Locals rediscovering the City – secret spots, behind-the-scenes goings-on, and the beautiful people who make Cape Town one of the greatest cities in the world.
We ended up close to the V&A Waterfront (not too tricky) – the only place in SA where you can drink on a beach due to the fact that they built the beach themselves. It’s an awesome spot, right on the water and a little tricky to find. More impressive than their ability to create natural environmental features are their cocktails and their extremely round pebbles. We chilled on some white couches on the sand, sipped pink drinks and had a great chat with Mike on blogging, his company, Retro Viral, and why he loves South Africa.
After the beach cocktail, Mike took us to & Union on Bree. The place has it’s own brewery somewhere in the building, and it makes some really awesome brewsky’s. Whatever you do, however, DO NOT attempt to park anywhere near the place. You will be denied access to visibly unoccupied public parking spaces, and then you’ll probably decide to park in a bay marked ‘Cab Films’ because you happen to be driving a cab and you also have a camera with some film in it, and that’s kind of funny until you are ACCOSTED by a giant man in ILL-FITTING PANTS who will SWEAR at you a lot and refuse to let you leave, using his belly as a weapon. Extremely amusing, if you’re into that kind of thing. Unfortunately, we didn’t get it on camera. But rest assured – Mike showed him who’s boss.
Thanks to Mike for a seriously awesome morning. Check out his blog, Sharman and Hobbo, as well as Retro Viral, and, of course, his video below.
A friend of ours put us in touch with Mike Sharman, a Jo’burg based blogger and online marketing aficionado who is apparently pretty big in Chad (the place, not the guy.) He was in town for a couple of days, so we offered him a Free Taxi ride. Being a completely legend guy, he accepted.
We picked him up in Woodstock, where a security guard flashed us his big clamp because we, obviously, parked badly. We escaped our brush with ill-wielded Oh-thoree-tay and ended up spending the better part of a morning with Mike, during which we discovered that among his many talents is an aptitude for winning every competition he ever entered. This dude has some rad karma. He recently returned from a stint in the UK, and he told us why he’s glad to be back. Check out Mike’s Taxi ride below.
You remember where they did the Adidas Three Stories Pop-Up bar during the World Cup? Well, that place (66-68 Albert Road, Woodstock, just follow the rad graffiti) is actually called the Woodstock Industrial Centre, and it’s fast becoming a hub of the art and design scene. It’s where you’ll find /A Word of Art gallery, which is hosting a one-night-only exhibition of celebrated photographer Roger Ballen’s work tonight to mark the opening of his exhibition at the Iziko museum tomorrow. The photographer will we be giving a talk, and we hear there’s going to be champagne, which thereby eradicates any excuse for not being there entirely. Come check it out.
Also opening tonight is Bibliophilia, a new bookshop in the Centre which carries all the books you can never find anywhere else. It’s open daily from 9.30am to 4.00pm for an ultimate paper fix. Check out the vid below.
For more info on Roger Ballen, visit www.rogerballen.com. His stuff is incredible.
As you may know, our first attempt at branding of the Free Taxi didn’t work out so well. In fact, our ingenious cardboard signage caused several innocent motorists the inconvenience of near death when it blew off on the highway. Twice. But we’d rather not talk about that. We also rather not talk about the way masking tape sticks to things. Pretty darn well, it turns out. Anyway, we’re prepared to overlook these grave miscalculations if you are. They need never be mentioned again, especially now that we believe we have solved the signage problem forever.
Poster paint. Glorious. It’s cheap. It’s sassy. You can steal it from little children. AND it washes off, sort of. The powdery residue that remains is a small price to pay when you consider it’s general amazingness. Well, that last part is questionable. Tell us what you think.
Step 1 – If you don’t have a rad CBD apartment, find someone who does...
A little while back, on the day of the epic Crash Course in Cape Town Taxi Driving, we found that Ethiopian restaurant in town, Addis in Cape, for lunch. While chatting to the restaurant’s owner, Senait, she happened to mention that she was thinking of throwing a dinner party for her housewarming. She’s just moved into the most insane spot in the Piazza on Church Square, and she wanted to celebrate, but she didn’t want to cook.
