The Pride of Africa

SET YOUR
SIGHTS HIGH
Capture a view of Cape Town
like no other with a turn on
the city’s Cape Wheel or by
parachute (below)
The Pride of
Africa
Look out, Sydney—Cape Town is staking
its claim as the gay capital of the Southern
Hemisphere BY • DAVID PERRY
D
ID YOU know you can eat giraffe?
I know you can eat eat giraffe; lions do it
all the time—but lions
are “allowed.” Turns out you can
also eat crocodile (it does taste
like chicken), eland (a kind of
antelope) and springbok (another
kind of antelope). It’s usually
Asia getting freaky with food,
but chicken feet and fermented
bean curd are hands-down blown
out of the water by what Africa
puts on a menu.
I shared these thoughts with
the bemused waitress at Mama
Africa, the best place in Cape
Town for adventures in African
cuisine. Just flying into Africa
was an adventure; looking up at
the arrivals/departures board is
like being in that cantina in Star
Wars. Lilongwe? Gaborone?
Windhoek? Where are these places?
Traveling to Africa for a Pride celebration might
seem equally mystifying. When it comes to gay
40
A P R I L / M AY 2 0 1 4
equality, the “Dark Continent” remains just that.
Horror stories out of Egypt and Uganda suggest Gay
+ Africa = Homicide. But by
contrast, South Africa is the
polar opposite of everything
north of it, and Cape Town
Pride proves it.
Rainbow Nation
IT IS truly one of the most
colorful Prides in the world:
black African motifs, Xhosa
singers and Zulu warriors
seamlessly combine with
white Afrikaner dancers,
Namibian-German drag
queens and English muscle
boys aplenty in a united
front of fabulousness. When
South Africa emerged from
the Stone Age of apartheid,
newly elected President
Nelson Mandela (imprisoned for 27 years on
Robben Island, just off Cape Town) and civic
leaders like Archbishop Desmond Tutu saw more
than a few parallels between the suffering of the
black majority at the hands of the white minority
and the discrimination gays and lesbians faced.
In a new, free South Africa, gays went relatively
quickly from having no rights to being able to
marry, adopt children and serve openly in the
military.
Cape Town, long on the DL as the gay
capital of the country, wasted no time catching
up to New York and Sydney. Stretching the last
week of February (late summer in the Southern
Hemisphere), Cape Town Pride builds to a fever
pitch on the first Saturday of March, the day of the
parade. From my vantage point on Somerset Road,
the main artery of the De Waterkant neighborhood
(aka the “gay village”), I was swept up by a
Carnival-type atmosphere and sloshed to the “Pink
Block,” a two-block stretch formed by Liddle,
Cobern and Napier Streets, flanked by Somerset on
one side and Prestwich on the other. It’s the most
freewheeling club district in town. Jammed with
eateries like Beefcakes Burger Bar, the watering
holes BarCode, Backroom and Amsterdam Action
Bar, and the clubs par excellence Navigaytion
and Crew, it goes without saying that the Pink
Block during Pride, and after it, is a wall-towall fleshfest. (There’s a reason they’re called
cliffs over Cape Town are just the northern face
of a much larger feature marching south, straight
miles. It makes the fleet of taxis owned by Table
Bay Hotel really handy. A welcoming beacon
Backroom and Amsterdam Action Bar.)
into the ocean—the famed Cape of Good Hope.
on the Victoria and Albert Waterfront by the
Capetonians, in fact, have a serious jones to
bump off Sydney as the go-to gay destination
the peak by
it is the crown jewel
south of the equator. If Sydney is Cristal Connors,
cable car, I hiked
of the city, something
Cape Town is Nomi Malone coming down the
my way along
curiously fluid-
I didn’t realize until
I noticed the double
stairs behind her. And she’s armed.
After reaching
eponymous Table Bay,
looking terrain,
takes. One guy stared
The “Mother City”
eyed suspiciously
at me, stammering,
DURING South Africa’s colonial period, South
by geckos and
“The Table Bay? That
Africa and Cape Town bounced back and forth
something called
isn’t even Cape Town!”
between Dutch and British control, each empire
a “dassie” (think
leaving its stamp. Next to the Greek Revival
buildings Queen Victoria so favored are pastel-
of a rabbit crossed
with a koala) until I
the Table Bay does
take the beauty and
colored Barbie Dream Houses the Dutch brought
had Cape Town and
hospitality of Cape
with them wherever they went. Mix in 11 official
the Atlantic on one
Town and revs it into
languages, from English and Afrikaans (a Dutch
side, False Bay and
sumptuously high gear.
dialect) to Zulu, Xhosa (“KOH-sah”) and several
other indigenous tongues, and I mean it when I
say you never know what’s around the corner.
