Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Went to the Puerto Rican neighborhood on Saturday.

I knew I was getting close when this chunky, slightly dark woman jogged by in tight pants, a camouflage baseball hat, and some political protest t-shirt with a Puerto Rican flag on it and slogans in Spanish.

Highlights included a Pentecostal coffee house with a mural made of different-colored beans that depicted this gigantic tree in the middle of the Atlantic with its lefthand roots in Puerto Rico (nothing else in that hemisphere depicted) and its righthand roots in Spain and Africa (no other European countries represented), and a restaurant called "La Casa de Jibaro" that featured a big sketch of a jibarito drawn on the sign.

On the way out too I saw the famous 80s barber shop "The Surgeon of Fades", only it seems like it's under new ownership, since it had this board hung up at the beginning of the sign that said "Santiago's", so the new sign would read, "Santiago's The Surgeon of Fades".