One of the most common questions I get when I am stopped on the Streets, Los Calles, and Las Avenidas of the world is: “Why should I buy a Custom Suit?”
Well, beyond the obvious, there are two main reasons:
In today’s age, the Tailor is an Endangered Species. These cats are old. And sadly, dying off. (Kind of like what Jim Rogers says about farmers and one of the reasons why the Agriculture sector is a solid long term play for your Bankroll).
I personally, don’t want to see that happen.
Help America
America is in pretty bad shape. One of many reasons we are in this position is because we don’t make anything anymore.
Last year, I moved over to an American Tailor. (Well, I am kind of lying, I still go to Savile Row every year to pick up some Custom Suits). My tailor is a legend in The Game and has made suits for Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra (and I won’t say any more because I don’t want to give away who he is.)
He charges a grip, but I would gladly pay double knowing how well they work. Hell, triple.
Bottom line, which would you rather wear?
A Custom Suit, made in The USA?
Or a glittery T-shirt and tight jeans made in China?
(If you answered the latter, go kill yourself. Or better yet, give me your address.)
Alright. Stop what your doing, because I’m about to ruin the image and style that your used to.
It is time again for The G Manifesto “Best of 2011” Awards.
Once again, these Awards are places or things that I have been to or experienced in 2011. So don’t get itchy if your local dive bar in Denver or favorite P.F. Wang’s in Poughkeepsie didn’t make the list.
Here are the rest of the Best of 2011, G Manifesto Awards:
Best International Nightlife City: Montreal, Canada. I am in love with this city. I am not sure of too many things, but this I am sure of: I will spend at least two months this summer in Montreal. Honestly, I think I can swoop a fly girl 8 out of 10 nights I go out there. It is probably closer to 10 out of 10, but I don’t want to sound like I am bragging. I almost slit my wrists for not coming sooner.
Honorable Mentions:New York City. I had too much success there in 2011 to leave it out.
Most Overrated US Nightlife City:Los Angeles. California has become a Police State, and Wessyde nightlife has gone down the tubes with it. California nightlife needs a whole new start like a person with a severed arm needs a tourniquet and a shot of tequila.
Best US Nightlife District: Brickell, Miami. Quality of girl is off the charts.
Best US Restaurant for Fly Girls:Cipriani’s. No single restaurant in America holds as many stunners.
Best International Nightclub:Andre Carne de Res, Bogota. I don’t get impressed by nightclubs any more. Well, that’s until I stepped into Andre Carne de Res in Bogota. Place is sicker than a cancer victim.
Best High-Action City:Abidjan , Ivory Coast. It went off the rope earlier this year. I hit a decent Cocoa trade playing the political takeover as well. To be frank though, the time I spent on the horn and researching that trade, it wasn’t that great.
Best Day Game City: Miami Beach. Lincoln road. No question.
Best Beach: El Sardinero, Santander, Spain is more breathtaking than northern California’s coastline. And more striking than La Jolla, California.
Best International Restaurant:La Taberna del Gourmet, Alicante, Spain. The food is so good it made old E-tab and Cocaine buzzes hit me. Seriously, my nose got sweaty while dining here. Ate here three nights straight at one point.
Honorable Mention: Toque and Au Pied Du Cuchon, Montreal. Both these restaurants are straight crack.
Best Trade: The Silver trade. I rode the silver miners up and sold out earlier in the year. And unbelieveably sold out of my paper silver near the top. Super lucky. Now I buy physical on the dips.
Best US Restaurant: Joe’s Stone Crab. Miami Beach’s answer to former G Manifesto “Best of” winner, Galitories. Illmatic. I even got a table on the last day of Stone Crab season with two fly Latinas.
Best International Hotel: Hotel Maria Cristina, San Sebastián, Spain.
Best US Hotel: The Plaza Hotel, NYC.
Worst US Hotel: Shore Club, Miami Beach. Place has slipped. The service is a joke compared to Las Vegas. Place kind of made me edgy. And that is not easy to do.
Quote of The Year:“It’s so crazy. I am in America. The country that I represent, the Red, White and Blue. I make money in America. I feed the American citizens, I feed the people that are less fortunate in America. Even when I make it rain, I am still throwing money to Americans!.”By Floyd Mayweather Jr. at the post Victor Ortiz Fight presser.
