My cover story on Colombian actress Catalina Sandino Moreno for the August issue of Latina magazine is hitting stands any second now. I’m excited to read it in print.

She was in the movie Maria Full of Grace, about a drug mule who travels to New York with a belly full of heroin pellets. The role earned her an Academy Awards nomination for Best Actress and countless other accolades. And although she took two years off to be a mom, she is back in action in the latest edition of the Twilight saga, Eclipse, playing an evil Mexican vampire.

For the interview, we met up at MoMA and saw the Tim Burton career retrospective and the Marina Abramovic show. The latter was interesting in that we both took part in the exhibition by squeezing between two naked men blocking a doorway. It was awkward for about two seconds but it definitely gave us a lot to talk.

I’ll post the whole interview as soon as I can get my hands on it!

Here’s a visual taste of what I ate in Copenhagen for a food story I wrote for New York. You can read the article here.

June 8, 2010…After the last final exam has been completed, students in Stockholm throw a roving celebration like none other. The alcohol-fuel party is like Spring Break on wheels.

A video about finding the subject for a feature I wrote for the July issue of Mountain Bike magazine.

Steven Gdula’s delicious gobs.

Thanks to the recession, a lot of people have been forced to reinvent themselves and try out new careers. In San Francisco, the profession of choice seems to be that of curbside chef as more and more folks in the Bay Area are hitting the streets with a pot of food in tow. I spent three very intense days in March chasing around food trucks, carts and tables in San Francisco via Twitter. I wrote about this little adventure for Budget Travel, and have included a few of the blurbs that didn’t make the cut below. Check it out!

Adobo Hobo
‘Hood: Mission District
Adobo Hobo is a lean operation: Founder Jason Rotairo invested in a folding table, a rice cooker, and a turkey fryer, then started serving his mom’s Filipino-style chicken adobo (drumsticks, soy sauce, vinegar, bay leaf, garlic, peppercorns, and onions in a hearty stew) at Dolores Park in August 2009. When the housing market slowed last year, Rotairo’s roommate—and now business partner—Edmund Choi suggested the licensed realtor hit the street. They recently expanded and occasionally include Sisig tacos, a take on another Pinoy staple made with marinated pork, onions, jalapeños, pork rinds, and sour cream scooped into a tortilla for easy handling.
Check twitter.com/Adobohobo for updates. $5. adobohobo.blogspot.com.

Gobba Gobba Hey
‘Hood: Mission District
When freelance writer Steven Gdula moved to San Francisco two years ago, he was out of work and missing his native Pennsylvania. In May 2009, he started pounding the pavement with a cooler full of gobs (a favorite childhood treat similar to a whoopie pie and made of two round cakes held together with a sweet cream filling) under the Ramones-inspired moniker Gobba Gobba Hey. So far, there are 36 rotating flavors on the menu—orange cardamom with ginger and saffron, and coco black cherry with lime are the most popular. Gdula also has a tasty book deal about his recession recovery story in the works. Various days and locations. Check twitter.com/gobbagobbahey for updates. $2. gobbagobbahey.com.

Bogotá is famous for its Sunday Ciclovía, when bicycles take over 70 miles of pedestrian-friendly streets. The best part of the weekly ritual is the people-watching: I saw dads teaching their kids to ride tricycles; a man transporting his children (and pooch!) in a cart attached to his bike; and I met a few guys cruising around on custom-built chopper-style bicycles. I even had a chance to try out one of these souped up bikes myself and let’s just say it takes practice to sit back and peddle.

Bottoms up!: A new shot bar offers colorful drinks with sexy names.

It’s been two and a half years since I was last in Medellín, and the transformation that I first wrote about is even more noticeable with the number of restaurants, bars and hotels that have recently popped up. Right before going, I kept hearing about the new wave of violence that has doubled the city’s murder rate since 2008. And I’m not going to lie, I was a little nervous. You see, even Colombians (or in my case, the daughter of Colombians) know that the price of life in Colombia can be cheap. But I was pleasantly surprised. And I’m not the only one that seems to like it here. The gringos have descended in full force. One cabbie lamented the number of men that come here—not to see Botero’s famous gordas—but to hook up with the ladies.

Death by chocolate

Feliz Dia de los Muertos. Today is the day when Mexicans remember the dead. They wear wooden skull masks and eat sugar skulls engraved with the name of their loved ones. It’s a great way to deal with losing someone you love. While in Mexico City, I met a young woman whose 20-something-year-old brother had recently died. She told me that the Mexican view of death helped her come to terms with his demise. She didn’t see it as an end but as the continuation of something else. It also made her appreciate her time on this planet a little more.

