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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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.
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.
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).
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:
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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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-BCCFlorida 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.
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:
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.
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?
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?"
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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While I catch up from a hellified week of handling personal business before the trip and the move, I thought I'd share this inspiring clip of a 13-year-old violin virtuoso that I encountered last week earning a lot of change on the street in Philadelphia:
I've never been known as a flag-waving, red-white-and-blue-bleeding patriot (often, quite the opposite), but there is one thing I am constantly in awe of and can never begrudge the United States: the greatness of its largest cities. Over the past few weeks, I've been to several American burgs, each one unique in its history, culture, and atmosphere; each a national, if not international, center of industry, commerce, communication, and transport; each with myriad museums, restaurants, concerts, festivals, and other markings of cosmopolitan sophistication. Say what you will about Wonder Bread suburban monoculture—America's cities as parts of a larger whole are unmatched anywhere else on the planet. I doubt any other country has as many places peopled by representatives of every cultural group on Earth:
Miami, Atlanta, Washington, Houston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Dallas, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York*
Take any of the cities I just named, and you can come up with any random dish, type of music, style of dance, or artistic movement: there's samba and salsa in Seattle, pad Thai in Miami, Guinean drum circles in Houston, and Tahitiandance classes in New York. And the ease of internal migration and the abundance of external immigration means the fusion of local traditions with recent additions.
Naysayers might erroneously invoke Europe as a comparison: there is none. Europe is a collection of independent nations with their attendant histories, languages, and former colonial empires. The majority of major cities on the Continent and the Isles are ex-imperial capitals, where wealth and power were concentrated during a multi-century competition with neighboring metropoli. The greatest American cities developed through a balance of domestic and international interests, without being national, or sometimes even state capitals. Besides, the United States is still only one country; there are others larger and more populous.
Then, there are equally vast nations, such as China or India for instance, with a large cadre of population centers that are, unfortunately, just that: agglomorations of people drawn together, like all cities, by virtue of resources and opportunity, but largely homogenous relative to their enormous population size and not very well-known on an international scale as models of economic or cultural diversity.
Yes, American cities deal with gang violence and grit, economic and social disparity, declining educational output and unemployment, pollution and inadequate public transportation. But these ills drive the best and brightest in their quest for liveable, enjoyable hometowns. The country is the biggest beneficiary of that work, manifested in those swarming hubs of human interaction where city lights outshine stars.
*I'm purposely excluding "niche" cities like Las Vegas, Orlando, Honolulu, or New Orleans; or "secondary" places like Charlotte, San Antonio, Portland, or Denver, despite soaring cosmopolitanism in each.
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Yesterday, I wrapped up a two-week jaunt out to California, Washington State, and Oregon, for no particular reason other than to meet up with friends on their home turf and to experience a part of the country I'd never been to. Of course, as with most new and interesting places I encounter these days, my mind goes automatically into livability-evaluation mode and I start to assess various indicators (job availability, income potential, cost-of-living, social and cultural offerings) in a semi-conscious litmus test of whether or not I'd be inclined to move there sometime in the unspecified future. This most always happens when I'm basking in the warmth and attention of good friends, who work unintentionally as the best PR agents any city could hope for, and I often leave considering, temporarily at least, a potential home-base that I hadn't before. So it went as I ventured from the humid semi-tropics of my native Florida over to the green-and-gold splendor of America's (Upper) West Coast: San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland.
San Francisco Bay I got to San Francisco International at almost midnight on July 1st, and was whisked away into the city in a black Toyota Prius (that I promptly nicknamed "Kit") by Mike and Ana, a neo-California power-couple-in-the-making whom I met in Colombia over a year ago. We spent the first couple of days on both sides of the Bay Bridge whetting our collective appetite for Thai food and tribal house, and getting our intellectual grooves on at the stunning California Academy of Sciences (NightLife on Thursdays, featuring a DJ and an albino alligator) and the Oakland Museum of California (featuring a poignant exhibition on the African presence in Mexico and a live salsa orchestra - thanks to reader Keith for that tip). Independence Day meant a breezy barbecue (featuring Jenkins Barbecue sauce specially shipped from Jville) out at Fort Mason Park and accompanying fireworks, with fifteen cool peeps huddled under three blankets and swathed in hoodies, hats, and scarves to watch the show; Mark Twain wasn't lyin' about these San Fran summers. A couple days later, Mike dragged me with him for indoor rock climbing before we had a BBQ re-do under the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge (there was sauce left, so...), and while M&A worked, I either hit the gym (Crunch Fitness in the Alhambra Theater - phenomenal - click for free pass), hit the streets (Black man taking snapshots of the mansions of Pacific Heights - talk about tempting fate), or hit the first season of "Mad Men" on DVD (the show's hot, y'all). I even got a chance to meet some West Coast cousins I'd only heard of, but had never seen, over some Burmese food that I'd only heard of, but had never tasted.
