🇨🇺 Curmudgeons just wanna have fun
Havana Blues III
Welcomed deluge
A much needed deluge in Havana today. Although if past storms are any indication, tomorrow everyone needs to be extra vigilant about chunks of ruined buildings falling down on them. Sad but true....
Dubious claim
Call me overly sceptical, but when someone volunteers information you didn't ask for, it always seems a little suspicious, if not an outright admission of guilt...
Day at the museum
The Interior of main entrance of the Museo de Bellas Artes. The little boy in yellow to the right is the doorman's son. Super cute.
Not sure if it was take your kid to work day, or Cuban museums are just especially laid back. Although presumably it's the latter, since one of the ladies working in the cafe was smoking, a couple of them in the galleries were taking phone calls and the one manning the WC in the main atrium was watching telenovelas on her phone (at max volume, in a space with very good acoustics).
NB: Lest anyone think I'm being critical, as mentioned in an earlier post, I had an amazing time at the museum, and still intend to drop by again in the near future. The more nonplussed the staff are, the more I'll enjoy my visit!
Churros in the moonlight
There's an almost full moon just out of the shot here, but fitting it in would have meant leaving out the old timey car and the newly opened little tienda that sells churros for 50 pesos ($0.14) a portion.
It's a small portion and they're not very good (too thin and crispy without any soft chewy centre), but they're also $0.14 and just across the street, so it's been taking some serious will power not to eat them more than twice a day....
Theft prevention
Even the dodgier neighborhoods of Havana feel relatively safe to me, but locals are pretty adamant that crime has been on the rise since the double whammy of (first-term) Trump sanctions and then the pandemic more or less totally crippled their already less than robust economy.
In any case, it's always better to be safe than sorry. And clearly this proud Lada owner has taken all the necessary precautions to keep his classic Soviet ride secure. Smart move, comrade....
Magic moments
The National School of Ballet* is a beauty, but the subject of this photo is actually the little car on the bottom right. Or more specifically the burley, working class driver who was blasting the Cyndi Lauper classic ‘Girls just wanna have fun' with the windows down, at what must have been max volume, because I heard it from the other end of the block.
In other words it was one of those totally unexpected, serendipitous moments that make both travel and life in general the incomparably wonderful ride that they are. Truly amazing stuff.
Unfortunately, when I stopped on the corner fully intending to temporarily disregard my personal policy of not overtly filming people, so I could take a panoramic shot of the famed Paseo del Prado and National School of Ballet and end on the little car blasting 1980s anthems, the star of the show must've sensed that the moment was about to be cheapened and cut the music.
Oh, burley working class Cyndi Lauper fan in the tiny car, I know it was for the best, but it still hurts not to have captured that moment for posterity. At least I'll always be able to cherish the memories, as ephemeral as they might be....
*Or perhaps the former National School of Ballet, as a bunch of the windows are broken and it looks pretty abandoned when you get up close to it. But as previously mentioned, in Havana it's really hard to tell what's actually abandoned and what's just in a state of disrepair. Still a lovely facade regardless though.
Golden hour in Angkor Wat
Golden hour on Calle Jesús María in Old Havana earlier this evening....
Brutalist beauty
The courtyard of the Palacio de Bellas Artes. A Brutalist beauty if you ask me....
FYI, we're still not done with these museum photos, but the best is yet to come - hang in there!
Golden hour in Angkor Wat Redux
Another shot of golden hour on Calle Jesús María in Old Havana yesterday evening, but this time from a slightly different angle....
Sunset on the Malecón
Another beautiful sunset along the Malecón....
Classic Cuban Car du Jour
A great comment from a follower on the original social media post:
“My grandpa used to have a 1957 . It was an airport taxi back in the day here in Athens. When we were kids, my brother, myself and seven cousins used to play inside it. In the 50 "s and 60 's most of the fancy taxis were huge american cars. I need to show this picture to my dad.”
Late night hobbies
When you've been staying with the same family for most of the past four months, yet somehow only just now discovered that the mother has a very unexpected, very particular, very impressive late night hobby....
