ILLUSTRATION BY KELLI ANDERSON

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We’re a far bigger danger to Jaws and company than they are to us — which is why the world’s largest shark sanctuary was recently established by the Marshall Islands, in the central Pacific. Here’s where, and why, our toothy pals are finding safe haven. —SAM POLCER AND ALICIA BUCHL PEREZ

ILLUSTRATION BY TIM VIENCKOWSKI

]]> http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2012/01/01/dispatches-11/feed/ 0 http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2011/12/01/dispatches-10/ http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2011/12/01/dispatches-10/#comments Thu, 01 Dec 2011 06:00:11 +0000 admin http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/?p=5627 Seeing Green

Come December, no other tree will inspire the warm fuzzies like a decorated fir, spruce or pine. Here’s a look at some cold, hard numbers behind the most festive greenery on earth. —SAM POLCER and ALICIA BUCHL PEREZ

ILLUSTRATION BY KELLI ANDERSON

]]> http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2011/12/01/dispatches-10/feed/ 0 http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2011/10/01/dispatches-8/ http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2011/10/01/dispatches-8/#comments Sat, 01 Oct 2011 06:00:36 +0000 admin http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/?p=5331 MUNICH, GERMANY
Oktoberfest, By the Numbers

Mounting Munich’s 178th annual Oktoberfest (something of a misnomer, as it runs from September 17 to October 3) is no small feat. Here’s a look at what it takes to throw one of the world’s biggest parties.

ILLUSTRATION BY JULIE TENINBAUM

]]> http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2011/10/01/dispatches-8/feed/ 0 http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2011/09/01/dispatches-7/ http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2011/09/01/dispatches-7/#comments Thu, 01 Sep 2011 06:00:04 +0000 admin http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/?p=5195 COLCHAGUA, CHILE
Shaken, and Stirred

Chile’s wine country bounces back

THOMAS WILKINS BIGGS had been asleep for barely 15 minutes when the world came undone. The managing director for Viñas de Colchagua, a winemakers’ association in Chile’s Colchagua Valley, Biggs had been up late into the night entertaining guests before dutifully returning home with his wife’s requested chocolate. At around 3:35 a.m. he awoke to the sounds of walls and ceilings buckling, paintings falling and his daughters crying. “The movement was incredible,” he remembers, gazing away.

Last year’s historic 8.8-magnitude earthquake collapsed bridges, split buildings and shifted the Earth’s figure axis by three inches. Once the human toll had been calculated (Biggs’ family was unscathed), attention shifted to Chile’s industries, especially wine. The fifth-largest exporter of bottled wine to the U.S., Chile has majestic growing regions beloved for their high-quality vintages at wallet-friendly prices. But its post-quake losses were significant: Toppled tanks and scattered barrels spilled 125 million liters at a cost of a quarter of a billion dollars. Observers questioned the industry’s future.

Today, the damage can still be seen, but just barely. With a remarkably resilient attitude found across Colchagua, Chile’s vineyards have rebounded. Century-old adobe walls have been rebuilt to modern standards, tanks are now secured to both the ceiling and floor to achieve some earthquake resistance, and the industry even posted around a 12 percent increase in exports since the quake, according to Wines of Chile. “We had to show all the people who believe in us that we can make it,” says Biggs. “There was no time for crying.” — MICHAEL B. DOUGHERTY

]]> http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2011/09/01/dispatches-7/feed/ 0 http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2011/08/01/dispatches-6/ http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2011/08/01/dispatches-6/#comments Mon, 01 Aug 2011 06:00:57 +0000 admin http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/?p=5068 COLORADO SPRINGS
In the Round

Some very rare coins make their way east

— ROD O’CONNOR

THE WAY Larry Shepherd describes it, shipping millions of dollars in rare coins isn’t much different from packing china for a move across town. “ They’ll be carefully boxed up and encapsulated in shock-absorbing material,” says Shepherd, the executive director of the American Numismatic Association. “And then that box will go into another box. They will be protected very well throughout the entire process.”

The coins are making the trek from the ANA’s nonprofit museum in Colorado Springs to Chicago for this month’s World’s Fair of Money, a rare coin show hosted by the ANA. Upon arrival at the Donald H. Stephens Convention Center via armored truck, the coins are escorted to the show floor by a full complement of armed guards. More than 30 security personnel, some in plainclothes blending in with the crowd, are always watching. The total bill for the detail is in the six-figures. “There’s a whole lot of Thomas Crown Affair going on that may not be obvious to the person walking into the convention,” says Shepherd.

But to anyone with sticky fingers, he offers a caveat: “What would you do with one of those items if you did steal it? Every owner from the time that coin was made is listed, so it would be impossible to sell. It would be like trying to resell the Mona Lisa.”

REGIME CHANGE
Among the coins featured at the World’s Fair of Money is the EID MAR Denarius, minted by Marcus Junius Brutus to commemorate his assassination of Caesar on the Ides of March in 44 B.C. Only 100 remain today, fetching upward of $300,000 each. Here’s what the coins are saying.

1. “BRUT” Short for Marcus

2. “IMP” Short for “Imperator,” the title given to victorious Roman generals. (Though he deplored Caesar’s arrogance, Brutus had a bit of an ego himself.)

3. HEAD SHOT Brutus put his own likeness on the coin in open defiance of a Roman tradition that frowned on depicting living men on money. He wasn’t the first: Caesar did it too.

4. “L. PLAET. CEST” Short for Lucius Plaetorius Cestianus, the moneymaker who struck the coins.

6. PILEUS Based on the cap worn by freed slaves, this is the Roman symbol for liberty.

7. “EID MAR” The Ides of March. (Beware.)

]]> http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2011/08/01/dispatches-6/feed/ 0 http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2011/07/01/dispaches/ http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2011/07/01/dispaches/#comments Fri, 01 Jul 2011 06:00:10 +0000 admin http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/?p=4940 LIMA, PERU
Nice Pipes

— BRIAN KEVIN
INFOGRAPHIC BY LIZ MEYERS

IN A DIM STORAGE shed at Pontificia Universidad Catolico del Peru, American archaeologist Dianne Scullin grabs an artifact from Peru’s ancient Moche culture, puffs out her cheeks and blows hard into one end, trilling a high note that echoes off the archive boxes lining the walls. “That would be an ocarina, rather than a whistle,” she says, setting down the thumb-size ceramic relic. “The difference is all in how you purse your lips.”