Frisco has two serious downsides: the weather (fog and frost in August!) and the expense. My friends' small-but-comfy studio rents for $1300 a month and no meal at any sit-down restaurant clocks in at under $8 (that includes breakfast)! The city is known as being the most expensive after New York, and for an aspiring writer without some type of independent wealth, you can hang San Fran up. That being said, the enormous natural and architectural beauty of the city—a 19th-century masterpiece perched atop commanding peaks over a turquoise bay—coupled with a cultural mix that truly does seem to get along better with each other than any other place in the country (even Oak-town represents with a large black middle class, thriving in spite of trigger-happy transit cops), the friendliness of service people (not one but two foreign convenience store owners welcomed me into their shops without a sign of resentment or bitterness...they clearly have never been robbed), the cult-like devotion to Obama (we started playing punch buggy with Obama t-shirts), and the urbane quirks (two skinny, butt-nekkit dudes walking hand-in-hand in the Castro in 50-degree weather; Asian girls jamming to Jade on their iPods; street names like Divisadero and Guerrero; super-futuristic-warp-speed-high-pressure bathroom hand driers; Bollyhood and Little Baobab and Escape from New York Pizza!) put SFO high up on the list of Fly Brother's hang-out spots. I just can't afford to live there.
Seattle After my Golden State interlude, I carried it up the coast via plush Virgin America to the Emerald City. My grad school buddy Lisa scooped me from Sea-Tac and drove us on a gray, overcast afternoon through forests of dark and piney Christmas trees into downtown Seattle, named after a vanquished Indian chief and squeezed on a hilly isthmus between Lake Washington and Puget Sound. We dined on fish and grits (which they called polenta and charged $18 for) with views of the busy seaport, downed just-cool-enough-to-drink-immediately mugs of coffee, and caught up on life as the sun finally came out, then slid under the horizon just before 10 PM. Flannel was the order of the day, especially in Lisa's Scandinavian-inspired barrio of Ballard, and even though my few days in Seattle were sunny and warmer than San Francisco, a green, underlying coolness permeated the air and always seemed ready to pounce like an animal on the nascent daytime heat. I crashed the next day on free-wheeling, centrally-located Capitol Hill with mohawked Brazilian Couchsurfer Gabi, who invited me to a samba set at Cellars Belltown (free on Thursday nights) and got jiggy with the strong contingent of Brazilians, Dominicans, and other assorted black and brown youngins who came out of the woodwork (I was too busy dancing and trying to get laid to take photos, sorry). Friday, after hitting a hangar-sized 24 Hour Fitness, I spent the afternoon horsing around with Lisa and Dutch Couchsurfer Ozella in front of the Seattle Asian Art Museum (see me on camel below) and down by the Space Needle. The tower's twenty-dollar admission fee was enough to discourage me, but we took photos and rode the Seattle Monorail and the carnivalesque Windstorm roller coaster. In full-on daylight, the Space Needle does indeed look like a relic from the Jetsons Pavilion at EPCOT, but at night, against the boxy, sparkly rectangles of downtown Seattle, with dots of light gliding through the sky in succession towards the airport, the fluid, illuminated white structure stands cool and imposing, the embodiment of the future we're living.
With all the dot-coms based in the area, Seattle's also not the biggest budget destination. And while the short summer is pleasant, with lingering sunlight and lots of parks to play in, it's still damn short; wintry rain sounds even less appealing than snow. Garbage Nazis are everywhere: you can't just throw shit away out West...there's recycling, compost, then regular waste. The city's also more ethnically diverse than I had anticipated, though much of that mixture seems to occur among the homeless population. People in crowded clubs and bars are exceedingly polite, random skyline and water views pop out of nowhere, and the double happy hour menus (4-7pm, then 10-midnight)—La Isla, anyone?—mean a slew of late-nite eats. Despite other people's disparaging remarks about dullness, Sea-town's done right by me.
