Destination: United States
Dispatch from the Yukon Quest Trail
by Eva Holland | 02.07.12 | 3:57 PM ET
I’m on the road this week, doing some writing and social media work for the Yukon Quest.
For those unfamiliar with it, the Quest is a 1,000-mile sled dog race that runs from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Whitehorse, Yukon (my hometown). I’m following along, and on the trail with me is a traveling crowd of volunteers, veterinarians, race officials, “handlers” (assistants to the mushers), and friends and family. We drive from checkpoint to checkpoint, meeting up with the dog teams whenever they intersect with the sparse road system. I’m writing this from Central Corner, an outpost on the Steese Highway just south of the one-time Gold Rush town of Circle City.
Never seen a long-distance dog sled race? Here’s a video that gives you a real sense of the scene at the start line back in Fairbanks:
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Yahoo! BuzzGawker Goes on a Vegas Press Trip
by Eva Holland | 01.27.12 | 2:10 PM ET
And lays the snark on thick in a dispatch, Among the Junketeers. Here’s a taste:
Though the Hilton was not objectively dirty, it was permeated by a certain sort of gloom that is the result of mixing dim lighting and snack bar food and huge television screens and losing betting slips together in close proximity and marinating for 20 years or so. “I think I’m a smart sports bettor, but I always lose,” said the TSN reporter to Kornegay at one point, obviating the need for a longer discussion here of how sports books in Las Vegas make their money.
Off to lunch at The Barrymore, a newly renovated spot with stylish wallpaper and mirrored walls and a ceiling made entirely of movie reels. On the way over we drove by Occupy Las Vegas, a grim collection of tents huddled on a cracked asphalt lot, like an obstinate little Hooverville. We did not stop. The manager at The Barrymore, shirt opened to the third button, came over to greet us. We had an entire room to ourselves. They filled the table with calamari and thinly sliced pork and every other appetizer on the menu, something which would be repeated in nearly every restaurant where we ate. The journalists had a bunch of cocktails, something which would also be repeated in nearly every restaurant. I neither drink nor eat meat, so I sat there eating my French onion soup and drinking coffee like a human sign reading “PARTY POOPER.” This would also be repeated in nearly every restaurant. The French onion soup was very good.
The press trip issue has been chewed over plenty (see: this, this, or, say, this), but I enjoyed this first-person, on-the-ground addition to the genre.
(Via @mikebarish)
Travel Movies Go to the Oscars
by Eva Holland | 01.25.12 | 6:00 PM ET
It’s Oscar time again. The nominees were announced this week and a pair of travel-themed movies are up for the big awards. Midnight in Paris is Woody Allen’s tale of a Hollywood screenwriter (played by Owen Wilson) who visits contemporary Paris and finds himself time-traveling back to the glory days of Hemingway and Picasso. It’s nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Art Direction.
On the other side of the planet, The Descendants stars George Clooney as a Honolulu lawyer who takes his children to see land held in a family trust on Kauai. It received nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (for Clooney), Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film Editing.
Of the two, I’ve seen only “Midnight in Paris,” which I liked—as a confirmed 1920s Paris nerd I laughed at the inside jokes and enjoyed the scenery. “The Descendants” is on my To Do list. It won Best Picture (Drama) at the Golden Globes last week, and Clooney won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama, too, so it has to be considered a favorite come Oscar night.
Tom Bodett’s ‘Inside Passage’
by Michael Yessis | 01.10.12 | 11:31 PM ET
Brave and amazing storytelling in this Moth podcast by Tom Bodett, who recounts a low point in his life—he nearly blew himself up on a power line—and how he emerged from it with a realization about his father and a beautiful reason to go to Alaska. He writes about telling the story on his blog:
Standing on that stage in Burlington and telling such a personal tale, almost a confessional, in front of 1500 strangers was one of the highlights of my performing life. Until the moment I walked in front of the microphone a big part of me thought I was making a mistake. It was too personal. It was too revealing of a very low point in my character. It would make me choke up.
It was all those things and more and has made me very happy.
Made me choke up, too.