That quote would have been hilarious alone as a joke. But the fact that Floyd was dead serious when he said it not only makes it the “quote of the year” it makes it the funniest thing said all year as well.
Best Movie:The Business. Finally a real International Playboy in a movie. Of course, it wasn’t a Hollywood movie, but that is to be expected.
Best Actress: Don’t know. Probably some P0rn girl.
Best Hip-Hop Album: Oneirology by CunninLynguists
Best Hip-Hop Track: Pusha T- Don’t Fuck With Me (Drake Diss) Someone had to destroy Drake. And who better to do it than Pusha T?
“Rappers on their sophomores, actin’ like they boss lords Fame such a funny thing for sure
When n*ggas start believing all them encores I’m just the one to send you off, bonjour“
Best Break out Hip-Hop Artist: Action Bronson. Bringing back those hard New York Street bangers for your ear drums.
Best Soul Track and Album: Raphael Saadiq, Stone Rollin
G’s of The Year: Miguel Cotto and Nicolas Berggruen. Cotto is an obvious choice. If you are not familiar with Berggruen, you should be. This guy is the ultimate International Playboy/ Perpetual Traveler. Peep the Data Sheet on the cat:
Long before dabbling with blank-check companies, Berggruen had already made enough money to buy all of the trappings of the ultrarich: a Fifth Avenue apartment in Manhattan, a mansion on a private island near Miami, the Gulfstream IV and artworks by Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons and Andy Warhol. Berggruen says that living amid all of that luxury turned into a burden and didn’t make him happy.
Buffett Pledge
“I understand the human instinct to want to create a nest and possess things, to show them off,” he says. “But for me personally, it became less and less interesting.”
So in 2000, Berggruen sold his houses, put his art collection in storage and gave away or sold most of his possessions, including his car. He says his decision to live a rootless existence wasn’t a means of dodging taxes; he says he pays them in the U.S.
The investor, who signed a pledge promoted by fellow billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates to donate at least half of their wealth, says he’ll give away all of it eventually. “Everything I do now is about growing the pot to have more to give away,” he says.
He has never married and says he is not interested in having children. Berggruen has been photographed at charity and fashion events arm in arm with a series of actresses and models, including Gabriella Wright, a British actress.
It looks like his Wessyde Base of Operations is The Peninsula hotel in Beverly Hills. A place I am not all that unfamiliar with for knocking back some early night cocktails.
He still should bust a pocket square, but no one did it bigger and better than Berggruen and Cotto in 2011.
Already making heavy, and I mean heavy moves in 2012. Should be an even better year.
I have never made it down as far as Marbella, but it is on my short list (although I don’t think it will happen this year).
Here is a good video, worth watching on Marbella, Spain. The jury is still out on this Piers Morgan guy, but still, a good video.
Peep it:
It goes without saying that when I hit up Marbella, Spain, I am going to do it on a way more smooth tip than shown in this video.
But that is neither here nor there.
Here is a little Data Sheet on La Costa del Crime a while back:
This is Puerto Banus, a luxury suburb of Marbella in southern Spain and truly a millionaire’s paradise.
But who are these people and where does their wealth come from?
The majority are legitimate businessmen, but Britain currently has a list of 230 known criminals sheltering in Spain and many of them are believed to live in and around Puerto Banus.
The Costa del Sol has seen an upsurge in violent crime in recent years with British, Irish and Russian gangs vying with local Spanish criminals for command of the lucrative drugs trade.
Morocco is only 40 miles away across the southern horizon.
The profit margins for smuggling Moroccan cannabis and Colombian cocaine are too tempting for many ex-pats, even when threatened with imprisonment or death.
A Briton was arrested in April this year in nearby Fuengirola after a consignment of cannabis and cocaine was discovered.
And drug dealer Scott Bradfield, from London, was murdered in October 2001.
His limbs were found in a suitcase on wasteland near Torremolinos in December and his head and torso were discovered in another case nearby.
Roberts returned from Vietnam to New York with screws and a metal plate in his head — the aftermath of an explosion. By the time he was 20, he was one of New York’s biggest nightclub impresarios, rubbing shoulders with everyone from Jimi Hendrix to John Lennon.
But after a business partner turned up dead and an informant told the police Roberts was involved, he hightailed it to sunny Miami. The year was 1975.
