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@sweetstielow
Life, Death and Food Poisoning in Mexico City.
Abel and I landed at Mexico City's international airport on a Friday afternoon to a casual immigration line that felt more like waiting to check out at the supermarket.
Our bags were dispatched on a conveyor belt that came to a full stop before they all finished coming out. Mine was sitting on the threshold, barely peeking out, so I had to climb up the belt to fetch it. Mexico.
The Uber ride to Condesa was just over half an hour. Traffic was bad. We passed through what felt more like an endless neighborhood than a big city; small houses with life pouring out onto the streets and little taco stands or meat markets or cafes on every corner. Somewhere between the architectural outskirts of Madrid and the battered charm of Havana, I was thinking.
My experience with Mexico spanned from dancing with the devil at a club in Acapulco, the poverty stricken border town of Matamoros, predictable American style resorts up the west coast, to the jungle on the Caribbean side. But I had never experienced it as a metropolis.
Starbucks and other American chains were ubiquitous. But at least it was the kind of Starbucks situated in an interesting historical building.Our Condesa hotel was an old mansion that blended into a quiet tree-lined street. It was both peaceful and brimming with life. What Palermo in Buenos Aires aspired to be. Somewhere between the bohemian polish of European cafes and the wild intrusion of a jungle.
The first night we had a late dinner at Blanco Colima in Roma Norte. The moment we sat down a DJ started playing loud music 30 feet in front of us. Dinner was a vibe. A pregame with people of all ages. They greeted us with complimentary mezcal. We had ham croquettes, pig tacos, an octopus sashimi and steak tartare. The fancily dressed waiters properly served us each tapa as if it were an entree, changing out the silverware we barely touched.
After dinner we winded through the trendy Roma Norte to see every cute restaurant and bar packed with people sitting outside. I randomly selected one from a recommendations list, and when we sat down I ordered a glass of red wine while Abel wisely stuck with mezcal. The wine was as terrible as my decision to order wine. I was reminded that even though we were in a major metropolis, it was still Mexico. And I was the butt of his jokes for the night.
Saturday morning we set out for a long walk to el Centro, stopping by a few plazas, el Mercado Central - a market sprawling with artisanal goods, and el Barrio Chino. We walked through streets made prettier with tiled buildings, some empty and under construction. We witnessed both the beauty of colorful outdoor floral shops and the sobering sight of pick up trucks packed with the national guard standing upright, holding assault rifles.
The more we got lost in the side streets and strayed from Condesa, the more I saw the non-trendy heartbeat that makes Mexico City what it is. The rich, European-style Mexico City, the tourists' Mexico City and the reality lived by most all came together to coexist as a very heterogenous capital. El centro was one of the busiest downtowns I'd ever seen. Every shop hustled to get us inside. Every corner had hordes of people trying to get every which way. The museum of tiles proudly stood in the chaos as proof that Mexico City was for artists.
In our short walk to Plaza Zocalo, the gravity of human existence haunted me. I understood why Mexican culture held onto ideas of heaven and superstitions from the past. It's unbearable to think about how one day our life just ends, and with that, becomes insignificant.
In Mexico City, the fragility of life felt visceral. While I was in that contemplative state, my mom called me from home to tell me she had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. It was like I divined it. Luckily, everything is ok now. But, I will never forget how that dark, superstitious energy of Mexico City led me to that moment.
Downtown was overwhelming. We walked back towards Roma Norte to have lunch with Abel's friends who drove up from Cuernavaca to meet us. A Spaniard named Alberto and his Mexican wife Miriam. We chatted in Spanish over a massive plate of 20 tacos at a very unassuming taco join on one of the plazas. True to Latin style, we were in no rush and continued on for coffee, and then postre, and then beers. A Mexican friend of mine joined us and talked to me about how people in Mexico City chose family over isolating themselves during the height of the pandemic, no matter how at risk it put them.
Not even the threat of death can tear the Mexican idea of togetherness apart, I thought.
We walked Abel's friends back to their car and discovered it had a boot on it and couldn't be moved.
"Joder."
