Are they not brothers, then, these protesters and the tantuni...
Are they not brothers, then, these protesters and the tantuni man?
"This is the worst place in the world"
"This is the worst place in the world"
On a cold weekend this winter, I flew to Edinburgh for what...
On a cold weekend this winter, I flew to Edinburgh for what turned out to be a more posh wedding than I expected. The bride and groom were diplomats; we'd met them in Riyadh back in 2008, treasuring every chance we had to drink their imported diplomatic hooch, and in general enjoyed their well-informed, widely read companionship. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it was almost too easy to detect class, lumped as we were into a broad category of non-Saudis. But visiting them for nuptials in the United Kingdom, I found such matters to be more finely tuned, at a register I couldn't handle, and having failed to wear the proper costume, or perhaps to adequately trim my beard, I stood before St. Giles Cathedral—as grand as St. Patrick's in New York City—while a scowling guard in a skirt blocked my path with a "stop there" gesture. So I stood in the rain, assuring him I was invited, and when he finally relented, I confronted pew after pew of blond hair and blue eyes, men taller than I, all these centuries of nutrition and good breeding, and it became all but certain that I'd drink too much at the 15th-century manor and risk remembering nothing of how I got home.
The hangover the next day was fierce, rivers of scotch preventing me from recalling all but the haziest outline of the reception, the champagne, the toasts, the moon, and with a slim chance I'd make the day-after picnic, I slept past noon for the first time in years, cocooned in a heavy white duvet. When I rose I headed straight for the train station, where I would meet an old friend who had been an expat with me in Cambodia. Jane and I had forged a friendship deep in a jungle, over opium and grilled shark. She was from Scotland and here I was, in Edinburgh. Threading through commuters, looking for a woman I hadn't seen in a decade, I recalled she had once applied to be a diplomat and even remembered a line from the blandly impersonal form letter that had declined her services while incorrectly guessing at her gender. "Dear Mr. Martin…" I found Jane, and launched into a description of the wedding. She looked exactly the same, long red hair, pale skin, a face dominated by sneering amusement. "Right, Mr. Deuel. Let's go to Leith."
We started down Edinburgh's wide sidewalks, ignoring a light rain and deepening cold, heading toward a district north of town that was declared the city's official port in 1329, by Robert the First. The south side of Leith long accepted cargo and was poor while the north side was home to fisherman and boat builders, and was comparatively wealthy. In 1561, Mary Queen of Scots arrived here by ship to begin her blighted reign, but found no one there to receive her ("hir cumming was more suddane then many luiked for," was the official excuse at the time). In the 18th century, a five-hole course devoted to the new game of golf was where the rules to that silly game were established. Whaling was a mainstay here, at least until the last great fish was caught, in the nearby Firth of Forth. To help sailors get Vitamin C, a concern in Leith started selling a concoction called Rose's Lime Juice. But after World War II, with the commonwealth's economy in tatters, the area of Leith underwent a steep decline.
When we finally got to the water, however, the sun came out, the day warmed, the avenue opened up, and there stood three of the finest-looking, marine-themed pubs I'd ever seen. Only a few years earlier Leith had closed its final "tolerance zone," on a nearby street, where prostitution was de facto legal, but today the come hither look came from an actual boat moored along the waterfront, a restaurant to be boarded by gangplank. The true seduction, however, was from The Ship on the Shore across the cobblestone street, a distant relation, at least in appearance, to Manhattan's Ear Inn, that old sailor's pub on the far west end of Spring Street.
I was too groggy to commit yet to sitting inside, so we settled into one of the wooden sidewalk booths, where our table was made of old champagne crates. On sun-warmed wooden benches, we sipped ale, and it was hard to imagine either whales or whores. When our insides were sufficiently re-boozed, we pushed through doors to find a massive table in a dark corner of the restaurant. There was something easy about spending strangely colored money, each note emblazoned with a Queen smiling primly, and dispatching with more crowns, we raised several more.
At some point a good-natured barkeep nudged a menu our way. It seemed pretty clear we needed to order the seafood sampler, and when it arrived, I found no other way but to compare it favorably to the only other marine tower I'd ever had—at Balthazar, also on Spring Street.
