All posts by Jakob Gibbons

Jakob is a freelance writer and digital nomad currently based in Leiden, the Netherlands. On his blog Globalect and elsewhere, he writes about language learning, budget backpacking, and global citizenship.

6 Must-Watch Documentaries for Good Global Citizens

For those of us born since around the early ’70s, we’ve been growing up in a world that was steadily going global. But today, in the 2016 of global economy, location independence, and international personal lives, we’re in many ways already there.

As more and more of the world becomes available to us, we have a growing responsibility to make ourselves informed consumers and participants in global society. To gain insights into the lives of some of the seven billion other humans who share our planet and learn about the common challenges facing many of us, start with these six documentaries.

 

1) Century of the Self

Century of the Self is an eye-opening investigation of the origins and consequences of consumerism in the West, but with a psychoanalytic twist. The documentary details how Freudian psychology was systematically applied to the world of the 20th century free market to induce us to want to spend more, starting with Edward Bernays, Freud’s nephew and the founding father of the field of public relations.

Century of the Self regards the societal drive to spend with skepticism, and takes an important look at how the latest kitchen appliance is in many ways keeping us distracted from the things that really need and deserve our attention in the world. Watch the first episode or the whole series for free at Top Documentary Films.

 

2) Breaking the Taboo

What started out as America’s War on Drugs quickly became a global phenomenon with heavy consequences for an entire generation, in the US as well as in Latin American neighbors like Mexico and Colombia. Breaking the Taboo takes a critical look at how policy decisions in one country can have extreme consequences for children, families, and entire industries in other countries.

This film looks not only at the failures of the global war on drugs, but also at success stories like the famous tolerance of the Netherlands and the Latin American countries on cutting edge of progress, like Uruguay.

You can rent or buy Breaking the Taboo on Amazon or the iTunes store.

 

3) Girl Rising

Girl Rising documents the lives of nine young girls growing up in different parts of the developing world. As it surveys young girls’ stories of human trafficking, violence, arranged marriages, and more, this documentary promotes a powerful message about the girls that are “rising” to reshape our world into a more equal one.

Girl Rising reminds us of the importance of educating young girls and developing them into community leaders, while also reminding us to tip our hats to the women of the world who are leading the revolution by balancing work and family and generally being badasses.

You can watch Girl Rising on Netflix or purchase a download from the official website.

 

4) Black Gold

One of the places we can have the most impact with the least effort is as consumers. Black Gold asks us to think about how something so abundant in most of our lives, coffee, travels from a person’s farm to your local Starbucks.

Fair trade is one of the most practical and successful approaches to ending poverty in rural communities: It ensures that farmers and the people who actually produce the goods we consume have access to accurate market prices and are able to unionize to combat the wage-suppressing forces of multinational corporations.

To learn more about how fair trade coffee is impacting farmers in Ethiopia and worldwide, you can stream Black Gold on its official website for $5: http://blackgoldmovie.com/.

 

5) The Square

In a world that’s still living the aftermath of the Arab Spring and navigating difficult questions of what “democracy” means worldwide, a human perspective is often just what we need to understand the lives behind the statistics and news headlines.

This Netflix original documentary does just that in a flawlessly-crafted film that strives to balance different and dissenting voices while empathizing with several from up-close. Filmed on the ground at Tahrir Square during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, The Square documents the two years of struggles and sit-ins by the same different factions of Egyptian society that have continued to alternate between collaboration and antagonization since the start of the conflict.

For a documentary that inspires human empathy without distracting from the issues at the heart of an ongoing global struggle, you can watch The Square on Netflix.

 

6) The End of Poverty

Despite its idealistic name, The End of Poverty takes an enlighteningly rational and pragmatic approach to the why and how of poverty, as well as to how we fix it.

Tracing its history from colonial conquest to modern trade, The End of Poverty illuminates how the policies of many world governments and the actions of global financial institutions affect drinking water in rural areas and a factory worker’s ability to earn a livable wage. Best of all, where so many others fail to go beyond diagnosing the problem, The End of Poverty ends with a series of practical and achievable goals for establishing a global system that works for everyone.

For a deeper understanding of the causes and consequences of world poverty then and now, you can watch The End of Poverty for free at Top Documentary Films.

 

Awareness is just the first step.

 

*Featured image: Egyptian activist Ahmed Hassan in Jehane Noujaim’s documentary THE SQUARE. Courtesy of Noujaim Films.

6 Female World Leaders Shaking Up the System

As Hillary Clinton prepares to officially clench the Democratic nomination at the convention on July 25th, she joins the ranks of women around the world who are shaking up global politics by fighting their way into the driver’s seat and steering their countries in a different direction.

Including two reigning queens who inherited their titles, halfway through 2016 there are currently 21 female heads of state and government among the world’s 197 countries.

Of the six women below, three are the acting leaders of their countries, two others are rapidly blazing the trail to become such, and another is battling for democracy against an attempted coup. Five are or will soon likely be the first woman to hold her position, one of whom being the first person ever to hold the position she single-handedly created to insert herself into politics and bring justice to her country. One is a pirate, another an unmarried academic, and another has evolved from scratching at to pounding against the glass ceiling over the course of the last two decades.

What they all have in common is that each woman, simply by existing unapologetically in the public eye, is a living counternarrative to local and global cultural narratives that tell us that leadership is men’s work.

Angela Merkel: Leading Europe by Way of Berlin

Officially she’s the Chancellor of Europe’s largest economy. Unofficially and in all reality, she’s something closer to President of Europe.

There are few political leaders in the world right now with as much power as Germany’s Angela Merkel, who’s jumped into the international spotlight with her role as “the Decider” during the Eurozone crisis, and again more recently with her controversial leadership of the European Refugee Crisis.

Forbes has not only named her most powerful woman in the world an incredible nine times, but she currently comes in at #2 on their list of most powerful figures in the world. News headlines are screaming about how her support has dropped, down to 45% as of last month; but in Germany’s multi-party parliamentary democracy, with six major political parties currently in its parliament, that’s a strong number going into her 2017 reelection campaign.

 

Tsai Ing-wen: Taiwan’s Tough New Leader

Tsai Ing-Wen of Taiwan may be the woman on this list with the most “firsts” behind her name: Not only is she the first female president of Taiwan, as well as the first Taiwanese president of indigenous descent, and the first Taiwanese leader to take such a distinctly assertive position toward neighboring Mainland China, but she’s also an unmarried female.

During her campaign, Mainland Chinese officials smeared her for her “extremist” views, not because she’s fiercely pro-LGBT rights or nearly as fiercely anti-Beijing, but instead warning the Taiwanese of the dangers of having an “emotional” unmarried woman lead their government.

Ing-Wen was once in favor of clearing up Taiwan’s “it’s complicated” relationship status with China by breaking it off completely, but now she may have moderated her tone a bit. While Ing-Wen has been politically careful with her Democratic Progressive Party’s known pro-independence politics, she’s pushed the envelope further toward Taiwanese independence than any of her predecessors.

 

Dilma Rousseff: Transforming Brazil and the Global South

Dilma Rousseff is a titan in global economics and poverty reduction. The suspended President of Latin America’s largest population and economy, Rousseff and her party have led Brazil to lift an incomprehensible 30 million Brazilians out of poverty in a short two decades.

