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thomas locke hobbs | weblog
travel, latin america, photography, urban planning and stuff.
...and now my New York chronicles

September 17, 2001
Posted my pictures of the World Trade Center disaster.


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September 6, 2001
Redundant Acronyms: ATM machine, HIV virus, LCD display, etc...


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Colombian Rock

I've recently discovered Los Aterciopelados, this fantastic Colombian rock group. I recommend their album Caribe Atomico. I'm going to see them in concert on Sept. 13th at the Roxy.


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August 27, 2001
Apartment Listing Sites Both are free and seem to have a fair amount of listings here in NYC. Unlike the Village Voice, which the whole world reads, these sites seem to be somewhat hidden, an insider thing. I found my current place via April's List.


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August 17, 2001
The apartment chronicles cont'd

I can easily see how this seldom updated blog could become entirely about apartments and real estate. The follow ad is for a place costing $850/mo in the posh heart of midtown Manhattan. For you non-New Yorkers this is way, way, way cheap. Of course, there is always a catch...:

top location in manhattan,56th and madison ave. new beautiful apartment building.close to many subways. one beautiful bedroom for you, share sitting room, bath and kitchen. The reason why they room is so cheap is that there's Only requirement upon you:you must be IT professional (ecommerce or oracle dba prefered)and willing to help me a little bit when I got trouble with work or study.or otherwise the rent might be higher



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July 23, 2001
Annorexic Models

Walking around Manhattan in the last three weeks I've seen about five fashion shoots. The first was right in the main concourse of Grand Central Station. Two tall, emmaciated, women lamely puzzled over train schedules while dressed in the lastest fall fashions (in the middle of the summer heat, of course). These and the other models I've seen photographed do not look normal in real life. They are tall and completely skin and bones. They aren't beautiful, they simply look weird. I am so used to this version of unreality in magazines and catalogs that I really don't give it a second thought. Now having seen a number of models in person I can better appreciate the gulf that separates them from the rest of humanity.


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July 17, 2001
$800 Closet

Real estate dominates all conversation in New York City they way traffic in Los Angeles or altitude in La Paz, Bolivia do. Crazy stories abound; rent-controlled steals, illegal conversions and all kinds of compromised situations. I have one small one to add. Recently I looked at a closet in Brooklyn. The asking price was $800. Literally, the room was a mid-sized closet, just barely big enough for a twin mattress. Above a coat rack still hung with hangers. In defense of the closet it was attached to a loft apartment with high ceilings, two walls of windows, an enormous living room, and great views of Manhattan. Basically for your money you get a roof over your head and use of the common space. Friends who have lived in the city long enough to be bitter but not long enough to have their own rent controlled places nod their heads and say it's a good deal.


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July 3, 2001
Urban Backpacking

I went to Costco in Brooklyn but I lack both a car and those little foldable dollies that everyone here seems to have. Lacking anything else to lug bulk food around in, I brought along my ever-trusted Eagle Creek travel pack, my indispensible companion on three extended bus trips through Latin America. It felt odd packing bottles of Ragu into a backpack while every one else strolled to the parking lot with their shopping carts. People on the subway surely thought I was some grubby European backpacker touring the US for the summer who was lost (no tourist ever goes to Brooklyn).


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June 27, 2001
Legiao Urbana was one of the big rock bands in Brazil in the 80s and 90s. I like their stuff, it sounds very 80s, somewhere between The Cure and Duran Duran (except in Portuguese). If you're going to Sao Paulo you can pick up a pirated copy of their greatest hits for $2 downtown (as opposed to $23 from Amazon)


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June 24, 2001
Casual Out, Biz Suits In.


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Richard Posner's New Book. (NY Times Review) After all, if economics can help us understand the human behavior that gives rise to the law, then why not psychology, anthropology and sociology?


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Death by Chocolate. Seagulls, not Humans (via Obscurestore.com).

What's wonderful about Obscure Store is that the headlines read like The Onion, except the stories are real.


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Penn Jillette on Weightlessness. Recounting experiences on "vomit comet", plane used to train astronauts. Check out picture of ZZ top guitarist floating free of gravity (via Metafilter).


