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the puerto rico, digital style

la republica dominicana!!!

well, my last trip is coming to a close and the dominican republic has been amazing! everyday we have done things that are a first for me. here is a run down list¨-

- our first day we photographed a LNG plant. what is LNG??¿¿ liquified natural gas. you cant smell it. you only know there is a leak when its to late and you have been incinerated! yikes. we had to hand in our cellphones at the gate. apparently when a cell phone rings, there is a small spark inside it, and that small spark could send us all to kingdom come. never mind the 18 cameras i am carrying.

it was pretty surreal, we climbed up the spiral stair case to get to the top of the lng tank some 200 feet in the air. the whole way we were accompanied by an employee with a sniffer. enter the modern day mining lng equivalent of your parakeet! basically we were told if the sniffer alarm goes off, that lng has been detected in the air and we should stop moving immediately bc static electricity could blow us up! did i mention that the sniffer goes off every 30 seconds just so you know its still on. you think they could have devised a better way to let us know the battery in the machine aint dead.

basicall we were sitting on top of a huge bomb, but the view was increadible. ha.

- after fotoing the plant we piled into our minivan and headed out to the countryside to photograph sugarcane workers cutting cane and what not. these dominicans love baseball so much, they have cut baseball diamonds into the middle of the sugar cane fields they work in. it was like being in field of dreams all over again, accept this time, without kevin costner.

from what i saw in the few hours we spent with the sugar cane workers, i realized how hard their work is. usually a good majority of the laborers are from haiti and extremely poor. it is grueling, unrelenting work, day in and day out.

- basically everyday here in the dr was spent in the minivan driving lord knows where all over this country. on one particular afternoon we drove to the north of the country and went for a hike through the woods and rainforest where jurassic park was filmed. our hike included trapsing (or clinging for my life) along a rope bridge strung over a rapids leadnig to a huge waterfall. it was pretty great, although i saw no raptors.

- on our drive back from the jurassic experience, we took part in what would be the third most popular thing in the dr and that would be cigars. we went to several hand made cigar factories. it was quite an experience. first of all, everyone sitting in the factory rolling cigars, was also smoking them. it didnt bode well for foto. we learned all about the process, the blending, the rolling and i was even rewarded with my own box of handmade cigars. when i get home, i will use my photoshop skills to reword the label to say cuban instead of dominican, and make a mint on ebay. apparently though, the quality of dominican cigars is right up there with the cubans. its just that, as americans, we cant have the cubans and what we cant have, we always want.

aint that true.

- it was a long day. what can i say. i was crabby and i had been forced to urinate in public half a dozen times. i was soaked in cigar smoke and my knuckles were still white from gripping the rope bridge. what could make this better¿ well, press passes to a sold out dominican playoff baseball game definitely could¡¡¡ david scored these from our client and we even had access to the field, so i downed a couple of presidente lights, and tried to remember everything i learned from my baseball cards and headed down to the field. i had no idea what the team names were, or who to route for. turns out the blue shirt i had on, was a good call on my part. yellow would have been bad, as it was the opposing teams color.

so here i am down on the field carrying all of davids shit, and photographing with my 40 year camera amongst all these dudes carrying canon mark whatevers and smoking cigars. what can i say, the dominican baseball players took a liking to me.

the first guy, charisma, built, muscles and a smile to stop a war, paused during his tv interview to give me a high five as i walked by. he asked me who was gonna win tonight and me, not knowing the correct answer, nor wanting to appear like an ass on dominican tv, said, YOU. he liked that and gave me another high five.

maybe he could tell i was from new york. thats another thing, all the dominicans either live, have lived, or have a sister who lives in the bronx. none of them knew either mark, nor sonya.

the next baseball player i encountered was also a hulk of a man, but not quite as gq as the last guy. this guy looked like his pirate ship had run aground on the baseball diamond and he had just decided to stay and play. our conversation went like this

pirate- yo yo i am the dominican banger
medio pollito - oh yeh, word. let me take your portrait
pirate - the dominican banger, that has a nice ring to it
mp - yes it does, just step a little over here, good good
pirate - yeh the banger the dominican banger. i have always wanted to do porn
mp - uhhh, i think you would be good at it
pirate - really¿ i think next season i move to california and become the dominican banger
mp - good luck

- tonight i had quite a different experience. we fotoed the local offices and then did a night shot from the roof, 30 stories up, of downtown san juan! it was really cool until david wanted to get up on the roof of the ariconditioner room and i had to climb up an enclosed ladder and through what i discovered to be a teaming nest of spiders! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. not too much you can do, 20 feet in the air with 60 pounds of gear on your back except keep your mouth closed and exhale through your nose! nice little spiders. nice spiders.

