Alright New York! Looks like we are next on the Ebola epidemic scare!

According to Marc Santora at NYTimes

A doctor in New York City who recently returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea tested positive for the Ebola virus Thursday, becoming the city’s first diagnosed case.

The doctor, Craig Spencer, was rushed to Bellevue Hospital Center on Thursday and placed in isolation while health care workers spread out across the city to trace anyone he might have come into contact with in recent days. A further test will be conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to confirm the initial test.

While officials have said they expected isolated cases of the disease to arrive in New York eventually, and had been preparing for this moment for months, the first case highlighted the challenges surrounding containment of the virus, especially in a crowded metropolis.

Even as the authorities worked to confirm that Mr. Spencer was infected with Ebola, it emerged that he traveled from Manhattan to Brooklyn on the subway on Wednesday night, when he went to a bowling alley, and then took a taxi home.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Cuomo spoke during a press conference  at Bellevue Hospital in New York on Thursday evening. Credit: Joshua Bright for The New York Times

The next morning, he reported having a temperature of 103 degrees, raising questions about his health while he was out in public.

People infected with Ebola cannot spread the disease until they begin to display symptoms, and it cannot be spread through the air. As people become sicker, the viral load in the body builds, and they become more and more contagious.

Dr. Spencer’s travel history and the timing of the onset of his symptoms led health officials to dispatch disease detectives, who “immediately began to actively trace all of the patient’s contacts to identify anyone who may be at potential risk,” according to a statement released by the department.

It was unclear if the city was trying to find people who might have come into contact with Dr. Spencer on the subway. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority directed all questions to the health department, which did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the issue.

At Dr. Spencer’s apartment in Harlem, his home was sealed off and workers distributed informational fliers about the disease. It was not clear if anyone was being quarantined.

Health authorities declined to say how many people in total might have come into contact with Dr. Spencer while he was symptomatic.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, speaking at a news conference Thursday evening before the diagnosis, said Dr. Spencer has given health workers a detailed accounting of his activities over the last few days.

“Our understanding is that very few people were in direct contact with him,” Mr. de Blasio said.

 A photo of Dr. Spencer posted on his Facebook page.

Dr. Spencer had been working with Doctors Without Borders in Guinea, treating Ebola patients, before returning to New York City on Oct. 14, according to a city official.

He told the authorities that he did not believe the protective gear he wore while working with Ebola patients had been breached but had been monitoring his own health.

Doctors Without Borders, in a statement, said it provides guidelines for its staff members on their return from Ebola assignments, but did not elaborate on those protocols.

“The individual engaged in regular health monitoring and reported this development immediately,” the group said in a statement.

A photograph of Dr. Spencer on his LinkedIn page.

Dr. Spencer began to feel sluggish on Tuesday but did not develop a feveruntil Thursday morning, he told the authorities. At 11 a.m., the doctor found that he had a 103-degree temperature and alerted the staff of Doctors Without Borders, according to the official.

The staff of Doctors Without Borders called the city’s health department, which in turn called the Fire Department.

Emergency medical workers, wearing full personal protective gear, rushed to Dr. Spencer’s apartment, on West 147th Street. He was transported to Bellevue and arrived shortly after 1 p.m. He was placed in a special isolation unit and is being seen by the pre-designated medical critical care team. They are in personal protective equipment with undergarment air ventilation systems

When duty called, I couldn’t resist! Clad in Valentino and Louboutin, I set out to capture the star studded annual Alzheimer’s Association gala for Shoeholics! Accompanied by my good friend Carla, it was a fun filled night. We met several of our other friends there: Ruth, Stephanie, Hayden, just to name a few. Girls just want to have fun…all for a good cause of course. No matter how high or low ones life is, it’s always important to give back to a worthy cause. For more on my coverage, details about the gala and to see more star studded pictures, please visit http://www.shoeholicsclub.com website. If someone you love is suffering from Alzheimer’s, get them the extra help they need and check out Skylark Senior Care.

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Carla

Hayden and Stephanie

Carla and Ruth

Shoeholics magazine, as seen in the event’s official program book

It’s safe to say that we all know First Lady Michelle Obama knows how to dance but we have really never seen her this way. She really knows what time it is! Watch her bounce in the video footage below. Get it Michelle!

