Destination: New York City
Your Friendly Neighborhood Airport Bookstore?
by Eva Holland | 02.18.09 | 2:41 PM ET
I spent a good portion of my Friday night at Newark International this weekend, waiting on a friend’s delayed flight from Canada. As a result, I had plenty of time to conduct an in-depth study of the titles on offer at the airport’s Relay store.
The project started out innocently enough. I’ve never paid much attention to airport bookstores—long layovers generally find me sound asleep on the floor at a quiet gate, or roaming the halls in search of an unsecured wireless signal. But this time I decided to browse the magazine selection, and then (while I struggled to reconcile my love for both “Cosmopolitan” and “The Atlantic”) a section heading in the books section caught my eye: Travel and Pictorial. The heading seemed odd, because—I could see from 10 feet away—half the books in the section had been written by Candace Bushnell. Had I somehow missed Bushnell’s transition to narrative travelogue author? Curious, I moved closer. And found that the Travel and Pictorial section was filled top to bottom with Manhattan-based chick lit. Multiple copies of “The Devil Wears Prada,” “Confessions of a Shopaholic” and “Shopaholic Takes Manhattan,” and no less than four Bushnell titles (“Sex and the City” chief among them, of course) covered the shelves in a blur of chirpy, bright, pink-heavy covers.
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Yahoo! BuzzFilmed Here: ‘Gossip Girl’
by Eva Holland | 02.18.09 | 12:27 PM ET
So here’s the dilemma: New York’s Restaurant Week has been extended, you’ve got a friend visiting from Canada, and you’d like to take advantage of the deal as a special treat. But how to choose just one of the 150 participating restaurants before making your reservation? Well, if you’re a sucker for teen television dramas (guilty), then naturally you book at the restaurant recently featured on “Gossip Girl.” Which is how I found myself at Butter for an unfashionably early dinner on Sunday night.
(Butter, in case you haven’t been keeping track, is the restaurant where Jenny Humphrey—aka Little J, the “poor” girl who lives with her aging rock star dad in a fabulous DUMBO loft—and Blair—the teen queen of the Upper East Side—staged a major showdown on Jenny’s 15th birthday back in season one.)
Morning Links: Holidays in Banda Aceh, ‘Slavery Theme Park’ and More
by Michael Yessis | 02.17.09 | 9:15 AM ET
- Passengers can no longer kiss at England’s Warrington Bank Quay Station.
- Is Marlon Jackson supporting a “slavery theme park” in Nigeria?
- The Mumbai attacks have apparently “put the brakes” on tourism in India.
- State and local governments to travel booking sites: Pay up!
- Daisann McLane: “Until I learn a place with my feet, I never really feel like I know it.”
- John Aglionby says Banda Aceh “has arguably become one of south-east Asia’s hidden holiday destinations.”
- Spud Hilton sifts through language-study options for travelers.
- In typo news: There’s one on the Manhattan Supreme Courthouse. It only took 82 years to discover it. Hooray!
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Would You Rather Live in a Big City or a Small Town?
by Sophia Dembling | 02.13.09 | 2:06 PM ET
Photo by Sophia Dembling I keep a file titled “Good Reads,” into which I tuck stories and articles that I enjoyed reading and like to revisit from time to time. The other day, I pulled the file out and found a photocopied page from the book O Pioneers! by Willa Cather.
I copied the page for a particular speech, spoken by Carl, who has just left Chicago, to Alexandra, who is trying to keep things together on her family farm on the Nebraska prairie. Read the quote after the jump.
This is Not a Miami Vice Pun
by Alexander Basek | 02.12.09 | 3:15 PM ET
The Viceroy Miami, down in the Icon Brickell project, is set to open tomorrow. Predictably, hotelistas are excited. It’s very Miami-ish, and not in an old guys sipping from tiny coffee cups and playing dominoes way: 162 rooms with interiors designed by Kelly Wearstler, Sferra linens and a ginormo 28,00-square-foot spa. A spot-check on rates reveals that you could stay there next weekend for about $200 a night, less than half of what they intended to charge until very recently. It makes for a much more intriguing proposition than at the previous price point, which was justified with a “they’ll come because they’ve always come” attitude.
Much like the Standard in New York, look for this project to be the canary in the coal mine for new Miami hotel openings. All the recently opened properties in less-than-prime locations will start getting antsy should things not pan out here. Much depends on enticing visitors to stay in a part of Miami that doesn’t have quite the same name recognition as South Beach—the EPIC, just on the other side of the Miami river, is in the same boat. Still, if they are out in front with these rates, it’s a sign of flexibility that up to this point many Miami hotels lacked. I’ll be sure to head down to check it out just as soon as I get a base tan that upgrades my skin color from “Casper” to “eggshell.”
