crossed over into the darkness. Get thee to a library and get lifted!

Here's the trailer from the film:

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80 Years in the A

2010-06-15T20:02:00.012-03:00

Y'all wasn't exactly expectin' a pitcher a'Mammy, wuzya?

Eighty years ago this week, Monroe, Louisiana-based Delta Air Lines began serving Atlanta Airport with one daily nonstop to Birmingham. From that skimpy hop over the state line, Delta has developed ATL into the world's largest airline hub, with nonstop flights to over 80 international destinations and who-knows-how-many domestic cities (well, Wikipedia probably knows, but...). In fact, it's because of Delta that whether you're going to Heaven or Hell, you'll have to change planes at ATL.

A large part of the reason I like Delta (theoretically, anyway) is because of its commitment to Atlanta, a Southern city that, for all its faults, has always been much more progressive than the region to which it belongs, no doubt a positive consequence of its connections to the rest of the world. Likewise, Southern culture gets exported as well, from the unrefined graciousness of the cleaning ladies in the terminal to the gleam of the TSA agent's gold tooth—my home culture, for better or worse. Oh, and there's also that Chick-fil-A in Concourse A.

You can read more about Delta and the A at the airline's blog. Meanwhile, in honor of Delta's 80th anniversary at the doubly-named Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, I leave you with Atlanna's own OutKast and their Southern Gothic classic, "Ms. Jackson," probably filmed right down US-19 from the airpert itself. For real.

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An Afternoon in Brasília, Part Deux -or- Why I'm Gettin' A Car With the Paycheck I Just Got

2010-06-12T17:57:00.010-03:00

I know the numbers are hard to read, but let's try and follow along anyway, shall we?

Mode of Transport
Green Line = Bus
Red Line = Foot

1. Spot where the bus dropped me off in the vaguely-named block, SHIS QI 15, for a doctor's appointment (Brasília's full of vaguely-named blocks. "SHIS" means South Sector of Individual Habitations in Portuguese. Don't know what the "QI" stands for). Time, 5:30pm. Appointment, 6:15pm.

2. Point where I realized that I was entering SHIS QI 13, and not headed towards Bloco "O" in QI 15, the location of the doctor's office. Decided to head towards the lone commercial strip in the block and ask for directions.

3. Point within the commercial strip where I encountered at least four people who either couldn't give me directions to where I was going, or gave me convoluted directions in a language I didn't understand. In addition, there was no ATM in this commercial strip and I had no cash; therefore, a cab was out of the question. My appointment was in 15 minutes. I found a lady who spoke rudimentary English who told me I could walk to the office in about 20 and pointed me in the right direction.

4. Point where got pissed at seeing the bus stop where I'd disembarked a mere 35 minutes before.

5. Point where I stopped and wondered if turning right would mean a short cut. I continued straight, of course.

6. I got to the gotdamn medical park and spent another 15 minutes running from building to building asking people in white coats where my doctor was located, only to have them tell me with pained faces, "You know what, honestly, I don't really know. Ask the doorman." Y'all don't know shit in Brazil, do ya? Time of arrival at doctor's office, 6:20pm. Appointment, 6:15pm. I wish somebody would have told me I had to reschedule.

Liked that? Read about another afternoon I had recently in Brasília.

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VTP: India

2010-06-09T07:32:00.006-03:00

This post is part of a monthly series of eye candy at Fly Brother, imaginatively named VTP (short for Vintage Travel Posters). We'll see how travel companies and bureaus have been enticing people off the couch since international leisure travel first became a bourgeois conceit. Few places stimulate the imagination for better or worse than India, though travel posters seem to have focused primarily on elephants, the Taj Mahal, and multi-armed Hindu deities to sell a continent-sized country full of over a thousand languages and just as many cultures. Still, the colorful, detailed designs make up for the lack of thematic ideas.

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Re-Post: Scenes of Sampa

2010-06-06T09:48:00.004-03:00

These photos are from a couple of years ago, but I think the energy and feel of São Paulo remains palpable in each shot. I was also a little bit too occupied with getting my club on this weekend to refresh the album with new images; sometimes a playa just has to play.

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Fly Brother Podcast Season Finale - Season 1, Episode 10: São Paulo - Scratch & Sniff

2010-06-03T11:16:00.007-03:00

In this, the season finale of the Fly Brother Podcast:

São Paulo: Scratch & Sniff

Playlist:
"Homenagem a Barra Funda" – Julgados Culpados
"A Noite Sem Fim" – Suba (Background)
"Lagoa Pinheiros" – Suba
"Um Dia Comum (Em SP)" – Suba (Background)
"São Paulo" – Morcheeba / From "A Life Worth Living" – Vikter Duplaix

Links mentioned in this podcast [in English unless denoted with (P) for Portuguese]:
Fly Brother - fly-brother.blogspot.com
NEGES Foundation - www.negesfoundation.org

Official City of São Paulo Site - www.cidadedesaopaulo.com/sp/en
Total São Paulo - totalspguide.com

Capim Santo - www.capimsanto.com.br (P)
Escola de Samba Vai-Vai - www.vaivai.com.br (P)
Livraria Cultura - www.livrariacultura.com.br (P)
MASP - www.masp.art.br (P)
Mercado Municipal Paulistano - www.mercadomunicipal.com.br (P)
Museu AfroBrasil - www.museuafrobrasil.org.br (P)
Pinacoteca do Estado - www.pinacoteca.org.br (P)

Kamaroty Music - www.kamarotymusic.com.br (P)
Diquinta - www.diquinta.com.br (P)
The Week International - www.theweek.com.br (P)
Julgados Culpados - www.myspace.com/julgadosoficial (P)
Suba - suba.isallineed.net

Accor Hotels - www.accorhotels.com
The CouchSurfing Project - www.couchsurfing.org
Traveller's Point - www.travellerspoint.com
Air Canada - www.aircanada.com
Continental Airlines - www.continental.com
Delta Air Lines - www.delta.com
Korean Air - www.koreanair.com
TAM - www.tam.com.br
United Airlines - www.united.com

Shoot me your comments, questions, suggestions, requests, or just a shout-out: flybrother [et] rocketmail [daht] kom.

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Fly Favorites: May 2010

2010-05-31T05:30:00.002-03:00

This phat-ass image by ESCOBAS.

See who's artistically reppin' your hood at Cit/ID.

A Brother in Sweden profiles the Noo Awlins Indians (thas hah we say it in Flawda).

Der Spiegel highlights "May Day Riot Tourism in Berlin" while the Economist covers Germany's French-like attempt to save its language from that gaudy party-crasher, English.

Dhani Jones is back tackling the globe Mondays on the Travel Channel (does this fool ever wear shirts?).

Using "The Beautiful Hortense" and Chihuahuan Mennonites to appropriately describe place at Cuaderno Inédito.

Fall for the next installment in the Cities of Love film series: Rio, Eu Te Amo (here's hoping it's more like the sparkling Paris, Je t'aime and less like the Wonder Bread NY edition; I want to love this movie).

Fly photographs and classy culture from the Motherland on Out and About Africa.

The current time in Paris, brought to you by funky Franco-Japanese timepiece, Uniqlock.

Resurrecting the Miami Herald's award-winning series on Afro-Latin America.

The hoof-stompin', devil-worshippin' Satanique Samba Trio (click "Imperialist Pigs" for the English site, LOL).

Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

From the AV Room: Brazil in Black and White

2010-05-28T04:57:00.003-03:00

A Brazilian airline's image of Brazilians:

A Korean airline's image of Brazilians:

Just sayin'.

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An Afternoon in Brasília -or- Why I'm Gettin' A Car With My Next Paycheck

2010-05-25T19:21:00.017-03:00

Like Florida and California and any other sun-shiney place that boomed in the 50s and 60s, Brasília's spread way, way out. So an afternoon of running errands without your own private vehicle just might look like this:

12:00pm - You finish work early with the anticipation of making a deposit at the bank, stopping by the TAM office downtown to pay for a plane ticket that can't get paid through the website because of a glitch, and pick up tickets for Saturday's tango and milonga event at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (because if you wait until Friday, they'll be sold out...trust).

12:15pm - A kindly coworker whose waiting for her own lift to the airport offers you a ride to the bank, which is on the way. That's 3 reais (pronounced hay-ICE...as of May 25, 2010, USD 1 = BRL 1.85) and at least 30 minutes of walking/waiting/bus time saved.

12:30pm - The friend arrives to pick you and your coworker up. They chat about flying up to Belem, at the mouth of the Amazon, to work on a government project and return two days later.

12:50pm - You arrive at the bank, take a number, almost make it to the counter when some relatively-healthy-looking 50-year-old shows up and gets to skip you because he's "elderly," but aside from that, you make the deposit with relative ease.

1:15pm - You run out to the bus stop to make sure you catch the bus actually headed to where you're going. The first bus that passes is not one that's going where you're going.

1:35pm - Neither is the second.

1:50pm - Neither is the third.

1:53pm - A small car with three women and a male driver pulls up and yells, "Rodoviaria" (which means bus station, which is where you're going). You say, "sim" and one of the ladies squeezes in the back while you squeeze into the front seat with the broken seatbelt and hope to high heavens that homeboy doesn't wreck the car. Oh, and your knees are pressed into the dashboard, so really, you wouldn't go anywhere if there were to be an accident, you'd just have shattered kneecaps.

2:10pm - You arrive at the Rodoviaria, thank your driver and tup him the R$3 you would have paid the bus driver, then navigate the few blocks through the concrete ant farm that is downtown Brasília, dodging cars, soaking up sun, and feeling heady about the fact that you're navigating the few blocks through the concrete ant farm that is downtown Brasília.

2:22pm - You get to the TAM office, located at the once-grand Hotel Nacional, and take a number: 162. They're now serving number 148.

3:40pm - You leave TAM, ticket in hand, but got-damn if it wasn't like pulling teeth to get them to waive the R$30 "administrative fee" for processing a ticket that you should have been able to do yourself, if it hadna been for that glitch. Cute office manager, though.

3:42pm - The free "hourly" shuttle bus to CCBB, which is located way off in BFE, despite its rich and profound cultural programming doesn't come until 4:50pm. You say, "screw that," and walk back to the Rodoviaria. There's gotta be a bus heading that way.

3:58pm - You ask a couple of random, blue-shirted bus drivers which greenhound is headed for the CCBB until you score; the driver of your chariot agrees to drop you off as close to your final destination as possible.

4:16pm - The driver drops you off as close to your final destination as possible: on the side of a six-laned highway with traffic zooming by at, I don't know, 100 kilometers per hour and the CCBB squarely on the opposite side of that highway and a barbed wire fence. Lucky for you, the sun's starting to hide behind some clouds, so that should cool things down a bit.

4:19pm - You dash across three lanes, then straddle the middle divide.

4:21pm - You dash across the other three lanes.

4:36pm - You arrive at the ticket booth of the CCBB because it's located on the exact opposite side of the complex from where you crossed the highway and have to circle the entire thing on foot. Brasília really does hate pedestrians.

4:40pm - Tickets purchased! Next free shuttle bus departure back to downtown is at 5:50pm. The free wifi is out. You've got paperwork for your job to do while you wait, and eat an overpriced pancake wrapped around some chicken and cheese at the gallery cafe.

5:25pm - The shuttle bus arrives, but the driver says it isn't leaving for another 25 minutes. Real quick, snap some pictures of the twilight sky being covered over with rain clouds and some of those cool cosmic-clover streetlights they have all over Brazil.

5:50pm - It's actually pouring rain, uncharacteristically, since it's supposed to be the dry season. The bus departs. You can't see shit out the windows.

6:28pm - After fighting through a sea of flashing tail lights, the shuttle arrives at the drop-off point closest to your house: a taxi stand near the subway station at which there are no taxis standing. It's still raining, but not pouring. Some people are like, "screw that," and walk out into it. You do, too.

6:35pm - You're walking faster than the pack of cars inching along the road next to you and you're glad you didn't waste money just sitting in a cab. Your shirt's getting soaked, though.

6:49pm - You arrive home, your three goals accomplished.

Total elapsed time: 6 hours, 49 minutes.

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Global Juke Joint: Mama Used to Say

2010-05-22T23:46:00.008-03:00

Afro-Belgian musical group Zap Mama has effused pan-African rhythm and flow for the last 20 years, badooing and doowapping on politics and partying in English, French, and Bantu. Started by the striking Congolese-born, Belgian-bred Marie Daulne, and using their voices as musical instruments, the all-lady ensemble carries you from London to Lyon to Lagos with a mix of traditional West African rhythms and their diasporic progeny: soul, reggae, funk, jazz, salsa, and house. I've recently rediscovered them on my iPod, so I thought I'd share.

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5 is Never Enough

2010-05-19T19:17:00.020-03:00

Many Americans might think the question of how many continents exist on Earth should be settled (of course, the demotion of Pluto as a planet a few years back ought to remind everybody that even "established" facts can change). But in Latin America, where I've lived and worked since 2005, the established number of continents students learn is five: Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania, and...America.

Already, us United Statesians are considered arrogant for claiming "American" as a nationality, when it's seen as a continentality akin to "European" for most in the rest of the hemisphere (that's a whole other post), so trying to separate the Americas is viewed as a knock against Latin Americans: "North Americans don't want to be on the same continent as Latinos." This, of course, conveniently ignores the grouping of Central America and the Caribbean, regions soaked in Latin-based languages and their associated cultures, soundly in North America.

I've had arguments with both students and other professors regarding this slight difference in continental calculation. Fivers argue that America should be counted as one landmass because it's so separate from the others, and that Europe, Asia, and Africa—all three of which are connected to each other—should be counted separately because of the varied cultures. Poor Antarctica is consigned to continental limbo because she has no human population native to her frozen expanses.

I, a staunch sevener, counter that technically, there should be four continents, since the very word comes from the Latin, terra continens (thanks, AskOxford!*), which means "continuous land." Ignoring the divisions caused by the man-made Suez and Panama canals, America, Eurafrasia, Antarctica, and (maybe) Australia are each continuous lands. My argument, however, is that since Eurafrasia is indeed considered three continents by both camps, North and South America, connected by svelte and sexy Panama and her 37-mile waist, should only naturally be counted as separate. And, considering continental drift and geologic history, the isthmus that comprises Central America is indeed very, very young, having risen from the ocean a scant three million years ago, while South America started separating from Africa 130 million years ago and North America from Europe 70 million before that.

I don't know how the Brits or other English-speaking countries view things, or how many continents other teachers accept in their classes; on my tests, it's seven. Get it right.

