Inside an old key-cutting shop on a quiet residential street in the Villa Urquiza neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Nico Fernández and Luis Murillo are intently watching a sixty-five liter copper still. Inside, a potent maceration of wormwood, herbs, and alcohol slowly bubbles its way up the neck of the still and then onwards through the long, copper pipeline to freedom. This is the distillery of Los Tigres de la Ira. They’re making absinthe, and it’s illegal. Like, really illegal.
Fiction & Opinion by Jeff Campagna
Posts by Jeff Campagna
“Walter Gropius,” I say to the doorman who looks a bit like Mike Ehrmantraut from Breaking Bad. We’re standing in a dark, closet-sized antechamber just off a quiet street in Palermo Hollywood, Buenos Aires. Outside, there is a big black door with a discreet sign that reads, simply, “Franks.” Satisfied with the password, Mike Ehrmantraut nods his head for me to proceed into the next room. “Adelante,” he whispers. In the next room stands a beautiful woman in a black dress with a pearl necklace and Ferrari-red lips. This is Victoria. Behind her, at the back of the dark room, is an old NYC telephone booth. Victoria gives me a cliff-notes history on speakeasies and then tells me that when the phone rings I…
Tie Your Camel First — Visiting The Eight Billionth Person On Earth
Jeff Campagna
Posted on January 22, 2014
I’ve never liked the Islamic world. For no reason other than I can’t relate to the lifestyle. I enjoy alcohol, recreational drug use, a hearty political debate and gawking at beautiful women. Here, in the somehow-still-ancient Muslim city of Marrakech, these simple pleasures are out of the question. Liquor is not sold anywhere. Drug dealers are perfectly camouflaged. Freedom of speech is a myth, and women, gorgeous or ghastly, are covered up like statutes in museum basements. It’s simply impossible for a self-indulgent, mid-21st-century journalist to feel at home here. It’s a bit like rehab. Shortly after arriving at the hotel my wife and I make love. During which, the haunting calls to prayer begin rolling out over the twisted durbs from the scattered…
It’s the morning after. I’m leaning against the antique pastry showcase in Pasticceria Caffè Pirona. I’m still a little shaky from last night’s drinking. There’s a framed picture of James Joyce on the wall, hung proudly. He was a regular here. In the mornings, on his way to work, he would stop in for a couple glasses of red wine and some presnitz, an eye-wateringly sweet Triestine pastry. Rumor has it Joyce even wrote some of, or conceived the idea for, or sketched out parts of his masterpiece, Ulysses, in this very cafe. Of course, no one really knows. But like Joyce and many a literary-tourist before me, I am here, eating presnitz and drinking red wine for breakfast.
It’s the day after Christmas in Slovenia and it’s unusually mild for this time of year. It’s a balmy nine degrees accompanied by a springtime-like drizzle of rain. Perfect weather for driving into the middle of former Yugoslavia for an interview and a few cold beers. Obrežje is a small settlement in eastern Slovenia and by eight in the evening, the village is quiet and glowy and glistening from the rain. On the eastern edge of Obrežje is a sleepy little border crossing into Bregana, Croatia. And right smack dab on that borderline is Kalin Tavern and Inn—a quaint 180-year-old establishment that is awkwardly straddling the two former Yugoslavian republics.