Where I've Been: Paris

My relationship with the City of Light was not love at first sight. The first time I laid eyes on the French capital was in March of 2004, when I snagged a $350 round-trip ticket from Washington to Paris for Spring Break. I spent much of that week trying to not slap the hell out of waiters, cashiers, and one metro station attendant who better be glad there was a plexiglass window separating my hand from his face. But the people on the street were polite and courteous and gave me no attitude whenever I asked what arrondissement I was in or for directions to the nearest McDo (in my defense, I was on a student budget).

Because of that, I decided to drag my family along for another try. Maybe it was because we had a ten-year-old traveling with us, but everybody, including the amazing waitstaff at Café Odeon, showed us the utmost respect and made sure we enjoyed ourselves. Many thanks to "Shrees le chef," as they dubbed my little brother Chris; he'll realize when he's like 30 how much we pimped him on that trip.

Also, forget the Paris you see in Meg Ryan-type romance movies. I mean, that's Paris too, but real Paris is very colored. Folks from all the former French colonies - from Africa (North and Sub-Saharan) and the Antilles to Indochina and the Indian Ocean - paint Paris more shades of brown than you can get mixed at Home Depot. Good-looking brown folks, too! And this diversity is manifested in the thousands of nook-and-cranny nightspots dotting the city, where hip-hop, house, rock, lounge, soul, samba, and salsa all get played sometimes under the same mansard roof. I don't want to even start on the food in a place where even a dollar-bag of cheap croissants from Ed is packed with lip-smacking buttery goodness.

Paris is like New York in the sense that when you exit almost any metro station, the scene is on-and-poppin, and each neighborhood has distinct characteristics that keep you firmly rooted on the same side of town. Barbès, Montmartre, and Pigalle in the north are all different, but united under an urgent energy transcending Barbès' controlled chaos, Montmartre's bohemian chic, and Pigalle's titillating trashiness. More centrally located, Le Marais is all nouveau flash and glamour, whereas the Opéra and Place de la Madeleine are old-school opulence. The Champs-Elysées in the west and the Bastille in the east form the poles of Paris nightlife, while the Puces de Saint-Ouen flea market just outside the Périphérique has hotties, hoodies, and hummus all in one place. And that's just the Rive Droit; Left Bank, I hardly knew you.

There are, of course, the "must-sees" - the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe - but I was moved more by the ethnographic busts and scale models at the Musée D'Orsay, or the intriguing design and exhibits at the Institut du Monde Arabe (where, incidentally, I had my first official Parisian date!). But, like anywhere, it's the atmosphere that seduces you: the stylish old ladies with poodles in pea-coats, the inexpensive wine and inattentive drivers, the canned mackerel with mustard sauce, catching the eye of someone still on the train as it pulls away from you and the platform, movies like Amélie, First Ladies like Carla Bruni, and the packing of as many unnecessary letters into a language as possible.

Paris, je t'aime*.





*Unlike it's amazing, multicultural predecessor, I do not expect much from the whitewashed New York version.

Generation Fly - For Fly Students

LUFTHANSA
Originally uploaded by Payuta Louro

A few months ago, über-chic German airline Lufthansa unveiled its plucky, student-oriented travel website, Generation Fly, which offers special student (and faculty) fares out of New York and other gateways on their expansive global route system. Now, they've upped the ante and are offering the chance to meet and interact with fellow young and nubile collegiate travelers via their slick new social networking site, GenFly Lounge. To keep random dirty old men from defiling the co-eds, an email address with the suffix .edu is required to become a member. Any of my university-affiliated readers willing to join and review the site? The panoramic photos on the homepage make me want to dive through the computer screen. Why didn't these bastids have this thing up and running back when I was in school?

"Why Should White Guys Have All The Fun?"

According to the short bio in the back of his best-selling "self-help" tome, The Four-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, Tim Ferriss "speaks six languages, runs a multinational firm from wireless locations worldwide, and has been a world-record holder in tango, a national champion in Chinese kickboxing, and an actor on a hit television series in Hong Kong." Dude is my age. Damn.

Fundamentally, Ferriss is all about "lifestyle design," which includes personal outsourcing, information management, and mini-retirements that maximize personal free time (to be filled with things you want to do, not have to do). On his blog this week, Ferriss interviews one of his own inspirations, Rolf Potts, writer and professional vagabond who just released his second book, Marco Polo Didn't Go There, "a philosophical book about seeing time as wealth and using travel to actualize that wealth." Now, many folks might not be all that into philosophy, but picking up and traveling, leaving our comfort zones, experiencing the unfamiliar all require a philosophic leap of faith that both Ferriss and Potts try to encourage through their books and websites.

Granted, looking at them - young, Abercrombie-esque, "affluent" white guys - a person of color with a possible interest in international travel might not exactly see themselves reflected in the life experiences of these guys. In fact, the dearth of recorded, comparable experiences by colored folks is the reason for this blog. But these two gentlemen have inspired me to take their advice, borrow some of their techniques, and use their knowledge and experience, plus the seemingly-inexhaustable positive energy reflected in their writing, in planning my life journey.

