El Parque del Buen Retiro

La Puerta de Alcalá

It is easy to miss the historical implications of monuments in a foreign city.  To understand them requires time, research and effort, and often even locals don’t know much about them (they have “just always been there”).  My eye lids grow heavy almost immediately when I begin to read a tourist map blurb of a bridge built for a general or another statue commemorating some city official, or the house where Chopin used to live (ok, Chopin’s house is pretty cool).  But the antique and the modern occupying the same space has always impressed me, and Madrid is prolific in its showcasing of this dichotomy. It’s everywhere you look.

La Puerta de Alcalá represents an old passageway, one used by kings, migrating sheep, presidents, singers and soldiers.  There are shrapnel marks on its side, left from a 1746 cannon.  And yet cars, scooters, and buses buzz, honk and circle the monument 24 hours a day.  It was built as a face-lift for Madrid and to celebrate its rising importance as a European city, and it is a wonderful backdrop for an afternoon coffee at a small table on the sidewalk.  If I ever hope to extend my limited attention span, I will learn more about this and some of the hundreds of other physical constructs here that are simply saturated with history and meaning.

Just behind the gate is Retiro Park, a particular source of pride for Madrileños.  Upon entering, there is an immediate and surprising change in atmosphere, like suddenly stumbling into a library after running a half-marathon. It may not take you at first, but give it a few turns around the dirt paths, and as you slow your walk and your breathing, you may not want to leave so soon. It is quiet and there are people reading and nodding off on the grass.  Even an ambulance, as it rushed in,  turned off its siren and continued with only flashing lights.   The idea of a park lying in stark contrast to a busy metropolis is somewhat new to me.  My hometown, San Diego, sometimes seems like just one big park.  There is little opportunity to see the drastic difference between metropolis and nature.  It is refreshing to see such care taken to keep a place clean and quiet. Grounds keepers slide silently around the park in little electric-powered dump trucks.  There is a large, green pond full of koi and little wooden blue boats, couples aimlessly rowing and talking.  And statues of animals and babies and triumphant-looking men and women.  Sensible street musicians sit on stools among birds, manicured flower beds, fountains, trees and lots of soft grass.  And the periodic stands pumping out ice cream are a pleasure for both child and adult.

This was one of those days in which nothing really happened.  Just a stroll through a park.  While coping with a new city and new way of life, these meaningless days are a requirement.  This park is only a few blocks from my new home, and if I am to keep what sanity I have left, I will keep this place handy to collect my thoughts, ideas, notes and an ice cold beer or two.  A place for couples, families, or the solitary wanderer, Retiro is close at hand and I intend to return here, no matter my frame of mind, and I hope that a few memories will be born here in the future.

To see a few more photos, click here.

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Deep in the throes of travel and frantic with the responsibilities of relocation, I have spent most of the last week curled up in airline seats, head leaned against the windows of cabs or twisting in jet-lagged insomnia on hard hostel beds.  I am tired.  But it is a good kind of tired.  It is a tiredness that comes from large strides of personal effort and progress , of drastic life-change.  There is a special kind of stress in meeting so many new people, using a new language, and coming back to a city to live, not to visit, and it is just the kind of stress that I expected.  Right now, my blood-shot eyes are telling me to turn off this computer and get some sleep already.

So, for now, these are some of the songs that have helped ease the nervous tension that creeps up when I close my eyes, allowing me to drift off to sleep.  More actual entries to come…

So This Is Goodbye (Pink Ganter Remix) by William Fitzsimmons

Feather by Little Dragon

Rock With You (M. Jackson) by Seu Jorge

Sweet Disposition by Temper Trap

Holy Thursday by David Axelrod

Apartment Story by The National

My lonely Chateau Dauzac Margaux

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Chateau Dauvac Margaux, wine

In September of 1992, in the duty-free section of ferry-boat freshly departed from Rosslare, Ireland, I bought a bottle of wine.  Already buzzed from the romance and contrived sentimentality of a backpacker’s trip in Europe and excited by our upcoming arrival in France, I decided to splurge on a 1982 Chateau Dauzac Margaux.  I, of course, did not know Chateau Margaux from Bartles & James. I took a stab in the vintner’s dark, chose something on the shelf second from the top, and packed it away in my Lowe Alpine backpack.  I don’t remember how much I paid for it, but at the time it seemed like a lot, especially for a newly graduated high school student who hadn’t even discovered the horrors of Lucky Lager beer and peppermint schnapps. But I still suspected it was something special that I was not ready to appreciate.

