Cuba

Charlie Finn makes it sound like a crazy sexy place.

It's lovely.

They have Spanish chain hotels in Cuba (Iberostar, Melia, NH), but even those don't seem that nice or contemporary.

Looser Rules for Travel to Cuba, a Destination Already in Transition ... As Americans prepare to visit Cuba under new, more flexible regulations announced by the Treasury Department on Thursday, however, American officials still expect them to get a close view of life on the island rather than sit poolside with a margarita.

Under the economic embargo, Americans are permitted to travel to Cuba only for specific purposes, which fall into 12 categories and include religious, educational, cultural, professional, journalistic or humanitarian activities. Many Americans visit Cuba on educational exchange programs, known as “people-to-people” tours, whose tight itineraries consist of back-to-back meetings with Cubans — from architects to chefs to farmers — and include minimal free time.

Under the new rules, which will take effect on Friday as part of a deal to restore diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba, Americans who qualify to travel under one of 12 categories will no longer have to apply for a license before they travel — a process that, in the past, could take weeks or months. And travelers will be permitted to use credit cards and spend money while in the country and bring back up to $400 in souvenirs, including up to $100 in alcohol or tobacco. What is not clear, say travel experts, is how American authorities plan to monitor what its citizens do when they get to Cuba. “What we don’t know is, ‘What is the border of these regulations?’ “ said Bob Guild, vice president of Marazul Charters, which has provided travel services to Cuba for 35 years. “Is anyone going to be vetting travel anymore?”

More flexible travel rules introduced in 2011 have already increased American travel to the island. About 100,000 Americans visit each year, while Cubans living in the United States make about 400,000 visits to see family. Those numbers could rise significantly under the new regulations, travel agents and tour leaders said. ... That is another question: As keen as the Cuban government is to receive tourists — about three million came last year — it may not be able to handle a sudden increase in visits from America, which is the source of about half a million visits a year (80 percent of these are Cuban-Americans). The Communist government may also be wary of having a flood of Americans discussing capitalism and democracy with its people, political analysts said. ... Travel representatives predicted that Americans would continue to use people-to-people trips to visit Cuba because everything is arranged for them and if their tour is organized by someone knowledgeable, they experience things they might not see by themselves. A large proportion of those Americans who currently visit Cuba do so on people-to-people trips, they said. ... Individual travel — particularly if commercial flights open between Cuba and the United States — could be much cheaper. A meal in the best privately run restaurants costs about $35. A typical bed-and-breakfast in Havana charges $35 to $50 a night.

Given the lack of hotel rooms, bed-and-breakfasts could be in demand, said Tom Miller, author of “Trading With the Enemy: A Yankee Travels Through Castro’s Cuba.”

“The hotel room situation will be the first crisis,” he said, adding, “There are only half a dozen really high-end hotels and, in the midrange places, there are invariably problems: The window won’t shut, the sink isn’t working.” ...

In Havana, Gay Bars Hold Their Own Against the Internet

By RICHARD MORGAN

JUNE 17, 2016

HAVANA — Just before midnight on a recent Thursday here along the Malecón, the capital’s five-mile concrete sea wall boardwalk, Wilder Calderon Peña, 24, a bartender and Airbnb agent, was doing his thunder dance.

“So that lightning hits me and my cigarette will be lit,” he said. Sure enough, a charitable stranger soon obliged. “Welcome to Planet Cuba,” Mr. Calderon, who identifies as bisexual, said after his first puff. “This is how the universe works here. You give good. You get good. It’s karma. It’s the laws of attraction.”

He then crossed the street to attend a drag show at mYXto, a gay-friendly bar, where he would stay until about 5 a.m.

Attraction drives the Malecón, which is a popular hangout for all Habaneros, especially for those who are gay — including escorts. Another habitué, Jorge Luis Ramos Medina, 30, a gay information engineer, described its broad appeal as “Havana’s sofa.”

It’s what cities in the United States and Europe, pre-internet, once called “cruising grounds” — areas that have for the most part become quaint artifacts of the gay past, replaced by hookup apps like Grindr, Jack’d and Scruff. Havana is gay night life before Grindr.