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Fresh off the press, literally 5 minutes ago today, Chanel captures the fashion world by storm with a short film for the No 5 perfume! I’m usually not the type to gosh about ads but Chanel’s latest installment of the iconic No 5 perfume starring Gisele Bunchen, directed by “Moulin Rouge” and “Great Gatsby” Baz Luhrmann really moved me. What a great story and artistry. This is pure art in motion! Kudos Chanel!

According to Laura Argintar at elitedaily: Making the rounds on the party circuit comes with an expiration date.

After countless rounds at the gilded bars, sore feet from ridiculous heels, and a reshuffling of priorities (cough quality time with “American Horror Story” cough), you’ve reached your threshold of Sam Smith remixes and well vodka.

We can no longer pretend to ignore the signs that our party girl lives are ending. Yes, this important chapter in our lives (you owe your confidence to many morning-afters strutting in aggressive clubwear, after all) is slowly winding down.

But that doesn’t mean we’ll miss waking up in vats of hummus and crushed pretzels.

Welcome to the (non) club! Here are the 60 signs your party girl life is ending:

1. You don’t have any recently tagged Facebook pictures.

2. You feel weird when your dress is too short.

3. You only go out when there’s a birthday or special occasion… not just because it’s Friday.

4. You can no longer take a shot without a chaser.

5. You’re sick of not remembering everything.

6. Your voice is permanently raspy, and you’ve had enough calling home and your sister greeting you with, “Hey, Dad!”

7. You go to clubs and complain about how many people are there.

8. You’re tired of waiting for new credit cards in the mail.

9. You don’t consider “Dancing like no one’s watching” a real form of exercise anymore.

10. You’ve succumbed to the fact that you can’t walk in heels, and this doesn’t upset you as much as you thought it would two years ago.

11. You’re productive during the weekends.

12. You’ve gone more than three months without breaking your phone.

13. You forgot how to twerk. (Psh, girlfriend. NEVAAAA!)

14. You only want to go out to places where you can wear your pajamas.

15. You are now retelling your old stories from The Archives because you have no new ones.

16. You get drunk off two drinks now! For the girl who used to wear green pants and flash everyone from five-story rooftops, whoever thought this day would come?

17. You’ve recently found this thing called “good judgment.”

18. You never coat check because you know you aren’t staying that long.

19. When people ask you if you smoke cigarettes, you say you don’t instead of “only when I’m drunk.”

20. Your clothes are ruined from being spilled on, including the ones you wear to work.

21. Your taste in music has gotten significantly better. (AKA outside of electronic super galactic martian music.)

22. You can’t afford to lose your wallet anymore.

23. The thought of waking up in a stranger’s bed doesn’t excite you anymore… it scares you.

24. There is no more room on your legs for new bruises.

25. Insurance has asked you to stop drinking.

26. You’d rather be besties with your coworkers than the bouncers.

27. You’ve recently scaled back on your eyeshadow game.

28. You say things like, “I cant go out tonight. I need to catch up on my sleep.”

29. You can’t relate to drunk anxiety anymore.

30. You no longer need a pregame to feel OK about drinking a lot. You’re perfectly comfortable checking out with a bottle of wine all by yourself.

31. You started going home and seeing your parents again.

32. You’ve stopped living like a vampire.

33. You’re debating issues dealing with Syria, not what to wear that weekend.

34. You purchased a white couch.

35. The only man you wait around for is your delivery guy.

36. You bought your last shirt-as-a-dress ensemble from Forever 21.

37. You’d rather sleep in your own bed than someone else’s.

38. You’re insecure about your dance moves.

39. You actually care about and take notice of the price of drinks.

40. You never go a night without removing your makeup.

41. You are wearing tights again.

42. You actually have to go out and buy alcohol for when your friends come over. There’s no longer a constant supply in your freezer. Ditto for beer.

43. Coming home blackout isn’t funny anymore, it’s exhausting.

44. You can’t even stay up to eat late night.

45. After years of deteriorating your brain cells and forgetting 89 percent of your nights out, you start more phrases with “When did that happen?” than “Remember when?”

46. You can’t stay up past 10 pm on a school night.

47. When you go to drunk text your go-tos, they know by now not to respond. You’ve pretty much exhausted your list of booty calls.

