Tales of the Cocktail, returning to Mexico, and I'm launching a travel channel!
Do I know what I'm doing? no. Am i doing it well? yes.
I’ve missed you, Mexico!
I’m officially back in Mexico after a few weeks of traveling around the USA. While it was great seeing all my family and friends, it’s soooooo nice being back in a place where the heat isn’t sticky. NYC and big cities have a gross kind of heat that just feels like dirty humidity to me now and my skin was not having it. Not to mention that as soon as I ate my first meal in the States, my face immediately broke out which says a lot about the food quality in the USA. That aside, I had a great time catching up and making new friends back home! Now let’s dive into some chaos:
Next, Tales of the Cocktails
This is an international event that happens once a year in New Orleans to highlight new trends, innovators, and award-winners within the cocktail industry. If you want to know who the best bartender is in the world, based on other notable bartenders and the entire beverage industry, this is the place to be. I’ll be attending (shoutout to neworleans.com for hosting me!!) and this will be my first time at this event. It’s going on during the last week in July and it’ll basically be nonstop cocktails, networking, and workshops (from what I hear). Looking at the lineup of events I’ll be attending, let’s just say I’m VERY excited.
To all the editors that are following this newsletter, if you want me to pitch you about specific topics, just let me know :)
I’m launching a travel channel!
I’ll be sharing more information about this the closer I get to my official launch but it’s been strongly recommended to me by a few members and associates of the James Beard Award Foundation (AHHHHH!!) that I start a travel channel. If you like reading/watching travel and food content, you’ll know that not only is the travel space VERY white and male, but it’s also aggressively able-bodied. As a single Black woman with a chronic illness that affects my mobility (I have a form of multiple sclerosis, for those who don’t know), I’m pretty much the only person in the national travel and food space that lives within this intersection.
While there are a growing number of Black women who are entering the travel space from a content creation angle, many of them are either coupled and/or able-bodied. All this to say, a number of high-ranking people are encouraging me to launch a travel channel to talk about what my experience is like working within this space and working for publications like Food & Wine Magazine, Wine Enthusiast, VinePair, BBC, and more.
A gentle warning:
Once that channel is up and running, I’ll probably have to dedicate all of my free time to it…which means that Heart to Arts might not exist past that point…
I make no promises right now! If I can find a way to do all three things (launch and run my channel, keep HTA, and continue freelancing for publications) then I will but, as it stands, that sounds like a lot.
Once I get the groundwork together with my colleague (because you know I have a team together working on this!), I’ll be teasing the channel on HTA first so definitely stay tuned!
That’s so exciting!!!!
Congratulations to the new endeavor! And don't worry about loosing us, we will certainly be watching. Sending all the healin and safe travel energy! BTW you Must hear my Sister Friend "Alicia Blue Eyes" sang in NOLA