The 27-year-old Ph.D. candidate is in the early stages of a three-year study for Columbia University, sorting through hundreds of millennia-old, pre-Inca instruments from the archives at Catolica and the nearby Larco Museum, recording solo recitals on ancient trumpets, conchlike pututo horns and whistling bo les shaped like anthropomorphic wolves. Many haven’t produced a sound since 100 to 900 AD.

Scullin has worked on traditional archaeological digs, but as a music lover and trombonist, she’s drawn to a small movement among archaeologists to catalog sound with the same emphasis the field has historically placed on hard data.

Her audio archive notes the volumes and pitches emitted by each instrument, and phase two of the project will involve an “acoustic mapping” of Moche archaeological sites, suggesting where among the pyramids certain instruments may once have been played and heard.

As Scullin works, her one-woman jam sessions attract curious passersby. She clicks a button in GarageBand to replay a series of scales on the 1,200-year-old ocarina. “Not bad,” she says. “My husband says I should mix them together and play Beatles songs.”

]]> http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2011/07/01/dispaches/feed/ 0 http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2011/06/01/dispatches-5/ http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2011/06/01/dispatches-5/#comments Wed, 01 Jun 2011 06:07:10 +0000 admin http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/?p=4846

Great Rift Valley, Kenya

 

 

 

Prides and Joy

How a tribesman who once killed a lion became one of the species’ leading advocates

DAY BREAKS OVER the Great Rift Valley in southwest Kenya, and Koike Parsaloi, a 37-year-old Masai guide from the Shompole Eco Lodge, draped in a purple-checkered robe and beaded necklaces, drives his Land Rover across the veld. Moments later he cuts the engine, and a lioness appears from a thicket of prairie grass. One lion follows another, until an entire pride is creeping across the plain toward a herd of zebra.

Such scenes were uncommon here only a decade ago, when conservationist and designer Anthony Russell partnered with local Masai to create the lodge and conservancy. At that time, these cats faced an uncertain future, their numbers thinned by hunting and habitat loss. Since then, Koike and his tribesmen have reversed the trend. The result: Lion populations in Shompole Conservancy and its environs have increased from just six to 70, even as their numbers continue to fall throughout Kenya.

That Koike has emerged as a protector of lions is poignant. Not only does he come from a tribe in which youngsters kill lions to prove their manhood (a practice abandoned in Shompole), when he was 24 he killed one that had crept into his village. “It was very dark,” he recalls, “and everyone was sleeping.” Sensing something from his hut, he stepped outside and found a lion staring back at him. He slew it with a single thrust of his spear.

Back on the veld, as the zebras notice the pride and flee, Koike praises the changes that have occurred here, where tourism revenues have funded schools and health care for the Masai, “including my three children,” he says. The pride turns its attention to a group of giraffes, and Koike shifts his Land Rover into gear and lights off in pursuit.—JOEL CENTANO

Valencia, Spain
In the Market

As the morning sun shines through the stained glass windows of Valencia’s vast indoor Central Market, vendors push carts brimming with apples and oranges in anticipation of a busy shopping day. To the right of the entrance stands thirtysomething Antonio Catalán Gómez, the man behind the market’s most popular spice stall, Purificación Gómez Molina. Always cheerful, even as tears stream down his cheeks thanks to the frigid air from nearby refrigerated fish stalls, Gómez greets customers as they peruse the groomed mounds of paprika and jars of cinnamon and saffron.

His grandfather started the business when the market opened in 1928, and it hasn’t closed a day since. “My father took over the stall in 1970, and I started working here after his death, several years ago, to help my mother,” he says. “Everyone knows us because we buy the best-quality spices and we’ve been around for so long.”

Growing up, he would help his father stock shelves on Saturday mornings. Then, the market was dark and dingy—soot covered the stained glass and “sun never came through the windows,” he says. “It was pretty bad until recently,” when the city renovated the market five years ago. Nowadays, the space’s visual aesthetic is more cathedral than market, with frescos of Valencia oranges painted on trusses and a sparkling dome at its center. “It is so beautiful now,” he says. “I love being able to see the sun during the day.”

A balding man walks up to the stall carrying three baguettes. He smiles, exchanges pleasantries and leaves with four containers of paprika. “He’s one of my regulars,” Catalán Gómez says. “I have a close relationship with my customers—they are family. I plan to keep this business going for a long, long time.” —KATIE MORELL

Berlin
Great Reception

There’s nothing palatial about Pallasseum, a bleak, 1970s cement monolith built around a World War II bunker here in Berlin. Some might say this 514-unit apartment complex is an outright eyesore. For artist Daniel Knipping, however, it’s the perfect canvas for an urban art project.

For two nears, Knipping has been printing images on the 300 or so satellite receivers a ached to Pallasseum’s façade. Most of the devices are owned by immigrants longing to get news from home, but by decorating them with pictures, Knipping transforms these passive receptors into transmitters of art.

Initially many residents were dubious, but when Klaus-Peter Fritsch, the management company’s CEO, heard the idea, he was so enthusiastic he paid for the first five pieces. Other tenants were soon on board, and the city financed the rest of the project with a $23,000 grant.

Knipping worked with each participating household to come up with the designs. Some selected photographs of their loved ones, while others chose pictures from nature to brighten the dull concrete surroundings. One dish shows a religious icon, another Pop Art Chevrolet.

Not every resident has been raving about it, however. “What art?” says Madlen Thiele, a hairdresser and lifelong resident of Pallasseum. “Oh, those? They’re silly, don’t you think?” Thiele said she would have rather spent the money on repainting the building. Nevertheless, Fritsch remains “proud” of the result. —CHANEY KWAK

June 6-July 30
NEW YORK CITY • Spend a summer evening enjoying Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well at this year’s Shakespeare in Central Park. www.shakespeareinthepark.org

June 16-19
PARIS • It’s a small world after all at the 31st annual Paris Model Show, where collectors show off their tiny boats, planes, trains and automobiles. www.mondial-modelisme.com

June 25-26
WASHINGTON, D.C. • Back- yard chefs around the country fire up their grills at the National Capital Barbecue Battle. Bring your appetite. www.bbqdc.com

June 30-July 6
EDIRNE, TURKEY • The Kirkpi nar Oil Wrestling tournament is exactly what it sounds like. In its 648th year, it’s also the world’s longest continuously running wrestling festival. www.kirkpinar.com

INDY VS. MONACO

On May 29, two of the biggest auto racing events on the planet, the Indianapolis 500 and the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Monaco, will be held. Here’s how they stack up. –ANDREW O’REILLY

MEET THE (BRITISH) VOICE OF THE INDY 500

INDIANAPOLIS, IND.—A smartly dressed Donald Davidson is taking in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway from the ninth floor of the Pagoda, the towering structure in the center of the track. He walks along the perimeter of the room and stops at a seat smack-dab in front of the starting line—his seat. The track’s only full-time historian, Davidson is also a well-known raceday radio personality—a post he’s held since the mid-’60s. Which is a li le odd, considering he has a British accent.