This wasn't the first time it happened to Alberto. The police, he told us, were notorious in Mexico for demanding "multas", or bribes. It could be for a parked car or a random pullover on the highway for speeding. They abused their power and they would tell you what you needed to pay to get out of it. In this case, Alberto's plates were from outside of Mexico City. He would have to go to a local pharmacy to pay the fine, and we would all sit in the car and wait for hours until a guy on a bicycle who worked for the police came to remove the boot.
By the time we got home we were too tired to go out to dinner, so I ordered sushi delivery to our hotel. It was an even worse decision than ordering red wine.
On Sunday we went to El Museo Nacional de Antropologia, which tells the story of Mexico before it was conquered by Spain. There were masks symbolizing mythological and religious practices. Pyramids that required a feat of human sacrifice to build in the middle of the desert. Civilizations that were confronted with death on a daily basis and still linger in modern Mexican culture.
After strolling through Polanco, Abel's sense of humor and boundless energy came to a full stop. Something was wrong. We used the bathroom of the W in Polanco and as I called my mom, he carelessly napped on one of the banks at the hotel's entrance.
We walked the 45 minutes to Mercado Roma for lunch. Abel sat lifelessly in front of his paella, barely touching what he loved so much. Food was not the answer, it was the problem. I gave my boyfriend food poisoning, because I had the foolish confidence of ordering raw sushi in a landlocked Mexican city.
On our way out of the market I stumbled on something, and Abel yelled loudly for all to hear in Spanish "lo siento, es rubia!" (I'm sorry, she's blonde!) and all of the Mexican chefs and workers erupted in laughter. Latin men.
Once again we had to ditch any plans for dinner out and spend another night in the hotel. It hit Abel like a bomb. And 12 hours later, it hit me. We spent Monday in bed, taking turns walking to the pharmacy to get more drugs. We pushed our flight to Sayulita.
Laying sick in bed with the Aero Mexico operator on speaker phone repeating "el sistema está un poco lento" and "estamos trabajando en ello" for two hours was not the idea I had for Mexico City.
As we finally took off two days later, I left thinking about all of the things we didn't experience in Mexico City. I did not make it to the trendy Rosetta or Pujol. We didn't see the Frida Kahlo museum or Diego Riveras' murals.
Mexico City kicked our asses. It humbled me. It reminded me of how human I am. It told me to take nothing for granted. And while the world is seeing it as a creative place that's new and intriguing, I felt the spiritual weight of 10,000 years of history overcome me. I didn't see the thin line between life and death, but I felt it.
Another day, a better vista #tropea 🇮🇹 (at Tropea, Italy) https://www.instagram.com/p/CS9VZFiqHxbGLt3nt5Jix1TJiiFqPgclQFgtbA0/?utm_medium=tumblr
City of endless skies and stairs #matera (at Matera, Italy) https://www.instagram.com/p/CS7DbD_qrMPEUXqQ5L42ov5oz8bx9iPn5TqMyA0/?utm_medium=tumblr
Colors of #puglia 💙💚❤️💛 (at Il Capitolo, Monopoli) https://www.instagram.com/p/CSzFXl8KExOJ4UNjn2YUnyZa1tpEdRRVvgmaB40/?utm_medium=tumblr
We’ll Always Have Unspoiled Italy
And Clooney will always have Como.
There’s a recent image of Kourtney Kardashian making out on a boat in Italy with Travis Barker, and it’s hard to know what’s competing for more attention — her bare ass or his full-body tats. Forget the glimpse of Venice in the background, it’s just a canvas for their moment. Visually, it’s interesting because it’s jarring compared to the clichéd glamour of an influencer hovering in front of a beautiful backdrop with a lame pose (I’m guilty of those). It’s also a signature Kardashian move — making their celebrity slightly louder than a picture of paradise.
But south of Positano — far from the celeb-trodden canals of Venice and Lake Clooney — Puglia, Basilicata, Calabria, and Sicily are still somehow below the social cache standard of American celebrities. Which means, they are still awesome because they are only partly-discovered. If you’re anything like me, swaths of English-speaking tourists ruin any romantic perception of a foreign country.
In a world without Anthony Bourdain, we have to sanctify travel ourselves. Give our own context to the places we go, and drown out the noise to feel any sort of emotional connection to a culture. And the thing with most celebrities and influencers is, they add noise.
