Zoocap

I have always been drawn to the style of Art Deco.  The art and the architecture seems somewhat contradictory to me, in that it looks modern while retaining a vintage feel.  I don’t know if that makes sense, but when I found myself standing in the middle of the Art Deco District in South Beach I was in heaven.  To be honest I was not sure what to expect when I was preparing for my first visit to Miami.  I have never been a bikini wearing beach kind of person, my favorite time on beaches is during storms, so I was wondering just what I would do once I got there.  I found a great hotel online at miamiluxuryhotels.com and when I checked in I explained this dilemma of mine to my bellboy on the way to my room.  He asked what I was interested in and I told him art, food, history, coffee, street markets…and he said that I must visit the South Beach Art Deco District. 

In this district there are more than eight hundred buildings of the Art Deco style.  I had my camera with me of course, and filled the memory card with images of these fabulous buildings to paint from later on when I got back home to my studio.  I went into the lounge of one of the hotels and ordered a drink at the bar.  I asked the bartender about the neighborhood and he gave the full story.  He said that most of the buildings were constructed through the 1920′s, which was also during the time of the prohibition. 

Much of the South Beach area became known for gambling and illegal liquor and speak-easies, attracting mobsters and crime.  For the next few decades the area became quite a slum.  But, he told me, the popular 1980′s TV show “Miami Vice” changed all that.  I questioned him and he said that the show had a lot to do with it, but that at the time the Miami Design Preservation League took interest in the neighborhood and restored all of the buildings to their original beauty.  The Art Deco district and all of South Beach is now one of the chicest and most visited areas of Miami.  I thanked him, and set back out on my journey to explore more of South Beach, and to discover a bit more of the history as well.

Are you going to Huntsville? Need a great room at one of the elegant hotels located in Huntsville? www.hotelshuntsville.com  There are plenty of nice places to stay and there are some fun things to do while you are visiting. There are plenty of things to see when it comes to the NASA space program. There is also the interesting North Alabama Railroad Museum and then there are some different kinds of museums. One of the more charming museums is the Clay House Museum.

The Clay House Museum is an old home that was originally built around the 1850s. The museum was started by a lady named Robin Hall Brewer. She fell in love with tea sets and started a collection that lead here to 8,000 pieces over a decade and a half. It all started with the fancy tea service she took part in at a restaurant in San Fransisco. She started to collect the tea cups, saucers and there matching creamer and sugar bowls that were made by Noritake. The museum is like a shrine for Japanese made tea sets. She also wrote a book on the matter becoming quite the master of tea set knowledge.

Brewer did everything she could think of to make the museum a success. She even volunteered at the Huntsville Weeden House Museum to learn how to run a museum. She learned everything she could about the tea sets and she collected as many pieces as she could. She even flew to Japan and visited the factory were her collection was made. Sadly the 57 year old, Robin Brewer died from cancer in 2008. The old home and museum is now an art gallery for local artists as well. It is located in the Madison area of the city on Eastview Drive. It is a great thing to see what dreams can be created with passion.

I got a friend with all sorts of superstitions about cars. She believes in the whole Saint Christopher thing and keeps a plastic stature of him on her dashboard glued with this uber version of super glue. She claimed it came from NASA where her father worked, but she claimed a lot of things. She was a storyteller about everything and never wasted a chance to entertain someone with a story. She was like Almost Browne expect her name was Cat Morgan. Cat Morgan had a story about her name too.

Cat had all sorts of stories about anything and everything that she could lay her hands on. Dishwashing fluid, mops, roofs, school parking lots, new tires . There are more things I could tell you she has stories about, but I cannot remember them all. Just those. The story about tires is an especially good tale. It stopped mattering to me whether or not this tall tales or big fish were real. I got to understanding that it wasn’t the tale and what was true in it or not true in it that mattered, but what she was trying to tell with the tale. There was where you could find the real, the authentic, the truth if you want it. But you had to look hard.

