robert nagle

I’m in a hotel room that looks as if Robert Nagle threw up in it. Orange-turquoise-chartreuse-magenta striped bed spread. Gold and brown-painted walls with blocky textured abstract paintings and a 5 x 7-foot mirror covering one wall. My towel has a picture of a blond couple kissing on it. But the bed is only big enough for one person.

The streets are filled with tuk-tuks and vertical neon signs. The restaurants and bodegas all serve the same thing: variations on chicken, rice and potatoes. Fried chicken, chicken asada, chicken soup. I’ve learned to like chicken wings, where the meat is so thin you have to tear it off with your teeth. But the neon casts a blood red light on everything and the tuk-tuks’ headlights make tracers in the air, so that the night here is constantly animated. It makes me want to run around with a camera and let it all in. It reminds me of San Francisco’s Tenderloin District – of Polk Street in the mid-90’s, but without the hustlers all afraid for their lives amid the AIDS crisis.

Now… if only the blaring salsa music would stop…