The sound of victory; Spain wins the 2010 FIFA trophy and the city is awash with celebration.

We are now living in Barceloneta in our newly renovated (and painted) attic apartment near the beach, so I will resume this blog with this one little soundscape of a special moment in time captured. The horn sounds are all the cruise ships and yachts tooting their collective horns. VIVA ESPAÑA!

It was an amazing day actually – earlier in the day there was a peaceful but vibrant march that started at the bottom of our street in Gracia:

As soon as the FIFA game started, all these people disappeared into bars, homes, anywhere with a TV to watch the game. Not only did Catalunya win some autonomous rights, but then Spain went on to win the world cup, so it was a double victory in my neighborhood.

1) My Spot 2) Surf’s up on our beach today!

There are many parallels to when we lived on the beach in Malibu; for example, in Paradise Cove the sun rises from the ocean, and this same thing happens here. Also, in Paradise Cove they were often filming TV or movies on the beach – same here. But here there is also the Venice Beach element to the Boardwalk; lots of serene old people as well as a few grumpy ones, but for the most part the elderly here appear to be very happy. Lots of young people live here too, which is refreshing. There is definitely an active scene.

In June, 2008 I did a blog called Anything Goes Beach, which incidentally is my most read blog because I describe the nonchalantly naked people on the beach, including a one legged man we fondly refer to as “Stumpy”.

I was curious how the opening of the new Hotel W would affect the human flora and fauna of Anything Goes beach, with the brand new boardwalk and all. Now I know; On my early morning bike rides to Hotel W (something that would have been impossible last year, with no boardwalk) I observe elderly naked men jogging proudly along that beach, which is host to the historic Club de Natacion.

1) Historic Club de Natacio 2) Iconic Hotel W is now next door to it.

This morning on my bike ride I saw Stumpy out there, smiling, standing totally naked with the help of his crutch thing, setting up his spot on the sand. Although this time of year and especially at this hour, there are few people other than the surfers or the odd batch of tourists plus a few duos of all night partiers out on the beach, the stalwart Catalan proud, elderly and naked contingent is holding its own. I expect nothing will change at all. Many of these people are members of Club Natacion and have been for 40 or 50 years and have been skinny dipping in these waters with their families since time immemorial. Catalans are a very stubborn culture, so I doubt the scene here will change anytime soon.

Where our apartment attico is located seems to be slowly but thoroughly undergoing a complete upgrade because we have the Olympic Port right there plus the new very pricey Hotel W, which is pervasive in most of my photos because it is on one end of our beach and its so big you cannot miss it.

Today is Sunday and I am sitting in my spot, which has just a wedge of a perfect slice of view. Lots of windsurfers, ferries, sailboats, zodiac powerboats, fancy ocean liners all go right through my little slice of a view. I am transfixed and fascinated by what passes through my little slice of eternity. From the palm tree, to the waves breaking on shore (with people walking or running by on the beach), from the boats et al zipping by to the horizon and infinite skies, which in themselves become more fascinating on a cloudy day – to the panni (clothes) ubiquitously blowing in the breeze off every balcony here. I down onto the (narrow) street and could robably almost shake hands with the person across the street if they were there. When I look down I can see the guy we call “Mr. Underpants” because he comes out on his balcony every morning in his white underwear and stretches blythely – and then he and looks down around below him, stands in the sun. And I see a the young woman sunbathing on her roof terrace below me, red bra and roled up turqoise bermuda shorts – she is texting into her cell phone or maybe playing a game… I love that I can people watch without ever setting foot on the street.

Surf’s up!

Here is a description of Barceloneta I found on the internet:

La Barceloneta is a neighborhood in the Ciutat Vella district of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The neighborhood was constructed during the 18th century for the residents of the Ribera neighborhood who had been displaced by the construction of the Ciudadela of Barcelona. The neighborhood is roughly triangular, bordered by the Mediterranean Sea, the Muelle de España of Port Vell and the El Born neighborhood. The neighborhood is serviced by its own stop on the Barcelona metro.

