“LOS JARDINES DE LA POLAR IS MY SECRET GARDEN IN HAVANA. IT’S VERY NEARLY UNDOCUMENTED. NOT EVEN MY HABANERO FRIENDS, AT LEAST MOST OF THEM, KNOW ABOUT IT, SO WHEN I TAKE MODELS THERE, BOYS WHO LIVE A FEW MINUTES WAY, THEY MARVEL AT THE BEAUTY AND THE SPACE. IT REMAINS UNCLEAR TO ME EXACTLY HOW OLD THE SPACE IT. FOR ALL I CAN DISCOVER IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN THERE WHEN GOD FIRST OPENED HIS EYES." - Kevin Slack, photographer.
If you are an admirer of salsa music, then a visit to Los Jardines de la Tropical is an absolute must when you are visiting Old Havana, Cuba. The place is famous for its open air dance parties since many decades, from the time long before the Cuban Revolution, when Havana was a place of many social clubs. It was a place where people would go and dance and drink beer until early evening. Most of them would go home after an afternoon in La Tropical, but some would go elsewhere, to another place, as cheerful as the first, but by now long forgotten by many since the late 1950’s. This place is Los Jardines de la Polar.
The Polar Gardens, named after the nearby Polar beer factory, the Polar Cerveceria, is secreted away inside the city, under a large canopy of ancient Algarrobo trees with their knotting threading vine-roots, with its dapple-drawn gardens and gazebos and bridges, with miniature castles and Chinese tile work and references to Catalan Modernism influences. Cut through by the Amendares River, the park has all the aspect of a once-beautiful now-forgotten discarded thing, crumbling under the pressure of time's steady push.
It does seem that the Polar Gardens enjoyed its heydey in the luxuriousness of the 1950s where they hosted beer drinking in the park to promote the brewery, where they held elegant parties at night, dedicating parties to various barrios - neighborhoods - of Havana. And social groups used to have monthly and weekly events there with music and dancing and drinking of course. Los Jardines de la Polar began to die at the birth of the Revolución in 1959; and inside the bark-rings of the Algarrobo trees, now sleeps the memory of the park's former beauty and glory, of dance and song. In 1989, Fidel Castro created the Great Metropolitan Park (GMP) of Havana, meant to revitalize and refresh the green spaces of Havana. The GMP comprises an area of about 700 acres and runs over 9 miles along the Almendares River. The GMP contains Los Jardines de la Polar.
“My secret garden is very nearly empty. There passes through it now, boys who play rigorous soccer on a field, some homeless habañeros who wash their clothes in the river and take siestas in the disused sports pavilion beside the open field, and in a back corner, some modest farmers, and, at the river, the Santería faithful performing sacred rites, and of course, young lovers with burning skin.”-B-
Photography by Kevin Slack.
KEVIN SLACK | BEAUTIFUL
"Young lovers with burning skin."
That statement ignites beautiful, erotic images in the imagination!
Posted by: Steve | May 05, 2009 at 07:19 AM