Rousseff’s contributions begin nearly 30 years before she became Brazil’s first female president, when she fought against and was later jailed and tortured by the ruling military dictatorship that took over Brazil in 1964. In 2016, this time in the name of preserving the democracy she helped to create in Brazil, she’s fighting a parliamentary coup attempt in an impeachment case being carried out by her political rivals. As her impeachment hearings begin, Rousseff continues to publicly fight against the interim government of her rivals, the first government made up exclusively of white men in Brazil, more than half of whose population identifies as Afro-Brazilian.

 

Birgitta Jónsdóttir: Iceland’s Potential Pirate Prime Minister

In the wake of the Panama Papers scandal, Iceland’s (now former) Prime Minister Sigurður Ingi Jóhannsson, was among the first to fall, leaving a vacancy to be filled in the upcoming parliamentary elections. Nothing’s official yet, but all Icelandic eyes are on a figure that’s expected to make Iceland’s next eccentric leader, a woman who will be a first in many ways.

While Iceland’s glass ceiling was already broken by Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir in 2009, Jónsdóttir is maybe most remarkable for being the leader of Iceland’s Pirate Party, a pan-European movement focused on internet security, freedom of expression, and government transparency beyond all else. While the Pirate Party has had some success in European elections, it looks like Iceland’s answer to financial scandal will be to vote in the first Pirate-led government in Europe, and Jónsdóttir is leading up the effort.

 

Aung San Suu Kyi: Fighting for Democracy in Myanmar

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi spent most of living memory under house arrest, and now she’s leading her country into a more democratic future.

In 1990, she and her party won an astounding 81% of seats in parliament, but the ruling military dictatorship nullified the vote, instead placing Suu Kyi under house arrest for 15 years between then and 2010. Ever since she’s stepped back onto the political stage in Myanmar, the nation has made its longest and most promising strides toward democracy under her guidance.

Due to a technicality of the Myanmar constitution, Aung San Suu Kyi is ineligible for the office of president—her late husband and two children hold UK citizenship, legally disqualifying her for the job. However, after becoming the first female Minister of Foreign Affairs after the 2015 election, Suu Kyi helped create a new government position, First Counsellor, from which she’s now calling the shots de facto in Myanmar.

 

Hillary Rodham Clinton: First Female Leader of the Free World?

Like some of the other women on this list, Hillary Clinton hasn’t quite made it to her country’s highest office yet, but in 2016 it’s the world’s worst-kept secret that she’s very likely headed that way.

Clinton has been a US Senator representing New York, as well as President Obama’s Secretary of State, but long before filling those roles, she emerged in the 1990s public eye as President Bill Clinton’s First Lady. Rewriting the rulebook of the traditionally ceremonial position, Clinton made herself known as one of the President’s closest advisors, and took on meaty policy issues like universal healthcare that many of her political opponents deemed inappropriate territory for the First Lady.

Ever since becoming the first prominent, assertive woman in modern American politics, Clinton has suffered high disapproval ratings from an American electorate unaccustomed to seeing strong women asserting themselves in positions of power. But just as these other five women have broken the mold in their own cultures, carving out spaces for women’s voices in public discourse and decision-making, Clinton has done the same, with her career and in famous retorts like “would you ask a man the same question” when asked in an interview about her favorite clothing designers.

Current polls give Clinton the distinct upper hand going into November’s election, taking a turn for the better after President Barack Obama’s recent endorsement of her, in which he said that “I don’t think there’s ever been someone so qualified to hold this office.”

It’s no coincidence that the countries these women represent find themselves leading the way in social and economic progress around the world. As more presidents, prime ministers, activists and CEOs add their names to lists like these, we can only hope that these women will leave behind a political culture in which women are empowered to participate, and in which the world’s 3.5 billion women have more than 21 global leaders speaking on their behalf.

The Melting Pot in Action: 4 Places to Discover America’s Unique Home-Grown Cultures

In most of what makes it to television screens and news feeds inside the US and beyond its borders, the world’s most famous country looks like a whitewashed monolith whose culture is best represented by big gulps and disposable income.

Hidden behind the glow and glamor of the now-global narrative of “mainstream” American culture is a tapestry of identities woven in a pattern seen nowhere else in the world. The United States is demographically distinct in a way that’s attracted immigrants and strengthened regional identities, and historically distinct in a way that’s bred a complex assortment of cultural identities that resemble a spectrum in some areas and a mosaic in others.

If there is such a thing as American exceptionalism, this is definitely it.

While a tossed salad is usually seen as a better metaphor than the traditional melting pot, in some places in the US, multiple cultures have indeed melded together over time and under social pressure, resulting in cultures and identities that are uniquely American. Some are the hybrid offspring of decades of immigrant communities living prominently alongside established ones, others the descendants of European religious refugees, and others of enslaved people trafficked en masse across the ocean. Together, they make up the untold narratives of millions of Americans living in one of the most naturally multicultural countries in the world.

For a glimpse into a few of the many expressions of what it means to be an American, you could start with one of these four destinations.

1) Acadiana: Far from France

The Southern half of Louisiana forms a cultural continuum that ranges from Louisiana Creole in and around New Orleans to Cajun Country extending West from the Mississippi river and spilling over the border into Texas. Acadiana—the 22 parishes that together make up the Cajuns’ historical namesake—is now home to one of the best-preserved American-born cultures and the most vibrant French-speaking community in the United States.

Atchafalaya Basin
Atchafalaya Basin located in south central Louisiana | Photo: Matthew Levine on Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Louisiana’s Cajuns trace their lineage to Acadia—les cadiens becoming overtime Cajun in English—in the Canadian Maritimes, from which the Acadians fled the British Empire in favor of then-French Louisiana.

But there’s nothing French about the region.

Alexandre Mouton House in Lafayette, LA | Photo: Richard Byrd on Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
Alexandre Mouton House in Lafayette, LA | Photo: Richard Byrd on Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

It’s true that many of the words spoken by a Cajun and a Parisian are similar, but put them in conversation and they’ll struggle at best, and ask the Frenchman to sample some gumbo or a colchon de lait and they might faint from cultural chauvinism.

Crawfish Festival in Breaux Bridge
Crawfish Festival in Breaux Bridge Pierre Jean Durieu / Shutterstock.com

Zydeco music and bacon fat roux form the focal points of most Cajun get-togethers, especially at community favorites in Lafayette like the Feed ‘n Seed or the Blue Moon Saloon, where you can also spend the night in the hostel or guesthouse. If you’re around in the summer, head to the Crawfish Festival in Breaux Bridge, a festival dedicated to the food and music found nowhere outside the region, and an implicit celebration of the Cajun identity.

 

2) The Carolina Sea Islands and the Gullah-Geechee Corridor

While living alongside stereotypical images of Southern charm in cities like Savannah and Charleston, Gullah communities have quietly but tenaciously reclaimed and retained a strong sense of cultural identity on the Atlantic edge of the Deep South. Historically comprised of a blend of the languages and cultures of enslaved families uprooted from a geographic swath that centers around modern-day Sierra Leone and expands as far as Senegal and Angola, communities of these descendants of the African Diaspora today dot the lowlands and sea islands between Jacksonville, Florida and Jacksonville, North Carolina.

Also sometimes called Geechee, Gullah communities live along the islands and lowlands between Jacksonville, Florida and Jacksonville, North Carolina. The oldest generations of today’s Gullah communities still speak Gullah at home, a creole language that combines a heavily English vocabulary base with grammatical and phonological influences from several West African Mandé languages that result in a sound unmistakably similar to Bahamian Creole or Jamaican Patois.