Here is her story about tires: she was driving on throughway and about two miles ahead of her was a gigantic and monstrous semi truck painted with a Chinese dragon on it that circled around the truck a couple of times with its curvy body. Anyway, she wanted to get a closer look at it because she loves dragons. Cat has stories about dragons too. So she tried to get closer and closer to the dragon, scything a path through the other automobiles on the road. Then she saw the body of the dragon split open, in the back where the door was to upload and unload things. Columns and columns of tires were back there, a whole army of them in the belly of the Chinese dragon semi truck. The tires spilled out and rolled around the road marble-style. A lot of people were mad and unhurt but she just laughed because got another good story to tell. I still don’t know what’s authentic in this story, which is why I like retelling it because I hope to never know.

On my visits to New York, I have noticed that everything tastes better.  The coffee is better.  The spaghetti and ravioli is better.  The Chinese food is better, and the pizza?  Well there is a reason that every other city in the country, has “New York Pizza” shops.  Okay, there was for a while the craze of the California Pizza Kitchen, and of course Chicago style pizza is popular as well.  But the craze of the Chicago pan pizza escapes me, as I have had Chicago style pizza, in the city of Chicago, and nothing beats the pizza of New York City.

Some people claim that the pizza in New York is so good because of three populations that have been drawn to the city throughout the years, the chefs, the food artisans, and the immigrants, all bringing their worlds together in the making of the perfect pie.  The many cultures have brought with them their customs, and their roots can be seen, or tasted rather, in their culinary artistry.  As stated before, the food of the city is just outstanding, check it out.

The first pizza shop was opened in 1905, by Gennaro Lombardi, Lombardi’s and is still on Spring Street, with the pizza cooked in the original coal oven just across the street in the original kitchen in Little Italy.  This pizzeria is still in business and is credited for the beginning of a world wide love of New York pizza.  There are many more long standing pizzerias throughout the city and each of the five boroughs.  Coney Island is home to the famous Totonno’s Pizzeria, and at DiFara, the traditional pieces covered in buffalo mozzarella are still made by Domenico Demarco, the 70 year old pizza chef extraordinaire.

My Italian friends quietly say that they now prefer the pizza of the United States, and of New York most assuredly to any of the pizza in their home towns in Italy.  My first slice was experienced in Times Square, at a popular little joint called Ray’s.  It is a taste I will never forget.  Perhaps it was the excitment of being in the city for the first time, and the vibe of the square, but as I said, it all just seemed to taste better, even down to the last bite of the crust.

In 1956, Paolo Soleri settled on the eastern side of the greater Phoenix area, in the city of Scottsdale.  Soleri was born and grew up in Turin, Italy, and upon completing his degree in Architecture at the Torino Polytechnico, he moved to the Arizona desert to study at Taliesin West with Frank Loyld Wright.  He has garnered many awards over the years, and when he returned for a visit to Italy, he founded the Ceramica Artistica Solimene. This is where he developed, among many other things, the bronze windchimes that so many people living in and traveling through the city of Phoenix so covet.

All around the city, you will find these chimes decorating the homes and balconies, the patios of the restaurants in some of the finest hotels in Phoenix, and in the carry on satchels of those traveling back home.  For the past thirty years, the sales of these chimes have contributed funds for his ongoing architectural project, Arcosanti.  Arcosanti is part of the commitment Soleri made to himself when he moved to Scottsdale, a commitment to experimentation and research in urban development and planning.

Arcosanti is a small village, which houses five thousand people, and has been undergoing construction and modifications beginning in 1970.  It is a way of combining ecology and architecture, which will leave the smallest footprint on the environment as possible.  There is minimal use of raw material, and a great reduction in the use of non-renewable energy and resources.  The site is open for touring seven days a week, the hours Monday-Saturday being 9am to 5pm, and on Sunday from 11am-5pm.