“I grew up in Salisbury, in the southern part of England, and was always fascinated with Grand Prix racing,” he says. “I was fascinated by American life, too, and I wanted to check it out.”

In 1964, Davidson flew to Chicago and caught a bus to Indianapolis just in time for the race. Prior to his arrival, he’d been so nervous about securing a good seat that he’d sent numerous letters to the ticket office. So many in fact that he was immediately recognized by the ladies behind the counter—who were also taken by his accent.

“The Beatles had just performed on Ed Sullivan, so everyone was interested in anything British,” he quips. His accent, combined with an encyclopedic knowledge of race facts, endeared him to officials, and he spent his holiday chatting up drivers in racecar garages. The following year, he came back to Indianapolis for good. The rest is history.

This month marks the 100th anniversary of the race, and no one is more excited than Davidson. “I can’t wait to see old friends,” he says. “We are inviting every living participant, regardless if they won or lost. It is going to be a big reunion.”

–KATIE MORELL

An Earful of Cheer

Disney does marathons the only way it knows how.

BEFORE THE START OF THE RACE, John Phelan makes a frantic predawn check of the route of the marathon he helps direct, making sure that everything is ready. He passes the water stations, the medical stops and the neatly aligned traffic cones that will channel runners in the right direction. Then his trained eye spots some 11th-hour snags: Winnie the Pooh is on the wrong side of the road. There are pirates in the parking lot. And the accordion players, stilt walkers, high school bands and trampoline artists all look as though they could use some last-minute motivation.

“Lots of energy, guys! Keep it going! Pump these people up!” Phelan shouts from his bicycle as he makes his way along the 26.2-mile course of the Walt Disney World Marathon, just barely ahead of the nearly 17,500 runners who have made this curious combination of entertainment and competition one of the most popular marathons in America. “It’s like pu ing on a big show, except spread out over 26.2 miles,” says Phelan.

Held every January, the marathon runs through all four of the Disney World theme parks and past characters in costume shouting encouragement (Snow White: “I’m so proud of you!”). It’s big business for Disney, filling the parks with 110,000 visitors during an otherwise slow season. There’s a half marathon too, making this the largest combination race weekend in the nation. The success has prompted Disney to add more races, including a Princess Half Marathon for women in February, and half marathons at Disneyland and Disney World each fall. All sell out far in advance, despite comparatively high entry fees. “We literally take over Walt Disney World,” says Michelle Maready, who also helps direct the races. “We overwhelm the property with runners.”—JON MARCUS

BRUSSELS

Swap Meet

Minutes before midnight, BOZAR, Brussels’s fine arts center, is packed to capacity with museum- goers wielding stacks of sticky notes. They scribble messages and place them all around the works of art on display. “Two nights in Marrakech,” the notes read, “baking lessons,” “Eurail pass,” “life insurance,” “a flight to wherever you want.”

Truc Troc, literally “Stuff Swap” in French, is an annual Belgian art happening in which artists trade their paintings, sculptures and photographs for goods and services offered by local art lov- ers. After a three-decade hiatus, the show returned in 2004, and it has become larger and more prestigious with each passing year. For the February 2011 show, a jury selected 160 artists out of more than 500 applicants to participate in the weekendlong event.

Anatoly, a self-professed Japanophile, is bidding 11 bento lunches on a Japanese flag that Christopher Coppers created out of shredded magazines. Adrian offers a guitar and 10 hours of lessons for an ethereal photograph of a tree by Pierre Moreau.

Artist Yuko Nakaya says she isn’t preoccupied with what she might receive in exchange for her zen sculpture of mirror and sand. She decided to participate after going last year because “audiences weren’t passive, but active viewers selecting what they wanted.” Serge Vanderheyden, one of the organizers, agrees. “Bartering is a chance to attract someone who doesn’t know art or have much money to interact with an artist,” he says.

With her mom and aunt in tow, 13-year-old Alice is busy flitting from one piece to another, leaving a pink trail of heart-shaped Post-Its she brought from home. She is offering tennis lessons, mix CDs of her favorite songs and even a diary. Asked why she is bidding on so many pieces, she answers, simply: “I love art.”

—CHANEY KWAK

PARIS • HELLO, GOODBYE

There was an empty space at the Grand Palais where John Lennon’s blue 1965 Ferrari was supposed to be. At auction house Bonhams’ February car auction, the music legend’s first ride was to be the star a raction. But then the anonymous owner got cold feet. “When the day looms, some people think to themselves, ‘Crikey, am I doing the right thing?’” says James Knight, head of Bonhams’ motoring department.

The owner le six Ferraris and four Rolls-Royces in the auction but couldn’t part with the car Lennon bought for around $3,250 after getting his license at age 24. Bonhams had expected it to go for up to $276,000. Instead, it was back in England while about 90 other cars, including a rare 1933 Buga i Type 51 that went for $1.5 million, were gaveled down.

The change of heart wasn’t cheap: Bonhams “withdrawal fee” cost the owner about $36,000.

Rupert Banner, a Bon- hams vice president who has sold about 30 of the owner’s cars over the last 15 years, says the man may have been influenced by the fact that selling the Lennon Ferrari would have com- pletely liquidated his fleet of collectible cars and le him without a single trophy. Banner tried his best to convince the Beatles fan to go through with the sale, but to no avail. “It wasn’t financial,” says Knight. “It was heart- versus-head turmoil.”

—JOSHUA SAUL

Gaga for Lipstick

Lady Gaga debuts her new shade at the Trump Soho.

The scene outside the penthouse on the 44th floor of Soho’s Trump Hotel is surprisingly calm, with sleek, headse ed publicists and fashion writers mingling lazily over cut cucumber sandwiches. When the doors open to reveal Lady Gaga, curled in a plush chair like an alien flower in a custom-made Thierry Mugler latex pantsuit, there’s none of the jockeying that typically accompanies a Gaga sighting. The reporters here have been instructed by her handlers that they’ll get 15 minutes with the star, during which time they are to stick to one topic and one topic only. That topic is lipstick.

“I heard there are a couple of British fashion mag editors here who are going to try to stray off-topic,” says a black-suited woman seriously to the publicist next to her. “We’re going to have to be on our game,” says the other.