To its credit, this bottle of French pride has endured hardships.  Since that smiley, sunny day in Cherbourg (no umbrellas), it has quietly experienced, without consent, three winters in harsh neglect sub-arctic in Fairbanks, Alaska as well as in the rainy dreariness of Kenai and Anchorage.  It has been subjected to the dry Utah desert air, the bumps and temperature changes of many road trips in a Volkswagen Beetle, and the indefensible heat of an Arizona summer.  It has been dropped in a sink and had hot gravy spilled on it. It has been stored in a humid storage unit in Ocean Beach, California for two 1-year stints (where it lives currently, upside down, in a box). It was tossed around and nearly consumed by a group of rowdy teenagers.  Simply, this French gem has lived in seven zip codes of cruel, American abuse.

Today it occurred to me that I have not had a material possession longer that this bottle of Chateau Margaux.  All the electronics toys, books, furniture, cars, clothes, laptops, CDs, and all the other tchotchka that one collects, they have come and gone, and with the common apathy and attention deficit of a spoiled materialistic child of the 1st-world.  It has survived four girlfriends, and more than a few light-hearted flings. It looks tired and aged.

Possibly, the lasting relationship between this bottle and I is a testament to my own appreciation for food and drink, maybe I have been holding on to this wine as a symbol of how I imagine my life should be, or maybe I am just an indecisive idiot, afraid of committment.

Chateau Dauzac has produced wine classified as “one of eighteen Cinquièmes Crus (Fifth Growths) in the Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855“.  Our bottle of Chateau Dauzac Margaux is ranked fifth in quality in a list of five types of wine, but these wines made it through as the best of what France had to offer at the time, and it the Official Classification has only changed twice since 1855.  To some, this is just more evidence of the rigid, conservative French culinary attitude. But any way you slice it (or pour it, in this case), this wine is bad-ass.

The maturing age of this bottle is apparently 18 – 20 years, which makes its heyday somewhere around 2001, while I was pacing the streets of São Paulo, rushing to my next private business English class, marveling at the herds of beautiful Paulista women, and drinking caipirinhas in Guarujá.  I have always known the right time to drink this wine, and I have harbored the guilt of its neglect back deep in the place where I keep all my writing material for self-loathing and pity.  I do not know enough about wine to actually anticipate what this bottle will now taste like when or if it is ever opened.  I know that I will have ready, along with a bowl of raw spinach leaves, arugula and iceberg lettuce, and the best damn bottle of olive oil I can find, just in case it has turned to vinegar.

Because I am at once a fatalistic cynic and a romantic, I have imagined the ideal scenario in which this bottle of wine should be truly enjoyed and appreciated, but don’t really believe it will ever take place. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that there are no men, beer pong games or chicken wings in this fantasy.

Twice I have been tempted, deep in bouts of self-pity, to open the damn thing and get it over with, cork screw in hand, like Miles in the movie Sideways, gulping his Pinot Noir out of a styrofoam cup at a fast food restaurant.  But each time I came to realize, as a small epiphany, some of what is valuable and what is not.  Wine is a social drink, and it doesn’t seem to taste as good when drunk alone.  It is best enjoyed spontaneously, when friends suddenly appear and everyone is caught in a haze of conversation and excitement about life.  And when one takes an inventory of these types of life occurrences, there are never too many; sadly there are usually not enough. I can only speak for myself, but too much of life has been eaten up in the business of living, in getting the adult chores done each day, in resting on the sofa in exhaustion from work, in sitting around and bitching about dead-end jobs or annoying people on the other end of the political spectrum.

So let’s call this expensive, never-ending bottle of wine a catalyst, a symbol in waiting, a token giving impetus to some future gathering of friends.  As a piece of old-world quality, it at least deserves to be presented in an environment of smart, happy words and laughs, coming from the mouths of people who enjoy the company of one another.

Here’s to hanging out and living in the moment.

Via Alloro and The Hollywood Bowl

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Beverly Hills, Villa Alloro

In the heart of Beverly Hills, ironically tucked away under a corporate office building and a suburbia-inspired parking structure, lies the locally known restaurant Via Alloro.  The earthy tones and sparsely placed desert vegetation lend itself well to the dry southern California air, and the understated decor and outdoor booths with pillows make a passer-by think of a simple (if not slightly done-up) Mediterranean cafe.  Any fears of encountering the ordinary are quelled by a friendly hostess who meets you just before you get up to her podium, and clobbers you with a beautiful smile.  “Inside or outside?”

Between the lunch and dinner hours the chefs, clad in white coats, come out front and chat around a small table.  I notice the tiny Italian flags embroidered on their collars, and I have the suspicion that they are happy and love what they do.  Only blocks away from Rodeo Dr. and the Bel Air Real Estate Agency, one can imagine the clientele that frequent this restaurant.  But the environment is surprisingly comfortable and downright pleasant for the recession-bruised common folk and Hollywood socialites alike.  You, whoever you are, sit down, sip wine, and feel happy.

In my opinion, food that is born in the the dry places of the earth is the best type of food in the world.  Tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, olives, eggplant, basil, lemon, bread—-food that is good for the blood, the skin and the soul.  I generally resist the occasional impulse to take pictures of my food and annotate the pretentious descriptions that the menus have to offer, but this was an occasion when presentation was naturally perfect (and I forgot my camera anyway).  A seafood salad not too drenched in balsamic vinegar, white rings of calamari, perfect scallops and crisp shrimp mixed with cold mussels and clams, lying on a bed of arugula, roasted bell peppers and celery. A perfect snack on a warm coastal desert afternoon.  We aspiring foodies always congratulate ourselves on our discoveries of whole, simple food.  And we smile with satisfaction and harbor a slight sadistic grimace for all those not enjoying the same gift. But there is always the desire to share the experience with others. This is the type of food that one eats slow, with conversation and without a pressing schedule.  And a complementary dry Cabernet doesn’t hurt, either.

Learn more about Via Alloro here.

I have always liked spending a little time in Hollywood to absorb the absurdity of it.  There is a strange appeal.  This is, of course, the mother of all movie sets, where people come to act, to pretend, to fashion a persona.  And it is just cool to blend in for a while; to catch a glance of the Hollywood sign in your rear-view mirror, to drive through the manicured landscaping of Beverly Hills,  to see one beautiful person after another frowning behind huge sunglasses, to be surrounded by billboards splashed with the latest shows and movies.  One seems to develop a slightly skewed, even deviant, view of the world while spending time here, one seen through the media of TV and film.  But it is fun.

In the middle of the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles, a perfect place to see live music in an outdoor setting is the Hollywood Bowl.  Carved out of the hills, it is surprisingly quiet and inviting, especially during intermissions. In fact, a suited army of security guards stroll around, with earpieces for added intimidation, to ensure no one talks or moves.

The show this night was the LA Philharmonic playing pieces of Elgar, Beethoven and Wagner, led by conductor Bramwell Tovey and master cellist Daniel Müller-Schott.  One of the unique charms about this venue is that anyone can bring in their own food and booze.  So we sat on wooden benches, got out our bread and olives, and sipped some old vine Zin while blending in with a crowd of classical music lovers, and finding a way to truly appreciate the talent that was being showcased.  Not bad for a Tuesday night.  This kind of experience makes the drive from San Diego worth every mile.

By the way, I’d like to thank Jessie for showing me Via Alloro and the Hollywood Bowl, two great places so close to home.  I hope to get back soon.