Dubai Appetizer

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The first thing I have to say about Dubai is nothing at all.  I can barely lift my jaw up off the ground long enough to form coherent sentences.  I've just had a brief and oh so shallow introduction to one of the most mesmerizing places I've ever laid eyes upon.  One minute I was speeding along an empty desert highway, and the next the sun was blotted out by a cloud of fascinating brand new buildings, each with a unique artistic flair.  Before I know it I'm gazing out the window of a Starbucks at a couple of camels strolling down a beautiful beach next to the palm tree-shaped island (known as The Palm).  The distinctive salmon pink Atlantis resort looms in the distance along with the sailboat shaped Burj al Arab.  Replete with a helipad extending from the side of the building, the Burj is purported to be the best hotel in the world.  A Lamborghini is parked on the street, and a completely burqa clad woman (five feet behind her husband) walks by a blonde woman seated outside who could easily pass for a Swedish supermodel.  Where the hell am I?

The area I find myself in is known as The Walk, a roughly mile-and-a-half long stretch of apartments, hotels, and condos that line the beach near the Dubai Marina.  There are 6 Starbucks located in the immediate area, so that none of the residents departing from one of their many towers has to travel too far for their morning hit.  If there are any residents, that is.  It might be Monday, but I don't get the impression that the applications to live here are piling up.  The street that parallels the beach is lined with cafes and boutique shops, some of them western and some not.  They range from Starbucks, Boots pharmacy, and Subway to upscale Japanese and Lebanese restaurants.  To my surprise, I found a Tiffinbites, one of my favorite places to get Indian food in London.  The staff is, I think, Filipino, as are many of the food service industry personnel here.  The fresh naan and Karahi chicken make for the best meal I've had in months.  As the day progresses, I realize that The Walk is the epitome of "New Dubai," the area west of the more historic creek area.  It's as if Manhattan we know it was being built all at once.  People live here, but the whole place has an "under construction" feel to it, not just physically, but also in terms of its economic and social development.  I can't help but wonder how many of the expensive stores here are managing to tread water.  Furthermore, its hard to imagine the tiny army of multinational residents here harboring any civic pride or belonging to many local groups.  Before I can think on these things for too long, I'm whisked away to a place even more superficial, unreal, and yet altogether intoxicating.

The Dubai Mall sits several miles east of the marina, closer to the historic center of Dubai, but still in another world altogether.  En route, we pass by and endless sea of construction.  South Asian immigrants are hard at work trimming hedges and operating cranes.  Some dangle from the sides of the monstrous towers, rushing at their work.  One moment, we pass by a large building bearing a propagandized poster of the Prime Minister of the U.A.E. and Emir of Dubai, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.  The next moment, we pass by brand new Microsoft and Cysco Systems office buildings.  Where the hell am I?  

 The 44,000 square foot mall is colossal and feels like its own 4 floored city.  It houses four hotels, a cinema, and a cutting edge arcade.  Stores are grouped together, with all of the furniture stores next to each other, the women's fashion stores co-located, etc.  The Gold Souk, a mall within the mall, tries to add a back-alley middle eastern feel to a mall defined by its luxury western attractions (Louis Vuitton, Prada, Cartier and the like).  A multi-story aquarium, complete with a shark tunnel, graces an entire wall inside the mall.  As I walked by, enjoying my Italian gelato, scuba diving vacationers explored the aquarium's reefs as schools of exotic fish dashed by.  Further along, a group of people whisk by on the professional size ice skating rink.  After exploring the lower level and eating at a high quality Italian restaurant I head outside where I'm greeted by the Burj Khalifah, the world's tallest building by far at 2,717 ft tall.  It dominates a mini-lake that is also enclosed by the mall and and Arabesque market selling Pashminas, rugs, and other touristy trinkets.  At sundown the fountains come alive, and columns of water dance to Arab music in a style similar to that of the famous Bellagio fountain. Incense and perfume permeate the air, adding to the city's intoxicating effect.  Before I know it I'm whisked away, and my nascent love affair with this dream world is cut short.

