Latest news with #Selva
New Straits Times
6 days ago
- New Straits Times
Man fined RM1,000 for assault in jealousy-fuelled attack
SHAH ALAM: A tank piping installer was today fined RM1,000 by the magistrate's court after pleading guilty to assaulting and slashing a 47-year-old man in a case involving alleged jealousy and domestic issues last week. Magistrate Mohamed Redza Azhar Rezali imposed the fine on C. Haritharan, 30, who was charged with voluntarily causing hurt to S. Sargunaraj. The offence under Section 323 of the Penal Code carries a maximum penalty of one year's jail, a RM2,000 fine, or both upon conviction. He was accused of committing the offence at about 2.15am in an apartment unit in Taman Puchong Intan on May 24. Deputy public prosecutor Alia Anisa Khairus Masnan urged the court to impose a heavy penalty as a deterrent. In mitigation, lawyer M. Partiben pleaded for a minimal fine for his client, who is single, an orphan, and earns RM1,500 a month. "He is remorseful and apologises for his actions," he said. In a separate magistrate's court, Haritharan's uncle, N. Selva Raj, 36, claimed trial to a charge of assaulting Sargunaraj with a glass marble used as a weapon, at the same time and location. Selva, a lorry driver, entered his plea before magistrate Muhammad Syafiq Sulaiman. The charge, framed under Section 324 of the Penal Code, carries a jail term of up to 10 years, or a fine, or whipping. The prosecution proposed a RM4,000 bail. In mitigation, lawyer Mohd Safwan Saleh said the amount was too high for Selva, who earns RM2,300 a month. "His family cannot afford the suggested bail. I request bail be set at around RM2,000," he said. The court fixed bail at RM2,500 and ordered Selva not to harass witnesses. Mention was set for July 29.
The Guardian
21-05-2025
- The Guardian
Spanish tourists robbed by armed ‘river pirates' in Peruvian Amazon
A Spanish tourist has recounted how an armed gang calling themselves 'river pirates' robbed her and her family aboard a boat travelling down the Amazon River in Peru. In a video on TikTok, one of the tourists, Elisabet de la Almudena, said she experienced the 'worst day of her life' on 14 May, when four armed assailants holding pistols and one machine gun boarded the boat she was travelling on with her parents and six-year-old daughter. She said the gunmen forced them to open banking apps on their phones and empty their accounts. 'We contracted a family tour, a sightseeing tour,' she said, adding that they were taken further into the jungle after being robbed and were left stranded there for an hour. 'The hardest part was when these people boarded the boat. Through mobile phone applications, they asked us to take the money out of our accounts and transfer it to one of their accounts, otherwise they would not leave,' she added. De la Almudena said there were about 14 Spanish tourists on the boat, including children and elderly people, who were all released shaken but unharmed after the ordeal. She said that a local family found them stranded and helped them get back to Iquitos, where they arrived in the early hours of the morning. She also alleged that the tour company, Canopy Tours Iquitos, did not have an emergency protocol or a GPS unit on the boat. In a statement on Tuesday, the tour operator Canopy Tours Iquitos said the incident was beyond its control and 'was reported immediately to authorities'. 'From the beginning, we activated our emergency protocols, offered our assistance to the affected group and have been actively cooperating with the investigation,' the statement said. The company also said it was improving its security measures in response to the incident, including GPS monitoring, and was working more closely with the River Police. The company and Spanish embassy in Peru could not be immediately contacted by the Guardian. The risk of armed robbery is low in Peru, however, the US state department has warned its citizens to 'exercise increased caution due to crime, civil unrest, and the risk of kidnapping' in certain parts of the country.
