Meet the artists in their natural habitat

Sunday, October 17, 2010
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Yesterday it was a day spent with my hosting family. Basically, the day was composed of visiting the Open Studios, a typical Boston experience, they say. What's this all about? Well, there are a couple of condominiums in the bay area, owned exclusively by artists, may they be painters, photographers, sculptors, playwrights, actors, whatever. The flats are available at one tenth of the retail price, but exclusively for artists, and they are awarded only to the best ones, based on talent and work. Likewise, a typical $1M waterfront condo can be acquired for $100k!

The Open Studios is a series of events throughout the year when certain artists of a flat complex open their doors, hang their paintings on the wall, put pricetags on them and welcome the visitors . Actually, I was pretty impressed with the size of the crowd visiting this event, as you could imagine in Romania, for instance, nobody would attend, except for your brother and your mother. Not here. All ages and ethnic groups are well represented. Actually when we talked in one studio in usual Hungarian, the artist, otherwise bearing a completely American name, just started to chat in Hungarian :) He turned to be from Canada with Hungarian ancestors.

I've never been to such an event before and I really enjoyed it. This way you can really have a picture about how artists conceive and create their artwork. The photgrapher's flats were the finest, in my opinion, as they all had a distinct personality, select lightning, fine wallpapers and feel - nonetheless, they were used as studios as well. I also found a couple of flats where styles were mixing in an inharmonic manner e.g. rustique with modern. The studios I liked the most were old fashioned apartment style arrangements with dark wooden cherry or mahogany floors, warm colored walls and mood lighting . Typically these artitsts did not even bother to make order in their flat and were engaged in work while the visitors were perambulating and that was so cool, it gave fidelity to the whole concept. This setting was characteristic to painters using classic methods and some sculptors. Another arrangement I liked was the modern, spacious and glossy, mondane environment - typical of photo studios. Actually there were a couple of big names, working with celebrities like Rihanna or Jay-Z. This is Boston, no surpirse :p - however they tell that this place is only third to NYC and LA in terms of famed artist per square meter.

After that we went for a dinner with the family. We chose a typical American sports bar.
Oh, I found out some things about American sports:

The four big names are football, baseball, hockey and basketball, in that order. There are also motorsports, for the poor and uneducated.
 
There are just a few (~10) football matches a year and the major leage tickets are practically unavailable for regular mortals . They say that certain families have been owing most of the tickets for decades and they regurarly pass them on through generations. In the very unlikely situation of a blank spot comming up, the price will be we unimaginably high. The football players are the biggest sports stars, especially the quarterbacks. The New England Patriots are the bostonian NFL team, having won three Super Bowls in 2000's.

Baseball players, on the other hand, are workers. Almost every day there's a baseball match. The Red Sox are the most supported team troughout the country. In 2004 they managed to win the league after almost a century. There's a huge rivalization going on between the Red Sox and the New York Yankees. Practically everyone, who's not a Yankee fan hates the Yankees and most of them support the Red Sox, when it comes down to it. I've seen cute tees in the market reading "I support two teams: The Red Sox and who ever beats the Yankees". Major league tickets are veeery diffucult to get and they are pricy as hell - $50 and up, even thousands for a Yankees match .

The Basketball team is the Celtics and they are doing quite well in the NBA, cracking the title in 2008. The Hockey players call themselves Bruins.The last time they won the Stanley Cup was in 72.

So we dined at a sports bar and I ordered traditional American Burgers. We also had nachos as an appetizer. What can I say, yes, it was a burger, well done, bravo, but practically every typical fastfood hamburger in central Kolozsvár is waay better and it doesn't cost $14 either.

In the evening we went to a party with a couple of Hungarian speaking friends for a party, like a real student party, in Camdbridge. Whoooa!

