Early Saturday Morning at the Pretoria Boeremark
A couple of Saturdays ago, my friends Fiver and Stuart and I woke up at before 5:00 a.m. and drove an hour north to the Pretoria Boeremark in Silverton. I've been meaning to check [...]
Walking Downtown Jozi: A Photo Story
There are many tales of woe in Joburg right now: building fires, exploding streets, absent mayors, water outages, an ever-widening wealth gap, and a general spiral of doom. And these stories aren't exaggerated. The [...]
Joburg Thrifting: Winter 2023
I'm obsessed with Joburg thrifting (see here, here, and here) and the more I shop second-hand, the more I realize it's almost never necessary to buy new things. There are so many great places [...]
Jozi Fashion Designer for a Day
Last Saturday, to celebrate 49 years on earth, I gave myself a gift: I booked an Airbnb experience with Caraci Clothing and pretended to be a fashion designer for the day. Okay, "fashion designer [...]
Friday Morning at the Biggest Fresh Produce Market in Africa
A couple of miles southeast of downtown Joburg, in a place called City Deep, there's a produce market the size of a small town. The Joburg Market (next door to the Mutliflora Market) is [...]
Pomegranates and Turkish Food in Centurion
Centurion, an anonymous no man's land between Joburg and Pretoria, is home to a magical place called Buyuk Chamlija: a self-described "Socio Eco Techno Village" that grows fat, juicy pomegranates and has a Turkish [...]
Quirky South Africa, Part 1: Padstals of the Platteland
My mom came for a visit and the two of us took a weeklong road trip through the South African platteland (Afrikaans for countryside). We drove from Joburg to Bethulie, Bethulie to the Garden [...]
Veldskoens: Southern Africa’s Favorite Shoes
I can't remember the exact moment when I became aware of veldskoens, a.k.a. vellies. These leather foot coverings -- somewhere between a shoe and a boot -- have always been prolific in rural South [...]
Art in Fordsburg at Lilian Road Studios
I've visited Lilian Road Studios, a collection of artists' studios in a historic, dilapidated building in Fordsburg, many times. Several great Joburg artists have had studios at Lilian Road, including Hannelie Coetzee and Hermann [...]
Black-Tie, Jozi-Style
I recently joined the Rand Club, which holds a couple of black-tie events each year. When it came time to attend our first fancy function, the Club's 135th-anniversary gala, Thorsten and I considered his [...]
A Tour of Joburg’s Mediterranean East
During my Rosebank jacaranda tour last October, I held a contest: The first participant to spot the lone white jacaranda tree on our route could choose a new place in Joburg for me to [...]
Knitting in Joburg: Arthur Bales Turns 120
More than a year ago, I blogged about a yarn shop in Edenvale and planned to start a longer series about knitting in Joburg. Somehow I never got around to expanding that series until [...]