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What city should I visit next? 🌎🌏🌍

Yo, Zhuangzi, the celebrated Daoist philosopher, once suggested, “The fish seems happy in the water. But does it know why? And does it even matter?” That thought has stuck with me for years. We rarely recognize the reality we live in—its beauty, its flaws—until we step outside of it. Travel forces that perspective shift. It reveals both the differences that define us and the shared humanity that connects us. It complicates the world in the best way, adding layers of nuance to something often oversimplified and hard to navigate.

Over the past few years, I’ve mapped out a fluid blueprint—traveling through Colombia 🇨🇴, Kenya 🇰🇪, Hungary 🇭🇺, Italy 🇮🇹, Portugal 🇵🇹, France 🇫🇷, Korea 🇰🇷, Hong Kong 🇭🇰, Turkey 🇹🇷, Mexico 🇲🇽, and Canada 🇨🇦. It’s been a long, evolving quest to understand culture through experience, and I hope to take an even more intentional approach moving forward. 🤜🏼🤛🏼

Wherever I go, I try my best to break bread with locals—not just for their favorite places to eat, but for insights I won’t find in a Wikipedia entry. Cities breathe, cultures shift, and the best way to understand a place is to get lost in it (safely, of course).

Appreciate all the kind words on my latest videos from Istanbul. More to come. 🤜🏼🤛🏼

Can you name the third song (a Turkish record) I used in this video? 😁 Also, what city feels like two worlds 🌍🌏 at once for you? 🤔

Yo, for me, it’s #istanbul 🇹🇷 Maybe it’s the way the call to prayer echoes over a rooftop rakı session, or how mosques 🕌 and nightclubs 🪩 stand shoulder to shoulder like they’re debating the future.

Maybe it’s because I’ve always felt caught between worlds—and this city doesn’t ask you to choose.

Here, Atatürk’s face still watches over a nation he reshaped, while Erdogan’s vision (whether you agree or not) pulls it in another direction. The tension is everywhere—in the way people dress, the way they vote, the way they speak of the past and the future. 💭

Sure, the lira’s not looking great 📉, and you can feel the weight of it—in the lingering looks for tips, the quiet sigh before a taxi fare is quoted—but Istanbul? It just keeps moving. 🤜🏼🤛🏼

The stray cats 🐈 still reign, baklava still tastes righteous, and history hums through the air like the ferries on the Bosphorus. ⛴️

Maybe that’s why I felt an instant attachment. Because here? You don’t have to be one thing.

You just have to be.

Aight, peace and blessings. 🤜🏼🤛🏼

PS. @goturkiye holla if you need me 😉

Name the movie theme songs I borrowed for this piece. Also, which city makes you feel like you’re in a movie?

Yo, for me, it’s #hongkong 🇭🇰 Probably ‘cause I don’t speak Cantonese, the moment I landed, hopped in a cab, and heard the driver’s rapid-fire chatter, it felt like stepping into a John Woo flick—minus the explosions. Sure, I was a little let down by the lack of towering neon signs and the long-gone Kowloon Walled City. My favorite actors are now pitching savings plans (except Chow Yun Fat—his pictures are only found at mom and pop eateries 😂), and the city’s cinematic nostalgia felt a bit faded. Now I know how friends feel when they visit NYC and realize that Little Italy isn’t like it was in Donnie Brasco, or that b-boys aren’t spinning at park jams like in Wild Style.

But Hong Kong’s story is still evolving. Local friends shared the weight of rising costs (real estate is wild), limited opportunities, and the pressure from China, with many leaving for Canada or Singapore. Yet, for me, it remains a place both foreign and familiar, a city that shaped my perspective long before I ever set foot there. I’m just glad I finally made it.

Aight, happy holidays 🤜🏼🤛🏼

PS. @discoverhongkong holla if you need me 😉

Episode 80: Queens Native visits the shop featuring @jaekicho 🌏✌️Starring @winnie_thepooj as Thyme and @darrylgenejr as Cale

Thanks to: Director @nitay.dagan, DP/Color @eyalbaucohen, Sr. Editor + Sound Mix @fogelmusic, Original Music @buona.notte, Sound Recording @verronicahein, Props + PA @hannahmeholick, and Associate Producer @torijeanine!

You’re Invited to the NYC Street Vendors Book Party

Join us Saturday, May 16th at Casa Magazines to celebrate the release of NYC Street Vendors by Joel Holland and David Dodge.

We are throwing an in-person book party that you won’t want to miss. Come meet the creators, author David Dodge, illustrator Joel Holland, and Jaeki Cho, co-founder of Righteous Eats.

Discover the stories behind the food carts, market stalls, and sidewalk entrepreneurs that give New York City its flavor, grit, and humanity. Stick around to sample amazing Nigerian dishes from the featured food cart, Divine Flavoured Catering and pick up a signed copy of NYC Street Vendors from Casa Magazines. 
 
Register to attend via the link in bio.
 
We hope you can make it!

