Venezuela! Hot damn! Finally! This trip has been three years in the making, ever since we shared a cab home from a Miami Beach nightclub at 6am with Anabella Zubillaga and Jose Luis Pardo aka "Cheo". We were all in town for the Winter Music Conference, a four day orgy of music and booze and no sleep and previous night's hangovers that are aaaaaalmost gone by the time you order your first drink of the day. We had all been introduced earlier that day at a yacht party thrown by Alex Moulton, a mutual friend. Eleven hours later we ran in to each other on the street outside of a Tiga/Tiefschwarz/2ManyDJs gig and we decided to share a cab. Sensing that these two clearly fell in to the "cool people' category, Anne invited them back to our room for a bit of wind-down and to watch the sun rise. They accepted without hesitation, and a friendship was forged in the early morning hours of South Beach.

The three years since have been filled with lots of hang outs. Restaurants, Bars. Clubs. Dinners at home. Fire Island. Etc. Somewhere along the way it became a given that we would one day accompany them to Venezuela.
"Just tell us when you want to go!" they would say.
"Just plan the trip, and we'll come" was our response.
This buck got passed back and forth for the last few years.

The day that Anne and I were leaving for Peru, I was walking through JFK making all my last minute calls. Tying up loose ends. I left Anabella a message, in no uncertain terms, declaring our intentions:
"Anabella! OK! Let's cut the bullshit! Anne and I are DEFINITELY coming with you guys to Venezuela for Christmas and New Years! Tell us the best way to get tickets, and we'll make it happen!"
And that was that.

By Thanksgiving, the deal was sealed. Anabella's sister Mariana, a travel agent in Caracas, had bought us tickets. They were bought in Venezuela so as to take advantage of the true value of the American dollar. Chavez has purposely de-valued American currency to discourage Venezuelans from converting their Bolivares into American dollars. So the official exchange rate may only be, say, two to one, when, in fact, the black market rate is closer to five to one. So we are having someone in Venezuela front the money, then selling our American cash on the black market once we're there to pay them back. Or such is my limited understanding of South American money shenanigans. Why I just publicly admitted to breaking international money laws I have no fucking idea. I was just kidding. Not one word of that is true.

The week prior to departure was extremely hectic. I had to DJ on Wednesday night. Anne and I hosted a big Christmas dinner for my entire family on Friday night. Every waking moment we were not at work was spent furiously shopping for food and Christmas gifts and Venezuelan trip supplies. We were going to be spending Christmas with both families in Caracas and we simply could not show up empty handed. Friday night's family dinner was a smashing success and a welcome reminder of just how thankful I should be for my wonderful family. Spending Christmas away, on a vacation no less, always feels like such a betrayal of tradition. My sister Sheelagh relieved me of this guilt by insisting we do an early Christmas dinner before our departure. Thank God somebody is on top of this shit. Saturday and Sunday were equally as manic. We both had to work on Saturday. Last minute shopping. Packing. I had to collect a handful of carefully chosen CDs on the off-chance I might get to DJ in Caracas. Made forty dubs of a mix to give away. Decided to at the last minute to make a brand new mix to bring as well. More dubs of that. Then, there's the social obligations: Dinner Saturday night with Andreas and Ayo. Ayo has been dancing with a company in the South of France for the last year, so any opportunity to catch up can't be missed. Make dubs like crazy on Sunday afternoon. Pack. Drinks in Brooklyn Sunday evening with my friend Kenny, who I haven't seen in months. Then my boy Brian was DJing at a club in Bed Stuy that same night. Had to see him too. Ugh.

Somehow that all went off with a snag and we made it to the 6:30am plane on Monday morning. The flight was painless. Five hours to Puerto Rico and and another on hour hop over to Caracas. BOOM! Done. We both slept the whole way.

Cheo and Anabella meet us at the airport. The heat, humidity, and ocean air wraps me in a big, fat, blanket of "relax, you're on vacation". Back in the tropics. Thank God.






Hillside ghettos surrounding the city




The Caracas airport is just off the beach, while the city itself is several miles inland, just on the other side of Avila Mountain. The airport road cuts through a tunnel in the mountain and winds down through the outer slums to the valley floor - downtown Caracas.

