Harry Winston Security

photo by J.R. Duran, NYC

Elite model 'Deedee' with Stanley Butkowski, Joseph Kestener and Al La Rocca of Harry Winston Security

A Business Expense: Hair Grows on Company Time

Mayfair House Hotel (now condos)

A woman behind Mayfair's reception desk draws a map on the back of a post card and points me in the direction of a barber three blocks away.  Hair stylist really but she insists he cuts men too.  I like Mayfair House. Tucked away in Coconut Grove, each room has a balcony and every balcony a hot tub -- All of it hidden from the street by masses of flowers, vines and whatever else grows in Miami. It's 1993 and I had left three feet of snow in Chicago.

First night I'm neck deep in the tub plugged into a walkman with Alcione's, 'Sufoco,' sipping beer and puffing a La Gloria Cubana. Only problem... a headphone wire knocks my cigar out of the ashtray and into the tub. That's okay. I have a lot of cigars...


Alcione's Sufoco

Back then, Ernesto Carrillo was still making La Gloria's in Little Havana on Ocho street. After a piece ran in Cigar Afficianado his cigars, extremely affordable & Cuban like, became impossible to find.  Parking a couple blocks away from the source, the El Credito factory, I thought it best to wear a suit jacket since red suspenders with yellow felt teddy bears were holding my trousers up. 

The El Credito factory Photo by Tina Bucuvalas

In a dark grey Britches of Georgetown,  Kennedy-model suit, (designed by Mark Rykken) and Ray Ban Aviators, I stroll into Ernesto's tiny shop. To my right are three rows of cigar rollers. Dead ahead is Mrs Carrillo, who I think I recognize from the magazine. From her counter she looks up, stares at me, and excuses herself. Taking off my sunglasses, I look at the rollers and smile.  No one smiles back.  Mrs Carrillo returns, behind her Ernesto, trailed by several men, who all walk by and out the door.

Mrs Carrillo nervously asks how she can help.  Pulling out a list of orders from clients and friends back in Chicago, I start, " Three boxes of Wavells,  Two boxes of number one Torpedoes...  She looks at me dead pan and interrupts, "You just want cigars?" I tell her I do and that I'm from Chicago on a cigar run for some friends.

Everything changes. The room changes.  The rollers, up to now silent as a tomb, laugh and talk. Someone starts singing.  Mrs Carrillo smiles, pulls out a file folder and tells me Wavells and Torpedos are sold out.  I ask what she has. She runs a finger down her list and I remember what I look like.

La Gloria Glorias


'No one wears a suit jacket in Miami - Especially dark grey,' I think, while 10 boxes of Maduro Glorias, all Mrs Carrillo had, go to the back seat and the jacket gets thrown to the passenger seat. 'Unless they're cops.' I sit for a minute as the a/c cranks up and wonder who they thought I was. Immigration? Maybe. There's a pang of guilt and I remember walking in my barracks, Corcoran jump boots heavy on the floor and my friends, surprised the footsteps belonged to me, running outside to retrieve the bag of pot they threw out the window.

A block from the hair stylist in Coconut Grove I hear the screams of several men, "Put it down! Put it fucking down, now!" Then that unmistakable, 'Pop-Pop-Pop' movies never got right.  A terrifying sound far  from its home on the range. I look for anyone on the street to see a reaction, 'Am I hearing what I think I'm hearing,' but it's early and there's no one. Only cars passing by with tinted windows up against the heat.

I see the hair stylist and calmly run for his door.  Calmly run?   It's skipping - but faster.  A bell rings as I open the door and cold a/c freezes head and crotch sweat.  I tell the man what the hotel told me and he laughs.  I'll learn he's Honduran and in his 50s. I talk.  He cuts.

After half an hour, he tells me, "Have you ever seen a telephone wire with a bunch of birds sitting on it?" I nod. "Birds fly up and join the other birds..." He cuts. "But you my friend -- You're like the bird that flutters around the wire.  Not sure where or even if he wants to land."

He blow drys the hair off my shoulders and a woman walks in.  Did you hear the gun shots. "No," says my barber.  The police shot a nut case with a machete only a half hour ago right around the corner.  My barber looks at me, "Did you see it?" "No," I tell him. "I only heard it."

Show Us Your Wallet: Michael Bastian

"The only piece of non-MB I wear... "

"...my favorite hotel in Stockholm."

"... picked this up in Japan. Supposed to be good luck."

"This is amazing. This is underneath the Duomo."

"A coin that's a heart. I don't even know where I got that."

"This is my lucky penny that I keep folded up so I don't spend it."

"You know what's really interesting? The contents of guy's wallets. "Asking a guy to pull out his wallet is a very personal thing." Michael Bastian

The Trad Hotel on the Trad Island

I fell in love with Bermuda on my first visit. It was England...but with sun. The taxi ride from the airport to my hotel in Hamilton was magical. It was a Friday afternoon and all of the traffic was coming toward us. Men on scooters in blue blazers, Bermuda shorts, kneesocks, Rep ties and sunglasses. Quick images of the ocean outside my taxi window framed by flowers and pink houses with electric blue shutters and bone white roofs. The humid breeze was soaked up by my dry, five below zero with the wind chill flesh. This place is so Trad and I haven't even discussed Dark and Stormies yet.

I stayed at the Hamilton Princess. I was on business and it was where everyone else was staying. A nice pool. Horrible food but only idiots and the lazy ate at the hotel. I was introduced to Dark and Stormies at the hotel bar. Barrits Ginger Beer and Goslings Black Seal Rum. With a lime. Somehow this drink manages to taste like Bermuda. I was invited to tea by some locals at Waterloo House. A charming little hotel between the Princess and downtown Hamilton pictured above.

I'm sitting in the courtyard drinking Lapsang Souchong and nibbling McVitties digestive biscuts and wondering why I'm staying at the Princess when I can be staying at Waterloo. I am on expenses. What do I care. And so I started staying at Waterloo when I could. It's small. Only 30 or so rooms and tends to fill up fast. And that's the reason it is to be closed.

"Not as good as it was but better than it will be." Remember that.

Bermuda, God bless her, has managed to keep most Yanks out of her knickers due to some serious employment and real estate laws. But Bermuda has gotten the whiff of money. Insurance money. Quiet and serious stuff. It seems the footprint of the Waterloo is too small for a 30 room hotel. As it is, this charmer sits between multi-storied midrises whose tenants count insurance company money. Waterloo will close this July based on information just passed to me by a good friend. She will be replaced with office space more in line with the value of the land.

I am in mourning. Maybe the best thing about getting older is knowing that everything wonderful will be shit canned by some ass hole with an accounting degree. By the time I'm my father's age nothing will be left. "Not as good as it was but better than it will be." I'm translating that into Latin and putting it on all my Polo shirts.