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.
--
well, that about does it for my trip to the dr. hope you are all well.
disfruta
the dominican dc
- 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.
--
well, that about does it for my trip to the dr. hope you are all well.
disfruta
the dominican dc
posted by dirty cookie at 7:25 PM
1 Comments:
ah, cockfights. reminds me of my days up in the 'hood...
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