CLEVELAND—The West Side Market is the kind of place where vendors attempt to out-yell each other and the challah may or may not have been hand-braided at the crack of dawn. You can impulse-buy a goat’s head here, or get the death stare from a fruit-stand guy if you spend too much time fondling the honeydews.

So when trustees announced that the market would celebrate its centennial with a superstar-chef-a-thon headlined by Food Network pierogi maestro Michael Symon, the bratwurst buyers and melon squeezers were abuzz. Enthusiasm ebbed, however, when the ticket price was revealed: $250 a head, the equivalent of about 40 goat cheese crêpes from market standby Crêpes de Luxe.

“It stinks that the average Clevelander can’t even go to this,” griped one regular. “We are the reason the market has lasted 100 years.”

The response from the city’s food community was swift. Steve Schimoler, chef-owner of Crop Bistro & Bar, organized an anti-gala called the People’s Party, with tickets going for 25 bucks. And while it may not have been the classiest culinary event in Cleveland’s history, it did boast an all-chef jam band and PB&Js with almond butter and foie gras. Even the grumpy fruit-stand guy enjoyed himself.

“We wanted to reach out to the little guys who never get invited to these hoity-toity events,” says Schimoler. “The market is about the people who work hard every day.”
Schimoler, whose restaurant is located in a 1920s-era bank building, even flung open the vault’s 40-ton doors so the party could continue there after the official event came to an end. “We were still going pretty strong at 2 a.m.,” he says. “The next morning I was like Gumby. I couldn’t move.”

- – - – -

DIGITAL AGE
Getting lost in translation on the banks of the Nile

EGYPT—In the shadow of the Great Pyramid of Giza, a middle-aged American woman is besieged by a crush of schoolgirls. “Where are you from?” they ask. “How much were your shoes?”

The most insistent of these curious children is a tiny thing who wants to know how old the woman is. The girl’s English is beginner-level at best, so the woman tries to convey her age by holding up fingers. The questions, meanwhile, continue to fly: “What do you do?” “Have you seen Hollywood?” It’s cute but chaotic, and the woman’s attempts at sign language grow increasingly flustered.

“Come and see this American lady!” a wide-eyed schoolgirl eventually shouts. “She is over 100 years old!” —James Dorsey

Pastaria’s Italian ramen has everything but the kitchen sink

THE CURRENT TREND IN Japanese-style ramen tends to focus on the traditional: salt broth, pork broth or miso broth filled with springy noodles, chunks of roasted pork belly, bits of seaweed and the obligatory soft-boiled egg. But if the matzoh ball ramen, short rib ramen and smoked salmon ramen now popping up around the country are any indication, tradition won’t be the sole focus for long.

At Pastaria, a St. Louis restaurant helmed by James Beard Award nominee Gerard Craft, the ramen hybrid of choice incorporates an Italian dish called tortellini en brodo. “It started when we were in Italy researching for the restaurant,” Craft says. “We started talking about the connections between Japan and Italy. Noodles in broth is something both cultures share, but the two dishes are incredibly different.”

With the tortellini disassembled into semolina noodles, shredded chicken, basil and chili oil in chicken broth—plus a perfectly poached egg that can be punctured, leaving the gooey yolk to mix in—Pastaria’s hybrid has achieved a union that elevates both dishes to their respective apexes. “It looks like ramen, but eats like tortellini en brodo,” Craft says. “It’s kind of a mind game.”

ST. CROIX, U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS—Jerry was supposed to run an errand today at Sunny Isle, a shopping center in the middle of St. Croix. However, he overlooked one crucial fact: Royal Caribbean’s Brilliance of the Seas is docked at Frederiksted, meaning hundreds of flip-flop-shod Caribbean cruisers have eight hours to kill on the island.

On ship days, when every taxi in town is chasing tourist fares, locals know better than to try to get anywhere themselves. So, stranded, Jerry sits on a stoop, sipping a light beer and idly scratching at a lottery ticket. He’ll try for Sunny Isle again tomorrow. “I don’t give,” he says, dismissing the inconvenience in a musical Crucian accent as a tourist-packed taxi rolls by.

A block west, crowds are combing the waterfront trinket stands. The restaurants on Strand Street are jammed. Cheerful reggae blasts from a PA system set up in the old town square, while a moko jumbie stilt dancer totters down the esplanade. When there’s no cruise liner here, Frederiksted is comparatively deserted. The ships that arrive every few days may scupper the plans of locals like Jerry, but they also bring in money, and no one is arguing with that.