- and then later that night we happened on what is the second most popular pastime in dr after baseball and that would be cockfighting! we ended up at this hella ritzy cock fighting ring. it was like a scene out of the sopranos that met the movie amores perros. we walked in and met our contact who sat us down at a private table in the back of a restraunt inside the hall and popped open a bottle of wine and started interrogating us as to why we wanted to photograph. keep in mind, my spanish sucks! ha. it was crazy.

then we met the president of the club and some of his cronies. finally we convinced them that we were ok. actually, it was one of the gallo handlers. he is from the bronx and we bonded over nyc. yeh, yeh, the triborough. i know where that is. i ride my bike over it every weekend in spandex. the cross bronx? sure i know where that is. my friend brad drove me over it once. is that what you take to get to ikea?? sure. ha.

anyways, we were in. david went off the photograph the ring and i went up to the back room where they prep the gallos to fight by melting plastic on their legs and putting razors on em. then they give em a bath and drop them down from a plastic box from the ceiling into the ring. it was a trip. i befriended to guys in the prep room who have a radio show EVERYDAY, where they talk about cockfighting. it was awesome.

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well, that about does it for my trip to the dr. hope you are all well.
disfruta
the dominican dc

i have an arcade fire . . . IN MY PANTS!!!

puerto rico mio.

the breeze blew my curtains in and out, like a deep sigh from the sea. i sat up with a start and looked around my room. nothing but a blurred, rhythmic blinking amber light shown in the solid darkness. my glasses, where are my glasses? i fumbled on my night stand, and knocked over a half empty bottle of water, something round and soft tumbled to the ground.

perhaps a mandarin?

boriqua whispers to me in the wind.

where the hell am i?

i had woken up with a start, as i often do when i travel, or return from traveling. i was covered in sweat and fresh from some sort of fear and loathing type hallucination. i glance around my room at things coming out of shadow and into focus. is that the ocean i hear? am i in a cabana? am i on the beach?

fuck yeah i am!

i started to piece it all together, the 4 hour flight to puerto rico (right?) the cold medicine. double dose, to knock me out. i glance at the clock. 4 am. apparently the tylenol PM had worn off. the hallucination was memorable, its why i stick with the brand.

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i am currently in san juan, puerto rico fulfilling the last leg of my travel journeys with foto loco, for the enrgy company. i will be here for another couple days before we head to the dominican republic, and then finally home. home sweet home.

i had no idea what to expect from PR. my only experience with puerto ricans has either been pollo asado, or yelling at them, late at night, from my LES apt window to turn down their music! PR is a lot like the states (i mean, it is part of america) in that they use dollars and EVERYONE speaks english, but in every other way it is a latin country.
guns. military. spanish. bad driving and the hustle.

its also falls into island mentality.
1) dont look at the taken women and dont take the women who are looking
2) dont trespass
follow these 2 golden rules and everything should be cool.

side note:those 2 things might be the only 2 things vinalhaven and PR have in common...not sure about that one.

i dont mean to make it sound bad though, the people here are WAY more friendly than the puerto ricans in nyc. MY BAD BORIQUENS. my bad.

no actually, the people here are quiet lovely. i am totally blown away. we have photographed some amazing stuff here:

the olympic boxer who single handedly kicked out ("with force" he says with a smile) the drug dealers from an abandoned lot in a barrio outside sanjuan. he then went on to build a kick ass baseball diamond, himself, for the local kids to play on. they have since formed leagues and play year round. pretty inspiring. the double d drug dealers have stayed away...for good reason. dude was fierce!

3 kings day:
my entourage hooked up with the mayor's entourage as he made the rounds through several barrios, handing out gifts to underprivelaged children. we spent several hours with him, and his moving trucks stuffed with toys! we were escorted by nearly the entire police dept. sirens wailing, we would roll 20-30 cars deep into these projects. from my own personal experience, when i would hear police sirens, i would run the other direction, for sure. but not on 3 kings day! the cops are friends with all the little hoodlums and their families and they all came running towards us! pretty cool.

at one point, i was up on a stage with foto loco, taking pictures of about 5000 kids waiting to collect their gifts from the mayor. in true PR fashion, the music was blasting! then at a certain point the kids just bum rushed the stage! it was nuts. there is nothing like getting man-handled by a 4 year old on a mission for the giant robot that happens to be right behind where you are standing! watch out! dude got all up in my face and stiffed armed me right out the way! go little man go!

wishing you a nuyorican new year

gotta get back to that ocean right outside my cabana window YO.

-the dc