That was badass. Or maybe bad, ass.. Hát az általános iskolás "sulibulik" meg "Mikulás bulik" ehhez képest fergetegesek voltak, háttal verték ezt a bulit :p Ok, maybe we didn't drink enough, only a couple of beers. Whatever, it was kind of a retro party with music mainly for the seventies and eighties . The people were just crazy. They were dancing like in the movies, literally. You had to keep a distance of at least 1 meter (that's 3 feet for those, who don't understand :)))) because of the "excercises" the chaps were doing. Just like the guy in the Evolution of Dance video. Crazy. It was a pleasant surprise to see elderly people as well. I bet they were like the "dean of harvard" in the usual setting :p But they were having fun and that's what matters, cheers you up too. But there were very strange guys as well. At one moment I thought Elvis has resurrested himself and came down for a shake.Or that one, were yakuza-ishly looking chap, might stab me in the back any minute..

I 've seen not one pretty girl. Even when I stopped qualifying by their ethnicity, it turned out that are either obese or anorexic. They were wearing clothes which our girls would were at home, alone, in the darkness, when nobody is seeing them, or in the best case as pajamas.. No traces of glamour, glitter, party feeling or strechy clohting were are used to at home .. And these poor guys get floor drunk from two .33 beers...

Every place closes at two, smoking's prohibited inside (I support that) and you can't get your beer out to the street. Nonetheless the place is crowded but in a way hardly comparable to a typical HuliBuli :p Only two restrooms, damen un herren mixed! That would be America, the crown of civilization? This restroom pattern is also charateristic of pubs, by the way..

I bet that there definitely are far more awesome private and fraternity parties, we just made the wrong choice. However they said that there might be a few more clubs, the number's certainly under 5.

Just a sec, let me check my flight. OK, it's on time and I'm at the good gate.

The trains stop at 0:30, so taxi was the only way of transportation home. I think only the driver was more pleased than me to arrive safely at the specified destination .. And he spoke hardly digestable Indian English, donanderstond? which strit? name ovo strit? whew.. But he was a good guy eventually.

So if you can hold on to one advice, this is it: Don't you ever think that European parties are bad. They are etalon, atom, beton, zsÍr, dominator, amitakarsz. De tényleg.

 
The other day was my last in Boston. I thought I would go for a walk in the suburbs, through the alleys of satellite city Newton, where I was living. I learned that Newton is the most expensive part of the whole United States, yes, including Manhattan, Beverly Hills and Forest Hill of San Francisco, and a great many of celebrities live here. The city is very wide spread and the parcels are quite large.

The region's a very beautiful, calming and charming one. The typical American house has at least two floors, a basement, a garage, a front garden and it's plated with horizontal wooden stripes . They don't have fences of any type, rarely a hedge. Likewsie the whole picture of the city is very warm and welcoming, every door seems to be open in front of you, which is not essentially the case, however, but they are more open-minded and more welcoming than we are, that's for sure. Vast green areas and trees keep the air and the atmosphere fresh and cool. One interesting thing I noticed is that cars parked in front of the mansions were mostly European models. I tend to believe (or dream :p) that the inhabitants are well paid, educated, European people, who are civilized enough no to drive a truck (just to clarify: no offense for truckdrivers here, I meant pick-up truck, typically reffered to just as "truck" in American English):) Actually, the whole area, including Boston, had a large number of small European cars. That's not the case in the South, where only trucks and SUVs can be seen, even in the metropolitan areas.
 
Halloween is knocking on the door, so you can imagine that evey house had at least an army of pumpkins, big spiders and skulls guarding it . Every lawn is so well maintained, the houses are in top notch condition, everything is beautifully arranged and at it's place. Estethically just a few mansions loll out and disturb the view. I don't have any idea about the price of such a mansion, but inferring from talks I had with my hosts and other people, I estimate certain houses' value to be somewhere around the millions, approaching the double digits...

Today's stroll was a very pleasing and relaxing experience, and America scored a strong positive point for me. 

Coming up with a review and conclusions on Budapest.

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