Portland I took Amtrak's Cascades route from Seattle to Portland, a three-hour rail expedition alongside the vast Puget Sound, past hulking, forested islands like Chia-whales rising from the glassy water, and under trestled and suspended bridges painted in earthy colors. Adam, my old roommate from Bogota, now permanently bearded and managing a hostel, picked me up from red-bricked Union Station, gave me a quick tour of the surprisingly large and bouncing downtown area, and we grabbed brunch over at Genies Cafe (the crabmeat omelet was slammin'). Afterwards, he went to work and I met up with Erika, colombiana and one-half of a couple I met in Rio over the holidays, and we walked around and hit some of the famous food carts downtown. Then it was Tori Amos at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, a stupendously beautiful rococo theater with a gargantuan "Portland" spelled out on the marquee. We were eight rows back from the stage; Tori toe it up, focusing mostly on the new stuff, but sated us old heads with "Cornflake Girl" and "Little Earthquakes." Lots of things like, "Tori, you're my goddess," and "Tori, I wanna have your baby," were shouted from eager fans. I just said, "Woooo" a couple times. Sunday, after a stupid-big breakfast at a place called Gravy in the gentrified Mississippi neighborhood (guess why it's called that), I hooked up with the great Kate, 50-year-old native Portlander and hardened traveler (Philippines, Thailand, Colombia, Venezuela—on her own, ladies!) who's off to Abu Dhabi next month for a couple years, and we strolled through the Portland Saturday Market (open Sundays) before entering ginormous Powell's, the world's largest bookstore and nerd crack house. I escaped after an hour, having spent only $29 for four books and leaving most of my travel budget intact; another ten minutes and things would have been grim. Later, after a stop at too-ballyhooed Voodoo Doughnut, I caught up with Lance, the other half of the couple from Rio, and had meatballs and mac-n-cheese at Savoy Tavern before crashing from exhaustion and starting the 24-hour journey back to Seattle, San Francisco, Atlanta, and home.
When I got to Portland, I had no expectations of what the city might be like, other than a populated outpost in whitest Caucasia. Thanks to the urban growth boundary implemented in the 70s to combat sprawl, downtown's thriving and enjoyable, surrounded by walkable, quiet, compact neighborhoods with little eateries and shops in each one. I saw very little vacant commercial spaces (unlike my own hometown, a port city roughly the same size and with better weather) and lots of people riding absurdly tall bicycles. I also so lots of people wearing absurd-looking headgear, including lots of Robin Hood-style caps. Because of the economy, many young, hip liberal arts degree-holders are waiting tables or slinging coffee for a living, and that same many have an aloofness that borders on rudeness, for a Southern boy like me who is accustomed to expecting a level of service commensurate with the amount of the final check. A Waffle House waitress can fling my $2 waffle at me, but if I'm paying $8 for some eggs, we need to be clear about who's doing who the favor. I didn't like that air of hipster arrogance, and I think a nice spate of violent crime might serve to put those attitudes in check. Of the three cities I visited, Portland seems to be the fullest of strivers, good and bad, proud of their strides in urban planning, transportation development (convenient and quick), and environmental awareness, but just a little too caught up in their own specialness in a place where everyone's off one rocker or another, and in one-upping Seattle. Anyway, in spite of a couple of gloomy, drizzly days, and a shocking amount of homeless people in their 20s, Portland proved a chill conclusion to my western adventure.
Did the shoe fit? Let's see if I start to miss it after a little while back East.
Special shouts to the following people for making this trip memorable: SFO: Mike, Ana, Jeff, Cousin Jackie, Michelle, B. Mason, Isaac, Sharif, and Keith SEA: Lisa, Tom, Ramon, Gabi, Erik, Ozella, and Camille PDX: Adam, Kate, Erika, Lance, and Mark
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Fireworks (Blurry) Fort Mason Park San Francisco, California USA July 4, 2009 Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment below and/or click.
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-BCCFlorida 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.
If you haven't the foggiest idea of what the hell I'm talkin' bout, please see the 2002 feature film, Drumline, starring Mariah's current, Nick Cannon.
This is footage from São Paulo's Vai-Vai samba school practicing for that city's Carnival competition at the end of this month. I'm telling you folks, you can call it whatever you want, in whatever language you want, but the rhythm within us remains unchanged.
