Destination: New York
No. 19: “Hunting Mister Heartbreak” by Jonathan Raban
by Michael Shapiro | 05.13.06 | 7:30 PM 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: 1990
Territory covered: The United States
Like a modern-day Alexis de Tocqueville, Jonathan Raban has traveled the length and breadth of the United States, observing Americans with the keen eye of a foreigner. His book Hunting Mister Heartbreak traverses the pathways of American immigration from late 19th-century Ellis Island to late 20th-century Seattle. In the book, Raban fully inhabits each place he visits, even borrowing an old black labrador named Gypsy in Alabama to feel more at home among the locals. He investigates whether a foreigner can truly become an American. In the end Raban realizes that one can adopt American ways but can never become completely American. And he seems quite relieved about that.
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Yahoo! Buzz$20 Million for Bedbug Bites?
by Jim Benning | 03.09.06 | 7:48 PM ET
A couple is suing the Nevele Hotel in New York’s Catskills for $20 million, claiming they suffered more than 500 bedbug bites during a July stay. Yikes. That’s a lot of bites—and a lot of money. We’re not entirely surprised to hear about the bugs, though. As we noted here, the New York Times reported last year that bedbugs were “spreading through New York like a swarm of locusts on a lush field of wheat.”
Niagara Falls: “When You Stand There, You Can Understand Why People Want To Jump In”
by Michael Yessis | 03.01.06 | 12:29 AM ET
Slate posted an excellent interactive essay about New York’s Niagara Falls today, a multimedia work that writer/photographer Alec Soth calls an “Orbison-like love song.” The photos, which are taken from an exhibit recently on display at New York’s Gagosian Gallery, focus on couples in love, roadside motels and, of course, Niagara Falls itself. It’s all set to Soth’s insightful narration about the nature of passion and transience of love and motels. Note: Scroll down to reach the interactive essay.
Adventures in New York City
by Frank Bures | 02.01.06 | 9:54 PM ET
Ian Frazier's "Gone to New York: Adventures in the City" spans 30 years of travels in the city that never sleeps. Frank Bures writes that it captures the rhythm of the place -- and its people.
Transit Strike Hits New York. (Insert Whistle Here.) “Taxi!”
by Jim Benning | 12.20.05 | 2:03 PM ET
Attack of the Bedbugs!
by Jim Benning | 11.28.05 | 12:36 PM ET
Bedbugs are “spreading through New York like a swarm of locusts on a lush field of wheat,” according to Sunday’s New York Times, and one exterminator told the paper, “Some of the best hotels in New York have them.” The rise of affordable global travel, among other factors, is being blamed for the pests’ resurgence.
Ranan Lurie Unveils a Painting Designed to Travel
by Michael Yessis | 11.03.05 | 5:30 AM ET
It’s called the Uniting Painting, and it debuted Tuesday in the lobby of U.N. headquarters in New York. But the man behind the painting, political cartoonist Ranan Lurie, envisions an ever-changing work of art that will extend out the U.N.‘s doors, across the East River and througout the world. “I do not have one single country where it was offered that has turned it down,” Lurie told the Voice of America’s Barbara Schoetzau. “Right now we have South Africa’s Ministry of Culture. We have South Korea wanting to do it with the purpose of spreading the painting to North Korea. And that will be the tendency, to spread it around and in different phases, slowly but surely bringing a uniting painting that lives up to its title.”
NYPD Hearts Rachael Ray
by Michael Yessis | 10.25.05 | 9:24 AM ET
Everyone seems to have an opinion about travel-show host, celebrity chef and future magazine mogul Rachael Ray. I know this because ever since I posted a note a few weeks ago about the love-hate relationship viewers have with Ray, people have been sharing a lot of love and a lot of hate on World Hum. Now it looks like Ray’s fans have some burly new support: the NYPD. World Hum reader Cincy points out this gossip item (scroll to bottom) in Monday’s New York Daily News:
Into Thin Air (While Sitting at a Desk in New York City)
by Jim Benning | 10.23.05 | 8:40 PM ET
The latest issue of The New Yorker has an amusing article about the approach one New York City climber took to prepare for a trip. To begin adjusting to the high altitudes he would reach climbing a pair of Mexican volcanoes, Explorers Club President Richard Wiese installed a Hypoxico altitude chamber in his office on the Upper East Side. Then he stuck his desk inside, cranked up the machine and began working at the oxygen equivalent of 13,000 feet.
