Destination: North America
Will Arizona’s Immigration Law Lead to a Travel Boycott?
by Jim Benning | 04.27.10 | 11:52 AM ET
It’s starting to. Some groups are already canceling meetings there. San Francisco supervisors are expected to vote today on a resolution that would go well beyond travel and cancel all contracts with companies based in Arizona.
And in a man-bites-dog kind of twist, Mexico has issued an alert for Arizona, warning that “any Mexican citizen could be bothered and questioned for no other reason at any moment.”
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Yahoo! BuzzTaco Bell to Indians: ‘Visit Mexico for 18 Rupees’
by Jim Benning | 04.21.10 | 2:59 PM ET
Yes, Taco Bell is invading India, offering such classic Mexican delicacies as “Potato & Paneer Burrito.”
The offerings, with an Indian twist designed to appeal to local tastes and vegetarian diets, sound genuinely intriguing in an Indian-Mex-fusion kinda way.
World Travel Watch: Drug Violence in Acapulco, iPad Ban in Israel and More
by Larry Habegger | 04.21.10 | 12:40 PM ET
Larry Habegger rounds up global travel news
What Does a Travel Warning Look Like in Tijuana?
by Jim Benning | 04.20.10 | 1:19 PM ET
Something like this, snapped with my camera phone over the weekend.
I went there for lunch and took a stroll down Revolution Avenue, the main tourist thoroughfare lined with bars and curio shops. A few years ago, the street would have been hopping with gringos out for an afternoon of margarita drinking, taco downing and sombrero buying. Not these days, and especially after the latest travel warning issued earlier this month.
A number of shops and restaurants were closed. The sidewalks, at least on some blocks, were nearly empty.
I’ve been going down to Tijuana for years. The drug-related violence has been taking a toll on the tourism business for a long time. But this was, by far, the emptiest I’d ever seen Revolution Avenue. Strangest of all, I didn’t see another gringo on the street during my visit. I was less than a mile from the U.S. border but in some ways felt as though I could have been in central Mexico.
One shopkeeper told me he sees more European visitors than American these days. (Now that I think about it, I saw more German travelers than American when I visited the southern Mexican state of Chiapas several years ago.)
Revolution Avenue wasn’t entirely empty. There were people out having drinks and lunch in bars and restaurants, and some of them appeared to be having a good time. They just weren’t white Americans.
This street designed to appeal to gringos is now, it appears, catering almost exclusively to Mexicans.
The LAX Theme Building: It’s (Almost) Back
by Michael Yessis | 04.19.10 | 12:52 PM ET
Three long years after shedding a 1,000-pound piece of itself, the iconic futuristic building at Los Angeles International Airport is almost ready for its adoring public again. Jennifer Steinhauer has the update.
‘Treme’: TV’s Best-Ever Take on New Orleans?
by Eva Holland | 04.15.10 | 3:09 PM ET
Slate’s Josh Levin, a NOLA native, thinks so. Our own take on the city, courtesy of contributor Adam Karlin, is here.
Political Pundits, Lay Off the Kabuki References
by Eva Holland | 04.14.10 | 4:21 PM ET
Slate writer Jon Lackman has a message for America’s Washington-watchers and op-ed writers: Stop using “kabuki” as a stand-in for “political posturing.” Lackman thinks the stylized Japanese theater tradition deserves better. He writes:
[T]here’s nothing “kabuki” about the real Kabuki. Kabuki, I’ll have you know, is one of UNESCO’s Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity! And it’s nothing like politics. It does indeed use stylized gestures, expressions, and intonations, but it’s far from empty and monotonous… Unlike a Dick Durbin stemwinder, the quintessential Kabuki moment (known as a kata) is colorful and ruthlessly concise, packing meaning into a single gesture. It is synecdoche, synopsis, and metaphor rolled together—as when, in one Kabuki play, a gardener expecting a visit from the emperor cuts down all his chrysanthemums except one, the perfect one. And in contrast with our own shortsighted politics, Kabuki concerns not the present so much as a “dreamlike time shrouded in mist but ever present in the subconscious,” to quote critic Shuichi Kato.
The history he digs up on the term’s arrival in American political discourse is fascinating.
The International Banana Museum: Meet its Saviors
by Eva Holland | 04.13.10 | 11:59 AM ET
Here’s an odd one: Gawker has an exclusive interview with Virginia and Fred Garbutt, the mother-son duo who recently purchased the entire contents of the International Banana Museum on eBay after collector-curator Ken Bannister was forced to sell. The new incarnation of the museum will reopen in North Shore, California, in January 2011.
The Leap at Crater Lake
by Amy Eward | 04.13.10 | 10:15 AM ET
Photo by Dustin Eward Amy Eward's infertility strained her marriage and left her reeling. During a trip to Oregon, she made a bold move to try to regain control.
Tourism in the Tenderloin
by Michael Yessis | 04.12.10 | 11:16 AM ET
Is San Francisco’s “ragged, druggy and determinedly dingy domain of the city’s most down and out” ready for tourists? The New York Times explores the question and talks to those behind a push to bring travelers to the ‘loin.
What if Martha’s Vineyard Had a Subway System?
by Eva Holland | 04.07.10 | 3:31 PM ET
It might look something like this. (Via Boing Boing)
76-Second Travel Show: The San Francisco-New York Showdown
by Robert Reid | 04.06.10 | 2:09 PM ET
New Yorker Robert Reid asks: Could San Francisco be the better city?
The Deceptive Magic of Travel Photography
by Spud Hilton | 04.06.10 | 1:17 PM ET
If you've seen it in a guidebook, that elusive, perfect view must really exist. Right?
Diamonds Are Forever
by Chris Epting | 04.05.10 | 9:08 AM ET
Chris Epting Chris Epting takes a baseball-inspired road trip, celebrating America's national pastime
See the full audio slideshow: »
New Air Travel Security Protocols on the Way
by Eva Holland | 04.02.10 | 1:05 PM ET
The Department of Homeland Security is set to announce a new intelligence-based threat assessment system to replace the mandatory secondary screenings that were brought in for certain nationalities after the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest flight over Detroit. From the New York Times:
The intelligence-based security system is devised to raise flags about travelers whose names do not appear on no-fly watch lists, but whose travel patterns or personal traits create suspicions. The system is intended to pick up fragments of information—family name, nationality, age or even partial passport number—and match them against intelligence reports to sound alarm bells before a passenger boards a plane.
President Obama signed off on the new protocols yesterday.