Apulians, or people from Puglia, are hospitable. Our first night eating out at a Masseria, we quickly realized no one took Ubers or taxis in the remote area of Capitolo. So, the owner of the restaurant graciously offered to drive us the five minutes back to our hotel in his car. The roads in Puglia aren’t filled with paved sidewalks, so it’s you vs. traffic on a long and dusty road. Which means walking home at night is a bit of a gamble, let alone in heels. I thought the owner would disappear into the other tables with Italian-speaking clientele to avoid carrying out a nice gesture, but he made his rounds and came right back over, car keys in hand.
Puglia is massively underdeveloped outside its cities, but peppered with hotels known as ‘Masserias’, essentially refurbished farmhouses which include a pool, a restaurant with local produce and a handful of rooms. If you want you can go to a Borgo, which is more castle than farmhouse, and get a five-star experience. The majority of the tourists in Puglia are holed up in these country houses or secluded hotels, so all you need to do to experience local Puglia is go to a public place.
That goes for the food too. The nicer meals we ate in Puglia were only memorable for how hard the restaurants tried to be innovative. Like adding raspberries to risotto and cubed cheese where it didn’t belong. The best spots were always the mom and pop seafood joints loved by locals that sat humbly along the water. Where dishes didn’t have one too many ingredients. Just a perfectly cooked bowl of pasta with anchovies. It’s a lesson I’ve learned time and time again: Italian food is meant to be unpretentious.
In Southern Italy, sprawling villages from centuries ago are frozen in time and only reachable through long country drives. In Basilicata, we stopped in Matera, a Unesco world heritage site once famously known as “the disgrace of Italy” and now, a prized gem. What used to be a cave-dwelling slum where humans coexisted with animals (and was evacuated due to poor living conditions a mere 70 years ago) has become a majestic town made of stone that rises to meet the moon at night. Thankfully, the food is unspoiled by any influence of innovation.
To drive through Calabria is to witness an endless stretch of farmland; the earth so dry it seems to be on the brink of setting ablaze, with a few pockets of old villages interrupting it. There’s more cattle than people, only visible at farmstands on local roads offering chiles or onions for sale. In Southern, unspoiled Italy, the ugly comes with the beautiful. And that’s what makes it interesting. Reaching Tropea is a herculean task. I liked to think the drive up steep cliffs to get there is what keeps most non-Italian tourists out. If you survive it, you’re met with a view of an endless blue Mediterranean where deep sapphire meets a sunlit turquoise. The charming coastal town has all the beauty and none of the pretense of how I imagine Positano. As for the food? Can’t decide if a plate of grilled octopus or a bowl of tomatoes was the best thing I ate.
When we arrived in Sicily by ferry, we were greeted with the port city of Messina. My first impression of a Sicilian city reminded me of Havana. Beautifully historic and slightly decaying pinkish and yellow buildings as intricate as they were dirty. Charming, in a world-weary sort of way. Catania felt similar. I liked the old town of Taormina because it was not your traditional coastal town. Somehow, this village of shops and restaurants was built on a hill that you could only reach by cable car, with views of Mount Etna behind it and the Ionian Sea shining in front of it.
As our sailboat left the port of Catania one hazy Thursday, I couldn’t help but think of Cosa Nostra. What smuggling, trafficking, or organized crime went on in the shadows behind these shipping containers?
At sea, we saw a fire that broke out in the hills of a village outside of Catania. Our skipper happened to be from that region, and watched as the flames grew bigger and bigger. He was unfazed. He wore a gold hoop in each ear and had several daunting sails under his belt; it was clear he had seen some shit. What made him Sicilian, I imagined, was the gravitas he carried of a life that wasn’t easy — but his ability to animate and relate to us despite it.
We are lucky to be able to travel to Italy, especially after the profound loss they experienced last year. There is nothing wrong with wanting a glamourous vacation. But I have found in this age of Bourdain idolizers, people want to experience an emotional or enlightened connection to the place they are visiting. And to do that, you have to make it the star. It’s what Bourdain knew how to do. Your anonymity is their platform. And any projections he made, he was sure to apologize for.