Charleston City Market - Sweetgrass
Charleston City Market – Sweetgrass (basketry of early Gullah culture) | Photo: Wally Goetz on Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

While Gullah culture is becoming more visible in the form of Gullah basket weaving booths and craft tables like at the Charleston City Market, most Americans, including those living along the Sea Islands, know little of the history of the first community of free black men and women in the South, or of the Gullah community programs still run by the first school for free African Americans in the South.

penn center south carolina
Near the Brick Church at the Penn Center, site of the Penn School founded in 1862 on St. Helena’s Island, near Beaufort, SC. | Photo: Henry de Saussure Copeland on Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

To learn about the community’s history and see it in action today, let your curiosity show to younger Gullah vendors at the Charleston City Market, or take local Gullah culture expert Alphonso Brown’s Gullah City Tour.

 

3) Pennsylvania Dutch Country: More than the Amish

An hour’s drive inland from Philadelphia and the Beltway is Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch Country and home to one of the largest populations of American Amish today.

pennsylvania dutch country
Photo: Kevin Oliver on Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Living in Mainstream American Culture’s backyard, the Pennsylvania Dutch range from misunderstood to ignored in popular media. Descended not from the Dutch but primarily from German (Deutsch) religious migrants, the culture that today speaks the Pennsylvania Dutch language named after them is made up historically of disparate European groups whose only commonality is a religiously-inspired desire for a life free of technological distractions. These Amish, Mennonites, and other conservative German-speaking religious groups over time became today’s “Plain People” of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana.

lancaster central market
Lancaster Central Market | Photo: David Wilson on Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Be wary of “authentic” tours throughout the region that promise you an “Amish experience”: unless the tour is run by members of the Pennsylvania Dutch community themselves, you’d be better off buying some Amish butter at the Lancaster Central Market, the oldest continuously operated farmers’ market in the US.

 

4) South Florida: More than the Sum of its Parts

South Florida has always cultivated its own identity in a vigorous mix of all the regional influences it protrudes geographically into, surrounded by Caribbean islands with their own histories and reaching toward Latin America, of which many see Miami as the unofficial capital.

shutterstock_415658200
The street Calle 8 of Little Havana in Miami.

The only region of the continental States with a tropical climate, even the weather makes South Florida feel more like a Caribbean city than one like you’d find in the Northeast or the West Coast. In the dense urban strip stretching from deep in the Keys all the way up to West Palm Beach and reaching toward Orlando, an eclectic mix of norms and values imported from around the hemisphere make Latin America’s unofficial capital like a glimpse into the future of globalization in the Americas.

Art Murals at Wynwood is a neighborhood in Miami Florida which has a strong art culture presence and murals can be seen everywhere.
Art Murals at Wynwood is a neighborhood in Miami Florida which has a strong art culture presence and murals can be seen everywhere. MR. INTERIOR / Shutterstock.com

The culture of Greater Miami and the areas sprawling out from it along the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico don’t belong to Havana or Port-au-Prince any more than they do to New York or Washington—today South Florida has its own recognizable English accent, a burgeoning American art capital, and is now exporting its culture of multicultural innovation in the form of dual immersion public school programs throughout the US.

To delve into its layers, start by touring the cuisines of Little Havana, or take a stroll along the Wynwood Walls urban graffiti district.

Critical Thinking Tools for Sorting Through the Slosh this Election Season

It’s that part of the democratic cycle again: political junkies stay tuned into their favorite 24-hour news sources while most of the rest of us seek to escape the endless deluge of nonsensical ads, non-sequitur attacks, and noncommittal answers to the questions that surround the presidential election season.

Political campaigning is by nature rhetorical: every candidate and every campaign exists to convince you that they’re right, and would prefer to keep you from spending too much time thinking through your values and determining what candidates and approaches offer the best solutions to our societal problems.

As November looms, your civic responsibility grows heavier every day: you can’t afford to let the campaign trail cacophony lull you into lazy thinking. To maintain your clarity of thought this election season, acquaint yourself with the most egregious and ubiquitous violations in rational thought carried out by our political candidates, and by doing so strengthen your intellectual defenses against irrational thought.

Beware Cognitive Bias

Cognitive biases are lapses in rational thinking that are simply the result of our imperfect human brains constantly needing to make imperfect decisions with imperfect information. Our natural mental reflexes categorize things and dismiss certain information as unimportant often resulting in assumptions or omissions that we never even notice ourselves making.

Confirmation bias is one of the most endemic, that little psychological short-circuit that inspires our deep love of listening to voices that sound like and agree with our own. It’s why most of us have a favorite news channel or paper that happens to line up unsurprisingly well with our own worldview.

Through the digital age our cognitive biases have gone viral, yielding the subjectively skewed social media bubbles we post and tweet and read in every day. Google and Facebook spend a lot of time finding out what you like so they can give you more of it and hide dissenting opinions from your search results and news feeds.  Being unaware of the effects of the transparent social bubble encapsulating your mind can lead to such cognitive errors as availability heuristic or the bandwagon effect.

Most social justice warriors could benefit from tuning into Fox News a couple times a week, just as defenders of traditional values and fiscal responsibility could stand a dose of MSNBC now and then. The mental exercise of engaging thoughtfully with the often ridiculous-sounding voices of the “other side” may not sway your beliefs one way or another, but it will ensure that you better understand the pros, cons, interests, and assumptions surrounding issues that are never as black-and-white as our politicians present them to us.

Cutting through Common Logical Fallacies

Reading a list of logical fallacies is like reading the guide to campaign rhetoric. Whereas cognitive biases are errors within your own subjective mind and thinking, logical fallacies are objective errors or inaccuracies in others’ argumentation; put simply, it’s when someone talks a smooth line, but the logic doesn’t quite add up.

There are more logical fallacies than rational statements in today’s election cycles, and lists attempting to enumerate them all run long. Here are three of the most common offenders during election season:

1. Post hoc fallacy

“Under the President X Administration, jobs were lost/crime increased/cost of living went up” is an argument endlessly thrown at us from both sides. There’s also its opposite: “During my time as governor/senator/mayor, unemployment fell and healthcare became more affordable.”

The post hoc fallacy is one of the most pervasive because it’s one that, on the surface, usually seems to make sense without much thought. It’s the assumption that when thing B happens after thing A, then thing A must be the cause of thing B.

When listening to such claims, be sure to ask yourself a few questions, like how Candidate X’s policies influenced outcomes in Issue Y.

2. Failing to address the argument

“I think what we really ought to be focused on” and “the real issue at hand here is” are just two of the least subtle ways candidates outright refuse to address ideas and arguments, but the more subtle ways can be more dangerous.

Also known as a red herring argument or the ignoratio elenchi fallacy, it’s most misleading when it succeeds in distracting its audience. This fallacy often teams up with our innate confirmation bias, leading us to praise the off-topic answers of our favorite candidates but call foul when the other team breaks the rules.

When watching a debate or interview, be wary of any talking points that follow a sudden redirection of the topic to what “the real problem” is, and instead seek out substantial answers on the issues that matter to you.

3. Ad hominem – attacking the person, not the argument

This one seems particularly egregious this election cycle, with the name-calling and mudslinging seen across the political spectrum. Ad hominem attacks denouncing someone as a bigot or unpatriotic or otherwise attempting to discredit a speaker based on their identity is a small logical step above schoolyard taunts and spitballs, and none of it constitutes actually saying something thoughtful about an issue.

Be wary of candidates who spend most of their campaign time talking about other candidates’ characters and personal lives than their positions on the issues. Remember that even though public officials make mistakes, that doesn’t make the beliefs they profess inherently flawed.

