I’m not sure I can say that I’m a fan of Vito Acconci.  I’d like to be, because I know I’ve tried to be at different times in my life, but they usually have gone terribly wrong, and I decide not to like him again for awhile.  He’s one of the great visionaries living in New York, to be sure, and I have nothing but respect for someone who can attempt what he did and be able to move forward into new things.  Every time I’ve tried to follow in his footsteps, it’s gone wrong, which seems to be part of his big plan.

If I had a better video camera, it might help.  I could be sitting in a chair in my top hotel in New York, and speaking to the camera as if the camera were you, and start confessing things, and then breaking into song.  I could also run in a thousand other directions with my words, and make confusing statements, and then things would be funny at the very end when everyone realizes I’m not going to say anything funny at all, but only make you think about watching me, and how that in itself is funny because it is not.  I could tell stories about my leg, and then everyone would be uncomfortable, but the truth is, I need a better camera.

Or a worse one.  Vito Acconci had a nice camera for the time, but to match his look, you’d need an old one, or maybe a super 8 even.  And he had a certain way with people, and it’s one that I just don’t have.  I tried the thing he did with following strangers around, and I ended up in a long relationship with someone I didn’t even like, just because I decided I had to be nice.  It was awful, and I felt bad, and even guilty, and that seemed to be what he knows, too.  I may have learned from all of this, then.  Even though I think it would be great to become an architect, and start designing lots of things, and talk about how we need to rethink things.  I could be someone who encourages people to rethink things, but then again, I’m not so sure.

WC Fields isn’t the only one who wants to be in Philadelphia these days.  For the living, it’s becoming an enormously vital center of arts and culture.  It has had a very strong identity for many decades, but recently has started to become a focal point for new work.  The old neighborhoods, with their particular histories and lessons of the past, make it a wonderfully apt place for exciting cultural work.  It seems as though it may be less than a generation ago that Philly was the place to go to get a break from the excess of New York City, and where people could test work out before bringing it out in front of a discerning public.

Today, Philadelphia’s art scene has evolved to the point where it doesn’t need another city to validate its existence, and it’s become a destination rather than a stop on the way.  This is one of the many reasons why it’s such a great place to visit.  In Philadelphia, cheap hotel accommodations are easy to find, and restaurants are as spectacular as they’ve ever been.  Tourists and young artists find themselves having a rather splendid time any time of year, because there is so much going on here.  In case there’s any doubt, visitors are encouraged to check out the work from the Asian Arts Initiative. This is a wonderful place to get a sample of visual and other creative arts from the local Asian American community.

There are wonderful sensibilities at work here, presenting local and international work to the Philly community.  There are some fantastic people at work in this project as well, demonstrating some of the most proficient and energetic talents in the world.  Sean Stoops, the Gallery Coordinator and Visual Arts Curator has a magnificent eye for work that speaks to global and local audiences.  He is an artist in his own rite, with spectacular installation projects on his cv, and always something new in the works.  He’s interesting to watch for his influence on visual culture as a curator as well as a creator.

One of the few absolutes about life, is that you never know what small event will change the rest your life forever.  This happened when the Tom Birchard, owner of the Ukrainian restaurant, Veselka, in the East Village met a girl forty years ago at a college fraternity party.  How does a young man from New Jersey, end up owning one of the most famous and authentic Ukrainian restaurants in New York?  By learning the recipes from the Ukrainian girl he met at the Rutgers University party so many years ago.

Veselka began as a combination newsstand, community center and a canteen in 1954, and was run by the girl’s father.  When her father died, Birchard took over the business and through the years it has gradually become a restaurant and a performance art space all in one.  Now Birchard has become, much to his surprise, and Honorary member of the Ukrainian-American society, a leader for his community and a patron of the world of performance art.  There are many incredible restaurants in Manhattan, and for many years Veselka has been serving not only wonderful dishes such as thick porridge called kutya, pierogies or potato dumplings, and various delectable dishes of root vegetables and pork…but has been serving up some of the finest and cutting edge performance art shows and poetry readings in the city.