Inside, the performer, looking a li le tired from her audacious egg-borne Grammy performance days earlier, quietly talks up the lipstick she designed for Viva Glam, MAC cosmetics’ AIDS relief program. “I wanted to create a nonjudgmental beige,” she says. “A color that a person of any race or any background could wear. My mother is wearing it right now.”

Gaga is serious about AIDS prevention. She’s had a few friends fall victim to the disease, she says. Still, a day of interviews so soon a er a major performance takes its toll. This is the first time she is participating in a Viva Glam campaign on her own—last year she had ’80s icon Cyndi Lauper with her. “We would laugh our pants off the whole time,” Gaga says. “That’s the only thing that’s hard about this year. I don’t get to crack jokes with her during all these interviews.” —JACQUELINE DETWILER

Barbarians at the Plate

Moscow’s rebel chef Anatoly Komm defies the notion that Russian food lacks sophistication. BY JAY CHESHES

MOSCOW CHEF Anatoly Komm is best known for transforming peasant fare into avant-garde cuisine that no self-respecting babushka would recognize. At his flagship restaurant, Varvary, he’s served capsules of borscht, deconstructed pelmeni and black bread that’s so dehydrated it’s got the appearance and texture of dirt. It’s exactly the fare one might expect from a former Soviet geophysicist using cosmonaut cooking equipment. And the tourists who dine there—90 percent of his customers—eat it up. And yet, many of Moscow’s wealthiest local diners don’t quite get what he’s doing. “Russians understand what it means to have a big boat, jewelry, a good car,” he says. “But to understand art, you need more than just money.”

The 43-year-old enjoys being the bad boy of the Moscow dining scene. (He’s turned away a cigar-chomping oligarch and his bodyguards for being too…oligarchish.) The name of his three-year-old restaurant means “barbarian,” and it’s a cheeky acknowledgement, he says, of the way much of the world still views Russian food. To help change those perceptions he’s been hi ing the road, his luggage stuffed with Russian ingredients like black bread, sunflower oil, smoked fish and pickled her- ring. In the last year he’s been to Cannes for a three-day chef conference and done guest chef stints in Switzerland, Austria and New Zealand.

Eventually some of the diners he serves make it to Moscow, where Komm conjures his reservation-only all-night “gastronomy show”—10, 12 or 14 courses of intricately plated new Russian cooking. Though his techniques were first inspired by a visit to El Bulli in Spain— birthplace of so-called molecular gastronomy—his ingredients dog- matically put the motherland first, eschewing imported luxuries favored by the country’s moneyed class. “I know the map of Russian products,” he says. He sources the crawfish in his “Russian carpet” dish from the Don River on the outskirts of Moscow. The crustaceans are served on a bed of smoked salmon and celery gelée with lemon foam and bright green and red “caviar.” “It’s my gastronomic joke,” he says. The bubbles are artificially con- ceived by adding droplets of pureed herbs and Tabasco to a chemical bath, a process known as spherification, once used by Soviet food scientists to transform liquefied fish heads into fake sturgeon caviar.

In fact, many of the high-tech gizmos now deployed around the world in cu ing-edge restaurants had industrial uses back in the U.S.S.R. Komm’s freeze-drying machine is the same sort once used by the cosmonaut program to prepare foods for outer space. It’s just another quirk of the chef whose geophysics career ended when he became a Versace importer at the suggestion of his girlfriend. The career shift opened him to interna- tional travel. In 1991, on a visit to Hong Kong, he decided on a whim to learn Chinese cuisine, convincing a cook with a stall near the seafood market to take him on as an unpaid apprentice. That monthlong stint led to others in Germany, Spain, the Caribbean, Italy— vacations spent slaving in restaurant kitchens for fun.

Eventually a friend convinced him to put all that food knowledge to use, bankrolling Komm’s first Moscow restaurant, the Palazzo di Spaghe i. That led to a grill-house called Green, which finally gave way to Varvary, o en described as the first truly Rus- sian haute cuisine restaurant.

“In Moscow, people are beginning to understand the difference between the good products and the bad,” he says. “But it’s changing slowly. And so I push it.”

“I’VE BEEN COMING here since I got back after the storm,” says actor Wendell Pierce, digging into a plate of crawfish etouffée at Bon Ton Café, a Cajun joint located within a trumpet blast of the Mississippi River in New Orleans. “I just discovered the place and was like, ‘Wow, it’s been here this whole time.’ And I loved it. Reminded me of my grandma’s cooking.”

Not only does Pierce play a thoroughly New Orleans character on the HBO drama Treme—struggling trombonist Antoine Batiste—he actually is a thoroughly New Orleans character. Born and raised here, he still lives in the Big Easy when he’s not working elsewhere. Locals love Treme (the second season premieres this month) for finally “getting” them, for providing an authentic peek into the city’s one-of-a-kind culture. But every time the show comes up, the conversation turns back to food.

“That’s one thing I always recognized when I would call home on holidays,” Pierce says, natty in a dark suit, speaking in the silky, booming voice that made him a favorite on The Wire, in which he played Detective Bunk Moreland. “I would be like, ‘How you doing? How’s your Sunday going?’ They’d say, ‘Oh, I’m fine. We had chicken, sweet potatoes…’ and they’d start describing the meal.”

The owner of Bon Ton, Wayne Pierce (no relation), comes by to exchange backslaps with Pierce, who’s since moved on to his favorite Bon Ton dish, the crawfish bisque. “Cuisine is an intrinsic part of the culture here. It’s where you see so much of our creativity,” he says, greeting a couple other regulars who stop by to say hello. “You literally can see the mixture of cultures in New Orleans and its history in our cuisine, all the influences from all the different people who have come together. That’s unique, man.”—MIKE SCOTT

EZUZ, ISRAEL

BUS STOP The arid stretch of Israel’s Negev Desert bordering Egypt looks more like a moonscape than a vacation destination. There are no sprawling resorts or trendy restaurants, only miles of sand and stars. British filmmaker Nick Breakspear—on hiatus from filming Valerie’s Orchard, a Holocaust survival story, nearby—is staying in a hotel room that doesn’t even have a key. In fact, it’s not even a room. It’s a bus.