I'd just recently been nearly disinvited to a wedding, after which I probably behaved as if I should've been. But now, as happens on a day in a unfamiliar place, I was allowing myself a new and lovely experience. This "Fruits de Mer" set us back 65 pounds and included a comely little animal called a Scottish Lobster. There were also several langoustines, a hunk of dressed brown crab, and several clams that looked like silky nuggets of sea foam. We fought over massive paddles of deeply orange smoked salmon and took pains to cut exactly in half the shard of tobacco-yellow haddock, called "Arbroath Smokie," an official designation ratified by the UN. The smokie is made of fish from the northern fishing village of Auchmithie, hard-smoked in a thick and humid fire for an hour. Scallops quivered with the deep cold of wherever they had once lain and the oysters were sharp and nearly translucent. I've never had more plump or flavorful mussels, nor have I yet surpassed the thrill of forking out the salty nest of celery bits and crunchy scallion and garlic bits nested in the half-cracked shells. There were also these long shells in which resided some kind of meat. The barkeep called them spoots. You might call them razor clams? In any case, I ate mine clenched between french fries.
Ensconced in dark wood and amidst the carnage of shellfish and empty pint glasses, it was hard to leave, or to even ruminate on the idea of remorse. To Jane, with whom I had as much in common as the day I met her—which is to say, a great appetite, a willingness to go anywhere, and a patience for the unpleasant—I tried to describe how strange it had been to feel so short in the cathedral, so accustomed as I was to towering over the various peoples I'd shared countries with over a peripatetic life. She told me about recent theater pieces she'd written about her time in Afghanistan. We both expressed sadness that my wife was away and agreed she would want us to have another beer.
Growing steadily more over-filled, I suppose I felt a twin sense of ease at work: Very little threat, it seemed, that any of the various people from the wedding would discover me and question my failure to attend the day's farewell picnic. Likewise, there was a familiar sense that we had earned this meal by walking so far, that rewards came to those who didn't confuse excellence with proximity to cathedrals. —Nathan Deuel
Thomas Dworzak is one of the best photojournalists alive. So why...
Thomas Dworzak is one of the best photojournalists alive. So why the hell is he curating teenager selfies on Instagram?
Answers in our exclusive interview here
tobiaswac: I love tacos. It's one of these things that is so...
I love tacos. It's one of these things that is so simple in its purest form: Corn tortilla, meat, cilantro, onions, salsa. But, this basic idea of a taco then spawns a near endless array of different varieties and flavors: Carne Asada or Al Pastor? Or how about Chorizo? What about a fish taco? Maybe Baja Style? Salsa roja or salsa verde? And don't even get me started on white boy tacos with ground beef. We could go on for days. Point is, tacos are awesome. Finally tacos receive the respect they deserve with the beautifully illustrated La Tacopedia. Currently available only in Spanish, we should all take this as an incentive to improve our hablo español. I think we owe that much to the noble taco.
The songs are dense, meandering, and for certain short stretches...
The songs are dense, meandering, and for certain short stretches of time, deeply satisfying. Two young blissed-out Americans wedge their way in front of me, flailing their limbs and licking each other's faces like giant lollipops. It's a confusing display of festival euphoria, and everyone around can't decide whether to push them to the ground or pat them on the back.
It's late now, and with sunrise and the promise of 127 more bans looming on the horizon, it feels like Animal Collective may just lose the crowd entirely. But then, the first shimmering synth notes of "My Girls" ring out and everyone stands still, almost unwilling to believe that this might happen—that the most popular band in one of the most popular festivals in the world might actually play the most popular song they've ever written.
But the music slides around and the synthesizer grows quiet and nobody seems sure if they're actually going to do it or if this is some twisted joke. A massive German guy in a Bayern Munich jersey next to me cups his hands and yells "My Girls!!!" at the top of his lungs, hoping to will the song forward with his baritone bellow. As the uncertainty builds and the tension builds and the 20,000 people behind me consider walking away from it all, those sparkly synth notes return and Panda Bear leans towards the mic mounted on his drum set and begins to sing.
There isn't much that I feel I need
The crowd exhales, then cheers wildly, and it feels, for a minute at least, that Primavera has just begun.
Is This The World's Best Music Festival? Primavera Sound, in Barcelona. Today on Roads & Kingdoms
ahetherington: A little light beach reading with the Diary of...
A little light beach reading with the Diary of Anne Frank, Cala Benirras, Ibiza…
She woulda been a Beach Belieber
ahetherington: On the bone, Can Caus, Santa Gertrudis,...
On the bone, Can Caus, Santa Gertrudis, Ibiza
Andrew Hetherington is on the road. With camera.
We leave Bissau and take the small passenger ferry to the...
We leave Bissau and take the small passenger ferry to the island of Bubaque in the Bijagós archipelago off the coast of West Africa. It is late December, and although the Bijagó people are predominantly animist, Christmas and New Year are public holidays and the ferry is full of people returning from the mainland for the festivities. It leaves Bissau's Pidjiguiti harbour two hours late, and the passengers take advantage of the delay to get drunk. Some have brought jerrycans full of palm wine; others buy bottles of beer from the on-board café. On deck a speaker belts out loud West African pop music. Passengers lean on the railings, drinking and chatting merrily. A few dance, clutching beer bottles and waving their arms in the air; the women jerk their backsides provocatively, in time with the music. The sea is flat and calm, the air hot and moist.
