I know this isn’t a technically strong photograph—it’s framed haphazardly. I was shooting from the hip. When I straightened the image in post, it looked worse since it lacked room above the subject. Yet, I present it here since I like the picture.

While it doesn’t look old-timey, in my mind, it evokes a golden time in our past. A place where families strolled down main streets bustling with people. It’s a scene that’s rare in the United States these days. Many downtowns are a shadow of what they used to be. Car and mall culture has pushed retail away from city centers. Now, with online stores, even malls are getting hollowed out.

While there are many challenges for Cuba, and I greatly prefer and love living in the United States, I notice some positives in this picture. Look at the vibrancy of the city streets in downtown Havana. Also, for the most part, many of the Cubans I met were not overweight. They generally looked more fit than in America. Was their lower BMI caused by a lack of easily accessible food? Perhaps. But here in the affluent West, we have the opposite problem.

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