Sea Doo’s Damn the Beach

Let’s say there is a beautiful sunny beach, a Mediterranean paradise. A beach where the sand is white, the water blue, the sun warm and fresh. Now populate this beach with the best of humanity, people with love and care in their hearts. Let’s even put this beach in Lebanon.

Now what would be the best improvements to the beach? What would take it to the next level? How about a pool next to the ocean so you can swim in fresh & clean water. Or how about a bar in that pool, so you can drink while you tan? Or how about lounge chairs and shade umbrellas scattered about green grass and extensive decks? Wouldn’t that be grand?

Then why, oh dear God why, does every single beach with such wondrous amenities also offer the scourge of the seas; the Sea Doo? Loud, smelly and an offense to the oceans blue is the Sea Doo and its older cousin the Jet Ski.

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Beirut Beauties Go To The Beach

If its summertime in Lebanon, there is only one place to be. The beach. And not just any beach, but the hottest beach clubs on the Mediterranean. Today’s fine choice is Oceania.

Nestled on the Lebanese coast just south of Beirut and hidden from the main highway by an endless banana grove, it boasts impressive Middle Eastern beauties from across this fine country.

Beauties who divide the day by the pool bar, where thumping dance tunes overwhelm the slowly inebriating senses as they soak in both booze and pool. Then there is the more staid family pool, itself stocked with parents who keep their looks even with kids. Of course, in the background, the ocean itself beckons with a boom.

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Super-Styling at Sky Bar

It’s a Friday night in the Paris of the Middle East, and the beauties of Beirut are out in force at the newest hipster hangout; Sky Bar.

Topping an oceanside building, the bar is an open-air rooftop patio of well dressed Middle Eastern jet-set players. Clock-stopping hot women stun the mind with tight skirts and high heels, perched delicately on bar stools, drink in hand. Hot hunks of man drape their gym-chiseled forms over bar tops, flexing as they hydrate.

And then there is my crew:

• Ben, a tall Australian in need of a tan,
• Megan, a quick & dry wit from Wales,
• Ali, an easy-going Lebanese, and
• Mohsen, a hip Beiruti.

While Ben and I celebrated the first Lebanese bartender who could make a vodka gimlet, Megan experimented with a series of color-themed drinks…

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Arrested for Photography – Past and Protest

See this innocuous advertisement for Coca Cola on Moscow’s Arbat Street. Does it look like a Russian state secret? Like it would have any value to a Chechen spy? Or be the basis for arrest if you took a photograph of it?

I was arrested for taking a photograph of this very sign when I lived in Moscow and I refuse for that to happen in America.

It was a damn cold night in Moscow, -34C. I know this number for the bottom of that Coke ad had a thermometer and when I saw just how cold it was, I pulled out my camera to document the moment – a tropics boy in the frigid north.

No sooner had the flash illuminated the night that two of Moscow’s drunkest finest stepped out of the shadows and asked me for my documents. A standard small-time bribe shakedown I’d easily brushed past before. This time, they didn’t quickly return my documents.

And then I spent a long, cold night in a Russian holding cell waiting for the police day shift to arrive and straighten things out. Yes, I was quickly released, unharmed if a little hungry and sleep deprived, when sober minds took a look at me and my paperwork. But that’s not the point.

The point is that this experience, while maybe expected in Russia, is now playing out in America. A country founded on freedom of expression and a right to public discourse. A country where unrestricted photography by private citizens has played an integral role in protecting the freedom, security, and well-being of all Americans by contributing to improvements in civil rights, labor practices, and police activity.

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New Nairobi House Numbers

Now that I have a half-million dollar mortgage, I always need to fix this or that. I am always improving my humble abode. From the little to the big, it’s a constant work in progress I cannot even escape when traveling for work.

There I was in Westlands, a suburb of Nairobi, waiting for my boss. We were going to have dinner at Mediterrane, what turned out to be a five hour gabfest about work. But before then, I was looking at the Westlands city council shops.

These are not African shopkeeper Zen abodes. No, these are old school shanties selling all manner of household goods and services. Goods and services I was wondering if I needed for my home. Studying each shop’s wares closely, the sign shop intrigued me the most.

With all manner of hand painted signs, the artisans involved were churning out visual cues and information for Kenya’s millions. I was first attracted by the funky yellow taxi signs, and thought of buying one. Still, I couldn’t figure out a good use for it.

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