I've certainly encountered racism in my travels and would never assume that the same open arms extended to Nordic-looking Tim Ferriss by the TV producers in Hong Kong would be extended to Caribbean-looking me. But that doesn't mean I couldn't get on a show in Germany. It doesn't mean I couldn't write my own show and have it produced in Venezuela (or Hong Kong, for that matter). I also know that there are streets I can walk down in Latin America and not get a second look as an easy tourist target, while Tim Ferriss wouldn't last ten seconds without being swarmed by screaming multitudes hawking native trinkets, blood emeralds, overpriced designer knock-offs, or underaged girls. But it's not about comparing myself to these guys with an attitude of disdain or jealousy. On the contrary; right now, I'm trying to do what they're doing - traveling and writing professionally - and damn if I'm not going to learn a thing or two from these intrepid lads. As deceased black muti-billionaire Reginald Lewis once asked, "why should white guys have all the fun?"

There's plenty of fun to go around.

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Two more short but excellent interviews with Rolf Potts about his new book and the art of long-term travel can be found on World Hum and Vagabondish.

What I Appreciate About the USA

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 the Economist. 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)

Ike Swipes Caribbean

Please send prayers/good energy out to the brothers and sisters in the Caribbean, especially in Haiti, the DR, and Cuba, who've been ravaged by an active hurricane season this summer. You can watch video of Hurricane Ike here. The pictures below are from eastern Cuba, sent to me by the Saint Augustine-Baracoa Friendship Association (check them out to send clothing and other needed supplies to Cuba). Check out the wave surging over that five-story building! At the bottom are two shots of my very good friends in Cuba. Communication with them has always been limited (phone service in Cuba is spotty and Internet access is a joke) and I hope they're okay.

Making an International Ass of Myself...

...last summer on the beach in Rio de Janeiro, butchering the beautiful Portuguese lyrics to Tom Jobim's iconic "Samba do Avião" (crudely translated as "Jet Plane Samba"):


Gringos cantam no Yahoo! Vídeo

This is how it really go, complete with opening prayer to the Orishas for safe passage into Rio:

Getting Your Walking Papers

By age thirty, most everyone should have a passport. If you are over thirty and don't have one, I won't waste any time criticizing (triflin...). I'll just say that there's no better time than now to start the process, and I've tried to make the process a little easier by sifting through the US State Department's travel site - travel.state.gov - for information on obtaining a US passport. I'll also say that the folks thinking they can pop down to Mexico or the Bahamas with their driver's licenses these days are in for a rude awakening at the border.

The State Department operates several passport agencies, located in Boston, Chicago, Denver, Honolulu, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Norwalk (CT), Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington (click the city name for info on that particular agency). Lastly, passport applications can be picked up and submitted at almost all US Post Offices.

You can also download and print a first-time passport application: here.

The total cost (in United States Dollars) for a first-time passport is $100 for anyone aged 16 and over and $85 for anyone under 16. The charge is broken down into the passport fee ($75 for 16 and over/$60 for under 16) and the execution fee ($25 for both). If you apply for your passport directly through the State Department at a passport agency, the total cost may be made in one payment and in several methods. If applying through the post office, the application fee must be made payable to the US Department of State, while the execution fee must be made payable to the US Postal Service (check or money order only).

Additional requirements include a copy of your birth certificate as proof of United States citizenship and a state- or federal government-issued photo ID for proof of identity, along with two 2x2-inch passport photos that can be taken at any FedEx-Kinko's or certain stores and pharmacies like Walgreens, CVS, or Wal-Mart. A list of other acceptable documents and forms of ID can be found here.

Passports can take up to 6 weeks to arrive, but can be expedited by visiting a passport agency, or requesting rush service with the application at the post office, for an additional $60. More information on an expedited passport can be found here.

You can also check on the status of your passport application here.

Passports for adults are usually valid for 10 years. Passports for children are valid for less time and require a different application procedure (check here).

Most foreign governments require that a US passport be valid for at least another six months after the conclusion of the trip. An adult renewal passport costs $75, and more information can be found here.

For international ballers who are running out of room in their still-valid passports, extra pages can be ordered, or you can get a newer, thicker passport here.

September 11 has, of course, caused a tightening in travel documentation requirements, hence the establishment of the WHTI - Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. Essentially, all the formerly passport-free areas for road trips and cruises - Canada, Mexico, and much of the Caribbean - will by 2009 require either a passport; a newfangled device called a passport card, good for border crossings by land or sea; or other "WHTI-compliant document." The cards cost $45 for a first-time adult applicant, $35 for a first-time child applicant, and $20 for current valid passport holders. All air travel to these regions will continue to require a traditional passport book.

Any other information you might want, need, or forgot to ask...check the website, because, hell, the State Department ain't payin' a brother.