Bloodgroup - Hips Again

Hidden New York: 5 Pointz

5 Pointz is a year-long graffiti exhibit spread across the facades of a 200,000 square ft (18,600 square meters) factory building used for art studios. Graffiti artists need to obtain a permit to leave a mark on these walls, with more prominent artists / sophisticated art getting the most visible spots. The lifespan of a single graffiti piece at 5 Pointz ranges from 1 day to 2 years, depending on its quality, popularity (pedestrian traffic around it) and the artist's name. This ensures that, no matter how many times you visit, there will always be something new to see.

I highly recommend this free exhibit, especially if the weather is nice. Not only will you see many unique works, but the combination of so many of them on a single object makes the facades of the abandoned factory resemble an enormous technicolor mosaic. Circle the building and find the stairs to climb on top, chill and take a deep breath of Manhattan and Long Island City (or at least take some awesome photos).


Address & Directions: 5 Pointz, Jackson Avenue at Crane Street and Davis Street, Long Island City, NY 11101; take the E or V subway to 23 St/Ely Ave, 7 to 45 Rd/Court House Sq., or G to Court House Square.

Another Yugoslavian Breakup & Lousy Makeup

After several false announcements, the Sarajevo - Belgrade railway is back in business. Some foreign media have romanticized this but I must say I find it rather confusing.

The luxurious Olympic Express, coined so after being garnished with a red carpet, upscale dining and stewardesses in smart uniforms for the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, is now an outdated train segmented into 3 mismatched cars, each under the jurisdiction of a different railway company. Moreover, the Bosnian-Serb car disconnects where the Serbian part of Bosnia ends, never even reaching Sarajevo.

This faded train resembles the chaos that captured Yugoslavia during the war. What used to be a cross country train now has to cross two borders and two (often very unpleasant) passport controls. It runs once a day, rather than 3 times as was the case prior to the war. Its passengers - once cheerful party-goers, skiers and businessmen - have transformed into none but a few worn out faces.

Smoking is kind of allowed in the cafe car... While travelers may light up when passing Serbia and Bosnia, they are forbidden to do so when the train is crossing the more European, Croatian non-smoking tracks.

18 years after its last run through Yugoslavia, the Olympic Express is slower. Due to the severe warfare damages that the railway, bridges and facilities underwent, it now takes over 2 additional hours to get from Belgrade to Sarajevo. So finally, the results of our war have in some way been quantified: we are two hours further apart, whatever that means.

Its windows smeared and seats shabby, the train looks nothing like its old self, when it was called the Olympic Express and trumpeted as the pride of the Communist-run nation.

www.guardian.co.uk , 13 December 2009

Documentaries : A Wonderful Weird World.

With the sprawl of monotonous topics in mainstream movies, it has been increasingly difficult to find a film that both shakes and teaches you something. Apart from independent fiction films, I have always fancied documentaries as a pitchout from the microcosm of my simple life and petty worries. If you never considered yourself a documentary geek, here is a couple of films that should convert you:

• The Cove (Louie Psihoyos)
  
• Devil's Playground (Lucy Walker)
  
• Below Sea Level (Gianfranco Rosi)

Last night, at the European Feature Documentary Film Festival "The Magnificent 7" in Belgrade, I saw Below Sea Level, a story about the homeless in California, settled in a camp in the desert, 190 miles southeast of Los Angeles and 120 feet below sea level. With no particular narrative, this film follows the daily lives of several different people ranging from a (former marine) transvestite to a woman who lost her son because he took a bullet for her. It is shocking in many ways, without ever communicating the director's thoughts. I kept expecting the political or sociological message that usually follows plots of this sort but it never came. All of the audio, both dialogue and music, came directly from the characters. No narrative text to answer the many questions rushing through my mind. It was on me to decide. It was on me to react.

The result? Bothered by so many dilemmas, I have been completely distracted by these peculiar Californians. I have been telling their story and recommending the movie to my family, friends, coworkers... Thumbs up to the self-generating marketing move, Gianfranco Rosi!

Prostitution: Prohibition, Abolition, or mere Regulation?

Whore. Hooker. Slut. Wait a minute. Do not take the image of sex workers as you may know it for granted.
Unlike the prohibitionist legislation in most western countries, Sweden and the Netherlands have somewhat alternative views on sex work, and neither of the countries criminalize the worker.