Kardashians or no Kardashians, Italy as a country has always been the star. Its beauty outshines the glamour anyone could bring to the forefront. Its food begs to have a dialogue. Which maybe means, less talking and more eating. Its history makes your short life inconsequential. I’m convinced that unadulterated Italy, not wifi-free yoga retreats, is the antidote to modern life. Because there we remember why we’re consumers. It’s about enjoying the things we’re meant to consume. Like tomatoes and unspoiled vistas and good craftsmanship and moments that are bigger than us. Not la famosa vita blocking my view.
Are advertising creatives rebelling against the system that created us?
Building the Church
David Ogilvy once said: “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.” He is boldly declaring the terms of advertising creativity by giving it a Darwinian purpose. Although advertising wasn’t born in the Mad Men era, Ogilvy’s was a golden age for the industry that set a new bar for storytelling, art direction and big ideas.
In the 19th century, newspapers started relying on ads featuring slogans, images, and minimal copy for profit. But it was two major milestones I think solidified advertising as a full-blown industry: the introduction of ‘brands’ in the late 1800’s and the formation of ad agencies in the 1940’s.
The first half of the 19th century ushered in a new era of capitalism in America. The economic boom of the 1920’s saw the invention of new products and a surge in consumer goods, while corporate giants started controlling most of the country’s wealth. Shopping was no longer just buying soup, rather having the choice to buy Campbell’s. With the marketplace churning out more and more products, advertising was there to package their perception into the new American ideals. A car became a symbol of class. A shampoo became the voice of a gender.
It was advertising that built the culture around consumption. It was advertising that humanized corporations as ‘brands’. It was advertising that became the reinforcement of our freedom to choose. And advertising that exploited our socioeconomic status to sell us a better version of ourselves.
Capitalism in America isn’t designed for the greater good. By promoting individual opportunity above all, it suggests you versus them. A for-profit system creates a metric for quantitative growth and advertising perceived that our value as citizens could be intrinsically tied to profit. Advertising arguably blurred the line between church and state. People’s sense of self became conflated with the politics behind the products they bought, hailing advertising as the religion of economics.
Advertising’s capitalization of culture set the stage for discrimination, stereotyping, sexism, and ulterior profit motives that would become a source of controversy throughout the 20th century — but would also ultimately challenge us to recognize how we see ourselves.
The Creative Message
Creatives don’t think like capitalists. At our most noble, we believe that creativity has the power to innovate, make progress and move society forward. At a fundamental level we get to be arbiters of the human condition in a liberal democracy. And at our worst, well, sex sells. We look for convenient truths and shape consumer narratives that influence, inspire, engage and entertain. To a creative, value is understood as an emotional measure.
For example, good design can inspire positive feelings that lead to happiness. The dissemination of ideas can provoke. The creation of art can give us purpose. The creation of beauty; empathy. Establishing commonality builds community, and so forth. Of course, it’s really the brands that are doing all the talking, but at some point creatives started asking questions on behalf of the brands they worked for.
What if we made people think? What if we questioned the us vs them? What if we challenged the socioeconomic stereotypes set in motion by our forefathers? Creatives learned to carve out a voice of resistance in culture. One of my favorite ads of all time is the Independent’s Litany. Aired in 2000, the British newspaper provoked the viewer to question the rules of society using reverse psychology. It said a brand could defy the system and (ironically) gave permission to the consumer to challenge the status quo.If we are lucky, we get to create messages for brands that move people beyond the comfort capitalism provides.
Advertising Today
Thanks to the internet boom of the 90’s, the advertising playing field has expanded enormously. Social media’s hyper distribution of ideas at scale presents another opportunity for advertising to capitalize on culture. It’s not just a mass message in the form of a print or TV spot, it’s a highly-targeted, hyper-personalized message around sports, entertainment, art, travel, or wherever your interests lie. That it’s a conversation between you and the brand hasn’t changed — it’s just more malleable, more dynamic, more in this moment.