When it comes down to casting your vote this election season, be sure to do it with clarity of thought. Carefully navigate your own cognitive biases and cut through the distractions of the fallacious rhetoric, and don’t let election season devolve into one giant, ironic distraction from the issues that matter to and affect you.

To reflect further and think deeper about your own political beliefs, non-partisan sites like www.isidewith.com and www.politicalcompass.org offer thought-provoking quizzes meant to explore how your own values and beliefs line up with those of current and historical candidates and schools of thought. You can also find detailed information on candidates for public office, their positions, and voting records at www.votesmart.org.

Leiden: Travel Off the Beaten Cobblestone Path in the Netherlands

Among the list of European cities that inspire nostalgic sighs and sparkling eyes, Amsterdam ranks high. The Dutch capital is a pristine picture of most travelers’ hyperbolically beautiful notions of a European city trip that combines culture and cocktails, cycling along perfect canals under blue skies and churning windmills on the way to the risqué thrills of the Red Light District.

rapenburg bike
Photo: Jakob Gibbons

 

Except that this isn’t Amsterdam.

It’s Leiden, a smallish student city located no more than a 35-minute train ride from Amsterdam or any of the three other most populous and important cities of the Netherlands. Hidden in plain sight, Leiden goes mostly unnoticed by travelers transiting through its Central Station on their way from Amsterdam to the Hague and Rotterdam.

ouderijn
Photo: Jakob Gibbons

 

The city is smaller than it feels. Despite having a population density similar to that of New York City, the official population of this medieval man-made island and the connected neighborhoods outside the moat that surrounds it is comparable to New Haven, Connecticut, and its land area is no more expansive than that of a spacious American university campus.

haven
Photo: Jakob Gibbons

But it’s no Amsterdam: in fact, a strong part of Leiden’s local culture and history is that it’s not its posh, powerful, and more popular older sibling on the other side of the imaginary line between the provinces of North and South Holland. The city has a singular atmosphere, its own traditions, and even a trademark accent distinct from those of each of the four urban pillars that together form the densely-populated Randstad area—the Dutch equivalent of a Boston-Washington corridor—in which Leiden finds itself in the near-exact geographic middle.

Many of the discreet local cultures that comprise the mosaic of the present-day Randstad emerged during the Eighty Years War. Leiden’s own story of singularity begins dramatically on October 3rd, 1574, when the Leidenaren of the sixteenth century ousted their Spanish Habsburg imperial rulers.

hooglandsekerk
Photo: Jakob Gibbons

 

For contemporary Leidenaren this meant a valiant victory and political and cultural autonomy. For residents of and visitors to Leiden today, it means one of the best festivals on the Dutch calendar.

breestraat
Photo: Jakob Gibbons

 

Every year on the second day of October, the city’s businesses close up early; and that night, the cobblestone roads along and between the canals erupt into a city-wide festival that’s somehow both one of the country’s biggest and best and at the same time mostly unknown outside a two- or three-town radius around Leiden: Leids Ontzet, or the Relief of Leiden.

For two nights, the sacred cultural norm of “just be normal” goes out the window. The second day of Leids Ontzet features more day-drinking, more city streets packed with stands selling beer and raw herring and fries with mayonaise, and the kermis, the giant fair that sprouts up overnight next to the Central Station and for two days devours the entire northwest corner of town.

kermis CC
Photo by ChrissyJ via Flickr Creative Commons under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

As a reward for the valiant defense of Leiden that gave us the modern-day Leids Ontzet celebrations, in 1575 William of Orange, the founding father of what would become the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands, endowed Leiden with the very first university of the Netherlands.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, Leiden University was an international center of philosophy and science; and in the 21st, it’s not only one of the most prestigious universities of the continent and the university where all future kings and queens of the Netherlands are educated, but also one of the biggest drivers of cosmopolitanism and the international community of Leiden.

kermis CC
Photo by kattebelletje via Flickr under CC BY-NC 2.0

Together the many international students and the equally plentiful expats form a key part of Leiden’s local culture—you’ll never take a stroll through the Wednesday and Saturday street market or through the alleys along the Rapenburg Canal without hearing the sounds of English and half a dozen other languages in the space of a few minutes. At times Leiden, with its not-quite 150,000 residents, feels more intensely international than Amsterdam or the Hague.

steeg
Photo: Jakob Gibbons

And this makes a difference for travelers. The thriving expat scene is constantly organizing events for newcomers and passers-through to dip their feet into Dutch culture and dive head-first into local culture.

dekooi
Photo: Jakob Gibbons

 

The International Student Network hosts the odd roadtrip and a traditional local hutspot dinner during Leids Ontzet, but those looking for less hand-holding or a bit of distance from the student scene normally turn to the lively local Couchsurfing scene.

Also a handy hospitality network for travelers visiting the city, Couchsurfing is a cultural exchange community, and in Leiden it’s best known for its weekly Wednesday “Language Lab” at Café de Keyzer—known lovingly by locals and internationals alike by its Dutch diminutive, t Keizertjeas well as hosting theme parties and events for everything from the Dutch Sinterklaas to an annual Halloween party that’s become a staple of the annual expat social calendar.

nieuwerijn
Photo: Jakob Gibbons

Modern Leiden is a multicultural amalgamation of its own local identity and the globalism that’s always been a fundamental part of that identity, from offering asylum to the English refugees who would later become the American pilgrims of Plymouth Rock to carving out a position as an international center of art, science, and scholarship during the Dutch Golden Age. In Leiden today, you can see that global identity literally written on the walls of the city.

arabic
Photo: Jakob Gibbons

Leiden launched its Muurgedichten or “wall poems” project in 1992, sponsoring the painting of over 100 poems in nearly as many different languages on the walls of buildings of every sort throughout the city. The result is a city whose physical bricks and mortar are covered in the many languages of global society, painting a picture as diverse as the residents who see a sliver of home when they walk past a poem in Polish, Arabic, Japanese, or English.

spaansemuurgedicht
Photo: Jakob Gibbons

Travelers looking for a seedy coffee shop full of joint-smoking tourists or a wild night of electronica-fueled partying may wish to step off their flight in Schiphol airport and directly onto the next Amsterdam-bound train. But those looking to spend a few days in a city with its own unique local culture that’s somehow both authentically Dutch and patently international should instead take the train fifteen minutes in the opposite direction, right into the heart of the Netherlands.

Forget Europe: The Latin American Cities Stealing the Spotlight in Social Progress

 

 

 

The world cities on the cutting edge of innovation and social progress aren’t where you think.

When we think of the world’s most progressive cities, we often imagine the same destinations that form the pillars of the traditional travel industry: Amsterdam’s sexual liberation, Berlin’s art-obsessed hipsterdom, and London’s big city anything-goes tolerance are synonymous in many travelers’ minds with progress and liberation.

But in the last decade, the forefronts of many fights for freedom and dignity have shifted to Latin America.

In the last two decades, the region as a whole has experienced a renaissance of people’s movements and leftist economic thought known as the Pink Tide, a period in which more than 50 million Latin Americans have risen out of poverty. With an increasingly stronger middle class able to provide for its own basic needs and hold democratic governments accountable, the fight of the new Latin American middle class is in many ways shifting to the front of human rights and dignity.

While the region as a whole reinvents itself, four cities in particular stand out as beacons of social progress in this traditionally conservative and unequal part of the world.

