Archives for July 2018

Big Art on Calle Cerra

July 31, 2018 by James Trumm 2 Comments

On March 29 of this year, a friend messaged me at 8:00 in the evening to say she was locked in at the Santurce Air BnB she’d rented. Literally locked in. She’d misunderstood her host’s key instructions and now found herself unable to open the gate that would allow her to leave. She needed rescuing and gave me the address: 809 Calle Cerra, Santurce.

Using Google Maps, I navigated through the Maria-darkened streets of San Juan. I thought I knew Santurce, but I’d never been to this part before. The apartment was at the top of a flight of outdoor stairs that was accessed from the sidewalk via a red gate to the right of the building. I retrieved the key from a lockbox and released Ang from her Air BnB incarceration. We had a good laugh about it.

I caught only a glimpse of the neighborhood that night. What I could make out looked to be one-third slum, one-third hip, one third light industrial/commercial. I mentally bookmarked it as a place to return to someday. And so four months to the day after I rescued Ang, I returned to check out the neighborhood by daylight. I was delighted to find the largest repository of street art I’ve seen in San Juan.

Some of the murals covered entire sides of buildings. They were clearly not the work of casual taggers.

The one below was done by NM Salgar.

This painting was the most intricate of any I saw. And it’s big; the photo here only shows half of it. I can’t imagine the amount of time it must have taken to work in all those little color dots. It was done by Shetrock, one of the most prolific and talented of the Calle Cerra artists.

I’m not wild about this particular piece, but I admire the ambition behind it.

This tree-shaded mural shows Puerto Rican baseball legend Roberto Clemente wearing his Santurce Cangrejeros uniform. Clemente was the first Latin American/Caribbean player to be enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The size of this mural is a reflection of how big baseball is here.

Below is surely one of the most beautiful hardware stores to be found anywhere.

I’m not certain, but I think the sign in the photo below is part of the artwork. San Expedito (Saint Expeditus) is one of the sketchier Roman Catholic saints. According to the entry on him in Wikipedia,

Expeditus was a Roman centurion in Armenia who became a Christian and was beheaded during the Diocletian Persecution in AD 303. The day he decided to become a Christian, the Devil took the form of a crow … and told him to defer his conversion until the next day. Expeditus stamped on the bird and killed it, declaring, ‘I’ll be a Christian today!’

Many stories circulated about the origin of the cultus of Expeditus. … A case containing the relics of a saint, who was formerly buried in the Denfert-Rochereau catacombs of Paris, was delivered at a convent in the city. The senders had written expédit on the case, to ensure fast delivery of the remains. The nuns assumed that “Expédit” was the name of a martyr, and prayed for his intercession. When their prayers were answered, veneration spread rapidly through France and on to other Roman Catholic countries.

Perhaps the sign is a commentary of some sort about the artwork? Who knows? Well, Shetrock probably does.

The magic of the big bunny is that the artist has imagined a three-dimensional chrome rabbit and painted it showing a contorted reflection of a street scene. It’s a painting of a sculpture that both shows the subject and mirrors the environs.

This Lichtensteinesque comic strip enlargement was four stories tall and hard to photograph. The industrial fan at the woman’s lips will give an idea of its scale.

Three Spanish ships sailing away and leaving a trail of broken, anguished bodies it their wake? I detect allegory in this one.

But if there’s allegory in this mural, it’s lost on me. It’s whimsical and fantastical, but I keep trying without success to divine some larger meaning.

This must be the coolest bus stop in Santurce. I didn’t even notice the old man sitting there until I’d taken a couple photos of him.

This last one was one of my favorites. It’s the only mural I saw that was part of an industrial plant. The artist used the idea that this is a tank of some sort to maximum advantage. Don’t lose hope: the water angel boy is coming.