This has become a counterculture hub, and many of the performers and patrons have been loyal to Birchard and his business for many, many years.  You may find yourself enjoying a production of “King Lear”, or you may find yourself experiencing a performance of “Honey Dance”, or a vaudeville show performed in Yiddish.  This is an eclectic meeting place for the multi-racial, and multi-cultural neighborhood that is the East Village. Food and fine entertainment, some of the best of the best New York has to offer is found in this little corner bistro.

It’s always a pleasure to travel with someone who is seeing Barcelona for the first time.  You can see the constant sense of surprise and delight, when they see this spectacular cosmopolitan city.  It’s a joy for yourself, too, of course, because the city is always changing and evolving.  Even though there are things that will always make it great, like the old architecture, paintings, as well as the classical sensibilities that embrace old-world manners, there is always something new here, and it’s always impressive as a city with vision.  There are plenty of visionaries here, too, as it continues to attract some of the best artistic minds in the world, just as it did in the Spanish golden age.

As a fantastic destination for tourists, it’s always been near the very top. Barcelona hotels and restaurants are plentiful, and also excellent, offering spectacular hospitality and luxury, so that you can see and taste the city from a place that speaks to pure pleasure.  There are also a fantastic variety of attractions that you can always find something to suit your tastes.  If you’re tastes run toward the unexpected, there is plenty here for you, and many interesting adventures lie ahead.  If you start looking into film here, you’ll probably run into the name Mabel Palacin.

Born here in 1965, she went to film school and continues to live and work here.  It’s a splendid compliment to the city, as she is an incredibly splendid artist.  Her preoccupations have to do with the way the viewer received the image, and her work plays with expectations in heady and fascinating ways.  She worked in photography for awhile, before turning to film completely, and her work is filled with the power of the moment in a way that most film-makers, even the best of the avant-garde, often miss.  Her work can be seen in exhibitions all over Spain, as well as many other countries in Europe, and Asia, and her splendid past career is a fantastic body of work to anticipate the years ahead.

For four-star hotels, Bangalore has a surplus of comfort and luxury.  Our world-class accommodation offer some of the most splendid features available, with a generous mixture of hospitality and convenience.  We offer a marvelous array of lodgings, and we specialize in the revitalization of the body and spirit.  You will adore the fantastic food available here, prepared by chefs who are trained in traditional cooking as well as the most contemporary innovations.  Fine dining is at a premium here, and conveniently located within your hotel.  Guests here will experience a lovely sense of relaxation, preparing them for new adventures in the city.

Bangalore has a lot to offer travelers of all ages.  It is one of the world’s great centers of technology, and the local economy has been quite good recently.  There has been a trend toward young people returning to Bangalore from time spent abroad, lulled back by its financial promise.  This makes for a fascinating cultural mix, where locals are suddenly getting to know their own city again for the first time.  This has resulted in new and interesting cultural experiments, blending innovation and tradition to the entertainment menu.  In this light, there is the Bangalore Roof Top Film Festival, which brings together audiences for intimate evenings of independent entertainment.

The Roof Top Film Festival is a wonderful way to get to know local culture in Bangalore, as the events are very informal.  People gather with the intention of watching lesser-known films in a neighborhood setting.  It is very community-oriented, which means that there is a strong connection to the local and global, and visitors here can observe and take part in the next wave of film viewing.  This is an open forum where people can see new and exciting work, and discuss what they see in an atmosphere of open inquiry.

There are few experiences in the world that can even come close to clubbing in Ibiza, and there are many reasons why it has such a tremendous reputation around the world.  One night (and this can extend well into the next day) in these clubs, and you’ll know what the buzz is all about.  Ibiza on its own is a magnificent place, with intensely hospitable island culture, a relatively mild heat, and beautiful vistas all around.  Add to this some of the best parties in the world, and there’s a sense of why clubs here have such a following.  Our clubs are distinctive in their ability to cater to youth culture with excesses of style and grace, providing a stomping grounds for a party that goes on all day and all night.

