Hey good people, just back from Cuba. What a trip, literally and figuratively.
America and Cuba have had our issues in the past. Cuban Missile Crisis, anyone?
In Cuba, they call the Cuban Missile Crisis, “The Missile Crisis.” Really.
But as good as we are at holding grudges here in the USA (see: 61+ year embargo that is still in effect), the Cubans have pro-level skills in this arena.
Witness El Capitolo, the Cuban capitol building in Havana. Built to resemble the Capitol Building in Washington D.C., it was designed to be 1 meter taller.
Our Capitolio is bigger than your capitolio.
Ha ha ha! So politics is just a penis measuring contest after all.
Speaking of which, check out the U.S. Embassy in Havana:
Pole-itics.
Back when George W. Bush was President, he had an electronic scrolling message board which relayed messages/propaganda to the Cuban people.
The Cuban government of course did not appreciate this. As the old saying goes, snitches get stitches. In this case, Cuba stitched together 150 large black flags and ran them up a sea of flagpoles they erected right outside the US Embassy. This served three purposes: block the people’s view of the messages; block the US Embassy’s view of the ocean; engage in some serious 149-upmanship.
Now that things are a little better and the island nation seems to be opening up a little more, both the messages and the flags are gone. The Cubans have left the flagpoles up, however, which now looks very modern artsy.
The times, they are a-changin’.
So much so, that there is even a statue of John Lennon in Havana.
John and Yokel.
Fidel Castro had banned The Beatles’ music back in the 1960’s, proclaiming it, “vulgar consumerism.” He later (almost 40 years later) changed his tune and dedicated this statue and park in John Lennon’s name.
But here’s a fun factoid, the glasses Bronze Lennon is wearing are made of glass.
When you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out?
Turns out that originally the statue had bronze glasses, but people kept breaking them off and melting down the metal for their own purposes.
So now, the government has the woman in the background hold on to these removable pair of glasses and place them on when tourists want a photo. And she makes the same amount as a doctor does every month because Communism.
And as you’ve probably heard, because of the embargo, the only American cars you’ll see there are old classics, like this 1947 DeSoto I’m pretending to drive:
Havana looks like Mr. Miyagi’s garage.
Yo, don’t hate the player, hate the game.
There are tons more shots of Cuba and of the many classic cars I saw over on my Instagram. CLICK HERE to go take a look. Then go see Havana for yourself before they Starbucks and McDonald’s it to death.