Breakspear’s digs are part of Exodia, a “bus and breakfast” dreamed up by former scuba instructor Eyal Hirschfeld. Upon retiring, Hirschfeld collected three vehicles—a Tel Aviv city bus, a concertina-style “bendy” bus and a wide- bodied airport shuttle—and outfitted each with hot water, a kitchenette and a full bathroom. The larger buses, which can sleep a family, even have playrooms built around the original steering wheels. Locals, says Hirschfeld, have welcomed the fleet and have even adapted shipping containers and railroad cars for their own similarly recycled digs. “It’s all rather bizarre,” he admits.

The resort was successful enough to spark a mini tourism industry in Ezuz. The tiny village, which has produced wine for 2,000 years, now offers an outdoor café, archeological expeditions and camel tours.

Back at the bus, Breakspear befriends geckos that reside in the buses’ thatched roofs and even tries his hand at milking the Hirschfeld goats. “I’m not sure what the nannies think of it, but the human kids thought my sad attempt was hilarious,” he says. Meanwhile, off in his own bus, Hirschfeld dreams of adding the ultimate suite: a double-decker London Roadmaster. —CHRISTINE H. O’TOOLE

As is often the case in Piedmont, the Ferraris family farm looks as it did a century ago. Around the central courtyard lean patched- up stucco buildings topped with russet tiles, and in the garden, bamboo poles support tomato plants while cabbages spread their ruffled leaves. But this organic, GMO-free farm is far from a throwback to Nonna’s garden plot. It’s a modern enterprise that manages to blend video games with community-supported agriculture—much like a real-world FarmVille.

“The idea we started with was to put together traditional agricultural techniques with innovation and the web,” says Giovanni Ferraris, one of three siblings who started Le Verdure del Mio Orto (The Vegetables from My Garden) on their family’s 60-year-old farm in 2009. Just as in the popular Facebook game and iPhone app, customers sign up at a colorful, cartoony website, choose the size of their plot and click to fill it with any combination of 39 varieties of fruits and vegetables. But unlike the game, everything here is actually planted, harvested and delivered to mainly urban customers. “We wanted to satisfy all those people who are sick and tired of perfect, polished and tasteless vegetables,” Ferraris says.

Right now, the family is tending 50 individual plots for customers who pay around $25 a week to have their produce cultivated and delivered. Orto offers insurance, so if a summer thunderstorm wipes out the week’s harvest, customers receive produce from other farms. For an extra fee, subscribers can add herbs or flowers to the delivery, or (this being Italy) accessories to the garden. A mere $26, for instance, buys a wooden sign; for just $53, the Ferraris family will erect a scarecrow customized with your photo to stand guard over your plot. —SARA CLEMENCE

COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS

DEEP FREEZE “It’s the Texas thing— the size and the scale of what we’re doing,” says Texas A&M’s Peter Fix, standing inside the tube of this continent’s biggest freeze dryer, located in an abandoned Air Force base outside Houston. Fix is the head of a project to reconstruct the wreck of La Belle, a ship helmed by famed French explorer Robert de LaSalle that sank in Texas’ Matagorda Bay in 1686, temporarily foiling France’s attempt to establish a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi.

The ship was discovered 15 years ago, but the 54-foot-long oak hull has proved especially difficult to preserve. For the last decade, conservators have been soaking the timbers in a chemical to leech out the water, an expensive process that could take as much as a decade and a half to complete. The freeze dryer, measuring eight feet by 40 feet and costing $500,000, will do the job cheaper and faster by creating an atmosphere so cold that the frozen water inside the timbers sublimates—or skips straight from ice to gas. If all goes well, the hull will be publicly reassembled and displayed at Bob Bullock’s Texas State History Museum in Austin in 2013.

Jim Burseth, the director of archaeology for the Texas Historical Commission, whose team discovered and excavated the hull in 1996, says that the freeze- drying will also preserve an important part of both Texas and American history. When LaSalle’s ship sank, it gave Spain an opening to challenge France for dominance of the region. Without the sinking of La Belle, the culture of Texas would look very different today. “Our hispanic heritage is due directly to the failed French effort to establish a colony here in Texas,” says Burseth. — JORDAN HELLER

DUBLIN

Stout Hearted

From a distance, the can of Guinness doesn’t look any different from countless others in Dublin. But look more closely at the label and you’ll notice a key anomaly: It’s in Hebrew. An artifact on display at Dublin’s Irish Jewish Museum, this can isn’t just “Good for You,” as the old ads promised, it’s kosher, too.

While the idea of a Jewish museum in Dublin may be a surprise, Jews in Ireland are long established, if small in number. Some arrived after their expulsion from Portugal in 1496; still more arrived in the 19th century from Eastern Europe. “People are quite surprised and absolutely fascinated by it,” says the museum’s president, Yvonne Altman O’Connor.

The museum is housed in a rowhouse that once hosted the Walworth Road Synagogue, which was built in 1916 and served as the spiritual center of the city’s small Jewish population for decades. Inside, volunteers deliver historical yarns in brogues punctuated with the odd Yiddish exclamation, and display cases brim with artifacts and photographs of notables like Robert Briscoe, a Jewish fighter for Irish independence who became lord mayor of Dublin, and Chaim Herzog, the Irish-born former president of Israel, whose father was Ireland’s first chief rabbi. There are even old job ads carrying the proviso that no Jews need apply.

O’Connor is looking to expand the museum in the coming years—Irish President Mary McAleese recently dropped by to help raise money—but right now, though little, it possesses a rare advantage in this city: It’s one of the few cultural destinations open on Sunday morning. — JON MARCUS

“THEY’RE JUST BEAUTIFUL, the royal family is,” remarks Michael Flatley, the Lord of the Dance, as he holds court over lunch at Oceana, a posh Manhattan eatery. “I’ve performed privately at Buckingham Palace many times, and it’s lovely to see Camilla and Charles together.” He’s done command performances for royals as well, he says—him, Tony Bennett and Tom Jones. “Tom’s a very good friend of mine.”

The Irish stepdancing impresario has been out of circulation since 2006, when he was felled by a mysterious illness, but lately he’s reemerged to promote his upcoming movie, Lord of the Dance in 3-D. “I think we were made for 3-D, and 3-D was made for us,” he says. “You have a lot of people enjoying their fifteen minutes of fame, especially here in the U.S., but we’ve been around for years, performing for heads of state, doing shows at the G8 summit. We’re really focused on family and tradition, and I think it’s exciting to bring that to the movie theater.”

The film, it seems, has given Flatley visions of an expanded dance empire. He smiles dreamily, leans across the table and whispers, in a gentle Irish lilt that belies his Chicago upbringing, “I’m going to start a dance channel. It will have dance cartoons for the little ones, and then, like, jazzercise for the ladies who want to get fit—and we’ll have a movie night with black-and-white films!”