NB: Probably not a ‘hobby’ per se, but repairing laptops (with a soldering iron!) is definitely a very unexpected, very particular, very impressive skill.…
Caped Crusader's Cuban cousin
Yesterday evening's sunset along the Malecón was even more spectacular than the previous few days. The Caped Crusader's Cuban cousin even turned up to enjoy the show!…
Emperor Xi Spittin’ Knowledge
Noticed a very conspicuous and uncannily timely new addition to the inventory of one of the local sidewalk booksellers just down the street yesterday evening. Gave me a little bit of that old glitch in the Matrix vibe.
Enough so that I felt obligated to inconspicuously snap a few photos, which wasn't difficult at that time of day, because this particular cohort of booksellers seems to hit the rum and whiskey pretty hard while on the job.
(Apologies for the feet. Unless you're into that sorta thing. In which case, you should head on over to my Only Fans asap 😉)
Albóndigas
When you mispronounce the Spanish word for meatballs (albóndigas) around Christmas time and the Cuban family you're staying with is still reminding you about it come Easter.
On the bright side, it's great for demonstrating the difference between ‘laughing at’ and ‘laughing with’ someone in English. And it also brings untold amusement to the kids, which I suppose is also good. Kids deserve untold amusement....
NB: I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure this was one of those let's throw some of the random things we've got in the fridge together recipes - picadillo meatballs on a bed of boiled potatoes, sautéed vegetables, boiled eggs and some cubes of 'ham', with a mojito vinegrette (heavy on the garlic) to taste and hearty side salad.
Needless to say it was delicious, regardless of pronunciation.
Todo por la Revolución!!
This old factory (or perhaps part of the railway depot, according to Maps) recently got a fresh coat of neon green paint on the roof. Looking sharp!
"Todo por la Revolución!!"
Fidel the Comedian: Not a joke
From the quotes/jokes that have aged like a fine wine department:
“Cubans, like people around the world, have jokes for just about everything. After Trump’s election and Castro’s death, one joke went something like this: Fidel had always said he could not rest until America was destroyed. Believing that Trump’s victory guaranteed that outcome, he went ahead and died.”
- Ada Ferrer, Cuba: An American History
NB: I've been meaning to post this quote for a while, and since it seems like yesterday* really might have been the official end of even the flimsy charade of democracy, rule of law, constitutional order, etc etc that we've long had in the US, probably best to stop dithering.…
*This was originally posted on 16 April 2025, and I've honestly got no idea what exactly this was in reference too, and since we've gone so far over the edge since then, it probably looks quaint in hindsight.
For a bit more context, here's a longer excerpt from the same book, just preceding the quote above:
"Sounding like a man close to the end of his life, Fidel wrote: “The first thing to consider is that our lives are but a fraction of a historical second and that humans tend to over-value their role [in history].”
Eight months after penning those words, at 10:29 p.m. on November 25, 2016, Fidel Castro died. The public announcement went out at midnight, and everything came to a halt. At music clubs, performers stopped mid-number; TV and radio programming was interrupted. The government announced nine days of mourning, with no music and no alcohol sales. Cubans signed funeral registry books across the island; they lined streets and roads to watch the solemn procession that wound its way from Havana to the eastern city of Santiago, where his ashes would be buried in the city’s main cemetery.
Castro’s tomb is a simple monument, a large boulder-like sculpture with a plaque that says only FIDEL. It stands a few yards from the imposing mausoleum for José Martí. By the time of his death, Castro had more than amply proved Richard Nixon’s 1959 prediction: without a doubt, he had been “a great factor in the development of Cuba” and beyond. But as Fidel himself had said after Obama’s visit, human lives are but a fraction of a historical second. He had wielded great power for a very long time. But he did not have the power to stop the rapprochement between Cuba and the United States launched by Barack Obama.
Unfortunately, someone else did.
Less than eight months after Obama’s historic visit and just two and a half weeks before Fidel Castro’s death, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost the race for the White House to Donald Trump. Fidel Castro had outlived the terms of ten US presidents whose rule overlapped with his. But he did not live to see the country’s strangest modern president assume office."
