#Shopping

A couple of miles southeast of downtown Joburg, in a place called City Deep, there’s a produce market the size of a small town. The Joburg Market (next door to the Mutliflora Market) is the largest fresh produce market in Africa – or the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, depending on who you talk to – and it’s where most of Joburg’s restaurants, produce shops, and vendors buy their fruit and veg.

Centurion, an anonymous no man’s land between Joburg and Pretoria, is home to a magical place called Buyuk Chamlija: a self-described “Socio Eco Techno Village” that grows fat, juicy pomegranates and has a Turkish restaurant shaped like a beehive.

My mom came for a visit and the two of us took a weeklong road trip through the South African platteland (Afrikaans for countryside). We drove from Joburg to Bethulie, Bethulie to the Garden Route, up through the Karoo Desert to Hanover, and then back to Joburg.

I can’t remember the exact moment when I became aware of veldskoens, a.k.a. vellies. These leather foot coverings – somewhere between a shoe and a boot – have always been prolific in rural South Africa, lining the shelves of padstals (farm stalls), small clothing shops, and famers’ co-ops. I would often see them and think: Those are nice shoes. I should buy a pair.

I’ve visited Lilian Road Studios, a collection of artists’ studios in a historic, dilapidated building in Fordsburg, many times. Several great Joburg artists have had studios at Lilian Road, including Hannelie Coetzee and Hermann Niebuhr. Now there is a group of artists working there, several of whom are my friends, and I can’t believe I’ve never blogged about it before. There are so many things I love about these studios.

I recently joined the Rand Club, which holds a couple of black-tie events each year. When it came time to attend our first fancy function, the Club’s 135th-anniversary gala, Thorsten and I considered his black-tie options. He didn’t own a tux, we didn’t like the idea of renting one for one night, and Thorsten isn’t really a conventional black-tie kinda guy. We decided to turn this chore into an adventure and go to downtown Joburg for a funky, custom-made suit.