Word: caf
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Along with the bullfights and the Prado, Spain's fabled flamenco dancing is something every tourist wants to see. What U.S. visitors seldom realize is that the "authentic" dances staged in the vast majority of Spain's "singing cafés" or tablaos 'these days are more flimflam than flamenco. To meet the demand, moaned a flamenco impresario in Madrid last week, "anybody who can wiggle his feet or snap his fingers has set up a tablao-and is cleaning up. The result is the complete breakdown of authentic flamenco. They're all dancing...
...Moscow and Kiev, after an evening of Brahms and Mozart, several of the musicians adjourned to the youth cafés to sit in on jam sessions with the local hipsters. In Tbilisi, the orchestra was treated to a sumptuous banquet and serenaded by Georgian folk singers. The only sour note of the tour was sounded privately by the musicians, who rightfully questioned Szell's generally lightweight selection of American works, including two insipidities by Composers William Grant Still and Herbert Elwell, a native of Cleveland...
...Frenchman has his café, the Briton his pub, but for Japan's man in the street the place to meet has been, for the past three centuries, a big bathtub. Throughout Tokyo today, where in working class neighborhoods up to 80% of the population still lacks private facilities, more than 1,600,000 men and women immerse themselves companionably every evening in the steaming vats of the city's 2,608 sento or public bathhouses. There Suzuki-san discusses the besuboru pennant race, and his wife, behind a flimsy partition (a late 19th century concession to Occidental...
...describes one as "a country girl-so I have her work the park." The girl demands a pair of boots for bad-weather soliciting, and Belmondo snaps: "Boots attract perverts." When the gendarmes threaten to put him out of business, he marries a virginal barmaid (Marie Dubois), operates her café until she turns shrewish, then flees to Greece and sells himself to an aged playgirl...
...Epoque at the turn of the century, the courtesans of France were famed for their elegance, the dazzle of their jewels, and the high cost of their favors. None more so than La Belle Otero, with her jet-black hair, hourglass figure and enameled complexion. One night at the Café de Paris, five rulers of Europe offered homage at her table-Russia's Nicholas II, Britain's Edward VII, Prussia's Wilhelm II, Belgium's Leopold II and Spain's Alfonso XIII. Otero boasted, "I have been a slave to my passions, but never...