Ooh Ooh, That Smell!
by David Farley | 02.10.09 | 3:31 PM ET
Periodically over the last few years, New Yorkers have had the sudden urge to eat pancakes. That’s because a mysterious maple syrup smell occasionally materialized in Manhattan, engulfing the island with a sweet and pleasant aroma and making everyone’s tummy grumble for pancakes. It also made people wonder if the smell was terrorist-related—and if the terrorists were trying to slowly turn Americans into obese eating beasts (unfortunately we’re doing that without any outside help).
Well, the mystery has been solved. It turns out, the smell was actually food-related. The culprit was a food processing plant in New Jersey that was omitting the scent of fenugreek.
It could be worse. There’s been a mysterious aroma in Tacoma (“the Aroma of Tacoma” they call it). That scent, however, had the opposite effect of the maple syrup mystery of Manhattan.
Morning Links: Bill to End Cuba Travel Ban Introduced, Facebook ‘Flashmobs’ and More
by Jim Benning | 02.10.09 | 10:27 AM ET
- Nine representatives have introduced a House bill calling for an end to the ban on travel to Cuba. !Suerte!
- A new Mandarin Oriental hotel in Beijing—not yet occupied, thankfully—burned last night.
- The economy of air travel: Demand for international flights is “in freefall.”
- A Facebook “flashmob” organized by “Crazzy Eve” hits a London train station.
- New York Magazine: “Why Sully may be the last of his kind.”
- Travel photographer Peter Guttman has crammed his home with souvenirs.
- Hotels spent more than $9 million lobbying elected officials last year.
- You wanna be a YouTube travel star? Christopher Elliott has tips.
- Travel publishers are feeling the effects of the recession. But sales of Frommer’s “Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World” remain strong. Whew.
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Sully on ‘60 Minutes’
by Rob Verger | 02.09.09 | 11:07 AM ET
I loved watching Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and the rest of the crew interviewed on 60 Minutes last night. There’s been so much press about U.S. Airways Flight 1549, but it was still powerful to hear all of them speak about what the entire event was like from their perspectives. (You can hear the audio transcripts of the plane-to-ground communication during the emergency here.)
A few moments from the interview that stuck with me: Sully said that hitting the flock of birds sounded like “loud thumps—it felt like the airplane being pelted by heavy rain or hail. It sounded like the worst thunderstorm I’d ever heard growing up in Texas.” He said he “felt, heard and smelled the evidence of them going into the engines.”
One of the most moving quotes came when he described how he heard, through the cockpit door, the cabin crew chanting instructions to brace for impact. “I felt very comforted by that,” he said.
R.I.P. Oscar Wilde Bookshop
by Eva Holland | 02.09.09 | 9:48 AM ET
The Greenwich Village landmark will close on March 29, after 42 years in business. The Oscar Wilde Bookshop is widely believed to be America’s oldest gay and lesbian bookstore; its first owner, Craig Rodwell, was also one of the founders of New York City’s Pride Parade. A thoughtful 2005 New York Times essay about the bookshop and its history remains available online.
What We Loved This Week: Disco Papa, Oregon Trail and ‘Ghost Wars’
by World Hum | 02.06.09 | 4:08 PM ET
Our contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.
Michael Yessis
A touching and hilarious story by Karen Russell, who took her 85-year-old grandfather—Disco Papa—to a cruise ship nightclub.
Rob Verger
I loved the snow in New York City on Tuesday. I watched it falling steadily from inside all day, and then late in the afternoon I stepped outside into next-door Sakura Park and snapped this picture:
Joanna Kakissis
I’m reading “Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001” by Steve Coll. In addition to exploring foreign policy blunders (and the U.S. made many of them), the Pulitzer-Prize-winning book also offers rich portraits of Afghanistan and Pakistan, two countries I’ve always wanted to experience.
Eva Holland
Last weekend I had the chance to watch the Chinese New Year parade in Manhattan’s Chinatown. I was a little surprised to see the number of insurance companies (and fast food chains) represented, but still loved
being there in the crowd, listening to the sounds of the parade going by and occasionally having glitter and silly string rain down on me.
Valerie Conners
Discovering the original, old-school version of Oregon Trail online. This has been the ultimate find, and is serving well as a procrastination tool for my Friday afternoon. It’s a trek back to 1985, my Apple IIC computer, the days of uber-pixelated screens and what was, perhaps, my very first yen for road tripping.