So yes, Jerry says, he’ll run his errands tomorrow, no problem—an attitude that would not surprise any of his neighbors. On St. Croix, life moves according to “island time.” When things don’t go as planned, you resort to Plan B: sit back and relax.

“Come back again,” Jerry says to a departing visitor, before taking another long, leisurely pull on his beer.

FOR A BASKETBALL FAN, there’s nothing better than the NBA playoffs. The games are filled with subtle adjustments and strategic decisions; for those who love a good narrative arc, it’s a time when reputations are made and legacies are enshrined or forever tarnished.

And yet for all the buildup, the outcome is fairly easy to predict. Consider that since the 2000 season, only one team has advanced to the NBA Finals with a record that wasn’t among the top three in their conference: the 2010 Celtics. Just two years after winning a championship, the Celtics had sacrificed regular-season success by resting their older stars, which made their postseason run less of a fluke than a strategy.

Upsets of the David-vs.-Goliath variety are extremely rare, and we have a pretty good idea even before the playoffs begin which teams are in serious contention. On March 1, Basketball-Reference.com listed three teams—Miami, San Antonio and Oklahoma City—with a 20 percent chance or better of winning the championship, based on a predictive model that runs a thousand simulations every day during the season.

That was no surprise, as those three teams had topped the standings since the early part of the season. What was surprising? The next closest competitor, the Los Angeles Clippers, was given a mere 8.9 percent chance, and no other team had as much as a 4 percent chance of winning the title. (By the time you read this, those predictions almost certainly will have been proven correct, barring debilitating injuries to key players.)

Of course, it’s theoretically possible that an underdog team could win the championship—it would just require a lot of luck. To do so they would have to beat odds stacked heavily in favor of teams with superstar players, and overcome the daunting task of winning playoff games on the road.
 
THE SUPERSTAR FACTOR
Before last season, LeBron James was derided as a mercenary in pursuit of a ring, someone who lacked the mental toughness needed to carry his team to the promised land. Now that he’s won a championship, he’s rightfully hailed as one of the all-time greats, a visionary player whose unselfish nature helped the star-studded Miami Heat capture the first of what should be several titles with him. In sports, as the saying goes, you’re only as good as your last victory.

Before the LeBron Era, there were superstars Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan, who traded titles throughout the 2000s while playing for the L.A. Lakers and the San Antonio Spurs, respectively. In winning five championships, Bryant forged his reputation as the ultimate closer and the nearest reincarnation of Michael Jordan, who won six times with the Chicago Bulls. Jordan himself took the mantle from Magic Johnson, who wrested it from Larry Bird. And so on.

Sportswriters love to weave Homeric tales of struggle and redemption around these kinds of players, whose influence on the sport is in fact much more prosaic. Basketball is a game of matchups. Once an advantage is found, a good team will exploit it relentlessly, running the same play again and again until the opponent finds a way to counter it. When in doubt, clear it out and let the best player try to beat his man.

It stands to reason that the team with the top athlete has an inherent edge, and history bears this out: Only nine teams have won championships since 1980, and just one franchise during that period, the Detroit Pistons, did it without a former, current or future MVP on the roster. Yet Detroit still had top-notch talent—most notably Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas, who helped them win back-to-back titles in the late 1980s. (And when the Pistons won the championship again, in 2004, it was with a team featuring four current or future All-Stars.)

There are only so many superstars to go around, and teams without one are doomed to bide their time on what’s known around the league as the “treadmill of mediocrity.” If that sounds bleak, well, it is, but it’s also just the way it is. Sorry, Milwaukee.
 
THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME COURT
Even for teams with a superstar, the process of winning an NBA championship takes players and coaches to their breaking point, both physically and mentally. They must survive an 82-game regular season that lasts almost half a year. And that’s just the prelude to a postseason trek that includes four rounds of best-of-seven-game series featuring over half the teams in the league.

The sole purpose of the regular season is to win as many games as possible and thus secure the home court advantage in the playoffs, where home teams win about two-thirds of the time. There are several theories about why home turf conveys such an advantage—players are more comfortable in their own arena, they’re better rested, the home crowd provides energy for its heroes in their time of need—but there are other, slightly more troubling factors involved, too. In their book Scorecasting, L. Jon Wertheim and Tobias J. Moskowitz found that referees across all sports were influenced to make calls favoring the home team. The writers theorized that this had less to do with bias than with the subconscious desire to please a mass audience—in this case, rabid hometown fans.

