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 picked Herman up on Kloof. He appeared to be talking very seriously to someone about a pamphlet or something, so, when he'd finished, we offered him a ride around the block. Turns out, Herman is a newly converted Hare Krishna. He now stays in that beautiful, massive temple in Rondebosch, and follows a really hectic daily routine of meditation and vegetarianism. It was really interesting to hear how he got where he is today, and what his religion means to him. Check out the video below.
Chris met Jared in a photography store. Unsurprisingly he is a photographer. He's from Long Beach, California and of South African decent. He is passionate about this country, and particularly about Cape Town, where he now lives. Jared has spent the last six years and his entire life savings shooting and self-publishing a mammoth compilation of photography chronicling the life and culture of South Africa. The work is catagorised and then graphically augmented by a tribe of the country’s best graphic designers and tattoo artists. The result is seriously impressive. We picked Jared up and gave him a ride to his latest exhibition and performance space in town. Check out his taxi ride below. And his blog here.
We picked Eunis up on Adderly Street. She was on the way to the deeds office to locate the title deed to her house, which she is trying to sell. She was accompanied by the prospective buyer of said house, Thando, and we couldn’t figure out why they were both so pissed off. You could cut the tension with a teddy bear. The situation was further aggravated by our inability to locate said deeds office, due to our extremely unacceptable taxi driving skills. OH well.
However, Chris soldiered on, and the pair relaxed eventually. He even pulled out some suiwer bombaliscious Afrikaans moves. Extremely funny.
After our incredibly inspired reworking of our corporate ID, we hit the streets to try and garner a few customers for interviews and Free Taxi Rides. Now, dear reader, it is not easy to convince people to get into our Free Taxi. This is because most perambulating potential passengers are in fact in possession of a fair deal of common sense, which, it seems, makes them reluctant to hop into a strange vehicle with some strangers offering, strangely, a FREE RIDE to wherever they want to go. Perhaps they think we are part of some scary cult, recruiting members for unfortunate human sacrifice. Perhaps they think the camera on the dashboard is there to capture their imminent demise for a leisurely viewing with friends later. We’re not sure what people think, but we are sure that it makes our job a little tricky at times.
We did, however, think that the lack of cardboard in our new CI would give the Taxi a more legitimate feel. Apparently, it doesn’t. Poster paint and the new shade netting addition seem only to make people more reluctant to hop in. Regardless, we shall persevere! The ones who get in are the ones who we want to talk to anyway. Well, that’s what we keep telling ourselves.
A guy by the name of Dylan from Sandboarding Cape Town dropped a link on our page a while back. We contacted him and offered a write-up in exchange for an experience. So we trekked out to the dunes in Atlantis for a morning. We couldn’t believe what we found.
So, we don’t know where we’ve been all this time, but it turns out there is a massive Mad Max-like dune system just 20 minutes out of Cape Town. You drive down the West Coast road, stop in a parking lot, go over a small little hill, and there, laid out before you, is another world. How have we not known about this for so long? How do you hide a massive dune system from everyone? Not cool! In all fairness, it is almost completely concealed. Populating the dunes is a whole other subculture. Tribes of tanned and toned local kids with 4X4’s pulling trailers carrying quads and boards and braai’s. They sandboard, quad and drink all day in the blazing sun. It’s like a secret, sandy Utopia.
Dylan took us through the basics of sandboarding. We were doing well until we got bored with the little slopey slope and decided, while Dylan was momentarily distracted, that we hadn’t fallen over yet and were, therefore, way too awesome for baby slopey slopes and obviously ready for the biggest dune in the whole world. A grave miscalculation, we discovered, and although our sandboarding pursuits ended shortly after that, we had a great day regardless. Check out the video below, and check out Dylan’s link.
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When we were missioning around with Mike Sharman, getting into scrapes with hairy-sweary guys, he introduced us to a man called Jan Braai. Jan Braai was a CA, until he quite his job to follow a passion – bringing people together through South South Africa’s only truly unique pastime: braaing. He is now behind Braai for Heritage he invented National Braai Day. How awesome?
We caught up with Jan at the Cape Town Beer Festival, where he told us about a new sport he’s invented – the Braai-Athlon. Extremely funny.
For those of you in an office that does not allow YouTube, try this out...
We picked Jeff up on Kloof Street. He was on his way to the other side of town (the old post office near the station) after a job interview. It was a glorious day in the City, and he was cheerfully walking down the road in a full suit, despite the heat. He said he didn’t mind the walk. We gave him a ride. He told us his story – how he was the “so-called first white twin to be born in the False Bay Hospital”, how he’s looking for the love of his life, yet spent his life in love with his City.
A truly positive and friendly guy, check out Jeff’s video below.
For those of you in an office that does not allow YouTube,try this out...