I was very proud of the friends that participated in today’s marathon. Though they wore quite conventional athletic gear—at least in comparison to the folks pictured here—they did a great job.

I cheered the runners at the 25th mile point and began to have those “what if” thoughts as I saw the diversity of people inching towards the finish line. It was truly inspiring.

They say that after a certain point it’s all in the head and I wonder if I could convince my mind to undertake such a daunting challenge. Hmm, I’ll have to ponder that a bit more.

New York magazine’s travel issue is finally out. Here are some of my contributions to the bargain hunter’s winter-travel handbook.” The photos are from my personal collection.



Bogotá, Colombia
Steamed snook and other delicacies, for a fraction of Paris prices.
The scary, cartel-dominated years of the eighties and nineties are clearly over for Bogotá, which has recently rolled out a much-admired public-transportation system, a network of hilltop parks and museums, and now a world-class restaurant scene that’s considerably cheaper than other dining capitals. The most evolved cooking is happening in La Macarena, where Cartagena transplant Leonor Espinosa invents dishes like the fish-egg tartare ($14) at Bar de Leo (571-334-3085), and steamed snook gift-wrapped in a plantain leaf ($21) at Leo Cocina y Cava (571-286-0050). Chefs in the northern part of the city are hyphenating like crazy; at the Franco-Colombian Criterion, the European-trained Rausch brothers prepare a nightly five-course surf-and-turf tasting menu ($50). Spend the night at 104 Art Suites (from $150; 104artsuites.com), which has twenty rooms, each featuring the work of a different Colombian artist.

Extras
• 5 p.m. hot-chocolate santafereño at La Puerta Falsa $2.50
• Pre-Columbian artifacts exhibit at the Museo del Oro $3.50
• Bicycle for cruising the Sunday Ciclovia from Bogotá Bike Tours $14

Valparaíso, Chile
An underrated cultural epicenter with favorable currency rates.
Like a Latin American version of San Francisco, artsy, freewheeling Valparaíso teeters on 45 precipitous slopes overlooking the Pacific. Always a good bargain given Chile’s out-of-the-way location and weak currency, the city expects its creative juices to be overflowing in January, when it hosts an international triennial called the Universal Forum of Cultures (fundacioforum.org). Pay 50 cents to ride an antique funicular up to Cerro Alegre, where the Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes (56-32-225-2332) will soon open to the public. From your cliff-top perch, compare historic paintings of Valparaíso to the real thing out the windows. On top of another hill, Cerro Cárcel, is the ex-Cárcel (parqueculturalexcarcel.blogspot.com), a onetime penitentiary that’s now an informal cultural center. Replenish with a chorillana (fries, eggs, grilled onions, and sautéed steak piled high) at rowdy café Casino Social J Cruz (56-32-221-1225), then head out to the disco pub El Huevo (www.elhuevo.cl). Stay at the meticulously designed Cirilo Armstrong Hotel (from $73; ciriloarmstrong.com), whose owners will organize tours to their artist friends’ ateliers.

Extras
• Tour of poet Pablo Neruda’s nautical-themed house, La Sebastiana$4.50
• Pisco sour and live bolero at the city’s oldest bar, El Cinzano $3.50
• Metro ride to neighboring seaside resort Viña del Mar $3.50

Glasgow, Scotland
Chockablock with galleries, starving artists, and the pubs they drink in.
The Glasgow School of Art used to be a feeder school for the big-league art galleries in London. Now its graduates are sticking around to take advantage of Glasgow’s cheap rents, prodigious pubs, and burgeoning art market. If you can, time your trip to hit the Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Visual Art in April 2010, when hundreds of young artists will be jockeying for their big art biennial moment (glasgowinternational.org). Duck away to the still-grungy West End (reminiscent of a pre-condo Dumbo) to visit former New Yorker Kendall Koppe’s Washington Garcia (washingtongarciagallery.com) below a series of disused railway arches. In the same art ghetto sits SWG3 (swg3.tv), a crumbling warehouse commandeered by a rotating group of artists, musicians, designers, and dancers, who often throw circus-themed parties. The finer points of screen-printing and woodcutting are debated in Merchant City at the vegan eatery (and microbrewery, concert venue, and record shop) Mono (monocafebar.com). If you overdo it on heather ale, the Brunswick Hotel (from $80; brunswickhotel.co.uk) and its compact minimalist rooms are a five-minute walk away.

Extras
• A dozen local oysters at just-opened Crabshakk $22.40
• The Malt of the Month at the Ben Nevis whiskey bar $2
• Indie show at the music venue of the moment, Captain’s Rest $10