Chris Arnade, Mimi the Cat and Telling Stories

Chris meeting Mimi (see the photo he took here).

So, back - with digressions - to the story of Mimi who lives under the Bruckner Expressway with her homeless human, Jaime, also known as Dragon.

We first met Mimi in November, when I was following Chris. The encampment under the expressway was deserted that day. We were there to hand over one of the large prints that Chris makes for all his sitters (and standers, and riders, and fliers) after he has photographed them. It doesn't hurt that by day he is a Wall Street banker and consequently has pockets deep enough to afford the frequent manufacture of these wonderful printed passports to the streets he walks in the South Bronx or East Brooklyn.

Photo: Chris Arnade

Anyone suspicious of his motives softens visibly when they see these images handed over for keeps. "People on the street think I'm a cop and cops think I'm a john or a drug dealer." Apparently word on the street after I'd spent two days with him was that I was an undercover cop. That day we were looking for the pigeon guys, who keep coops on the roofs of their buildings. One of the movers and shakers in the hood was a man Chris knew from before, with a single name, no phone number and no one willing to share his phone number. But minutes after word was out on the street that you were looking for him, he or a proxy would call Chris. We walked up to one of his apartments - he owns several -  which contained not just an indoor coop with curtained windows, but a pool table, a large collection of empty and ornamental Hennessy bottles, and a small stage. The stage, Chris was told later, was so that strippers could dance comfortably.

Standing in that empty hallway, waiting for the door to the apartment to open,  I became conscious of my colour, my coat, the peephole in the iron door, and my hands in my pockets. So I took them out of my pockets, slowly,  and kept them in plain sight. The door was opened by a young man wearing baggy pants belted midthigh with sparkly white underpants above, and nothing else beside a superb physique. There was white stuff around his mouth. He was extremely polite, let us in to see the birds, then went on brushing his teeth in the bathroom.

See Henriette's photograph here.

Back under the Bruckner on the cold November day Chris was not comfortable hanging around in case someone took exception to our presence, so we moved to leave. But in the dark space where Jaime kept his bedding I noticed a movement and looked more closely. The movement soon became a little cat, tucked up in bed, who blinked sleepily before coming out to greet us. That was Mimi.

According to Chris, making appointments with someone who is homeless can get complicated, and he and Jaime were not able to meet for several weeks after Chris had offered to help get her spayed. When Chris did make it back, he found Jaime's gang of friends but no boss man.

Chris writes:

"Soon after he disappeared, Mimi and a few other guys were still there, but they spoke no English. After a few more attempts I eventually asked some policemen nearby. They told me he was arrested, but gave no details.

I managed to find a few old notes I had written, he had given me his full name of Jaime Alomar.  I then checked all the prisons in the area and found him in Rikers, arrested for possession of stolen goods and for violation of parole.

The area is filled with long haul trucks that are loading and unloading. He had told me that in the past he would lift a few items from the back of trucks in the area, mostly crates of food or such, but that he had moved on from that.

I am going to try and visit him in Rikers. They do not make it easy to visit an inmate, the corrections officers, after already spending a few hours navigating the prison, can without reason, deny your request."

So the spaying of Mimi has turned into a convoluted mission and a story that leads in and under and through the parts of New York that most of us do not see.

Chris and  Jose, a pigeon kepper

One of the reasons I asked to travel along with Chris was to understand the nature of his rapport with people on the street. Years back, I was drawn to an image of Eshete, a man who haunts my own neighbourhood, swathed in a vibrant woven cloth. He is father and feeder to many stray cats in Red Hook. How, I asked on Flickr, did Chris approach someone and ask to take their picture? From a practical point of view I was envious of his photographic ease with strangers, drawn by candour of his photos: Brooklyn Heights resident, kids at the exclusive Packer College, banker, with a PhD in Physics, son of an anthropologist who moved the large family around the world to various hot spots, the hotter the better, drawn to record the frayed edges of New York City.

Photo: Chris Arnade

Anyone who has "more than one strike against them" is a subject who appeals. Colour, race, culture, drugs, economic circumstances, prostitution are often part of the picture recorded by his Nikon D700. But also part of his oeuvre are the trappings that make poor and crime ridden neighbourhoods positively human. The Hunts Point Alliance for Children, bodegas, which he identifies as the social hubs of the block. All news is gathered and dispersed there, they know what's going on. He visits a regular dominoes game in the back of one. On the roofs above the streets where dealers sometimes hang on corners are the pigeon guys, loners who find life bearable because they love their birds. Standing on a sidewalk in December I watched with Chris as a flock wheeled in the winter sunlight overhead - he was trying to pinpoint their home roof. As I watched a rufous missile broke the flock apart violently and dived straight down the side eight floor building before spiralling upward with a pigeon its talons. A red tailed hawk on the hunt.