Jim Benning
Another great World Hum gathering in New York City. Lolita Bar’s basement was packed last night with readers, writers and travelers tossing back drinks and talking trips. It culminated in a late dinner, replete with duck tongue and rice porridge, at Congee Village. Thanks to all who came out.
Falcons, Gulls and Clams at Kennedy Airport
by Rob Verger | 02.05.09 | 11:21 AM ET
There’s been a lot of press lately about airplanes and bird strikes, but the story I’ve found most interesting comes from John F. Kennedy International Airport—it’s the only U.S. commercial airport that uses falcons as a means of controlling the local bird population. It’s an effective way to deal with the bird issue, for the simple reason that while birds can get used to noise, they never habituate to having a natural predator in the area.
The project is run by Falcon Environmental Services, and in addition to JFK, the company has contracts at two U.S. Air Force bases, and a few airports in Canada. At JFK, from May 1 to the end of October, sunrise to sunset, two teams patrol the airfield in covered pickups with falcons on perches in the back.
To learn more about the project, I called up John Kellerman, the manager of operations at JFK for Falcon Environmental. He’s a retired New York City Police Sergeant, and has been working as a falconer at JFK for four years. He spoke to me over the phone from his home on Long Island.
I asked him what kinds of birds they usually encounter. “It depends upon the time of year,” he said. “When we get there in May, we have large flocks of cormorant going by, we have large flocks of geese going by, brant in the early season. Then during the course of the summer we have gulls—herring gulls, laughing gulls, black-backed gulls—they’re offshore feeding.”
Touring Tokyo’s Underbelly
by Julia Ross | 02.04.09 | 2:17 PM ET
I’ve been a fan of MP3 audio tours since I discovered the transporting Soundwalk series several years ago. In fact, Soundwalk’s moody MP3 tour of New York’s Chinatown still reverberates in my ears every time I walk down Mott or Bayard Street in lower Manhattan. So I wish Tokyo Realtime’s new audio tour of Kabukicho, Tokyo’s red light district, had been available when I visited the city in 2007. From the preview posted on their site, the tour mixes just the right amount of music, political commentary and local history to make at least one corner of the overwhelming metropolis accessible. And god knows, anything that helps tourists cut Tokyo down to bite-size portions is helpful.
Those looking for the peep shows and brothels documented in the tour may be disappointed, however. The Guardian reports efforts are under way to clean up Kabukicho in line with the city’s short-listed bid to host the 2016 Olympics.
New York’s Restaurant ‘Week’: Now a Money-Saving Misnomer
by Eva Holland | 02.04.09 | 9:58 AM ET
New York’s famous restaurant week—that heady few days in late January when Manhattan’s priciest meals become, er, somewhat less pricey—has been extended through to the end of February, making it more like Restaurant Month-and-a-Half. Semantics aside, though, we’ll take it. This is a great chance for more budget-conscious travelers to see the way the other side eats. So step out of the queue at Sbarro, book now at one of 150 restaurants, and you’ll land a three-course fixed-menu lunch for around $25 or an equivalent dinner for $35. (Via NewYorkology)
Morning Links: Australia’s Great Ocean Road, LEGO N.Y. and More
by Michael Yessis | 02.04.09 | 8:21 AM ET
- World Hum contributor Tony Perrottet drives Australia’s Great Ocean Road.
- Scott McCartney: “Perhaps no other consumer-service business is so rule-bound as the airline industry.”
- Travelers can now link Delta and Northwest frequent flier accounts.
- Arjun Basu meditates on the size of airports.
- Photos: The making of an Interstate highway (via Coudal)
- Slate calls Aung San Suu Kyi “the world’s most effectively sidelined leader.”
- These baggage handlers at Edinburgh Airport “played tig” while waiting for planes to land.
- I LEGO N.Y. is currently the most emailed story at the New York Times.
- Video: Did you know Steve Martin was on Flight 1549?
- I’m fantasizing about a future of travel that involves this.
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Filmed Here: ‘When Harry Met Sally…’
by Eva Holland | 02.03.09 | 3:47 PM ET
Movie tourism: to some, it may be an embarrassing, empty and needy exercise. But to me, it’s at worst a harmless detour from more weighty travel fare, and—in a best-case scenario—can even be a surprisingly illuminating way of looking at the world. By chasing the spots where ghosts of film crews past still linger, you can find yourself stumbling on unexpected treasures, or seeing well-worn landmarks in a new light.
I’ve dabbled in the practice before, but this year I’ve decided to get serious. During my present stay in New York City, and beyond, I plan on seeking out some major movie-making landmarks, and (naturally) sharing my findings here.
And where better to open an occasional series on movie tourism hot spots than Manhattan’s Katz’s Deli, of When Harry Met Sally fame?