Yo, walking through a tunnel in Shenzhen 🇨🇳 with a sidewalk and a scooter lane, made me realize I’ve spent my whole life thinking tunnels were 99.9% for cars. EZ-Pass, Holland, Midtown, Lincoln…pay the toll, sit in traffic, that’s been the routine. But in Chinese cities like Hangzhou and Shenzhen (as well as Korean cities like Seoul, but not as much EVs), tunnels are part of the street. People and scooters cut through them.

It’s a small thing, but it rewires how you think about who a city is built for 🤔

Aight, peace and blessings ✌🏼

Yo, update on the China 🇨🇳 bookstore tour (please scroll down to peep the first stop in Shanghai 🙏🏼). Walked into Sisyphe (西西弗书店), and it’s a completely different beast. If Shanghai Hong Kong Joint Publishing felt like somewhat of a state-curated front table, Sisyphe feels like the mall version: Chain, commercial, polished, optimized. And personally, more of what I was looking for 😅

Quick details on the chain: Named after Sisyphus 🪨, yes, the Greek myth, about the guy pushing boulder up a hill. Founder Jin Weizhu’s pitch is that pushing the masses toward quality reading is its own Sisyphean grind. Started in 1993 in Zunyi, a small city in Guizhou, HQ’s now in Chongqing. Today, there are 500 locations across 80+ cities, 200M+ annual visits, inventory and shelf placement run on data and algorithms…according to the kind staff I spoke to. They explicitly target the general crowd, including folks who don’t really read.

What caught me on the floor: Manga, anime, YA novels stacked up front. Books on AI and OpenClaw, again, prominently positioned 🤖 (keeps showing up everywhere). Economy, self, help, stocks, tech tycoon bios in the middle. The party agenda? Tucked in the back in its own section. Not absent, just not the headline.

Same country as Shanghai Hong Kong Joint Publishing, very different storefront. One reads like a civic statement, the other like a commercial mirror of what people are actually pulling off the shelf 🤔

Felt the need to provide this update, ‘cause the first post/and bookstore felt like a limited glimpse, rather than the full picture.

Aight, peace and blessings 🤜🏼🤛🏼

Yo, walking through OCT Loft in Shenzhen…peeping old factories turned into cafés, design stores, shrouded in plants on top of concrete. It got me thinking…I’ve seen this before. In Lisbon, Bushwick, Brooklyn, Seongsu, Seoul, Taipei. Similar lighting and fonts. Familiar vibe in a different language.

The Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han calls this hyperculture…the moment where abundance smooths out the edges and difference becomes décor. When everything is available everywhere, a city starts to lose its accent 💭 Rem Koolhaas wrote about “The Generic City” 30+ years ago. So these thoughts and sentiments aren’t new.

I’m not saying it’s good or bad. I’m just noticing that the further I travel, the more places start to feel like a similar place wearing different clothes 🤔

What y’all think? 🤜🏼🤛🏼

Yo, standing in a Shenzhen mall (Haus Nowhere) watching Nike (NYSE: NKE), Uniqlo (sorry 🙇🏻‍♂️ it’s actually listed on Tokyo Exchange 😅 as 9983), On (NYSE: ONON) and Shake Shack (NYSE: SHAK) sit shoulder to shoulder is one of the reminders they’re proof that the U.S. 🇺🇸 needs China 🇨🇳 and China needs the U.S. China makes the goods the world buys. The U.S. (and its public markets) gives these brands the capital and the demand to scale. And China’s growing middle class has been now for decades where that expansion lives.

What China has pulled off—moving hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in a single generation—is one of the most remarkable economic feats in modern history. And the reality on the ground is way more layered than the political theater wants you to believe. These two economies are stitched into each other. Coexistence isn’t the threat. It’s the thing actually working…is at least how I see it.

What y’all think? 🤔

Yo, how’s my rusty/rudimentary Chinese 🇨🇳? 😂 I don’t know that many words, so most of the time when a service worker asks me something, I do my best to pick up the few words I do know and piece it together.

This China trip’s been a good reminder…the best way to sharpen a language is to not be afraid of messing up and getting embarrassed. And as much as English has been the lingua Fransois in a lot of places, in a country with a much higher reliance on its own homegrown market, English isn’t a priority for most. When you’re in China, you’re expected to speak Mandarin…especially with the way I look 😂

Aight, peace and blessings 🤜🏼🤛🏼

Yo, don’t get it twisted, the Chinese were merchants, been ‘bout that paper, long before the United States was a country. In more recent decades, once Deng Xiaoping cracked the market open, China’s consumer appetite became the meal every global brand wanted a seat at.

While the political system isn’t chosen by ballot, but the capitalist instinct here predates most of the West’s. Which is why I had to chuckle standing in the square of Zhejiang Exhibition Hall, with noticeable Soviet-era bones, built under Mao to honor the work of the people, being neighbors with Prada, Chanel, and Louis Vuitton, logos glowing like little beacons of late capitalism.

My non-expert thoughts on China’s particular brand of communism is a longer conversation, one for another post.

Aight, peace and blessings 🤜🏼🤛🏼

Yo, I’ll share more details when I’m back home and get a chance to process all the conversations, learnings, and details I picked up in Shanghai and Hangzhou that tie into this 🤜🏼🤛🏼