Spinning Bicycles in Soweto
Last Saturday afternoon I stood on Mbolekwa Street in Dlamini, Soweto, with a couple of hundred other spectators, watching teenage boys spinning around on super-long, low-slung bicycles. Most of the bikes didn’t have brakes, or even seats in some cases. The...
#Gauteng52, Week 24: Turffontein Race Course
Welcome to Week 24 of my #Gauteng52 challenge, for which I will visit and blog about a new place in Gauteng Province every week for 52 straight weeks. This week I visit Turffontein Racecourse in southern Johannesburg. My home town, Baltimore, is a horse-racing town....
How (Not) to Jump Off a Stadium
The Commonwealth Games, an Olympics-like sporting competition involving athletes from the Commonwealth of Nations, are headed to Durban in 2022. The 2022 host city won’t be officially announced until September 2015, but it turns out that Durban is the only...An Authentic Joburg Afternoon
I recently had a Twitter argument with a guy who said he thinks Joburg “lacks authenticity”. I never got to the root of what he meant (Twitter isn’t the place for complex debate), but I’m glad the argument happened because it got me thinking...
Heather Mason
I’m an American writer/blogger/photographer living a quirky life in Johannesburg. Follow along as I explore Johannesburg, South Africa, and the rest of the world.