Well, we thought. Chris can cook like Jammy Olive Ear. Shannon believes she is Tom Cruise in ‘Cocktail’, which means we’ve got food AND drinks covered. We would do the dinner party! What followed was, well, a blast.
Step 2 – If you can’t cook anything, call Chris.
Due to his prodigious culinary skills, Chris was in charge of the menu. Senait couldn’t remember whether or not she had an oven, so he decided to do things on the Weber. Eventually the menu consisted of:
With Drinks: - Baked bree and artichoke on baguette.
Starters:
- Rocket, gorgonzola, parma ham and walnut salad with a balsamic reduction. - Haloumi on Ciabatta
Mains:
- Butterflied leg of lamb cooked on a bed of rosemary with braaied lemons - Kingklip with white wine, lemon zest, spring onions and BUTTER in a poofey foil parcel.
A wicked chocolate Secret City Project cake from Charly’s as desert.
Step 3 – Don’t get complacent when things look delicious.
Once the several shops were done and we had all the ingredients, we rocked up at Senait’s place on Thursday afternoon and began preparations. Things went smoothly. It only got "random" when the guests arrived and requested grapefruit mojitos and vodka mules in large amounts. These are excellent cocktails to do, because they’re simple, inebriating and delicious.
The Vodka Mule:
Some vodka (how much is directly proportionate to how late dinner’s going to be)
Fresh mint
Ginger beer
Grapefruit juice
The Grapefruit Mojito:
Bacardi rum (see above for amount)
3 lime wedges
Brown sugar
Fresh mint
Crushed ice
Muddle the stuff at the bottom of the glass, add booze, add ice, top up with the juice. Delicious.
Rad as these apartments are, the kitchen tend to be rather small, about the size and volume of a large animal, making cooking rather tricky. Chris is a champ. Check out Chris juggling food below.
Step 4 – If you make pancakes for a living, and you once owned a discoteque, you are awesome.
Among the guests at Senait’s dinner party was an extremely interesting man call Jean-Luc. He is from France, and he accidently landed in Cape Town one day. He has never left. Jean-Luc once owned a number of discos. He sold them all and retired. Bored, he decided to buy a trailer and sell pancakes on the Camps Bay strip. Just for fun. Now he’s a feature. He promised us as many free pancakes as we want, so we’re definitely going to make a turn soon.
Check out the final dinner party video below.
Thanks to Senait for letting us commandeer her kitchen, and to Charly’s Bakery for making us an amazing Secret City Project cake. It was incredible.
When it comes to shopping Chris believes that there is only one way to execute it. Fast. He took Senait and Shannon on an adrenalin driven shopping spree, designed to make sure Senait did not realise how much cash she was dropping and that we could make our afternoon meeting. Check out speed shopping below.
You remember Addis in Cape? We gave the owner, Senait, a free ride to do some shopping for her dinner party (more on that later). Senait is an incredible woman. A business woman to her core, she owns three restaurants – one in Tanzania, the other in Ethiopia and the third here in Cape Town. After living all over the world, she’s made Cape Town her home. She loves this city. See the vid below.
Due to Shannon’s unfortunate yet incurable lack of interest in anything business related and Chris’ unavoidable lack of time to do things necessary for his survival such as sleeping, absorbing nutrients and following the basics of personal hygiene (just kidding, Chris - you smell fine) we’ve recruited a friend to help us put together the required bleh-businessy things we need so we can afford to eat occasionally. Her name is Blyda, and she’s a kick-ass marketer. To give her some idea of what we’re about, we picked her and Simon up in Gardens and took her for a Free Taxi ride. Check out the video below.
One of our first Free Taxi passengers was a lady called Kareema. We picked her up on Orange, even though she was only going to the Mount Nelson, and because she was early that day, she let us drive her around for a while and listen to her story.