Berlin at home
I wanna go to Berlin!
But we have Berlin at home!
Berlin at home:
The life aquatic with Estaban Zissou
New mural on the Malecón…
Godfather of Centro Habana
“God Lives” and apparently so does the Godfather....
NB: This is one of Havana's ubiquitous bicitaxis. They're 100% pedal powered, but many have some kind of battery packs on them in order to run speakers blasting bass heavy tunes into the streets, as they very slowly ferry folks about town.
Only in Cuba
So this is the cafe at the Museo de Bellas Artes, which looks like any other museum cafe you might find pretty much anywhere around the world. But once you approach the counter, you'll discover a very Cuban touch.
That's not AI or your eyes deceiving you, it's packs of pasta for sale. This seems to be a common theme at any government-run cafe or restaurant - random food items, and even some random non-food items, being offered in addition to the usual coffee and beer and bottles of water.
But what made this moment truly special, at least for me, was the fact that the only other patrons at that time were a group of four very loud Italians, who are definitely back home in Florence or Rome or Bologna or wherever right now telling people about this.
And that's not all, the proverbial cherry on top came when one of the museum employees from another department walked over and bought a pack of spaghetti. It was the absolute perfect comedic timing, even if she didn't know it. And of course, the lady at the counter smoking a cigarette also added to the overall ambience of the scene.
As already alluded to in a previous post, this was easily an 11/10 cafe experience, and at least a 100/10 cultural experience. And, for what it's worth, the 100 peso ($0.28) espresso also wasn't half bad, not that it would have mattered in the least if it had been....
Cine Yara
Been a while since we've seen one of Havana's many historic cinemas and theatres, so here's a big one - both literally and figuratively.
Originally opened in 1947 as the Teatro Warner Radiocentro and located at one of the city's main crossroads in the Vedado district, Cine Yara is the primary venue for many of the various film festivals that still take place in the city.
NB: If you can't read the marquee there, it says something to the effect of ‘International Meeting of the Academy of Ballet on the centenary of Alfredo Guevara’.
I'd never heard of Alfredo Guevara until about 20 minutes ago, but if you Google his name, one of the first hits should be an obit from The New Yorker entitled ‘Cuba’s Film Godfather', which is an even more interesting read than the title suggests.
Primavera
'Primavera' by Cuban sculptor Rafael San Juan. Originally unveiled in 2015 during the 12th Havana Biennial, it's become one of the city's more iconic public works of art. More info here.
Life imitating art
There's a Swedish film from ten or so years ago called A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence. I've never seen it, but the title is still one of those random things that's ended up getting stuck in my head for some reason.
So you can imagine my excitement when I went to take this photo of graffiti in the back of an overgrown lot early one morning, and noticed that pigeons were sitting above it. Sure, it's not a branch, and the graffiti says ‘Think’ not ‘Reflect’, but close enough....
Classic Cuban cars du jour
God is in control
So a couple days ago I was ambling about Centro Habana and came across some kind of scene that involved the fire department (with a shiny new fire engine no less!) and a large crowd of people packed into the small street, fixated on whatever was happening. Since I wasn't really in the mood for any excitement, I thought about avoiding the street, but laziness (and perhaps a tinge of repressed curiosity) kept me walking straight ahead.
When I approached the crowd and noticed that many people had their phones out, filming something, I looked up to the left, but for the life of me couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. A bit confused, I continued on my way, towards my go to black market money changer (since that was the main task of the afternoon).
But just as I was about to exit the scene, I finally realised what was happening. A black cat had managed to catch its foot in some metal bars on a second floor balcony, and was flailing about, while the firefighters very nonchalantly began setting up their ladder for the dramatic, slowmotion rescue.
What at first appeared to be some kind of traumatic life or death situation, turned out to be a heartwarming storybook cliché come to life. And as fate would have it, when I stepped back to the corner to get some photos, the kid in front of me was wearing the absolute perfect shirt for the moment.
I'm not sure if God is actually in control or not, especially these days, but I can see how it would be comforting to think so. Hope everyone has a lovely (Easter) weekend....