Amongst the attractions on Barceloneta’s beach are German artist Rebecca Horn’s ‘Homenatge a la Barceloneta’ monument, and, where the beach gives way to the Port Olimpic, Frank Gehry’s modern ‘Peix d’Or’ sculpture.

Here are a couple shots of the Peix D’Or. It is at the other end of my beach:

Gehry’s Peix D’Or sculpture adds to the eccentric skyline of Playa San Sebastian

Peix D’Or – whimsical shot plus one taken from the pier.

Where we are situated physically is at the head of the triangle described in the wikipedia insert above, so we have the beach on one side and the port on the other side, with a row of buildings separating us on each side. On the beach side, when our neighbor opens his window we can see the beach through his windows, like a movie within a movie, and across the street on the port side there are some old fashioned reformas going on, with one guy hanging on to the other guy’s leg so he doesn’t fall down onto the street.

1) View of sea through neighbor’s windows across the street beach side 2) Old fashion manual reformas in the aprtments across the street located over a fish restaurant on the port side

Barceloneta is in a state of upgrade. On the one hand you can see the places being bought up by affluent people taking advantage of some good deals going down during the current global crisis. They remodel the tiny 35 square meter apartments, often combining 2 apartments into one. On the other hand you have the stubborn Catalan families, of the “I Yam what I Yam” school of thought who live in tiny 30 meter apartments, often keeping their doors and/or windows open so when you walk by you really get an eyeful, reminds me of a Brueghel painting , elderly women in house dresses, men in pants and old fashioned undershirt, slipper/shoes. But there is a healthy third contingent – the youth hostel generation twenty-something backpackers, some of them renting tiny apartments, others simply staying at the hostel on the beach. There are always skateboards, bikes, rollerblades and everything in between gliding down our freshly paved boardwalk.

1) Mark tries out his new skateboard. 2) A typical bicing station to check a bike out or return one. These stations are ubiquitous, especially in Barceloneta

There are lots of tourists on weekends and holidays, and I believe all summer. The place is certainly hopping with life. I wish the remodel wasn’t happening so soon, but then again, its great to get it over with. If all goes according to plan we should have our place ready to go by June, maybe sooner. Meanwhile I’m getting our money’s worth by staying here until the work begins… The dogs don’t seem to mind. Mark has to go back to Gracia (our studio etc.) to work a couple mornings a week, for example he has to go back tomorrow and probably won’t come back until Tuesday). But technically, our reformas have begun in that our glass doors were delivered today, two big guys hoofing them up our six flights of steps… The door frames came the old fashioned way; they were foisted up the side of the building.

1) Mark basking in the sun before heading back to Gracia 2) Our door frames arrive, on a rope, from the street and up the side of our building and over the balcony.

Here’s a home video of the rope pulling up our door frame:

Of course, we’ll see how my love affair with this place continues with all the seasons to come, but I have a feeling we might move here – we’re talking about refinancing our Gracia place so we pay a lower mortgage and then renting it out. That’s our line of thought. If we can hang on to Gracia a few more years we would stand to make more money in the resale. Meanwhile we’d keep our “rented” Partners in Rhyme store in Gracia and just commute. It really is an easy, pleasant bus ride… We’ll see how things play out, but judging by how I am reluctant to leave this place here at the beach, (Mark loves it here too) and depending on a satisfactory outcome to the remodel, my heart has certainly relocated here, for i am essentially a Malibu gal and this is the closest I’ve felt to complete bliss since living in a cabaña on the beach in Paradise Cove.

Meanwhile, I have 2 more nights here before the reformas begin and the whole family relocates to Gracia for a spell.

1) cin cin 2) my spot, when seen from below and at night looks like a bordello. We plan to keep that look.

