Ariane Dutzi

Last year Donna Karan & Anna Wintour discovered what a lot us already knew. Ariane Dutzi is a great designer and a great person. She's been giving her time and her heart to making the world a better place and the world has started giving back. The fashion world anyway. Dutzi has a sort of co-op where Mayan women make mostly handbags and totes from recycled materials in her studio home in Valladolid. And she has 3 jack russell terriers.

Ford Wheeler

Ford Wheeler Film production designer and master tarte-maker. List Santa Lucia as one of his favorite flea markets in the world... there goes the neighborhood.

Ricard Frazier & Laura Kirar

Laura Kirar, Trudesign founder and creative designer with her husband Richard Frazier are Yucatan hacienados on Day of the Dead 2010. More fun than a barrel of spider monkeys! Designing lives from NYC to Miami to Merida.

Xila

Sheila Matthews I met a couple of years ago when she bought a house in my block. It turns out she too is from Texas and so we set off in search of the taco al carbon mecca that had eluded me for so many years. Most of the year she lives in Bodrum, Turkey where she excavates ship wrecks.

"Archaeologist, diver, ship reconstructor, author, mapping expert, illustrator, traveler, Sheila seems always to be in demand. Where in the world does she also find the time for her passion, riding horses! "

James Brown

A couple of years after I moved to Merida there was a great house around the corner from me. I kept trying to get different friends to buy it and no one did. One day I heard it had been sold. It turns out James Brown and his wife Alexandra bought it! I had lost touch with him for about 15 years. I first came to know of James through his paintings in a little gallery in the East Village called Naturemorte in the early 80's. That was before I became a failed artist. I met James just before I moved to Paris in 1985. Then he turned up in Paris a couple of years later. He still has a great studio on Rue des Plantes and mostly works in Paris but soon he plans to do more work in Mexico. For a couple of years that house was piled to the ceiling with all of their possessions from the NY studio and the hacienda in Oaxaca. So for a couple of years they always stayed with me and Josh while they were here in Merida. Then in 2008 the Browns bought the house in front of their house and that house has a house behind it which opens onto an alley. The new house is James studio and storage. The Alley house belongs to his son Dagenhart who spent his gap year here in Merida. I long for the days when they will at least linger here through the spring and return in the fall. Winter is too short!

Vija Celmins

Webmaker and birdwatcher Vija Celmins finally ended her search for a home in Merida. After two years of ardent searching just at the moment when she was going to make an offer on a house in my neighborhood of Ermita a bigger better house popped up in Mejorada and she grabbed it. The lawyer was dragged out of bed early Sunday morning. The papers were signed and Vija was off to Chichen Itza for the rest of the day. She spent the night at Hacienda Chichen and was up before dawn on the bird walk. By noon she was back on a plane to New York. We finished renovating her house in the winter of 2008.

Here is a link to her show in NY at McKee Gallery through June 25, 2010. This is her first gallery show in NY since 2001. She paints that slowly and perfectly.

Nicholas Malleville & Francesca Bonato

Coqui Coqui is a spa created by Nicholas Malleville an Argentinian botanist, landscape architect and model with locations in Valladolid, Coba and Tulum. On my 3rd attempt in a year I found the doors to the Valladolid spa and perfumery closed again. As I was driving off I saw Nicholas walk up to the locked door and scream for Francesca. No one came to the door but he went to the neighbors and climbed over the wall and after adjusting the lights he let me in. I'd gone in search of a fragrance to replace L'eau Trois which was recently discontinued by Dyptique. My friend Kathleen Baird-Murray the world foremost authority on spas (in my acquaintance) and the former beauty editor of Tatler had just passed through Valladolid and brought me a couple of likely contenders from Coqui Coqui. Nicholas was very kind to give us a tour and recommend a nice Italian restaurant on the square Candelaria. Finally Francesca came down from her massage 8 months pregnant. We talked about the virtues of various hospitals in Merida and exchanged emails. The next day I dropped in to say goodbye as I had work to do in Merida and after 4 hours of non-stop talk I got in my car and back on the highway.

I wondered if my life would not have been more like his if I'd gone directly from Paris to Tulum instead of stopping off in NYC waste most of my hard earned modeling money in restaurants and auction houses. We agreed to make a trade. When Francesca gives birth in early December I'll loan them my house and when I have a break I'll be their guest in Coba or Tulum.

Go read the W article and you'll understand why I'd like to trade my life for his. I'm just not sure I could fit in my 5 dogs.