The internet made us more self-aware. The worst of our actions were suddenly in our faces. Our self-doubt and physical insecurities. Our century old gender stereotypes. Our capacity for bullying. Racism. Sexism. Homophobia. All started surfacing. And advertising took these truths and mirrored them back to us. Advertising challenged the norm and then repackaged it, offering up newer, timelier American ideals. Dove’s Real Beauty. Always’ Like a Girl. Burger King’s Proud Whopper. Glossier’s Body Heroes. And so on.
The rise of connected society also meant the dark side of capitalism starting at us. Brands have had to shuffle to cover up their shady business practices and bury stories about inhumane working conditions in third world countries. Consumers started to become more aware of how a for-profit model doesn’t always add up to a feel-good message.
Advertising for Progress
All of this self-awareness birthed another evolution. Advertising is now held to a standard of being on the side of progress. Our connected era has yielded a crop of brands that submit to conscious capitalism, where purpose has a say in profit’s bottom line. There are brands that make products that invest in our global future, like Patagonia, Tesla, and Apple. And there are brands starting conscious-raising, non-conforming conversations, like Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty, Thinx, Hims, Impossible Foods.
Thanks to conscious capitalism, we can now opt into the concept of for-good by choosing to buy certain brands. We can now have meaningful conversations around what that better version of ourselves is. And it goes both ways. As a copywriter, as someone who wants to contribute meaning to a soulless political system and put truth on a pedestal, I have to recognize that advertising creativity comes at a cost. There would be no platform to start these meaningful conversations if it weren’t for the system that got us here, would there? But in this Darwinian indsustry, can you fault us for just trying to survive? And so I find myself asking some questions.
How codependent are we on rebelling against the system that created us?
If there were no norm to challenge, what would our message be?
And if the status quo we question is just a product of capitalism, are we really just rebelling against a contrived version of ourselves?
When did we start to depend on mass media for validation?
Do we remember what it was like to see ourselves before we received any brand messages at all?
At best, advertising for a creative is an outlet for self-expression and an opportunity for awareness that leads to real progress.
At worst, I’ll forever be stuck in a loophole, challenging yesterday’s cultural ideologies. For better or for worse, as long as we’re buying, we’re believing.
Again, basically New York if you take away the concrete. . . . #puertorico #placespr #elyunque #rainforest (at El Yunque National Forest) https://www.instagram.com/p/BsI5PmmBjcH-xwTZ6mpQfnqUm4UPTXVcGcnmos0/?igshid=14pms30qp2zed
More #boats ! #sailinglife #glailing #boatstuff #socksdontgobad 🇫🇷 (at Porto-Vecchio) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0D4YhagTPSsnCauON7CQeViDGs69zCuFzyZ4o0/?igshid=1cr3tg52j84ee
Italians 🤷♀️💁🏻♂️ (at La Maddalena, Italy) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0Egc1Sgkr8jpbgFG3VYnFcqFkVNwwRAWeWWRg0/?igshid=1lp9x788qtuo9
Fall in Sevilla. #itsalwayssunny #inseville #adelphia (at Seville, Spain) https://www.instagram.com/p/B37MY_OBlyS8773j62kSqpenBdiPH6oNshIoJc0/?igshid=15qe6ljbpvf7w
✨❄️☃️✨❄️✨ #brooklyn #nyc #sometimesitsnowsindecember (at Cobble Hill, Brooklyn) https://www.instagram.com/p/B6Rx1NSgAB7lRJ0DOSv9Y2aV2fJzB90NO3Xr2g0/?igshid=1iax3dnnat88x
Sevilla, October 2019. (at Seville, Spain) https://www.instagram.com/p/B-P8oGFA0ntZ7rH4ULMXFiJpX2yCu4Jmoa09-A0/?igshid=x5e3u8sjgyv3
15,000 steps of pure anti-social bliss. #ithinkthisislakemichigan (at Quarantine) https://www.instagram.com/p/B-iXCweAXIgkjWxKEGTXg_JzTd4w3P4Tyrx3ik0/?igshid=m321ani4y9st
Some people hike, some people walk to Vineyards. #italy🇮🇹 #monterossoalmare (at Monterosso al Mare)
#newyork in the rain ☔️ #newyorkphotographer #nyc #nycphotography #manhattan #ues (at New York, New York)
CUBA
A cultural utopia. Whose history has been preserved for lack of an option. A place with a dark and colorful past that begs to escape its reputation as an imprisoned island nation. Holding imaginations captive for decades. How many people have projected romantic ideals on its helpless solitude? I broke up with the well-protected fantasy of Cuba in October; that damn plot of paradise can be reached.
Trinidad was the best way to part with it. All the colors are real. We drove through the pastel shacks of the historic colonial town, sharing the road with horse and buggy; hitchhikers and idlers ready to answer our appeal for directions. Peaches, greens, sky blues, yellows. Grown men freely hopping in and out of vintage pink chevys as if they were regular old jeeps. Our first taxi driver in Trinidad took the two battery wires with his bare hands and sparked them to start his car.
We stayed with Elvis. A black man maybe in his 60’s, he was quick to make jokes, and offered us to take him back to the U.S. in my friends very oversized suitcase. He ran a Casa Particular off a crowded dirt road ten minutes from Trinidad’s colonial square. Thanks to Elvis, I immediately loved Cubans. He bragged that just as the famous singer was a rock-and-roll legend, he was a legendary hotelier.
That day, we stumbled into the backyard of Casa de la Music to find a musical group of ten people—every skin tone a different shade—jamming on modern salsa. The trombone player came over and invited us to his gig that night. We gladly accepted and then joined the rest of the tourists (Germans! Latins! More Germans!) as they knocked back mojitos and smoked cigarettes in the main square. Live music we learned, was the standard at every restaurant and bar in Cuba.
The next morning we left for Havana. 25 CUC for a seat alongside two other travellers. The long drive quickly became one of my favorite experiences, filled with moments that made up a view of the past. Pure unadulterated country. No wifi or cell service. Music played on the stereo via hard drives that were smuggled into the country and sold, containing the latest latin and reggaeton hits. If we saw billboards, they were words of propaganda. The not yet abandoned pride of the longstanding revolution was everywhere.
The lone highway brought unexpected scenes of people, too. Children in school uniforms. Horse and buggys. Hitchikers (where were they trying to go?). Herds of cattle. Farmers in their gaucho boots chasing them, steering them.
We stayed among the locals in Habana Centro. In this neighborhood, home life poured out onto the streets. Open windows exposed people cooking, watching T.V., sitting around in their underwear. The streets one giant maze of corridors. Neighbors may as well be family. In our ten minute walk to Habana Vieja, we were overcome with black exhaust from the old cars, people briskly walking by us; a few hollers and stares, shops that sold everything from meats to pajamas, and generally overcrowded sidewalks. It felt like one giant village and we were a part of it.
Habana Vieja is lively. In fact this was not a city of protesting, opposing views and crime. This was not filled with the chaos, heat and exaggeration I sometimes associate with a poor Latin city.It happily yielded to its touristic reputation, give or take a few scams.
Highlights of Havana:
• Museum of the Revolution, an unpolished history of Cuba cut together through the idealistic lens of the men behind the revolution..
• Music and Mojitos, literally everywhere and for all. And the variety of music, from skin tone to age to gender to tune.
• Two Girls (were they 16? 26?) who tricked us into going to the Buena Vista Social Club founder’s concert to buy them drinks. My exchange with Amaranto Fernandez in Spanish was worth it.
• “Wifi” Parks, Cuba’s version of our 90’s mall hangouts, where locals congregated around spotty signals to check their communal Facebook page. (Not free!).
• 1 CUC Ride Shares, long before Uber Pool there was waiting on the street to hop in a car with strangers in Cuba.
• The Grotto – a salsa club where men invited you to dance salsa, and when you lied and said “descanso” instead of being discouraged, they lined up together and practiced the most intricate and rhythmatic footwork you’ve ever seen in your life.
• Cubanos – the sandwiches are everywhere, but unlike the rest of the world, they don’t call them Cubanos! Ordering a Cubano is a fun way to confuse people though.
All in all there is a richness to Cuba that I think was born from its longstanding fight to be unified. Socialism is meant to contain. Cuba endures from the harmony of all this chaos. You have to think about the politics that gave birth to a creativity unparalleled by the rest of the world. This island was never meant to exist like in our imaginations. And like a lover, we can only hope it remains untouched in all its immortal beauty.