Month: August 2015

The Secrets of San Miguel de Allende

“En San Miguel cada uno y su vecino es un artista,” Louis said–in San Miguel everyone and his neighbor is an artist. It was my third day in this colonial town and I had already grasped the San Miguelean spirit: drink mezcal, party hard, and make art. Hung-over from the wedding I had crashed the night before, I managed to drag my cruda self from my bed to attend my Airbnb host Crystal’s birthday BBQ in the garden. Herself a jewelry maker, among Crystal’s guests were a painter, a pianist, a graphic designer, and a gallery owner. I felt as if I had found myself in the 21st-century version of Paris in the 1920s. As Gerardo the painter poured me another shot of mezcal, the group began to speak about secrets: how they were different than lies and why we loved our secrets so much… I wondered whether a secret had to involve two or more parties; was a secret an interactive concept by its very nature or could it also be internal? “Everybody has …

Under the Rubble of Istanbul’s Urban Regeneration

This week’s post is a link. I am proud to contribute to InPerspective magazine’s first issue with an article on Istanbul’s urban regeneration and its impact on this ever changing mega-city. InPerspective is a non-profit project made up of a network of journalists, translators and readers dedicated to reporting stories that explore different subjects and perspectives from all over the world. In addition to contributing articles to this wonderful project, I will be helping them as regional editor. As a taste, here are first few paragraphs of my first article on InPerspective: ISTANBUL’S URBAN REGENERATION CHILDHOOD MEMORIES AND A CHANGING MEGACITY I grew up in Kaya Palas, a 14-story building on Iğrıp Street in the Asian side of Istanbul and as I write these words it has no roof. In its stead are machines tearing apart the building from top to bottom, floor by floor. By the time anybody reads this article, the building that was my childhood’s palace will have ceased to exist. Our apartment overlooked Fenerbahçe Orduevi, perhaps the most fancy military officer’s club in Istanbul boasting a …