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June 23, 2001
Rock en Español

I just dug up Mana Unplugged which was a constant on my stereo back when I was in Buenos Aires. The album is a fantastic live set of their best songs. Great songs and great playing. Mana, Mexico's biggest rock band, mixes in rock, salsa, a Police-sounding reggae, ranchera and more on their songs.

Back in 1995 during my first trip through Central America their song "Oye Mi Amor" was in heavy rotation on the radio. Only later did I connect the song with that ridiculous big-haired band called Mana. Only later did I discover their music. And in fairness their hairstyles are more Led Zepplin 1971 than Whitesnake 1987.

Rock en español is a relatively recent phenomena in Latin America with the exception of Argentina where it goes back to at least 1965 with Sandro singing "Hay Mucha Agitacion" (that's "There's a whole lotta shakin' going on"). The absolute best of the early stuff is Sui Generis who put out three albums between 1972 and 1974. It's a mixture of Beatles, Crosby Stills & Nash, and The Beach Boys and at the same level of quality. I own 700 CDs and the Sui Generis greatest hits is in my top 20 easily.


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June 22, 2001
Slate reviews PT Cruiser, Ford Focus, VW Beetle. Brainy and intellectual, but very well written: The PT Cruiser will be the equivalent of the Chippendale pediment on Philip Johnson's AT&T Building.


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June 20, 2001
Virginia Postrel on Bush's protectionist pandering to domestic steel producers. NY Times.


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June 15, 2001
Divine Diets. Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker:
... the fatted calf that was prepared for the Prodigal Son is evidence that God approves of filet mignon.



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June 14, 2001
The Beach, Tortel, Exclusivity, Prince William

I recently read The Beach by Alex Garland, which was made into a mediocre movie with Leonardo DiCaprio. The novel is great, however-- sort of Lonely Planet meets Lord of the Flies. Basically the narrator is looking for that perfect travel spot, unspoiled by hordes of travellers or (worse) tourists. He finds it but it turns out to be more hell than heaven.

The book got me thinking about this fetish of exclusivity in travel. The whole deal is to go to the new hot spot, the yet-to-be-discovered resort, Bali 20 years-ago, etc. There is something about this that strikes me as morally distasteful, like spending $1000 on a baseball card. I tell myself when travelling not to make my enjoyment of some destination based on any perceived exclusivity.

And yet, here I was last November in the small hamlet of Tortel in Chilean Patagonia. To get there you have to take a three hour ride on a leaky wooden barge down a river. The village has no streets, roads, or cars. All the houses are built on stilts and connected by rickety boardwalks. I was the only tourist there. As sun set I stood on a ridge overlooking the village. In the distance I could hear the moving of rocks and the crushing of boulders as construction crews worked to complete a road connecting Tortel with Chile's Camino Austral (also known as Pinochet's folly). I thought about how drastically this place would change and savored the un-touched beauty of the place, soon to disappear.

I'm exagerating the remoteness of Tortel. I was alone there mostly because I went off-season. The place is well known to Chilean summer vacationers. Actually, if you search for the place on Google you'll find all kinds of links, mostly about Prince William's stay, as part of a public service project. I can empathize with the desire of exclusivity. It's a fundamentally conservative wish. The smallness of a single place is amazing in the face of the transformative power of trend and fashion of the larger world -- tabloid culture briefly touching down in some heretofore remote spot in the world.


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June 13, 2001
200 Years of Sexual Tourism. UK Guardian. Book review.


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June 11, 2001
Recently I've made the Lonely Planet Daily Scoop part of my frequent reading. It's very simple. It is a page of short AP wire stories from far-flung places across the globe. It's the kind of stuff that doesn't make the New York Times but gives you a bit of the flavor of what's going on out there.


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About me

My name's Thomas Locke Hobbs. I used to live in Argentina, now I am in Brooklyn. I grew up in California. I'm a bit suspicious as the value of keeping a weblog, but I do it anyway. Go to my home page for more about me.


Weblogs I read:

Xblog, Virginia Postrel, Signal vs. Noise, Robot Wisdom, Regrets Only, Peterme, Obscure Store, Metafilter, Media News, Lonely Planet Daily Scoop, Kottke, Joel on Software, Fury, Dan Bricklin, Camworld, Business Daily Review, Arts and Letters Daily, Andrew Sullivan








































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