Since 1999, Sweden has been attempting the abolitionist approach to prostitution by criminalizing the purchase of sex services. Thus, it is the client, rather than the prostitute who is considered guilty. By subtracting a large number of purchasers, Swedes are hoping to disrupt the sex market to the extent to which it can no longer sustain itself. The general view is that prostitution represents the peak of men's oppression against women and that no prostitution is voluntary. Thus an important purpose of this law was to influence people's attitudes through numerous feminist campaigns, emphasizing that gender equality is impossible if men are still able to sell, consume and exploit women's bodies.

The Dutch, on the other hand, are strong believers in voluntary prostitution. Their view is that prostitution has existed for so long across the world, that the only pragmatic approach is to accept the situation and regulate it so that it excludes involuntary actions. The Netherlands lifted the ban on brothels in 2000. The 6 main objectives of this legislation are:

1. control and regulation of prostitution;
2. better combat against the exploitation of involuntary prostitution;
3. protection of minors;
4. protection of the prostitutes' position;
5. separation of prostitution from criminal activities;
6. reduction of the portion of illegal immigrants in prostitution;

This voluntary vs. involuntary approach makes the Swedish one seem so conservative! A report written by the Norweigan working group for the legal regulation of the purchase of sex services shows that the legislation in Sweden has caused prostitution to go underground, the prices of sex services to drop and the fear of violence to grow among prostitutes while the Netherlands' hunt on street prostitution after the legalization of brothels sent a lot of illegal immigrant workers back to places they may have been trying to escape. Has anyone asked the sex workers before taking a stab at solving their problems?

Air - La Femme D'Argent

Market Middlemen

While the post-communist transition process picks up in Serbia, even the make up of our open air markets has been transforming. As real peasants can no longer afford to travel to the cities to sell their produce, the middlemen/women of the markets have prospered. The buyers do not trust these new "businessmen", partly because the prices have considerably risen and partly because they are unsure about where the food they buy comes from. Thus, the market middlemen wear clothing as similar as possible to the stereotype image of the Serbian peasant, in hope that someone will mistake them for one and become a regular customer.

The End of a D.C. Public School

H.D. Woodson High School was the only high school in Marshall Heights, a neighborhood spread across the border of South East and North East Washington DC, and is now being demolished because of serious problems with plumbing, heating and hazard protection.

America's Oldest Children

"My rose is that I love my mom. My thorn is that my dad got locked up." Jackson's eyes were filled with tears. Playing Roses and Thorns was a way to sometimes help the children talk about their feelings, which they rarely did. They usually took their situation - homelessness, missing fathers, addicted mothers, daily shootings in the neighborhood - for granted. Jackson is 7 years old and lives with his mother, who recently realized she was a lesbian, and four other brothers at a transitional housing program in South East D.C. The father, a homeless most of his life, is usually missing or in jail, and the few times I have seen him visit the children he would make it a point to call their mother a "dike" or to take the saved up pocket money from his sons (which usually added up to a few dollars). 

That was the most difficult part of volunteering with homeless children in South East DC, the helplessness of an outsider. Not being able to do something about the way Jackson's father talked about his mother because it was a family matter. Not being able to do anything about 9-year-old Mike's mother who was constantly drugged up on a mixture of pills she invented as a substitute for crack. Not knowing what to say when the kids called each other "nigger". I was and always would be a white privileged outsider and, despite the fact that many of the families overcame this, I am not sure I ever did. Privilege had crippled me. The thought of me proposing solutions to the problems of lives I had never come close to living began to terrify me. 

I decided to be a close friend but at the same time respect that the role of a friend, especially a child friend, is one of a listener, a distractor from daily troubles, a companion. We did many things together, from jumprope to homework. I let go of what I knew of as norms and finally began to see things with a clearer mind. My friends were children, who despite their unique lives, wanted to be treated as children - to be played with, read to, advised on girlfriend/boyfriend troubles. Many people may see this as an attempt to escape reality but no, my friends are not going anywhere, they are sitting right in the epicenter of America's problems. They are just not willing to escape their childhood because of it. 