I know my introduction to Dubai is just that; a superficial, shallow, and unrepresentative encounter with a tiny slice of the reality.  But what a potent encounter it has been.  The experience is tempered by the knowledge that only a small fraction of the population actually enjoys the fruits of the development carried out on the backs of what is essentially the modern equivalent of a slave labor force.  But moral considerations aside, it is refreshing to see what focused human imagination and creativity are capable of when given access to unrestricted methods and unlimited wealth.  Coming from a Western world sometimes characterized by stagnation, atrophy, and decay, the spirit of Dubai is reminiscent of the can-do attitude of the romanticized American West.  Only time will tell if Dubai's development can continue; if people will ever move into those empty condos.  Until then, I'll be looking forward to my next (hopefully more substantive) encounter with this new Babylon.

Black Friday in the Richest City in the World

This Black Friday I did my American duty; I went shopping.  I may have only purchased a mouse pad made to look like a Persian rug, but what's a poor boy to do in the richest city in the world?

Abu Dhabi, the eponymous capital city and emirate of the United Arab Emirates, is a city of fabulous wealth considering its mere 900,000 inhabitants (half of whom have gotten here within the last decade).  Thanks to the emirate's bountiful oil and natural gas supplies (which are slated to last through the better part of the century), it has been called the richest city in the world by Forbes magazine and CNN.  The crane-filled horizon indicates as much, though the city hasn't yet lost its sense of self in the way that Dubai has.  Abu Dhabi is still a plainly Middle Eastern city, with a quarter of its population being native Arabs, and the rest being made up of foreign workers, largely from South Asia, East Africa, and the Pacific.  While most of the town feels as such, it has several examples of the grand opulence that only the Emirates can afford.

One such example is the Marina Mall, home to dozens of the highest-end retailers in the world.  Black Friday isn't a national birthright in the U.A.E., and many of the shops were closed until later in the day (as Friday is the Muslim holy day).  As the afternoon rolled on, the Emirates began to show up in force.  You'd be forgiven for thinking that Maseratis and Lamborghinis were a minimum entrance requirement.  Even a trip to the local Carrefour, the Wal-Mart like superstore in the basement of the mall, is done in full style.  In Emirate culture, the mall appears nearly as central to life as the mosque.  Boutique shops, restaurants, and a food court aren't enough.  Emirates come to the mall to bowl, to buy a Mercedes-Benz, or to ice skate (and ski in the case of Dubai's Mall of the Emirates, opening soon at the Marina Mall as well).  Perhaps the oppressive desert heat encourages people to stay under one, air conditioned roof while meeting all of their needs.

The Marina Mall is just one of many high profile developments in the city.  All around it are other shining examples of the monarchy-led investment strategy that has come to characterize the U.A.E.  Next door, the Emirates Palace is a massive, European style hotel reputed to be of unparalleled quality.  Off the coast, the Emirate is investing in several man-made islands, surely future homes of high-end development projects.  On Yaz Island, the recently completed Ferrari World is home to the worlds fastest roller coaster; its so fast it requires goggles.  On the outskirts of the city, entire planned communities of apartments and condos are springing up from the sand, though most appear vacant for now.  While Abu Dhabi is clearly laying the foundation for the days when its oil and natural gas have run dry, the emirate seems determined to play the tortoise to neighboring Dubai's dizzying hare.

Consuming Cowboy Culture: The 20th Annual Chuck Wagon Gathering at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum

A fiddle sings a merry tune in the distance as a cauldron of peaches bubbles over a fire.  The clink-clank of a blacksmith's hammer keeps the beat for the pair of horses who trot by, pulling a loaded wagon behind them.  The air weighs heavily under the odious concoction of stew, cobbler, campfire smoke and animal dung.  Under the shade of the trees, a wild eyed "doctor," H.P. Hedgethicket III, Esquire, raves about the medicinal wonders of lizard oil to anyone who will listen.

This isn't a scene from the past or from a Hollywood set; its an annual event to celebrate the culture of the West and those who won it.  Every May at the bottom of Persimmon Hill in Oklahoma City, the Chuck Wagon Gathering provides visitors a chance to sample cowboy cooking, immerse themselves in cowboy culture, and try their hand at cowboy crafts like rope-making and leather stamping.  While much of the event is geared toward the little buckaroos, the limitless free samples of stew, beans, sourdough biscuits, cornbread (which cowboys did NOT eat, as one rancher informed me), peach cobbler, and bread pudding are enough to entice even the slickest of city slickers.  All of the food is authentically prepared in large dutch ovens and cauldrons.  There's even a cooking demonstration, complete with a couple of plump, microphone-wearing frontier women to show you how to get your cabbage patch stew just right and how to properly clean your dutch oven.  And, in case you were wondering, yes, they do have a cookbook for sale (the latest in their three part series on cowboy cooking).