I leave you with a reggae track I wrote and recorded recently back in our studio in Gracia. (It is a rough mix and still needs some guitar.) I have 12 others going into a reggae collection to sell through Partners in Rhyme

I have been staying here in Barceloneta for almost a week now – we came out a couple days before Easter and although Mark had to go “home” to Gracia to take care of some business, I have been here all week and with luck Mark will rejoin us later this evening. We bought a traditional chocolate cake in the form of a house and shoe and 3 days later we are still munching on it:

1) Hard to choose which one. 2) We ended up with chocolate shoe house with 2 dogs and easter chickies

Easter here in Barcelona begins a few days before Palm Sunday. Before I write in the present tense of where I am now, sitting in my writing spot on the beach I will share a few images of palm leaf products for sale for Palm Sunday:

I love these delicate icons, hand made from palm leaves and very traditional. I bought one for good luck.

More Palm Sunday products,

candy, candy, more candy… plus a Catalan vendor of palm leaf products

Okay, I’m free to blog about where I am, here and now. I can actually hear the ocean surf from my spot, and view sailboats, windsurfers, ocean liners as well as people who walk by my little slice of beach, not to mention the seagulls. The aural landscape is fantastic, soothing, takes me back to my days of living on the beach in Malibu. The fresh ocean fragrance is also envigorating.

1) This is Mark’s “work station” on his side of the house. 2) Mark enjoying a few moments basking in the glow of “my” spot before heading back to Gracia Partners In Rhyme headquarters to do more thorough work than is possible from his laptop in the sun

It’s fun getting to know Barcelona from yet another point of view. With my bicing card I can grab a bike at any nearby station and pedal with Quixote alongside to wherever I want. Sometimes I’ll check the bike in at a station at a beach too far to easily walk to, then I’ll throw sticks on the beach for my dog, and then check out another bike to ride home to our piso attico in Barceloneta. The 6 flights of stairs to our funky attic are getting easier to scale by the day.Once our remodelling begins I/we will be forced to stay in Gracia again, so we’re trying to get the maximum enjoyment before the reformas begin.

some photos from riding bikes around my new neighborhood and nearby beaches with my dog Quixôte.

1) View of our beach from below Hotel W – you can even see the ugly building that blocks our view. 2) View of our beach from beach below the Geary fish sculpture

One of my favorite easy bike ride destinations is the Hotel W, which I find imminently photogenic and intriguing from all angles.

1) Shot from below and close up 2) Neon lit view from our beach at night

Hotel W on a cloudy day; I love how the clouds reflect off the building.

In my new capacity as Barceloneta tour guide I like to take my Catalan friends to see the Hotel W up close, because its a different experience than one imagines.

Jordi and Sol were our first visitors from Gracia. We walked to Hotel W, where I posed them in front of the skull graffiti on the hotel breakwaters.

Yesterday I rode my bike through a nearby park and came upon what appeared to be a graffiti overpass of some sort. I rode to the top, optimistic that it might be a short-cut to the zoo or to CIutadella Park, but instead it ends abruptly – how very bizarre! The cool thing is that it is an aural vortex, and it seems like all sounds converge there. I could hear a live circus band, a boat bellow and what sounded like zoo noises, all the sounds separated as if on different audio channels. Surprisingly I could not hear the cars whizzing by on the street below me. I will go back with my NAGRA audio recorder in the future … what a weird find.

Graffiti bridge… to nowhere!

This morning was overcast, balmy, breezy with big waves. I took the dogs down for their early morning walk and although my iPhone camera reduces the surfers to mini pixel size, there are actually scores of surfers out there..

Surf’s up!

Lunch for 1 in my spot plus 2 dogs lurking in my room (off to the side).

I finish today’s blog with two Happy Easter photos; one of Mark in his room camping out on an air mattress with the dogs, the other of a nice sand sculpture taken on Easter Sunday:

1) Love in the Ruins. 2) Happy Easter! (Feliz Pascua)

We recently bought a “fixer upper” attico piso located in a great spot in Barceloneta, so my blogs will be from a new point of view of my adopted city. Although we plan to keep Gracia as our home base, we bought this steal of a piso simply for the location and for the affordability . At 149 thousand euros, the price was half the going rate of most pisos in Barceloneta. And we could fulfill our goal in the process of having a little slice of sun or “trocito de sol” as they say here.