Working with, serving and learning from DC's homeless children was the most rewarding experience in my life. They unearthed a part of me that nobody else could have. I learned to be positive and playful in all settings. I learned to use the child in me as a way of empowerment, a loll out to foolish obstacles.

The names mentioned in this blog entry are fictional based on real characters. 

Detergent Opera

Soap Operas. Think, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Who do you imagine watching soap operas? What is their sex, level of education, age? It's fascinating how I have a very clear image of who is watching a soap opera, in terms of all three categories, even though I have never in my life actually met a middle aged housewife who spends her days in front of the television set, mesmerized by the passionate forbidden love between a Frederico and a Maria. (In my experience, these women are usually too overwhelmed with more important things like raising their children, helping their spouses balance between work and family life or looking for a job themselves to spend their days watching TV.)

And, how come they are called soap operas? I always imagined this was because all the drama, lust and passion grew exponentially, in a similar way that soap foam does when you scrub.

However, the term soap opera emerged because these shows, which came to represent the overwhelming majority of commercialized radio broadcast in the 30's, were in fact sponsored by household cleaning product brands. Opera, on the other hand referred to the portrayal of everyday life events in an opera-style, with over exaggerated drama and complex emotion.

An article about this by Robert C. Allen, intrigued me not only because the thought that soap operas could have easily been called detergent operas or disinfect operas made me giggle, but also because I have always used the term so casually, not caring enough to know its real meaning and implications.

The soap opera always has been a "woman's" genre, and, it has frequently been assumed (mainly by those who have never watched soap operas), of interest primarily or exclusively to uncultured working-class women with simple tastes and limited capacities. Thus the soap opera has been the most easily parodied of all broadcasting genres, and its presumed audience most easily stereotyped as the working-class "housewife" who allows the dishes to pile up and the children to run amuck because of her "addiction" to soap operas [...] Despite the fact that its appeals for half a century have cut across social and demographic categories, the term continues to carry this sexist and classist baggage.

This made me think... As women did not have much of a chance to work in the years when soap operas were emerging, it should not be surprising that they were the primary audience of anything that would broadcast during the day. Moreover, passing a sexist or classist judgment is fallacious as it must have been mainly the powerful prosperous men who designed the form of these shows, as a way to satisfy advertisers while meeting what they themselves decided would be the interest of the consumers. Mocking women or the uneducated as the mindless followers of soap operas is blaming them for something that others created.

I admit, I'm guilty. But I promise to work on it. And, let's all work on knowing what the terms we use really mean.

Josephus

My friend Joseph is who I want to be when I grow up. In particular, I am trying to travel the way he does. I came across one of the emails he wrote to me from Angers, France, where he was doing a semester abroad to study the language. To me, it serves as a tutorial on how to look at traveling and overall life experience.

Busy in France? More like living my dreams. French culture is invigorating. The standard is this whole subtle game thing with meeting people. Then I come on the scene. Standing on my board, kicking and pushing, then the hill drops. I lower my bag, pull a cig to my lips and bend me knees until I'm literally sitting. There is lots of traffic downtown. I whiz by listening to Crookers, thinking about how amazing it's gonna be next Friday in Paris when I see them. My new Angers/France accomplice Jennifer and I have found a couch to crash on after the show. I get to the bottom of the hill and all eyes are on me from the top to the bottom, with families and teenagers cheering with wide smiles. I'm here. Welcome to Angers, welcome to my world. I thought about it for a long time the previous night. Am I here to blend in? Or engage the new town and give them a taste of my cultural expression - goofy shades, boat shorts, a tight tee, with a flannel over it. If I am deciding to support the tourism in Angers, they may feel insecure with my privileged travel, which is why I decide to give back. Hey there, Joseph here. C'est ca se ca?

e-mail from Joseph Cutler on June 6, 2008

Balkan Beat Box - Joro Boro

Serbocab

Stepping out of Belgrade's Nikola Tesla Airport, you will be happy to find what seems like a line of legitimate taxis right at the exit of the arrivals section. Such a convenience!

Do not be fooled. These taxis are what are commonly known as "divljak", literally meaning "vandals" in English. Unfortunately for us Serbs, airport - city transfers are the first impression visitors gain of a country, which is why I feel particularly passionate about helping you avoid "divljake".

