These days, I drink more Gin & Sodas than anything else. And I’ve got it down to a science.

It’s not really about quality ingredients. I have no doubt that a perfectly prepared gin & soda containing bathtub gin and no-name soda water is more palatable than a miserably prepared gin & soda made with Tanqueray No. TEN and a soda siphon. It’s in the process, not the product.

Based on my experience this recipe is perfect for scorching mid-days by a cold pool in the tropics, frigid nights in the dead of winter with or without a fireplace, before a massage, during a massage, after a massage, while reading Hemingway; Dickens; Kerouac; Hunter S.; Ayn Rand; Foster Wallace; National Geographic or watching films; good or bad. While thinking about your failed career(s) or dreaming up some new ill-fated venture. While in the driver’s seat, passenger’s seat or back seat. It goes best with electric company or profound loneliness. With food or without. Morning, afternoon and/or night. In either hemisphere. On any continent.

Two Years Of Drinking Beer In Panama

Jeff Campagna

Posted on June 11, 2013

Okay, a little over two years and whole lot more than beer — but this is a little goodbye note to Panama.

Of the four national beers in Panama (Panama, Balboa, Soberana & Atlas), the green-bottled namesake is by far the best.Though, I must admit, they all taste a bit like gutter-water and will leave you more bloated than drunk.

I’ve drank Panama underwater in bromine-soaked pools and I’ve drank it in the back seat of a Piper Cherokee Six while flying low over the Pearl Islands.

I’ve drank Panama at 7:00am in the stern of a rusted-out fishing panga with strange Panamanian fishermen while the burnt sun rose over endless waters. I’ve set a can down briefly while I reeled in a 25lbs Yellow Fin Tuna.

The Biomuseo: Gehry’s Take On The Future Of Architecture

Jeff Campagna

Posted on June 4, 2013

For isolationists and zombie-apocalypse fanboys, the future of architecture may mean buildings will resemble designer-fortresses, like The Safe House by Polish Architectural firm, KWK Promes. Impenetrable blocks of concrete plug up the windows, steel shutters come slamming down over the glass front door and a drawbridge entrance is hoisted up — and all this with the push of a single button.

To conservationists and green-libertarians, structures yet to come may take engineering cues from nature, like The Green School complex in Bali, Indonesia. Bamboo chalkboards, compost-toilets, cotton tents deployed to keep classrooms cool and water-vortexes that produce 8,000 watts of electricity, day and night, help to keep the complex off the grid.

A New Bohemian Philosophy

Jeff Campagna

Posted on May 24, 2013

The term ‘Bohemian’ calls to one’s mind images of tattered clothing, greasy hair, tangled beards, empty bottles of absinthe, typewriters with worn away letters and paint-splattered cold-water flats. Fingers yellow, eyes red and stomach empty, the Bohemian haunts seedy taverns, bargain diners and empty, moonlit cobble-stone streets where professionals leaving work, or fancy restaurants, cross to the other side so as to not brush their shoulders with a lower class. Those same professionals may appreciate the fruits of Bohemian labour in art galleries, on bookstore shelves or on stage at the theater, but they will always maintain a distance from the motley assortment of artists. But things have changed.

Gone are the days when forward thinking creative types sat idly in watered-down hangouts drinking watered-down coffee, stewing about their anti-everything notions.

Culture has changed. Business has changed. Before, Bohemians and businessmen walked on different sides of the same street, now they walk hand-in-hand in the middle of the road. This is a little theory I call: The New Bohemian Philosophy.

The New Bohemian is a software engineer, an inventor, a business magnate, a product designer, a record label or film studio executive. He is affluent and respected, followed and befriended. He is original, individual, professional and career oriented. He is not a social insurgent. He is not an anti-establishment rebel. He has packed up his nominal possessions and moved out of the low-class gypsy neighborhoods of the past and taken up residence in the sprawling estates of Newport Beach, the dapper townhouses of the Upper East Side and the summer haunts of Martha’s Vineyard. He has gone from wanderer to traveller.

Flowers But Fading Seen

Jeff Campagna

Posted on May 10, 2013

‘Son, come closer. There is something I have to give you. Closer still. That chair, pull it up, Son. It will seem like nothing at first but it is much, much more. There, that is better.’ These words were spoken, with considerable effort, by Howard Cromwell who laid upon his deathbed. Howard was not old but he was sick and so there was a tragic sort of cloud that hovered in the hospital room, lurking in the corners and upon the floor. It was the sort of cloud that came in without warning and sat heavy in the air. The sort of cloud that is remembered well by those who walked felt it. The sort of cloud that choked the lungs of Morey Cromwell who now sat alongside his father in a cold steel chair.
‘Dad, you are not supposed to talk. Nurse O’Brien has given you strict orders.’
‘Orders are rules and rules are for the living.’
‘You are still alive.’
‘Not in spirit, Morey, only in the flesh. But, I must give you something. I must stay focused. The case over there on top of the counter, can you grab it, yes, that one, open it, son’
The younger Cromwell removed from the old, vinyl briefcase a worn and tattered book. Along with it was a letter tinted yellow with age. Howard Cromwell looked on with strained delight as his son curiously flipped through the dusty pages. The volume was hard-covered and its jacket was a pale blue. On it was an image of a man and woman stooped with sadness and despair. Above the image read “A Farewell To Arms” and below it, in red, the author’s name: Ernest Hemingway. His fingers were not eager, his pace was not rushed, but young Cromwell’s hands stopped their fidgeting on certain pages where hand-written profanities were visible over black dashes. Upon realizing that his son had made this discovery Howard Cromwell’s eyes became brighter, his wilted posture bloomed and his weak heart began to race.

Fiction & Opinion by Jeff Campagna

The Perfect Gin & Soda

Jeff Campagna

Posted on June 28, 2013

Two Years Of Drinking Beer In Panama

Jeff Campagna

Posted on June 11, 2013

The Biomuseo: Gehry’s Take On The Future Of Architecture

Jeff Campagna

Posted on June 4, 2013

A New Bohemian Philosophy

Jeff Campagna

Posted on May 24, 2013

Flowers But Fading Seen

Jeff Campagna

Posted on May 10, 2013