New York Post
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
VHS, cassettes find new life at NYC event as hundreds of analogue enthusiasts are ‘fed up with streaming services'
Here's a rewind to the days before streaming. Hundreds of analogue enthusiasts spun through rare VHS, cassettes and even eight-tracks at the first-ever NYC Tape Fair in Bushwick on Sunday – as buyers said they're getting sick of streaming shenanigans. 'It's the artistry of it all: It's easier to connect with the art when it's in your hands, when you're looking at it,' festival co-founder Anthony Morton, 33, told The Post at the inaugural fair, which included more than a dozen vendors at cafe-art gallery-record store Selva. Advertisement 8 Co-founder Anthony Morton (right) at the first-ever NYC Tape Fair in Bushwick, Brooklyn on April 27, 2025. Reena Rose Sibayan For NY Post 8 VHS Tapes being sold by Night Owl Video at the NYC Tape Fair. Reena Rose Sibayan For NY Post Organizer Ricardo Marerro, 30, said buyers are 'curious and they want more.' Advertisement 'I think people are fed up with streaming services and the options available to them are getting fewer every year,' added Marerro. 'If you pay for a streaming service, you don't own these movies. 'A lot more people are realizing that there's a whole world of music and movies that are not on streaming services, and there's a lot more to explore,' he added. Morton, of Ridgewood, Queens – who was first introduced to the collecting world through his father's bootleg Grateful Dead tapes – told The Post the quirky festival was born out of a 'selfish want' for the pair to expand their cassette collections. 8 Organizer Ricardo Marerro said that people are getting fed up with streaming services. Reena Rose Sibayan For NY Post Advertisement 8 Customers browsing vintage VHS and cassettes tapes at Selva in Bushwick. Reena Rose Sibayan For NY Post 'We would often go to record stores and record fairs looking for tapes and, more often than not, there would be only five to 10 tapes at a table,' the Williamsburg resident said. 'There were a lot of records, but we wanted more tapes. This is the first [festival] of its kind.' The organizers argued 'undervalued' cassettes – many of which were sold between $2 and $20 at the festival – are vastly cheaper than vinyl records, making them especially appealing to audiophiles as recession fears heighten. '[Cassettes] have never gone away, especially in the DIY-type punk scenes – it's always easier to make 20 tapes than it is to make 20 records,' Morton said, 'but more people are buying them now. Advertisement 8 Violet Sky (left) and Andi Harriman showing off their hauls. Reena Rose Sibayan For NY Post 8 Customer Hiram Vazquez with his stack of VHS tapes. Reena Rose Sibayan For NY Post 'More people are selling them too,' he added. 'I think we're at a point where a lot of collectors are trying to offload some things, and that has opened up this new flood of amazing things into the world.' Bushwick resident J Rivera, 36, said the affordability of the tapes and the ability to 'disconnect' from the internet drove him back to tapes. 'I walk around with my Walkman, so there's less phone interaction,' said Rivera, who made off with a roughly $100 haul from the festival – ranging from Deee-Lite to Jimi Hendrix to Tommy James and the Shondells to Judas Priest. 8 Drew M. Gibson (left) and J. Rivera posing with their purchases. Reena Rose Sibayan For NY Post 'You don't just choose your favorite tracks, you kind of just vibe,' Rivera added. 'I like the experience, it's like when you go to the library and they don't have every book, they have what they have and you can just browse.' Cassette sales have surged 440% in the last decade, per NPR, and VHS stores are on the rise — from Blockbuster's return in the UK to the opening of VHS stores from Maryland to California. Advertisement 'I think it's a lot more appealing to the people to do that now than ever before,' said Aaron Hamel, co-owner of Night Owl Video, a VHS and DVD store that opened in Williamsburg this year. 'I saw the record resurgence, and I feel like physical media for movies is sort of the same environment [vinyl] was 20 years ago.' 8 Samantha Schwartz (left) and Aaron Hamel of Night Owl Video were vendors at the NYC Tape Fair. Reena Rose Sibayan For NY Post At the NYC Tape Fair, Night Owl Video's VHS sales included a copy of David Lynch's 'The Elephant Man' and 'Love Camp 7,' which Hamel describes as a 'Nazi exploitation movie from the 70s.' Many customers were simply on hand for a trip down memory lane. Advertisement 'I'm nostalgic for a time where you could walk into a store and browse the shelves, look at a cover, read the blurb on the back, see what kind of special features are around there, and make a decision based on that,' Hamel said said. 'With the way things are in the world today, there's a desire to not live in this time period. Going backwards has, at times, been preferred.' Musician and archivist Violet Sky, 24, picked up VHS copies of 'Night Eyes 2' and 'Earth Girls Are Easy.' 'In a world of streaming, companies have the option to pull things from platforms, and you don't truly own anything – so it's really cool to be able to own your own media.'
