USA Archives - Page 3 of 4

• Everything is so clean. • Everything is so cheap. • There are indeed a few loud, obnoxious American douchebags. Conversely, most Americans are friendly, polite, and helpful. • Products come in too much unnecessary packaging. • The weather couldn’t be any more pleasant than in Northeast Florida in spring. • At 72, my mother […]

Thoughts of an American Expatriate After a Spur-of-the-Moment Weekend Trip Home Read More

Mar 3 2011

Bom Carnaval!

By Fly Brother

Burl Ives got it wrong; the most wonderful time of the year, in much of the world, is upon us – Carnival. For four, five, six, even seven days leading up to Ash Wednesday, revelers in the Catholic world drop inhibitions and taboos in a frenzied, culturally-mixed-and-matched attempt to “get it all in” before having

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Jun 29 2010

How Flying Standby out of LaGuardia Helped Me Practice My Yiddish

By Fly Brother

Often, the best way to improve skills in a language different from your own is to utilize them under adverse circumstances. As proven by The Nanny, New York’s true mother tongue is Yiddish, and my 24-hour ordeal to fly from The City to Jacksonville on a buddy pass provided ample opportunity to strengthen my flimsy,

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Jun 26 2010

Re-titled Re-post: I Definitely ♥ NY

By Fly Brother

This weekend, I’m in The City for a travel blogging conference, TBEX ’10. And while I stood sweating in the sweltering Times Square subway station today with every color and creed on the globe represented on that platform, I remembered a post from last year, in which I compared the two capitals of the English-speaking

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Feb 25 2010

From the AV Room: Of Isolation and Melancholy

By Fly Brother

San Francisco’s black population has declined from 13% in 1970 to 7% today. Micah sees himself as less than one-in-ten; Joanne sees herself as just one. Medicine for Melancholy explores love, race, and, to my mind, America’s most beautiful city. Watch: Then watch:

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Jan 8 2010

Global Juke Joint: Miami Sound Machines

By Fly Brother

Cruising around Miami for New Years in a rental car with no iPod dock meant much radio time. Thankfully, 93.9 (in spite of random and agonizing bursts of “I Gotta Feeling,” “Dancing Queen,” “Single Ladies,” and “I Will Survive”) took it back to 1980s Dade County, when no ethnic community was a true majority, South

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Dec 21 2009

From the AV Room: Late Night Underground

By Fly Brother

Yeah, there are rats, service disruptions, drunken old men, drunken young women, and the pungent odor of pee, but dammit, the New York City subway runs 24/7. And I mean the whole system, not just a couple of train lines here or there. In the city that never sleeps (an oft-quoted untruth), the 24-hour bars

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Dec 15 2009

One Nation Under a Groove

By Fly Brother

NEW YORK— A couple months ago, after a week in London, I posted a comparison of the English capital with its New World offspring and giving the marginal victory to NYC. After last night’s Giant Step Records (free) holiday party at the Hudson Hotel, the Big Apple pulled much farther away from London, cementing its

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Nov 19 2009

Global Juke Joint: La-La Land

By Fly Brother

Get at me, SoCal.

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Aug 22 2009

From the AV Room: Philly Prodigy

By Fly Brother

While I catch up from a hellified week of handling personal business before the trip and the move, I thought I’d share this inspiring clip of a 13-year-old violin virtuoso that I encountered last week earning a lot of change on the street in Philadelphia:

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