Chris and Rafael

And Mimi? Still unspayed, but still in the crosshairs. 

Chris will have an exhibition on Smith Street at the Urban Folk Art Studio starting March 8th, 8pm.

At Home

I passed these walls on Queen Victoria Street on Saturday. It was hot. Very hot. The sky was solid blue. I had walked through The Company Gardens (first planted in 1652 by the Dutch) for the first time in years and was returning to the parked car, where the female car guard had called me sister. The trees in The Gardens made thick green shade. As I walked under an enourmous magnolia with plate-sized white blooms, I heard singing. Nearby stood a semi circle of black people, young, old, some children, dressed smartly, singing. I did not know what they were singing. Or why. It was beautiful. It may have been a hymn. It may have been a Struggle song. Part of the reason my eyes pricked and my throat tightened was that I did not understand them. Because I belong to a generation apart. That's what apartheid was. It separated us, by school, by geography, by language.

I remember standing in my headmistress's - Mrs Mackintyre's - office at Rustenburg Girls High, trying to sell a grand plan: to swap schools with students at a black township school. Six of them here, in the bright white buildings around the green grassy quadrangle, and six of us there, in the dusty township. I wrote many pages in blue inked cursive to justify and explain my wish. I put my pages in a plastic binder and she read them. I think. She told me it could not be done. My parting plea to her was, Mrs Mackintyre, apartheid will end, because it is inevitable, and it will end in my lifetime. And we won't be able to understand each other, because we have not grown up together.

My father was involved in a case concerning the extreme violence in the townships in the mid to late 80's. On the surface it appeared to be a vicious internal squabble between residents, characterized by widespread arson, murder and necklacing (the placing of a petrol soaked tyre around the neck before burning. Our government sponsored television at the time showed a film clip, on the nightly news, a clip of a woman burning to death this way. I can never forget it.). The factional fighting was in fact a fight stoked by agents provocateurs and the South African Police. My father appeared against the police. His instructing attorneys from the Legal Resources Centre, an NGO, were Matthew Walton and Steve Kahanovitz and his junior advocates Paul Pretorius and Dulah Omar. Because that case was so drawn out, years in the running, these men, especially the first three, became part of our lives, and their passion and belief in justice influenced me profoundly. I developed a crush on at least one of them.

I haven't thought about them in a long time. If you sit here long enough, though, you start to think. I found a  lengthy transcript of a 1997 Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearing regarding what we called the KTC  case.

At that  time I had also met a man named Pro Jack, a dark bundle of warmth and infectious enthusiasm, with whom I, a group of adults and some politicians took what must have been the first ever township tour. He wanted white people to see that there were real people, with real lives, and real ordinary goodness and problems (big problems), living there. He wanted people to talk to people. We had been taught to be afraid of the townships. That fear persists even now.

I Googled Pro Jack, not ten seconds ago. He was shot dead in 1991. By members of his own party. Apparently - it's not clear at all. I had no idea.

And that is what so many of us say:

"I had no idea."

I don't know where I'm going with this. I was just going to post a picture of a wall and some graffiti. But no matter how American I may have become, I am South African.

I'm just not sure what to do about it.

Car pictures

Not of the car. From the car. Cape Town from the road...

The famous table cloth spilling over Table Mountain, from the Parade.

Devil's Peak, from De Waal Drive.

From a traffic circle at the Foreshore. No idea who the statue is.

Oleanders in the median on the M3 heading north.

Ou Kaapse Weg, heading south on a cloudy mountain day.

Ou Kaapse Weg, heading north.

Edinburgh Drive intersection and the plastic bird seller.

Boyes Dive overlooking Muizenberg.

Kalk Main Main Road looking through the railway underpasses onto the harbour's beach.

Don't fly Delta

...and don't fly KLM. Same animal, it seems.

Ellen is stuck in Amsterdam. Her KLM flight is code shared with...Delta (which sometimes cancels in mid air).