 

Mexico City: Leading Latin America in LGBT Rights

The ushering in of marriage equality in Mexico’s Distrito Federal in 2009 was one of the first signs of the progressive wave sweeping across the Americas. In a world where over 70 countries still punish homosexuality as a criminal offense, the massive Mexican capital became the region’s first city to legalize its LGBT-friendly attitude.

Today Mexico City retains bragging rights to one of the most vibrant gay neighborhoods from Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego in its Zona Rosa, a downtown neighborhood bursting with drag shows, dance clubs, and Korean karaoke any night of the week. But the most progressive thing about Mexico City is its tolerant and relatively LGBT-positive atmosphere that allows residents of and visitors to the city to walk down most streets holding the hand of whomever they choose.

 

Santiago: Social Investment through Startup Culture

While so many of its neighbors have struggled through economic uncertainty and instability, Chile has quietly built itself up into one of the success stories of the Americas. The country with one of the highest Human Development Indexes in the region, Chile continues to invest in its human capital and knowledge economy, and nowhere is that more evident than in its capital city.

Santiago Skyline and Park
View of the skyline of Santiago, Chile

Santiago’s now-famous Startup Chile incubator once looked like another dime-a-dozen developing country startup program, and now six years after its launch is held up as a model for creating innovation hubs in the Global South. The program brings aspiring entrepreneurs from within Chile and across the world to Santiago, where they’re given an interest-free startup loan as well as entrepreneurial mentoring and support. This is all part of the Chilean government’s plan to position Santiago as the “entrepreneurship hub of Latin America,” furthering Chile’s development and ability to offer better education, healthcare, and economic opportunity to its people.

 

Montevideo: Bringing Peace to the War on Drugs

In 2012, Uruguay shocked the world when it became the first country to ever completely legalize the growth, sale, and consumption of cannabis. In an era when the War on Drugs has shredded the social fabric of countries like Mexico and Colombia, the Uruguayan government has followed through on its popular mandate to combat drug crime by legalizing and regulating marijuana.

Port Market - Mercado del puerto - Montevideo Uruguay
Montevideo, Uruguay – December 15, 2012: A view of Mercado del Puerto in the left, the famous place in Montevideo to eat local meat cuts, Montevideo, Uruguay.

The decision has received both praise and criticism in the local and international press: its impact on organized crime and drug use in the country has been mixed, but the policy also provides promising opportunities for medical and psychological research impossible elsewhere. The government looks at it as a possible future revenue source, but for now the state-run marijuana industry’s main goal is to undercut the influence of the black market and organized crime in Uruguay, while at the same time providing an inspiring Latin American model for a post-drug war society.

 

Medellín: Innovating through Social Urbanism

From 1990s international murder capital to innovation capital of the world in 2014, Medellín’s program of urbanismo social, social urbanism, has made the city a model for urban progress that’s turned it not only into a model case study of Latin American urban planning, but also a tourism and expat hotspot.

Medellin Metro Cable Cars
MEDELLIN, COLOMBIA – MARCH 8: Metrocable cars arriving at a station in Medellin, Colombia on March 8, 2014. Metrocable is the first gondola lift system in the world dedicated to public transportation.

By focusing first on the most resource-poor and opportunity-desperate parts of the city, Medellín’s social urbanism approach jump-starts social change by beginning with drastic and spectacular innovations in the places where they can make the biggest differences. The best evidence of this approach is the ultra-modern cable cars and outdoor escalator that have been constructed and integrated into the city’s modern metro system to connect isolated hillside shantytowns to the economic opportunities of the city center. Alongside these public transit investments, the impressive parques-biblioteca, “library-parks,” that serve as community and education centers in Medellín’s poorest neighborhoods make a spectacular statement about the city’s approach to progress.

biblioteca belen
Parque Biblioteca Belén, a neighborhood ‘library park’ in Medellín, featuring community workshop spaces, technology skills instruction, music classes for children, and other services designed to keep youths out of gangs and adults out of unemployment. Photo by Jakob Gibbons.
parque explora
Parque Explora, a giant community center-educational complex hybrid built onto the side of the metro station in one of the poorer neighborhoods of the city’s northeast. Photo via Wikimedia Commons under CC0

It’s true that many of the cities where human rights and civil liberties are best translated into opportunities for their citizens are found in Europe and the Global North, but today, our battles for social progress have gone entirely global. Entire regions are shifting their own narratives, shaking off images of violence and narcotrafficking that no longer tell the true story of day-to-day life in Latin America.

Now is the time to go and experience the cultural transformations guiding Latin America into the future, to say you witnessed peace in Colombia, the completion of Chile’s successful transition to democracy, the fight for safety and rule of law in Mexico, and countless other people’s movements moving and shaking the region.

Swap Your Vacation for a Mindful Staycation: Playing Tourist in Your Own City

What draws us to travel is the novelty and stimulation: suddenly we’re awash in a sea of new sights and sounds and smells, waking us up and making us feel alive and alert like we somehow never seem to at home. But the grass isn’t necessarily greener on the other side–you’re just paying more attention to it.

Travel is a way of breaking from routine, giving your mind a rest, and engaging the senses with a fresh set of stimuli. A small dose of adventure packs all the regenerative power of an extended meditation session,  and most of us are already overdue.

Even though you could afford to, you don’t need to hop on a plane or a train to escape your stress. Sometimes, all you need is a little dose of mindfulness to transform the same old city block you ignore on your way out of the subway into a restorative staycation. Just turn on your senses, turn off your phone, and take a little walk outside.

Unplug and Tune In

Mindfulness is about engaging actively with the present moment. That means that, before you can get started with your mindful staycation, you’ll need to get rid of all the things you use to distract yourself from the tediousness of everyday life

Take out your headphones: swap your morning commute podcast for soaking up the sounds of the neighborhood, the individual residents’ voices, their old cars puttering down the street or the constant beeping of busy crosswalks.

man walking
Image via Pixabay under license CC0

Rather than staring mindlessly at the sidewalk and contemplating your to-do list, let your eyes dart from sight to sight, building to building, face to face or store to store. Ride the public transit without a destination, alternating between scenery-watching and people-watching.

Don’t read a book or text or tweet.

As you take off on your mindful staycation, please keep all electronic devices (and other distractions) switched off and stowed away at home or under the seat in front of you.

Start with New Surroundings

A change of pace and scenery will help you jump-start the process: head to a different neighborhood with a different vibe than the one where you park your car or the one where you meet your colleagues for drinks every Friday. If you normally drive, take public transit. If you normally bike, walk. Wear comfortable clothes, and if you want, bring a camera.

chinatown usa
Image via Pixabay under license CC0

Head for the cool bohemian zone or the culturally diverse immigrant neighborhood of your city. Pick somewhere that excites the senses: a creative and quirky Airbnb or a boutique hostel with its own personality is the perfect place to wake up your inner explorer and meet people you otherwise wouldn’t, just like on vacation.

Escape Your Bubble: Meet New People, Do New Things 

It’s one of the best parts of a vacation for many. In our typical nine-to-five lives we get stuck in a social bubble made up of all the people we work with, live around, and otherwise have ideas and perspectives in common with. We fall into social bubbles  in which we’re cut off from any ideas that don’t already sound like ours.