To pop in at any time during operating hours you will take a self guided tour, for group tours previous scheduling arrangements are necessary.  The gardens located throughout Arcosanti are beautiful to wander through, and many times people choose to have their celebrations here.  Most of the residents are artists, so along with the famous windchimes you will find various objects created by those living on the site.  It really is a grand place, in every way, so on your next trip through the Arizona desert, make sure to find some time for a visit to Arcosanti.

The city of Los Angeles is a sprawling metropolis.  To fly into the city at night, you will find a sea of street lights and buildings just outside your airplane window, that never seems to end.  I moved to LA in the summer of 1999, just one week before my birthday and as luck would have it, we drove through the desert of Arizona and California during the hottest part of the day, only to end up on the 101, at the beginning of rush hour traffic.  Six lanes of traffic heading West through the Valley, and six lanes heading East.  It is a different kind of city when you are moving there, as opposed to spending a few nights in a best Los Angeles hotel, being driven around by the hotel chauffeurs.

When I found myself stopped in the madness that is the 101, and the endless sea of not city lights, but the sun reflecting off of the roofs of hundreds and hundreds of cars, I questioned my decision to move to this city.  But we finally reached our new place, unloaded the U-Haul, and I feel directly to sleep.  The next morning, I knew that if I headed out from the Vally, and just drove to the coast, I would be standing on the sand of one of the most incredible stretches of coastline in the Western part of the United States.

I took off on the windy road through Topanga Canyon, and after about half an hour, I turned a curve and saw the blue of the Pacific Ocean in the distance.  My heart started to pound a bit, as I drew nearer to the fresh saltwater scented air.  During the next two years, the beaches along the coast were my home.  From the calm and elegant Malibu, to the funky and energetic boardwalk of Venice.  Any excuse I had to go from one side of town to the other by driving along the Pacific Coast Highway, I took, as even though it was out of the way, it was a great way, a breezy Southern California way, with the top down and the tunes of Moby playing loudly from the stereo.

It’s been years since I was last in San Antonio, but I remember distinctly two things about it: The Alamo and The River Walk.  Known at first as the Mision San Antonio de Valero, The Alamo has existed on its current site since 1724 or two hundred and eighty-six years.  Sixty-nine years after its inception, the mission was secularized and given over to Indian residents who farmed the fields; by the 1800s, the Spanish military a cavalry unit, who called the place the Alamo after their hometown, Alamo de Parras.  In 1835, the Alamo entered history when General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna arrived with an army outside San Antonio, taking the people inside the Alamo by surprise.  The defeat of the Alamo and the victory of Santa Anna has been recreated many times in film, giving rise to the expression “Remember the Alamo!” as a rallying cry against such a crushing blow.  Now a museum, the Alamo keeps that memory alive, open every day of the year except for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

The River Walk has an even older history than the Alamo, stretching back as far as 1536, when Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, at the time shipwrecked and a captive of Indians, saw and later described the River; much later, in 1691, a Catholic priest camped near a stream known as the Yanaguana and decided to celebrate a mass on St. Anthony’s Day and so renamed the stream San Antonio.  Several centuries later, in 1959, the river became a city park, officially starting the development of the River Walk.  In 1962, a landscaping program along two miles of the river walkway planted seventeen thousand trees and shrubs and vines.  The El Tropicano, which was the first riverfront hotel, opened.  Today, in the 21st Century, the River Walk remains a unique addition to the city, filled with shops and luxury San Antonio hotels.

As much as I extoll the virtues of the San Antonio River Walk, you should know that the River Walk is actually drained for maintenance, this year from January 3rd to the 12th; however, this means that San Antonio is holding the Michelob Ultra Mud Festival!  Each year, once the river is filled up again, the Mud Festival is the place to be as media and civic celebrities and politicians attempt to capture the title of the Michelob Ultra Mud Queen and Mud King, attempting to raise money for the River Walk Association.  Included in the festivities are Ultra Mud Pie Ball, Ultra Mud Coronation, and the Ultra Mud Parade.  If you miss it, Bud Light will be holding a Mardi Gras River Parade in February!