Continue reading the main story On an island of communists, gay Cubans were long Havana’s have-nots, the last among equals. That began to change in 2008, when, after a gay rights speech by Mariela Castro Espín, the daughter of President Raúl Castro, the capital staged its first gay pride parade, which has continued annually, less as a shirtless spectacle and more as a protest. Kingbar, which opened last year in the hip Vedado neighborhood, harks back to a time when American gay bars still had a bit of a renegade quality.

“It’s like freedom of expression,” said Manuel Subarez, 27, a sandwich maker at a cafe who is also a “full-time Lena Dunham superfan.” “It’s like we can do anything we want today, because we are gay,” he said at this year’s parade, tugging proudly on his Keith Haring tank top. Homosexuality was legalized here in 1979, but a 1988 law prohibits a “publicly manifested” presence.

“The revolution continues,” said Dr. Castro, 53, a sex educator, at the official post-parade festival as she held a rainbow placard of this year’s motto, “Yo Me Incluyo (I Include Myself).” “Until there is equality and diversity for all Cubans in all aspects of our society.”

A dedicated gay bar — as opposed to one with, say, a night devoted to gay clientele — debuted here in 2013, the first ever in Havana. But its closure last October was met with a collective roll-with-the-punches shrug. More places catering to gays are coming, joining a dozen weekly parties and Mi Cayito, a beach popular with gays. And the Malecón itself is too vital a scene to be shut down. Gay clubs frequently swell with the roaring titular anthem of a Jacob Forever pop song: “Until the Malecón runs dry!”

Wi-Fi bandwidth is another matter. Cuba has up to 4,000 active daily Grindr users, said Jennifer Foley Shields, a publicist for the app. But a recent series of Grindr check-ins here by this reporter revealed, on average, 11 online users in this city of two million (a population roughly equivalent to Houston’s).

Even in a five-star hotel along the Malecón with four-bar Wi-Fi reception, one typical check-in, after several false starts, required 14 minutes to open the app.

The experience is even more uphill for locals, who pay 2 Cuban convertible pesos per hour for internet use. (Cuban salaries, on average, 20 Cuban convertible pesos a month.) Apple users additionally, once their iPhone is unlocked, must pay middlemen to install apps, with several gay Cubans saying they were either too poor or too embarrassed to request an installation of Grindr or its ilk.

Joel Simkhai, 39, Grindr’s founder and chief executive, has touted the app’s reach in nations struggling technologically. This year, after a visit to the island, Mr. Simkhai told On Cuba magazine that gay Cubans “still haven’t got it 100 percent.” During that trip, he hosted a party sponsored by Grindr at a bar on its gay night.

In a phone interview, Mr. Simkhai said he would not share the minimum bandwidth Grindr needed to function, adding: “Our numbers are O.K. It’s not a huge market for us.” Cuba is “a growth opportunity in a market dying for Grindr,” he added.

Last year, the Cuban government created public for-pay Wi-Fi zones. Verizon began Cuba’s first data-roaming deal with the United States last September. In March, Google announced plans for a technology center here, offering 70 megabytes per second (as opposed to the normal one megabyte per second speed that is standard here).

Mr. Calderon, who goes by the nickname Wild, has accounts with Grindr, Hornet, PlanetRomeo Uncut and Scruff, and claims to be the only man in Havana on Daddyhunt. He finds the apps unappealing.

“Gay life is about being open, being unlimited,” he said. “I’m bisexual, because I prefer the unlimited. Why would anyone — bisexual, gay, whatever — want to be trapped as a photo, as an internet profile in an app? That’s a different kind of closet, a box. So boring.”

His friend Juan Carlos Godoy Torres, 25, a saxophonist and flutist with an 8-year-old son, agreed.

“I didn’t fight through five years of slow development in the gay community to end up spending two or three CUCs an hour maybe meeting a virtual person,” Mr. Godoy said. “I prefer the magic of the streets, someone who can trap me with his eyes, who can dance with me, who can touch my face. I want more than sex.

“I was married, and I want that moment of revelation of that day, when you see someone for the first time, the surprise of it. That’s not possible if they are sending me messages that begin with photos of their chest. That’s not romance. That’s shopping.”