*In the interest of fairness, I consulted the Real Academia Española for the official Spanish-language definition and got cada una de las grandes extensiones de tierra separadas por los océanos ("each one of the large extensions of land separated by oceans," basically, no real help for either argument).
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Fly Brother Podcast - Season 1, Episode 9: Multilingual Swagger

2010-05-16T09:38:00.006-03:00

In this episode of the Fly Brother Podcast:

The Fun and Frustration of Learning Other Languages

Playlist:
1. "A Ring" - Towa Tei
2. "Plekete" - Zap Mama
3. "Chica Chica Boom Chic" - Bebel Gilberto & Carlinhos Brown

Links mentioned in this podcast:
Fly Brother - fly-brother.blogspot.com
NEGES Foundation - http://www.negesfoundation.org/

Florida A&M University Study Abroad - www.famu.edu/index.cfm?oied&welcome
New York University Study Abroad - www.nyu.edu/studyabroad/
University of Texas at Austin Study Abroad - www.utexas.edu/student/abroad/

Alliance Française USA - http://www.alliance-us.org/
Goethe-Institut - www.goethe.de/enindex.htm
International Language Institute of Cairo - www.arabicegypt.com
Instituto Cervantes - nuevayork.cervantes.es
The Japan Foundation - http://www.jpf.go.jp/

Berlitz - http://www.berlitz.com/
International House - http://www.ihworld.com/
Meetup - http://www.meetup.com/

Shoot me your comments, questions, suggestions, requests, or just a shout-out: flybrother [et] rocketmail [daht] kom.

Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

Fly Brother Interview on Jay Travels

2010-05-13T07:46:00.004-03:00

Atlanta-based fly blogger and brother Jay interviewed me a few weeks ago for his international travel site, Jay Travels. The resulting madness went live this Tuesday, featuring my musings on Greenland, Mickey Ds, and prostitutes. Here's an excerpt:

Have you ever experienced a problem when traveling (passport, victim of crime, etc.)?
Once, in Rio de Janeiro, I was walking home from the gym with a Brazilian friend and while we were talking, a kid of maybe 9 or 10 came up to me and started talking in Portuguese. I told him, in Spanish, that I couldn’t help him and he grabbed my wrist. I, in typical American fashion, yanked my arm back and told him not to touch me (or as we say in Florida, bag back!). He started yelling at me in Portuguese and I yelled back in Spanish, then turned to make my way home. He came up and kicked me in the butt, then ran back across the street.

Things escalated from there, with him throwing a rock at my foot and my friend pulling me away from the scene because Lil Man was about to get the whippin his daddy clearly wasn’t giving him. Meanwhile, my friend kept commenting how kids these days don’t even seem to fear two over-six-foot-tall men anymore. When we got back to the house, my anger had turned to anxiety because I was lucky the kid only picked up a rock as opposed to pulling out a knife or gun. And it didn’t matter that I understand all the socio-economic backstory behind this young, black street kid; I was identified as foreign and subsequently as an easy mark. That ended my short-lived love affair with Rio.

Check out the rest of the interview here. Thanks, Jay!

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Executive Decisions -or- Sometimes, It's Okay to Pass

2010-05-10T06:07:00.000-03:00

For those of us averse to a sedentary, monotonous lifestyle, there often comes a point when we have to make executive decisions regarding our time, our resources, our needs, and our wants. I'm both extremely sociable and intellectually inquisitive, so living in the capital city of a large South American country known for its highly-sociable population and culture, executive decisions have been the order of the day, almost every day.

Had I not committed myself to an every-third-day blogging schedule, posts at Fly Brother would be haphazard and sporadic, reflecting the random socializing that inevitably presents itself whenever more than two Brazilians get together. As I'm inclined to accept any welcome diversion to the mental and sometimes emotional strain of penning new text, it takes major focus on my part to decline the enticing offer of movie night or an embassy cocktail or karaoke or sushi with the crew, especially on school nights (booty calls, however, always get answered; y'all know how it is).

Now, if my professional objective were only to stack then spend bills, rolling out every night would gravy. But to appropriate a recent tweet I ran across, "a real writer's job isn't to be popular." That particular tweet referenced an article on the responsibility of journalists, or any event chronicler, to report the truth, no matter how unpopular or even dangerous doing so might be. I take that quote, however, on a much less profound level to mean you can't be a real writer and be hanging out all gotdamned night; not unless all you do from noon to four, once you wake up, is write. Sometimes, you just gotta say, "nah...I'll pass. Thanks, though" (you do, however, still want to be invited to stuff).

And it's not just about writing; it's about balancing your life in such a way that all of your projects become manageable and still get done, whether or not that's raising well-read, well-rounded kids or starting a business or planning your first round-the-world trip. After all, life's too short to just be focused on work, but ain't none of us heir to a hotel dynasty. Like they say in Spanish, unos por otros (basically, one thing for another). Yes, you may have a twinge of regret about missing one thing or another, but when you've finally reached your objective, you won't regret not doing what it took to get there. And there will always be another movie night or embassy cocktail or booty call (though maybe not with the same person, since you flaked out the last time).

So yesterday, instead of meeting up with a large group of friends for the closing day of the Robert Polidori retrospective I'd been wanting to see, I decided to stick around the house, stock up the fridge, finish preparing two tests, call the important women in my life and thank them for their interminable maternal love, deflect the few regrets that did arise about waiting too late to get to the Polidori showing, and continue conceptualization of upcoming Fly Brother expansion.

I've also decided to cut my planned two weeks on the road this summer to only nine days, starting with the TBEX '10 travel blogging conference in New York, followed by a week of fellowship with two very good friends in Toronto (holla TDK and La Femme Nikita). Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec City were originally on the itinerary, but it felt wiser to shorten the trip and deepen the finances available to me in NYC and YYZ than to spread myself too thin across eastern Canada. Executive decision.

And now, I can buy a nice video camera and take you good people with me on some of my fly-falutin' adventures. See...it's all about you, baby (wink).

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Vintage Travel Posters (VTP): Rio

2010-05-07T07:54:00.011-03:00

This is the first of a new monthly series of eye candy at Fly Brother, imaginatively named VTP (short for Vintage Travel Posters). We'll see how travel companies and bureaus have been enticing people off the couch since international leisure travel first became a bourgeois conceit. Our first destination: the marvelous city of Rio de Janeiro, where both terrestrial and corporal landscapes have been hot commodities since the 1920s.

Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

Airline Geekery: Mergers and Marketing in Latin America

2010-05-04T17:20:00.028-03:00

While the press and traveling public gawk at the news of merger of United Airlines and Continental Airlines, another move towards industry consolidation is taking place south of the border. Last month, Brazil's OceanAir (yes, in English), started a few years ago by Colombo-Brazilian multimillionaire Germán Efromovich, adopted the brand name of its much larger Colombian sister airline, Avianca, also owned by Efromovich's Synergy Group. With this re-branding, the airline hopes to move up from its position as Brazil's fifth-largest carrier, offer international flights from Brazil, and become a recognized name in the region. Avianca is following in the tradition of Chile-based LAN Airlines and Central American conglomerate Grupo TACA (with which it merged last October, forming the double-branded Avianca-TACA) in cross-border airline mergers and branding, turning national airlines into continental carriers.

El Salvador-based TACA was the first airline to jump into multinational consolidation in the early-90s by investing in the flag carriers of its neighboring countries: Aviateca of Guatemala, Lacsa of Costa Rica, and NICA of Nicaragua. Though maintaining different owners (with Lacsa retaining its airline code), the combined company created one brand identity and focused hub operations at San Salvador and San José, then later at Lima when TACA Peru signed on.

TACA's merger with Avianca, in which both airlines will continue to operate under their respective brands, is the largest of the various mergers and acquisitions that Avianca has undergone in its history as the world's second-oldest existing airline. After engulfing several smaller Colombian airlines, Avianca bought the tiny VIP in Ecuador and its new owner, Efromovich, started OceanAir in Brazil, both of which are now called Avianca in their respective countries, though they continue to function separately under local operating certificates.

LAN, the largest airline in Spanish-speaking Latin America and one of only a few anywhere that can fly you to Tahiti, works similarly; the Chilean branch and its subsidiaries LAN Peru, LAN Argentina, LAN Dominicana, and LAN Ecuador all operate with differing certificates, but unified branding. LAN also bypasses its hubs at Lima and Santiago, with nonstop flights from Miami to Bogotá, Caracas, and Punta Cana, furthering the concept of LAN as a super-national airline brand and having dropped the name LanChile years ago (they also have a thrice-weekly JFK-Toronto hop).

As the global airline industry contracts for its own survival, the major US carriers whittle themselves down to a handful of legacy (i.e. old-as-dirt) and low-cost brands, unable to merge with foreign airlines because of US legal restrictions. The major Latin American airlines, much like Air France-KLM or British Airways and Iberia, are steeling themselves for the future of air travel by offering broad networks and convenient transfers that transcend national frontiers. And now you've got three (or two?) more options for heading down Argentine way:

Avianca: Non-stops from Miami and New York-JFK to Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, and Barranquilla; Miami to Cartagena; and Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, and Washington-Dulles to Bogotá. Connections to all major South American cities through Bogotá.

LAN: Non-stops from Los Angeles, Miami, New York-JFK, and San Francisco to Lima; Miami and New York-JFK to Santiago; New York-JFK to Guayaquil and Toronto; Miami to Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Punta Cana, and Quito. Connections to all major South American cities through Lima and Santiago.

TACA: Non-stops from Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York-JFK, Orlando, San Francisco, and Washington-Dulles to San Salvador, with connections to all major South American cities; Los Angeles, Miami, and New York-JFK to San José; and Chicago, Los Angeles, and Miami to Guatemala City.

Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

Fly Brother Podcast - Season 1, Episode 8: Night Flight 695 - The Trance-Atlantic

2010-05-01T08:33:00.004-03:00

In this episode of the Fly Brother Podcast:

Night Flight 695 - The Trance-Atlantic
Journey with Fly Brother on an ethereal, all-music flight from Little Havana to the Latin Quarter - Miami to Paris - featuring recent and classic house, downtempo, acid jazz, soul, and electro-samba. Whether its to work out, chill out, or make out, this compilation will transport you each time you listen. Download and get lifted.

Playlist:
"Vazilando (Rasmus Faber Mix)" - La Oreja de Van Gogh
"Cerca de Mí" - Louie Vega f. Raúl Midón
"The Way That I Feel" - Vikter Duplaix
"Casa Batillo" - Brazzaville
"Late Night Swing" - David Borsu f. Damia da Costa
"La Femme d'Argent" - Air
"A Day in December" - Manoo and Francois A.
"Girls & Boys" - Prince & The Revolution
"Leaving Monte Carlo" - Physics
"La Rhythme et Le Cadence" - Dimitri from Paris

Links mentioned in the podcast:
Fly Brother Blog - fly-brother.blogspot.com
Fly Brother Podcast - flybrother.podomatic.com

Shoot me your comments, questions, suggestions, requests, or just a shout-out: flybrother [at] rocketmail [daht] kom.

Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

From the AV Room: Portraits of a Megacity, Then and Now

2010-04-28T06:24:00.015-03:00

Today, I return to São Paulo, my favorite megacity, for a weekend of sophistication and debauchery. Brazil's largest city presents me with ample opportunities to sate every aspect of my being. I love her for that. The four videos below juxtapose images of the world's largest underrated city from its adolescent growth spurt to its mammoth adulthood and accompanying developmental issues:

São Paulo, 1943: This propaganda-soaked documentary, produced by the US government in 1943 (when Sampa's population was a mere 1.3 million), highlights the seeds of industrial development that have served as a blessing and a curse for São Paulo. Despite the film being skewed towards an upper-class, light-skinned Brazil, it's still fun to see images of the bustling old downtown districts (my favorite parts of the city) in their heyday.

São Paulo 1954: This short film, with unfortunate sound editing (the rockem-sockem instrumental score should have been used to punctuate the footage of traffic and movement, not static skyscrapers), conveys the sense of emerging power and importance of the nascent metropolis.

São Paulo 2008: Featuring the modern metropole of 20 million that I know and love, this short film captures the vibrant realities of SP, good, bad, and ugly. Chaotic, inspirational, tough, profound, crowded, progressive, imposing, impressive, endless.

São Paulo 2009: Part of a National Geographic multi-part series on megacities, this 45-minute documentary features the green revolution taking place in São Paulo and the aspirations to sustainability as good business for Brazil's financial capital.

Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

Fly Favorites: April 2010

2010-04-25T10:10:00.028-03:00

Faux-WWII posters for the fly-ass crib at Urban Bazaar Posters.

The New York Times on why French is indeed not an endangered language.

Jetrosexual expat Kiratiana helps deserving web designer Denise Jacobs get to Londontowne.

National Geographic Traveler offers a heart-tugging treatise on the goodbyes of travel.

NoDebtWorldTravel insists you shake off the Haterade and hit the road.

To the East: peep the Asia issue of Black Expat Magazine.

Fellow Florida A&M University alums Andrea and Teri go crazysexycool abroad at Travelista.tv.

Jaunted's "Five In-Flight Things That Will Remain Free From Hidden Airline Fees" (for now).

Kick it in Paris or Costa Rica with the Black Atlas traveler sweepstakes.

Kelly of Travellious on "Why You Should Always Have a Trip Planned." Amen.

Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

Brasília's Birthday Bash

2010-04-22T06:33:00.024-03:00

With fighter jets, inflatable pools, Nigerian-Brazilian hip-hop artists, beach volleyball, politicized circus clowns, Daniela Mercury, and a Disney parade, the Brazilian capital celebrated its fiftieth birthday with a barrage of parades and concerts rivaling Carnival. Candangos (immigrants from the four corners of Brazil who came to build Brasília) and Brasilienses (successive generations born in the city) converged on the central axis of the Plano Piloto, bookended by the Eiffel-esque TV Tower and the bifurcated Brazilian Congress, to dance samba and forró, eat corn-on-the-cob and street meat, and, of course, drink gallons of Skol and Antárctica. A special free concert by electronica guru Moby served as a pre-show last weekend, but the official celebrations kicked off Tuesday night, with concerts by established and emerging pop, rock, hip-hop, and gospel acts (Tuesday, incidentally, was the not-widely-heralded Day of the Indian).

Wednesday, a nationally-recognized holiday honoring independence hero “Tiradentes” and the official date fifty years ago when Brasília opened for business, saw a bona fide Disney parade thunder down the Esplanade, the reverence for good ol' Walter Elias Disney echoing that for the similarly visionary President Juscelino Kubitschek (affectionately known as “JK,” Jota-Ka), whose controversial dream of a modern and futuristic capital came true out of, literally, thin air. Crowds in Brazil's trademarked rainbow of browns—from coal to cream—poured in and out of the mile-long party space, laughing, yelling, flirting, fighting, and mixing under a constantly morphing sky. Uniformed police ambled through the masses, eyeing bare midriffs while keeping order; vendors hawked beer and mangoes and prayer tickets, while Rihanna's “Take A Bow” blared from the speakers at the central bus terminal anchoring the action. As dusk descended and the puppet shows and folkloric indigenous and Afro-Brazilian dance presentations turned into rock and samba and jazz and MPB concerts on various stages, families with curly-haired youngins headed home as teenie-boppers and hipsters in skin-tight everything flooded the area in anticipation of the headliners Daniela Mercury and Milton Nascimento, and a tsumani of lower-profile but popular bands who rocked BSB until 4AM. If nothing else, Brasília's birthday bash is a testament to making something out of nothing, and to a youthful, energetic city poised for another fifty years of planned disorder and chaotic progress.

Parabéns, Brasília!

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Tracking Your Trips (a.k.a. Catnip for Airline Geeks)

2010-04-19T07:33:00.025-03:00

For airline geeks like me, or for folks interested in keeping track of their air mileage or flying habits, German-based website, FlightMemory.com, records and organizes your travel data, offering whimsical statistics and personal route maps.