Read more of Bubaque, Far Away. An R&K excerpt from Mark Weston's fantastic travel book The Ringtone and the Drum: Travels in the World's Poorest Countries.
This year, the Tbilisi Photo Festival is about a lot more than...
This year, the Tbilisi Photo Festival is about a lot more than just photography
[Image by Oksana Yushko from Grozny Nine Cities]
Last day of spirits-school at the Manhattan Cocktail Classic....
Last day of spirits-school at the Manhattan Cocktail Classic. This lesson: mezcal from Oaxaca. Mixes of cultivated and wild agave cooked with Huanache, oak, or mesquite. The names: Union, Espiritu Lauro, Koch, Yuu Baal, Los Siege Misterios, Real Minero, Pierde Almas, El Jolgorio, Banhez. Time to study up.
Roads & Kingdoms associate editor Pauline Eiferman is in...
Roads & Kingdoms associate editor Pauline Eiferman is in Seoul this week. First picture from her: the chill-out lounge (of sorts) at a celebration marking Buddha's birthday on May 17.
Happy (belated) birthday, Buddha.
paulafroelich: My favorite video from the Chuds… Weng Weng. I...
My favorite video from the Chuds… Weng Weng. I watch this every Sunday while eating Cheetos
We are drawn by the pulsing famo beat, drawn from our rondavel...
We are drawn by the pulsing famo beat, drawn from our rondavel in dark of night, down past the turn in the river and the semi-deserted hospital, down toward the grounds of the vacant hotel and into the gutted adjacent building—some defunct abattoir—where all hog-butchering has been laid aside to give the band some space to play. The building is a dusty cinderblock warehouse, windows painted over, walls shedding plaster, the whole place haunted and forbidding.
And there is an honest-to-God famo band napalming the stage—actually, there's no stage, defunct abattoirs don't have stages—but the singer is raging and the drummer is raging and the dancers are raging, though not the accordionist or the bassist, because those two stonefaced motherfuckers are motionless, wearing sunglasses, chain-smoking, sitting with their backs to the crowd, and laying down an absolutely dirty line of accordion-bass polyphony.
But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself, because I don't want to skip over the man with the machine gun, and because I want to make sure, first of all, that we know what famo is.
Besotho Dance Party: Dirty basslines, funky dance moves and a doorman with a machine gun
This, somehow, is work today. At the Manhattan Cocktail Classic...
This, somehow, is work today. At the Manhattan Cocktail Classic with Atsby Vermouth and a cheese described by Murray's Cheese as "a nutty stinker with a supple, savory creamline and a mild, milky core." The many troubles of the world are getting blurrier by the minute in here.
Half guts, all glory: Azerbaijan's khash stew.
Half guts, all glory: Azerbaijan's khash stew.
This was not just any border, but one whose creation in 1947 had...
This was not just any border, but one whose creation in 1947 had led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, one of the largest mass migrations in human history, and more than six-decades of highly militarized contempt between what today are two nuclear powers. Since 1959, the India-Pakistan crossing at the Punjabi village of Wagah, were I was headed, has also been one of spectacle, famous for a daily ceremony known as Beating the Retreat—a show of inane yet belligerent antics in which goose-stepping Indian and Pakistani border guards, donning fan-shaped tufted hats, spend 45 minutes trying to out-kick, out-stomp, and generally out-perform the others, before lowering their respective flags and closing the border for the evening.
These theatrics have made Wagah a border crossing unlike any other since Checkpoint Charlie: the vast majority of visitors arrive not to stamp passports but to gawk at the line in the sand and its guards. For both countries, it is a 365-day-a-year national ritual, held at what is the only open road crossing along the 1,800-mile border between the two states. Although I had come in part for the entertainment, I also hoped these stomping men in silly hats might teach me something about the long-intractable India-Pakistan conflict.
Line Dancing, a story of border politics, India-Pakistan beefs and guys in funny hats.
chrismohney: It's going to be a beautiful day out there folks!
It's going to be a beautiful day out there folks!
thetuqay: By Thyrza Segal & Chris McMahon: adding monsters...
By Thyrza Segal & Chris McMahon: adding monsters to crappy landscape paintings.
Lena and Katya, Juvenile Prison for Girls, Ukraine 2010 From our...
Lena and Katya, Juvenile Prison for Girls, Ukraine 2010
From our Q&A with photographer Michal Chelbin
Buy her book of intimate juvenile prisoner portraits from Twin Palms Publishing
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