“When I first came to Miami, I wasn’t smuggling: I was like all the other dealers on the street just trying to make a living, and it got to a point where I had so much business that these people just couldn’t supply me,” he says.
That’s when Roberts shifted from being a drug dealer to a drug importer for the Colombian Medellin cartel.
Importing paid well: By the end of 1976, Roberts says he was moving 50 kilos of cocaine worth $500,000 or more a month. Roberts was living it up: He had half a dozen servants, a Porsche, multiple houses, dozens of race horses and friends in high places, including the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.
The U.S. government labeled Roberts the “American Representative” of the Medellin cartel; he became known as “the bearded gringo” on Miami’s streets.
Roberts and a few American partners created a highly advanced drug-smuggling system that included secret airfields, listening posts to eavesdrop on Coast Guard communications, and homing beacons for tracking cocaine shipped by sea.
“We ended up getting, up by Tampa, a 450-acre farm and it was all surrounded by trees and we put two runways in there and we put hangars in for the planes to go in,” Roberts says.
Their drug-smuggling schemes stymied the U.S. government for nearly a decade.
Death came for Jon Roberts, the infamous cocaine cowboy, on Dec. 28 at age 63, after a long battle with cancer. But his public career as a charming monster is just beginning
A true-crime memoir, “American Desperado” (Crown; $28), written with journalist Evan Wright, has just been published. In Hollywood, director Peter Berg and star Mark Wahlberg are developing a movie based on his exploits.
Dying at his ease in Fort Lauderdale in the company of a devoted younger spouse and his 11-year-old son Julian, product of an earlier marriage, was an improbable end for a man who never repudiated his lifelong philosophy that “evil is stronger than good.”
“How many times have I encountered a crooked politician who wants to establish he’s a nice guy, or a killer who wants you to think he’s a good guy at heart,” says Wright. “I was fascinated because here is a guy who has done monstrous things and he’s not trying to portray himself as a nice guy or a victim.”
As Roberts tells Wright in “American Desperado,” “I might be a sociopath. Most of the time I’ve been on this earth I’ve had no regard for human life. That’s been the key to my success.”
If “American Desperado” is to be believed, Jon Roberts beat people to death in New York, skinned enemy POWs alive in Vietnam, and helped a future CIA agent murder famed mobster Meyer Lansky’s stepson in Miami – with Lansky’s approval.
Roberts first came to national attention as one of the stars of “Cocaine Cowboys,” a Miami-produced documentary that was a surprise hit in 2006. The film details the early 1980s, when Miami became a nearly lawless place awash in cocaine, violence and corruption.
As an American representative of the Medellin Cartel, Roberts helped import some $2 billion worth of cocaine into South Florida, working with infamous figures like Albert San Pedro, Pablo Escobar, Bobby Seal, Max Mermelstein and Bobby Erra.
“He’s a killer,” says Wright, author of the acclaimed Iraq War book, “Generation Kill.” “The notion that Jon is a monster because he kills people doesn’t disqualify a person in my code of life. He’s a killer — let’s move on from there. Let’s find out more.”
Last night, I spoke to Roberts’ smuggling partner and costar in Cocaine Cowboys, the laid-back and quirky Mickey Munday, with whom he had epic disagreements. The last time Munday saw Roberts, he recalls, was at a Miami restaurant with Peter Berg — where the cancer-stricken old criminal vowed to kill Munday before he kicked the bucket: “Before I go, I’m going to get you.”
“I told him: ‘If I had a bucket list, I might put that blonde over there on it,'” Munday says. “‘But not whacking somebody who’s known me for 25 years.'”
“I always thought that he would beat this, I really did,” Munday told me. “If anybody could, it was him, because he’s the meanest son of a bitch I knew. If cancer could get to him it could get to anybody.”
Munday later texted me, referring to Roberts’ nemesis Mermelstein, who also died of cancer: “I hope Jon is kicking Max from one end of Hell to the other.”
A while back we talked about Undefeated Gucci Loafers. Today we are going to talk about what any G worth his salt has: Undefeated Zippo Lighters.
It is no secret that I am a big fan of Zippo lighters.
Why?
Great question.
Well, first off they are American Made since 1932. And even though the government and the TSA have tried to destroy a great American company, the company still stands. (Make sure you check out Travel: Zippo Lighter Travel OtterBox Waterproof Case ).