Whatever the reason, the benefits are very real. In the 75 playoff series held during the past five years, the home team won 76 percent of the time. What’s more, the majority of the “upsets” occurred between teams with nearly identical seeds (4 versus 5 and 2 versus 3, especially).

That leaves just a handful of bona fide stunners—and most of those were influenced by an injury to a key player, the sports world’s one true equalizer. After reigning MVP Derrick Rose tore his ACL at the end of the regular season last year, for instance, the top-seeded Bulls lost to the underwhelming Philadelphia 76ers in the first round of the playoffs. Of course, Philly would find their unexpected success difficult to sustain, and much like other Cinderellas who came before them, they didn’t make it out of the next round.

So why would anyone watch the playoffs when the outcome seems all but certain? No reality show can match sports for unscripted drama—each game is a pulp novel, with heroes, villains and plot twists galore. The possibility of surprise, no matter how small, sustains us through the early rounds and right up to the grand conclusion. But we shouldn’t be shocked when the story turns out pretty much the way we thought it would.

PAUL FLANNERY lives in Cambridge, Mass., where he watches way too much basketball and writes about it for the website SB Nation.

WITH EACH NEW DEVLOPMENT in automaking, it becomes more and more obvious that the future of driving will involve cars that are smarter than we are—or at least faster at making life-or-death decisions. Take the latest announcement from Swedish car company Volvo: Piggybacking on technology that prevents collisions with pedestrians and other cars, engineers have developed the first-ever system that’s capable of recognizing a cyclist before he pulls in front of you and automatically applying the brakes. The system uses radar, a video camera and a complex decision-making algorithm to differentiate between a biker you’re about to run off the road and things like stray newspapers and shadows, a setup that engineers will adapt for other types of collision risks (next up: deer). Here’s how they did it.

1. Many cars, including Volvos, already offer collision-avoidance technology. In preventing bike accidents, engineers faced the challenge of teaching a car to recognize a cyclist. This required “training” the system’s video camera in what a human body looks like on a bicycle, and its radar in recognizing movements that typically precede car-cyclist crashes.

2. Next, the engineers shut off the system’s automatic braking component, allowing test drivers to train the cars in bike-heavy cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam without unintentionally causing a wreck. Essentially, this involved letting the system make decisions and telling it, “Yes, that’s a granny on a bike,” or, “No, that’s a flower stand.”

3.  Once it was fairly sure the system worked, Volvo reinstated the braking component and brought out the crash-test dummies for trials. The aim was to have the car stop only if a cyclist was heading directly for a collision. “You have to make sure it doesn’t intervene when it shouldn’t,” says Martin Magnusson, Volvo active-safety engineer.

JUST PASS THROUGH DENVER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, catch a smile and a greeting from Customer Service Agent Rufus Lovett, and you’ll agree: Not only is his job a perfect fit, but his name is too.

“I suppose there’s a little irony there with my last name,” Lovett says with a laugh. “When people ask me if I like my job, I say, ‘No, I love it!’”

Lovett manages gate activities for departing flights, which is no small task. It encompasses, for example, getting 144 customers and their bags onto a single-aisle aircraft in 35 minutes to ensure an on-time departure; providing a higher level of service and attention to the airline’s elite-level frequent flyers and uniformed military personnel; watching for bags and strollers that need tagging for last-minute gate-checking; processing first-class upgrades and serving customers standing by; taking care of unaccompanied minors; and ensuring the pilots and flight attendants are aware of customers with special needs.

Yet Lovett sees his job as more than just making announcements and boarding passengers. He makes it a priority to offer customers an enjoyable travel experience, and to make sure they know he is grateful for their business. With nearly 400 United and United Express flights a day from Denver, Lovett has his work cut out for him. But he takes it one customer at a time.

“I enjoy people. I enjoy what I do. I find out whatever I can do to make the experience better, and do it,” he says. “A lot can happen when you’re traveling. I never take for granted that I’m a part of a customer’s experience. I feel fortunate to be a part of their memories.”

When interacting with customers, Lovett says, “I always start with a smile, and I use their name, offer a handshake and ask how their day is.” But the key is to genuinely listen to the answer, he adds. “Sincerity goes a long way. My attitude toward service is simple: care, concern and respect. If I approach each customer and every day with those three things, I can’t go wrong.”