What the locals do in order to get a cab is they either call one or waive one that has a blue plastic sign with white numbers next to its Taxi sign, like the one in the photo below:
Either way, be sure to avoid the following taxi stations:

• In front of the Tesla Airport
• In front of the Train Station
• Taxis by Trg Republike (the main square)
• Taxis lined up on Terazije, in front of the Benetton store
  

Divljak taxis will not only rip you off but also drive you around in circles and tend to be very aggressive if you confront them. Whenever I have tried to resolve these issues, I have lost, had to pay the amount of money that their adjusted meter suggested and ended up on the verge of tears. Not worth it.

So, there are two ways for you to get to the Belgrade's city center from the Tesla Airport and vice versa. One is the shuttle bus organized by JAT Airways, which takes you to Slavija and from where you can catch a variety of buses, trams, trolley buses and taxis. These buses leave hourly from the Tesla Airport to Slavija 7 AM - 10 PM, as well as from Slavija to the Tesla Airport 5 AM - 9 PM. JAT passengers get a complimentary voucher for these buses; otherwise, the price is RSD 250 / a bit under EUR 3. Tickets are bought inside the bus.

The other option is to stick with the taxi. However, do ask someone at the airport to call one for you. The standard rate to get from the Tesla Airport to any destination in the city center is EUR 10, when riding the on-call taxi.

Some legitimate taxi companies and their phone numbers are:

• Beo: (+38111) 970
• Beogradski: (+38111) 9801
• Maksis: (+38111) 9804
• Pink: (+38111) 9803

You should use these numbers throughout your stay in Belgrade and, when not going to or from the airport, you get a 20% discount on on-call drives. These taxis are registered, monitored by their taxi association and are reliable. Unless there is a complete collapse in the city due to weather conditions or a strike, they arrive in 3 minutes.

Random tip: when getting in and out of the taxi, avoid opening the rear door on the driver's side. This is where the wire that connects to the taxi sign goes through and using this door will show that you are foreign!

Lyon

I just returned from my 10-day vacation in Lyon, France. I have been to France quite a few times, but I particularly enjoy Lyon. Situated between Paris and Marseille, Lyon is the second largest city in France and, if you haven't ever thought of it that way, this is because for some reason Lyon has not been publicized as much as it deserves. The plus side of this is that there is a large metropolitan area of France to explore without ever having to be pushed and stepped on by tourists, as is often the case in Paris.

With so many independently owned restaurants, shops, cafes, one could easily live in Lyon without ever indulging into the mass-consumer lifestyle. Moreover, the city's architecture - from the 15th century Vieux Lyon (Old Lyon, in English) to the old silk weavers' district of Croix Rousse, rich markets and narrow streets have offered me a break from life in Belgrade, which is increasingly starting to resemble that of some wild capitalist city, overwhelmed with honking cars, pollution, hypermarkets, chain bakeries and take away coffee.

Aside from the usual sites that you will read about on the city's official site or Lonely Planet like the Fourvière hill and Place de Terraux (a spacious square with a 19th century fountain sculpted by Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, famous for having sculpted the Statue of Liberty), I would like to suggest a couple of things to authenticate your visit:

• Montee de la Grande Cote: a strip connecting Croix Rousse and the Presqu'ile peninsula. This colorful UNESCO World Heritage Site hosts everything from 18th century homes to homes more recently built as social housing projects. The street also offers many artisan shops with hand made jewelry and clothing, classic pastry shops, tiny galleries and facades hectically stained with graffiti and stencil art. Tip: go to the Croix Rousse Market (take the yellow metro line C to Croix Rousse) to get the season's finest produce, do some "people-watching", maybe even be a tourist and taste some cheese, then stroll down Montee de la Grande Cote and finish up with a rest at a tea salon in one of the intersecting streets towards the bottom of Grande Cote.
• Guillotière quarter: explore the mixture of university student and immigrant life. This is also a great place to try delicious Arab pastries and hit the affordable Asian restaurants.
• If the weather permits, rent out a Velo'v bike, which can be picked up and returned at any of the many Velo'v stations throughout the city. Don't miss driving by the 2 riversides! You can even stop at one of the ships and have a refreshment before heading to Parc de la Tete for a ride through the Botanical Gardens.
  
  
  
  Wander around and let me know how it went!