But you know what’s above it. The downtown,
what Capetonians call the “City Bowl,” is the
largest section of the city not interrupted by the
contours of one of the most iconic geological
features on earth: Table Mountain. This colossal
mesa juts up 3,558 feet, and few vantage points
are so airily vast. The mountain, “Hoerikwaggo”
to the native Khoi people, is not only emblematic
of Cape Town. It personifies all of South Africa
and even lends its name to the constellation
Mensa (“mensa” being Latin for “table”). The
the Indian Ocean
on the other and
the Cape of Good
Hope down the
middle. Awesome.
TERRIFIC TAKEHOMES
Cape Town
Beautifully decorated ostrich
clings to every
eggs and tribal masks make
great gifts
inch. Drive down
the seaside
highway and what
looks like isolated villages are just suburbs of the
city. In terms of population, Cape Town barely
cracks the 3 million mark, yet because of its
quirky geography covers a whopping 948 square
Arch, perhaps, but
NATIONAL PRIDE!
Aside from a stroll through
the city center (left), points
of interest include (clockwise
from top right) the National
Museum, Table Bay Hotel and
the National Gallery
A five-star picnic basket
on the summit of
picturesque Signal Hill
to watch the sunset?
No problem. The
Table Bay chefs and
sommelier will knock
your socks off (watch
out for the guinea
fowl). A taxi to get to
Summit Hill or just about anywhere else? Just
ask. My driver, a sunny Syrian named Naser, was
an encyclopedia of Cape Town must-dos. And
this was on top of a room that delighted, a bed
CAPE TOWN CREATIONS
If the bartenders at Beefcakes
Burger Bar aren’t yummy enough,
a meal at Societi (bottom right) or
Café Manhattan (bottom center)
should do the trick
THE
NITTY
GRITTY
FLY
South African Airways
flysaa.com
that swaddled, a view that astounded
and cuisine that whacked it right outta
the park.
But what really illustrates that you
aren’t in Kansas anymore are the teatime
pastries speckled with gold. Really. The
salmon, watercress sandwiches and
scones were all fine and good, but the
blinged-out crullers sent me running for
the camera.
Post-Pride Pursuits
SUMMER in Cape Town is perfect
beach weather (in the 90s and dry), but
there is no beach in the City Bowl (Cape
Town is a busy port). For sand and surf,
I went south to the Llandudno district
and Sandy Beach, which pulls double
duty as the city’s nude and gay beach.
Once down with native fashion, it was a
backflip into the sapphire-colored water.
Big mistake.
It may be 4,143 miles away, but
the waters off Cape Town are shipped
directly from—drumroll, please—
Antarctica.
That! Water! Is! Freezing!
LATER (after I’d relocated my ’nads) I
discovered the upside: The cold water
generates some of the world’s richest
fishing grounds, and the Mariner’s
Wharf, in the Hout Bay section, is the
best place in town to take a sample.
Thanks to a few other geographical
quirks, Cape Town is smack dab in
South Africa’s famed wine country, and
back in town, at the gay-owned Societi
Bistro and historic Café Manhattan
(the Stonewall of Cape Town), I
sampled some of the best vintages in
existence—Meerlust, Simonsig, Raats,
Groot Constantia—all produced in South
Africa. It got a little hazy at one point,
but I hung on long enough to learn Groot
Constantia was the favorite of Napoleon.
Somewhere out there, a Frenchman’s
head is exploding.
It was an exhibit on François le
Vaillant in the South African Museum,
fetchingly set amid the glades of the
Company’s Garden park, that really
struck a chord. The Marco Polo of
southern Africa, le Vaillant explored this
land centuries before, often being the
first European the native people ever
saw. Enchanted by their cultures, his
words ring through time to the South
Africa of today: “I returned, so to speak,
to man’s primitive state, and breathed,
for the first time in my life, the pure and
delicious air of freedom.”
True words.
STAY
Table Bay Hotel
suninternational.com/
table-bay/Pages/
default.aspx
EAT
Beefcakes
Burger Bar
beefcakes.co.za
Café Manhattan
manhattan.co.za
Societi Bistro
societi.co.za
Mama Africa
mamaafricarestaurant.
co.za
Mitchell’s
mitchells-ale-house.com
PLAY &
BE MARY
Amsterdam
Action Bar
amsterdambar.co.za/
action-bar
Backroom
amsterdambar.co.za/
backroom-bar-2
BarCode
leatherbar.co.za
Crew
facebook.com/
CrewBarCapeTown
Hothouse
hothouse.co.za
Navigaytion
navigaytion.co.za