So, in spite of an intense desire to my last US home base amidst the radiant energy of a socio-political paradigm shift, and a $550 ticket from Colombia to NYC (close enough) for the occasion, I have concluded that it's probably in my best (financial) interest not to go to the inauguration in DC. I would have had to borrow money or be sponsored to every event I went to, mooching off of my very hospitable friends, but still starting 2009 in debt, which is never a good idea. My Brazil trip can't be cancelled because I'm going with friends and taking advantage of that cheap airfare would mean taking four days of unpaid leave from my job to comply with the flight dates. Like I said in the comments on my "Decisions" post, the cold or the crowds weren't reasons to stay away...in fact, I was looking forward to being squeezed on the Metro with thousands of other people - Americans of every ilk - excited about a new chapter in our country's history, smiling from excitement and shouting "Yeah!" and "Yes We Can!" and "Obama!" before even exiting the station. I was looking forward to the parties and the conversations and the old and new friends I'd meet and the job offers I'd get (truly) and the photos I'd take and witnessing political anticipation buzzing through the proletariat. But, like this year's Olympics and Sade's last concert (waaaaay back in 2001), I'll have to chalk up missing the inauguration to another instance of not being able to do it all.
So, the plane ticket to the inauguration of our noble president-elect, Barack Hussein Obama, costs around $800. If I spend it, I'll miss out on:
-Three days of work, unpaid. -Either a Buenos Aires or Salvador da Bahia add-on to my end-of-the-year romp in Brazil. -A trip to Cuba in February with some of my best friends from the States. -New York for Spring Break. -A new digital camera (the one I have now is very "first generation"). -A new iPod (well, an iPod, as I currently don't own one and this Discman is looking more and more like an 8-track player every day). -Possibly Mexico in March with another one of my cool peeps.
Now, I know you're thinking that all these things couldn't possibly be worth $800, which is true when considering the individual price of each item. However, when taking into account the accrued interest, fees, and surcharges that go along with robbing Peter to pay Paul, the end amount spent becomes compounded.
If I do go, I'll be making a long-overdue and much-needed visit to Washington, where I lived as a sometime political operative before moving to Colombia. I'll be amongst virtually all of my very best friends in life (and get to see my undergrad university especially represented since our band, the world-famous Marching 100, has been invited to perform). And we'll be witnessing the one and only time that the first black president of the United States is sworn into office. I mean, I'm the history teacher for chrissakes...shouldn't I be there for this one and only history-making life-changing event?
I have to decide by next week.
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Note: If this post sounds strange and flighty to you, then you should know that I am indeed a sufferer of vagabond neurosis.
And I'm perfectly euphoric. Today, I mailed in my absentee ballot, voting for president (B. Obama, of course), a Florida state senator, about six judges, the Duval County clerk of court, some folks for the soil and water commission, and on a couple of state constitutional amendments (including pro-non-citizen property ownership rights and pro-gay marriage).
I've done my duty. If Obama loses, so will be forever lost the modicum of faith I have in the U.S. electoral system and its citizenry, and I will never vote again. What would be the point after that? This, from a political science major and former political campaign operative turned international blogger.
Here's hopin'.
Meanwhile, if some foul shit goes down in Florida, if they try to hoodwink us, bamboozle us, lead us astray, or run us amock like in 2000, my girl Cyndi got proof that at least one vote was cast for Barack Obama in Dade County:
When I left the states for South America in 2005, I was definitely not a patriotic person. I mean, 200 years of slavery, a hundred years of legal segregation, and another forty of trigger-happy police incursions and a societal fear of black men do not exactly compel me to sing "God Bless America." Still, living abroad has instilled in me what I'd call a passive sense of nationalism, manifested as a nostalgia for certain uniquely American cultural attributes that can't be found anywhere else. The United States is absolutely not "the best country in the world." No place is. But the US definitely has a lot of cool stuff going for it. This is my list of ten things I appreciate about the States:
10) Magazines. I mean, damn, one whole wall at Barnes & Noble (or Books-A-Million) is dedicated to the glossy, shiny alternate universe of magazines. There's one for every geek boner you could imagine, from crocheting to dirt biking to porn. And besides the staples of every black household (Ebony, Essence, and the ubiquitous Jet), I get to see gorgeous people of color smiling back at me from the covers of Vanity Fair and Men's Health and Time as if we've actually overcome!
9) Healthy Foods. Here in Colombia, a small, 10-slice pack of turkey breast costs $6. At Winn-Dixie, a pound of sliced turkey breast costs $4. Tropical and temperate fruits. Peanut butter. Protein bars and granola bars and low-carb bars and cereal bars. Yeah, lots of it might be processed and/or preserved, but dammit...we grow tall and big and strong in the USA!
8) Concerts. Mavis Staples. Kid Sister. Seu Jorge. Bebel Gilberto. Afrika Bambaataa. Julieta Vanegas. Dave Hollister. Santogold. Crosby, Stills & Nash. Los Lonely Boys. Black Dice. Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens. All free this summer in New York. That's just one venue in one city for one season.