After entering destination, schedule, and seating information for about 90% of the flights I've ever taken, FlightMemory calculates how many times I could have circumnavigated the Earth (8.9), my longest and shortest flights (that Seoul-LA hop was a killa), and how often I've sat in the front, middle, or back of the plane (of 224 flights, I've flown first 3 times, business 9 times, and cattle class 211 times).I also get these lovely maps, plotting my flight paths within and outside of the US (you can tell I'm an East Coast boy with Latin American tendencies), and when I decide I like the looks of things, I can order a more colorful, detailed wall map so I can brag about my travels even more than I do now.Other trivial tidbits include my top ten airports, airlines, aircraft, and routes (BOG, Delta, Boeing 737, and Bogotá-Barranquilla, respectively) based on actual flights flown, not so much personal preference.
Innit cool? Track your trips at FlightMemory.com.

Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

Fly Brother Podcast - Season 1, Episode 7: Especial Colombia!

2010-04-16T06:12:00.004-03:00

In this episode of the Fly Brother Podcast:

Colombia, with two O's and no U

Playlist:
1. “Calle 19” - La Mojarra Eléctrica - www.myspace.com/lamojarraelectrica (Spanish only)
2. “El Mapalé” - artist unknown
3. “Somos Pacífico” - Choc Quib Town - www.chocquibtown.com/english.html

Links mentioned in the podcast:
Fly Brother - fly-brother.blogspot.com
NEGES Foundation - www.negesfoundation.org

Official Colombia Travel Website - www.colombia.travel/en/
Cartagena Tourism - www.turismocartagenadeindias.com/ingles/es/general.htm
Bogotá Tourism - english.bogotaturismo.gov.co
Cali es Turismo (Spanish only) - www.caliturismo.com
Medellín Tourist Guide - www.guiaturisticademedellin.com/index.php?lang=en
San Andres and Providencia - www.sanandres.gov.co/turismo/home.php

AIRES (Spanish only) - www.aires.aero
Avianca - www.avianca.com
Continental Airlines - www.continental.com
Delta Air Lines - www.delta.com
JetBlue Airways - www.jetblue.com
Spirit Airlines - www.spiritair.com
Copa Airlines - www.copaair.com
LAN Airlines - www.lan.com
TACA Airlines - www.taca.com

Shoot me your comments, questions, suggestions, requests, or just a shout-out: flybrother [et] rocketmail [daht] kom.

Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

Resurrecting the Jetrosexual

2010-04-13T22:07:00.009-03:00

Five years ago, Virgin Atlantic Airways came up with an inspired and inspiring marketing campaign as a way to put the glamour and excitement back into air travel—to spawn a new Jet Age, populated by a group of "high fliers" whose mission is "to achieve greatness" and "raise the bar in their industry or simply succeed where no one else could." These go-getters who get around were dubbed jetrosexuals. Can't get any flier than that.

Along with the designation came a list of eleven commandments to which Fly Brother tries his darnedest to adhere, and in order to advance to the level of a true jetrosexual, grasshoppers, you must not only commit these to memory (in theory, at least), but you must live by the mantras espoused here in your everyday actions as well:

11. Thou shall have thine passport ready to go at a moment’s notice.

Fly Brother says: Naturally.

10. Thou shalt have a favorite airport and be prepared to explain why it is thine fave.

Fly Brother says: Hong Kong International. A triumph of glass, steel, and light, HKG at Chek Lap Kok is a monumental yet supremely user-friendly temple to transcontinental air travel. You could get lost, but there’s plenty of English around to make sure you don’t wander onto the runway. If only they could keep the new terminal but bring back that classic Kai Tak landing.

9. Thou shalt not be a Chatty Cathy with thine seatmate.

Fly Brother says: Never. In fact, the eyes are lowered into a vintage Toni Morrison before the seatbelt light goes on.

8. Thou shalt never hold up the security line.

Fly Brother says: Even though it is ridiculous that only United States security personnel require shoes to be removed, it’s even more ridiculous to continually set off the alarm with the Herringbone you got last weekend at Flea Market USA.

7. Thou shalt be able to order a beer in at least six different languages.

Fly Brother says: Let’s up the ante a little on this one, shall we?
Vodka martini. Shaken, not stirred.
Martini de vodka. Sacudarido, no revuelto.
Vodka martini. Secoué, non remué.
Vodka martini. Ristet, ikke rørt.
Martini, που τινάζεται βότκα μην ανακατωμένος.
揺れるウォッカマルティーニかき混ぜられない。

6. Thou shalt respect the five minute rule when using thine lavatory.

Fly Brother says: This is a tough one on those 17-hour New York to Bangkok flights. Just try to go before you leave home. And don't eat too much.

5. Thou shalt be able to pack a week’s worth of clothes into a single carry-on bag.

Fly Brother says: A good laundry service at your destination and appropriate clothing selection can stretch that week to a month if necessary.

4. Thou shalt not own one of those inflatable neck pillows.

Fly Brother says: While they may be comfortable, they look horrid. Style and comfort must be balanced.

3. Thou shalt have at least one passport stamp from a country that now goes by a different name.

Fly Brother says: This may be difficult for some of the less-seasoned jetrosexuals. A stamp from a country on the US State Department's travel advisory list will do.

2. Thou shalt travel Economy class, on rare occasions, just to keep thine self humble.

Fly Brother says: This is relatively easy when thou payeth for thine own ticket.

1. Thou shalt leave terra firma behind in order to move business and culture forward.

Fly Brother says: Done.

Now, copy and paste this handy pocket-sized list of jetrosexual commandments to print for quick reference in the event of kidnapping or memory loss.

Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

From the AV Room: Baby Brasília

2010-04-10T07:50:00.010-03:00

Inaugurated in 1960 as Brazil's brand-spanking-new capital, Brasília was built on a high, semi-arid plateau in the mid-western region of the country to bring money and people into the vast and empty interior. The city has certainly filled-out since these images were filmed, but it's interesting to see life in my retro-futuristic home base during its first few years of existence.

Mostly what you see are government buildings and dormitory-style apartment blocks, punctuated by the twin towers of Congress, with the curved concrete spires of the unfinished cathedral shown toward the end. The soil here is the same red "Jawjah" clay many of us Southerners know well, though the film was recorded in the dry season (it's crazy wet these days, so the city's very much green), and you can see why Brasília's a bitch for pedestrians. Government salaries were tripled to get people to move with their families from the old capital, Rio, and there's a definite difference in dress and appearance between the stylish denizens of the new city proper and those at the bus terminal who came from other regions of the country to help build the place, but had to live in the poorer, far-flung satellite cities of the Federal District.

And it's not boring, folks. Really.

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On Fear, Frustration, and Freedom

2010-04-07T10:37:00.005-03:00

It's been a month since I moved to Brasília. My apartment's set up (except for Internet) and I've already got a cleaning lady to spruce it up once a week. I've had my house-warming party, hung out at pool halls and nightclubs, done my first embassy event, developed a nascent group of friends, started Portuguese lessons. The job's going as jobs go—filled with meetings and paperwork and the counting of days until the next payday or holiday. And thirty days from the start, I look back on the journey thus far and ask myself if this is what I wanted.

After having lived in Latin America for four years already, I'm certainly not a novice to the concept of international relocation. But that doesn't make me immune to the fear and frustration that go hand-in-hand with sometimes unrealistic expectations. I mean, according to popular opinion, breathing the very air of Brazil is supposed to render all of life's woes trivial and moot, the closest thing to paradise on Earth, The Dream. But interminable bank lines don't factor into that paradisial opinion, or innumerable phone calls to get Internet hooked up at home, or having your name misspelled on important documents, or Subway charging twice as much for as sandwich as in the States and still running out of tuna. None of the frustrating aspects of establishing a life abroad factor into the romantic notion of moving abroad, of moving to Brazil. I'm even guilty of believing the hype a little bit, myself.

And along with that frustration comes the fear that I might not be making wise decisions, that I have less than a decade of “youth” left to make mistakes and figure things out, that pre-existing friendships and relationships with people in other places are in jeopardy due to my physical absence, that anything I've worked for up to this point in terms of building a life could disappear in an instant, or that everything I've worked for up to this point in terms of building a life doesn't amount to a real life at all. The fear of having nothing to give and everything to lose. The fear of insecurity and misunderstanding; that if I fuck this up—this grand, elusive, esoteric exercise—things are bound to consistently and irrevocably remain fucked up. There's nothing like the isolation of living in a foreign country by yourself, no matter how friendly the people or how open the society, to bring out neurotic introspection. It's an inextricable part of the process. Because moving to another country isn't just a corporal endeavor.

So for those random Tuesday nights when the weather sucks, friends are occupied, foolishness is on television, and frustration and fear begin to work on my mental and emotional well-being, I have this bit of literary inspiration that I copied down ages ago in Washington to pull it all back together:

When nothing in the world matters, when you've lost everything, there is perhaps a moment when the only thing that can count, the only thing you have left is choosing your own direction; looking your demons in the eye and proving to yourself that you are more than they. If only for a second, an hour, a day. That you are a man, that you have will, that there is something in you that they can not destroy, something that remains even if it is buried so deep you'll never see it again. That you can save something, even if it isn't yourself. And knowing, for the rest of your life, even as what you have is not a life, even as they reclaim you and send you back into their hell—knowing that, perhaps only for that one shining instant, you were free.

-Alan Howard
"Theseus"

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Photo Essay: The Ass-Crack of Dawn in Brasilia (Coincidentally, the exact time I have to be up for work).

2010-04-04T07:54:00.005-03:00

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Fly Brother Podcast - Season 1, Episode 6: Spring Flings and Fares

2010-04-01T16:02:00.005-03:00

In this episode of the Fly Brother Podcast:

Spring Flings
Spring Fares

Playlist:
1. "That Night (Vikter Duplaix Remix)" - Jazzanova
2. "Si Tú No Vuelves" - Miguel Bosé f. Shakira
3. "Window Seat" - Erykah Badu

Links mentioned in the podcast:
Fly Brother - fly-brother.blogspot.com
NEGES Foundation - www.negesfoundation.org

Air France - www.airfrance.com
Finnair - www.finnair.com
Icelandair - www.icelandair.com
Korean Air - www.koreanair.com
Lufthansa - www.lufthansa.com

FlyerTalk - www.flyertalk.com/forum/index.php
Bing Travel - www.bing.com/travel
Kayak - www.kayak.com
Orbitz - www.orbitz.com
Expedia - www.expedia.com
FareCompare - www.farecompare.com
Airfare Watchdog - www.airfarewatchdog.com

Shoot me your comments, questions, suggestions, requests, or just a shout-out: flybrother [et] rocketmail [daht] kom.

Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

Spanish ≠ Portuguese

2010-03-29T03:18:00.000-03:00

Many people hold fast to the myth that Spanish and Portuguese are similar enough to be mutually intelligible. They are both Romance languages (based on Latin) and share many grammatical structures and vocabulary. They are indeed closer to one another than English is to its closest brethren, Scots and Frisian. But let me debunk the idea right now that Portuguese is just Spanish with a bunch of Z-sounds; they are two distinct languages. You might be able to get by for a couple weeks of vacation in Rio or Salvador with some Spanish, but living in Brazil means coming to terms with false cognates, misunderstandings, and lots of asking people to repeat themselves slowly—mais devagado in Portuguese, versus the Spanish más despacio. Ou seja, espanhol e português não são iguais.

See, not only is the Portuguese lexicon full of words that are similar but mean different things than their Spanish counterparts, words that exist in both languages but are used more in one than the other, and thousands of contractions versus the two in Spanish (al, del), the Portuguese sound system is a monster on its own. Word-initial R and double-R (rio, carro) get pronounced as an English H, unlike the trill that gives Spanish its snapcracklepop (ergo, HEE-oo, KA-hoo). Oh, and the O at the end of words is pronounced like the Spanish U (see previous example). And there's lots more, minha vida.

Note: My Spanish was developed first in the Dominican Republic, honed and fine-tuned on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, and peppered with that Floridian-Cubano seasoning of Miami, so 'scuse me if i'm not thpeaking de Cathtellano of Ethpaña. Like the various Englishes that exist, the many Spanish dialects all have varied vocab and pronunciation. And I'm talking about Brazilian Portuguese. Deal.

Easy
These words are pretty easy to recognize and mostly mean the same thing.

English-Spanish-Portuguese
door-puerta-porta
moon-luna-lua
street-calle-rua (think ruta)
coin-moneda-moeda
to leave-salir-sair
to write-escribir-escrever
to listen-escuchar-escutar
to arrive-llegar-chegar
yes-sí-sim (silent M, nasalized I)
much/many/very-mucho/muy-muito

Meh...
These require a little more brain power.

carrot-zanahoria-cenoura
apple-manzana-maçã
elevator-ascensor-elevador
stairs-escalera-escada
to speak-hablar-falar
to dance-bailar-dançar
to need-necesitar-precisar
to save (money, time)-ahorrar-economizar
but-pero-mas
hot-caliente-quente

Wha...?
No way in hell you can guess these words as a non-native Spanish speaker.

knee-rodilla-joelho
dog-perro-cão/cachorro
pen-bolígrafo-caneta
window-ventana-janela
to close-cerrar-fechar
to forget-olvidar-esquecer
to turn on-prender-ligar
to look-mirar-olhar (mirar is used in Portuguese poetry, as in mira lua)
to happen-pasar-acontecer
is there water?-hay agua?-tem agua?
we go-vamos-a gente vai (huh?)

I could go all day.

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Global Juke Joint: Croatian Soul

2010-03-23T01:42:00.001-03:00

Eddy Meets Yannah. They bad, y'all. And they're from Zagreb, too!

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Moving to Brazil in 21 Easy Steps

2010-03-20T00:18:00.007-03:00

Say, "I'm moving to Brazil, dammit!"
Find a friend who has just passed on a teaching job in the Brazilian capital, not your first choice of cities, but only 90 minutes away by air from your first choice of cities.
Interview with your prospective employers via Skype from San Francisco.
Respond with a resounding "yes" to the offer of employment they email you an hour later.
Compile all necessary documents for the visa process: college degrees and transcripts, birth certificate, passport copies, money orders; order background check from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Beg your wily friend from grad school to take the papers to the Brazilian consulate in Miami for "legalization."
Listen to your wily friend from grad school cuss you out about having to wait in a long-ass line, having to use her own cash (since the Miami consulate doesn't take money orders), and having to come back another day to pick up the documents.
Listen to your wily friend from grad school tell you that they couldn't "legalize" your grad school degree and transcripts because they were issued in the District of Columbia.
Wait until your wily friend from grad school sends the documents back to you in Jacksonville.
Beg your bestest buddy from back in the day to take the transcripts and notarized/apostilled copy of your degree to the Brazilian consulate in Washington for "legalization."
Listen to your bestest buddy from back in the day cuss you out about having to wait in a long-ass line and not having the consulate take anything because the money order (this consulate only took money orders) was for $10 and they only needed $5 because they could only "legalize" the transcripts and not the degree because it was a copy and not the original, which is framed and put up in storage somewhere.
Listen to the consular officer in Washington tell you over the phone in English and in Portuguese, in spite of your pleas of logic and reason, that they cannot accept the notarized and apostilled (by the Florida Department of State, no less) copy of the graduate degree and to send the original so they can punch a hole in it.
Look through storage somewhere for your original graduate degree and overnight it to Washington to your bestest buddy from back in the day can take it to the consulate so they can punch a hole in it.
Listen to your bestest buddy from back in the day tell you that the turn-around time for the two documents you needed "legalized" is seven days, not the two days posted on the consular website.
Have your bestest buddy from back in the day listen to you cuss out the entire country of Brazil from the rooter to the tooter.
Read with trepidation an email from the school official handling your visa process that he's going on Christmas vacation to Europe before the papers will get down there and that the mid-January moving date is most likely now going to be mid-February.
Try to convince Brazilian consular officials in Washington to process your two documents in less than a week, then accept the inevitable as they tell you they'll try to have them done before the one-week deadline, but they can't make any promises.
Have your bestest buddy from back in the day FedEx the documents, "legalized" exactly one week after they were submitted, to the school's lawyers in São Paulo, since the administration's already on holiday.
Wait.
Stare holes into your computer screen when you see that your work visa has been approved the day after Carnival, along with several foreign members of the Minas Gerais Philharmonic Orchestra.
High-tail it to Miami, walk the final documentation (including police background check) through the consulate on Tuesday, flirt with the receptionist handling your file who still charges you the full $231, pick up the visa on Friday, board the plane on Saturday.