Lovett has seen a lot since joining United in the late 1970s. In that time, the airline has grown from a domestic player to the largest airline outside the Soviet Union, and then to a global carrier with a network that spans the globe. Today, getting from point A to point B today is faster and safer than ever. Planes are quieter, cleaner and friendlier to the environment. And travelers’ expectations have evolved: Where service was paramount back then, customers now want service with value, choice and frequent flights.

Still, throughout his 36-year career with United, Lovett has maintained a constantly high level of care, concern and respect. And it hasn’t gone unnoticed: The company has received hundreds of letters from customers singing his praises, and he has been featured in three newspaper articles and two TV news segments.

“Your agent Mr. Lovett is absolutely the best employee we have ever experienced!” wrote one customer. “Denver airport and United are blessed to have him. He was so thorough and friendly to everyone.”

“With each and every passenger,” another wrote, “he would ask them a question, wish them a safe trip or give them a hug. He was funny, graceful and polite. He should be given a promotion!”  

For his part, Lovett finds such accolades “humbling.”

“I’ve loved each and every day I’ve worked here,” he says. “Sure, some days are tough, but I just look at it as a challenge. When you love where you work, you want to see the company and those around you succeed. So I’m just doing my part to help make that happen.”

One of United’s Adventure Bears finds a new friend

RHONDA GLOBE LIVES UP TO HER NAME, traveling the world as she brings smiles to kids who could use some extra cheer. Rhonda is the 2014 ambassador for the United Adventure Bear™ program, in which airline employees and Adventure Bear program partners deliver the soft, cuddly teddy bears to children in the U.S. and around the world who are experiencing illness or economic hardship.

Rhonda’s predecessor, Oliver D. World, traveled to Australia, China, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Portugal and Vietnam, to name just a few of his exciting destinations.

Now, for the first time, United is making Adventure Bears available to donors. Through June 30, the airline invites customers and co-workers to donate and receive their own 2014 Rhonda Globe collectible bear. With each $50 “Give a Bear, Get a Bear” donation, participants will receive their own bear, ensure that a second bear is sent to a child in need and support the United Adventure Bear program through their contribution to the United Airlines Foundation.

Donors can also make a 100 percent tax-deductible contribution of any amount to the United Airlines Foundation in support of the United Adventure Bear program. Program beneficiaries include the American Cancer Society and Make-A-Wish America. A portion of the money raised will also benefit organizations within United hub locations.

For more on the United Adventure Bear program, its recipient organizations and how to donate, visit united.com/adventurebear. Your donation just might be what gives Rhonda a new stamp on her passport.

CHIBUKU SHAKE-SHAKE PROBABLY ISN’T something you’d order on a first date. A murky Zambian beer made from corn or sorghum (or both), it comes in a cardboard carton and costs around 50 cents a pop. The name derives from the fact that in order to distribute the sediment that settles on the bottom, you have to shake the drink before opening it, and carefully: There are tales of overshaking and resultant explosions.

Yet in recent months this volatile thirst-quencher has rolled across East and Sub-Saharan Africa like a pungent wave. Already a hit in Zambia, where it has been consumed in one form or another for decades, Chibuku is now available in Ghana, Mozambique, Swaziland and Tanzania, with more countries being added soon. And it’s not the only beer making its mark in these areas. The rollout of Chibuku was orchestrated partly in response to Senator Keg, a cheap Kenyan brew made with sorghum or barley. This year, East African sales of Senator Keg, which is hand-pumped in bars for about 20 cents a mug, are expected to pass the $150 million mark.

The popularity of Chibuku and Senator Keg is a triumph of neither local entrepreneurship nor grassroots marketing. Chibuku is owned by the London-based multinational SABMiller, whose more illustrious products include Grolsch and Peroni Nastro Azzurro. Senator Keg was introduced to Africa in 2004 by SABMiller rival Diageo, whose whizbang lab in England is now consolidating its presence here by conjuring up an array of products for African palates and pockets, such as Snapp, an apple-flavored beverage aimed at women.

There’s a good reason for the $500 billion brewing industry’s sudden interest in this long-ignored market. With their economies taking off, Africans are in the mood to party, and beer is increasingly the tipple of choice. As Americans rediscover spirits, Germans cut carbs and British pubs close at a rate of 18 a week, Africa’s emerging consumer class promises to fill the void. This is due in part to its perception of beer as an aspirational drink, especially among young men, for whom slogans like “Guinness gives you strength” resonate strongly. Nigeria, in fact, is now Guinness’ largest market.