48. Shopping for cute little party dresses has been replaced by shopping for cute tailored work pants.

49. Gold eye glitter doesn’t excite you like it used to… Sigh.

50. You don’t know the names of the new cool clubs. But you don’t actually care.

51. You’ve finally washed the hot, sess-pooly, retired alcoholic stripper stench from your hair.

52. You’ve started buying more “practical” shoes.

53. You forgot to buy red cups at the grocery store.

54. You’ve realized you won’t find someone who is “husband material” at the places you frequent.

55. When you see your drug dealer, he asks how you’ve been since the last time he saw you with your underwear tucked into your skirt holding a handle of Tito’s.

56. You’ve consecutively made it to work on-time every Friday morning.

57. Your hearing in your left ear could use some improvement from too many nights getting low near the bass.

58. You have time to do your laundry.

59. You can remember what the inside of the bar looks like.

60. You’re reading this post and thinking, “Sh*t, that’s me.”

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Please say it ain’t so!

A photo of the ordeal, taken by one passenger.

 

According to GothaMist: They delayed the flight because the seating wasn’t segregated! An El Al flight from JFK to Tel-Aviv was delayed on the eve of Rosh Hashanah after ultra-Orthodox passengers refused to sit next to women. One passenger described the whole experience as “an 11 hour ordeal,” and another tells ynetnews.com that the plane was prevented from taking off because “people stood in the aisles and refused to go forward.”

“Although everyone had tickets with seat numbers that they purchased in advance, they asked us to trade seats with them, and even offered to pay money, since they cannot sit next to a woman,” another passenger explains. “It was obvious that the plane won’t take off as long as they keep standing in the aisles.”

After the pilot pleaded with everyone to take their seats if only for takeoff, the plane finally departed Wednesday morning. But as soon as it was in the air, many of the passengers quickly stood in the aisle, in order to preserve several feet of sin-space between them and the opposite sex. One female passenger on the flight tells ynetnews.com, “I ended up sitting next to a haredi man who jumped out of his seat the moment we had finished taking off and proceeded to stand in the aisle.”

The aisle was reportedly crowded with men praying throughout the duration of the flight, making it extremely difficult for other passengers to access the restrooms and preventing flight attendants from distributing refreshments. “I went to the bathroom and it was a mission impossible, the noise was endless,” another shellshocked passenger recalls.

El Al issued this statement in the wake of the incident: “El Al does everything it can to give its passengers the best possible service year-round. These days bring with them a peak in air traffic to Israel, and our crews on the ground and in the air are doing the best they can to address the needs and requests of all our travelers while trying not to fall behind schedule.

“The company will examine the complaints and if some passengers are found to have acted out of line the company will examine its future steps.”

What’s really frustrating is that all of this could have been avoided if the airline had just distributed large plastic bags!

L’Shana Tovah!

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After a pit stop in London, the City of York in the UK & Berlin, I headed to Munich to check out the highly anticipated Oktoberfest at the heart of it all. The event cited 6 million visitors in attendance! Not one to be left out, I was decked out in my own take on modern Dirndle, the traditional Bavarian attire, one of which is a vintage set from the 1960s. I do intend to wear them again in New York City where taking fashion into your own hands is nothing but creativity and being different. Heck! I once wore my vintage Japanese Kimono acquired during my visit to Kyoto down Madison Ave! I have no shame at all. 🙂 At the event, I also spotted African print dirndls! #Africagoingglobal

Naturally, you can’t be around the Oktoberfest festivities and not taste the beer. This visit would mark my very first time drinking beer! I was fortunate to have witnessed the Bavarian costume parade and the beer tent parade a day before, but sadly I have lost a lot of those pictures to my external drive refusing to open. I hope the very few from my mobile phone would suffice for now.

I can honestly check off attending Oktoberfest off my bucket list.

Schoene wiesn fuer alle!!!

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I survived my very first Burning Man in the middle of nowhere far into the dusty Nevada desert! Sigh…what an experience! I was told to go there with an open mind and armed with endless dose of sense of humor. It turned out to be the most required prerequisite for survival in the rave/disco music and open bar drenched community of love, happiness and sharing! Yes, you read right, sharing! You see, the festival of life, uninhibited and radical inclusion also depends on participants’ unconditional desire to share all things from liquor, food, wisdom, art, erotic pleasures, knowledge, just to name a few. The number only mode of “official” mode of transportation are bicycles but of course yours truly had to pimp out a pink tricycle to make a feminine statement complete with an official Shoeholics plate license.