What struck us first was her energy. She comes from Delft. She is a single mother of two children. She works hard as a cleaner at a five star hotel, where she is instructed to be invisible. Yet she is vivacious, optimistic and happy. She loves her city. She told us that Delft (a fairly rough area) doesn’t sit on her clothes. It’s not the place that makes the people, she says, but the people who make the place. A while back her idol Lionel Richie was in town. She’s pretty much his biggest fan, yet she couldn’t go up to him and say hi, for fear of being fired. We know this is the way things are. Why?
A truly beautiful and gutsy individual – check out Kareema’s video below.
There’s a place called the Field Office down on Barrack Str. (between Harrington and Roeland.) It’s a great coffee shop/ working space put together by two designers as a place for creatives to meet, work and get off their faces on caffeine. You will sit on rad buckets which have been made into incredible stools, drink great coffee and be surrounded by Macbooks and interesting ideas. It’s here that Michelle Son has displayed her latest work, an interactive installation called ‘To Whom It May Concern.’
While the installation was being set up in the background, all Microsoft colours and moving parts, we had a chance to ask Michelle what it’s all about. Check out the video below, then make your way down to the Field Office to experience it first hand. It’s awesome.
So, if you remember, we took some shots at Paul’s Secret Spot with Chris’ pristinely preserved Granny Cam, as Zenith something or other, with takes the type of film you find on a dusty shelf at the back of Orms and costs an arm and a wrinkly leg to develop. We weren’t sure how they’d come out, but we picked them up yesterday and they are really cool. Well, 50% of them.
There seems to be a problem with the Granny Cam. There is an ominous black shape covering half of every photograph. Perhaps the Granny Cam is possessed. Maybe it was the antiquated film. Either way, if you look past the smudgy thing on the left side of every image, you’ll see how awesome the Granny Cam will be when we get it exorcised. But we’ve uploaded the pics anyway, for your viewing pleasure.
When you hear the term Supper Club you envision a bunch of grannies sitting around a very well lit dinner table. Flying geese decorating the walls and the pong of bustle sprouts. Not this one. Calvin and his mates meet up once a week and prepare a three-course meal for each other. We were kindly invited to join in, warned that the bouncer will kick us out if you didn’t have to R40 required to pay for the meal, we entered into this unknown realm of supper clubs.
Seeing as these dudes spend their free time beating each other up at Mixed Martial Arts and playing extreme frisbee you’d expect that they would have no finesse around the kitchen. We were seriously wrong! We were served up a delicious butternut soup, which sent Chris spiraling into depression seeing as he was certain his was unbeatable. Followed by a “my plate isn’t big enough” fish curry. All topped off with a cheese platter and peanut brittle.
Dinner conversation was as good as the food. We discussed music, parachuting dogs, Harvest of Hope, Rosetta Roastery, tightrope walking, and Troy’s 300 rendition. Unfortunately the video camera drank too much wine and decided not to record a lot of the evening. So did we. Nevertheless check out Calvin’s Supper club video below.
After our mission to Paul's Secret Spot, we were, understandably, very hungry. Nothing works up an appetite more than taking pictures of people's eyeballs. So we went a little further down the road (a clue?) to Hout Bay, all the way round the harbor to the very furtherest place where you'll find the BEST fish and chips at Fish on the Rocks.
You can't miss the place. It's positively psychedelic. They've registered the domain name 'www.africasfavourite.com' which we thought was very funny, but awesome, because if Africa the Continent really dug fish and chips, this probably would be her favorite, and they'd probably have enough hake on the premises to feed her, too.
The people who work there are extremely nice, the service is great, the vibe is great. The food is full of nutritious, delicious, tasty greasy goodness. Crack an ice-cold Coke, squirt some All Gold and enjoy. If you really like seagulls, you should definitely go here. R40 gets you a great big portion of fish and chips, which you won't finish, but you can take it down to the rocks and throw it to the birds. If you are really afraid of birds, you should definitely not go here or do this, ever.
And, when you're done with lunch, go a little further through Hout Bay and pay R30 to do Chapman's Peak drive. The views are truly world-class. There's also the thrill of danger you get from the possibility of getting squashed by a falling rock at any second, which makes you appreciate the views even more and think of the mentally unstable people who like to cycle up there. If you don't want to pay R30, the first 2.5km's are free, you just need to turn around halfway and come back, missing the most spectacular theatrical views and seeing the same thing twice.
So, as you may remember, our photographer friend Paul promised to take us shooting at his favourite Cape Town secret spot. Bright and early Saturday morning we met him in the parking lot of X, caffeinated and ready to go. It really was a gorgeous day.
The point of the exercise was two-fold. Shannon needed to learn how to use Chris' digital camera, so she spent most of the day taking photos of a bottle cap and her watch to try and understand how things are sometimes dark and sometimes light and sometimes blurry and other times not so blurry. Chris wanted to check out the ancient Zenith camera he inherited from his gran (the Grannny Cam) and pick up a few tips from Paul as to how to take photos which melt your face, something Paul happens to be very good at. We spent a good six hours romping on the rocks with our photographer friends Tegan, Matt and Fran, and meeting some cool impromptu portrait models - the most memorable and awesome being Rafeeqa, who had a really cool smurf T-Shirt and patiently sat for us for hours, smiling beatifically. We really enjoyed her. Thanks Rafeeqa!
Because we promised Paul we wouldn't tell anyone where his best kept secret spot was, we can't tell you where Paul's best kept secret spot is. But if you guess, and we, like, don't say your wrong and stuff, then that's not really telling, is it? So log onto the FB page and gives us your best guess, and if we don't say your wrong, then your right and you can win something awesome, which we can't tell you about either. Paul says that, if you follow what he calls 'the chicken bone trail,' you'll find his spot and most of the other best spots in CT. We did, so should you. See where it leads you.
So we're extremely excited to see how the Zenith shots came out. They're being developed today, so we'll post them later. They may be all white and over-exposed, but they better not be because they cost like R20 a shot. Overall, we had an awesome day. Check out the vid below.
We met Paul after he commented on a post about us somewhere in the cyberscape. We offered him a Free Taxi ride, and weren’t sure quite what to expect when we picked him up from the Greenpoint Vida. Turns out, Paul is an absolute legend. He is also a pretty famous photographer. His work is incredible. Check it out here. We took him to YoursTruly and had an awesome lunch chatting about, well, everything from aliens to the medium format film in Chris’ granny’s camera. It was a thoroughly enjoyable couple of hours. Check out Paul’s taxi ride below.
Chris has a friend called Danny, who has just opened a cool new deli on Long called YoursTruly. We were keen to check it out, so we headed there for lunch on Tuesday.
We all know that opening a coffee shop is a risky affair. You have to have guts to put all your free-range eggs in such a basket. But the story of YoursTruly is as much a romance as it is a business endeavour. Danny, a graphic designer by trade, is a charismatic guy who had an idea. That idea became an obsession. He quit his job. He scoured the city for a location. He couldn’t find one. Back then you could find him skateboarding up and down Long Street for hours trying to find the perfect place. Eventually, he did – a grimy coffee shop below Neighbourhood. He managed to track down the landlord, but, due to the unfortunate previous tenants, the landlord was convinced that a coffee shop makes premises grimy. Danny sent through his proposal anyway, and asked the landlord to consider him if he were ever to change his mind. Which is exactly what happened when he read Danny’s proposal, and that’s how YoursTruly came to reside at 175 Long, just below Neighbourhood.
Apart from the great location, there are a whole lot of other things just right about the place. Experienced baristas and a great house roast mean the coffee is awesome. They do incredible fresh, wholesome sandwiches which you design yourself and which cost, unbelievably, around R24.00. They also serve pastries and fresh juices. The walls are covered in art for sale, and there’s a great lounge area at the back where you can pick up a magazine and not be disturbed. If you’re in a hurry, you can grab a takeaway from the NY style window that opens onto the street.
Overall, you’re getting that hip inner-city vibe without the overboard prices. We’re sure you’ll find yourself a regular before you know it. Check out our video of the opening below.