Filed Under: Puerto Rico, San Juan, Unauthorized Public Art Tagged With: Puerto Rico, San Juan, Santurce, Street Art, Unauthorized Public Art

The Pulse Nightclub Massacre Memorial in San Juan, Puerto Rico

July 29, 2018 by James Trumm 1 Comment

During a chance meeting with a survivor of the Pulse nightclub massacre of 2016, I learned that there was a monument to the victims here in San Juan. That made sense, since a 23 of the 49 people slain that night were Puerto Rican. I’ve been involved in the struggle for LGBT rights since the 1970s, so my curiosity was piqued. I set out to find it.

The memorial is located near the entrance to the Sixto Escobar Stadium in San Juan’s Third Millennium Park, not too far from Old San Juan.

The monument consists of seven right angle trapezoids covered with different colored tiles. There’s a small plaque in the center which says it was erected by the City of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz, Mayor. Off to one side is a much bigger plaque that lists names of the people who died. The Puerto Ricans are listed prominently, while the other victims are listed in smaller print at the bottom. A translation of it reads:

Let this tribute to life reinforce our commitment to fight hatred – the product of homophobia – with love, product of respect. Our motto reverberates in all hearts: love is love, is love, is love …

To each side of the monument stand four boxes, on top of which are little containers of artificial flowers. Some of them have a rubber wristband around them commemorating the massacre. I don’t think these boxes and the flowers are a permanent part of the monument. At least I hope not. The boxes are made of painted wood and won’t last long.

The memorial is the first and only public monument in Puerto Rico that commemorates LGBT people. I was glad to find it. However, the monument itself is somewhat underwhelming. The abstraction of the plain, small geometric shapes doesn’t convey much to me. The different colors are no doubt a nod to the rainbow flag and the idea of diversity, but the overall effect lacks the profound emotional resonance that I’d expect of a memorial to the the deaths of 23 Puerto Ricans. To put that number in perspective, if the same percentage of people in the States had been killed relative to the overall population, 2,250 people would have lost their lives.

I also found the location of the memorial puzzling. Sixto Escobar Stadium is a decaying and partially-disused athletic complex that as far as I know has no particular relationship to either the gay and lesbian community or the Puerto Rican government.

The monument isn’t located in an area where people are likely to notice it. During the time it took me to take ten photos of it, I saw no other people pass by, even a crowded nearby beach, Playa El Escambrón, is just a few hundred meters away.

These observations aside, the most significant aspect of the monument is that it exists at all. Full props to Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz and the municipal government for erecting it. And though I found the overall design and siting disappointing, the memorial had its intended effect on me. I found myself thinking of the massacre, of the victims and their families, and of the vigil in Toledo, Ohio that Lori Seubert and I attended for the victims. The photo below shows us afterward. It also reminded me of the many people who’ve been persecuted–and even killed–simply because of who they love.

There should be more monuments to the Pulse victims and to the other mass shootings that now happen with such depressing frequency. Horrific as it is, the past should not be forgotten.

Filed Under: Puerto Rico, San Juan Tagged With: Puerto Rico, Pulse Nightclub, San Juan

Toroverde Nature Adventure Park

July 28, 2018 by James Trumm Leave a Comment

I’ve been hosting family and friends recently. When my son Josh and his girlfriend Jessica came to Puerto Rico for a visit last weekend, we went to the Toroverde Nature Adventure Park in Orocovis, a community perched high up in the mountains in the center of the island. Toroverde really doesn’t offer much in terms of “nature.” By my definition, it doesn’t really provide an “adventure” either. But what it does offer is ziplining. And it does that very well. In addition to its Puerto Rico location, Toroverde operates another zipline facility in Ras al-Khaimah, one of the seven emirates that comprise the UAE.

I was impressed by the operation and its staff. They projected competence, assurance, and fun in well-nigh perfect proportions. The effect was to calm the jitters of the nervous while nurturing the spirit of the fun-seekers.

It was a fun, almost relaxing experience. We did seven different zipline runs, each one of which was a little bigger than the one before. I didn’t feel any fear, just the thrill of riding down a wire hundreds of feet above the valleys below.