Initially she raced to JFK because she learned that her flight to Amsterdam was running 3 hours late, meaning she would miss her South African connection...So she jumped on an earlier flight to Schipol only to be stuck there.

Don't. Fly. Delta.

Read this previous post.

Bad news is I am booked back on KLM. My ticket says nothing about Delta. Sneaky. If Delta is involved, I want a refund.

So her stay is cut by at least a day. Plus the Awfulness.


2-4-12, 8:12pm update: 

Spoke to Ellen on Skype. KLM wants to reroute her tomorrow through Frankfurt, to Windhoek (Namibia) to Cape Town. On Air Namibia. To most of us that's like...Air What? In Amsterdam they were stuck on the tarmac for four hours before the flight was canceled. First a story about no potable water and the difficulty of getting trucks out in freezing temperatures. Then left engine problems. Then canceled. They were given vouchers to call KLM, which has no toll free number. But the voucher runs out before you get to speak to a human to sort out a new ticket. She asked me what I know about Air Namibia; all I could do was go online and look at (shoddy) reviews. Mostly about service. At least the aircraft seem sound. This would put her in Cape Town midday Monday. 36 hours late on a nine day trip. Countless stress hours substituted for holiday vibes.

The irony is I booked KLM back to New York because it seemed the most time-saving way to fly. Not. I have already asked for a cancellation of my ticket and refund. Snowball's chance in hell? Anyone willing to bet?

So. Think good thoughts for poor Ellen. Her laptop and cell batteries are dying as she has no European adapters. It's not like she was going to spend time in Europe, right? Wrong.  And the hotel has none to offer.

As the cat would say: Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!


Read Ellen's blogpost from the road here.

(PS She found a power cord to plug in her laptop. Yay. She's got power.)


2-5-12, 10pm update

Now Ellen's flight to Namibia has been canceled. She is stuck in Frankfurt overnight.

2-6-12

A text. From someone unknown. Ellen will land in Cape Town at 8.30pm. From where? On what? Who knows.

And if you bet that I could not cancel my KLM ticket you would be correct. No cancellation. No refund. I should have invented a death in the family. KLM's voice over while you're on hold says, "in our fast-paced world we know that time does count..." Really.

Interestingly, not once has weather been cited as a factor in this flustercluck.

Ellen's latest post about her adventure is at her blog, which is not set up for linking to individual posts. So scroll through once you are there.

La Colombe

Our palate teaser at La Colombe, which succeeded. It was the best flavour of our lunch and I wanted more. A prawny, gingery veloute. Perfect.

Below, a new wine, for me. Beau Constantia Viognier, and not wooded, to my delight. I find many South African Sauvignon blancs (Thelema's latest offering excepted) too acidic for my taste, and this wine had a softer, floral finish which I loved.

My mom is lucky enough to enjoy lunch here regularly with a good friend. They take turns treating each other. I wait for my once-a-year treat. Except this will be twice - we booked for next week when Ellen will be here. The restaurant was put on the international food map, as I've said here before, by Franck Dangereux, who is now on the other side of the mountain in Noordhoek. His Foodbarn deli is one of the best in the city, turning out from its open kitchen superb pies, breads, desserts and roast chickens to go, as well as having a large communal table for lunch on site. The Foodbarn restaurant nearby has excellent service and slightly too much sauce on each plate. And is painted my new favourite seaside turquoise.

La Colombe's executive chef is now Scot Kirton.

Back to La Colombe, where we sat at 'the throne',  a table under an arbour commanding a view of the courtyard and its pool. A pretty plate with a crayfish (rock lobster) theme. If I'm being critical, and I think one can be at these prices, there was a heavy hand at work with the seasoning. And once the frizzled sweet potatoes appeared they kept appearing. They work. Once. And if one thing was cooked sous vide, half the menu was then sous vide, too. 

An older man across the courtyard, who turned his margarita-fueled and full, staring attention on us for most of lunch was pretty sous vide, too. My mother began to bristle. I put on my big dark glasses. A waitress was dispatched to our table to inquire about my marriage status. Big Frenchman, I muttered. 

Then the blueshirted man appeared in person, holding aloft a glass of wine and smiling an oily smile, sure of our grateful welcome. He had time to say, Hello, before my mother said, Goodbye! -  and that was that, though it took a while for the message to sink in. What can I say. I was longing to deal with him myself but orders is orders and mom was paying for lunch! At last our waitress put up a menu to block him off, below. Phew. It must sound silly but it was really uncomfortable.

