Friday, June 20, 2025

Fandango at the Bulb!

The members of Son de la Bahia, a son jarocho community based in the East Bay, gathered on the Albany bulb to host a...

Puebla’s cathedral has the tallest bell towers in Mexico

Construction of the Cathedral of Puebla started in 1557 and was not completed for another 211 years. When it was finally finished in 1690,...

Tequila!

Because I love tequila, I decided I needed to go down to tequila country in Mexico to see where and how they make it. Tequila...

Puebla’s new Museum of the Baroque

In 2017, the Museo Internacional del Barocco opened in Puebla City, Mexico. The new building, designed by Toyo Ito, is worth seeing both for...

Taxco, the silver city on a hill.

Taxco is about 100 miles south of Mexico City, perched on the side of a mountain that became one of the invading Spaniards' most...

Don’t overlook the Guachimontones pyramids

If you're in the Guadalajara area (perhaps on a Tequila pilgrimage), don't overlook the pyramids of stacked disks at the Guachimontones archaeological zone to...

Mexico City’s charming and chill Amsterdam neighborhood.

A few miles to the southwest of the center of Mexico City is a neighborhood that started out as a race track for horses...

Tango is a lot more than a dance

Tango is Buenos Aires. Tango is Argentina. Tango was born in the slums of turn-of-the-20th-century Buenos Aires, where weary laborers translated their day-to-day burden...

These crude markers honor Argentinian heroes.

If you pay attention to the sidewalk as you wander the streets of Buenos Aires, you're likely to spot numerous colorfully tiled markers that...

Che’s life commemorated in a single statue

One of the lesser-known memorials to Che Guevara in Cuba is the statue of Che and a child that's located at the provincial headquarters...

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Quetzalcoatl’s temple is also worth exploring at Teotihuacan

Because he's one of my favorite gods, I particularly like the Quetzalcoatl Temple (Templo de Quetzalcoatl) at Teotihuacan, which is at the opposite end...

Don’t hurt me. I’m fixed.

In Havana, there are so many unsterilized dogs and cats that some people try to kill them just to try to keep down their...

On the streets of colonial Trinidad.

Trinidad was one of the first cities established in the Caribbean by the Spanish. In 1514 -- only 22 years after Columbus first landed...

The Soumaya is a visual treat, inside and out

Mexico City's Museo Soumaya building at Plaza Carso is one of those buildings that I never get tired of looking at. The building is...

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Puebla’s flavorful colonial center

Known for its flavorful food, the architecture of Puebla's historic center also has a wide variety of flavors. The city was founded in 1531 by...

Signs of impending change?

Among the eight or more major "March for our Lives" demonstrations around the East Bay on March 24, the gathering in Oakland attracted several...

Bang Data at the F&S Music Festival

Berkeley's Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse celebrated its 50th anniversary with an outdoor music festival on Addison Street last Saturday. The highlight -- for me...
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Leo has an entire subway station dedicated to him

The city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, loves Lionel Messi so much that they have dedicated one of their subway stations to him. The Jose...