Lately, though, Flatley’s mostly just been focused on his own family, namely his six-year-old son, Michael Jr. “Beautiful little guy. Ach jeez, I just love him,” Flatley says, his eyes reflecting his teal scarf. “I don’t know if he’ll dance, and I don’t care. I’m just out here making the money for him and his mom.” His movie is set for release on—when else?—St. Patrick’s Day.—LAYLA SCHLACK

LAS VEGAS IRON CURTAIN CALL

Raman Stsepaniuk, 32, sits at a bar in the middle of the Circus Circus Hotel & Casino—with a family of trapeze artists flinging themselves around over his head—and recalls his first impressions of Sin City. For one, he hails from Belarus, a place of long and dark winters, so life in the desert meant getting used to a startling amount of light—both natural and otherwise. “I just looked at all those lights on Las Vegas Boulevard,” he says, “and I thought, ‘We only had two streetlamps!’” Plus, he didn’t arrive in town on the back of an elephant, which was a real change for him.

Stsepaniuk, an acrobat and former elephant rider who works in the Le Rêve show at Wynn Las Vegas, is one of thousands of former members of the world- renowned Moscow Circus who now call Vegas home. Russian circus performers began arriving in town in 1990, when artists from the communist bloc were first allowed to work in the West. They made a big impression. “That level of acrobatics was unknown on the Strip,” says former Las Vegas mayor Jan Jones, now a senior vice president for Caesars Entertainment. Today, many perform in big shows like Cirque du Soleil’s Mystère, while others are traveling artists who use Vegas as a base because of its tight-knit circus community.

As for Stsepaniuk, he’s since adapted to his desert surroundings. “I can be at the ocean in four hours, or play some golf before going to work at night,” he says. It’s an American life like any other, save all the hurtling 65 dizzying feet in the air, above a small pool of water before a crowd of thousands. —KIM PALCHIKOFF

LONDON Beer Necessity

Adrian Larner leans with one hand on the bar and contemplates his nearly empty pub, the Calthorpe Arms in London’s Bloomsbury district. He’s been running it for 21 years, long enough to remember a time when neighbors gathered in their local pubs with a near-religious frequency. “Pubs were the center of the community,” he says. “They’re where you would go to meet old friends and new and chat them up.”

Shifting social habits, rising real estate prices, and competition from cheap supermarket beer are combining to drive some 29 English pubs out of business each week, threatening a tradition as closely associated with the national culture as greasy breakfasts and monarchy. “It’s one thing Britain is good at,” jokes Jason Tinklin, who runs the Star Tavern in London’s exclusive Belgravia section.

Enter the movement to preserve the English pub. Called the Campaign for Real Ale, or CAMRA, it produces the annual Good Beer guide, which supports the most authentic of the nation’s 60,000 pubs by steering tipplers to the best, as judged by the association’s rank and file. The group also advocates for “real ale,” a traditional beer usually aged in wooden casks, not kegs, and poured from hand cranks, not taps, at slightly cooler than room temperature. Real ale’s revival has produced a boom in microbreweries.

So successful is the campaign that some national beer distributors have begun opening faux-authentic pubs to get in on the craze. Tony Jerome, an officer of CAMRA, smiles about this over a pint at a tiny pub near the organization’s headquarters north of London. “There are some things,” he says, “that you just can’t re-create.”—JON MARCUS

RIO DE JANEIRO C-FUNK ALL STARS

On a cool night in November, a few hundred people gather outside Rio’s Fundição Progresso for the launch of the soundtrack to Elite Squad 2, a movie about the social and political problems of the city’s notorious favelas—all set to the beat of once-outlawed carioca funk music.

Carioca funk, which fuses bombastic hip-hop with Brazilian beats, was born in the favelas in the ’80s and has long been controversial for its gritty, at times explicit, portrayal of life in the slums. That all began to change in September 2009, when the government officially recognized it as a Brazilian cultural movement, rather than an objectionable

ghetto byproduct, and legalized the raucous and long-banned favela dance parties it inspired. “The funk is more than just music; it is a way to open up a dialogue,” says Leonardo Pereira Mota, better known as MC Leonardo. An 18-year veteran of the music scene, he’s the president of the Association of Professionals and Friends of Funk, which helped lead the push to legitimize the music. Nowadays, he and other DJs hold dances in pacified favelas, with a strong police presence to ensure that the events go off without any trouble.

A little after midnight, MC Leonardo and his brother come onstage to perform their popular single “Tá Tudo Errado” (“Everything Is Wrong”). Hundreds of fans sing along, pushing closer to the stage. Vinicius George—a 45-year-old former police chief who now coordinates the office of Marcelo Freixo, the state deputy who signed the law legitimizing funk—is dancing to the beat. “It is a big accomplishment that funk now is gaining a wider audience, outside the favela,” he yells, grinning, over the music.—KATYA GUBAREV

SHANGHAI Spouse Trap

The Shanghai marriage market in Renmin Park, in the city center, is not as glamorous as it sounds. For a start, no one here is under 50 years old, nor has anyone made the slightest effort to doll him- or herself up. That’s because the 200 or so people milling around aren’t looking for spouses for themselves, but for their kids.

“I just wish my daughter could find a man,” sighs Mrs. Yu, a very earnest middle-aged woman. “But she is too busy. And of course her standards are very high.” Each parent carries a placard listing his or her child’s better qualities: height, salary, even travel experience. Many don’t bother posting a photo—they know what they want, and good looks don’t place very high on the list.

The parents’ anxieties are understandable. In their day, people married on average by age 24. But in modern Shanghai it’s increasingly common for women to hold off on marriage to focus on a career. Plus, the notoriously strong-willed Shanghainese girls do not enter into matrimony lightly. Since it often means giving up work, many won’t even date a man if he doesn’t hold the promise of at least a house. (At the same time, no one wants to be sheng nu, or left on the shelf.)

Matchmakers work the crowd, brokering connections between parents. They charge a small commission for their services and expect an invitation to the wedding. All have tales of successful unions. That’s what keeps people like Mrs. Yu going. “I’m just lending a hand,” she says, denying she’s being pushy. “I’ve got time. My daughter doesn’t. And, of course, it’s she who goes on the date…I can’t force her.” And then the pragmatic lady returns to perusing the vital statistics.—SIMON LEWIS

“We’re starting with our stout, which is a robust, full-bodied kind of beer,” says Mitchell, adding casually that once drinkers hit zero gravity, the tongue swells, making it more difficult to detect flavor. “We’re also working on the carbonation problem. If you burp on earth, the gas separates from the liquid and comes out, whereas in space both the gas and the liquid come out together, so you have these suspended balls of beer floating around. We’re trying to avoid that.”

