Destination: New York

Fall Foliage Around the World

Central Park, New York Photo of Central Park, New York City, by joiseyshowaa via Flickr (Creative Commons)

From Osaka to Chicago, seven photos of turning leaves around the shrinking planet

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World Hum Goes to the Travel Blog Exchange ‘10

We’ll be communing with our fellow travel writers and bloggers in New York City June 26-27, 2010, at the second annual Travel Blog Exchange. Founder Kim Mance and her crew launched TBEX last July in Chicago with a memorable day of travel talk.

Next year, the event spans two days and World Hum, one of the event’s media partners, is on the organizing committee. We’re working with Kim and several others in the travel blog universe to help develop the event, and we’ll also be preaching the Travel Writing in the Digital Age gospel with a small taste of our new workshops. If you’ve got any thoughts, suggestions, etc. about what you’d like to see covered, please .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).


Drawing the New York City Skyline, From Memory

That’s what autistic artist Stephen Wiltshire is doing in this live webcam feed. The Huffington Post has some background on Wiltshire and his “uncanny ability to draw and paint detailed landscapes and cityscapes entirely from memory.”


New Travel Book: ‘Save the Deli’

New Travel Book: ‘Save the Deli’ Photo by stevendepolo via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Photo by stevendepolo via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Here’s one for traveling pastrami-lovers everywhere.

“Save the Deli” follows author David Sax around Europe and North America in search of a shrinking number of Jewish delicatessens—and, though the project was driven by fears for a declining institution, the result seems to be a hopeful one.

In a letter to potential readers posted on Amazon, Sax addresses the “heresy” of his search for the deli in such unlikely spots as Salt Lake City or Brussels:

Three years ago, when I began working on this book, I too had fallen prey to the misguided notion that great deli was only confined to New York and Montreal. Anything outside those cities had to be a pale imitation. I, like many Jewish deli lovers, was narrow-minded, could see and imagine no further than the local delicatessen I frequented…a village simpleton who knows nothing beyond his little shtetl and the salamis therein.

But as I hit the road, in search of the story of delicatessen in American and around the world, I tasted revelation after revelation.

Publishers Weekly describes these revelations as “joyful moments in this otherwise elegiac travelogue,” and notes that the book’s “well-crafted portraits don’t string together perfectly, but individual chapters shine.”


Montreal vs. New York City: The Hotdog Showdown

Last year we blogged the great bagel debate. Now, Gadling weighs in on another staple.


Video You Must See: Where Would You Want to Wake Up Tomorrow?



A film crew asks 50 people the same question on a Brooklyn street. (Via The Daily Dish)


Celebrating ‘The Best American Travel Writing’ in NYC

I made it to the launch party for The Best American Travel Writing 2009 last night at Manhattan’s Idlewild Books. Series editor Jason Wilson was there, along with this year’s guest editor, Simon Winchester—who read from what he described as his “preachy” introduction on the importance of teaching geography. (Preachy or not, I think it’s a point worth making.) Contributors Elisabeth Eaves, Matthew Power and Andre Aciman also read from their essays in the anthology, a few bottles of wine were emptied, and—if I can have a preachy moment of my own—it was nice to see, despite the ongoing litany of bad news, that a book of literary travel essays can still draw a crowd.

As for the anthology itself? I haven’t gotten deeply into it yet, but it looks like another good one. Regular World Hum contributors Frank Bures and Eric Weiner both have stories included, while four World Hum stories—from Katie Krueger, Julia Ross, Emily Stone and Jeffrey Tayler—are among this year’s additional notable selections.


Interview with Bonnie Tsui: ‘American Chinatown’

Bonnie Tsui, American Chinatowns Photo by Matthew Elliott

Jenna Schnuer talks to the author of a new book about American Chinatowns and why "broken Chinese is the mark of being Chinese American"

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‘The Best American Travel Writing’ in New York City

The Best American Travel Writing 2009 has landed in stores, and, for anyone in the New York area, there are a couple of upcoming events celebrating the release.

First up, Idlewild Books is hosting a launch party this Thursday, October 8, at 7 p.m. Several contributors to the 2009 edition will be reading, including guest editor Simon Winchester and World Hum contributor Elisabeth Eaves. You can RSVP to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Later this month, there will be an installment of the Restless Legs Reading Series devoted to the anthology. It’ll take place at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, October 21, at Lolita Bar—series editor Jason Wilson will host, and World Hum contributors Elisabeth Eaves, Tony Perrottet and Frank Bures will be reading.

I’ll be attending both and hope to see you there.


Photo You Must See: Surfer in the Fog

Photo You Must See: Surfer in the Fog REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

A surfer walks along New York’s Rockaway Beach as the fog rolls in.


Introducing the ‘Walkway Over the Hudson’

It seems pedestrian park-bridge hybrids are really catching on. After Manhattan’s High Line opened to rave reviews this summer, Poughkeepsie, NY, has followed up with its own offering, transforming a 1.25-mile railway bridge into a state park/walkway running more than 200 feet above the Hudson River. This Just In has the details on the grand opening.


British Airways: Introducing the ‘Son of Concorde’

With BA’s luxury London-New York route launching this week—exactly forty years after the Concorde’s first flight—the Independent’s Simon Calder takes a closer look at the new service, and at the history of luxury and business class-only air travel.


Portraits from the New York Subway

Improv Everywhere is back. (You remember the group that “froze” Grand Central last year?) This time around, they posed as MTA-contracted photographers, taking photos of passengers on the New York subway for an eventual subway yearbook. The result is not just a funny gag, but a pretty cool set of portraits, too. Check it out:

(Via Boing Boing)


What if the Burj Dubai was in Manhattan?

Kottke posts an altered version of the Midtown skyline. Puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?


Video We Love: David Byrne Cycles Times Square

0:19—“Lady, if I was a truck you wouldn’t be doing that.”
1:31—“Times Square, crossroads of the world.”
2:27—“Sometimes when I tell people I ride around New York they think I’m crazy. That may be.”
3:52—“If this were a bike lane, there would be a truck from New Jersey in it.”