I began chatting with one of the other members of our group. She was a fellow motorcyclist who favors big boulevard cruisers. Then I noticed that she wore a bracelet that said “Pulse.” She’d said she was from Florida. I put two and two together and asked her if the bracelet was from the nightclub where the massacre happened two years ago. Yes, she said, and in fact she was one of the DJs who was working there on that awful night when 49 people were killed and 53 were wounded.

I was momentarily dumbstruck. What do you say to someone who’s lived through something like that? I told her about the vigil that took place in Toledo, Ohio and how profoundly the shooting had affected my circle of friends. She told me that many Puerto Ricans were among the Pulse victims and that there is a monument to them somewhere in San Juan. I plan to go searching for it.

Filed Under: Puerto Rico Tagged With: Puerto Rico, zipline

El Batey: The Rolling Stones’ Bar of Choice in San Juan

July 26, 2018 by James Trumm 3 Comments

There’s no neon sign outside of El Batey. No neon signs inside either. And praise be, no TV. The windows have bars, not glass. The floor is uneven and rank. The place is open late til 3:00 or 6:00 or whenever. The bartenders will play Iggy Pop on the sound system on request. It’s a punky-junky dive bar located on a less-touristed street of Old San Juan.

I loved it. I could see myself going there night after night, quietly killing off brain cells with cheap rum as I sat at the bar reading and thinking deep thoughts.

It gave me a strange feeling, and the rest of that night I didn’t say much, but merely sat there and drank, trying to decide if I was getting older and wiser, or just plain old.
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary

There’s a lot of legend attached to the place. The Rolling Stones drank there when they were on the island. Some claim it was Hunter S. Thomson’s watering hole when he lived in San Juan, the place he’d go to gather the experiences he would later thinly fictionalize in The Rum Diary. Maybe. In any event, it’s the kind of place where you COULD have seen him back in the day.

The word “louche” doesn’t even begin to describe it. Inside, the walls appeared to be sweating. (No, I hadn’t dropped acid.) Scribbled signatures covered the smudged wall space like a net of black words, an effect that felt strangely cozy, but also kind of insane. The floor looked sticky from spilled drinks. The fragrance, a musty eau-de-ashtray combined with damp, ancient stone. In the dim, amber light our fellow customers all looked a little unwashed. You immediately got the message: this was not a frozen cocktail with umbrella kind of place.
― Laura Albritton, Uncommon Caribbean

It’s not a place for the rule-bound or the asthmatic. Despite a citywide smoking ban in restaurants and bars, people puff away in El Batey as if it were 1966. And the bathrooms are not for the squeamish or the dainty.

A notice scrawled on the men’s room door reminds people that access is limited to “1 (one) @ a time!”

The bar pulls off the trick of being simultaneously homey and deeply alien. Palimpsests of graffiti cover every square inch of every wall and part of the the high ceilings. How drunk would you have to be to stand on someone’s shoulders or climb a rickety ladder to write on the fifteen foot high ceilings? The writing is so multilayered as to defy reading and much of it seems to be in the Drunkish language, contributing to the strangeness of the place. But knowing that 50 years worth of earlier patrons appreciated the place enough to leave their mark makes the place seem intimate and human.

There are only two actual signs in El Batey. One reminds you of where you are. And the other reminds you that the president is a wanker — as if you might forget either of those things.

Business cards and other ephemera make up the lamp shades that surround the dim lights above the bar. A couple of clamp lamps light the corners of the other rooms. It’s dark, the vibe is chill, and the promise is anything goes.

And over in the corner, an old jukebox awaits quarters, hoping that someone will play “Paint It Black.”

Old God sure was in a good mood when he made this place.
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary

(Some of the photos in this post were taken by Josh Trumm)

Filed Under: Music, Puerto Rico, San Juan Tagged With: El Batey, Hunter S. Thompson, Puerto Rico, Rolling Stones, San Juan

Goodnight Miraflores

July 25, 2018 by James Trumm Leave a Comment

On my last night in Peru, I wandered the length of Avenida Jose Larco from the sea to Parque Kennedy. I started at the Larcomar shopping plaza, a handsome Miraflores shopping complex perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Pacific.

There I visited a gallery that was hosting an exhibition of photographs staged by the World Press Association. This being news photography, the photos tended toward the sad and disturbing, but there was much to learn from their composition. So much of photojournalism, it seems to me, is about knowing when the perfect split second is about to occur.

Elsewhere in the complex was a mixture of shops and restaurants of American, European, and Peruvian brands.

It was nearly dark when I left Larcomar and headed north. The darkness didn’t stop a utility worker from repairing some underground lines.

I passed by the usual parked motorcycles, fruit stands, apartment buildings, and convenience stores on my way to Parque Kennedy.

It was bicycle night at the park. I saw about a hundred cyclists queued up and waiting to ride around the city. Miraflores has bike lanes, curbed on both sides and painted red, that make bicycling around safe and easy. You can see one on the right side of the picture below.

Around the perimeter of the park were restaurants, cafés and stores where people indulged in less vigorous pursuits.

The public chess games, while less vigorous than bicycling, were definitely more intense. The two guys in the foreground were playing speed chess and completed half a game in the time it took me to take pictures of them.

When the hour got late, I walked back down Avenida Jose Larco to my hotel. I hadn’t taken a trip like this in three years, one where I’d spent eight days in two different parts of a country or region, explored UNESCO World Heritage Sites and ordinary street life, been out in the country and in the thick of a major city. Peru felt like a return to a life I love. It seemed like going home.

Filed Under: Lima, Peru, Travel Tagged With: Lima, Miraflores, Peru, Travel

Miraflores: Faces on the Bus

July 23, 2018 by James Trumm Leave a Comment

I’m fascinated by the glimpses I get of people as they pass by me on buses, trains, and subways at night. There’s a freeze-frame view of another human who inhabits the same planet I do and then that person is gone from my gaze forever. The people are lit as if on stage, characters in a stop-action play.

Maybe I’m a transit voyeur.

In the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima, I tried to capture some of what I saw. Buses are common and crowded there, so there’s no shortage of subject matter. Unfortunately, my visual reach exceeds my photographic grasp. I’ve got to work on my technique. But I write my blog as much for myself as for other people. It’s a notebook of ideas, some of which I later turn into better things. So here are the results of my most recent photographic experiments.

Filed Under: Lima, Peru, Travel Tagged With: Lima, Peru, Photography, Travel

Lima Centro: Plaza de Armas

July 22, 2018 by James Trumm Leave a Comment

During my stay in Lima, I fell in love with Miraflores, Barranco, and the Parque de la Reserva. However I felt less passionate about the Plaza de Armas, the main square in the center of Lima. Though the Cathedral Basilica of Lima, the Municipal Palace, and the Archbishop of Lima’s Palace are nice old buildings, none of them are examples of amazing architecture.

The way buildings and other features are arrayed around the plaza seems haphazard. The space looks unfocused and visually incoherent. Trees, flagpoles, streetlights, and a fountain add too many vertical elements to the square. Less would have been more.

I found more appealing things to look at in the side streets. On one pedestrian mall, the Lima Municipal Band was playing lively dance numbers. People (mostly older folks) were dancing in the street. And I just loved the fact that Lima has a municipal band. I thought of my parents, both of whom played in bands in high school and beyond. My father played the baritone horn while my mother was a very accomplished trombonist. They would have loved hearing what I heard.

One of the side streets dead-ended into the Casa de Correos y Telegrafos. It must have been inconceivable to the people who built this back in 1897 that letters and telegrams would be well-nigh obsolete 120 years later.

I also wondered if rendering a mail slot as a lion’s open mouth was really the best symbol for the Peruvian postal system. People want their letters delivered, not devoured. Still, it was pretty cool.