Time Out
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
A VHS festival is coming to Bushwick this week
If you're a film or camera buff and are looking for a throwback—we're talking early 2000s here—then you're going to want to head to Bushwick this Sunday, April 27 for a one-of-a-kind festival called the NYC Tape Fair, an event that's "dedicated to the revival of physical media in the form of all things VHS, cassettes and the restoration of rare and unique material." If you haven't noticed, camcorders and other forms of early recording devices are making a huge comeback, in part, we think, because of the nostalgia that the products evoke. An old-school video store even opened in Williamsburg earlier this month! The NYC Tape Fair will take place at Selva, a record store and cafe/bar in Bushwick, from noon until 6pm. Multiple vendors will be displaying and selling rare, vintage and new tapes throughout the space, including vendor Found Footage Festival, one of the most prestigious collectors of rare "found footage." One of the co-founders of the Tape Festival, Anthony Morton, tells Time Out that the event was born out of a desire to offer a highly curated selection of VHS tapes and cassettes to the public, since, most of the time, the items tend to be stuff that people find laying around in antique stores or family homes. Part of the resurgence of this form of media, Morton says, involves folks' craving to own tangible objects. "It's nice for people to own physical media," he says. You'll find more than a dozen vendors offering everything from obscure home videos to vintage tapes of Madonna concerts and music collections. Morton suggests looking out for the real niche stuff—for example, a VHS tape created by a regional motor sports dealer. There will also be some old TVs playing odd and interesting footage. In addition to it all, attendees will get a chance to check out Selva, a space that hosts lots of creative events and deserves a visit in its own right. BKDeadhead
WIRED
06-02-2025
- Entertainment
- WIRED
More Than Mezcal: A Dive Into Oaxaca's High-End Cocktail Scene
Using local ingredients like hoja santa, huitlacoche, flying ants, and a variety of mercurial spirits, bartenders in the Mexican city are testing the boundaries of flavor and presentation. The 'Still a Martini' cocktail from Selva in Oaxaca, Mexico. It contains mezcal, St. Germain, dry vermouth, and sliced cactus. Photograph: Víctor R. López If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED Sitting at the prettiest bar in the city of Oaxaca, my neighbor received a drink from the bartender that glowed green. It was not the vaguely disturbing dayglow honeydew of Midori, but like an emerald lit from within. When my similarly luminescent drink arrived, I took notes, part out of habit and part because it was so intriguing. Just as I wrote the not-exactly-complimentary words "like a difficult friend on a good day," the bartender who created the drink appeared over my shoulder to ask what I was writing about. The drink shares its name with the bar, Selva, a Spanish word which translates to 'jungle.' Not only does it contain mezcal, Oaxaca's best-known spirit, but also the hoja santa leaf from the plant so peculiar and powerful, it's also known as pepperleaf and root-beer plant. The herb imparts flavors of pepper, eucalyptus, tarragon, licorice, mint, and anise. On their own, both of these ingredients are difficult to mix, and together they're what the menu aptly refers to as a 'jungle in a glass.' The Mexican state of Oaxaca seems to have a disproportionate amount of these ingredients that are particularly tricky to incorporate into cocktails, so I started talking to booze-industry people in the region to find out how they wrangle them. "I like to investigate how one crazy ingredient can work with another crazy ingredient without creating chaos," says Alexandra Purcaru, Selva's snoopy cofounder and beverage director. She cites, for example, raspberries and nori as a favorite unexpected combination, but prefers using local-made specialties like mezcal and rum and letting the spirits' terroir do the work. Mezcal, for example, might grow in soil so iron-rich that the dirt takes on a reddish hue, or it could be rooted in something much more sedimentary, creating such wildly different finished products that it makes the spirit a bit of a moving target when creating a cocktail. The Selva, the signature cocktail at the bar of the same name, was created by Alexandra Purcaru in 2019. Photograph: Víctor R. López For a previous bar menu, Purcaru incorporated lumpy huitlacoche—the product of a fungus that attacks corn, turning ears gray and giving the kernels notes of licorice, truffle, and mushroom—into an old-fashioned style cocktail featuring Maiz Nation, a whisky made with local corn. On another evening my wife Elisabeth and old friend Rob and I ordered three