There’s a place on Church street called Addis in Cape. It is, quite literally, a chunk of Ethiopia slap bang in the middle of the CBD, and after our Crash Course in Real Taxi Driving, we rocked up there for lunch. The place is awesome. The restaurant takes up three stories, with a roving smoking section and beautiful décor throughout. Intricate silver Ethiopian crosses, bright umbrellas hung from the ceiling and ancient papyrus books fill the space. The low carved chairs are surprisingly comfortable, and the service is, quite simply, amazing. So is the food. Ethiopian cuisine consists of a vast selection of beautifully spiced curries. Each dish comes either spicy or not so spicy, and all of it is served in mounds on a gigantic sourdough pancake plate and eaten communally with baskets of rolled Injera (the same thing the plate is made of) that look like bandages and serve as both knife and fork. It is, quite simply, delicious. Addis in Cape imports its spices directly form Ethiopia, and each dish is prepared separately, from scratch, to order- no mean feat when each table orders about seven different dishes a meal. Though you may be desperately confused by the menu, ordering is really pretty simple. Just ask for chicken, lamb, mushrooms, butternut and so on, and tell the waiter whether you want it spicy or not. They’ll do the rest. When you’re done, you can eat your plate. Just make sure you finish with their insane Ethiopian coffee. For more info, go to www.addisincape.co.za, and check our video below.
We went out in the Free Taxi and picked up some incredibly interesting people.
Ashley, is a Chess coach and professional Chess player. We, personally, have never met a Chess player. We mean, seriously - have you? We were even more excited when he told us he is also a Western Province Scrabble player. We kid you not. Apparently, Chess wasn't doing it for him any more, so he 'recently' took up Scrabble. Furthermore, there is in fact a national Scrabble League which holds Scrabble tournaments, one of which Ashley actually won last week. How can nobody know about this? Probably because it happens in Pinelands. We imagine a heavy wooden door with one of those slidey face porthole things where you have to spell a really long word to get into a room full of people wearing dark glasses and sweating over their vowels and consonants.
Ashley invited us to check it out. However, everybody knows that Art Directors cannot spell and we would thus have to ask them to make a special exception for Chris, and to not laugh at him too much. Ashley has also agreed to teach us how to play Chess, a skill neither of us have ever managed to obtain. Chris might be good at Chess, though, because is is quite good at maths and can do long arithmetic in his head. We're definitely going to check out the Western Province Scrabble league.
Last week we were contacted by Jess Henson, a successful freelance writer and one of the people behind the Creative Cape Town initiative. She wanted to speak to us about the project, so we offered her a ride in our Free Taxi. What ensued was a very interesting two-way interview with an extremely interesting woman.
Shannon first met Jess years ago at an exhibition opening in the CBD, where they committed petty theft and drove over a pavement. A staple of the Cape Town creative scene, she’s written for Cape Town’s top creative chronicles (under the pen name Jezebel) and has carved out a reputation for herself as one of the CT’s best freelance writers. She is also in love with the city where she lives. We spoke to her about blogs, Capetonians and the amorous advances of taxi commuters. Check out the video below.
So, yesterday, we were driving down Strand Street to drop a passenger off at the station when we stopped at a red light. A real taxi pulled up next to us. The driver took one look at our cardboard ‘Free Taxi’ signs (which we forgot we shouldn’t really put on our taxi, for this very reason) and scowled. He shouted at us. FREE TAXI?! We quickly assured him that our Taxi was not actually free and is, in fact, the most expensive taxi in the CBD, so expensive that people have to take loans to go in our Taxi and the ‘free’ part was ‘free’ as in ‘freedom’ or something like that. This is all, obviously, not true. But at that moment, we felt it appropriate to lie. Through our chattering teeth.
This appeared to mollify him. He then eyed out the Carolla and asked if we wanted to swop taxis with him. We said we’d consider it. He then offered to buy the Carolla (everybody wants to buy the Carolla) and made a substantial cash offer. We asked him for his number.
His name is Ade. Scowl is his natural facial expression. While we were taking his details we explained the project, and how we have discovered that we are the worst Taxi drivers the City, possibly the world, has ever seen. We asked him if he’d give us a lesson, and because Ade is actually a legend guy, he agreed, saying it would be his pleasure.