NYC Gets the Stews. LA and DC Welcome Travel Movies.
by Michael Yessis | 09.22.05 | 4:20 AM ET
Plane Crazy, a play about “stew life” in the ‘60s, is in the middle of a nine show run in the New York Musical Theater Festival. New York Times writer Miriam Horn gave it a mixed review, but the show appears to have sold out every performance. I wonder: Is it a good play that does justice to the life of stewardesses in the early jet age, or do people just like the songs and the outfits?
Freelancers, Travel and The New York Times
by Jim Benning | 08.19.05 | 6:18 PM ET
A number of freelance travel writers are miffed about a column in Sunday’s New York Times by Public Editor Byron Calame. Calame points out that bylines of stories written by freelancers in The Times Travel section look no different from those written by staff writers. Because it’s difficult for editors to monitor the ethical and reporting standards of freelancers, Calame writes, “readers deserve to know whether a freelancer or a staffer provides the content.” Many newspapers make a distinction, of course: Bylines of stories written by freelancers in the Los Angeles Times, for example, carry the phrase “Special to the Times” as opposed to “Times Staff Writer.”
‘Best American Travel Writing’ Launches with New York Event
by Jim Benning | 10.07.04 | 7:36 PM ET
Editor Pico Iyer hosts the launch event for the 2004 Best American Travel Writing anthology Tuesday, October 12, at The Explorers Club in New York City. The reception begins at 6:30 p.m. Readings from Tad Friend, George Packer and Elizabeth Rubin follow at 7 p.m. The cost is $15 for nonmembers and $5 for students. This year’s edition features two World Hum stories, Test Day by Frank Bures and Sandbags in the Archipelago by Heather Eliot.
Airports Get Their Pop Culture Close-Up
by Michael Yessis | 07.15.04 | 12:57 AM ET
U.S. television shows and movies are increasingly being set in airports. See: “The Terminal,” “Airport,” and the upcoming series, “LAX.” In a post-9/11 world, the question is: Why? John Leland explored the phenomenon in Sunday’s New York Times, quoting the usual suspects, like Pico Iyer, and getting some keen cultural insight from the likes of Karal Ann Marling, a professor of popular culture at the University of Minnesota. “[Steven] Spielberg did something very smart in ‘The Terminal’ to emphasize that the airport is one giant shopping mall,” Professor Marling tells Leland. “It’s a dodge game we play with ourselves to pretend airports aren’t airports. In that shopping world, it’s obvious that the management is going to take great care of you and nothing evil can happen to you. It distracts travelers from the possibility that they will meet bin Laden on the next flight. How can you be afraid when there’s a Gap next to you?”
Travel Trend Watch: Bookstore Tourism
by Michael Yessis | 06.04.04 | 9:47 PM ET
Here’s a travel trend we can get behind: Travel in support of independent booksellers. Larry Portzline started the venture last year as a “grassroots campaign to promote and support independent bookstores by marketing them as a travel and tourist destination.” “It all started last July, when Portzline organized another group of 45 book lovers to travel from Harrisburg to Manhattan to visit 18 bookstores in Greenwich Village,” writes Jane Van Ingen in Poets and Writers magazine. “During the four-hour bus ride to the city, Portzline gave a presentation about competition in the bookselling industry. During the day, travelers visited landmark bookstores such as the Strand and Three Lives and Co., as well as niche stores that sell only cookbooks, foreign-language titles, children’s books, or mysteries.” Next trip: A June 12 excursion, also from Harrisburg, where Portzline works at the local community college, to New York City. Through his Web site, Portzline encourages others to coordinate trips in their own areas. “Wouldn’t it be great,” he writes, “to see busloads of book-lovers pulling up in front of independent bookstores on a regular basis?”
New York From Above
by Jim Benning | 09.12.03 | 1:36 AM ET
Two years after planes toppled the World Trade Center towers, Salon columnist and airline pilot Patrick Smith marks the September 11 anniversary by recalling his own flights over New York City. Smith once piloted small turboprops around the World Trade Center and Statue of Liberty. Maneuvering there was always, he writes, “a unique and unforgettable procedure.”