“Africa is the one place where beer volume growth has outperformed economic growth over the past couple of years,” says UBS analyst Olivier Nicolai, pointing up a trend that’s prompting brewers to invest heavily in the region. SABMiller alone has poured almost $2 billion into Africa over the past five years, building plants in Nigeria, Uganda, Mozambique, Angola and South Sudan. Diageo has invested more than $1.5 billion here. Heineken, the leading brewer in Nigeria, last year paid the Ethiopian government $163 million to acquire two state-owned breweries.

While the outlays are considerable, so are the potential rewards—and not only in the ways you’d expect. Africans may have acquired a taste for commercially produced beer, but the homemade stuff is by far the more popular option. According to UBS, the average African drinks 16 pints of commercial beer a year (about 10 times less than the average American); however, on average, that same consumer downs more than 50 pints of home brew made from fermented cassava, sorghum, millet or bananas—despite the fact that such concoctions have sometimes proven deadly.

So in addition to introducing mainstream products into the African market, international breweries are casting an eye toward replicating the ever-popular home brew in a far safer form. Seeing the potential for a drop-off in beer-related ER visits, African authorities have greeted the arrival of foreign breweries with smiles and, more to the point, financial incentives.  

This March, SABMiller upped the ante by debuting into a wide African market something Nicolai calls a “game changer”: Chibuku Super, a brew with a fixed alcohol content and, because it comes in plastic bottles rather than cartons, a 35-day shelf life (previously, 10 days was pushing it). “This is significant because it can be transported to shops throughout much of the continent,” Nicolai says. “It will also be very cheap, and cost is a big factor.”

But the regional economic benefits of Africa’s budding beer market are even more far-reaching. Unlike homemade brews, mass-produced beer generates tax revenue, while the sheer scale of the industry’s farming, distribution and retail operations promises a significant number of new jobs. It won’t hurt, either, that quality control and standardized alcohol content means that workers could see a marked decrease in the severity of their hangovers. As Mark Bowman, head of SABMiller’s African operations, notes, “Everybody wins.”

BOYD FARROW, a London-based writer and editor, believes “Chibuku Shake-Shake” would be a very good name for a dance craze.

AN IRISH TOMECOMING
To celebrate a native son, Dublin goes by the book

In cities around the world this month, throngs will turn out to celebrate Bloomsday, June 16, honoring James Joyce’s landmark novel Ulysses—which may baffle anyone who’s made a failed stab at reading the famously impenetrable day-in-the-life epic.

But it all makes perfect sense to the overseer of the biggest Bloomsday fete, a seven-day party in Joyce’s hometown of Dublin. “Ulysses is a very democratic book in that it brings people together,” says Mark Traynor, manager of Dublin’s James Joyce Centre. “You can’t read it in isolation—it almost requires a support group.”

In addition to retracing the steps of Ulysses’ hero, Leopold Bloom, through the city streets, Dublin Bloomsday attendees can partake of Joyce-centric readings, seminars and performances galore (including an experimental theater piece, (S)quark!, that employs an actual parrot in discussing the question: Was Joyce a genius?).

For first-timers, Traynor recommends the Bloomsday breakfast—though queasy eaters may balk at Bloom’s beloved grilled kidneys. “It’s a wonderfully social atmosphere,” Traynor says of the meal, “even if the menu isn’t to everybody’s taste.” JUNE 10–16

VENICE—Restaurant manager Michael Manca is courteous but unapologetic as he personally delivers an $80 bowl of mutton stew to a table in the corner. After all, this is Harry’s Bar—home of the $20 Bellini.

Today is Festa della Madonna della Salute, or the Feast of Our Lady of Health, a day commemorating divine intervention during the plague of 1630–1631. The dish being served is castradina in brodo cole foglie di verza—castrated mutton with soup and cabbage leaves—which was starvation rations during the plague years.

Manca has been manager at Harry’s for only a few months, but he knows Venice, and he knows which of the city’s many festivals he prefers. “The Festa del Redentore [Feast of the Redeemer] dates from the plague years too, but now it’s more about boat parties and fireworks,” he says. “Carnevale really dates from the 1980s, and targets tourists. But the Festa della Madonna della Salute is traditional—more pious, more pure.”

