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New York Pride

Yesterday I spent nearly six hours of my life waiting for the annual Pride Parade to end. Not that it's not a good time, but my god, by hour four you're ready to slit your wrists, and there are still a couple hours to go! This year's parade was dominated by gay-friendly religious organizations; in fact, the first hour of the parade was solely churches. The AP has a good recap of the event, and also of San Francisco's parade, at which First Lady-wannabe Elizabeth Edwards said, ''I don't know why someone else's marriage has anything to do with me. I'm completely comfortable with gay marriage.''

Posted by Sebastian / NYC / June 25, 2007 /

Aruba

My friend Justin and I made the quick flight down to Aruba this weekend for a bit of relaxation and to celebrate my 25th birthday. Unlike my last trip here, I used sunscreen this time and am not suffering from a radioactive tan.

Last night we celebrated the fact I've lived so damn long by meeting up with a local friend for dinner at Sunset Grille, the restaurant that has been billed as the top restaurant in the Caribbean by Caribbean Life magazine. A bit intimidating sounding, but the service was understated, low-key, and simply amazing. The food was superb.

We had a true feast. On the menu was a sushi appetizer, champagne and strawberries (thank you Richard Gere in "Pretty Woman" for teaching me what to do when presented with that combo), martini salad (greens shaken in a martini shaker and presented in an oversized martini glass), fabulous beef from Argentina, flawless shrimp (Justin alleges; I won't touch the stuff), as well as chocolate souffle and espresso. As if that weren't enough food to make me feel like a beached whale, the restaurant surprised me with a birthday song sung in both Dutch and Papiamento (the local dialect) by the entire waitstaff, as well as a birthday cheesecake -- after I'd already eaten the souffle -- that I couldn't turn down.

Posted by Sebastian / Aruba / June 19, 2007 /

Pre/Post

25th birthday views from my hotel in the Palm Beach section of Aruba. What a difference a few hours makes! In the distance, sixteen miles away, are the shores of Venezuela.

Posted by Sebastian / Aruba / June 18, 2007 /

Colors of Oranjestad

Oranjestad, the bustling capital of Aruba, is chock-full of interesting and colorful architecture. The commercial face of the place keeps changing as the cruise industry makes even more and more stops here: the downtown is now filled with Gucci, Mont Blanc, Louis Vuitton and other high-end brands that cater to cruisers. Luckily the occasional marauding goat can still be spotted stopping traffic on the streets of Oranjestad, keeping things real.

Posted by Sebastian / Aruba / June 17, 2007 /

Vancouver's Olympic clock

Vancouver's new Olympic countdown clock: Oh, how I love thee!

This gorgeous clock will be counting down for the next three years and then when it hits zero, as Vancouver magazine puts it, it will "start counting upwards, toward infinity. You'll never know whether you're late for work, but you will know exactly how long it's been since the world set its gaze upon our fair city, once upon a time in 2010."

Posted by Sebastian / Vancouver / June 9, 2007 /

Vancouver's economy: what economy?

Next to 'Who killed Laura Palmer?' the world's second-biggest mystery involves Vancouver and the question of what people actually do there. I'm the first to admit having no shortage of friends with dubious "careers." Wander the streets of business district, which seems pretty bereft of businesses, and you'll probably wonder the same thing. What exactly do people in Vancouver do? No one knows, but Vancouver magazine has an interesting article on the bizarreness:

"Vancouver's core attitude--a sense of God-granted entitlement--twinned with a need for quick returns are our legacies from history, because wealth here was generated by scooping minerals, knocking down forests, and since 1986, harvesting the last of our non-renewable natural resources: water-view real estate."

"We’re settling into a Rio-like future as a resort attached to our festering favela, the Downtown Eastside. Vancouver is a wonderful place to visit, to play, to shoot up, to check out of a career, to retire, but it’s no longer a serious business centre.The first people I heard describe Vancouver as a 'resort' were Hong Kong- and Taiwan-born businessmen as they re-aligned their investments towards China after briefly nesting here in the 1990s. Vancouver is arguably the least corporate major city on the continent."

"The resortification of our downtown has been a quiet secret in Vancouver’s development and urban planning communities for a decade; real estate brokers long ago stopped listing land here as potential office sites—the returns from condos being so much higher."

"Vancouver: your parks, theatres, schools, community centres and transit lines are all wonderful, but sooner or later you will need to generate wealth in a renewable way to pay for them."

Posted by Sebastian / Vancouver / June 5, 2007 /

Mark Twain's famous line about the coldest winter he ever spent was summer in San Francisco seems true this weekend. It's freezing here. I only brought shorts, thinking that the sunburn I got here a few weeks ago was a sign of a hot summer to come. I was wrong, and have spent the weekend shivering. But even in the cold, San Francisco delights.

Posted by Sebastian / SF / June 3, 2007 /