by Lola Akinmade
There were only four items on my to-do list – buy some Ankara, buy some groceries, find a tailor, and get some original artwork. “You can’t find them all at the same place”, Remi explains as we travel along Lagos Mainland Bridge towards our first stop, Balogun Market. It was a hot [...]
by Jann Huizenga
It’s raining, and the power is out. I strain in the dim light to take it all in: shattered spectacles; sour linens; jewelry black with age; wool stockings; fusty hope chests and sculpted cradles; mountains of rusty pistols for Albanian blood vengeance.
The shops in Kruja’s old Ottoman bazaar have the bad breath [...]
by Bonnie Smetts
I tiptoed up the gray-carpeted stairs of the Gucci store in Rome. A single sweater folded with precision lay on a counter and another three lay perfectly forbidden on a shelf below. The only other shoppers were a Japanese teenager with no apparent budget and a model who I’d seen leave her boyfriend [...]
By Craig Wilkins
Rick’s Café (Latin)American
I am a night person. Always have been. I’ve never understood the need for anything to begin early in the day and phrases that purport to educate me in this area — like “Early to bed, early to rise…blah, blah, blah” or “The early bird catches the worm” have only served [...]
By Anke Snow
Hello, my name is Anke, and I’m a souveniraholic.
I am not exactly sure how I came to realize this. Maybe it had something to do with a general dissatisfaction I felt about my vacations, as if I hadn’t gotten the most out of them. But why hadn’t I?
On a six-week trip to France [...]
By Jeff Vize
I have a thing about haircuts – an addiction almost. I’ll do them anywhere, anytime. I get them once a week sometimes. Especially when I’m traveling. And especially when I’m in the middle of nowhere.
I justify my pathological behavior in a couple of ways: First, I have a shaved head, and I prefer [...]
by Janna Leyde
In a department store on the biggest island in the hemisphere of the Southern Cross my two Aussie friends waiting patiently while I debated between $20 or $200 sneakers—cheap generics or unnecessarily expensive Lacoste. It was simple. In three hours I needed a pair of sneakers to climb a bridge, and [...]
by Janet Forman
There’s an intoxicating energy along the broad boulevards of Harlem these days. In the heart of black America, a wellspring for generations of eloquent literature and incendiary music - and a community that has seen more than its share of hard times – fashion and design boutiques are opening amid the convivial crunch [...]
by Jann Huizenga
On a flawless autumn morning en route to the market that hugs Ecce Homo Church, you round a bend into a narrow lane and come upon a pair of anziani, ancients, engaged in conversation. A shaft of sunlight illuminates them like a klieg light. Canes in hand, they lean into each other, their [...]