On your mindful staycation, rebel against your bubble:  if you live in a trendy young professional neighborhood, spend some time in a more family-oriented area or head over to where the students live. If you’re surrounded by highly-educated knowledge workers, pass a few days in humbler working class surroundings.

hiking through stones
Image via Pixabay under license CC0

You can use social networks like Meetup.com to find events organized by locals in your city, with themes ranging from shared professional skills to the most obscure of hobbies. Go to a meetup and learn a language or pick up running, even if just for one weekend of a different look at your city.

Take a Page Out of the Guidebooks

Travelers all want to do what you’re doing and experience your town ‘like a local’, but when you’re due for a staycation, you can take a page or two out of their book instead.

Check sites like Wikitravel or Lonely Planet to see what’s drawing visitors to your city from afar. Check local events on travel social networks like Couchsurfing, and search for local expat groups on Facebook. These guys are the ones enjoying your city like there’s no tomorrow (because most of them are leaving tomorrow), so let their enthusiasm inspire you and don’t be ashamed to look like a big stupid tourist in the same zip code where you pay rent and punch a time clock.

Man and woman on a road trip and reading a map together while seated inside their car. Happy young couple going on road trip.

Setting out with no more intention than to experience the moment fully doesn’t just allow you to enjoy your urban home in a new way. It leads you to discovering the coolest neighborhoods, trying things you’d never do between 9 on Monday and 5 on Friday, and building mindful new habits that contribute to your overall sense of balance.

And once you learn to appreciate the novel in the everyday, suddenly everywhere you have a hotel reservation or pay an electricity bill will become a travel destination.

Location Independence and Eternal Spring: Why Digital Nomads are Migrating to Medellín

Around mid-2014, they started taking the Internet by storm; and two years, later they’ve succeeded in spreading across the globe, quietly revolutionizing the worlds of both work and travel as they go: digital nomads.

 

betahaus berlin
A coworking space in Berlin, Germany, a popular digital nomad hub. Photo by Karine via Flickr under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

They’ve actually already been skulking around the web and the world for a decade or more, hidden through most of the 2000s in geek-friendly shadows of the Internet where what were then mostly programmers and web developers became the first front of “vagabond hackers.”

Since the dark days of dial-up, these location-independent professionals have begun venturing out into the world en masse, expanding their ranks to include everything from creative professionals to day traders. They first began congregating years ago in Southeast Asian coffee shops and coworking spaces, and by 2016 they’ve spread to form a loose professional network that covers the remainder of the cheap and well-connected world.

And now, to increasingly greater notoriety in the digital nomad community, they’ve established yet another up-and-coming outpost in the developing world, this time in Medellín, Colombia.

How Medellín is Luring Location-Independent Professionals to the Other Side of the World

For most of the foreign faces who make up Medellín’s digital nomad community, this South American city is quite literally on the opposite face of the planet.

centro
The Hotel Nutibara overlooking Medellín’s historic center. Photo by Jakob Gibbons.

Latin America as a region doesn’t seem like the logical first choice for most digital nomads: Wifi connectivity often ranges from erratic to useless, and you’re much more likely to have a knife pointed at you in Rio or Panama City than you are in Bangkok or Siem Reap.

Yet the nomads keep pouring into Medellín.

One factor tugging location-independent professionals toward Colombia’s second city is the annual average temperature of 72 F (22 C) that has earned it the nickname of La Ciudad de la Eterna Primavera, the City of Eternal Spring. Another pull is without question the unrivaled warmth and friendliness of paisas, as the people of Medellín are known in Colombia, toward the foreign visitors with whom they share their city.

For many, these things are enough to get them in the door, but sunny days and smiling local faces do not a digital nomad hotspot make. Medellín’s more than just a pretty face.

estadio
A bright, sunny day over Medellín’s Estadio neighborhood. Photo by Jakob Gibbons.

From world murder capital in 1991 to world innovation capital in 2012, Medellín has followed the example of neighboring Bogotá, transforming into a center of social urbanism that promotes the wellbeing of all its citizens and, as a pleasant side effect, draws in the tourism dollars.

Medellín today is home to cafes and coworkings to rival any digital nomad hub. Epicentro and Atom House are staple coworking spaces in the expat-dense Poblado neighborhood on the south side of town, the traditional heart of the Medellín’s digital nomad community, where expats rent out fully furnished flats on Airbnb for anywhere from $400 to $1400, to twice that for those with the disposable income and the taste for it.

medellin_pobladoCC
Views of the city from the posh Poblado neighborhood. Photo by Serge via Flickr under CC BY-SA 2.0.

 

World-class coffee from the hours-away Eje Cafetero region is finally creeping its way into shops and cafes in Medellín after having been reserved primarily for export until recent years. But if you want a cup of the really good stuff, you’ll need to cough up a whopping 3,000-4,000 Colombian pesos, or a US dollar and some change.

ondas_coffee
Locally-grown and roasted coffee at Cafe Ondas. Photo courtesy of Cafe Ondas.

 

You could splurge and drop $3-4 dollars on a two-course lunch with a glass of fresh-squeezed juice from an everyday neighborhood restaurant like Miiroku

miiroku
A typical plate of food at a restaurant like Miiroku, in La Floresta. Along with the soup and juice that came with it, this cost $11,000 COP, or just under $4 dollars. Photo by Jakob Gibbons.

…or, for the nomad suspended between sporadic paychecks, $25 will buy you enough groceries to weather a brief nuclear winter.

groceries
$80,000 COP (or about $25 US dollars) worth of groceries from the supermarket in Laureles (including a kilo or two of meat hidden behind the bell peppers). Photo by Jakob Gibbons.

 

The easiest answer to why so many web developers and content writers and graphic designers are choosing to live in Medellín and trade their labor for dollars and euros online is twofold: The cost of living in Medellín still hasn’t caught up to the rapid increases in quality of life, and, perhaps just as importantly, the exchange rate for those earning in US dollars or euros has never been better.

Kit Glover, originally from Australia, arrived just in time in the quiet but cozy Floresta neighborhood on the west side of Medellín. More nomad than digital, Kit had backpacked through the Middle East and Mexico by the time all the rave reviews from other travelers caught up to him and sent him off towards Medellín in late 2014.

Just as he’d hoped to, Kit managed to jump through the bureaucratic hoops of starting up a small business as an expat in Colombia, leasing the three-story space where he opened Café Ondas.

ondas roof
The rooftop terrace at Ondas. Photo by Jakob Gibbons.

 

When Kit turned the second floor of Ondas into Ondas Coworking last year, he says he just gave it the standard social media share and kept his expectations low. But just a few days after officially opening his shared workspace for digital nomads, two enthusiastic faces showed up hoping to make use of it. Both still spend most of their digital working hours at Ondas.

ondas grafitti
One of the rooms in Onda’s coworking space. All the murals were created by local artists in Medellín. Photo by Jakob Gibbons.

 

Shaun Taberer, English copywriter and content marketing specialist, is one of the two who showed up at Ondas that day. Shaun, who today is the face of Digital Nomads Medellín and the instigator behind most of the community’s meetups and workshops, was just another backpacker with a laptop before arriving in Medellín.

Shaun’s been in Medellín for about two years now, and he literally wrote the guide to the place for digital nomads. “You go to Lima, Quito, wherever, and there are expats and digital nomads there, but the community in Medellín is so concentrated and active,” he says, explaining what led him to put down his backpack and plug in for a while.

herman sean
Shaun and Herman, two well-known faces in Medellín’s nomad community, working away in Ondas. Photo courtesy of Cafe Ondas.

 

Still others are coming to Medellín just to see why so many are coming to Medellín, like Tomas Gurvičius, a Lithuanian student studying International Development at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands.