And voilà! Brazil.

Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

Fly Brother Podcast - Season 1, Episode 5: Lady Travel Bloggers and Around the World by Couch

2010-03-17T16:12:00.006-03:00

In this episode of the Fly Brother Podcast:

Celebrating Women's History Month with Lady Travel Bloggers
CouchSurfing Your Way Around the World

Playlist:
"Aquarela do Brasil"/"Nêga do Cabelo Duro - Elis Regina
"Une Very Stylish Fille" - Dimitri from Paris
"Reach the Sky" - Eddy Meets Yannah

Links mentioned in the podcast:
Fly Brother - fly-brother.blogspot.comcheck out the other Very Fly Sisters on the blogroll to the right.

NEGES Foundation - negesfoundation.org
Black in Cairo - blackincairo.blogspot.com
Nikita the Traveller - oneika-the-traveller.blogspot.com
Currents Between Shores - currentsbetweenshores.blogspot.com
Felicia Shelton Photography - felicia-shelton.com

And don't forget these amazing Fly Sisters:
A View to a Thrill - aviewtoathrill.net
Adventures Abroad - neketa0824.wordpress.com
Adventures in Wheelville - wheelville.blogspot.com
American Black Chick in Europe - americanblackchickinlondon.blogspot.com
Baci from Rome - bacifromrome.blogspot.com
black and (A)broad - blackandabroad.blogspot.com
Black Broad Abroad - blackbroadabroad.blogspot.com
Black Girl in Prague - blackgirlinprague.blogspot.com
Black Girl on Mars - blackgirlonmars.blogspot.com
Black Women in Europe - blog.blackwomenineurope.com
BrownGirlsFly - browngirlsfly.com
Chronicles of Ajala - adisao.blogspot.com
Farsighted Fly Girl - rosalindcummingsyeates.blogspot.com
Fat Juicy Oyster - fatjuicyoyster.com
From a Yellow House in England - fromayellowhouse.blogspot.com
Geotraveler's Niche - lolaakinmade.com
I'm Leaving on a Jetplane - journeyw.blogspot.com
Int'l Glamazon - intlglamazon.blogspot.com
L'Étrangère Americaine - letrangere-americaine.blogspot.com
Miki Tokyo - art-house-queen.livejournal.com
My So-Called Life in France - mysocalledlifeinfrance.blogspot.com
New Beginnings - hkinmarseille.blogspot.com
NYC/Caribbean Ragazza - sistergirltales.blogspot.com
Out and About Africa - outandaboutafrica.blogspot.com
Overdose of Satisfaction - kourt-overdoseofsatisfaction.blogspot.com
Seoul to Soul - natarshanwright.blogspot.com
Seoulicious's Weblog - seoulicious.wordpress.com
Shannon Evans - shannonevans.com
Sista in Tokyo - sistaintokyo.blogs.com/sista_in_tokyo/
Sister Sha in Seoul - sistershainseoul.blogspot.com
Spirit of Black Paris - spiritofblackparis.blogspot.com
Style Noir - stylenoir.blogspot.com
The Real Tragedy - 251319.blogspot.com
The Supa Dupa Fly Seoul Sista - theblackeslteacher.blogspot.com
Two JetSet Divas - twojetsetdivas.com
Urban Travel Girl - urbantravelgirl.com
Where the Hell Am I? - expatjane.blogspot.com

Shoot me your comments, questions, suggestions, requests, or just a shout-out: flybrother [at] rocketmail [daht] kom.

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A House-Warming in Brasília -or- Why CouchSurfing is the Greatest Thing on Earth

2010-03-14T19:37:00.009-03:00

You're new to a city. You're like Bo...you'own know Diddly. What do you do? You log onto CouchSurfing.org, that's what you do.

A social networking site that's actually built around facilitating live-and-in-the-flesh human connection, The CouchSurfing Project puts world travelers and other worldly folk in contact with one another for interaction as benign as a coffee and a chat, up to and including the more intimate use of floor space, couch space, or bed space. You set up a profile, look for like-minded individuals in your immediate area or in a place that you'll be visiting forthwith, and voilá, you're on your way to eye-opening experiences with some of the world's friendliest, most interesting, genuine people. All communication is recorded in the system for safety purposes, and testimonials for both hosts and guests help paint a picture of what kind of nut-job you've got on your hands. Interest groups let you hook-up with other single female travelers, backpacking epicureans, beach bums, parasailers, or last-minute-couch-having Berliners, and it was in one such city group─the Brasília CS group─that I subtly mentioned that I'd just moved to town and was having a little welcome get-together at my place on Saturday. Forty people showed up.

See, CouchSurfing fits almost too well with a gregarious society like Brazil's. People here really do look for any excuse to party and welcoming a new foreigner in their midst offers the perfect reason. And with Brasília being the national capital, and therefore a very transient city, many of my guests were recently-relocated Brazilians who've been in town only a bit longer than I have. I had students and teachers and journalists and civil servants and federal police officers and future novelists and regular vagabonds conversing on the pull-out sofas, sipping caipirinhas, dancing to Beija-Flor de Nilópolis and Madonna and Hector Lavoe.

My neighbor came home at 11:30 (official party start time: 5pm) and, with smiling politeness, informed me that party cut-off in the building is 10pm. By midnight, the revelers─my new-found friends, acquaintances, and running buddies─had moved the party over to a nearby park, each one thanking me as they left in customary receiving line fashion. No, thank you.

This evening, the security guard on-duty from last night gave me a thumbs-up, shook his head, and chuckled as he handed me a copy of the building rules.

Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

An Old Rant Revisited

2010-03-11T20:30:00.010-03:00

Today, five days into my new life in Brazil, I got pissed for the first time since I arrived. It was at the gym and it involved a cultural and linguistic misunderstanding. As my Portuguese leaves much to be desired, I was reminded of this short essay I wrote, almost four years ago to the day, while living in Barranquilla, so I thought I'd share. Careful...there's cussin.

Rant

When living in a country where the language is not one you were taught as a child, often there are no words. Literally.

So I'm grocery shopping the other day when I come out of the store with my food in a cart pushed by a teenage bag boy. We walk out into the very narrow parking area to get a cab to run me and all my crap the four blocks that i had just walked from my house to the grocery store.

Well, the width of the parking area is a serious issue because a woman was parked in her minivan, emergency lights flashing, reading a magazine, basically blocking any car from passing to her left, but also blocking my grocery basket from passing to her right.

All we needed was one inch of space. A pulgada.

The bag boy taps on her window and asks her to move up a little, as does the taxista. She’s like, I'm waiting on this parking space, pointing to the car next to the cab.

"Disculpa," the taxista says, apologizing for his error. I'm like, "No, no disculpa. She thinks the whole world has to wait for her. Other people have things to do today and all she has to do today is shop (I was 99% sure of that, given what I’m learning about the culture). I gotta get to work," I say. She hears me, which is good, ordinarily.

So the other car pulls out, she pulls up, and we start loading the cab with my groceries (well, the bag boy and the taxista do it...you can pay people to do everything here). Then, and I got myself into this, she gets out of her car and starts talking, without looking me in the eye, "Lo que es aracataca. Aracataca bucaramanga bucaramanga barranquilla mompós.”

See, this is what happens to me when I'm annoyed or pissed. All the Spanish goes out the window and I end up having a thousand things to say in English and two words of Spanish.

Whatever she said, the bag boy and the taxista look at me for a retort, and all I can get out is, "I don’t know what the fuck she just said so lets just get this shit packed and get out of here" in English. Not having the time to engage in a lengthy confrontation with ol girl, nor trying to sound like a damn gringo who barely knows the language, I then say to their blank faces (in Spanish) that my Spanish isn’t good when I'm mad and I have to get to work. So much for going native.

(It's important to note here that I'm pissed a) because I would have won the argument and b) instead, I came off looking like a blithering idiot).

Later in the cab, when I'm calm, I say in Spanish, "All the she had to do was move up a fucking inch. She's a gotdamn sociopath, blocking the whole damn driveway when, if she knew the dimensions of her vehicle and how to drive the bitch, everybody could get to where they had to go." The taxista agrees with me, saying "Cali cali bogotá. Bucaramanga mompós."

I think I might be hard of hearing. Either that, or these fools ain't speakin' Spanish.

See, this is the thing. I've been blessed/cursed with the ability to mimic sounds almost perfectly. My French accent is so good, when i say "Pardon, parlez-vous anglais?," people ask me what for? (I guess that's what they say...they don’t say yes or no, so i assume that they assume i speak good French). I picked up the Dominican accent of Spanish so well during my time there, that people called me a liar to my face when i said i wasn't Dominican (more on that later) despite glaring grammatical and vocabulary mistakes. All that mattered was my ability to roll my r’s in words like ferrocarrrrrrrril and puerrrrrta and RRRRRRRRRRRRRepública Dominicana, whereas all the other Americans still said stuff like car-row.

So when I start speaking, my great accent is coupled with a decent vocabulary and a functional grammatical structure which indicates initially that I'm a native speaker. My "local" appearance also helps. But then, a few sentences later, folks start thinking, this muhfucka ain't from roun' heah. Hmmmm.

Well, when I'm angry about something, I really do lose it. It's like a foreign person in the U.S. who can hardly get a complete sentence together when she's short-changed a dollar at the grocery store. She might really need that dollar and she knows the cashier did the shit on purpose, so she's hot, all the while thinking, "Beeyotch, if we was back in China and you tried that shit, my posse woulda strung you up from a tree and slit you from guzzle to gut, then boiled the entrails and fed em to the pigs." But all the frazzled pobrecita can get out is a feeble, "give...me...dolla." Cuz when you upset, you ain’t got time for all that thinking and translating foolishness.

So next time I see ol' girl in the parking lot, I'll just break out into a refrain of "Move bitch, get out the way."

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Photo Essay: Crossing the Amazon by Air

2010-03-08T19:51:00.025-03:00

Word.

A work of art.

Yes, the current local time was indeed 5:34AM.

Dawn in Dade County.

Fatigue setting in.

Uma garotinha...awwwwww.

Ole Man River.

The Mis'sippi ain't got nuthin on this.

Not exactly ATL.

The river runs through it (the dark water on the left is from a separate tributary that merges with the Amazon at Manaus).

Oooooooooooooooooooo!

Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!

Ooohhhhhhhhhhhh.

Thunderous dusk over the capital (yes, it took that long to get there).

Arriving at BSB.

Can't get any more Brazilian than that.

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New World in the Tropics

2010-03-05T11:30:00.013-03:00

Image by Robson Cesco

New World in the Tropics is the title of a book written in the 50s on modern Brazilian culture by famed Bahian anthropologist and scholar, Gilberto Freyre. It's also the theme under which I embark on another journey, begin another chapter in my life. I started writing this blog as my four years in another tropical country, Colombia, were coming to an end. I've not written much about my time there because those years proved infinitely challenging, both positively and negatively, and it may be a while before I'm prepared to pen detailed memoir of my life on the crown of South America. Also, I wanted Fly Brother to focus on international traveling from a—my—black perspective that extended beyond the boundaries of one particular place. And that boundless outlook remains the focus of the blog, even as I (and you, dear reader) settle into this new world in the tropics—Brazil.

The Re-Invention Tour
Tomorrow morning at 7:15, I will depart Miami, arriving five hours later at Manaus, capital of Amazônia, before continuing another three hours to Brasília, capital of the continent-sized nation of Brazil. I think it's important to note the distinction of the two capitals, as the Brazilian state of Amazonas is as large as many nations and has a distinct history and culture centered around the indomitable Amazon River and its besieged rainforest, dark green on the map and spanning nine countries. Brasília, by comparison and not unlike the great American city of Washington, was built from scratch almost as a coming-out party for this burgeoning republic of the future and as a paean to man's mastery of nature. Despite having been to the country five times, my travels have been relegated to the coastal cities that most reflect the face Brazil shows to the world; this move to the Brazilian interior, a place as foreign to me as the Australian Outback, will be a move to another Brazil, to another world far from sand and samba, yet informed and shaded by it. Of that, I'm excited.

I'm also excited about the opportunity for reinvention. I've got a clean slate in Brazil. Not that I did anything untoward in Colombia, or even the States, that necessitates a complete change of identity (well, besides some bad financial decisions, maybe). I'm talking about having a blank canvas on which to draw anything I want, on which I can be anything, do anything. I can learn the guitar and be a hit gringo bossa nova singer. I can write two or three novels set in Brazil. I can stay put in Brasília after my two-year teaching contract is up, I can move to Rio or São Paulo or Recife, I can go back to Colombia or off to Germany or to Vanuatu (2006's happiest place on Earth, if you didn't know). I can create new experiences, interactions, friendships, relationships, loves and hates (hopefully much, much more of the former than the latter). Point is, even moving to Brazil after many years of voicing that desire is proof that I can do what I set my mind to. It may not be easy or happen on the timetable I set or exactly the way I envisioned it (yet), but there it is: accomplished.

Gooooooooooooooooooooool!
So now, it's time for more goal-setting. Having been gainfully unemployed but steadily traveling since June has resulted in a financial deficit that needs reversion into surplus. I'm serious about the guitar lessons, but also about perfecting my Portuguese to a level that allows me to translate literature to and from English. I'm going to learn how to play soccer...er, futebol, dammit (capoeira, meh, not really big on handstands and such). I'll have the first draft of a novel set in Brazil by the end of my first year there. I'll volunteer with a youth organization at least twice a month. Besides a week in New York (TBEX '10) and another in Colombia (tying up loose ends), I won't be on any international flights for my first year in-country, opting for Amazon river-running, five-hunnid-mile dune buggy treks, and the humbling grandeur of Iguassu Falls to sate my wanderlust. And, of course, Fly Brother will be continually updated, with mostly international content infused with weekly ruminations on my Brazilianization.

So now it begins, this renaissance of sorts. Colombia honed me in many ways, sometimes painfully, but always necessarily. It's time to apply those lessons as I continue on my quest for self-actualization. And I'm suited up and ready for my new world in the tropics. You coming?

