Destination: Florida
I Still Don’t Know For Whom the Bell Tolls
by Doug Mack | 11.29.06 | 7:49 AM ET
Photo of Ernest Hemingway's Key West house by pumpkinoodle, via Flickr. In Florida's Key West, land of tropical cocktails, Doug Mack went to Ernest Hemingway's house looking for inspiration. He found some, but not the kind he hoped.
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Yahoo! BuzzYahoo!, Current Debut “Traveler” Video Channel
by Michael Yessis | 09.21.06 | 7:06 AM ET
Yahoo! Current Traveler, one of four channels launched this week by the partnership between the Internet giant and the Al Gore-backed upstart cable network, features amateur and professional travel videos—and, perhaps in a category all by himself, videos by U2’s Bono.
Orlando Tops List of Angriest U.S. Cities
by Michael Yessis | 08.21.06 | 6:55 AM ET
Say it ain’t so, Mickey Mouse! Orlando, Florida, home of Disney World, ranked at the top of Men’s Health’s list of angriest cities in the U.S. How can one of the self-proclaimed happiest places on earth be located in the angriest city in the U.S.? The story on the magazine’s Web site gives no explanation of how it arrived at its list of the 100 angriest cities, so if you live in one of them, don’t get too angry about your arbitrary designation. Use it as an excuse to get yourself to Vanuatu fast. The country was recently selected as the happiest country on the planet. Or, perhaps even better, head to the Florida Keys to that other happiest place in the world: Margaritaville. Thanks for the tip, Eli.
Reminder to Voodoo Practitioners: Please Keep the Human Skulls Out of Your Carry-On Bags
by Ben Keene | 07.27.06 | 11:20 AM ET
Airline travel sure isn’t what it used to be. As we’ve posted in the past, many carriers have reduced the niceties on long distance flights in an effort to cut costs in an increasingly competitive business. These changes may not bother all travelers, but after a U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale ruled against well-intentioned individuals packing human skulls with their other luggage last week, you have to wonder what comfort will be the next to go. Back in February, Myrlene Severe, a Haitian woman and practitioner of Voodoo, brought a head with her from Cap Haitien to the United States to ensure a safe arrival. Judge James I. Cohn saw things differently. “All of us has something unusual in our religions,” her lawyer said during her trial. In our religions, perhaps, but in our suitcases no longer.
Eastern Europeans in Margaritaville
by Jim Benning | 06.05.06 | 2:35 PM ET
In all our top-30-books-posting fervor in recent weeks, we fell behind in our newspaper reading and failed to note a few worthy articles, including Thomas Swick’s piece in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel about exploring the Eastern European community in Key West, of all places. “Ever since my first visit to Key West in 1991, when I brushed up on my Polish with my Pier House chambermaid, I have been intrigued by the city’s Eastern European workforce,” he writes. “I like the seeming incongruity of Slavic conchs, the cloud-covered contracted to a subtropical isle, the children of socialism adrift in Margaritaville.” Swick is the author of, among other books, Unquiet Days: At Home in Poland.
No. 30: “A Turn in the South” by V.S. Naipaul
by Tom Swick | 05.02.06 | 11:33 AM ET
To mark our five-year anniversary, we’re counting down the top 30 travel books of all time, adding a new title each day this month.
Published: 1989
Territory covered: The American South
In deceptively simple prose conveying complex insights, the great novelist and travel writer V.S. Naipaul penetrates what may be the most impenetrable region of the United States. And he would seem to be the perfect chronicler of the place: a man who feels he doesn’t belong anywhere amidst people who feel they don’t belong anywhere else. Each of the seven chapters is devoted to a city or town—Atlanta, Charleston, Tallahassee, Tuskegee—and Naipaul is often helped in his understanding of each by a long-time resident who patiently, sagely, shows him around. Telling observations from the author are interspersed with long passages of reported speech. His almost ornithological fascination with spotting a “redneck” is balanced by his steadfast determination to look beyond the stereotypes. The last chapter, on North Carolina tobacco culture, is a masterpiece of meticulous reporting and illuminating reflection.