Fear and Loathing in a Chevy Aveo
by Eva Holland | 10.04.11 | 10:03 PM ET
On the 40th anniversary of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” The Daily’s Zach Baron climbs into a modest rental car and hits the Hunter S. Thompson trail. Here’s the introduction to his sharp and funny story:
Writers only go to Las Vegas for one reason, really. It is our World Series of Poker, except more pretentious. But the process is not dissimilar. You train, get your weight up. A semi-competent feature here, a not-totally-botched essay there, and then, one day, when your editor is particularly distracted, downtrodden or simply in need of something to believe in, you push your meager pile of chips to the center of the table. You look your mark in the eye and bluff. “It is the 40th anniversary of Hunter S. Thompson’s ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,’” you say, your face calm, confident, “and I want to go there, to write a piece on the book, and the American Dream.”
You don’t expect him to say yes. Pitching stories on the American Dream is what writers do when their hearts are empty, their minds blank. It is the equivalent of stalling for more time, throwing a Hail Mary down eight with time expiring, a way to mark your commitment and plucky optimism before admitting defeat and moving on to something with an actual chance of success.
This is part one of a series. I’ll be following along. (Via @alexanderbasek)
‘127 Hours’ Fan Rescued in Canyonlands National Park
by Eva Holland | 09.26.11 | 11:13 AM ET
Move over, McCandless pilgrims: With the success of last year’s 127 Hours, there just might be a new breed of death-defying travel movie fans on the block. The Guardian reports that a solo hiker was attempting to retrace Aron Ralston’s route through Little Blue John Canyon when he fell and broke his leg. The hiker, Amos Richards, hadn’t told anyone where he was going—he crawled in search of help for four days before being found by park rangers who’d noticed his abandoned campsite. Richards was treated at a hospital and has, thankfully, been released with all four limbs still attached. (Via Gawker)
R.I.P. Chelsea Hotel
by Eva Holland | 08.22.11 | 11:02 AM ET
The Daily Mail reports that the iconic New York City hotel is no longer accepting new guests, and that its remaining long-term residents are “resigned to being bought out to make way for a run-of-the-mill boutique hotel” now that a new developer has taken control of the site. It’s a sad end for a notorious building. Tom Leonard looks back on the Chelsea’s more than 100 years:
Surely no other single building can lay claim to so much creativity, destruction and sheer scandal as the Chelsea Hotel in New York. For decades it was a byword for Bohemian eccentricity and hellraising excess, an imposing but squalid sanctuary for writers and artists too penniless or troublesome to live anywhere else.
Jack Kerouac wrote his Beat Generation bible On The Road there, in one drug-fuelled, three-week marathon. Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey there, too, training his telescope not into space but at the apartment windows opposite… From writers such as Mark Twain, Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill, through the hippies and on to the nihilist punks of the 1970s and beyond, ‘the Chelsea’ has more than lived up to its understated description of itself as a ‘rest stop for rare individuals’.
(Via Sophia Dembling)
On Coastal Time
by Pam Mandel | 08.19.11 | 11:07 AM ET
Kalaloch Beach. (UJ Sommer) Years pass. Life changes. But for Pam Mandel, one thing stays the same: her love for the Olympic Peninsula.
Meditation at Stinson Beach
by Jim Benning | 07.27.11 | 11:00 AM ET
Don George recently visited a favorite northern California beach.
I let the sea wash over me, let the waves fill my head and lungs, lose myself to this inconceivably old and ageless place.
I think: This is the same scene I witnessed two decades ago, quite possibly even the same rock I sat on then, scribbling in my journal as I tap into my laptop now. And if I come back in 20 years, it will almost certainly be the same still.
But of course, much has changed in those two decades. My children have grown up and moved on. My Dad and other loved ones have passed away. New jobs, new places, new books, old dreams.
And suddenly these words flow into my brain: Where does it all come together? What does it mean?
Tales of a Travel Chaperone
by Michael Yessis | 07.26.11 | 7:14 AM ET
Funny story concept well executed by the man doing the chaperoning of fifth graders to Spain: Dave Barry.
Our group consisted of four dads, 18 moms and approximately 27,000 children. There was no way to get an exact count: They move too fast.
Our group assembled at Miami International Airport (motto: “Our Motto Has Been Delayed”). All of us wore identical ill-fitting T-shirts with our group name printed on them. That’s how you let everybody know that you’re a group of sophisticated world travelers.
The Washington Post Magazine covered similar ground this weekend. John Kelly joined a group of junior high students touring Washington D.C.