Lots of Americans go to Cuba illegally every year for vacations. They just pop across the border to Toronto or Mexico and then fly to Havana. As a Canadian who's been to Cuba three or four times I've always met Americans in Varadero who came down for the cheap package trips starting in another country. At first they'll tell you they're from Vancouver or Halifax but their non-Canadian accents give them away. Cuba knows what passports they are using and they don't care - they love people from the States. It's the US that wants her citizens to stay away from Cuba.

Cubans are a beautiful people, by the way.

The influx of sex tourism is sure to bring more disease to the island. That's a pity.

Do some of the guys kind of look like this guy?

yummy

Why Are Cuban Men Putting Pearls in Their Dicks?

According to some Cubans, having a small ball inserted under the skin of your penis makes you a better lover.

In Cuba, sex is everywhere. From the moment you arrive at the airport, it feels like you were just transported to a parallel universe of good-looking, tanned salsa dancers. Walking the streets, there is no doubt you will walk past boxes of Vigor King Size condoms stacked up in chemists' window displays, while in bars of a more sketchy variety, you can buy a Momentos condom with one Cuban peso.

...

Cuba's Young, Salsa-Dancing Male Hustlers Are Going to Be Seducing a Lot More Rich Americans

jinetero

Hoy guys

R8, I think it'll be okay, as they have a good health care system and sex ed.

Rolling back their gross foreskins is like pulling apart a grilled cheese sandwich, except the sandwich smells better.

I'm sure they bathe, R16. But they are uncut right?

What makes Cuba more interesting than, say, Puerto Rico, or anywhere else in the Caribbean? I know every place is unique, but if you haven't been to Aruba, or Trinidad, or St. Bart's, etc.? Why care about Cuba?

It's new to Americans, R18.

It's not much different except that Cuba is in a time capsule.

Well, a time capsule makes it interesting.

Why would it be in a time capsule when it was a vacation destination for Canadians and Brits and Germans, etc? Does everybody need America to progress?

Was the a US law that penalized businesses that invested in Cuba? That would hinder foreign investment there, I guess.

I didn't say it was a bad thing. I've been there twice. It's part of my culture. I just meant that the difference will be the time warp. The technology and cars are stunted from a time long ago. While there are tourists, it still has a small town close feel for me.

I've always wondered why I never saw a '57 Chevy there though there are plenty of '56 and '58 models. Do you suppose they found a way of selling them for foreign currency? Could they have wound up in the US?

Are they leaning towards implementing free market reforms at all?

delightful and amazing

DEPRESING AS FUCK

DEPRESSING AS FUCK. Everyone is looking for a way to get out and they'll do and say anything to do so. I have 2 middle aged friends from Spain that fell for Cuban boys, they managed to get them out of the island and into Spain and the minute they set foot in Europe it was "adios, maricon!"

What proportion of guys are hot?

The attractive ones got out years ago, the ones left are the unfuckable ones

Havana is great. People are friendly, especially the young men who are attracted to yankee dollars. I did not partake, but they are very handsome.

Outside Havana it's rural countryside and beautiful. Cuba has modern highways, but few vehicles are on them. Most citizens can't afford a car. Never saw a traffic jam.

We stayed at the Hotel Parque Central in historic Havana. Good quality first-class hotel with a good restaurant , large bar/lounge and fantastic location. Stay in the older part of the hotel, the newer addition is somewhat Holiday Innish.

Very warm and humid, all year round.

Havana is rundown, but you can see the faded elegance underneath the decay. It look very European in its layout, with squares and wide boulevards.

Darian Álvarez

R29 These are the hot Cubans that left country.

R29 And the "unfuckable" ones remained.

Hottie Elian Gonzales is still there, too.

I've been twice. The men are small and slim built.

Go for a 5* hotel and it'll be about low 4* quality. The food isn't great because of the trade restrictions and there are hardly any sweets and chocolates to be had. I had Haribo there for the first time because there was nothing else.

R35, did you see any jineteros (basically hustlers)?

Whores doent excite me. Real men do

They stink cause water is expensive and they're uncut which means even if they could bathe they wouldn't know how to wash properly "down there."

They have soap and water, and they don't smell.

i want to eat this cuban pinga

I got out.

The hot guys have indeed left Cuba for Spain.

Trump has made it hard to travel to Cuba.

Yeah it's a pain to get there. Puerto Rico has amazing Latin pinga.