Two hundred yards west of the restaurant, well-dressed penitents crowd onto the temporary bridge spanning the Grand Canal in front of the imposing Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute. Families crossing to the church carry votive candles. Those returning bring balloons and festive foods, to be handed out to children as treats.

A mink-coated matron pauses by a street vendor and hesitates over an array of candles, which range in length from 12 to 36 inches. She smiles at a young boy who’s clutching his mother with one hand and an enormous Venetian lion balloon with the other, then she purchases a yard-long taper and joins the stream of people heading over the water to give thanks.

THE FAIRMONT EMPRESS
Victoria, British Columbia

CLAIM TO FAME: The question isn’t so much who has stayed at this venerable hotel—which harks back to railroad’s golden age—but who hasn’t. Jack Benny, Katharine Hepburn and Bing Crosby all hung their hats here. More recently, it’s accommodated John Travolta, Barbra Streisand and Queen Elizabeth.

BEST PLACE TO HANG OUT: If you’re feeling Vancouver Island’s, um, atmospheric chill, book the West Coast hot rock massage at the sumptuous Willow Stream Spa. After 90 minutes of being kneaded with the aid of warm stones and essential oil, you’ll forget what “cold” and “damp” even mean.

SIGNATURE DRINK: A tradition since 1908, the afternoon tea in the hotel’s ornate tea lobby (think Rudyard Kipling meets Alice in Wonderland) features a bespoke blend of Assam, Kenya, South India, Ceylon and China varieties created for the Empress by the Metropolitan Tea Company.

AMAZING AMENITY: Thanks to Fairmont’s recent collaboration with Le Labo, every room at the Empress features Rose 31 products from the New York custom fragrance house. The woodsy/floral scent evokes both the masculine and the feminine—along with a strong urge to stuff a few bottles into your bag.

]]> http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2013/06/01/this-months-hottest-hotels-7/feed/ 0 http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2013/06/01/next-dish/ http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2013/06/01/next-dish/#comments Sat, 01 Jun 2013 04:00:43 +0000 edward http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/?p=12545

Chef David Myers’, of new Los Angeles restaurant, Hinoki & the Bird, marinated tuna and lemongrass salad

]]> http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2013/06/01/next-dish/feed/ 0 http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2013/06/01/three-perfect-days-shanghai-2/ http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2013/06/01/three-perfect-days-shanghai-2/#comments Sat, 01 Jun 2013 04:00:38 +0000 edward http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/?p=12374

hemishang-317-v3_0

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM SAYS THAT SHANGHAI was little more than a sleepy fishing village before the British, French and Americans set up shop here after the Opium Wars of the mid-19th century. Actually, it was already a bustling port with a population of several hundred thousand. Although not much evidence of this period remains, you can still catch glimpses of a traditional way of life: locals praying at temples, playing mah-jongg and practicing tai chi in parks.

Shanghai’s transition to the megalopolis that we know today began in the 1880s. It was the first Chinese city to have electricity and telephones. By the 1930s, as the rest of the world sank into economic depression, Shanghai was a thriving hub with more than 3 million people. It boasted some of the era’s classiest hotels (many of which still stand in the Bund and French Concession areas) and buzzed with jazz, girls and gangsters.

Mark Twain’s observation that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme” certainly applies to Shanghai. Following the isolationism of the Mao years, Shanghai has once again led China’s efforts to open itself to the world. Economic ambition is etched on its skyline, its rocket-ship buildings and its towering electronic billboards, while its population is swelled by foreign transplants drawn to its bottomless reserves of energy, audacity and cash.

Other Chinese cities may more obvious choices for exploring the past, but if you want to get a glimpse of the future, Shanghai is the place to be.

]]> http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2013/06/01/three-perfect-days-shanghai-2/feed/ 0 http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2013/06/01/crowning-achievement/ http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2013/06/01/crowning-achievement/#comments Sat, 01 Jun 2013 04:00:32 +0000 edward http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/?p=12576

Miss You Can Do It contestant Teyanna Alford, in 2011

CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT
Applaud the girls of Miss You Can Do It, says the pageant’s founder, but don’t coddle them

“I WANT A PURPLE MUSTANG and I want to drive it to Florida” isn’t an answer you’d expect to hear at a typical beauty pageant, but the Miss You Can Do It Pageant is anything but typical. Founded in 2004 by Abbey Curran, the first Miss USA contestant with cerebral palsy (and only the second with a disability), it’s the event of the year for 50 girls with special needs and challenges.