The food alone is worth the trip, but the entire event, while not terribly large or extravagant, stirs more than just the stomach.  I was treated to a flood of memories from the Westerns that I so loved as a kid, the way most American males experience cowboy culture in their youth.  I was reminded of scenes from Young Guns, Tombstone, and Wyatt Earp - those were my favorites (sorry John Wayne).  I remembered playing fort with my cap gun pistols, pretending my bike was really my trusted horse, and visiting the ghost town in Calico, CA.  Perhaps I liked cowboys just because I grew up around horses until I was 8 years old, or because my father still thinks that he's a cowboy, but its hard to imagine the life of an American male child without cowboys.  The western genre may be losing ground to the likes of Pokemon and Star Wars (which has been described as a space western), but the Hollywood image of the cowboy has undoubtedly left an indelible mark on American culture.

Up the hill, surrounded by a colorful garden sits the gargantuan National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.  If the National Mall in Washington, D.C. was in a pinch and needed a new Smithsonian Museum, they could probably plop this one down and it'd do the trick.  Dramatic and over-sized sculptures abound and local square dancing groups perform in the lobby.  There are several art galleries filled with romantic images of American frontier life, including paintings by Albert Bierstadt and sculptures by Frederick Remington.  There's a mini frontier town, called Prosperity Junction, that aims to recreate the ambiance of a turn-of-the-century railroad town just after dusk.  There are excellently constructed galleries of cowboys in film, the history and development of the American cowboy, and the importance of the rodeo.  One can also peruse an impressive collection of guns from the late 19th century, a Native American showcase, and a frontier hunting exhibit.    If cowboy culture were a religion, this would most certainly be its Vatican.

While the museum certainly indulges in romanticized images of cowboy life, it also depicts much of the grueling and monotonous work from both the past and the present.  Cowboys were and continue to be hired help, a kind of specialized shepherd.  They have to castrate calves and chase down stray cattle in freezing blizzards.  They have to spray the herd with special medical solutions to prevent parasite infestations and spend long hours under the unforgiving sun.  As one quote from the museum put it, "this ain't inside work."  Which leads me to wonder, why all the glamor?  Why has the cowboy become the iconic symbol of masculine American identity, much like the Medieval knight is to Europe, and the Samurai is to Japan?  The image is so powerful that several Presidents (Roosevelt, Reagan, and Bush II, off the top of my head) have tried to incorporate the image of the cowboy into their own political identity.  Much as in stories of knights and samurai, cowboy stories from Hollywood and literature are morality tales at their core.

Every culture has its myths that communicate and preserve its values, usually through a tale that follows the arc of the "Hero's Journey," as described by the late Dr. Joseph Campbell.  Great myths are almost always stories of an individual's journey and the personal growth that occurs along the way.  While in reality cowboys rarely got into scuffles with Native Americans or had to chase down evil bandits to rescue honorable ladies, their lonely lives on a dangerous frontier had the makings of an archetypal adventure onto which a young and growing nation could project its ideals of individual morality.  Other defining national events such as the Civil War were fraught with divisive sentiments, and the West had always been a kind of release valve for the nation's tensions (Frederick Jackson Turner's classic thesis).  For a society so focused on westward expansion, the long cattle drives of the late 19th century formed the perfect setting for a national myth (as opposed to the environment of continual political struggle which defined feudal Europe and Japan).

While the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum cherishes the substance and spirit of the old West, the enduring and idealized image of the cowboy is not preserved in authentically prepared peach cobbler or in highly decorative leather saddles.  The cowboy life isn't so much the embodiment of our national culture as it is a vessel for us to communicate our social values.  Some ardent aficionados of cowboy culture might want to believe otherwise, but as the Outlaw Josey Wales put it, "That's just the way it is."