It’s difficult to spend any time in a club here without hearing the word techno, and there are few who probably really understand what that term really means.  Most people will call any kind of electronic or dance music techno, and although they might occasionally be right, there’s more to it than a purely cosmetic similarity.   The term does certainly refer to technology and music, but there are some key distinctions that are important to keep in mind.  Perhaps most importantly, the music did not begin in Europe, as one might guess, but in the United States.  It is very similar in sensibility and development to hiphop and rap, combining forms to create something very unique and sophisticated.

Techno’s origins are generally accepted as beginning in Detroit in the 1980s.  Three African-American college students, Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, and Juan Atkins, aka The Belleville Three, found their inspiration in a late-night radio program hosted by DJ Charles The Electrifying Mojo Johnson.  Their music was a mixture of forms that played with early versions of sampling, and was inspired by ideas drawn from science fiction, and a fascination with and uneasiness toward the future.  This was later integrated with some ideas drawn from Alvin Toffler’s The Third Wave, and began to develop with specific and complicated beats, designed to put the listener into a kind of light trance state.   There are many lines of development between these early stages and what one will hear in Ibiza, but the intentions to alter the consciousness of the listener are still the same.

I have spent many a great day and night in New York City! There is more to do than you can fit in in one lifetime. Museums, shopping, site seeing, Broadway, Off Broadway, Opera, concerts and more. From sunrise to sunrise there is never a lack for something to do. I particularly enjoy the museums. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is enormous. It has a gallery with reconstructed Assyrian temples inside, they are in a beautiful rood with one side of glass overlooking the green trees of Central Park. The collection there is vast and spans the entirety of human history. Pre recorded historic art, Egyptian, Roman, Byzantine, Greek artifacts. Paintings from Leonardo de Vinchi to Andy Warhol and everyone you have ever heard of and not heard of in between! The museum area is studded with 4 star hotels new york for your accommodation needs. A short walk from the Met is the Guggenheim, an unusual building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The round structure with its simple lines and form stand in stark contrast to the straight lines and ornamentation of the 1800’s buildings that surround it. The Guggenheim houses modern art shows. Its gallery is an open room several stories height that is round and is accessed by a spiral ramp way lined with art. From there heading to MOMA, the Museum of Modern Art or the Modern as it is called by New Yorkers. This splendid museum houses works of the Dadists, Surrealists, Expressionism and more modern art movements. I remember going to MOMA years ago when the additional floors were added. The entire museum displayed Picasso’s work… Only Picasso. It was wonderful. There is also the International Center for Photography, The Frick Collection The Cloisters, The Museum of Natural History and enndless smaller museums and galleries. Oh and I don’t want to forget another favorite of mine across from the Museum of Modern Art is the American Folk Art Museum. The collection of folk art there is amazing and worth a look. These is wood working, needle work, quilts, hand made garments, from fun and funky to fairly ordinary and mundane but the workmanship is always top notch. Make sure to check museum listings for changing exhibits, you never know what might be showing, you may be surprised.

For the savvy world traveler, each hotel in Bali, Indonesia offers a heady combination of hospitality and luxury, all in the comfort of one of the most lovely places on the planet.  Bali has beaches that absolutely live up to their reputation, and the nightlife here is very lively.  There are plenty of options for family fun, too, with excellent tours, sights, and restaurants that serve heavenly food.  Bali is a fascinating mix of cultures and traditions, with elements of Buddhism and Hinduism having worked their way in from China and India.  There are many local performances, too, with excellent works of dance and theatre.  Often, the theatrical and dance forms are mixed, to make fascinating and extremely complex works that are spectacular.  For most tourists, it is very easy to get accustomed to life on the island, and it’s difficult to leave!