It’s not just the kids who take the contest seriously, though. “Recently we’ve had contestants whose siblings must be in those ‘Toddlers & Tiaras’ types of pageants,” Curran says, “[because] their moms come in and ask, ‘What brand of sunless tanning are you going to use on my child?’”

This month, Miss You Can Do It will take center stage in a new HBO documentary of the same name. While Curran, now a grad student, is happy the contestants are being recognized, she doesn’t think that special needs should translate into special treatment.

“My mom has an obsession with rugs. For me, these are the worst things in the world—I drag my feet and I trip on them,” she says. “And do you know what my mother says? ‘Pick up your feet!’” JUNE 24

Park Avenue Coffee’s gooey butter cake

ACCORDING TO LEGEND, back in 1930s St. Louis a German baker jumbled up the quantities of flour and butter when making a cake. Faced with a gloppy mess, he popped it into the oven anyway, producing a dense, rich slab. The resulting dessert—dubbed “gooey butter cake”—became something of a specialty in St. Louis, with modern bakers constructing a crust to encase a filling of powdered sugar, butter, cream cheese and, occasionally, flavorings ranging from piña colada to eggnog to maple bacon.

At local gooey-butter-cake purveyor Park Avenue Coffee, the treat comes in more than 70 varieties, but none is as popular as “Mom’s Traditional,” a version of the St. Louis original. Blondie-esque and offering a decadently buttery center, it delivers a hit of sweetness that provides the ideal balance to a cup of black coffee.

PERMANENT MARKER
In Wear Your Dreams, Ed Hardy traces his rise to tattoo artist superstardom

THINK ABOUT TATTOOS in their most familiar form—grinning skulls, rearing tigers—and you’re thinking in large part of the work of Ed Hardy. Since starting out in California more than 40 years ago, he has perfected an exuberant, technically brilliant style that has been instrumental in not only popularizing tattoos, but also elevating them to a genuine art form. In the meantime, he himself has been elevated to international brand, with Ed Hardy apparel, fragrances, eyeglasses and energy drinks. His true medium, though, has always been skin, and Wear Your Dreams: My Life in Tattoos provides a fascinating account of how he went from marking up childhood buddies to making a true mark on the world. The book also contains examples of the work that led him to be called, quite rightly, the Godfather of Modern Tattoos. JUNE 18

MIAMI—Three hundred miles. The man from Aston Martin explained that this was my limit. I was the first civilian to drive this particular 2014 Vanquish, and the company wanted to keep the mileage low. I told the man from Aston Martin that I understood. I would bring it in at 299.

Even as I spoke, I was pretty sure I wasn’t being entirely truthful. After all, I was going to be driving around Miami in a $280,000 car. And not just any old $280,000 car: The Vanquish is a descendant of the James Bond car, an instrument of boyhood fantasy, a beautifully stylized projectile. You do not count beans in a vehicle like this.

As the Vanquish rolled up to the hotel entrance, I could feel myself growing more suave. The machine—painted “Skyfall silver”—gave the impression of a powerlifter who wears a suit so flawlessly tailored it’s impossible to discern the impressive musculature beneath. I nestled into the bucket seat, inhaled the cowhide scent and tapped the accelerator. The 6.0-liter V-12 engine bid the hotel a gruff farewell.

Aston Martin introduced the Vanquish, a two-door grand tourer, in 2001, and retired it six years later. Now it’s back, replacing the DBS as the company’s standard-bearer for style, power and expense. The car has 565 horses under the hood and tops out at 183 mph, making it one of the most powerful production cars Aston Martin has ever rolled out. And, again, it looks the part: All gnashing grille and glowering lights, the front end is like something out of a manga comic.

The first thing that happens to you in a car like this is that everyone wants to be your buddy, if only for a block or two. I spent much of my first day with the Vanquish ferrying people around town. The next day, I decided to see—as the saying goes—what this baby could do. So I pointed the car’s angry manga face south and headed for the Keys.

Leaving Miami and its suburbs behind, I whooshed for an hour or so down Route 1. To my left were the flats and the islands breaching the teal water of Manatee Bay. After crossing the Overseas Highway into Key Largo, shrimp shacks blurring by, I glanced at the speedometer. I’d expected to see 35, maybe 40 mph. I was doing 85.