Flight 187 in the Hizzouse!
by Michael Yessis | 03.21.06 | 9:54 AM ET
Jet Blue, you and your seat-back satellite televisions are no longer on the cutting edge of in-flight entertainment. Pilots at Miami International Airport have told FAA officials that their communications are being disrupted by hip-hop music being broadcast from a pirate radio station called Da Streetz.
Thomas Swick Takes the Train to Orlando
by Jim Benning | 03.13.06 | 2:28 PM ET
How was it? “I looked like a contented man,” he writes in Sunday’s South Florida Sun-Sentinel, “but inside I was raging.”
Rolf Potts on the Key West Literary Seminar
by Jim Benning | 02.01.06 | 7:28 AM ET
The four-day January writing seminar has gotten more electronic ink than any recent travel-writers’ gathering I can recall. Thomas Swick blogged about it here. We noted a newspaper column about it. And now Rolf Potts has offered his own take. He had a grand time, but he had a few critical words, too. “I’d reckon that one weakness of the seminar was a total lack of political diversity among the panelists,” he writes. “At times, the panel discussions came off sounding like another episode of ‘Liberals Being Self-Congratulatory’ (the longest-running show in American letters).”
Expedition Everest: Disney Brings Nepal and Tibet to Orlando, Florida
by Michael Yessis | 01.27.06 | 1:06 AM ET
Whether you love Disney or curse it for devouring the world, you’ve got to admit that the mega-corporation sure understands the power of travel and the journey. Since Uncle Walt opened Disneyland in 1955, the company has drawn people to its theme parks by tapping into the mythology of many of the world’s iconic destinations and travel experiences. New Orleans. The Matterhorn. Pirates plundering the Caribbean. Huck and Tom on the Mississippi River. Then there’s California Adventure, an entire theme park that revolves around some of the state’s best known attractions. Even Disney’s $7.5 billion deal for Pixar supports the point. After all, aren’t “Toy Story” and “Finding Nemo,” at heart, about epic journeys?
“Hemingway’s Hurricane” on Book TV
by Jim Benning | 01.14.06 | 2:31 PM ET
C-SPAN2’s Book TV will feature 45 minutes this evening (Saturday) on Hemingway’s Hurricane: The Great Florida Keys Storm of 1935. Author Phil Scott chronicles the storm that hit the keys with 200 mph winds and killed more than 400 people. Hemingway weathered the storm in Key West and later concluded that more could have been done to prevent the deaths. His writing about that, some believe, led to his appearance on the FBI watch list. Scott’s Book TV appearance begins at 9 p.m. EST.
Back to the Newsroom
by Tom Swick | 01.13.06 | 8:52 AM ET
No Place Exists That’s Not Worth Writing About
by Tom Swick | 01.12.06 | 6:02 AM ET
I visited Key West for the first time in 1991. I had been in Florida, working as a travel editor, less than two years, and driving with the window down in January to a literary seminar on travel writing seemed a dual blessing. John Malcolm Brinnin—another unjustly forgotten writer—gave a keynote address that I still quote from in travel writing workshops (the hair on my neck never failing to rise). I interviewed Calvin Trillin, who invited me to lunch at the Pier House with Alice. And I interviewed Jan Morris, who impressed me as the most considerate famous person I had ever met. (A role Pico Iyer seems to be filling admirably.) One morning near St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, I ran into Jan power walking down Duval Street. No matter; she stopped to chat. I told her that in my travels I often attended service at the local Anglican church. “You can sometimes meet interesting people there,” I said. She looked doubtful, saying she preferred the company of pagans. And with that she regained her loping stride.
Debating ‘What’s Left to Discover and What Should Be Left Undiscovered’
by Tom Swick | 01.11.06 | 6:58 AM ET
Saturday morning I stepped out of my Key West B&B and felt a chilly breeze. I had often thought that I personally brought unseasonable weather to a place (almost never unseasonably good weather) but now I wondered if it was maybe travel writers in general.
Reflecting on Key West, Cuba and Whether Misfortune Makes for Great Travel Stories
by Tom Swick | 01.10.06 | 8:03 AM ET