The streets around Plaza de Armas were the only places in Peru where I saw government security forces on display. I don’t know whether this is a regular occurrence. Three months before I arrived, Peru’s president was forced to resign in a corruption scandal and was replaced by the former vice-president. Perhaps that ripple of political instability prompted greater vigilance. Or maybe this is just a sad feature of the world we now live in.

On a happier note, there was a fine-looking bookstore nearby. I’ve remarked before on how many bookstores there are in Lima. Their presence always makes me think well of a city.

Of course, bodegas, street vendors, and convenience stores are common too.

Lima Centro certainly gave me the opportunity to indulge in some of my photographic obsessions: motorcycles and bicycles. They tell me stories about the place and the people who inhabit it.

I strolled through the arcades that ring the Plaza de Armas. And I wondered when I would return.

Filed Under: Lima, Peru, Travel Tagged With: Lima, Peru, Travel

Meet The Beetles (of Peru)

July 21, 2018 by James Trumm Leave a Comment

Original Volkswagen Beetles were once common on the streets of Latin America. But now these sturdy machines are getting rarer. There are still some stalwart old Beetles on the roads of Peru.

The ones I saw there seemed somehow brawnier than they do in the States. Possibly they have larger tires? For whatever reason, they look to me taller and more capable of going over rough terrain than their North American cousins.

Nearly every Peruvian Beetle I saw had been modified in some way or another, making identification difficult. So I’d be glad if Beetle experts reading this could give me their estimate of the year of each vehicle here and weigh in on the larger tire question.

I saw this one in Cusco. It appeared to be in the best shape of all those I photographed.

This one was parked on a side street in Miraflores. It was one of several I saw that had a roof rack of this design.

This battered bug was driving around Plaza de Armas in Lima Centro.

I saw these four Beetles in Barranco. Being a mecca for hippies, artists, and other Bohemians, it didn’t surprise me to find a fair few old VWs there.

When I was growing up, we had a book of classic Volkswagen ads on our family bookshelf. They were clever and quirky — some of the first ads I actually enjoyed. During my trip to Peru, I remembered this ad and found myself thinking about how common Beetles used to be in Latin America. It says a lot about why these cars were once so popular in certain parts of the world.

Filed Under: Cusco, Lima, Peru, Travel, Wheels Tagged With: Beetle, Cusco, Lima, Peru, Travel, Volkswagen, VW

Parque de la Reserva

July 20, 2018 by James Trumm Leave a Comment

At the time of its dedication in 1929, Lima’s Parque de la Reserva was intended as a monument to Peruvian troops who fought against Chilean forces in 1881 in The War of the Pacific. In 2007, though, the purpose and meaning of the park changed significantly. The grounds were substantially renovated to include 13 large fountains that were designed less to inculcate Peruvian patriotism than to celebrate Peruvian children, friends, families, and lovers.

The fountains are colorfully illuminated at night. Some have sensors that vary the water flow and light color as people approach.

Some of the fountains entice people into them and then spray bars of water up from holes in the ground, creating a kind of water prison.

At the perimeter of the park are benches set into small gazebos where cuddling couples can watch the water and light show.

Encouraging love seems to be part of the park’s design and intent. There are love seats in several strategically scenic places around the park that are very popular with couples and families who want photos taken.

The evening I was there, I saw two wedding parties having photos taken. This one looked a little strange, though.

Filed Under: Lima, Peru, Travel, Unauthorized Public Art Tagged With: Lima, Peru, Travel

Barranco Street Art 2

July 19, 2018 by James Trumm Leave a Comment

There’s so much street art in Barranco that I couldn’t fit all of it into my first post on the subject. The neighborhood is situated by the ocean and is divided by a gorge that cuts into the shoreline. A wooden footbridge over the gorge is so popular a hangout for loving couples that it’s called La Puente de Los Suspiros (the bridge of sighs). Many of the best murals in the neighborhood are located around the steps that lead down into the valley. Some artists’ studios are accessible only from the steps.