7) American Cinema. Citizen Kane. Gone With the Wind. Imitation of Life. All About Eve. Blazing Saddles. Young Frankenstein. The Wiz. Jo-Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling. Jungle Fever. New Jack City. Juice. Lean On Me. Krush Groove. Love Jones. Eve's Bayou. I Like It Like That. Casino. Heat. The Shawshank Redemption. American Beauty. Fargo. Requiem for a Dream. Any Given Sunday. A Christmas Story. The Hours. Bring It On (just playin'). And absolutely everything in between. (I couldn't even begin to wrap my mind around a "comprehensive" list.)
6) Landscapes. The amber waves of grain on the Great Plains. Purple mountain majesties of the Rockies. The rocky cliffs of California. The infinite flatness of the Everglades. Volcanoes and pine forests and glaciers and beaches with black and white and beige and coral sands. America is beautiful.
5) Black American and Southern culture. Of course, these often overlap. Grits and eggs and grits and bacon and grits and fish and grits and corned beef hash and grits and fried bologna and cornbread and collard greens and barbecue and boiled crabs (with potatoes and corn and Roger Wood sausages) and, yes, chitlins and music at parties and games of spades and tonk (or "tunk") and drawls and twangs and shit-talkin and rankin' on somebody's mama til somebody gets mad and breakin out movie lines like "You ain't got-ta lie, Craig!" and breakin out old dances like the Reebok and the Cabbage Patch and the Running Man and the Roger Rabbit (and the Squirrel and the Tawlet Bowl and the Woop and the Tootsie Roll) and HBCU football games and step shows and dropped r's (pahk the cah, nah!) and words like chuch and mm-hmm and well! and my-my-my and Jesus Lawd and the odd-count grunt that generations of black women have perfected when receiving bad/interesting/surprising news: mmm. Mmm-mmm-mmm. Mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm. Thems my peoples.
4) Diversity. There is no other country on Earth with more than two truly international cities. There's always been the gateways - New York, LA, Miami, San Fran. The capital - Washington. The classics - Philly and Boston. The magnet - Chicago. But now, even bastions of regionalized Americana are noticeably microcosmic - Atlanta, Seattle, Dallas, Houston. On any given weekend, you can leave your Mandarin Chinese class to fill-up on some pad Thai before hitting a salsa spot and then an afterparty with a Brazilian DJ. Or you could just go straight to Magic City right after that pad Thai.
3) Comparative success of Black Americans. Nowhere else in the hemisphere do the descendants of African slaves have as many opportunities to develop socioeconomically than in the US, in spite of foolishness from both mainstream society (of which we're less than 14% of the population) and amongst ourselves. Black immigrants from the Caribbean might do well in Canada, but not too many of them do that well back in their home countries. Colombia's cool and I love Brazil, but we still got a long way to go in those places, too, which is disheartening since half of Brazil's 200 million people are of African descent, as well as 40% of Colombia's. And there are no Latin American Obamas, Oprahs, Colins, Condis, Kenneth Chenaults, or Richard Parsonses. In many places, like where I live, they still Driving Miss Daisy.
2) Freedom of speech and political discourse. "BUCK FUSH!" There, I said it. Try saying "Puck Futin," "Chuck Favez," "Ruck Ufibe," or "Cuck Fastro" in their respective countries, and thas yo ass.
1) English. I love languages, especially those of the Romance variety (Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian son mis favoritos). Still, much useful information about the world in which we live is only available in the home language of the country that produces that information, and in English. I haven't seen any Spanish-language publication or broadcast news source that gives as complete coverage to global issues as theEconomist. If I get lost at the airport in Dapango, Togo, I guarantee you somebody's gon speak a lil English. It's the lingua franca of the new millenium, y'all, and I'm glad I got to learn it growing up so I wouldn't have to be bothered with learning its ridiculous spelling and pronunciation system as an adult.
What do my fellow expats appreciate about the States?
(Very specific honorable mentions: Marshalls, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and driving on a freeway at dusk with some hot lounge or chill house setting the tempo)
Fly Brother tackles international travel in unabridged, unapologetic, full and complete color. It's also the blog name of writer and educator Ernest White II, a tall, ruggedly handsome, erudite, occasionally delusional Black American male living in Brazil's largest city.
Y'all wasn't exactly expectin' a pitcher a'Mammy, wuzya?
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.
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