Just got these dandies and would love to mail them to you. For a simple $1 donation via PayPal, I’ll give you a few along with some other nifty treats. Breaking even on the $1 cost (postage and printing), so am doing it b/c I love you all!
CREATE! DESTORY! happyft…
After getting our money back from the shady bus-ticket salesman, the rest of the day went great. We rode through the crazy traffic one last time (no lanes, no crosswalks, no stop lights, with random buses stopping wherever, mule wagons, horse carriages, bikes, motorbikes, cars, trucks, vans, etc. turning, diving, weaving, and dodging) before hitting the tourist road on the Nile to Karnak. We kept riding past Karnak, where Luxor showed its poor side again as the city transformed into unfinished buildings, rural checkpoints, dirty strips of stores, and fields of wheat and grass in the shadows of palm trees.
On the way there, we had a bike race with a kid and a friend on their shared bike. They seemed distressed that Laura beat us all (I’m used to her bad-ass biking), but smiled the whole race. Out in the rural concentrations, children ran along with our bikes, yelling “Hello!” and “Welcome to Luxor!” They didn’t grab us this time. I heard birds chirping, donkeys beying, and watched the wind blow shifting patterns in the fields, and felt good to be on a bike in the countryside.
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Carnaval just landed on a chilly Sunday this weekend. I caught the parade for about an hour, went home for a break, and then walked a litter-strewn, car-free Mission Street to the party at Harrison St. Ran into Jef, Rebecca, Antonio, and Linda in the market-buying frenzy there, and we promptly left to catch Soul Salaam at Medjool’s rooftop party, running into Kush Arora on the way out. Pod showed up to the rooftop scene, so I caught almost all of the old SoundLabSF crew in one day!
What’s in store for this week?
After being a fan for 7 years, I finally get to see Manu Chao this Wednesday at Bill Graham Auditorium. He has a new CD out this September. The folks at CELLspace will be bartending for a fundraiser at Elixir that night as well.
Saturday, Pod and DJ Zelko, along with World Remix alums Brass Menazeri, get their Roma on at Kafana Balkan, 7 pm at the Rickshaw Stop. $10-$25.
Sunday, my current favorite band ever, Secret Chiefs 3, headline at the Great American Music Hall. Attend this event prepared to see music genres get shredded, along with ear drums (ear plugs recommended) and perhaps your soul. I caught this band two years ago for an adoption day show and they melted my mind in an initiation of fourth-dimensional vector-pointed warps into robed mysticism. Read about that amazing initiation here.
Maybe we run into each other this week? Hope so!
PS: Posted this while listening to Balkan Beat Box’s new CD Nu Med.
A nice photo off of the felucca (sailboat) Laura and I sailed on in Luxor. We went to “Banana Island” (not an island; but a tourist myth), paid off the “mayor” so we could tour the banana fields, had some bananas as our captain smoked sheesha, and then sailed back to the “port” (a docking area in front of a huge construction site). Once docked, we met all the children apprentices, a shifty guy named Hassan “Joker,” smoked real Egyptian sheesha (raw honey tobacco that gave us a buzz), ate kushary, looked at photos from trips past, and left the boat without the captain even asking us to tip him! Great experience.
Laura and I rented bikes for two days while in Luxor. Great way to get around, get off the tourists roads, and avoid most of the touting. The nice Asian man who took this photo joked that he wanted backsheesh for it. We looked at him puzzled and he laughed, replying “No backsheesh! My pleasure!” This was shot outside of the huge Karnak Temple complex north of Luxor.
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I’m at a concert and don’t have a good seat, so I cut out of the amphitheater to head to the other side. I get turned around on a school campus, wander by some stencil graffiti on a bike trail, and then get directions from strangers. The route sends me to a rustic trail in the woods that winds up at a creek in a deep ravine. As I cross it on a shaky fallen tree, I remember that I’m dreaming and then port myself back to the concert.
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I work in a Soviet Department of Organic Produce for a dream-like Totalitarian Russian Regime. Paranoia follows me as a fact of life, and I find myself at a public execution somewhat shaken by how it is happening.
The shooters, army regulars, stand far away from the people who are going to get executed. A crowd, which looks planted by the Party, stands around in odd configurations, most likely to look good for the camera shots.
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