Tomas, a sort of meta-nomad himself, is traveling and researching how digital nomad communities impact their host cities, in an effort to flesh out our understanding of “lifestyle mobilities and North-to-South migration,” he says, referring to patterns of migration from the wealthy “Global North” to the poorer and less developed “Global South.”

He says he came to Medellín, of course, for the great weather and low-cost life like everyone else, but that the biggest thing that drew him was the utility of learning the Spanish language, pointing out that it “isn’t really that practical” to learn the local languages in some other nomad hotspots. “I knew I wanted to be in South America, and Medellín seemed like the perfect base.”

Even Medellín’s Nomads (Mostly) Move On 

By definition, nomads are always moving.

twilight_departureCC
A cruise departing from the harbor in Cartagena, where many digital nomads will be departing from Colombia to embark on their next journey this summer. Photo by Peter Barker via Flickr under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

 

In May, many of Medellín’s nomads will say hasta luego to the mini-lives they built in Colombia as they set off on the Nomad Cruise, a week-long “workation” and networking event that will carry its passengers from Cartagena to Lisbon. There, some will put down shallow roots in that city’s own bustling nomad community, and others will plane, train, or automobile on to their next planned destination or the next place that has that something special.

Herman Ritzema was the second coworker who showed up at Ondas when it opened its doors to Medellín’s digital nomads. A Dutch web developer and nomad turned semi-nomad since meeting his paisa wife-to-be while backpacking in Peru five years ago, Herman will be joining the cruise, but his plans will bring him back to Medellín with his wife and one-year-old son, who will be accompanying him on the trip.

“It’s my home base now,” he says, using the typically nomadic terminology to refer to what others might just call “home,” echoing the sentiment of the growing number of nomads who are putting down slightly more solid roots in the City of Eternal Spring.

Public Art in Bogotá: How Graffiti Helped Transform a World Murder Capital into a Latin American Cultural Capital

In the mid-1990s, the Colombian capital was synonymous with violent crime, desperate poverty, and government corruption. Twenty years and many buckets of paint later, it’s better known as a model for rapid urban development and the Latin American capital of street art.

Take an afternoon stroll through Bogotá’s bustling city center in 2016 and public art of all kinds will beckon your eyes and ears: buskers strumming ukuleles on café terraces, local folk bands performing on grassy medians during the Sunday ciclovía bike tour, and entire neighborhoods plastered in building-sized murals.

 

bogota columbia graffiti
Photo: Jakob Gibbons

The graffiti of the Bogotá of old mostly fit cliché images of run-down inner city neighborhoods where teens haphazardly vandalize whatever they can get their spray cans on–but not the graffiti of the new Bogotá.

The street art of the citizen-reclaimed capital of Colombia is decriminalized and destigmatized. Where gang signs and sloppily sprayed initials were once an unavoidable part of daily life for Bogotanos, today’s graffiti is deliberately encouraged by the local government, and it’s made its mark on more than just the city’s walls.

 

bogota columbia graffiti
Photo: Jakob Gibbons

At the peak of violence and chaos in the early 90s, just over 80 of every 100,000 Bogotanos were murdered every year in the capital city, with a total of 4,352 homicides in Bogotá in 1993 alone. After the groundbreakingly progressive and extraordinarily high-impact mayorships of Antanas Mockus and Enrique Peñalosa—one a socialist philosopher and the other a neoliberal economist —the homicide rate had dropped by 40%.

One idea that united the two transformative mayors across their differing political ideologies was a focus on public space: by investing in transit, cultural institutions, parks, and libraries, Mockus and Peñalosa sought to change their city’s culture by making it a place where Bogotanos could enjoy and take pride in their shared spaces.

Fast forward to the year 2013 and Bogotá’s 475th anniversary celebration: the modern Transmilenio bus system carries hundreds of thousands of passengers every day, through its own newly-constructed traffic lanes and past similarly new parks and libraries.

 

transmilenio bogota columbia graffiti
Transmilenio | Photo: Jakob Gibbons

The other notable new inhabitant of Bogotá’s public spaces is art.

Photo: Jakob Gibbons
Photo: Jakob Gibbons

 

And as more paint has gone up on overpasses and the sides of corner stores in the last two decades, the general safety and quality of the lives of the people of Bogotá have increased with it.

By its 475th birthday, Bogotá had evolved from a violent grey developing city into the Latin American capital of street art. Crime rates had been once again cut in half, producing the Bogotá of today, whose homicide rate is among the lowest in Latin America and about a third that of American cities like New Orleans, Flint, and Baltimore. And these numbers are only expected to keep falling.

bogota columbia graffiti
Photo: Jakob Gibbons

 

As graffiti culture asserted itself in Bogotá, the authorities mostly turned a blind eye, with local businesses even often contracting well-known local grafiteros to cover their buildings in murals. And then, after the tragic and needless shooting of a 16-year-old local graffiti artist by police in 2011, the legal culture finally caught up to its mural-painting tax base.

Partly in response to the shooting, then-Mayor Gustavo Petro began promoting graffiti as a form of public art and civic enrichment in the city while also taking measures to regulate where and on what kinds of buildings the art is allowed. Of course local graffiti artists still can’t resist the allure of the forbidden, but the new law is also seen by many as a symbolic concession by the city to its people.

Photo: Jakob Gibbons
Photo: Jakob Gibbons

 

This long struggle for public art laid the groundwork for the 475 year anniversary celebrations in 2013, in which the city contracted several well-known local street art collectives to decorate a stretch of highway downtown. Calle 26 is now not only one of the city’s main thoroughfares and the main line of the Transmilenio transit system that’s been heralded around the world as Bogotá’s crowning achievement in urban development, but now also “the first open air art corridor of Bogotá.”

calle bogota columbia graffiti
Image via Wikimedia Commons

Today, public art is as synonymous with Bogotá as drug violence is with the city of two decades ago, and the men and women behind the paintbrushes and spraycans are proud of it. Artists from around the world are moving to the Colombian capital to adorn its surfaces, and some of Bogotá’s grafiteros are riding their local fame all the way to other corners of Latin America and Europe on invitations to beautify other cities in need of a jolt of life and art.

And Bogotá’s painted streets affect more than just artists: tourism is an important part of the city’s continuing urban development plan, and the paint is drawing in the tourists.

Visitors to Bogotá can (and should) reserve a day for the Bogotá Graffiti Tour, organized and run by some of the city’s most prominent artists. The donations-only walking tour is not only a down-to-earth alternative to your typical tour group, but also offers the singular chance for you to view Bogotá’s prolific street art through the eyes of the very artists fueling Bogotá’s cultural revival.

eseguey bogota columbia graffiti
Photo: Jakob Gibbons

As of January 2016, former mayor Enrique Peñalosa, one of the two crucial custodians of Bogotá’s transformation, is once again mayor. As part of his 10-part plan for furthering the city’s development, he continues to focus on the accessibility and hospitality of public spaces in the city, which he says will include “cleaning up trash and graffiti.”

While it seems that the Peñalosa administration’s plan is to clean up marginalized neighborhoods and remove art that’s gang-related or otherwise offensive, local grafiteros are bracing for a fight. Artists fear that the city’s involvement in deciding what is “art” and what is “vandalism” will suffocate art in the city, the very art that’s worked so hard to produce a visual transformation of the city to match the social changes it’s endured in the last two decades.

