Have you ever seen a guard look this elegant? I love how she wears red lipstick with her uniform.
感恩节 Feeling Grateful
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and on this one I am feeling incredibly grateful and fortunate to be in Shanghai doing what I love. I don’t take any of this for granted and hopefully can continue to live each day one at a time with an immense appreciation for my supportive family (my real family and my new family in Shanghai…you know who you are!) and friends.
I celebrated Thanksgiving at Boxing Cat Brewery. The food was delicious, I ate enough jalapeno cornbread stuffing to feed the Liberation Army. We washed it down with free flow of wine and heavy glasses of Boxing Cat’s own IPAs and pumpkin lagers.
I stepped outside to call my family in the South Carolina. Sure enough, they were going through the Hagerty Thanksgiving routine: my sister and dad were pulling fresh oysters from the muddy banks of Sand Creek at low-tide while our country house was being prepped for our extended family’s arrival with a fire blazing and cats snoozing (they commute from the city as well) while Macy’s parade played as background music. Just as I started to feel the pangs of homesickness, I said goodbye to my mom and pulled out my camera to take these pics. I returned inside to join them in celebrating my first Thanksgiving away from home and realized how grateful I should be feeling every single day.
SSF Spotlight: Allez les Bleus, Electro Night
“Excuuse meee, argh youehh Freh-hench?”
“No, I’m from the United States. Why?”
“Oh, pardon mee, nevermind. I am hosteeng a Freh-hench parhtee wiz onleee zee Freh-hench muzeec so I zink youeh will not like to make deez parhtee.”
I am not sure which is worse, my attempt at French phonetics or DJ Raph’s self-introduction. When I first met him at Bar Rouge’s French Decadence party I was very put off by his blatant discrimination against American taste in music, but after hearing about his passion for music, I began to understand.
DJ Raph is not like the other Shanghai DJs who hover over Macbooks under blacklights and seamlessly blend tracks or mixup beats like GirlTalk and MSTRKRFT. In fact, he is rather old-fashioned, even outmoded (he prefers compact discs over laptops). But what Raph lacks in technology he makes up for with his undying zeal for zee muzeec, particularly zee Freh-hench muzeec.
“I’m not playing for myself. I’m playing for the people. My passion is to share the music with everyone and help them create memories.” According to Raph, his role as a DJ is not to spin, mix and recreate music into something new; rather, he simply wants to play what people love to hear. This Saturday at Not Me, he will play what French people want to hear: a Toure de France Music of quintessential French pop, rock and electronic from the 70s to today.
Raph was right. As an American, I don’t know much about French music, so I asked him to tell me his Top Five favorite essential songs from France.
1. Daft Punk “Around the World.”
2. Indochine “L’Aventurier”
3. Telephone “Ca C’est Vraiment Toi”
4. Claude Francois “Alexandrie-Alexandra”
5. William Sheller “Un Homme Heureaux”
上海街头时尚On the Street: People’s Square
My love affair with the classic peacoat ended in middle school, but I really like the dramatic look of the over-sized hood and lapels on her otherwise traditional coat. Even from the opposite end of People’s Square, her intriguing silhouette caught my eye.