of Selva's trickiest cocktails. First came the Selva: the hoya santa leaf, a young mezcal, lemon, agave syrup, poblano chili liquor, and juniper bitters, a little laundry list of ingredients that might not play well with others. Medicinal, wild, and bright green, the Selva is unique and beautiful enough to have earned itself a slot in the recent bar book, Signature Cocktails . I said it reminded me of an unstable energy source in a Marvel movie, to which Elisabeth immediately added, 'or flubber.' At the bar, the hoja santa is treated like a controlled substance. The leaf is destemmed, weighed, and trimmed down until it measures nine grams, then it's rolled into a cigarette shape and stored in a special tray. The ingredients are combined and liquefied in a NutriBullet personal mixer, then given a hard shake followed by a triple strain. "This drink destroys the NutriBullet," a bartender quipped while making one, noting the fibrous quality of the leaf. 'We use it because it's quiet-ish, but we go through them fast.' Next, we turned our attention to the Morada cocktail with rums from MK and Paranubes and lime, along with jasmine that infused into the drink as we sipped. Paranubes is a personal favorite because it's so peculiar, a white Oaxacan rum that's almost Caribbean in style, with far-out tasting notes of roasted pineapple, cinnamon, clove, pickle brine (!), and sugarcane juice. At the bar, Purcaru aged the MK Rum with roast plantain skin, which imparts a desirable tart astringency. The drink was like an extra-tropical margarita cousin with inherent salinity. For the Passiflora cocktail, on the other hand, she mixes passion fruit, Lillet Blanc, and Valdeflores rum that's been fat-washed with coconut oil. (The latter meaning the spirit sat with the oil in it before being chilled so the fat can be removed, in this case leaving a delicious tropical vibe.) Most notably, she uses curry powder in the drink to bring out the tobacco notes of an aged version of Paranubes' rum. Perhaps it's understandable that opinions in our little crowd were split by a drink containing curry, but it was undeniably interesting. "It's like soup," said Elisabeth as Rob and I started wondering about heartburn while still enjoying it, peculiar but coherent and pleasingly tropical. There is a lot of daring in these cocktails, and also a lot to figure out. Those funky-saline flavors of Paranubes change as the rum ages, but it turns out that it goes well with the artichoke liqueur Cynar, or the sweet orgeat syrup usually made with almonds and orange-flower water, where it can bring out ripe fruit notes. Incorporating mezcal into cocktails is no easier, simply because there are so many different types of agave that the liquor can be made from. Mixing mezcal into a cocktail can make the drink floral, smoky, and even minty. Mess it up, though, and producers get upset, occasionally preferring you just consume their product straight, saying something along the lines of once my mezcal is mixed with other ingredients, it is no longer my mezcal. Even the most purist producer might make an exception for Juan Lara's ginger and pennyroyal cocktail. Lara manages the bar at Oaxaca's high-end Criollo restaurant. He set one of these in front of me as we talked in Criollo's huge outdoor dining area, where rabbits and chickens roamed free, and the drink was distractingly, dangerously good. Pleasing notes of honey mingled with smoky notes of the mezcal, and half of the rim was coated with an extra-fine ground combination of salt and dried flying ant, a seasonal delicacy here which lends a funky herbaceous flavor to the festivities. The ants turn out to have been the drink's inspiration. In season in July and August, they pack a big punch, even in limited quantities. Ginger, on the other hand, is strong, so there's just a bit of that, balanced out by the minty pennyroyal. In the glass with a bit of lemon juice, the ingredients harmonize in what tasted like a delicious new kind of fruit. "We balance the bitterness of the flying ant with the smokiness of mezcal," Lara says, pointing out that it's a bicuishe mezcal, a favorite variety of mine, with everything rounded out by that bit of honey. Since mezcal can vary so much from bottle to bottle, why use it in the first place? "Mezcal is because we're from here," he says, gently implying, why wouldn't you? As intellectual and conceptual as the drinks at Selva are, this one at Criollo goes down easy. Either way, the difficult ingredients—bold botanicals, mercurial spirits, desiccated insects—are embraced, turning them into something very memorable. 'Hoja santa is not a difficult ingredient, it is just an interesting ingredient,' says Purcaru back at Selva. 'It's a question of finding the balance I'm looking for.' If she encounters a mezcal that she can't think of just the right use for, her solution is classic: She drinks it neat.