In an interview with Colombian news magazine Semana, well-known local artist Toxicómano shared his take on the role of graffiti in the transformation of the Colombian capital, stating defiantly that “Peñalosa’s making a mistake if he thinks the future of Bogotá is a return to grey.”

Whatever next steps the city government takes, there’s a new culture of street art that has taken root in the newly safe and inviting public spaces of Bogotá, and the local grafiteros don’t plan on putting down the paint any time soon.

niunamas bogota columbia graffiti
Despite the unprecedented rate of social change, life still isn’t perfect in Bogotá. Recent years especially have seen a spike of violent attacks against women, frequently including sexual assault and murder, that’s seen by some as an issue of Latin American machismo culture. This seemingly less ‘artistic’ instance of public art, written in Sharpie on the handrail of this small bridge in the Teusaquillo neighborhood, is as socially potent as its more eye-catching cousins: it reads, from bottom to top, “No more dead women, not one more.” | Photo: Jakob Gibbons

 

Tallahassee: the Florida City that’s Quietly Climbing its Way to Coolness

Most people planning a weekend trip to Florida have their eyes on the breezy beaches and cosmopolitan cities of South Florida, and you can hardly blame them. Miami has been a must-visit nightlife capital for most of living memory, and cities like St. Petersburg are among the first that come to mind when you think of young hipsters amassing to sip microbrews.

That’s partly why you should go to Tallahassee instead and enjoy the forgotten state capitol before everyone else figures out how awesome it has become almost overnight.

Tallahassee has historically belonged to that disdainfully ignored northern third of Florida that feels more like an extension of the rural South than the Caribbean seafood and palm tree-lined boulevards you see on Florida tourism ads. But in no more than a couple of years, this small town has transformed from a meh student town to a trendy urban center of entertainment, entrepreneurship, good eats, and locally-brewed drinks.

Tallahassee is first and foremost a student town. November's annual Homecoming Parade lights up the city with the international flavors of the university, like the Center for Intensive English Studies' float in last year's parade.
Tallahassee is first and foremost a student town. November’s annual Homecoming Parade lights up the city with the international flavors of the university, like the Center for Intensive English Studies’ float in last year’s parade. | Photo: Jakob Gibbons

Despite all the growth and change, Tallahassee is and probably always will be a student town at heart, which means there’s no lack of bars and clubs, from the tacky to the luxurious and everything in between. But now there’s so much more. If you’ve only got a weekend in Tally, try hitting most of these local highlights.

Tally Highlights: Obligatory Stops for a Weekend in the Florida Panhandle

Every burger joint in every American town boasts that it has the best burgers around, but Monk’s has the city awards and local cult following to prove it. Its official name is Wells Brothers Bar and Grill, but that’s too much of a mouthful for locals as they wax gastronomic about its perfectly fresh beef and argue over their favorite combination of the page-long list of options for building your own perfect burger for ten bucks. If your taste buds are up for a delicious adventure, try the Lip Smacker, their famous peanut butter burger, and consider ordering some homemade sweet potato fries with it. There’s a reason these guys have been voted Tally’s Best Burger pretty much every year in living memory.

The Warehouse is another popular hangout for Florida State English students and other literary enthusiasts, who go for the frequent readings and performances and stay for billiards and cheap beer.
The Warehouse is another popular hangout for Florida State English students and other literary enthusiasts, who go for the frequent readings and performances and stay for billiards and cheap beer. | Photo: Jakob Gibbons

 

That’s probably why Tallahassee’s favorite burger guys opened a second restaurant in the slightly upscale Midtown area, called The Midtown Caboose. It’s run by the same Wells Brothers of Monk’s, and despite being in a more moneyed neighborhood, the menu stops well short of being intimidatingly posh. You definitely shouldn’t shy away from the beef here, but also check out some of their inspired vegetarian and vegan dishes. A meal and a drink at Midtown Caboose will usually land you on the far side of $15, but you’ll have to throw in an appetizer or a second round of beers to cross the $20 mark.

After dinner at Monk’s, head one block down High Road to Proof Brewing Company, another locally-owned favorite. Unlike so many other bars in college towns, Proof maintains a solid mixed demographic, with lots of 21-and-up students and grad students as well as young professionals and generally just people who like good beer. Recent years have seen Proof evolve from a pub with a great selection of European beers to a craft brewery and centerpiece of the local beer scene.

The Tallahassee classic All Saints Cafe, in the artsy Railroad Square neighborhood
The Tallahassee classic All Saints Cafe, in the artsy Railroad Square neighborhood | Photo: Jakob Gibbons

During the development boom, they opened their Brewery, Taproom and Beer Garden just south of Florida State University. It’s a perfect place to sip a fresh brew with a view of the process that brought it to your appreciative lips, as the garden has a perfect view of the brewery itself. Check their schedule to catch some live music, or if you go on a quieter night you can enjoy your beer with a game of table tennis or bocce ball.

foodtruck outside an art store on Gaines Street close to the Railroad Square neighborhood
Food truck outside an art store on Gaines Street close to the Railroad Square neighborhood | Photo: Jakob Gibbons

The Beer Garden is in the Railroad Square neighborhood, long-time beating heart of Tally’s arts scene. Railroad Square Art Park is sandwiched between Florida State, Florida A&M, and the hip coffee shops of Railroad Avenue. The Art Park itself is full of galleries and studios, from painting to woodwork to clothing, and scattered between the art shops are plenty of places to sit down and have a meal or a drink. Make sure to catch First Friday, on the first Friday evening of every month, when all the local Tallahassee artists are there presenting and selling their crafts while the whole city comes to peruse their shops and stalls.

the International Bookmine
The International Bookmine | Photo: Jakob Gibbons

In walking distance from Railroad Square is Gaines Street, the hotspot of the current urban development. In the midst of all the new there, you’ll find a pleasant piece of old, a favorite of many Florida State English students and of local bookworms in general: the International Bookmine. This place has been here since the dirt in Tallahassee was new, and it’s a nice break from all the shiny new apartment buildings that surround it. As soon as you walk inside, the smell of old books and old buildings will converge on your nose in a more effective sales pitch than any of the 2-for-1 specials on the same street.

Street art in the parking area of Catalina Cafe, a coffee roaster and bakery on the newly developed Gaines Street.
Street art in the parking area of Catalina Cafe, a coffee roaster and bakery on the newly developed Gaines Street | Photo: Jakob Gibbons
Brand new upscale housing developments on Gaines Street
Brand new upscale housing developments on Gaines Street | Photo: Jakob Gibbons

If you’ve only got one weekend in Tallahassee, try to finish it up with a visit to the newly constructed Cascades Park, smack in the center of Downtown under the shadow of the capitol building. ‘Park’ is hardly a fair word for this place: it’s got your standard-issue swing sets and walking trails, but the Capital City Amphitheater is the epicenter, perfect for a great outdoor concert. On weekends when the amphitheater is empty, opt for a meal in The Edison, the new hip eatery in the repurposed county electric building, or enjoy a stroll under the perfect North Florida sun.

Brand new Cascades Park, a multi-purpose outdoor area with an amphitheater and live music venues, with the Florida state capitol building towering in the background.
Brand new Cascades Park, a multi-purpose outdoor area with an amphitheater and live music venues, with the Florida state capitol building towering in the background. | Photo: Jakob Gibbons

All the signs are pointing in the same direction in the Florida Panhandle: Tallahassee is the next up-and-coming big thing. Get ahead of the curve and schedule your next Florida vacation for the capitol, so you can assure its growing hipster population that you were there before it was cool.