I began to recognize the symptoms of Stockholm syndrome about four hours into my day touring Washington with the eighth-graders of Centreville, Mich. I was starting to identify with my captors.
Happy Unofficial 75th Birthday, Aloha Shirt
by Michael Yessis | 07.25.11 | 2:25 PM ET
Laura Bly explains why July is a significant month for the aloha shirt, unofficially.
Though Honolulu tailor Ellery Chun trademarked the term in the 1930s, the garb gained official visibility in 1947, when the city’s chamber of commerce amended an earlier resolution allowing open-necked shirts during the summer to specifically include the aloha shirt and its loud, colorful patterns. Celebrities from Elvis Presley to Tom Selleck were enthusiastic ambassadors, and soon every Hawaiian tourist worth his plastic lei was bringing one back as a souvenir of paradise.
One man who helped popularize aloha shirts, Alfred Shaheen, died in 2009.
Stilettos in Paris
by Eva Holland | 07.20.11 | 10:21 AM ET
Eva Holland did the Bohemian backpacker thing in Paris. Paris Las Vegas gave her the chance to act out a different role.
Happy Third Birthday, Restless Legs Reading Series
by Jim Benning | 07.14.11 | 11:49 AM ET
I was happy to find myself at New York City’s Lolita Bar last night for another installment of the Restless Legs Reading Series. As usual, it was a good evening: About 50 travel writers and readers chatted around the bar before heading downstairs to hear Tony Perrottet and Elisabeth Eaves read from their new books.
As it turns out, the reading wasn’t just another date on the Restless Legs calendar. It was the series’ third anniversary.
David Farley had been organizing informal gatherings for years, but in July 2008 he decided to make the events official. He envisioned Restless Legs as “a reading series for the wanderlust stricken” that brings “travelers, travel writers, and the people who love them together for an evening of sharing tales from the road, gossiping, and general debauchery.”
He expected a good turnout for the first event: It was mentioned in local media and on travel blogs, and he invited all his friends. Lolita Bar’s little basement was packed as Tony Perrottet and Cullen Thomas read and answered questions. Farley was pleased, but he wasn’t necessarily optimistic about future readings.
“I thought by the fourth month it’d be dwindling to a handful of people, because that’s how a lot of readings are,” he says. “But after almost three years of doing it seven to nine times a year, I’ve been really surprised that it’s been almost full capacity every time.”
What are some highlights from the last three years?
“People who’ve done things other than read,” Farley says. “Mike Barish did 10 minutes of travel-themed standup comedy. Kim Mance sang a travel article that she wrote, accompanied by an acoustic guitar. David Grann read. He’s one of my favorite writers and he’s a pretty big deal.”
We teamed up with Farley for a World Hum-themed reading in October 2008.
The readings are the focus of the gatherings, but I suspect many come as much to hang out with like-minded travelers and writers. In fact, some wind up at the bar all evening and never make it downstairs for the reading. Farley thinks that’s a little disrespectful to the readers. “But then when I think about it, I’d like to be up there sometimes, too,” he says, “so I can’t give anyone a hard time about it.”
How long will Restless Legs continue?
“Who knows?” Farley says. “There’s no termination date. I think people really like it. if I decide to end it, someone else would start something similar. If I somehow perish, someone will decide to keep it going.”
Upcoming readers will include Dan Saltzstein and Brook Wilensky-Lanford Sept. 15, and contributors to Slate’s Well-Traveled series in November.
Long may you run, Restless Legs.
Dig This: ‘Man, Americans Love Big Stuff’
by Michael Yessis | 07.08.11 | 8:44 AM ET
Apparently there are people whose bucket lists include the phrase “operate heavy equipment.” Dig This is them. For a few hundred dollars, the Las Vegas “heavy equipment playground” allows people to operate Caterpillar bulldozers and other oversized construction equipment.
Owner Ed Mumm says the “good majority” of the customers are guys. However, he told NPR’s Ted Robbins, “he has been surprised at how many women are also interested, which is the reason Dig This offers a package called ‘Excavate and Exfoliate,’ a half-day at the park followed by a spa treatment at the Trump Las Vegas Hotel.”
Splitscreen: A Love Story
by Jim Benning | 06.30.11 | 1:48 PM ET
Splitscreen: A Love Story from JW Griffiths on Vimeo.
Mesmerizing travel video shot entirely on a Nokia mobile phone.
(Via Kottke)
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