I blame the engineers. With its carbon fiber body, adaptive suspension, whip-smart steering and low center of gravity, the Vanquish seems built to create the illusion of moderate speed. It’s light, agile, responsive and seductive—all the ingredients for a hefty speeding ticket. Luckily, the car’s ceramic disc brakes are pretty good too. In Islamorada, south of Key Largo, I slowed down and pulled into the lot of Marker 88, a beachfront seafood joint that used to be a favorite stop-off for avid fisherman George Bush Sr.

]]> http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2013/06/01/aston-powers/feed/ 0 http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2013/06/01/chop-and-change/ http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2013/06/01/chop-and-change/#comments Sat, 01 Jun 2013 04:00:29 +0000 edward http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/?p=12389

HIDING IN YOUR KITCHEN, disguised as the most mundane appliance imaginable, might be the next great tool for urban sustainability. We’re talking about your garbage disposal unit, the thing that sits beneath your sink and chomps your food scraps into oblivion. Maybe you use it daily and never give it a second thought. Or perhaps you’re an eco-conscious sort, and each time you flick the switch you wonder, “Is this thing bad for the environment?”

The answer to that question, it turns out, is no. In fact, as more cities try to cut their carbon footprints, slash their trash heaps and produce more energy, this humble domestic convenience could prove an intriguing ally. Here’s why: When you throw your food leftovers into the garbage can, they eventually end up in a landfill. There, as they decompose, they release methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes powerfully to global warming. Organic waste also takes up valuable space, costs money to process and lives up to its name—leaving this stuff to rot in a landfill wastes the chance to tap its energy.

Send your food scraps through your disposal and into the sewer system, though, and they’ll likely end up as biogas, a mix of mostly carbon dioxide and methane produced by microbes as they digest the organic material. Unlike most landfills, many wastewater treatment plants actually use the methane they generate. Sewage treatment is an energy-intensive business; by encouraging microbes to gobble up your waste inside special tanks, these facilities are able to capture the gas to power their operations. In the past, when sewage plants made more methane than they needed, they simply flared it off. But now they’re looking for ways to expand usage of the biogas, like delivering it into natural gas pipelines or the electricity grid.

This makes your banana peels and last week’s pasta a potential source of locally made energy, like your own tiny barrel of oil. Or perhaps an entire oil well: The average family of four generates 17 pounds of food waste every week. Nationally, food scraps make up roughly 14 percent of food waste, most of which ends up as landfill trash, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Having caught on to the value of organic waste, a number of cities are looking for ways to increase the amount that flows to their sewage plants. Across the U.S., nearly 850 wastewater treatment plants use biogas as a source of energy. Some municipalities are even tapping local businesses’ byproducts, using everything from brewery hops to over-the-hill supermarket produce in order to ramp up biogas production. In fact, the race to make biogas is altering the image of the sewage treatment industry, which is rebranding itself from “wastewater management” to “water resource recovery.”

If you happen to be a company that manufactures garbage disposals, meanwhile, all of this amounts to an interesting business opportunity. “Disposers can effectively divert food waste away from landfills and turn it into both an economically and an environmentally productive resource,” says David MacNair, vice president of global marketing and strategic development for the InSinkErator unit of Emerson Electric. InSinkErators are the most popular brand of disposals, and the company aims to grow its business by helping cities go green.

“Disposers have been sold as a consumer convenience and a hygiene appliance—it’s all about the environment in your kitchen,” says MacNair. “This conversation we’re having today isn’t about the environment in your kitchen but in your neighborhood and in the world.”

Last year InSinkErator launched a pilot project in Philadelphia, where food waste makes up roughly 20 percent of the trash delivered to landfills. In the city’s two wastewater treatment plants, food scraps are converted into clean water, biogas and fertilizer. As part of the city’s Greenworks sustainability program, InSinkErator installed nearly 200 units in homes in two neighborhoods. The project will measure the amount of food waste diverted from landfills. This spring, similar projects rolled out in Tacoma, Milwaukee and Chicago.

The biogas movement is spreading slowly, and it may still be a while before Americans feel empowered and proactive every time they dump leftover soup into the disposal. But as far as appliances go, there’s nothing in your kitchen with quite as much revolutionary potential.
For InSinkErator, the challenge now is how to turn those green chops into a selling point. Unlike, say, an electric car in the driveway or a rack of solar panels on the roof, an InSinkErator “is hidden under my sink,” says MacNair. “I get zero credit for having it.” Just a warm, fuzzy feeling and an empty trash can.

Colorado-based writer HILLARY ROSNER is working on upping her pasta intake in order to save the planet.