RSS SPIRIT

Please shut up. Please. Oh, and please stop making these
crappy profitbox condo crapholes that will blight
the neighborhood evermore.

The cranes downtown claw-like rip out
another crass profitbox highrise, glinting
testimony to cost per square foot.

The last vacant lots are now furiously thrown up on,
in the a last ditch attempt to turn a dollar before
the drywall and cinderblock craphouse goes down in smoke.

The houses though at least are as cheaply made as possible,
so when they house more 'affordable' people after the bust,
it will be a seemless transition from 'the manorside'
to 'disability village.'

No more slavic guys fighting please, no more fork lifts
running down city streets at 40 m.p.h. No more talk
of granite countertops and maple cabinets, or flipping,
or real estate scumbags getting rich by
gladhanding.

The ugliness will be lasting, in the form of lame, soulless
boxes built to enrich offshore mob syndicates. Boxes built
to the property line, to as high and wide as possible.
So that those in them never have to leave.
Until they flip into their suburban McMansion in two years.

One says yes but, men are working, things are bustling,
money is being made, taxes are being paid.
Those of us in the bubble reply, "being built is a house of cards."
Just another hustle on shakedown street,
a tapering type scam that will see much in the way
of cash-stuffed carpet-bags scurrying to their
horrid gated mansions to dine on all the fruit their
unearned money will afford them.

click on art for better view





Dragon Fern



















Do you know where you are?



















Acid





















Breath



















Anatomy













J. Haack, artiste, presiding

La Paz is the only real city in Bolivia - a busy, sad and bustling bowl in the high Andes. They have oxygen at the airport for when the odd visitor from sea-level inevitably passes out.

I wanted to pass out at the airport, but nervousness and anti-altitude drugs managed to keep me on my feet. The only way to get over it is to slowly acclimatize yourself. Which in my case meant going to the hotel and passing out. After 12 hours of my body desperately trying to manufacture more red blood cells I wandered out into the streets of La Paz.

Bolivians are mostly indigenous peoples of these arid highlands. The punishing environment has been matched by short, squat people with UV tolerant skin and a third lung. They are shy of foreigners and do not much deal with them unless it is to change dollars into local currency.

La Paz is polluted, the automobile traffic is incessant and emission laws non-existent. The city is at such high altitude that pollution has nowhere to go but remain in the bowl from whence it came.




La Paz and Mt. Illimani








Through the pollution and oxygenlessness I walked. After a week I could get up to multi-hours long walks. In retrospect, it was a nice way to get to know a city, accretively and slowly as scorched lungs would allow.

There is an anachronistic emotion that startles while walking down the colonial rock streets. Pungent and often in shadow, the streets here are built to accommodate medieval era sewage technology and vigorous commerce shielded from that strong sun right above your head. The streets never really die here. Late at night an altitude related headache woke me, and I could still here the thrumming beats of the never-ending evangelical Christian band who played by the fountain.



another La Paz band, not religious









At night it got cold and dark fast. But this being the second poorest place in the western hemisphere, this does not mean people go home. The street stalls remain open, the beggars still speak to themselves and the minivans keep circling old fountains that spoke off down six streets.

A sadness permeates. Saddest of all are the miserable beggar children. I heard the worst stories regarding these raggedy orphans who will shine your shoes (badly). One of those kids had the saddest eyes I have ever seen.









Above ground cemeteries when you live on a rock.











The streets do bustle with commerce. Things I bought that I would recommend:

Popcorn (guy comes afternoons by the fountains)

Breakfast Sandwich (vendors arrive on big streets. They go fast, come early.)

Alpaca sweaters (haggle.)

Coca leaves (get the special activator compound for best result.)

Broasted chicken (just another word for fried here.)

A minibus up the hill (inclines take their toll here.)

Lunch (best value at any restaurant.)




















There are a bunch of parks like the one above. Always populuated, you get all sorts, rich to poor. I enjoyed them, but maybe because they are the only flat sanctuaries around.













Usually I found myself up at the top of a severe hill like above. Topography tends to become an obsession in this city, so let us focus on the people who scurry up and down and around. First they are poor. Most of them. The inequality in the country is ridiculous. There is an almost preternatural resignation that equips them to deal tough lives. There is pride, but it is rueful and implicitly acknowledges the severe circumstances with which most must deal.



















This is some street performer freak who was sticking nails in his skin. I found him at one of the higher ground market places, generally the higher the poorer. No gringos around but me. I was not quite sure what his act was, but I think he was possessed by some demon who allowed him to feel no pain. Or he was severely mentally ill and should have been institutionalized. I like how the mom brought her baby to the self-mutilation street theater. I tell you, these people are tough.

The Spanish were truly awful colonists and from what you learn, you simply cannot believe the crap they did. What they left is an oligarchic governmental system that is racist and selfish. (addendum: it will be interesting to watch if a 'real' Bolivian recently elected president can make any changes.) They also left some architecture.




























And also a military band or two.














Notice the puggy French horn player not quite cutting a martial figure.

But who cares about endemic poverty, pollution and altitude when you there is Del Grand Poder? Luckily I was there for a major street parade and was truly amazed at the level of craft and psychosis that went into the costumes.


































































I had a real fun time, definitely recommended. But I should warn you, if you attend make sure you do not make indecent propositions that end with tense confrontations with suddenly appearing lovers on high roofs.

La Paz - even after a very long time the city still has a full effect on the mind's eye.














Its streets were an unsettling contrast between light and dark, passive and frenetic.




















Years can pass and you will still easily embody the cold stone urban canyons at night, strung bulbs and van lights illuminating curving walls, tropical music on a portable radio, hot dishes of well cooked parts monitored by stolid street vendors.

But avoid the mayonnaise at the street vendors if at all possible.