So, today, he picked us up on Shortmarket and Long in one of his 10 taxis, and we set forth on one of the fun-est adventures we’ve ever had – a short course in Cape Town Taxi Driving, with Chris as driver and Shannon as gaaitjie, under the tutelage of a talented Taxi Driver called Ibraheem. It was awesome.
Silver-chocolate-denim-luff-luff-silver-sparkle-white-petal-gardens. There is a place where this phrase actually makes sense, and after a long morning of Free Taxi driving, we ended up there, at Charly’s Bakery, for lunch yesterday.
You can’t really miss the building, as it is covered in a wall-to-wall mural and the trademark neon pink and white stripes. You walk in, and you’re a kid again. It’s that simple. Lumo cupcakes, chocolate everything. Tarts, cookies and confectionary of every kind. Enough sugar in the vicinity to put you into a diabetic coma. Absolutely glorious.
We met with Alex, one of Charly’s daughters and one of the people largely responsible for the incredible range Charly’s Bakery produces. Charly himself, who has been baking since he was 14, has actually retired, and the business is now run by the women of the family, with matriarch Jaqui at the helm. Alex and the team have designed and produced cakes for the likes of Nelson Mandela, Elton John, Oprah, Thabo Mbeki and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. She once put a wedding cake together in 20 minutes after a docket slipped through the cracks. The bottom line is that these ladies know their what they’re doing. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak.
Mention Charly’s Bakery to any Capetonian and you’ll be met with all kinds of salivation. The place is, to quote their slogan, Mucking Afazing. Yet they aren’t overpriced, they aren’t snobbish, they’re just an functional family business run with decisiveness, confidence and a generous dash of sound business sense. Their stuff is in such demand, they operate a night shift and a day shift, so that they are literally baking 24 hours a day, all year round.
So, if you’re looking for a lunch spot or a birthday cake in the CBD, Charly’s is pretty much it. There’s a seating area out front where you can watch people go by and enough parking for minimum hassle. The coffee’s great. The food is great. And so is the sugar rush. Check out our video below.
Our second fare was a young couple we picked up on Orange Street - Mr. Thando Jack and his friend Ms. Belinda. We asked them where they liked to go in the City. Thando Jack recommended some places in Gug’s, like Mzoli’s and Soli’s, which is, apparently, much like Mzoli’s, only it’s called Soli’s. And apart from Mzoli’s and Soli’s, he recommended we check out a spot called Ace’s Place. We took his number. We asked them how they made a living in the City. Belinda works in a hotel. Thando Jack shyly let us know that he was, in fact, currently unemployed and looking for a job in a hotel. Which explained his dapper three-piece and the leather binder on his lap, and left us wondering. How does an impeccably presented, well-spoken and formidably named guy like Thando Jack struggle to find a job in the City? We’ve decided to help him. We’re putting the word out. Help us find Thando Jack a job. Check him out in our latest video.
So we pimped our taxi and hit the streets today. All was going well until we backed out the driveway and reached a walking speed, at which point our entire corporate branding effort began to flap like an epileptic in the light breeze. May need to rethink this for Monday.
When we eventually managed to actually arrive in town, alive and not in police custody, we were faced with another problem: Nobody seemed to give a s**t about our Free Taxi. The problem with Capetonians, of course, is that they have seen everything. And our face melting signage was, clearly, not as face-melting as we had previously thought due to the unfortunate loss of half of it, including our ‘Free Ride’ sign, on the treacherous highway. We were very upset. We played our Nigerian reggae music louder, in the hopes of attracting at least a little cynicism. No dice. And no customers.
Eventually, Chris was made ‘gaaitjie’ and thus trusted with the task of verbally eliciting business from the passenger side window. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that, not only was Chris the worst ‘gaaitjie’ in the WHOLE WORLD EVER, his method of trying to convince young, single woman to ‘get in the car’ because ‘we have DRINKS for you… No, please ignore the camera…’ was doing more harm to our brand image than anything else. He was subsequently demoted.
Nevertheless, we did manage to convince a few people to take a free ride and share some stories with us as to where they like to go in the City, what to do when unemployed and why babies are better out than in. Check out our webisodes for more.