The 28 year old festival where the unusual is normal, is definitely not for the faint hearted for many reasons.  Acquiring tickets to attend the affair is mind blogging. You basically have an hour window in February to buy the always sold out 70,000+ tickets online! Thinking about buying them at the gate is a suicidal mission. Some participants (which always includes founders of Facebook, Google, celebrities like Will Smith, Michelle Rodriquez, P Diddy, et. al and no one takes notice of them at the Burn) save up during the entire year to acquire RVs, tents, a week supply of food and booze, while some of the aforementioned celebrities simply whisk their way in on private jets paying landing fees to the tune of $25,000 to arrive just mere minutes next to the location. Others have to endure the 6-12 hours drive from all works of life. Gotta to say the social network of people, free boozing and hard partying ahead at the Burn makes it all worth the effort. Once there, no money must change hands and one must leave no trace of existence once it’s all over. You take out all that you bring in.

Generous burners offered free classes ranging from yoga, free body scrub, belly dancing, spanking, psychic to erotic massages. One of the days included a 50k marathon race around the playa for a cause. Like any big city where accidents can happen, a young lady (perhaps drunk) made a fatal attempt to climb into a moving mutant car and swiftly met her death. Participants are warned ahead of time (on the back of their tickets) that they basically attend the event at their own risk. So you can imagine there won’t be any lawsuit coming up about that fatal accident. So sad. RIP. 🙁

It is not uncommon to spot nudity and erotic arts at the Burning Man. To be frank, after a few hours of dealing with dusty wind and sand in all manner of places where the sun don’t shine on your body, the last thing on your mind would be to gawk at nudist at the Burn. You sort of become immune to the shock value. Mind you, this is also a family friendly affair. I not only spotted pregnant women but also kids as young as a baby. I spoke to one of the parents about their decision to bring their kids to such an event. They said it was a fast track to learning about the “birds and the bees” story and have grown used to seeing so much in their short lives that it means absolutely nothing to them anymore. Dare I say that they had a point! A naked woman walked by an 8 year old boy on a bike and he didn’t even do a double take in her direction!

I was however slightly shocked at how “vanilla” the event was. Not only was the music heavy on the rave and disco set but also the attendees lacked in diversity. Each person of color I ran into was also surprised to see me and vice versa. We were all counting each other! I spotted no more than 50 people of color, most of whom were gay men who came with their caucasian partners, and mainly from San Francisco. It felt as if the entire population of San Francisco emptied into the event with just a few international hard burners to pepper the census. As a result, my afro hair got more attention than the wearer –me! I stood out everywhere I went! No, I’m not complaining. 🙂

The height of the event was the burning of the 80 feet wooden man on the 7th day with fire performers and mutant cars blasting music giving the atmosphere the kind of energy you can never get from being high or drunk. This is the D-Day.  I was told that the “man” normally takes 20-30 min to burn and fall. As a virgin burner, you can imagine my disappointment when the unburnable man took more than 3 hours to take his fall. By the time I gave up and got up from my sandy seat, my legs were numb. I was falling as I walked back to my RV location. The next day was a more sombre affair at the burning of the temple. You see, this is were burners come to pay their respects to past loved ones or simply to meditate. It’s a more spiritual affair with complete silence while the temple burns, a huge contrast to the high charging partying energy when the man burns. I found this particular day to be the most important highlight for me because it was a soul searching moment, a time to reflect.

Unlike the blue chip CEO’s who had the luxury of flying back within seconds after the event, my team and I had to endure what would have been a smooth 9 hours ride back to Las Vegas to return the rented RV. Instead, the journey took 2 days and 3 tow trucks thanks to dead batteries, flat tire and a defective spare tire! The full detail about that ordeal will be posted at a later date. Thank goodness we all alive and well.

Overall, will I ever go back to experience the Burning Man again? Hell to the yeah! Where else would you legally see an event full of naked people, free booze/food, 24 hours partying, unique art and open heart of giving unconditionally in America!

To all of my fellow burners out there, thanks for such a lovely first year experience. See you all soon.

Please peruse the following sample of images. Hope they are to your liking. Full gallery of pictures are available on my Facebook page. Also join me on Instagram!

Next stop, OKTOBERFEST in Germany! Stay tuned for that coverage! 🙂

Police brutality!!! When will this nonsense come to an end?!!! NYPD strangles and kills Eric for basically trying to break up a fight. No good deed goes unpunished. I am in tears just watching this video footage. I have no words but to send my condolences to Eric Garner’s family. RIP Eric. 🙁