This month, Mitchell will send the brew up on a simulated zero gravity flight with pros from Astronauts4Hire, a private astronaut group in Florida. The plane will complete a series of aerial parabolas, providing passengers with 20 to 30 seconds of weightlessness every time the plane is on a downward trajectory. The point was to see how zero gravity affects taste and drinkability, and what drinking beer in space might do to the body. If all the tests show positive results, Mitchell says he’ll develop a full line of space beers for the thousands of wealthy tourists expected to sign on to blast into space in the coming years. “Every time humans have gone to the next frontier, we think about food, then shelter, then water, then beer,” he says. “We’re anticipating that after twenty minutes of weightlessness, people are going to want a beer.”—CHRISTINA COUCH

As 24-year-old Justin Gaddy walks past hundreds of Skittle-colored sneakers tied to a chain link fence and a painting of a wad of cash eating a doughnut, he notices something odd: His sneakers—the black, red and extremely rare Nike Air Max LeBron VIIIs—are everywhere. “I’ve seen six other dudes here with these on,” says Gaddy, whose 80-pair shoe collection is worth around $10,000.

If there’s any place to find half a dozen men wearing two-week-old shoes that are already impossible to find, it’s Sneaker Pimps, a touring event celebrating sneaker culture with shoe vendors, hip-hop, video game tournaments and live art demonstrations. It was started in Sydney in 2003 by Peter Fahey, a twentysomething Australian “sneakerhead” connoisseur. Since then, he’s taken the event to more than 60 cities and put on more than 200 shows with the help of performers like Ghostface Killah, Paul Wall and Rick Ross.

Gavin Brown, an 18-year-old college student wearing a pair of gray and blue glow-in-the-dark Nike Blazers, is one of those sneakerheads at the recent New York City event. Hovering over his phone and lifting his eyes only to peek at passing feet, Brown says he’s obsessed with sneakers because “they define you as a person. When you look at someone, you can tell what kind of person they are by the sneakers they’re wearing.”

As for Gaddy, he’s not concerned about six other people wearing the LeBron-endorsed space boots. “Only real sneakerheads have these,” he says. “I saw those other dudes in the line with me the night they came out.” —ADAM K. RAYMOND

Her walk has slowed to a stiff shuffle, her lashes are crusted with ice, and her voice is muffled by a surgical mask, but Amy Rosen still flashes a thumbs-up—not the sort of thing you’d expect from someone standing in a minus-110-degree freezer.

Welcome to Canada’s most unusual spa treatment: the cold sauna at the new Sparkling Hills Resort in British Columbia. “I wasn’t nervous at all until the spa director said I had to sign a waiver, have my blood pressure checked and wear a surgical mask,” says Rosen,  
40. “Then I thought, ‘What have I gotten myself into?’”

Upon arrival, visitors don gloves, a headband and socks to ward off frostbite. They are led into the first room, which is kept at a toasty minus-15 degrees. After five to 10 seconds, they are directed via intercom into two progressively colder chambers: a minus- 60-degree room for another five to 10 seconds, and then the minus-110-degree room for up to three minutes. By then, seconds feel like hours and the thumping bass you hear is your heartbeat. “It was shockingly cold,” says Rosen. “Someone can say ‘minus-a-hundred degrees,’ but you can’t understand what that means until you feel it. My elbows felt like they were on fire.” European wellness specialists claim that everything from psoriasis to arthritic pain can be eased by the treatment, which costs $40 for an introductory visit. (Like roller coasters, it’s not recommended for pregnant women or people with high blood pressure or heart trouble.)

When Rosen emerges, she’s bright pink and giddy. “Once you go the distance you’re happy you did it,” she says, noting that the after- spa buzz is incredible. “I know a lot of people who’ve gone and then chickened out,” she says. Her advice: “Just do it.”—HEATHER GREENWOOD DAVIS

PETE ROSE’S SIGNATURE LINE.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY GRAHAM ROUMIEU

PETE ROSE, the baseball legend who was banned for betting on games in 1989, likes his job these days. It consists of sitting in the Field of Dreams memorabilia store in Caesar’s Palace 180 days out of the year and signing his name to things. In 2007, he signed 5,000 jerseys at $400 a pop and autographed 18,000 baseballs. With a bit of prodding, he reveals he made close to seven figures that year.

“See, I’m not one of those guys who’s worried about watering down the market,” says Rose, 69, wearing a black Philadelphia Phillies hat, blue jeans and white leather cowboy boots. As he churns out signatures, Rose keeps one eye on the Breeder’s Cup, playing on a portable television nearby. “There’s a thirty-seven-to-one shot,” he says, referring to the horse Goldikova, who goes on to win the race.

But ask him about the odds on a baseball game, by way of bringing up his banishment from the majors, and Rose bridles. “It’s old news, man. It’s time to move on. I think everybody understands now that I understand that I screwed up.”

Rose would go on about those dwelling on the black mark he put on the face of baseball if he wasn’t continually interrupted by autograph hounds rooting for him to get into the Hall of Fame on the sole basis of his all-time-record 4,256 hits. “This is like gettin’ an autograph from Ty Cobb,” Rose says.

Whether or not he admits it, Rose’s sins loom as large as his achievement as baseball’s Hit King. But just when you’re willing to forgive his crimes, he’ll happily remind you of them. For a mere $299, he says, he’ll sign a ball with the words, “I’m sorry I bet on baseball.”

“Not a truer statement that I can make,” says Rose. Then he snaps back into salesman mode. “Now, the jersey over there is the only item I sign ‘Charlie Hustle,’” he says. “I won’t even sign a baseball ‘Charlie Hustle’ for my kid.”—JORDAN HELLER

On a recent Friday on Beijing’s East 3rd Ring Road, a 10-lane inner-city artery, cars inch forward, faces press against windows in steamy, overpacked buses, and traffic wardens with orange vests and whistles struggle to hold back the surging tide of pedestrians and cyclists. It’s here that Wang Xiaolong from Hebei Province sells his wares: world map posters and phone chargers he has strung around his neck. His starting price for a charger is eight dollars, but as the lights turn green and the traffic begins to flow it drops to just over a buck.

