Tag: NYC

Museo Nacional de Antropología

Museo Nacional de Antropología

A man stood next to me in a Korean owned deli in Palisades Park, NJ.  His boots were fake, not real lizard but still in the style of  botas de vaquero none the less.  The boots you can buy in any norteno town where the men have paid thousands to sneak across the border to work as low paid laborers in the US.  His trim mustache and dark skin, tucked-in shirt and ironed blue jeans might have made him a short Lotharo back in Piedras Negras but here, he was just a a guy who worked as a baker in a Korean pastry shop.  Maybe he cut grass, painted, lifted, delivered, hauled, got spit on, harassed, not paid, paid lowly, hid, ducked, drank, shivered, and maybe he did none of the above.  But he was here, not in his country, and trying to work.

The Spanish I heard in Times Square coming from Minny Mouse wasn’t the native tongue of the native Puerto Ricans or Dominicanos.  It was la lengua of the Mexican.  Maybe the Chapinas or the Peruvian.  But it was the accent of the new comers.  They  dressed as Elmo, Spiderman, and Minnie to pose for a dollar or two with the kids of those who stayed in $300 a night hotels in the City.  They crossed borders to stand next to white kids so that their parents could snap pictures of them in the blinking lights.

One guy gets hot and lets slip his facade.  The mask slips revealing a face more fitting inside the Museo Nacional de Antropología than on the streets of Times Square.  Cada de indio as my mother would say of the neighbors.  The face of an indigenista, a face from Southern Mexcio, of Guatemala, of the south.

So Spiderman crossed 9th ave near Port Authority.  Wherever he went, he seemed tired.  Worn from dancing for the Spanish and Italian tourists.  Of hearing the accents of his conquerors and taking the money of his master.  He probably walked to his next job.  His delivery job where he would make a dollar or two running msg-filled Chinese food up six floors up to an uppity Iowan who now calls Manhattan home.  The Iowan feels its his new right to belittle the delivery guy who was five minutes late because he couldn’t walk fast enough.  The rain was too hard, the snow was too cold.

Santiago once pointed out the only people out on the streets during a blizzard were the mojados who were delivering food.

I learned on this trip New York works because of it’s illegal infestation.  An infestation that makes the City move.

 

Los Angeles Times goes organic.

Los Angeles Times goes organic.

Just a quick posting of tearsheets from a travel piece I shot for the LA Times and the new travel trend of Agrotourism in Hawaii.  Well traveled tourists are now recognizing the value of eating off the resort and eating and shopping locally.  Fresh fruits, vegetables, and produce can be pretty good albeit rather pricey at times.  But on an island, everything can be pricey.

So some have asked how much certain things cost here so here is a quick rundown:

gallon of milk:  around $6 for mainland, $8 to $9 for locally produced.

gallon of gas:  HNL:  $4.45, outer island $4.70+

lb of bananas:  local apple bananas are about $1.30, imported are around $1.09

pineapple:  Costco price is $3.29 or so, tourist price at fruit stand, $6

lb of ground beef:  $3-4

locally grown tomatoes:  $5/lb, imported are about $2.99/lb

But some of these costs didn’t surprise me from New York but they are shocking when you go to a place like San Antonio where you pay like $1 for 10 limes/lemons where at Safeway locally you get a lemon for like $1.29 EACH.

But to get back to the shopping locally at local farmer’s markets, things are obviously fresher and more unique and you will get a taste of the small farm as opposed to the corporations growing produce on the west coast.  You can’t buy mangosteens or rambutans at Safeway but you’ll pay for it at the farmer’s markets but the tastes and joy of eating something exotic really do make you feel like you are in the middle of the Pacific.

Lots of the exotic fruits and produce grown here are not native but they do add flavor to the local cuisine.  Its great tourists are now recognizing the value of having a sustainable trip where things are sourced locally rather than imported at high costs.  This creates local jobs, demonstrates we shouldn’t convert every inch of ag land into condos and resorts, and sustains a better way of life for everyone one on the Islands.  The drawbacks…well the major one is the costs of doing business, and the costs of labor.  Hawaii has no access to cheap immigrant labor to work in the fields, labor laws are strict and surely add to the costs of doing business, and Hawaii is clearly not business friendly.  Costs and taxes are high enough to drive small and start ups off the Islands.  Historically, the plantations took advantage of the labor here which drove a rise in unionism and now housekeepers at the big hotels are paid as much as the night managers.  How the hotels survive is by passing that cost onto you.

Regardless of my ranting, locally grown whatevahs is the trend across the country.  I’m glad we’re pushing more of this into our lifestyle even if it does costs a little more.  A locally grown avocado is pretty tasty.  Locally grown greens are crisper and its always neat to know I got an egg from a local chicken and not off a boat.

Oh, the above picture of the farm girl, Norah Hoover.  Ah, what a beauty.  She was working on the Kauai farm that produces stuff for Common Grounds in Kilauea.  As the staff was walking me around showing me parts of the farm and gardens which produce a good portion of the food for their restaurant, Norah walks over, barefoot no less, to plant kale into the field.  I immediately was drawn to her as her off the shoulder shirt, overalls, and bed head red hair fit my image of what organic farming and life is like on Kauai.  Sure enough, the LA Times and others have used that picture to be the lead for the story.  She made a great picture.