Cave’s Heard•NY, happens within two large, cordoned off circles. Get there 10-15 minutes early for a spot in the front. The dancers arrive, and come together in pairs to make Cave’s beautiful equine creations. The performance begins with the horses grazing to classical harp music, provided by musicians seated at raised platforms beside the circles. Then, the percussion takes over. Each horse couple separates and a Harlem Shake-like dance breaks out, with the half-horses moving around with what appear to be moving mini-stacks of colorful hay or crazy colored Cousin Itts. Children and adults giggle and reach out to touch the wild beasts.

For more on Nick Cave’s Heard•NY, presented by CreativeTime and MTA Arts for Transit presentation, click here. And to learn more about the artist’s soundsuits, go to this PBS News Hour video.

Roller dancer, Skate Lisa, at Barcelona’s Hotel W Spot. Photo by photographYeah.

Michelle Barrios spent her weekends from the age of around eight or nine at El Patí­n Dorado (The Golden Skate), a giant lit up roller-skating rink in Panama City, Panama. There she taught herself to roller dance (a combination of skating and dancing).

Now, she is the creator, manager and brand ambassador of BCN Roller Dancer and hosting roller dance parties, meetups and events in Barcelona. Learn more about the roller dance resurgence in Barcelona and BCN Roller Dancer in my article featured in the travel section of Untapped Cities, an online site, which helps locals and travelers alike rediscover some of the world’s greatest cities, including New York, Paris: Roller Dancer: Barcelona.

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Desde que tenía ocho o nueve años, Michelle Barrios se pasó cada finde en El Patí­n Dorado en su país natal, Panamá. Fue ahí, bajo de las grandes luces en la pista de patinaje que ella se enseñó a si misma a combinar el patinaje sobre ruedas y el baile en algo que se llama roller dance.

Ahora, ella es la creadora, encargada y embajadora de BCN Roller Dancer y hace fiestas, reuniones y eventos de roller dance en la ciudad de Barcelona en España. Se puede saber más del resurgimiento de roller dance por Barcelona en un artículo que escribí para Untapped Cities, una página que ayuda a los nativos y viajeros a conocer mejor las ciudades más grandes del mundo (Nueva York, Paris, etc…): Roller Dancer: Barcelona.

Photo courtesy of the Grand Daddy Hotel. Photo taken by Jean-Piierre Esterhuizen.

Musician, music producer and DJ, Fred Jacquier (DJ Fred Spider) arrived in Cape Town, South Africa in 2009 alone and with a suitcase. He didn’t know anyone. He did know that he had come to open his own club.

He is now the host of Salsation, a Latin-infused music and dance party happening every Friday night at Cape Town’s Grand Daddy Hotel, a quirky boutique hotel that has a rooftop airstream trailer park. Learn more about Spider, salsa in South Africa and the Grand Daddy Hotel in my article featured on Salseek, a digital magazine covering Latin dance and music from around the world: Salsation Comeback in South Africa.

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El DJ y productor de música, Fred Jacquier (DJ Fred Spider) llego a Cape Town, Sudáfrica en el año 2009 con solo una maleta y el deseo de abrir su propio discoteca.

Ahora él es el presentador de Salsation, una fiesta de música y baile latina que ocurre cada viernes en el hotel Grand Daddy en Cape Town (un hotel que lleva un parque de caravanas clasicas en la ultima planta del hotel). Echa un vistazo a mi reportaje, Salsation Comeback in South Africa, para saber más del movimiento de salsa en Sudáfrica y conocer mejor a Fred Spider y el Grand Daddy Hotel. El artículo había publicado en la revista digital sobre los bailes y la música de latino america, Salseek.

Diner en Blanc New York 2012 setup at Lincoln Center Plaza.

It’s the afternoon rush hour in New York City. Most people are heading home. Thirty-two hundred others have made Superman-style changes into all-white outfits at their office building restrooms or the gym to attend Diner en Blanc (White Dinner), an elegant Parisian pop-up picnic held at a secret city location.

Meeting up outside of Starbucks at 60th and Broadway.

What started in 1988 in France as a modest outdoor soiree hosted by François Pasquier, has ballooned into an international phenomenon. The Paris edition now draws 15,000 guests. There are Diner en Blanc (D.E.B.) events celebrated in such places as Kigali, Rwanda; Sydney, Australia; and Barcelona, Spain will celebrate its first on September 13, 2012.