As China’s economy strengthens, its traffic gets progressively worse, creating an increasingly captive audience for enterprising vendors like Wang, who hustle everything from dumplings to water to steering wheel covers—all at steep markups. Back in August, Beijing experienced a world-record nine-day jam stretching 60 miles. After just a couple of hours, groups of hawkers descended upon the jam with dumplings, instant noodles and water, and sold them for four times the original price.

An Australian journalist recalls being caught in an eight-hour jam in what should have been a two- hour journey on another of the notoriously clogged highways leading into the city. Locals hauled drinks up from a nearby village on the backs of tricycles, he says, and there was no point in even trying to bargain.

Of course, drivers are starting to wise up. Truck driver Gao Yunming says now he takes some ham, noodles and water with him on long trips. As for battling boredom, his solution is simple: When he hits a jam, he pulls out a pack of cards and rounds up some other drivers for a game or two of poker.—ELISE OSBORNE

CLERMONT-FERRAND, FRANCE

In a discount supermarket in central France, a machine about the size of an industrial refrigerator with protruding pumps and tubes draws a crowd of puzzled shoppers. Standing before it, a middle-aged woman fills a plastic jug with a dark liquid. Numbers climb on a digital display. A bar code prints on a sticker. The onlookers whisper. Then they nod approvingly when they realize what it is they’re seeing. It’s a wine dispenser.

The machine is called “La Cuve,” which harks back to the old days of France when people lugged empty bottles to purchase wine from a cuve à vin, or wine vat. It’s the brainchild of Astrid Terzian, a businesswoman who a few years back enlisted the help of automotive engineers to devise a way to provide cheap, tasty wine with a smaller carbon footprint. Eliminating the cost of bottling allows her to sell for less, she explains. Customers fill up reusable bottles for as little as $2 per liter.

“It’s an everyday wine,” Terzian says, noting that her target consumer is not looking for an exquisite vintage to store in a cellar. “People who buy this wine drink it immediately.”

In 2010, eight stores across France bought or rented one of these 500- or 1,000-liter vending pumps, which dispense red, white and rosé wines from multiple regions. Terzian is now in talks with investors interested in bringing La Cuve to Russia, Israel and the U.S.—the latter arguably the global epicenter of bulk buying.

As for the woman filling up her jug at the supermarket, it’s her first time using La Cuve, but she’s sold. Apart from the convenience and low cost, she says, it’s easy to use. “Like a gasoline pump,” she says, grinning.

BERLIN

Strolling through Mauer Park, a stretch of green space built in the footprint of the Berlin Wall, there are many things you expect to see: graffiti artists practicing their trade on a remaining stretch of Communist-era concrete, for instance, or tourists quietly contemplating the weight of history. What you don’t expect is a mob of thousands of karaoke enthusiasts cheering and singing along to Ronan Keating’s “When You Say Nothing At All.”

And yet, there they are. Welcome to the Bearpit, a stone amphitheater set along a once-dangerous strip of the wall that now hosts the city’s massively popular Sunday afternoon karaoke party. Every week, up to 2,000 people of all ages come together here to perform rowdy renditions of everything from Elvis Presley to Puccini.

When Chris from Stuttgart finishes his take on the Keating tune, the MC, an Irish expat who goes by the name of Joe Hatchiban, whose mobile karaoke rig consists of a laptop and two speakers transported via bicycle, takes the mic. “Beautiful,” he opines, over the raucous applause. “Sung from the heart!”

In early 2009, Lennon started bringing karaoke to the people, biking around the city and setting up his equipment at different monuments. One day, a curious crowd formed in Mauer Park, and his act was on its way to becoming a Berlin institution. “It beats working in a call center,” Lennon says, waving a donation tin among the revelers. “And it’s a lot of fun.”

Lauren, an Australian, is sitting on one of the Bearpit’s granite seats. “It was moving to see the wall for the first time, and kind of weird to see this huge celebration next to it,” she says. “It shows how the people and the city have moved on.”

OKLAHOMA CITY

Wave upon wave of torch-wielding skeletons are marching through the darkened streets of Oklahoma City, their glow visible from a mile away. Sinister music blares from speakers mounted on small wagons pulled along by members of the playfully macabre procession. Following close behind is their leader, a lanky, suited figure with a wild shock of gray hair, rolling along inside a giant clear plastic ball, waving and grinning wickedly at the awestruck bystanders.

That man is 49-year-old Wayne Coyne, lead singer of the world-renowned rock band The Flaming Lips, and his highly regimented Armageddon procession is just one of dozens of entries in The Oklahoma Gazette’s annual “Ghouls Gone Wild Halloween Parade” in downtown Oklahoma City.

Coyne has been leading his “March of 1,000 Flaming Skeletons” since the inaugural parade in 2007, and in that time it’s become both a pilgrimage site for Flaming Lips fanatics from across the country and a glorious display of local pride by a band that got its start in the Sooner State. Since they formed in O.K.C. in 1983, the Lips, in all their exuberant weirdness, have helped soften their state’s no-nonsense cowboy reputation. The state, for its part, has responded with affection.

“The Lips have been one of Oklahoma’s greatest artistic ambassadors,” says Nathan Poppe, clutching his torch; it’s his third parade. “They’ve traveled the world, collected all these pieces of weirdness from everywhere they’ve been, and decided to plant it all here.”

KEYSTONE, SOUTH DAKOTA

Don “Nick” Clifford, the last living carver of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in Keystone, South Dakota, arrives at work around 8 a.m. and takes his seat in the gift shop. There the 90-year- old remains for the next 12 hours, until every last visitor’s question is answered and every autograph is signed. It would be a long day even for a young man—which he was when he started working here back in 1938.

Clifford was one of the last men hired to help create the Rushmore sculpture, which turns 70 this October. A Keystone native, he was 17 when he started on the mountain, though he had been trying to land a job there since he was 15. His break came when the son of Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor behind Rushmore, decided to organize some of the workers into a baseball team. Clifford, an ace pitcher and outfielder, signed on as a ringer for the Mount Rushmore Memorial Drillers. Then he pestered his teammates until they finally hired him.

Clifford started out being paid 50 cents an hour cutting logs for Borglum’s studio and cranking the winches in the winch house to raise and lower cables. He was promoted to driller, which earned him an extra dollar a day. He worked there for three years. “We knew that it was important when we were working on it,” he says, “but we had no idea how important.”

Sitting in the gift shop, Clifford shares his tales, which he wrote about in his memoir, Mount Rushmore Q and A. So what Q does he get the most? “They always ask, ‘Was it scary?’ I always tell them it wasn’t scary for me, but we did have men who couldn’t stand the height,” he says. “After one day of work they’d never come back.”