Image by the Brazilian Ministry of Tourism

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Fly Brother Podcast - Season 1, Episode 4: Night Flight 121 - The City to Sampa

2010-03-02T02:39:00.003-03:00

In this episode of the Fly Brother Podcast: Night Flight 121 - The City to Sampa

Journey with Fly Brother on an ethereal, all-music flight from "The City" to Sampa—New York to São Paulo—featuring recent and classic house, downtempo, acid jazz, and electro-samba. Whether its to work out, chill out, or make out, this compilation will transport you each time you listen. Download and get lifted.

Playlist:
"Saturday Night Experience" - Jody Watley
"Voodoo Bliss (Aaron Bingle's Azure Mix)" - Janice hosted by BSG
"Bedtime Story" - Madonna
"Down" - Herbert
"Night Over Manaus" - Boozoo Bajou
"Amazodiac" - Audio Lotion
"Waltz for Koop" - Koop
"My Endless Journey" - Imada
"Samba do Gringo Paulista (Bigga Bush Reconstruction)" - Suba and Bigga Bush
"Playground do Brasil" - Imada
"Love and Happiness (São Benitez Sunset Mix)" - River Ocean f. La India

Links mentioned in the podcast: Fly Brother - fly-brother.blogspot.com

Shoot me your comments, questions, suggestions, requests, or just a shout-out: flybrother [at] rocketmail [daht] kom.

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Fly Favorites: February 2010

2010-02-27T08:57:00.015-03:00

CNN Traveller highlights the diverse and sundry architecture of beautiful Downtown Cairo.

Carlo Alcos of Matador Trips takes five weeks to cycle around that faded Caribbean beauty, Cuba.

From Seoul to the Seine, photographer and very stylish fille Felicia Shelton has unveiled her new online portfolio.

Tom Brokaw takes the blame off Canada with this insightful portrait of his home country.

Canadian brother Ricardo Arthur discusses b-boys and black culture in Japan.

Brandie of Out and About Africa profiles DC-opian Bernos.org and their fly African t-shirts and blog.

My So-Called Life in France gets hilariously indignant about "Gerdard Dipardoo's" bleaching of the racially-mixed auteur Alexandre Dumas.

The New York Times goes in-depth on how to click it and ticket flights the frugal way.

Camille of Adventures in Wheelville shows us what's up during Carnival in snowy Slovenia.

When in the City by the Bay, check out the slick and soulful Museum of the African Diaspora, and donate to the cause.

Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

From the AV Room: Of Isolation and Melancholy

2010-02-25T00:47:00.004-03:00

San Francisco's black population has declined from 13% in 1970 to 7% today. Micah sees himself as less than one-in-ten; Joanne sees herself as just one. Medicine for Melancholy explores love, race, and, to my mind, America's most beautiful city.

Watch:

Medicine For Melancholy - Official Trailer from Strike Anywhere on Vimeo.

Then watch:

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The Great San Francisco Fly Brother Meet-Up

2010-02-22T01:59:00.002-03:00

On Saturday, I had the absolute pleasure of meeting up with a couple of old friends and more than a few new ones at the first ever Fly Brother Meet-Up, held at the aptly named Fly Bar and Restaurant in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. We talked travel and music and politics, the girls beat the dudes at shuffleboard (twice), and there was even a possible hook-up among two of the guests. We had law students and market researchers and public relations folk and jewelry makers and opera guild event coordinators and half-priced pizzas and nachos with roasted chicken on top. Our tab was picked up by the generous Brazilian husband of the indomitable Ali la Loca (muito obrigado, moço!) and I ran into a surprise celebrity guest!

Thanks to Ali, Ricardo, Mike, Ana, Diana, Sharif, Rasheed, Cassidy, Tommie, Keith, and Dave for a fly weekend in San Francisco!

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Strange Passage

2010-02-18T12:15:00.005-02:00

Living outside of New York, it's easy to miss entertaining, insightful, and even inspirational stage plays. Thanks to Spike Lee, the entertaining, insightful, and inspirational Passing Strange was filmed on its very last Broadway performance in 2008, capturing an amazing theatrical experience in an appropriate medium for temporal and spacial export beyond the Great White Way. The semi-autobiographical, gospel/pop/rock-infused story of a black, middle-class, angst-ridden teenager who jets off to Europe in search of "The (ever elusive) Real" in the early 80s was brought to my attention by a college buddy of mine, himself casting off the binds of a nine-to-five to pursue artistic endeavors; he said he immediately thought of me and suggested I order the DVD. He explained his understanding of the show in a series of text messages:

[Passing Strange encompasses]...searching for the real more as a metaphor rather...ur purpose...the reason y u live and breathe...and the reason y ure here. Yes...this can apply to racial identity and culture but i thought it as something deeper than that. Defining your soul...devoid of culture or race. Him trveling and visiting different cultures trying to find where he fits is on the surface...but underneath it all laid something universal...regardless of upbringing...background...or race...the search for truth and the journey for inner peace. This can be applied to anyone...the person hopping from job to job trying to figure out what he or she needs to do in life to be happy...the person hopping from religion to religion to find the truth...or the truth that satisfies him or gives him peace...the chick hopping from man to man trying to fill the void that'll finally make her feel complete...etc.

To me the play hit on so many levels...so many artistic levels and the struggle that artists grapple with on a daily basis...established artists and up and comers trying to find their spot...their niche. Brilliant.

Need I say more? Watch this clip from The View, in which the supporting cast welcomes the protagonist to Amsterdam and "The Real," then order the DVD and fly.

Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

Fly Brother Podcast - Season 1, Episode 3: Carnival!

2010-02-15T16:47:00.003-02:00

In this episode of the Fly Brother Podcast:

The Whats Whens Wheres and Hows of Carnival

Playlist:
1. "Na Onda do Berimbau" - Monobloco*
2. "Baila en la Calle" - Luis Díaz & Sonia Silvestre
3. "Getaway" - N'dea Davenport

Links mentioned in the podcast:
Fly Brother - fly-brother.blogspot.com
NEGES Foundation - NEGES Foundation

For tips on getting to Carnival next year, check my handy-dandy How to Get to Carnival Guide on the Fly Brother blog.

Shoot me your comments, questions, suggestions, requests, or just a shout-out: flybrother [et] rocketmail [daht] kom.

*Not the original musical selection, this song is a fusion of styles associated with samba and the Brazilian martial art of capoeira, representing both Rio and Salvador Carnivals. I just ain't feel like re-recording fifteen minutes of talking.

Season 1, Episode 3: Carnival!

Fly Brother Podcast

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Must See TV: Brazil Carnival Live

2010-02-12T09:02:00.013-02:00

Image by street paparazzo

Carnival, the annual celebration of debauchery preceding 40 days of disciplined abstinence leading up to Easter, is in full swing and last year, I posted tips on how to become part of the party. Well, if you can't make it this year, or you'd like to see how things go down in Brazil before you go down, you can catch live streaming video of the six-day bombastic madness in Salvador da Bahia, and the blinding glitz of the two-day samba competitions in Rio and São Paulo (yes, they have Carnival there, too):

Jam with Radio Raheem-sized sound systems day and night in Salvador, from this afternoon through Tuesday night.
Watch the São Paulo Carnival parade live, beginning tonight at 8:05pm Eastern and tomorrow at 7:25pm Eastern (Vai-Vai reprazent!).
Then, catch Rio de Janeiro's competition, starting Sunday at 5:55pm Eastern and continuing on Monday (check back for time).

It's not to early to start planning for 2011.

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Keepin' It Sassy

2010-02-09T14:21:00.001-02:00

Austin, Texas might get all the hollers from mainstream media, but I think it's that other college town and Southern state capital a few hundred miles down I-10 East that speaks surprisingly to all-inclusive diversity and the rack of artistic expressions, cultural encounters, and eating options that entails. No, this ain't your granny's Tallahassee.

Nestled amongst the red clay hills, moss, and magnolias of North Florida, Tally indeed reminds folks that it was "the only Confedrit capital east of the Mis'sippi not captured by Yankee fawces during the waw of Nawthun aggression." And while the atmosphere is still not exactly "We Are the World," the city's third black mayor currently holds sway over politically blue territory in a decidedly red region of the country, while students, alumni, and faculty of (my alma mater) Florida A&M University continue making socioeconomic headway at a percentage unmatched anywhere else in the state. Adding to the mix is a burgeoning Latino and Asian student population, especially at Florida State University, and many young people unaffiliated with government or university who've visited, liked, and stayed, and who've carved a niche of professionals and bohemians that have, in turn, spawned an explosion of alternative activities to traditional Homecoming games and massive barbecues (not poo-pooing either, mind you).

If you're in town on the first Friday of the month, head to the aptly-named First Fridays at Railroad Square, a gathering of eclectic visual and musical artists showcasing their wares among off-price wine and grilled snacks. I bought a t-shirt with an outline of Florida and the tagline, "No Other State Has Sunshine."

From now through March 23rd, Black art collectors Bernard and Shirley Kinsey display paintings and historical documents, including a hilarious Dear John letter from Zora Neale Hurston, at the Mary Brogan Museum of Art & Science. The exhibition goes to the Smithsonian when it leaves Tallahassee.

Next week, hit FSU's 7 Days of Opening Nights, wait til March for Handel's "Xerxes" at the Florida State Opera, or swing down in the fall and rattle to FAMU's Marching 100 at one of the football games.

Saturday afternoon, stroll through the mangrove forest at the Tallahassee Museum and watch the black bears and Florida panthers frolic with man-sized yarn balls, or soak up the silence in Princess Murat's modest plantation house. Saturday night, get yo salsa on at Atlantis Bar and Grill or have a drinky-poo in the lobby of the Aloft Hotel (a much more welcoming atmosphere than at the Hotel Duval down the street).

Skip Chik-fil-A and TGI Friday's. Head for Super Perros for Colombian fast food, Bahn Thai for (you guessed it), Uptown Cafe for the hot pulled pork, The Black Bean for comida cubana, and Bird's (Aphrodisiac Oyster Shack) for the nominal oysters or the baddest-ass hamburger in the Lower 48.

Tally-ho!

Thanks, John and Nina, for the bomb Super Bowl weekend!

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From the AV Room: Carnival Muse

2010-02-06T13:59:00.006-02:00

It's that time of year again where folks in Latin America, Louisiana, and the Mediterranean are prepping for Carnival, which starts next week in most places. In Brazil, the Carnival Muse competition is underway, where judges select a winner from among representatives of each samba school to open the Rio Carnival parade. Unfortunately, it's one of the few times Brazil's darker sisters appear on national television. Fortunately, it's hot.

(If you have no patience for Portuguese, you can skip the interviews and catch the dancing in the last 45 seconds of the video.)

Fernanda's one of my favorites from this year:

But, nobody tops last year's Luciana:

Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

Fly Brother Podcast - Season 1, Episode 2: Peace, Love & Black History

2010-02-03T03:04:00.004-02:00

In this episode of the Fly Brother Podcast:

Celebrating Black History Month with Black Expats
A Nod to Valentine's Day with Love and Travel
Finding Fly Deals Online

Playlist:
1. "Abie Baby/Fourscore" - Nell Carter & Cast from the Motion Picture Soundtrack of Hair
2. "Un Beso de Desayuno" - Calle 13
3. "Happy" (Spiritual South Go Happy in Rio Mix) - Max Sedgley

Links mentioned in the podcast:
NEGES Foundation - http://www.negesfoundation.org/
Kayak.com - http://www.kayak.com/
Sidestep.com - http://www.sidestep.com/

Shoot me your comments, questions, suggestions, requests, or just a shout-out: flybrother [at] rocketmail [daht] kom.

Download, relax, and get lifted.

Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

Fly Favorites: January 2010

2010-01-31T03:08:00.002-02:00

Designer Tyler Thompson spruces up the boring-ass boarding pass.

Black Expat interviews the always adroit American Black Chick in ~~London~~ Europe on life across the ~~Cess Pool~~ Pond.

Very decent Time article on the historical relationship between Haiti and her neighbor, the Dominican Republic.

Matador Trips' photo essay "Big Cities Under Snow" knocks 'em dead with wintry wonder.

Vagablogging outlines a few unexpected Carnival options, should Rio, New Orleans, or Venice strike you as old hat.

wejetset's city notes lets you add to or take away inspired urban insights from global cities.

The New York Times scopes out Colombian colonial treasure Villa de Leyva (Remembered it! Wrote it down! Took the picture [above]!).

Rome Photo Blog and Daily Dose of Imagery. Sit and stare.

"Disgraced" Lonely Planeteer "Thomas Kohnstamm" lists "Nine Subversive Travel Books" on World Hum. Don't miss the "argument" in the comments section on "monolingual, white Americans." ;-)

Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

And Just Like That, Plans Change

2010-01-28T15:49:00.010-02:00

On Monday, I announced that I'd be hitting a Grand Tour of Guatemala and Honduras next month, using frequent flier miles I'd accrued with Delta. On Tuesday, that entire scheme fell apart.

See, what had happened was:

Because Delta was merging the former Northwest Airlines' computer systems information into its own, many of the functions on Delta's website were not working properly. I ended up spending a total of three hours on the phone (half of that on hold) while the customer support people tried to square away my award ticket. Mind you, this is after I spent hours on delta.com trying to match dates and destinations to my personal timeframe and mileage account balance. Finally, I was booked to fly from Fort Lauderdale to Guatemala City via Atlanta on February 3rd, returning on the 18th. As I said in the previous post, I was supposed to have been charged $55 for taxes and debited 35,000 SkyMiles. I shot off emails to friends and contacts in Guatemala and posted the news here.

Tuesday morning, I check my bank account balance and notice it's been debited $150 by Delta.

I broke out the People's Eyebrow.

Then, I called my dear friends at the World's Largest Airline to find out what the hell's going on. After another half-hour wait, I finally spoke to someone who informed me that I'd been charged $55 for the taxes, $20 erroneously for booking over the phone (this was supposedly already re-credited, since it was their website that was screwy), and $75 for booking a ticket using miles within 21 days of departure.

Two things:

Out of the three hours and three customer service agents I spoke to, not one mentioned the $75 fee.
I could eat off of that $75 for the WHOLE TWO WEEKS I was supposed to be in Central America.

Her: "I'm sorry, sir, but your SkyMiles account is self-service, and if you check the rules and regulations section, you'll see that the penalty for booking within 21 days is $75.

Me: "I acknowledge that I might need to go back and review the fine print, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect somebody at Delta, while booking the ticket and reiterating the tax amount, which is even LOWER than the booking fee, to say, 'Mr. White, you are aware that you will incur a $75 fee for booking this ticket on these particular dates, are you not?"

To make matters worse, cancelling the ticket altogether and having my miles reinstated carried a penalty of $100.

Rock. Fly Brother. Hard place.

I explained to the agent that I know $75 might not sound like a lot, but in this economy...! And that normally, even non-refundable tickets can be cancelled without penalty within 24 hours of booking, and I had about 3 hours left.

She spoke to her superviser, and to Delta's credit, the entire itinerary was voided, my miles were reinstated, and I should see an additional $150 back in my bank account within a few days (otherwise, I would have talked lots of shit about them on this blog).