The first Diner en Blanc in New York happened in 2011. Then, 1,200 guests enjoyed an al fresco dining experience at the World Financial Center downtown. Over 30,000 people were on the waiting list and due to a computer glitch, some received false confirmations.

I was one of them.

Luckily, Diner en Blanc, as a way of apologizing, placed those who were accidentally sent confirmations on a priority list for the 2012 edition. For 2012, the organizers also expanded the numbers to include 3,200 guests.

And I got in this time, for real.

Arrival at the secret locale: Lincoln Center Plaza.

At the time of registration, you pay a membership fee of $4, which, if you follow the laundry list of D.E.B. rules, entitles you to an invite to future editions. This year New Yorkers dined under the stars and beside the fountain at Lincoln Center Plaza. The cost to dine is $25 per person and it is a B.Y.O.P (Bring Your Own Picnic) affair. Although, you can purchase food and alcohol — the rules state that you may not bring your own booze — from the organizers. However, the prices are high and the pickup lines long.

After convening outside a Starbucks, our table leader led us to the — what was still — secret locale. Music from the likes of Edith Piaf welcomed diners clad in white and carrying tables, chairs and picnic wares. This was followed by a live musical performance. At around 8:30 p.m., the sophisticated outdoor picnic turned into a dance party. Napkins were whirled around in the air, bubbles blown and the white balloons handed out earlier and tied to chairs began to float up into the night sky. A D.J. spun dance and disco hits.

Just before sunset, everyone settles in to the al fresco D.E.B. dining experience.

The evening ended at 10 p.m. to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York and various kick lines popped up in the aisles between the rows of tables.

Philadelphia and Chicago celebrate their first pop-up D.E.B. picnics on August 23rd and 24th respectively.

If you’re attending a D.E.B. event soon, or hope to in the future, here’s what you’ll need:

• A white (not cream, not ivory), elegant outfit
• A folding square table + 2 white folding chairs (If you don’t have white chairs, cover with a cloth or slipcover.) (Ikea’s HÄRÖ folding table and chairs work well.)
• A wheeled cart or small dolly for transporting the table and chairs (You can get this from Deals & Discounts, Ikea, Target, etc…)
• A white bag or a white picnic basket (I got the Sutherland Yorkshire Picnic Basket for 2 from Picnicbaskets, through Amazon, and threw the white tablecloth between the handle to disguise its non-white wickerness.)
• White tablecloth and 2 white cloth napkins
  

  All good things must end. New York’s Diner en Blanc 2012 wrapped up around 10 p.m.

• Dinnerware: 2 large white plates, 2 dessert plates, 2 sets of cutlery, 2 glasses (no plastic) (The basket I purchased had small plates, so I borrowed larger plates from my roommates.)
• Food and drink: A first course, cold main course and a cheese/dessert course, baguette/bread. (We had prosciutto and bread, followed by tabouleh as our main course and then strawberries and blueberries with brownies for dessert.) A bottle of water and soft drinks (Alcohol drinks are only available through the caterers.)
• One trash bag
• Centerpiece: bouquet and candles (From Michaels: white silk flowers, 2 tall votive candle holders and 2 flameless/electric tea lights, the flowers were placed in a white and orange Harney and Sons tea tin.)
• In case of rain, purchase a Wedding Umbrella White Jumbo 68″ Golf Umbrella from the Golf Umbrella Store through Amazon, or directly.

Untapped Cities has great coverage of Diner en Blanc events in Paris and New York. There is also a terrific time-lapse video of D.E.B. New York 2012 on the site.

Ronnybrook Farm Dairy in Ancramdale, New York.

It’s 5:30 a.m., Stephen Reed drives his Jeep over a long, bumpy country dirt road and arrives in front of a small house across from a cattle corral. He beeps his horn several times, rolls down the window and shouts, “Hey, let’s go, get up,” in hopes of waking his co-worker at Ronnybrook Farm Dairy. His boss, Dan Osofsky, pulls up alongside him in a pickup truck. They both shake their heads and snicker at the late start they are off to this morning. But, there is no time to dwell on it. They pull up to the main blue and white barn and jump out of their vehicles.