Chavez's cult of personality is immediately evident in numerous billboards and murals along the highway, though from all the hub-bub in the States about him being the next Sadaam Hussein, I quite honestly expected the public megalomania to be a lot worse. His legacy may be more Che and Fidel, but his image is very Mao - a chubby, eternally smiling, man of the people. Though, truth be told, the public mural pecking order seems to give Simon Bolivar a commanding lead, with Chavez a strong second, and Jesus and Che Guevara neck and neck for third place.



This building below is the Teatro Teresa Carreño. Kind of like the Lincoln center of Caracas. It looks like something straight out of the film "Logan's Run". The anti-government graffiti above (right) was tagged on to a pillar of this theater. According to Cheo, my trusty translator, it is essentially saying, "Farruco (minister of culture), our culture is not your farm" - a message to the government, telling then to keep their hands off of this theater (and Caracas high culture in general, I suppose).




We are all starving, so our first priority is stopping for food. Being new arrivals, it is agreed that the most typical Venezuelan meal possible should be our first meal in Caracas. We drive to Cheo's favorite spot, an arepa chain called Mundo Del Pollo (Chicken's World).

As soon as we sit down, several diners from various tables make their way over to pay their respects. I am guessing this is just the tip of the iceberg. You see, Cheo is a bona fide South American rock star (he's the guitarist for Los Amigos Invisibles). He also DJs and produces under the moniker DJ Afro. Anabella, on the other hand, is an effortlessly charismatic creative networker and social butterfly who attracts an entourage of cool, beautiful hipsters the way most people attract credit card debt. She works in television and advertising in New York City. She also seems to have a million creative interests on the side that I can't even begin to keep track of, though I have known her to be a stylist, a costume designer, a club promoter, a photographer, a video disc jockey, and a puppeteer. Together, they are a force to be reckoned with. Hanging out with them in Manhattan is a cross between Blake Edwards' "The Party" and that scene in Fellini's 'La Dolce Vita" where Nico and her entourage wander around the old villa looking for ghosts. You never known who you'll meet, but chances are they will be interesting, and often wearing at least one item of clothing or accessory that you really wish you owned (i.e. strawberry shortcake FAT laces!).

The third guy to visit our table is a local musician. He introduces himself with a firm handshake and the words 'Franco. Pana". As soon as he leaves, I inquire about the greeting. "Pana", it seems, is the Caracas version of "bro", or "dude". It is a colloquial evolution of the English word "partner", which was in heavy usage by texas cowboys who saturated Caracas during the oil boom of the 1970s. My first Venezuelan slang word! Cool. I wonder if they have elaborated on "pana" the way Americans have with "bro-seph" and "bro-seephus" and "bro-tato" and "bro-ham", Etc. We shall see.

The food is pretty plain, as Anabella had foretold. Before we came to Venezuela, she warned us about Venezuelan cuisine.
"Don't expect much from the food" She said. "It's meat and cheese, and that's about it. Eat something spicy before you come, because you won't get any of that in Venezuela".

First course is a large, round, hunk of moist, white, cheese about two inches tall. Then a plate of sweet platanos with the same white cheese sprinkled on top. Ample cuts of grilled steak are delivered on individual cutting boards. A basket of small, fried arepas appears as well. Arepas are the moist, corn-meal bread that is the staple of much of South America. These particular ones are called "arrepitos", because they are deep fried, small, and cute. Venezuelans seem to have an obsession with making everything cute by adding the "ito/ita" suffix on the end. My hands-down favorite example of this is that they refer to Star Wars' R2D2 as "Arturito" - "little Arthur" - simply because of the phonetic similarities. Fucking hilarious. And it totally works too!

After lunch we stop to get gas. Anne and I are flabbergasted by the cost - a whopping SIXTY CENTS to fill up the gas tank. I kid you not. Sixty cents! It defies logic. Gasoline is literally cheaper than water. Cheaper than bubble gum. Apparently Venezuela operates under the Marxist model that Venezuela is an oil rich country, so its citizens should never pay more for gas than what it costs to produce. Wow. What a novel idea. Cheo tells me that gas has actually been subsidized for decades, even before the oil industry was nationalized in the mid-70s. Venezuelans have come to view cheap gas as their birthright, so no politician will dare raise the rates. The last time they tried, in 1992, there was a general strike and a failed coup that first brought Chavez in to the public eye. Reports estimate they lose something like 9 billion a year due to subsidies. Anabella tells me cheap gas is also the cause of the horrendous Caracas traffic.
"Everybody drives, because gas is basically free" she says.



The Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas, designed by the Venezuelan master architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva