Let me tell you about this picture, it's not how it looks!

I love this picture. I think this is objectively a great photograph.  We took this last week (Oct 2019) in Cusco, Peru.  I just feel it needs some explaining.  If I step outside myself (no, I didn’t do any Ayahuasca… which would have had that experience)… here is how the picture looks to me.

Come here weirdo native people, please. I know you are on your way to work, to likely toil somewhere that involves you taking home 50 pounds of bananas on your head.   Please, though, indulge me and the wifey with a picture.  I think your lowly poor hobbled existence is just adorable.  It will show all my friends back home how in touch we became with local culture.  I will tell our friends made up back stories about us all, and how we promised to keep in touch.

That, to me, is how all of these types of pictures look.  In a word… exploitative.

Doesn’t it?

Well, there was exploitation involved, but we were kinda more the victims.  Allow me to explain.  “No, there is too much.  Let me sum up.” – Inigo Montoya... who kinda looks Peruvian.

These ladies are full time tourist picture be-inners.  See, Peruvians in the city don’t dress like this.  They dress like you.  We did see ladies who genuinely dressed like this, but not on stoops in the city.  It was in drives through the countryside.

We were talking down the incredibly and brutally steep streets of Cusco looking at touristy is you can:  four white people wandering around with big ass backpacks. 

how steep?  That steep.  Not exactly 'to code'

I looked over and saw them on the stoop and made eye contact, because it was such an adorable site.  I nudge the wifey, and she looks over.  These astute capitalists ran over and literally handed my wife that… lamb?  “we take picture together?”, may have been their only English.  But, I did really want a picture like this, and I didn’t want to exploit the locals.  I even thought about sneaking a photo to try and capture a genuine moment, but took the high road.

Before we know it, we are sitting their with these wonderful ladies taking out picture taken.  “10 Soles?”.  Sole is the Peruvian dollar, and they were 3 to our dollar.  So, 10 soles is about $3.  Absolutely worth it.  I would have paid that just to take a picture of them, not to mention with them.  After the great photo, we give them 10 soles (do I capitalize the S there for currency?  Don’t know.  They say “20 soles!”.  I explain that is all I have (wifey and I both speak Spanish).  They start chasing us down the street yelling “20 soles.”  Obviously, we gave them an extra ten soles.  They made $7 in about 4 minutes.  Well done, ladies.  Happy to share the wealth.  As we walked around more, we saw several groups like this, sitting and being adorable with baby llamas and alpacas making themselves available for tourist photos.

Again, TOTALLY worth it to get that photo above.

For the record, I did sneak a photo of a genuine adorable real life Peruvian moment.  See this pic below. 

This is in Ollantaytambo, one of the gateway cities to Machu Picchu.  The father had a huge blanket set up selling wares to tourist.  This was his child, who likely spends hours a day there with his father.  Like any adorable child, he was bored and started playing a beautiful steel drum they had out for sale.  I can tell you it was a kid just being a kid, and not a kid trained to be adorable for tourists because after I got this shot his dad kinda yelled at him and told him to put the drum down.

my rant on cops vs bikers

This is an aside from my book review of 'Ratsnakes', about an undercover cop.  You can find the book and its review over here.  This was a long winded rant that had nothing to do with the book, but i felt like publishing in anyway   -  Oct 2019


More and more I am seeing things that really really trouble me about the bike gangs... er... gentleman hobbyists?  The stealing and looting and terrorizing and drug dealing... don't much care.  It isn't my business.  What upsets me is the violence towards their women.  These guys beat up their women.  They do it a lot, an for a lot of reasons.  The obvious is insecurity and poor male role models.  It is also to make sure the women 'know their place'.  They do it to impress their needy ass peers.  They do it because the realize after being in the gang for 20 years has gotten them nowhere in life.  I think they went in looking for fun and adventure and camaraderie.  By the time you are 40, though, you being to realize you are just an unemployable douche-bag.  They are disappointed with their station in life and the sacrifices they made for the club.  Lastly, I think the do it because they are totally fucked up and out o their mind on speed and booze every waking moment.

That is my armchair assessment.  It makes it tough for me to to read about.  I can't root for these guys.  As example?  In the late 60s, Hunter S Thompson famously lived and rode with the Hell's Angels.  He was transparent about about writing the book, and was fully accepted into the club.  It was a natural fit, as Hunter was much loser to being an Angel than a journalist.  He loved guns and booze and motorcycles and was at least as crazy as the crew he ran with.  Shortly after, famously, he got kicked out.  Not just asked to leave politely, but nearly beaten to death.  What does this have to do with anything?  Bear with me.  Hunter was stomped because he intervened on a club fight, which is a big no no for an outsider.  This guy was beating up his 'old lady' something fierce.  hunter didn't mind, it wasn't his business.   This Angel was so riled up he starts kicking a dog.  That is when Hunter stepped in.  A dog, and a motorcycle are both higher in the caste system than women are.

Thompson got drunk and stoned with the Angels on the beach, and stuck around when things got ugly — something he avoided while writing the book. An Angel named Junkie George started beating his wife to a pulp on the rocks. When Junkie George laid into his dog as well, Thompson spoke up. That was all it took for several Angels to start pounding on Thompson’s skull and ribs.

I have zero respect for that level of stupidity and misogyny.  I can't root for that, or romanticize and rationalize that behavior.  Of course, cops are notorious for beating their women, too?  Why?  I have a theory, and this is a thoughtful assessment.  For cops, like football players (perhaps the most notorious of spouse beaters) violence works!  Violence solves all problems.  When reasoning doesn't work, be it for a cop, a mobster, or a biker... a swift and thorough beating ends the problem.  I just think maybe violence isn't intended, but it lies closer to the surface than many other solutions.  For football players, I don't even think they try the 'reasoning' stage... they just hit.

the whole thing about beating up women, though... I just to speak my piece.  Let's close this out with a  quote from the Beastie Boys.

“I want to say a little something that’s long overdue
The disrespect to women has got to be through / To all the mothers and the sisters and the wives and friends / I want to offer my love and respect to the end.” 

Here is the book that started the rant.  As I got through the book, I realized this rant was way off  base for the text.  That is why I pulled it from the review.  But it needed saying -

Snakes: Cheating Death by Living A Lie: Inside the Explosive World of ATF's Undercover Agents and How We Changed the Game

Vincent A. Cefalu