For three generations, the men and women of the Osofsky family have been running Ronnybrook Farm Dairy on an expansive plot of land caught between the Catskill and Berkshire Mountains, two hours northeast of New York City. Many of the farms that joined Ronnybrook in dominating the bucolic landscape, especially when Ron Osofsky, Dan’s father and the farm’s owner, was a child, have been sold off to larger corporations. Ron and his brother Rick, however, would not allow that to happen to their parents’ farm.

“My grandmother did all the work,” says Dan, the 34-year-old farm’s manager, of Ronnybrook Farm Dairy’s early days.

He and Stephen run into the barn, wash their hands and go into the main milking room, where Persia, Licorice, Majorca, Karen, Mika and the other dairy cows have been brought for their morning milking. The cows are milked twice daily and spend the rest of their time grazing in the grassy fields. The milk is bottled in a plant across from the main barn.

Stephen gives the bull calf a bottle.

Stephen slides the door open to a smaller, dark barn bed in the corner of the main room. A newborn bull calf darts toward the light. It was born a day earlier and is still unsteady on its legs. Stephen gives it a bottle.

He exits the main barn to join Dan in packing up a small Bobcat loader to bring feed, milk and fresh hay to a dozen 1 to 2-month-old calves across from the main barn. Each calf has its own hatch and Dan and Stephen work together to feed them and freshen up the hatches with hay.

In order to produce high-quality dairy products they can be proud of, the Osofsky’s take exceptional care in each step of the process. They make their own hay to feed their prizewinning Holstein cows; they allow the older cows to graze in the rolling hills for five to six months and they use recyclable glass bottles for their milk, which is pasteurized, but non-homogenized.

To the right of the youngest calves are the three-month-olds. They have been paired up in larger hatches, as Dan explains, “For them to learn how to fight for food,” and co-habitate. Further afield is a larger cattle corral for the older cows. Dan fills the older cows’ trough and leaves to tend to the next chore. In the midst of the cows going in for food, one falls over. Dan rushes between the fence slats to help the cow back on its legs.

Dan puts fresh hay in the hatch of a 1-2-month-old calf.

“You can’t just flip them up,” he starts, “they have four stomachs, which can get all twisted and cause bigger problems.” Dan and Stephen gently get the cow up and return to their remaining morning chores.

Throughout the 12-hour-plus work day, Dan and his farmhands are constantly dodging crises: cows falling over, supply depletions and equipment malfunctions. Added to the daily to-do list, which also includes filling orders and attending various famers’ markets in N.Y.C. and in the surrounding counties, these pop-up problems make the work that needs doing on the farm never ending.

Food writer and James Beard winner, Megan Wetherall, captured the Osofsky family’s life and challenges on the farm in the food production documentary series, The Big Table. It premiered at the close of the NYCFoodFilmFestival in 2011.

As Dan and his father Ron and uncle Rick mention in the documentary, they wouldn’t trade this tough, but terrific life for anything.

Dan drives up to the top of one of the hills on his family’s farmland midday.

Hay bales, made by Dan and his farmhands, dot the farmscape.

“I just like coming up here,” he says, taking a deep breath, grinning and looking down at the land he works 24/7.

Several round hay bales, future food for his cows, ferment in the sun and gorgeously dot the lush green landscape with Stissing Mountain, the Berkshires, and the Catskill Mountains in the background.

Ronnybrook Farm Dairy products (milk, yogurt drinks, butter and more) can be bought at farmers’ markets, supermarkets like Whole Foods Market and N.Y.C’s Chelsea Market. Locate a store near you via Ronnybrook’s webpage.

Ronnybrook Dairy from Carey Zamarriego on Vimeo.

Calella de Palafrugell’s tranquil Port Bo.

Braving Spain’s Wild Coast – The Costa Brava, contains everything you need to know to enjoy one of Spain’s most picturesque stretches of playa: from a campsite with tent pitches perched atop beach cliffs to watching the Cantada d’havaneres festival performances from a fancy flat on a cove in Calella de Palafrugell. Featured on Travel Dudes, the website “for travelers, by travelers.”

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En mi reportaje Braving Spain’s Wild Coast – The Costa Brava para la página Travel Dudes, una página web “hecha por viajeros, con contenidos escritos por viajeros,” doy toda la información necesaria para disfrutar al máximo de las playas magníficas al nordeste de España en la costa brava.