Ad - Friday, November 23, 1984 - North Shore News

N
SS

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2.

ART OF THE

Strictly personal

by Bob Hunter

PECULIAR CHARM ot
Havana 1s that it has a vague feeling of
Rome after the fall. Except for a handtul of

monuments to the revolution, no skyscrapers have
been built since 1959, the year Fidel and the boys

took over.

It seems, too, that no paint
has been used on the faded
walls While in generally
good shape, roads are pot-
holed in certain districts, and
womay be simply because ot
their Romanesque style, but
the old homes of the rich
show then decay like pie-
tograph of the empire after
the Visigoths had come to
stay (In Havana, instead of
riding horses, they park their
army jeeps everywhere and
wear olive-green umforms }

The posh lImestone man.
sions in the western part of

the city, tormerly the
bourgeoise secohon, as our
guide calls ou, have been
handed over to. several

families each, with the result
that laundry hangs between
the Dork columns Eaten by
salt winds and time some of
these buildings go back to the
WWth C entury—- them cornices
and balovonies hase the
sottened look of soap left too

long in the water Some ot
the colonnades hare
crumbled

In the streets. except for
the Russian-made_ I adas,
Nivas, Mochbuys and
lumbering Hankas, the

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American cars are all of
1940s and SOs design. I note,
with some remorse, that the
most durable of all Yankee

vehicles turns out to have
been the "49 Ches (My first
car was one otf those—lI

should have kept it )

The ironic apogee of thts
lost age of Yanquis influence,
of course, 18 a mint ‘S89
Cadillac, tail fins rising ma-
jestically just in time to greet
the revolution

‘*‘Rhumba, conga
and rock ’n’ roll

crash from ghetto
blasters from the
rooms of peeling

tenements.”’

Founded in the mid-1S00s,
Havana is very nearly the
oldest European city in the
Western Hemisphere The
onginal fort, Castillo de los

Tres Reves del Morro. stall
stands

Any city that ancient has
grace, dignity, beauty, no
matter how threadbare and
wind-goawed it may have

become. And especially in the
Old Section of Havana,
where the structures go back
400 years, there ts an elegance
that contrasts almost paintul-
ly with the Miami-style hi-rise
architecture of the SOs to be
found downtown.

Wandering through the
streets after an early evening
rain: rhumba, conga and
rock néroll crash from
ghetto- blasters out of the
rooms of paint-peeling,
mouldering tenements with
Trusting tron grillworks and
sagging wooden doors
Women walk by in curlers,
Tattered posters praise
revolutionary heroes and ex
ort people to throw litter into
Bargage cans

There are Havana rainhats
everywhere—scraps of the
brown paper that the ex.
cellent bread comes wrapped
in being used to fend oft the
rain Army trucks are parked
everywhere in alleys left dark
and mysterious because the
only streetlamps are at the
intersections Kids clatter by
on skateboards And behind
the steel

bars of narrow
courtyards sit the hulks of
broken cars being

miraculously restored
Cubans have become masters

of the body reburld

Even in the dark, young
guys wear sunglasses Inside
the apartments with thetr

bright yellow and pink and
lime green walls, with crack-

ed tile stairs spiralling up-
ward, tamiulies gathered
around their Russian-made

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television sets. Rabbit cars
perch hke flocks of wire
roosters atop the buildings
The news leads off sirtualls
every might with an item
about Fidel...

Contrasts: A poster of Karl
Marx seen dimly above the
cigarette smoke in a corner
bar with its retractable steel
door rolled up, bottles of

rum Stacked on shelves
behind glass doors as high as
the arched ceiling with its
Slowly-rotating fan, and
across the street, visible
through the louvered door, a
huge black and white poster
ot Jesus Christ, seeming to
hold out his arms to glower-
ing Karl.
To be continued...

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