Beach culture is a world of its own, where the concerns for tomorrow or yesterday tend to wash away to give way to the immediate present.  In Bali, this can certainly be the case, and the love of the sea is very high.  This love finds itself expressed in visual art, music, and film.  So much film, in fact, that there is a festival entirely dedicated to surf films.  The Ombak Bali International Surf Film Festival is in its second year, and is a four-day festival to present the best surf films from around the world.

The focus is on local film, but there are certainly movies from around the world that represent the best of this interesting genre.  The intention of the Ombak Bali Festival is to provide a forum where the films can be seen and discussed in one place.  It promotes dialogue between filmmaker and audience, and is especially designed to give new filmmakers a place where their work can be seen.  There is also a focus on disseminating interest in the environmental concerns that so many of the films express, and deepening love for the sea.  The films are incredibly beautiful, often very funny, and always fascinating, revealing complex social issues that draw the characters to the ocean, for one reason or another.

Savvy world travelers seem to understand that for 5-star hotels, Goa is well-equipped to be a world competitor for excellence in luxury accommodation.  Already famous for its beaches, architecture, and reputation for hospitality to tourists, it is also a fascinating urban center with a fascinating history.  From the earlier times when it was part of the Mauryan Empire, to the dark days of the Inquisition during the Portuguese colonization, and up to the present day, Goa has had to be many faces to many people.  Its current reputation is based, in part, on the migration patterns of hippies, many of whom found their way to Goa in search of enlightenment in the 1960s.  But like anything in Goa, the surface may be simple, when the truth is much more complex.

There is a long tradition of theatrical performance in Goa, and many of these forms can be seen today, in folk forms and in their evolutions.  One particular theatre group, the Mustard Seed Art Company, has had a history that began over 20 years ago.  Its roots are somewhere between the local and the global stage, and its socially-conscious performances have touched audiences and the company’s artists in profound ways.

Spearheaded by academic and playwright Maria Isabel de Santa Rita Vas, Mustard Seed Art Company started off by working on established scripts before doing their own work.  Since then, their plays deal with a broad range of themes, from child labor to raising HIV/AIDS awareness.  One of their recent projects has been about the life of Abbé Faria, a Goan by birth and considered to be the father of modern hypnotism.  Some of their work follows in the footsteps of the now-deceased founder of the Theatre of the Oppressed, Augusto Boal, and his influence is certainly felt in their artistic and philosophical aims, which raise the standards for world theatre.

The beaches in the Spanish city of Valencia close to capital, in the Northern region of the city are usually quite popular, especially with the visitors coming from the other parts of the country.  However the beaches in this city are the least affected by tourism, and retain the traditional customs that have not been influenced by foreign travelers from other countries in the world.  In Castellon, the city to the north, just bordering Valencia, the architecture is a mix of industrial buildings and warehouses, surrounded by the traditional buildings that are lining the mountains.  Every year this area attracts many young fans of music for their international music festival that includes the most famous bands and musicians performing today.

Further down the coast is the resort town of Benidorm.  While this is a favorite party spot and the playground of the rich and famous, this is a location that is filled with tourists, so be prepared.  Located here are also the locations of the parks of the region, the Aqualandia Water Center, the wildlife reserve, Terra Natura,  and the popular theme park, Terra Mitica.  If the rapid fire world of the parties and the nightlife of tourist spots are not one’s scene, there is a village with the combination of wide open spaces and nature hikes throughout the mountains, combined with luxury hotels.  Valencia, Spain offers up fun and excitement, but is far more off the beaten track than Benidorm.

The mountains are great place to escape the summer heat of the city, with many rivers, water falls and cool mountain breezes.  Surround the city are the open fields of the rice paddies, wherein grows on the ingredients of the recipes that the city of Valencia is well known for, the seafood paella.  Surrounding the plantations and located through the mountains, are various wildlife reserves that also offer solace and quiet walks through nature and the plants, the birds and the animals indigenous to the region.  All the regions have much to offer those vacationing in Spain, different things for many different personalities of world travels, but all uniquely Spain.