Checking back on delta.com for flights leaving 21 days later, I found I could leave for Guatemala on February 16th and, for the same amount of miles, return February 18th or March 3rd (two weeks after I'm supposed to have the visa paperwork back from Brazil). Sayonara, Guatemala.

So for 25,000 miles and $7.50 in taxes, I'm heading to San Fran from February 16th-23rd (Bay Area Fly Brother fans, make some noise!) with a raincoat and two lessons learned:

Read the fine print in your frequent flier account.
Be flexible with your plans (which is easier said than done, especially if you're going to a wedding or Carnival or to see that hot jump-off you've been chatting up on the Internet for the last few weeks).

Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

Two Weeks in Central America

2010-01-25T14:42:00.013-02:00

Photo by youngrobv

Because of a bureaucratic bottleneck involving my Brazilian work papers, I'm not heading down to Brasilia for another month. So I decided to use the 40,000 Delta SkyMiles I had stashed in my account for an excursion to warmer climes. In my last post, I asked readers for suggestions on how to use the miles, mostly to get ideas but also to maybe get some lurkers to out themselves; that didn't work very well (thanks, Ali La Loca, for your input) but some of my friends did weigh-in via phone and email.

So, after many, many hours of checking and cross-checking dates and destinations, I snagged a round-trip to Guatemala City for 35,000 miles (plus $55 in taxes). I'll be gone for two weeks, making the circuit from Guate across the Honduran border to Tegucigalpa, the Caribbean beach town of La Ceiba, industrious San Pedro Sula, then back into Guatemala to check out the Mayan ruins of Tikal before heading back to the capital for my return flight.
I get to see stunning Mayan pyramids, experience the Garifuna culture of the Honduran coast (a mixture of African and indigenous flavors alongside crazy-gorgeous beaches), and spend about two-thirds less money than I'd be spending just chilling in the chilly—and expensive—US of A.

See, travel can help you save money!

If you're in the area during the first two weeks of February, know someone who is, or know of something I should experience while in Central America, definitely give me a shout!

And, of course, you're certainly invited to come with.

(By the way, I'm not going to the colonial city of Antigua because, well, after Saint Augustine, Santo Domingo, Havana, Cartagena, Bogotá, San Juan, Panama City, Popayán, Quito, Villa de Leyva, and Salvador da Bahia, I'm kind of colonial-ed out!)

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I've got 40,000 SkyMiles in my account...

2010-01-23T15:29:00.003-02:00

...and I'm free the first week in February. Where should I go?

(I'm limited to the US, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America).

From the AV Room: Egyptian Papyrus Art

2010-01-19T20:50:00.014-02:00

Back when I was in Cairo a few months ago, I had taken a taxi into the Old City to catch a free performance of the Whirling Dervishes (in Turkey, which has higher-profile dervishes, they charge admission). As soon as I got out of the cab near the market, a loquacious peddler named Ahmed approached me and asked me if I needed some help finding something. I told him I was looking for the Dervishes and he said he'd show me where they perform. We walked into the market, down a bustling and colorful alley, to a cathedral-like structure where the show would start in another hour. He invited me to see his papyrus shop to kill time, promising that I had no obligation to buy. What the hell? (By the way, papyrus is the ancient precursor to paper, a writing surface made from the dried reeds of the papyrus plant that grows along the Nile).

Mohamed and Ahmed

After climbing up fluorescent-lit concrete stairwell, with nary an inclination as to any malice on Ahmed's part (either I'm especially sensitive to the underlying goodness of people or I'm a damn gullible fool), I entered the secluded, second-floor gallery. There stood Mohamed, Ahmed's Nigerian business partner, who spoke to me about the Egyptian art of papyrus painting. Despite the quesionable location of the shop, Mohamed came off as an expert in his vocation, Ahmed shining equally as a consummate salesman ("Your mother is best mother in the world after my mother, she deserve something from the gallery"). I bought a beautiful $25 papyrus scroll for my mom, but I also got some interesting footage of Mohamed describing the art and craft of papyrus painting.

Egyptian Papyrus Art from Fly Brother on Vimeo.

When you're in Cairo, make sure you say "hi" to Ahmed and Mohamed (and buy something, too):

Alghouri Papyrus Art Centre
28 Ahmam El Mosbagha St. (beside Wokela Sultan)
Alghouri, Al Azhar, Cairo, Egypt
Tel. 2512-5859, Cell 0106695899
www.alghouriartcentre.com

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Fly Brother Podcast Premiere: Let's Get Lifted

2010-01-16T19:33:00.008-02:00

I told y'all it was coming. In the debut episode of the Fly Brother Podcast:

Who Is Fly Brother?
Behind the Haiti Earthquake
Why Be Fly?
Getting Your Walking Papers

Playlist:
1. "Prelude"/"Let's Get Lifted" - John Legend
2. "Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" - Dionne Warwick
3. "Lakou Trankil" - BélO
4. "Paris Tokyo Remix" - Lupe Fiasco f/Pharrell, Q-Tip, & Sarah Green
5. "Adore" (Fly Brother Theme Song) - I:Cube

Download, relax, and get lifted.

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Help for Haiti

2010-01-13T03:12:00.015-02:00

Just this week, I had begun the preliminary planning for two weeks of volunteering this summer at an environment-focused work camp run by the NEGES Foundation in Léogâne, Haiti. Just yesterday, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake rocked the country, its epicenter only a few miles away from Léogâne, just west of the capital, Port-au-Prince. With communication lines down and innumerable casualties, this has been the worst earthquake to hit the disaster-plagued and poverty-stricken country in 200 years. According to press accounts, hospitals and other traditional disaster relief locations have been destroyed.

The NEGES Foundation, with the help of my friend Dr. Brandi Reddick of The Green Pharmacist, had been planning a summer camp for kids that focused on environmental awareness and green living, in addition to the foundation's normal projects, which include planting trees and operating a school, community center, and Internet cafe in the town. One of the organizers, Ms. Marie Yoleine Gateau, had just spoken with me Monday about coming down to work this summer. As of now, she has still been unable to reach her family and friends in Léogâne from her current residence in New York.

The pictures in this post are from Dr. Reddick's trip to Haiti last summer, when she first volunteered with the work camp. Her enthusiasm in describing her experience inspired me to go myself this year. When I spoke to her today, she said that most people have this abstract image of "those poor people in Haiti already suffering," and while the poverty is real, the people still lead as normal lives as they can; most were finishing up the work-day, getting dinner started, or out playing soccer.

While I'm unsure as to the status of my trip to Haiti, I still plan on at least volunteering my voice to raise consciousness about this tragedy, and to solicit help and support beyond the brief period of newsworthiness afforded to the people of Haiti this week.

To volunteer funds, clothing, medical supplies, and/or time to the NEGES Foundation, please contact Ms. Gateau via email: p y o 1 [a t] a o l [d o t] c o m.

Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

The Importance of Going Places for Yourself ~or~ Even The New York Times Occasionally Doesn't Know What the Hell They're Talking About

2010-01-10T15:00:00.017-02:00

Inside the Walled City, Cartagena

A few days ago, The New York Times published its list of the "31 Places to Go in 2010." My former adopted country, Colombia, clocked in at number 26. Certainly, the country is worthy of inclusion on this list; the cultural and geographic diversity alone make it a stimulating visit, and it's not any more dangerous than much of the US. But it was the last line of this almost-four-paragraph blurb that had the needle scratching the LP in my head: "It has even prompted some travel bloggers to call Cartagena the next Buenos Aires."

Now, first of all, I'm always annoyed when people dub something "the next" anything, as if there's a problem with the original something and it needs to be replaced. In fact, for me, that phrase serves as a warning: stay away from Panama because it's becoming "the next Costa Rica" (read: overrun by drunken Spring Breakers and monolingual retirees).

Granted, travel writers and people in general tend to compare places with others, and that's OK, especially if the comparison is couched in the writer's own experience or relegated to certain aspects of a place, such as its nightlife or cultural impact. But as much as I've compared São Paulo and New York, I would never call São Paulo "the next New York." New York, for one, ain't goin nowhere and São Paulo's too busy being the next São Paulo to be anything else. There's also the danger of glaring generalizations and a glossing-over of history, which, as modern and supposedly culturally-sensitive writers, we're supposed to be avoiding as much as possible. So comparing a tropical colonial port and resort town with a national capital in a temperate climate with a ludicrously different set of demographics and a population 13 times as large is comparing apples to airplanes: they both start with "A."

I Googled the offending phrase to identify these mysterious "some travel bloggers" that the Times references. "Some travel bloggers" turned out to be one travel writer named Liz Ozaist, featured in Budget Travel magazine back in 2008 with an article titled "From Cartagena, With Love." The subheading (or super-heading, really, since it appears above the title): "The Next Buenos Aires." Now, in fairness to Ms. Ozaist, she probably had nothing to do with the addition of that, to my mind, inappropriate heading. She most likely submitted the article to her editor with the title, which alludes to her father's love for the place ingrained a couple decades before her trip, and hit the road for her next story. I would think it's the editors at Budget Travel (Lawd, they prolly never gon publish me now) who got it wrong. And though I was drawn in to the article because of Ms. Ozaist's attention to detail and the interesting characters she meets, I got thrown every time someone compared Cartagena to a place that I feel bares absolutely no resemblence whatsoever. "'Cartagena reminds me of Venice,' [Todd] says, 'it has that same intangible magic about it.'" That's how Cartagena makes Todd feel, and it's certainly valid, but I will say this: Cartagena's surrounded by water, but ain't nary a gondola floating around in what I would hesitate to consider canals.

"Buenos Aires by Air"

Now, I must admit that I've never been to Buenos Aires myself. However, as a student of Latin American history and culture and as a traveler who has spoken to many people about Buenos Aires, I have a pretty decent idea of the kind of city that it is: fairly affluent (for Latin America), boldly planned with broad boulevards and Parisian-inspired architectural flourishes, sidewalk café culture, and peopled largely by the descendents of many European immigrants.

On the other hand, for most of my time in Colombia, I lived less than a 2-hour drive away from Cartagena and spent many weekends rambling the streets of the "walled city." I called up a good friend who had also lived there, married a Colombian girl, and honeymooned in Buenos Aires:

Ring, ring.

"Hello?"

"What's up, T? It's Fly Brother. Lemme ask you something. How would you compare Cartagena and Buenos Aires?"

"What do you mean?"

"The two cities, how would you compare Buenos Aires and Cartagena?"

"In what way?"

"Just, like, in general. Like comparing DC and New York, how would you compare Cartagena and Buenos Aires?"

"You can't compare them. They're not comparable."

"Well, they're both Spanish-speaking cities in South America."

"That's about it."

"I thought so. Thanks, and Happy New Year."

Click.

"Bazurto Market Buses, Cartagena" by CadeJ.

Cartagena's a small, provincial capital supported by tourism and secondary port facilities. The streets of the old quarter are narrow and, like most Spanish colonial cities, disorderly. Most of the people are descendents of the African slaves that passed through the city's gates as the principal slave port on the Spanish Main. It's a place for a slow, sunny Sunday afternoon in a hammock, listening to some Cuban son, knocking back the aguardiente; a beach town with fruit sellers and hair braiders and high-rise condos to prove it.

While Ms. Ozaist makes one reference to Cartagena reminding her of one particular neighborhood in the Argentine capital, she alludes to Havana, Cuba's capital and Cartagena's closest relative, at least three times in her article; that is the city most evoked while strolling along cobblestone streets under grand arches and pastel facades, something I can speak to personally, having been there thrice. The unmistakable African influence, from the cooking to the music to the lilt of costeño Spanish, that sets Cartagena in the gilded frame of other New World treasures such as New Orleans, Santo Domingo, and Salvador da Bahia, is the single most noticeable feature that separates it from Buenos Aires (also a former slave port, but most folk don't even know that).

In 2007, the Times published this article, offering up a true serving of Cartagena's richly tragic past and present. The author, Tim Parsa, seems to have researched the history and culture of the place before penning the piece, an effort that appears to be lacking in this week's Times blurb by Denny Lee (Did you just Google Cartagena, dude?).

I'm not saying any of this to poo-poo The New York Times or Budget Travel or any particular travel writer or editor or whathaveyou. All I'm saying is that folks, travelers in particular, need to research multiple sources beforehand, then visit a place for themselves in order to get a real sense of their destination. Clearly, relying on media (including Fly Brother) can mean getting erroneous descriptions and untenable comparisons in a subjective attempt to make a place seem more or less appealing than it is.

Unless, that is, you combine both Times pieces and surmise that Cartagena becoming the "next Buenos Aires" means becoming the "new gringo mecca." If that's the case, I'll be off trying to find the "next Cartagena," someplace Spring Breakers fear to tread.

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Global Juke Joint: Miami Sound Machines

2010-01-07T23:55:00.006-02:00

Cruising around Miami for New Years in a rental car with no iPod dock meant much radio time. Thankfully, 93.9 (in spite of random and agonizing bursts of "I Gotta Feeling," "Dancing Queen," "Single Ladies," and "I Will Survive") took it back to 1980s Dade County, when no ethnic community was a true majority, South Beach was still gritty and vice-ridden, and everybody punched it down 95 South to locally-produced freestyle and bass music*. Here's some of Miami's finest (plus a little Crockett and Tubbs action) to carry you from MIA across Biscayne Bay:

*For my true booty music aficionados, check this classic 2 Live Crew performance on "The Phil Donahue Show."

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Conclusión y Comienzo: Annual Review 2009

2010-01-04T19:56:00.002-02:00

Conclusión - 2009
Before heading down to Copacabana for last year's countdown, I sat with a very good friend on the balcony of our apartment in Rio and, from a deck of Osho Zen Tarot cards, selected the card that would indicate my karmic/spiritual/essential theme for the year: "conclusión" (that would be "conclusion" in English). As these mystical consultations can be from time to time, my selection proved prophetic. 2009 did indeed become a year of conclusion, from ending a challenging work situation in a difficult environment and completing one of my major life goals (for the first time, anyway) to bowing out of a few long-standing but unhealthy relationships and transitioning from an archaic dependence on CDs for the more modern MP3 musical format.

During the first few months of the year, I was confused about continuing at my job as a high school English teacher in Barranquilla that offered me financial security, versus pursuing artistic goals that may not provide immediate remuneration. Added to the uncertainty was a severe case of incurable vagabond neurosis, so I chose to not renew my contract and embarked on my first round-the-world adventure. Between June and December, I traveled to 16 countries:

Brazil (Rio and São Paulo)
China (Hong Kong and Macau)
Colombia (Barranquilla, Bogotá, and Cartagena)
Egypt (Alexandria and Cairo)
Germany (Berlin)
India (Agra, Chennai, Delhi, and Mumbai)
Ireland (Dublin)
Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur)
Panama (Panama City)
South Korea (Seoul)
Sweden (Stockholm)
Turkey (Istanbul)
UAE (Abu Dhabi)
UK (London)
USA (Chicago, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Orlando, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and Washington)
Venezuela (Caracas)

From a creative standpoint, despite barely posting timely content on my own blog, I had writing featured on, or was interviewed by:

American Airlines' Black Atlas
Black Expat Magazine
Writer Anja Mutic's blog, Ever the Nomad
Matador Network
Scottish travel blog, Sharing Experiences
Travellious
Yes But No But Yes

And I've expanded my social network exponentially, crossing paths with blogging luminaries like Farsighted Fly Girl, A Brother in Sweden, Adrianne of Black Women in Europe, Nikita the Traveller, Felicia of This Time in Seoul, Stacy of Bisous from Paris/Baci from Rome, Anja Mutic, Brian of No Debt World Travel, The Green Pharmacist, and Brandie of Out and About Africa, in addition to forging new friendships and creating new memories.

Lastly, I've found a pair of investors who are interested in seeing Fly Brother soar to greater heights. You'll learn more about that later.

Comienzo - 2010
"Comienzo" means "beginning" in Spanish, and though I'm using that word for the title of this particular section since it applies to new projects coming down the pipe as well as renewed energy and focus (and it fits nicely with last year's word, "conclusión"), I'm lifting my official word for the year straight from the prolific Lola of Geotraveler's Niche: discipline!

Regardless of whether or not we're talking about staying on task, on budget, on diet, on an exercise plan, on time, whatever, it ain't gon get done without discipline. So with that in mind, here are some of the upgrades and objectives I've plotted for 2010:

A deepening and diversification of what you can find here at Fly Brother. This includes a fresh and clean podcast where I discuss issues related to travel, culture, history, and music, and interview interesting and otherwise fly folk, appearing bimonthly (on the first and the fifteenf, naturally). I also plan to update the blog with text, photos, and video at least ten times per month (allowing for one less in February, of course), and to monetize the site through travel-related products that I produce and sell directly, as well as inspiring products and services produced by others and available through affiliate marketing.

An increase in overall presence and name recognition. I'll accomplish this by submitting articles to both print and web-based media (my goal is a minimum five articles published on highly-trafficked websites and five published in print during the year), creating fan pages on MySpace and Facebook, participating in travel writing forums, and establishing Fly-Brother.com. I'll also work on increasing my own personal accessibility by tweeting more frequently and responding to every email personally within ten working days.

A shorter, yet exhilirating list of international destinations for the coming year. Living in Brazil means trips to cities I've not yet visited, such as Brasília, Florianopolis, and Recife. Argentina rises to the top of the list, with non-stop flights to Buenos Aires from my new homebase. This summer may bring a two-week volunteering project in Haiti, followed by a week of R&R over the border in the Dominican Republic. And on tap for next Christmas, should the stars align themselves appropriately, is a Southern Hemisphere Round-the-World trip featuring Australia and South Africa. Who's down?

With my readers as motivation, cracking the whip whenever discipline fails me, 2010 will rock. So get them seatbelts fastened and those tray-tables in the upright and locked positions. It's time to get fly.

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Wow.

2009-12-29T02:01:00.001-02:00

As 2009 ends and I prepare my annual review à la Chris Guillebeau, I had to stop and think about the insane amount of experiences I've had and people I've met along the way. "Whirlwind" can barely capture the appropriate velocity of the past twelve months, during which time I went from living in Colombia to prepping for a move to Brazil, and an index card bluebrint of arrows and airport codes turned into a series of places and faces that passed all too quickly from dreams to memory. Since bringing in 2009 with millions of people on Copacabana Beach, I've been to 35 cities in 15 countries on five continents. Wow.

It's only now, looking back, that I realize the magnitude of those statistics. After all, while on the road, more attention had to be paid to details like food, lodging, transport, and other logistics than to the entire scheme as a whole. Outsiders had the luxury of awe and wonder; I had to figure out how to get from the airport to my CouchSurfing host's house and where I could find wireless Internet.

Now, I think about the new friendships forged, the old friendships strengthened, the innumerable moments that I yearn to repeat, the people with whom I want to hang out again, dance with again, smile at again, hug again, make love to again, meet again, and say goodbye to again. These memories serve as bittersweet affirmation of the transitory nature of life; that nothing is permanent and every present moment is just that, a present to be treasured.

So, at the end of this calendar year, I give thanks to the Cosmos for 2009 and everyone in it. And for 2010 and everyone in it.

2009 from Fly Brother on Vimeo.

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Re-post: Missing Middle Florida

2009-12-24T14:33:00.009-02:00

I haven't been on vacation in Florida with my entire family since the mid-90s, and spending this Christmas with them in Orlando brings back and brings up all sorts of memories and madness. Back in March, while still living in Colombia, a bout of homesickness caused me to pen an homage to my home state, a celebration of both the geographic and temporal location that serves as my cultural foundation. Being back home, I find these same sentiments echoed in family conversations and collective memory, in spite of mindless sprawl and cultural homoginization, increased population and pervasive plasticity of modern Florida. For new readers, I hope you find this post enlightening and entertaining. For long-time readers, I hope this re-post is just as engrossing as you originally found it (well, assuming you found it engrossing, originally :-)

Happy Holidays to all the Fly Folk out there. Thank you for reading.

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Missing Middle Florida
(Originally posted March 10, 2009)

There's the moonlight and magnolias of the North, the kid-centered wonders of Central, and the tropical swing of the South - the geographic regions of the state of Florida. Then there are the temporal zones: the Old Florida of Osceola and Andrew Jackson, of Saint Augustine and the Confederacy, of Zora Neale Hurston and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. The New Florida of Walt Disney and Jeb Bush, of Little Haiti and Little Havana, of Spring Break and Dave Barry. And I grew up somewhere in between, a native Floridian born to native Floridians, who have a connection to the peninsula, know all the secret places, and how to get everywhere in the state without once climbing on one of those new-fangled interstates. I'm from Middle Florida.

Being born at the tail end of the 70s means my memory only extends as far back as 1980, a time of transition for my home state. Since the late 19th century, hell, since the 15th century when Juan Ponce de Leon named the place for the flowers he saw while killing off Tekestas and searching for the Fountain of Youth, Florida has been a tourist haven. But I came of age just as manufacturing and the military - long mainstays of the state's economy, lead by Jacksonville ("The Bold New City of the South") - took a backseat to newly invented mass tourism and an upgraded agricultural sector, just as the Mariel Boat Lift cemented Miami's status as capital of Latin America, after the influx of snow birds and Baby Boomers but before the boom of babies born to folks from other states and other countries. I'm not pre-Disney, but I'm pre-Disneyfication.

I remember taking U.S. 17 to Orlando, U.S. 90 to Tallahassee, and A1A to Daytona Beach, passing the original themed attractions built along winding hightways at the advent of the Motor Age that had already faded in the shadow of their newer, flashier, 2.0 Beta versions in Orlando, before re-inventing themselves in order to compete: the thin, weary dolphins at Marineland; corny water ski shows at Cypress Gardens; determined young synchronized swimmers in mermaid outfits at Weeki Wachee.

I miss those days: school field trips to the fort at the "Nation's Oldest City," Saint Augustine, marveling at the kooky billboards for the Ripley's Believe-It-or-Not Museum and stopping to pick dates off the palms that lined U.S. 1 out of town. Gatorland, Gatorade, the Gator Bowl, and a fierce, sometimes irrational devotion to the University of Florida Gators. Crosstown high school football rivalries between Raines and Ribault and cross-state rivalries between Lake City Columbia and Fort Walton Beach Choctawhatchee back when high school football rivalries mattered. Indigenous place names like Okeechobee, Okefenokee, Ocoee, Loxahatchee, Pahokee, Immokalee, Kissimmee, Ichetucknee, Chattahoochee, Apalachee Parkway, Miccosukee Road (shouts to Tallahassee). The ease of slipping between Southern and tropical cultures as effortlessly as organizing a random crab boil or barbecue on a typical hot-ass April or September afternoon. FAMU's Homecoming Parade, which always started out on a freezing November morning and ended up blazing hot by 10 AM, and the FAMU-BCC Florida Classic, back when it was held in Tampa, back when the Tampa Bay Bucs sucked. Kennedy Space Center and Melbourne Jai-Alai. Dances like the Tootsie Roll and the Tawlet Bowl, accompanied by syncopated Flawda Bass and the raunchy lyrics of Dade County's poet laureate, Luther "Luke" Campbell. The Fort Lauderdale Swap Shop and Flea USA and the Opa Locka-Hialeah Flea Market (straddling Lock-town y la República de Hialeah). Miami with only a small cluster of skyscrapers Downtown and televised vice on run-down South Beach and the original Orange Bowl and an equal number of everybody from everywhere back when, it seemed, more folks got along better (though the 1982 Overtown riot told a different story). Tropical storms with names. Blue skies in the east and black skies in the west. Miles of undeveloped coastline. Flatness.

No, I don't miss the stench of the pulp mills and the knowing where you could and couldn't go as black folk after dark, lest we forget the Florida was indeed a slave state and didn't desegregate schools until almost 1970. After all, many strange fruit-bearing trees grow alongside palm trees. But I do miss the strong black communities and institutions that were established and thrived in that environment of hate. And I miss being in a place where I have roots as exposed, yet as deep as the mangroves in the Everglades.

And I miss Publix and Winn-Dixie.

And skee-ball and go-karts at Fun 'n Wheels.

And Wild Waters.

And Jenkins' Quality Bar-B-Q.

I think I'm just getting old.

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From the AV Room: Late Night Underground

2009-12-21T00:49:00.009-02:00

NEW YORK—
Yeah, there are rats, service disruptions, drunken old men, drunken young women, and the pungent odor of pee, but dammit, the New York City subway runs 24/7. And I mean the whole system, not just a couple of train lines here or there. In the city that never sleeps (an oft-quoted untruth), the 24-hour bars and 24-hour diners and 24-hour pharmacies and 24-hour gyms and 24-hour Apple Store remain connected by underground rail. The late night trains that stop at each station don't convey the same warp-speed urgency of the express trains that race underneath the grid of Manhattan at ten blocks a minute, but the lower number of riders means available seats and fewer obstacles when rushing through the maze-like transfer stations.

There's also the loopier entertainment; at midnight, you not only get the drummers and the guitarists and accordion players, you get to see punchy folks getting jiggy like this in the subway:

Late Night Underground from Fly Brother on Vimeo.

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One Nation Under a Groove

2009-12-15T19:32:00.015-02:00

NEW YORK—

A couple months ago, after a week in London, I posted a comparison of the English capital with its New World offspring and giving the marginal victory to NYC. After last night's Giant Step Records (free) holiday party at the Hudson Hotel, the Big Apple pulled much farther away from London, cementing its title, in my book at least, as the hottest city on the North Atlantic. Here's why:

On a bottom-lit dancefloor the size of a small hotel lobby, black-white-and-Latin b-boys, Asian ballet dancers, 40ish couples from Spanish Harlem, 50ish couples from Harlem Harlem, Korean-American salsa instructors, A&R execs, mailroom gofers, baldies, dreadheads, girls-with-girls, guys-with-guys, professional dancers, occasional two-steppers, Southerners, Northerners, foreigners, and a middle-aged woman with a cane all samba'd, salsa'd, and shook assorted and voluptuous body parts in the spirit of the way the truth the light the drum.

What might have been an underground incarnation of the nearby United Nations headquarters jammed to an intoxicating, almost religious confection of Diasporic rhythms tracing the triangle from Banjul to Buenos Aires to the Bronx and back, conjured up by musical sorcerer Nickodemus and supplemented by live percussion. As soon as mi gente's hips got used to swiveling, feet got called into glorious church-stomping candences, arms enlisted in jazzy flourishes, and heads involved in breakneck floor spins. Continuous smiles shifted from toothy and excited grins to coy, Mona Lisa-style expressions of contentment that body and beat worked in unison. Couples formed and broke apart, partners shifting among the crowd of one-time strangers who at once recognized each other as disciples of the music. There was no pretense, no posturing, no being too cute or hard or proud to nod, smile, or give a thumbs-up. Of all the people in New York, it's the house heads who embody the ideas of borderlessness, of universality, of humanity in celebration of diversity and ignorant of demographics, all the while charging and being charged by the eternally pulsing heartbeat of enchained masses ferried across the Atlantic centuries ago.

London tries, but this happens no where else but New York.

Here's a little shadow-dancing footage for those of you who couldn't make it to the event. You can't see much, but you can feel it. Sorry I couldn't film more...I was too busy gettin' my own groove on.

One Nation - Part 1 from Fly Brother on Vimeo.

One Nation - Part 2 from Fly Brother on Vimeo.

Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

A City, A Dream, and A Day in December

2009-12-11T09:00:00.001-02:00

Ain't it pretty?

Today, I head up to the Frozen North: ten days in New York City (any lurkers in the area, get at me). In honor of the occasion, I'm going to share with you a song that I think speaks more to The City I usually encounter than does Jay-Z and Alicia's new cut, Madonna's homage, or even Old Blue Eyes' standard paean (though I think "Sidewalks of New York" might come close :-) Anybody know this one?

Also, check this New York Times piece and related comments, freshly published this past Wednesday, on all the affordable hotness The City has to offer.

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Ain't it pretty?

On a related note, I read recently that one should to verbalize one's dreams as a part of manifesting them into reality. That being said, I shall verbalize that, within five years, I plan to be living seven-to-eight months of each year in São Paulo and three-to-four months of each year in New York (the summer months, of course; what could be better?), with each transition bookended by a few weeks of travel. The question isn't "why?" (I mean...why not?). The question is "how?"

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On an unrelated note, I came across this song in my iPod recently. If electronic music is supposed to be danceable and joy-inducing, then why does this one make me so sad? :-(

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Photo Essay: The Magic of Macau

2009-12-09T02:32:00.032-02:00

Macau. Most people haven't even heard of the place: a former Portuguese colony on the southern coast of China established as the first permanent European toehold in the Far East back in 1557 and the final foreign stop on my amended round-the-world trip (Seoul doesn't count, as I was only transiting for eight hours; though I did get to shower in the lavish Korean Air business class lounge and meet up with this sexy sista at Krispy Kreme in the Gangnam District for a short 60 minutes).

Long since overshadowed as a trading and financial center by urbane and much-larger Hong Kong, only an hour's ride east by high-speed ferry, Macau has reinvinted itself as a combination Lisbon-Las Vegas, with its collonnaded colonial quarter framed by monumental, neon-lit casino resorts. Peopled mostly by mainland Chinese in search of capitalist-country incomes and sprinkled with a few expat Portuguese working in the still-lucrative legal sector and assorted Brazilian showgirls, Russian and Australian ballroom dancers, and Romanian strippers who cycle in and out as casino entertainment (of course, I was there the one night the strippers had off), Macau has the distinction of being the first and last European possession in China, having been handed back in 1999, two years after HK. Under the "One China, Two Systems" plan that also allows HK to flourish with a large degree of independence, Macau still bathes in the collective glow of flickering lights, glamorous floor shows, luxury retail, and palacial gaming halls.

Observe:

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Hot and Kold, Hong Kong

2009-12-04T12:46:00.021-02:00

Oh, Hong Kong! How the currents of history and culture have conspired to make you the entoxicating urban assemblage that you are. Poised at the foot of Victoria Peak and gracing both shores of a similarly-named harbor, Hong Kong has lost none of her shine after having changed hands from the British colonial power that created her to the Chinese superpower that is her cultural foundation. Expats from all over the English-speaking world keep the financial sector abuzz, hold-up in luxury skybox apartments and tooling around packed and narrow streets in Maybachs and Bentleys (only the service people—accountants, attorneys and such—whip around in Beemers and S-Classes). The masses, and I do mean masses, aspire to these trappings, though, for the time being, whisking around the city in speedy, efficient public tranport doesn't make being part of the proletariat seem so bad. Hong Kong is a city of conspicuous consumption and unbridled capitalism, upward mobility writ large. But unlike, say, Dubai or Las Vegas, she's been handling her business for centuries.