Lots of drama. Instead of dessert we chose one of the palate cleansers designed for mid-meal - another thing that irritates me on a menu (I know, bitch, bitch bitch). But they work brilliantly at the end of a meal. Apple and cucumber sorbet with a Pimms fluff.

Dessert wine with treats.

The End. Good food, good wine and entertainment. The Sous Vide man is no doubt harassing someone else in Cape Town at this minute. 

Cape Town Mystery #2

Mega Walls.

The Mystery: Who builds them? Rather, who lives inside the walls? My theory: Not Capetonians (and foreign friends, it's Cape Town, not Capetown. But it's Capetonians...end of digression).

I'd like to be proved wrong, because my sentiment is xenophobic. Or maybe just Gautengphobic? Gauteng is a province of high walled enclaves and compounds.

Mega walls are on the rise,  and I don't think that it is in response to an increase in violent crime. That's not scientific, just a hunch. I do think that it may be the result of a migration south of our northern South African cousins who don't feel right with a view unobstructed by Security.

The wall above, now under construction on the hill above Kirstenbosch, is serious. It's laughable it's so high. It can't be legal. Is there legal limit in building codes? This is 12 feet, minimum. And will it be glazed with electric fencing, the icing on the mega wall cake?

The only good thing this wall does is hide the unprepossessing block of house within.

This is on Rhodes Drive, nearby. At least we got arty with the stone. Afro-Goth. My guess - 8-10 feet. Note electrified strands on top.

Are you safer inside something like this? I don't think so. Once you are over a wall like this nobody in the world will know that you are there. Except for the cameras. This one does have cameras. So who lives inside? Mystery. Big, gauche mystery.

Mega wall close to home. Electric fencing. "English Rose". The irony is deafening. Height? 10-foot range, I'd say. Electrics.

I hate to tempt fate by saying that my parents' house is altogether unwalled and crime-free. Bad things can happen anywhere, and are frightening and sometimes deadly. I understand fear. But their house, unlike these cocooned neurotics, is visible from the street, and the street is visible from the house. Very hard to pull a fast one on it. Impossible to creep up unnoticed. Then again, every window has burglar bars - often not noticed by visitors as they mimic the wooden frames of the windows. 

The mega walled houses, I'd bet, have iron free glass and sophisticated electric alarms which go so well with our rolling electricity black outs.

*Note on building materials for the Americans reading this. One of the first things that stuck me in the States was that houses seemed to be built (to my eye) from planks, plastic and insulation. If you punch wall in a fit of temper chances are you'd go through it. If you did that here you'd go to hospital. While the walls above obviously cost mega bucks, it is true that - with the glaring exception of shantytowns - most housing here is built from brick, stone and cement. Dry wall on frames is a great rarity, and used exceptionally. I assume that it has to do with lower labour and materials costs here, and also with a high level of masonry skill.

Previous Cape Town Mystery:

Cape Town Mystery #1 - the lollipop trees at Constantia Village

Fire

I pulled off the N7 late on Saturday afternoon for a couple of minutes to photograph the water tanks below. To the left lay the stripped summer wheatfields, with a haze of blue mountains behind them. To the right the white watertanks, the windmill, and the thick wall of distant smoke which I later learned was issuing from the fire beginning to rage near Wellington and the beautiful Bainskloof. 

That fire has now been fought for three days with seven helicopters including two Oryx lent to the struggle by the air force. The main concern is property damage - there are people, homes and farms in the area, but I am not sure that it is a bad thing for the fynbos, which requires fire for regeneration and also for the germination of many plants. I don't know when last that area experienced a burn. 

Too-frequent fires are bad; similarly, long intervals without fire cause the vegetation to senesce. Ironicallly, both conditions are caused by humans: Cigarette butts, arson, and accident on the one hand, and zealous fire fighting and -prevention on the other. Just how fynbos evolved to require fire I don't know. This is not lightning country, but perhaps it was long, long ago. Perhaps ancient hunter gatherers were careless with their sparks. Since humans and fire came from Africa, perhaps it is fitting that this country needs flames in order to renew itself. 

Does this make a case for burning one's bridges?

No retreat, no retreat; they must conquer or die who have no retreat.

I wrote that in the back of my planner when I was 16. Had I read A Modern Comedy? What was chasing me? School. I hated school.

Not that I need to retreat. It's just where fire leads one.