Notes from a small city, tales from a big town - Chapter 1

I just bought a Gatsby .

It’s a local Cape Town fast food take-away. It’s a huge bready-bun filled with hot chips (French fries), spicy steak, eggs and cheese and smothered in secret chutney of sorts called Mango Atchar. My neighbour once told me she went to a cafe in high heels, had half a Gatsby and walked home in flip flops. It is uber fatty, Heavy as hell, unhealthy, messy, awkward to hold and super very bloody F#$% delicious.

Much like Cape Town.

Cape Town is different. And by different I mean - ‘different’. It’s much like the old uncle who had a cheap Botox injection a few years ago and now decided to extend his saggy-eyed midlife crisis for a few years by piercing his ear... problem is, we love the old boy dearly. He is cool, funky, hip and laid back. But underneath that hardened exterior, pulses a beat to a tune filled with emotion and hidden stories.

Cape Town is situated at the tip of Africa. For a while after 1652 AD, it was – what we consider today – a glorified truck stop.  A Shell petrol station. An overnight motel in the middle of nowhere. It was the mid-way stop for ships sailing from Europe to India. (or so we’re told. I think they came here for the Gatsbies)

Because of this, several old wives saying were created: “Never trust a man with white shoes” for example. Navy sailors, tailored in their bleached boots, fathered many offspring here and vanished over the morning’s watery horizon. I for example am an offspring of the fruits of their forbidden passions... I am forbidden passion fruit.

Cape Town also became an epicentre of cultural fusion – a hotspot of inter-continental assimilation of ethnicity, traditions and new customs and ideas. From sun bathing on gorgeous beaches, to perving at those sun bathers from a mountain top nearby.

So there’s a mountain (or very high flat topped hill), some beautiful icy beaches, locals selling a vast array of flowers in Adderley street, Fresh fish (snoek) in Hout Bay, lots of taverns in shanty towns, a crazy public transport system that somehow works, a peculiar and proud people, a young nightlife, fresh Nigerians still operating the dated 419 scams, streetpreachers on street corners, the smell of spicy foods cooking away on Sunday mornings, American fast food establishments like McDonalds, Burger King, etc – though South Africa’s Steers Burgers walk circles around their offerings. There’s sunshine, and botanical gardens, there’s aquariums and butterfly worlds. There’s theme parks and flea markets and nightclubs and pubs and tourist traps and koe'sisters and penny polonies and beautiful human beings and ugly human beings and public zombie walk campaigns and school rugby and cricket rivalries and super malls and hidden cosy home-owned restaurants and false teeth and the Cape Coons singing and dancing under bright umbrellas, and so many other things...

But these things don’t make Cape Town, Cape Town.

What makes Cape Town Cape Town is the Gatsby... It takes all the years of traditions, the untidy streets, the cultures, the beautiful sceneries, the local music, the unique charm, the warmth, the accents, the everything – sums it all up into a meal way too large for a mortal soul to consume in one setting and  sets off a series of explosions of parties and flavours in your mouth.

So forgive me as I end this off quickly... I just noticed three chips fall from it’s doughy home and that upsets me.  It should be in my mouth.

Fearless Dave