And that's what makes her somewhat imposing. Arriving by ferry into Victoria Harbour, guarded on both sides by walls of skyscrapers, themselves backed-up by mountain peaks, I felt as if I'd just entered a fortified medieval city with high walls and turrets full of sentries. Once inside, the cluttered and exhilirating commercial alleys of Kowloon City or Sheung Wan contrasted with the sleek and chic straightaways of TST and Causeway Bay, and regardless of the cost of rent, a pair of shoes, or a bowl of soup in any given area, the place was crowded, teeming, jammed, packed, populated. Literally, erybody and they mama lives in Hong Kong.

Despite a population density of 15 thousand people per square mile, I didn't find HKers to be particularly outgoing. Unlike other places I'd been, in spite of looking conspicuously foreign, I barely got a second glance from anyone. This in itself didn't bother me. I was annoyed, however, by the few blacks I did come across, and I mean few and far between, who actually looked away as we approached one another on the street. I was aghast; never in my travels had I not crossed paths with a fellow black Westerner (usually distinguishable from black Africans by carriage, demeanor, and hairstyle) and not shared the bruh-man headnod of solidarity and kinship in a foreign land. Well, it was straight "incognegro" in Hong Kong*. Maybe the brothers and sisters thought I was Indian, as there were many in HK, but it was the whites who I was continually greeted by at intersections and on the street. I was hurt to my heart. I was angry.

Fortunately, I had been blessed with a few soulmates in the city who could feel my pain: the lovely and talented Nikita the Traveller kept me company when not parsing French grammar for the kiddies at school; and Victor, novice diplomat and expert translator (homeboy be tawkin' dat Chinese!) who graciously provided a roof, vittles, and wireless Internet for a week in Wan Chai, as well as a crew of fellow FSOs who knew where to go in Hong Kong for the hot beats and hot grits (yes, grits). We were of split opinion regarding the eye-avoidance issue: Victor saying folk greeted him all the time (I say that's because of his dreads), while Nikita parked in my lot, highlighting numerous instances of shade. That aside, Victor and his friends provided me with much insight into life as a diplomat (though, to be fair, HK ain't exactly Kabul or Ciudad Juarez, so I think they might be just a tad biased, understandably), and almost sold me on the idea, until we compared the three-month annual vacation time afforded teachers versus the fourteen days they get in the Foreign Service. You do the math.

When I wasn't hanging with the homies, I hoofed it around the city, wiping the sweat off my brow while snapping photos of open-air meat and flea markets in Wan Chai, wading through the throngs in Times Square, expanding my mind at the Hong Kong Museum of History, politely declining an offer of tailor-made suits by Pakistani salesmen on Nathan Road, flying over to the Big Buddha on the longest cable-car ride in life, zooming up to breathtaking Victoria Peak on the near-vertical tram, coursing back and forth across the harbor on the Star Ferry, uncovering the lone capoeira class in town, and scouting out the nearest Burger King to ease a craving I'd had for the last month.

Hong Kong is hot. I just wonder why the people are so cold.

*Side note: Subsequently, in both Macau and Seoul, brothers greeted me appropriately; one was from Mozambique and the other Canadian. This vindicates Asia as a whole and isolates HK as a mecca for coloreds with no damn home trainin'.

Check the photos:

Then ride with me to the roof of Hong Kong in the glass elevator of the Hopewell Centre:

Going Up, Hong Kong from Fly Brother on Vimeo.

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World AIDS Day 2009

2009-12-01T06:00:00.000-02:00

Be aware. Know your status. Always practice safe sex.

Sometimes, Even Fly Brothers Can't See Past the End of their Noses

2009-11-30T11:33:00.015-02:00

MALAYSIA — Kuala Lumpur.

At this point in my journey, after two months and nine countries, I was operating on borrowed funds and becoming just the slightest bit panicky about where the next cash infusion would be coming from. The original plan had been to have enough money stacked to hang out in Brazil for a few months without having to work full-time in order to bang out a few chapters of a novel. Very quickly, zat plen vent kaput.

Meanwhile, I was still on the dream tour, passing through the Kingdom of Malaysia for a couple days en route to Hong Kong, and crashing with a gangly CouchSurfer of Chinese parentage named Dan. A writer and web designer, Dan took a day off of work to show me around his city, peopled with a mix of Asian ethnicities and served by a modern and extensive transport system. Accustomed to giving tours of KL, Dan had a whole itinerary planned, involving mosques and markets. Our first stop: KL City Centre to check out the Petronas Towers, those twin silver, Islamic-inspired spires of Entrapment fame and one-time tallest building(s) in the world. We knew we wouldn't be able to go to the top, since tickets had to be procured first thing in the morning. In the end, though, we never made it out of the park and shopping mall at the base of the towers.

See, what had happened was, I had found a few teaching job leads online; a couple in Brazil, one in Berlin, and another back in the States. I needed to get my CV sent out to each school, pronto. Immediately. Right away.

There were two Starbucks beneath the towers, both with painfully slow wireless Internet, both chock full o' foreigners trying to access said Internet simultaneously. What started out as a quick five-minute email ended up takng an hour. Then. we decided to get some food and as we were finishing, it began to rain. I felt like I could squeeze in another couple of emails and a Skype phone call or two. And after another almost two hours, Dan let me know in his calm, measured manner, that most of the places on our sightseeing list had closed. I was in town for only two days and had spent five hours in a mall, most of it hunched over a laptop at Starbucks. Talk about misplaced priorities.

Dan had been gracious enough to take off from work and drive me into the capital city of a country to which I had no clue when I'd be returning on a continent I'd never been before. And because of a very American sense of single-mindedness and goal-oriented-ness, I missed out on who knows how many sights, sounds, and other random and beautiful experiences stressing over something that could have been taken care of during one of my many pending airport layovers (especially considering all major East Asian airports have free or cheap Internet access).

Work-related stress without even having a job, while on vacation. Ain't that a...?!

Here's to trying my damndest to never make that mistake again. Cheers, Dan!

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A Diwali Story ~or~ Check the Local Calendar for Holidays Before Booking the Flight

2009-11-26T01:11:00.032-02:00

Image by m4r00n3d

This year, the Hindu holy day of Diwali fell on October 17th.

This year, my twelve-hour layover in Chennai, formerly Madras, fell on October 17th.

As with most religious holidays such as Eid (end of Ramadan) or Hanukkah, Diwali—the Festival of Lights—is celebrated with family. And as I had no family to speak of in India, I was destined to spend my first Diwali alone.

My plane ticket from Delhi to Kuala Lumpur cost me less than $200, but the scheduling called for a half-day stretch in the seaport on the Bay of Bengal for which a juicy cocktail is named. Knowing I'd be stationary for such a long while, I sent messages to a few CouchSurfers in the city hoping I'd have a couple of babysitters. Not knowing I had booked my flight on Hindu's biggest holiday (though not everyone in India is Hindu, Diwali is also an official government holiday just like Christmas in the US), I had several responses to my queries, but they were all very tentative: "I might/might not be in the city," "I may/may not be available to take you around town."

In the end, blood proved thicker than water and my would-be CS day hosts apologized profusely and with great regret that they wouldn't be available; the last host informing me of this after I had already arrived in lush, tropical Chennai. With most tourist sites closed for the holiday, and with the temperature being in the mid-90s, I decided to spend a couple hours at the movies.

I printed up the boarding pass for my international flight, which departed a little before midnight, and after a short stroll around the compact airport which included an abortive attempt to secure a banana-chocolate milkshake (apparently, adding banana to a chocolate milkshake necessitated consultation with the restaurant manager, restaurant owner, and airport authorities), then argued with a rickshaw driver over the price to take me to the Chennai Citi Center mall (got him down to 130 rupees, about $2.80). We arrived at the boxy, but baroque, shopping center after a half-hour of whizzing through relatively empty streets and past shuttered storefronts. I had my mind all set for something Hollywood or Bollywood. I got nothing: every showing of every film was sold out for the entire day. I guess it was for the best, as all the movies were in Tamil anyway.

After another haggling session, this time with a pack of audacious but idle rick drivers trying to finance a very merry Diwali on my lone airport run, I trekked back to the terminal.

I was sleepy and sweaty.

I still had six hours before my flight.

I wasn't allowed through Immigration with a boarding pass printed from the website.

I wasn't allowed through Immigration without a departure form from my airline.

I wasn't allowed through Immigration to just sit and wait at the gate.

The airline counter didn't open until two hours before my flight. There were four hours left.

I bought a bar of soap at the pharmacy and took a bird bath in the bathroom, changing into a clean shirt and the least-dirty of the two pair of jeans I had.

And I sat. Wrote. Sat. Ate. Sat. Whistled. Sat. Twiddled. Sat. Watched the old school departure board letters flap around, spelling the names of far-off-sounding destinations one letter at a time (very cool!). Sat. Wrote. Sat. Ate. Etc.

I checked into the flight and scored a window seat on an exit row.

I marched triumphantly, for the second time, to Immigration. "Happy Diwali," I said to the officer who immediately frowned and gave me a defiant Indian head wiggle.

"Not everyone in India celebrates Diwali, you know," he schooled. "We Tamils celebrate the Harvest Festival in January, called Pongal."

I stood stunned, but I guess I would have responded the same way had I been working somewhere and was greeted with "Happy Kwanzaa." In fact, I know I would have (I told y'all Indians were black).

The moral of this story: Stop trying to be a smart ass by erroneously invoking people's cultures when a simple "hello" would suffice.

Happy Thanksgiving, errbody!

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Global Juke Joint: La-La Land

2009-11-19T09:00:00.004-02:00

Get at me, SoCal.

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Delhi Denizens

2009-11-15T23:20:00.001-02:00

Dry and monstrously big, India's capital city houses over twelve million people who, despite sprawling over 570 square miles at the apex of the Indo-Gangetic plain, still seem stacked on top of one another. The New Delhi train depot served as my introduction to the city and my most uncomfortable experience in India: thousands of people milling around the dusty platforms, spitting phlegm despite signs discouraging the practice (hello H1N1/SARS/bird flu/regular flu!), kids running around in tiny t-shirts and no underwear, pulverized fecal matter rising with the clouds of dust as trains pulled into the station. I was afraid to lick my lips. At the station, I was conspicuously foreign, which for me is unsettling in chaotic environments like this, and I was stared at more than at any time on my journey. One guy came up to me with a gob of amber wax at the end of a stick and offered to clean my ears for me. I responded in Spanish, and he retreated with a grin that said, "What the hell is this muhfuka speaking?"

Unlike Mumbai, where I stayed with a friend I already knew who doubled as a translator and had easy access to transportation, Delhi meant the renewed adventure of traveling solo. And while I met many interesting people and had numerous profound conversations via that friend, it's always when I'm alone that I meet the most surprising people. North India was not short on surprises. In fact, during my five days there, I met:

Willy and Ula, an inspiring middle-aged German couple I met on the train from Delhi to Agra. With their grown children off raising families, Willy and Ula had already trekked through Latin America for a month with rudimentary Spanish before traipsing off to India with rudimentary English. They had been taken advantage of by the staff of their hotel and were trying to cope with thickly-accented Indian English by the time we met. I decided to ask if my CouchSurfing host could help them once we got to Agra. It turned out to be the best decision I could make.

Rajat, a no-limit soldier stationed at one of the many military installations in heavily-fortified Agra. Soft-spoken and sharp-featured, he commanded respect from his on-base inferiors to the off-base touts and rickshaw drivers swarming around us at the station. He met us with the names and phone numbers of a couple hotels in town and before taking me back to his place to grab a shower (this was post-14-hour train ride from Mumbai), he made sure Willy and Ula were safely tucked away in a hotel and that we had decently-priced transport to the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort the next day. The consummate CouchSurfing host, Rajat introduced me to Tulsi Mulethi tea and the Hindu tenet of present-focused living. 'Preciate ya, brother.

Jag, the film and television director who grew up in Australia to Indian parents and brought her cross-cultural perspective back from Oz. Our paths crossed at another CouchSurfer's house in Delhi and I knew we'd be hanging hard once I saw her large eyes and wide smile. We got our grub on at a frou-frou restaurant on Delhi's periphery, then our club on at a crowded nightspot a few barrios over. It was just a day in Delhi, but memorable nonetheless.

Tino and Tony, dance instructors imported from abroad to establish the Indian National Ballet who happened to be crashing one floor down in my central Delhi guesthouse. Tino, a hip-hop and jazz teacher from the Canary Islands who spoke English with a British accent and black American idioms, sat pulling his hair out over a girl in Mumbai who had turned him out. Tony, a fellow Southerner, whipped up some slammin' gumbo and garlic pasta using recipes he had learned from his ex-wife. Tino and I sat and sulked (in Spanish) in their apartment because it was Diwali—the biggest Hindu holiday—and salsa night had been cancelled. Family holidays always suck when you're on vacation.

I was honored to have this diverse group of miscreants and ne'er-do-wells cross my path. It's the type of interaction that makes traveling alone worthwhile; I'd never have met any of them had I been rolling with one of my peeps. And I'd be six friends short.

See Delhi here:

And watch the Magic Carpet Maker waterproof one of India's famous rugs at the carpet factory in Agra. Sorry about the sideways video, folks. Just turn ya head. ;)

Magic Carpet Maker from Fly Brother on Vimeo.

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United to the East, AA f/Fly Bro, FB Winter Tour

2009-11-09T21:23:00.000-02:00

United joins Delta in Africa

Photo by AV8NLVR
Last week, United Airlines announced service from Washington-Dulles to Accra, Ghana, continuing on to Lagos, Nigeria. When the flights start in May, UA will become the second major American carrier to serve the Motherland, giving the large Nigerian population in the DC area nonstop access to the country's largest business center and former capital. Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines already flies to Accra and Lagos, as well as Abuja, Nigeria; Dakar, Senegal; Johannesburg, South Africa; and Cairo, Egypt, though they've announced several routes to other African destinations in the past year that either have been terminated or never took off for various reasons. It's nice to see other airlines taking the (lucrative) chance of serving Africa, but I can't imagine the in-flight service even approaching that of the European airlines already flying from the US to the continent via their hubs.

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AA's new black travel website, featuring Fly Brother

Photo by caribb

In October, American Airlines started a travel website centered around the black travel experience called Black Atlas. Headlined by writer and "travel expert-at-large" Nelson George, the site highlights 27 domestic and 15 international destinations sure to resonate with affluent African-American travelers. Readers can submit blog posts detailing their experiences on the road, as well as search for airfares with a special interactive map. They've also been kind enough to feature ya boy, Fly Brother, and his scribblings on Salvador da Bahia, Paris, and Mexico City. Now, that's fly.

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Fly Brother Winter Tour 2009

LOS ANGELES, November 18-23
NEW YORK, December 11-20
ORLANDO, December 20-26
MIAMI, December 29-January 6

If I'm headed your way, shout me!

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