My last days in New York have been a busy last few days. Naturally, I went to another house party thrown by one of my dozens of cousins from Med. school. There were board games with alcohol as the gain or win, a live band and all-in-all a great night and morning. We didn’t get any sleep basically, so most of my cousins and I ended up at brunch where the mimosas flow from a fountain (kidding), but alcohol was par for the course.

I spent the rest of the day checking out Brooklyn; I really went there to eat at this very famous pizza place, but the long queue did not seem appetizing. I walked all the way across Brooklyn Bridge, which gave me a stunning view of New York City. I ended up in the artsy part of town, Soho I think, the place where they converted all the dilapidated warehouses into galleries and art studios. Then, I walked into what seemed not a so safe area, wasn’t sure, but I definitely felt like I didn’t want to stand out as a tourist. It was a great day anyway, and I had a great experience in Brooklyn.

That night I got to see Avenue Q, an off Broadway play at this really nice theater venue called New Stages. I got a great deal on my Broadway tickets on-line, click here if you’d like to get great prices too! The venue is a collection of some pretty small stages, almost black-box really, where you almost feel like you’re a part of the play going on. I liked Avenue Q, it was funny, relevant and quotable.

My last day was spent at the American Museum of Natural History. The exhibits were interesting and imaginative, but it was the planetarium that really blew me away. Finally, it was time to head home. I’ll miss my cousins, but now it’s time for them to come to California to visit me.

Austin, Texas is also the state’s capital. In addition, many people would call it the country’s musical capital. The city itself goes so far as to refer to itself as the live music capital of the world. That’s a pretty big claim and Austin has the goods to back it up. Live music is played and enjoyed throughout bars, clubs, café’s and coffee shops across the city. Many of the residents are musicians and the ones who aren’t enjoy and support the music scene. There are also festivals and ongoing events that are not only popular with the residents but attract the numerous populations of tourists that visit the city each year. The hotels Austin fill up quickly in the days before the annual Austin City Limits Music Festival, which was named after the famous PBS program.

The PBS program that the festival is named after has become one of the most popular taped concert series in the world and many musicians and bands consider a performance invitation on it one of their fundamental goals and while the Midnight Special in the 1970s indicated to many musicians that they had arrived or they had made it, a performance on Austin City Limits holds the same appeal to performers today.

The festival began in 2002 and was only two days during that inaugural year. It occurs in the early part of October or late September and since it began it has quickly elevated to the status of Lalapooza, Boonaroo and Coachella as one of the top live music festivals in the United States. It has also drawn some major names in the music industry including Tom Petty and REM. Elvis Costello, Cold Play, John Mayer, Sheryl Crow and Willie Nelson are others and are also among the list of performers that have appeared at both the festival and on the televised program. The Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam and Ben Harper were among the major names from the 2009 nine festival.

Tennis players, with their speed and agility, also have the ability to work out what their opponent might be doing five moves from theirs and the other possible moves to their countermoves.  Tennis players are amazing sportsmen and sportswomen.  However, the clinical mindset it takes to dissect the moves of your opponent has room as well for silly superstitions.  Almost every player has them.  People have seen them throughout many tennis tournaments, and probably will see them again during the up and coming Autralian Open.  Tennis players, even famous ones, are not inured to routines and habits that have become a part of their superstitions.

During his games, Andre Agassi must make the ball boys and ball girls be in the original place they were before he serves.  If that means he asks them to go back, he will do it.  In a whole tournament, one of the Williams sisters, Serena, will actually wear the same pair of socks.  Not copies of the same kind, but the same stinky sweat ridden pair soaked in sweat from numerous matches.  Other famous female tennis players have their share of superstitions.  Hennin-Hardenne would never ever put her feet on tennis lines between points.  Allegedly, this habit has toned down now from her usual ferocity in keeping up her superstition.

What is the point of such superstitions?  Mostly it’s a mental one.  If a player thinks they have an advantage by doing some strange and often dumb looking (or smelling if you’re Serena Williams’s socks), then that player will play like they have an advantage.  It’s a kind of self-imposed psychological trick.  The other reason superstitions work is it makes a brain get some focus which is critical for a match.  Tennis is a detail-orientated sport: a player must be focused on the ball pin ponging around the court and following through on a swing and a million other things.  If having the ball boys out of place distracts you, you will also be off your game.  Therefore, it is better almost to have a superstition that eliminates such distractions,  It isn’t really so much a superstition either as a means to increase the mental aspect of a player’s game.

Perhaps nothing is more important to a company than the internet, especially in terms branding.  An irate customer might take down a company with just a few blog posts, or some well placed forum discussions.  At the very least, a customer, or an angry employee for that matter, can make a pretty large dint in a company’s brand.  Since the internet is a top place for creating a brand, from viral videos and other forms of ad campaigns, it is of absolute importance that a company, in particular those that do the majority of their business online, protect their brand.  Part of the way a company can do that is through search engine optimization.

What is search engine optimization?  It is a way to develop the kinds of sites and the number of sites a web site gets in online traffic process from a search engine.  Part of the way to start is through website analytics software.  Google is a prime place to start.  Such software will allow you to look at who is going to your website, the demographics to be more precise, but also to look at the demographics of a competitor’s website as well.

Google actually provides the tools you need to get good results from such research.  Google Ad Planner allows a company to search out websites that draw in the kind of people you want to draw into your website.  Ad Planner, though purely a research tool, is extremely helpful.  You can take the data and information you’ve gleamed from it for a media planner application, which does what the phrase suggest: it helps you to plan and organize and how to define any problems you have in marketing and make achievable goals from them.

There are other great things about the Google Ad Planner that can help a company out.  It also allows industries to trim and form plans based upon the statistics a subdomain provides, which is the kind of data Ad Planner provides.  From there, you can start building a plan that will allow you to form the sort of results you want from search engine optimization services.

After arriving later in the afternoon in San Francisco, we wasted no time heading out to explore. Our first stop was walking down Polk Street, we heard it’s full of spas, cafes and a few neighbourhood grocery stores, but what’s even better, is that is ends at Fisherman’s Wharf. There’s enough seafood restaurants that could feed the entire state of California. The place was packed with tourist, including us, but thankfully, it was winter the the crowds were much less than what they would be in any other season. We got to sample fresh seafood everywhere we went, from clam chowder to red snapper. That pretty much filled us up to where we didn’t need to sit down and eat at a restaurant. We managed to roll back to our San Francisco cheap hotel room to recharge for tomorrow.

The next morning, we visited China Town, and well, to be honest, we were a little disappointed. I mean, it felt authentic and everything, but it just wasn’t ‘tourist’ friendly. I don’t blame them, really. I’m sure China Town get inundated with thousands of tourist every day, but we really didn’t expect to see so many souvenir shops. The best part about visiting China Town was getting to see how fortune cookies are made. It was amazing that after rounding a corner, we found ourselves in Little Italy! What a difference a street corner makes! In Little Italy, we found the bookstore that was famous for selling and promoting banned books.

From there we headed down Jack Kerouac Alley and had lunch at the famous Ferry Building. Then, with our stomachs full, we took the ferry to Alcatraz. We spent the entire day on the Island, the history is rich and the tour has lots of interesting audio-guides.

For our last day in San Francisco, we spent the time walking to the Golden Gate Bridge, but to get there we had to walk through the Marina. After about two hours of walking, we finally made it to the bridge. What a magnificent site! It was really windy, so it took us over an hour to walk across it and back again. There are phone stations along the bridge, and there are signs posted above them saying ‘Don’t do it!’  The phones are patched directly to a suicide crisis center.

We could’ve stayed in San Francisco for months, it’s such a big city and there’s literally so much to do here. We’re looking forward to our next trip back, but for now it’s time to do some wine tasting in Sonoma and Napa Valley!