week end á la newyorkaine

The duties of my job push (!!!???) me to travel much too oftenly to New York. Fall is obviously the best season to stay there ("autumn in New York. it lifts you up when you´re let down..) if you don´t want to get freezed in February or roasted in August. Roosvelt Island horror sights fascinate me now more than ever. Even if I hadn't to trip to New York obligée, I would certainly search for the way to stay there at the precise moments. My top neighbourhood now is the Bowery, with an excellent hotel at a rather reasonable prize (does anything like exist in N.Y?). Unfortunately, the Bowery borough has also fallen into the predatious voraciousness of Real Estate "gentrifiers". To "gentrify" in that city means filling real boroughs with unreally snobbish mid-western college middle class (mid-mids) applying to look sophisticated, newyorcan, (even intellectual, sometimes), and deep. Nothing of the aforementioned could really be taken seriously, of course, except for Real Estate predators, who get use ($$$) of this legendary snobbery. Voraciousness has reached its highests peaks in investors striving for gettting poor people out of their much-too-well-for them Mitchell-Lama apartments, that, as years pass by, have become real newyorcan lofty-roomy luxury. Gay scene doesn't result as novelty and exciting as a decade ago, maybe because of its growing influx in my motherland, Chile. Nonetheless, there's always gratifying surprising issues in old favourites, as the Roxy. Middle age gayness has a different taste, definitely, and I found myself wandering how could I manage to buy a now-precious Mitchell-Lama apartment in the now-upscale Bronx Co-Op City, getting some advantage of the city's proverbial snobbery, that makes such high quality buildings be so underpriced if compared with some stylish slums in the Meatpacker. I would really love to have a pied-à-terre there, a neighbourhood in which formerly Third-World Gay couples promenade cozily with their children into the very livable large and green outdoors of Co-Op City.

boomtown gayland oooh la la...

Most of Santiago de Chile downtown reminds of Paris. When freed from Spanish, Chilean oligarchy felt ashamed of everything that resembled "hispanic", so they started destroying sistematically almost every colonial building (fortunately, there were not such magnifiscent ones here, as in Lima, Peru). Embedded from French-slanted and newly-acquired Cartesian rationality, Chile's new Republican order prohibited -until present day- bull and cock fighting, and nobiliary titles. They were also specially keen on choosing French neoclassical styles for every relevant public building excepting La Moneda Palace (the House of Government), the only survivor of this frenchy-frenzy. Late 1900's urbanism was also almost completely "á la mode francaise", and many french architectes had to settle down here, because the demand for houses "á la pied á terre", was, at moments, unmanageable. Little spots of gothic Europe started dotting Santiago's mainland everywhere. So, urban oligarchy lived here as if they were in their beloved Paris ("see Paris and die", they said). Most Boomtown Gayland settled down in what previously had been a fantastic parisian-shaped neighbourhood, including a wide "perspective" avenue; a classical park shaped "á la Jardin de Luxembourg" (Forestal park), with a twin train station, cloned exactly from Paris'Gare d'Orsay ("Estación Mapocho"). The buildings there resemble very much similar ones in Paris and Buenos Aires. Sturdy masonry buildings built to last almost forever, a park and even a rarity small hill converted into a gardenesque fantasy ("cerro Santa Lucía") that dates from the 19th century craziness of former mayor Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, whose intention was to re-create famous Babylon's hanging gardens, with hints of Versailles. He did it so succesfully.

living la vita borghese

In our beloved southern hemisphere, a hint of spring is beginning to knock out the doors of our almost frozen lifes after a horrid winter, with its warm life-enhancing sunrays. The national anniversary, known as "fiestas patrias" is the official entrance to a new 2009 life cycle. This year there will be 4 days for celebrating: sept.18th, 19th, 20th and 21th. This is not comparable with patriotic July 4th solemnity; because September 18th in Chile is more a pedestrian celebration of excesses that remembers all of us of our past as country peasants with no other horizon in mind that drinking like a fish, eating chilean-version BBQ ("asado") until death, and dancing drum beat-filled Colombian Cumbia, which had became Chilean national dance by adoption. Chilean national dance "La Cueca" is soooo complex and elegant (as happens with Argentinian Tango) just a very few know how to dance it properly. Gay Boomtown version of "El Dieciocho" (The eighteenth, the national Chilean anniversary) obviously excludes bloody Chilean-style BBQ, because many of its socialites are PETA-friendly and "don`t eat corpses". They exclude, for equally obvious reasons, dancing Colombian "Cumbia", considered too popular and ordinary. They would rather spent patriotic anniversary listening a posh and smooth version of ambience techno, eating sushi with slightly non-anorexic friends at their apartment terraces, and drinking vodka-berries instead of more ordinary "Chicha", (a kind of grape cider which is customary at these feasts.) A rather more patriotic very few will opt for a renovated version of classic "empanada" (a mixture of chopped meat and onions inside a crust of baked dough) replacing the smelly meaty mix for delicatesse shrimp and Gruyère cheese.

chlesea, east village? no, just boomtown gayland in here

Boomtown Gayland in Santiago de Chile is an ever-growing thing that has nothing to envy to San Francisco, or New York's Chelsea or East Village Gay boroughs. The main difference, for the good of us, Chileans, is that Santiago's Boomtown Gayland landed in one of the hipest and trendiest neighbourhoods of the city if not, the chicest of all. Nothing to do with rundown ghettos in most of USA's cities. No meatpacking facilities nearby nor fishy markets, no smelly haze over Boomtown. Just a fantastic Chilean Jardin de Luxembourg with its fine parisian-style museum, that houses either classic and modern art. A stone´s throw, the Chilean copy of parisian Gare d'Orsay, where open air ballet, opera and drama are oftenly performed in the sweet evenings of spring and summer. Jazz soirées are held in our cozy local Jardin de Luxembourg too. Nobody here lives in recycled storage warehouses, of course, but in the most fabulous 1930's to 50's apartments, that have nothing to envy to similar ones in Buenos Aires, but larger. When recently visiting an old couple of (hetero) professionals friends of mine, living in a 600 sq.mt.1930's déco bunker, I had the opportunity to take a glance at the always diverse Gay fauna around. At the very beginnings of Santiago's Gay Boomtown, the guys tended to be more activist and proselitist with plenty of flags on the balconies and windows of their upscale apartments. Now, there are signs of a newly acquired normality, as rents and real estate prices skyrocket, and getting a small pad becomes harder. Just a very few rainbow flags are still visible now, but you can see lots of "divines" making their grand entrée to the many highly-fashionable-but-rather-affordable cafes of the borough.