Post #397030 by bigbrotiki on Sun, Jul 27, 2008 11:42 PM

Boris, he didn't expect the book to be out til August, so he scheduled the book signings for September. There will be one at Wacko, and one at 8-Ball.

On 2008-07-27 14:37, twitch wrote:
Anyone have experience with Cuba lately?

Since it is still illegal for American citizens to visit Cuba, I don't think you will find much official travel advice here, you have to look among your fellow Canadians...or the numerous blogs on the subject. Many Americans visit via Canada or Mexico every year, but they risk high fines, so they wouldn't like to talk about it.

And I have to warn you, the book presented here is about the glamour period of Cuba's past. Today's realities are somewhat different. Sure, many bars have great live Cuban music, you can get decent Mojitos and Daiquiris everywhere...but do not order anything else at The Polinesio, for example. Do not take the availability of everything you can get here for granted:

The food is very simple, and can be pretty bad, or quite good, it's a lucky number game. You have to have the attitude of an urban archeologist discovering remnants of a time passed. Do not expect a "fun tropical vacation"...unless your kind of fun is found in architecture and history.

Let's use the cars as example:

On 2008-07-27 12:05, NOTCH wrote:
Ive always wanted to go there and site see and maybe pick up some old cars and ship em back here...

I don't think the Cubans would like to let them go. The reasons these car are still on the road is that the pre-Revolution cars are the only vehicles that the citizens can legally own. All the other cars after that are government distributed and owned. So the American car owners have been pampering these babies for 50 years. But not all look like this:

...or this:

..but many like this:

...or this:

...with interiors like this:

This the result of having nothing to fix them up with, neither money nor product. What do you do when this is what a car parts department looks like:

As shown in the wonderful documentary "Yank Tanks" ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0312048/ ), you make the parts yourself! Quote: "The sheer persistence and inventiveness of these car lovers in manufacturing replacement parts that are either no longer available or out of reach of the isolated island is impressive to say the least....The question asked over and over "If you had to choose between your car and your wife, which would you choose?" meets with various amused answers..."

When these cars are used as Taxis for locals, they are more busses than limousines:

Of course that is still better than using the busses: