Photo by Dustin Driver

Published in Solano Magazine

The night air is thick with heat and the sweet smell of fried beaver tails, a Quebecois confection of fried dough known as queue de castor. The St. Laurent River is alive with light, its waters reflecting the nonstop nightlife of Old Montreal. The narrow cobblestone streets teem with people-street performers, musicians belting out jazz, and locals drinking at sidewalk cafés. There are children, college students, clowns, old men with accordions, jugglers, sketch artists and street vendors. Smiles, snickers and laughter are everywhere. This is summer in a city that’s buried under snow for half the year. This is a celebration that will last until autumn, a kind of subdued, down-home revelry that only the Quebecois can pull off. read more »

Photo by Dustin Driver

Published in Solano Magazine

It is dizzyingly hot. The sharp smell of new clothes, perfumes, rubber and strange food marry to form an intoxicating fume that hangs in the air like fog. Bangkok’s Chatuchuk weekend market is a vast labyrinth of more than 15,000 cell-like stalls. It buzzes with the combined voices of more than 200,000 shoppers. Their eyes scour the endless shops for bargains. Their hands tear through mountains of T-shirts, racks of knock-off jeans, piles of watches, lacquered dishes, rice-paper lamps, cell phones, compact disk players, everything imaginable. Merchants scream at the crowds through megaphones at a speed and pitch that makes me wonder if even the Thais can understand them. Food vendors deep fry, sauté, boil, peel and serve everything from cocoanuts to noodles to grasshoppers. The insanity sprawls across 35 acres of land. More than $750,000 will change hands in just under two days of operation. The Chatuchuk Market is the largest of its kind in the world, humanity’s best impression of a beehive. read more »