It has several real drawbacks, the most obvious being there is no elevator so its a 6 floor climb to the top and the second being that although we are in an ideal spot, our view of the ocean is obstructed in all but one spot. Here is a photo of our one view of the ocean so you can see how close we actually are:

View from our new beach shack using a zoom lens

We have been living in Gracia for three years now, and charming as the neighborhood is, it doesn’t have much sun. By buying this little fixer upper, we now have our little place in the sun. My life has suddenly become even more magical.

Although my cadaver gloves make it hard to see, in these photos taken March 5, we got the keys to our new piso and I dangle them for the camera, with Mark and then with the realtors who sold us the place.

The first thing we needed to do was replace the water heater so we can at least spend the night there, as is. We hired our friend of 15 years, Isi. He came in, replaced the water heater, gave us a great estimate for the work to be done, which involves knocking down walls, adding window doors with electric persiana blinds. He’ll move a wall too, as well as moving the water heater outside. He will do the whole job with his comañero, Jose for six thousand euros which includes the windows and doors. I sure hope he’ll accept some tips, because his estimate is really low and he is a very thorough and reliable worker.

Before I go on, here are some before photos of the labyrinthian 50 meter piso attico – before we start knocking down walls and adding window doors to the decks, replacing the existing windows.
These shots are not of all the rooms, but you get the idea…

Rosalia and Albino are the elderly Catalan couple from whom we bought our place. Although they lived there for 30 years and raised 3 kids there, it now looks like a mad scientist labaratory, as evidenced in the above thumbnails.

1) This will become the master bedroom, with a glass door instead of a window. 2) The glass door will lead onto this sunny balcony.

This is the first wall to get a hole punched it, a defining moment that our reformas have already begun.

Our reformas team are intense, capable, efficient

When our team took its 3 hour lunch break I took a bike ride with my dog while Mark lounged and napped in the sun. One of the things I love about Barcelona is the socialist Bicing bicycle stations placed everywhere. For 25€ a year I am able to bike around the city by simply swiping my card at any station and then riding off wherever I might want to go. Bicing stations have become ubiquitous. There is one at the end of our street in Barceloneta. Quixote and I wnet for a ride, direction Geary golden fish sculpture. There was a bicing station near there, so I turned in my bike and went for a walk along the beach with my puppy. After about a half hour of that I checked out another bike and headed in the direrction of the new Hotel W. As it were, there is a brand new paved walkway and a convenient bicing station at the end, so I again checked in my bike and proceeded to explore the grounds of the new Hotel W Barcelona.

Hotel W seen from my boardwalk, then explored up close by foot

1) My dog is a natural poser, but here in this close-up you can see his real feelings 2) That’s my tiny dog posing on that W!

The grounds of the Hotel W feel Olympian and I am one of the few who think it is a wonderful exhibit of grande architecture. It gives a fresh point of view from which to look at Barcelona, the enchantress city.

What we have bought into with all this, is the lifestyle. Our place is modest and here the ugly truth that obstructs our view. If it weren’t for this one building we would have a great beach view:

1) the big, ugly building which obstructs our sea view. 2) Our beach, as seen from as soon as we descend and walk a half block.

Our immediately reality, even as a fixer upper we are enjoying the experience of owning a slice of heaven. Here’s a self portrait with iPhone plus one of Mark and Quixôte relaxing in the sun.

1) The Barceloneta Beach lifestyle suits us 2) The place already has a nice, big bathroom which is in fact one of the nicest rooms in the place.

We plan to spend Easter in our new Love Shack.

