Watching Beirut die

[evlbstrd]

We went to Beirut to film a TV show about the city's newly vibrant culinary and cultural scene. Then the bombs started falling, and we could only stand on the barricades of our hotel balcony and watch it all disappear -- again.

By Anthony Bourdain

From where I'm sitting, poolside, I can see the airport burning -- the last of the jet fuel cooking off like a dying can of sterno. There's a large, black plume of smoke coming from the south of the city -- just over the rise, where the most recent airstrikes have been targeting the Shiite neighborhoods and what are, presumably, Hezbollah-associated structures. My camera crew and I missed it the first time they hit the airport. Slept right through it. Woke up in our snug hotel sheets to the news that we wouldn't be making television in Beirut (not the show we came to do anyway), and that we wouldn't be getting out of here anytime soon.

Link:
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2006/07/28/bourdain_beirut/index.html

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[Erika]

1. Gone in 1983 and now again

How very sad for these people.

[evlbstrd]

2. The article describes that sense of loss very well.

And this guy is a teevee chef. I think I'll watch him.

[Bluebear]

3. Yo EB

Just cited the same article. Yeah Anthony is way cool. Like no typical TV chef you'll ever see :)

[Pacifist Patriot]

4. I've admired him since reading "Kitchen Confidential"

He's got talent as a writer and a chef.