It never snows in Barcelona. I hear the last time it snowed was 25 years ago. So when we woke up on Monday, May 8 it was a drizzly day, so we set about our morning errands with umbrellas. It was so chilly I mentioned in passing to Mark, “if it drops another 3 degrees we’ll see snow,” never for a moment thinking this would actually happen. About 10 a.m the first flurries started falling. People everywhere looking up, in wonderment.

THIS IS A LITTLE MOVIE WE THREW TOGETHER WITH MY NEW VIDEO CAMERA.

Barcelona being hit with a huge snowstorm covering the streets and people with a blanket of white and bringing the kids out to play, some of whom have never seen the snow in their lives.

This new dress shop was once filled with everything from household cleaning products, cosmetics, to rat poison.

The tienda (store) next door to our house was a uniform supply outlet called “Climax”. They had been in business in the same space for 2 generations. It was a company that sold helmets, gloves, workers gear, uniforms. When workers began to get laid off, the domino effect was that their products were no longer in demand. Mark and I were able to take advantage of living next door, as the lady whose father had established the business over 50 years ago, liked us and helped us lease the space for under 400 euros a month, which is quite a steal, even in the recession. Here is a photo of the store we took over with its old sign, and next to it the same store, but now it is our Partners in Rhyme headquarters. We are part of the tipping point in Gracia…

1) Climax uniform shop goes under 2) to be replaced by the new Partners In Rhyme sign 3) Mark at his desk at the new Partners In Rhyme storefront 4) We had this Florentine “giglio” painted on our security door.

Paquita, the namesake of a store on the corner of Plaça Villa de Gracia, closed shop because after working there over 30 years the lease on the space was up because they doubled the price to renew her store lease. She is entitled to her “jubilacion” (paid retirement), so she is now looking forward to her freedom. She lives in Gracia, has many friends already in retirement here, and is not sad to let go of her shop. Although I always found the outfits in her store to be dowdy, she catered to all the elderly who still reside in Gracia and I’ve always appreciated the charm of this. I am now speaking Catalan, and she tells me in Catalan that she always watches me throwing sticks for my dog in the Plaça and has admired how well behaved my perrito is. She says she will still come to the plaça for some sun, and looks forward to seeing me there.

1) Modes Paquita has been a fixture on the corner of Plaça Rius y Taulet (recently renamed Plaça Vila de Gracia) 2) Paquitas 3/4 liquidated 3) You can see Paquita herself at the counter of her empty shop 4) The store is now vacant.

Gracia is starting to turn “piho” (upscale). Here’s a nice car parked on our street but also a homeless man just 2 blocks away:

Many of the tiny multi-generational shops are going under, which is sad because they were part of the fabric of this neighborhood.

Here are some more photos of various shops in my neighborhood in a state of liquidation:

I’m going to miss Casa Mas Joan Alimentacion Supermarket and liquor locker. I’ll be curious to see who takes over this big space.

This shop is also a corner store on Plaça Vila de Gracia. It used to sell “trastos” (knick knacks) and used furniture. I am curious what products this new “La Moda” store will sell.

Some more nearby shops in a state of change:

Some more shops in a state of transition

Many quaint businesses in my neighborhood have survived the times though, so fortunately, the charm of this district is intact. In the future I will dedicate another blog to my neighborhood, Gracia, and how vibrant and traditional it remains despite the slow morph from a fiercely Catalan neighborhood to a slightly more tolerant, multi-generational barrio.

I switched to my NAGRA (digital audio recorder) for the actual blast, which in reality took out all the electricity in the house and scared the sh_t out of me:

The audio of the explosion of egg bursting in microwave.

Now, as many of you who know me personally are aware, one of the first songs I wrote decades ago was called “Microwave Babies”.

I “just happen” to have a LIVE performance of that song, performed by the band Visiting Kids (I am playing keyboards in the left back corner of the stage) which I share with you because – it all ties in.

(Today’s blog is a bit silly, but I promise, my next one will tackle a serious topic about the effects of global crisis in my neighborhood here in Barcelona…)