Destination: United States
‘The Great American Road Trip is Resurgent’
by Eva Holland | 07.27.09 | 11:28 AM ET
In the latest issue of Outside, Ian Frazier declares that the road trip is back. We’re glad to hear that he’s come around—last summer he was one of those who predicted that the road trip was dead—but we’re also pretty sure it never really went away in the first place. Frazier goes on to offer some thoughtful reflections on the irresistible urge to jump in the car and head west. His short piece is accompanied by more fine, compact road tripping essays from Walter Kirn, Matthew Power and Eric Hansen. (Via @AdventureLive)
Email to friend
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! BuzzPhoto We Love: Surfing Huntington Beach
by Jim Benning | 07.24.09 | 2:33 PM ET
REUTERS/Gene Blevins
Australian Taj Burrow at the recent X-Games finals in Huntington Beach, California.
One of surfing’s biggest events culminates at the Huntington Beach Pier this weekend: The Hurley U.S. Open of Surfing concludes Sunday. Forecasters are predicting some big, tasty waves thanks to a swell from the Southern Hemisphere.
Pink’s Hot Dogs Headed for LAX
by Jim Benning | 07.24.09 | 12:57 PM ET
The iconic Los Angeles hot dog shop, which draws famously long lines and celebs to its historic La Brea location, plans to open an outlet in the Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX later this year. “Various accounts have it opening anywhere from late fall to late December,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
It’s always good to see less generic, more local fare in airports. The trend continues.
Miami International: Off to the Races?
by Eva Holland | 07.24.09 | 12:02 PM ET
One corner of Airworld could get a lot weirder. There’s a proposal in the works to build a horse racing track in the parking lot at Miami International—apparently, a working track is a prerequisite for the real objective, slot machines at the airport.
Hey, I can see the slogan now: Win back your checked baggage fees!
An Open Letter to President Obama: Martha’s Vineyard?
by Tom Swick | 07.24.09 | 10:24 AM ET
iStockPhoto Contemplating and celebrating travel
Taco Trucks and the ‘Mobility Patterns’ of Young Urbanites
by Jim Benning | 07.22.09 | 1:37 PM ET
By now most people have heard of the L.A. Twitter taco truck phenomenon that is Kogi. Well it seems that Kogi’s success has spawned a slew of other food trucks in Southern California, from the Coolhaus ice cream sandwich truck to the Franken Stand hawking vegan sausages.
And the trend is going national, so if you’re in the U.S., look out for a gourmet food truck coming soon to a neighborhood near you.
Today’s Los Angeles Times story on the phenomenon includes an interesting bit of sociology.
Travel Song of the Day: ‘Chicago’ by Sufjan Stevens
by Alicia Imbody | 07.22.09 | 12:42 PM ET
Travel Movie Watch: ‘A Perfect Getaway’
by Eva Holland | 07.22.09 | 11:38 AM ET
Beautiful people murdering each other on an isolated Hawaiian hiking trail: What’s not to like?
“A Perfect Getaway” opens August 7.
Travel Movie Watch: ‘Julie and Julia’
by Eva Holland | 07.21.09 | 2:19 PM ET
Here’s a promising one. “Julie and Julia” tells the story of Julia Child’s years as a Parisian expat, when she first tackled French cuisine, alongside the story of New York City blogger Julie Powell, who spent a year attempting every recipe in Child’s classic, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” Meryl Streep plays Child—who was recently included in our list of ten inspirational women travelers—while Amy Adams takes on Powell. On top of the promising cast, Nora Ephron wrote and directed—cue the jokes about a recipe for success.
How America Learned to Fear the Roundabout
by Eva Holland | 07.21.09 | 12:02 PM ET
Interesting tidbit from this Slate article calling for American city planners to embrace the roundabout. Turns out, our collective roundabout anxiety can probably be blamed on our European vacations:
Mentioning roundabouts seems to invoke some form of the famous “availability bias,” which leads people make judgments based on the memories that can be brought most easily to mind. And so, the American who may have driven as a tourist in France or Greece a number of years back will shudder with recognition, associating the roundabout with terror and near misses. But motorists with such memories often fail to consider that they were driving as tourists in unfamiliar climes, perhaps only for a few days. Roundabouts, like the language, the signage, the food, and just about everything else, were strange and novel, and so the tourist driver, already probably feeling a bit wigged out—for a roundabout in Italy is filled with Italian drivers—felt a heightened level of stress and thereafter consigned the roundabout to the dustbin of terrible ideas—or things that might be good for Europe (like socialized medicine) but don’t translate.
Arthur Frommer Rediscovers Small-Town America
by Eva Holland | 07.21.09 | 11:15 AM ET
The guidebook publisher who made his name in Europe has just returned to his boyhood home of Jefferson City for the first time in decades—and the result is an infectiously enthusiastic blog post on the joys of small-town America. Frommer writes: “Now I won’t claim that a visit to Jeff City is a big touristic opportunity. But to me at the time it was Athens, London, and Paris all rolled into one—and would you believe?—it lived up to every memory I had of it.”
Missouri road trip, anyone?
Mapped: Literary San Francisco
by Michael Yessis | 07.21.09 | 10:28 AM ET
The San Francisco Chronicle commissioned a beautiful map of San Francisco “composed of some of the very words—from novels, poems and essays—that animate our city.” It’s “loosely inspired” by the literary map of St. Petersburg, Russia, we linked to in February. (via @roncharles)
The Colony of LAX Parking Lot B
by Michael Yessis | 07.20.09 | 4:21 PM ET
Great story in the Los Angeles Times about a community of pilots and other airline workers that lives in trailers and motor homes in a parking lot at Los Angeles International Airport. Dan Weikel writes:
For several years, clusters of RVs were scattered around the airport’s parking lots until LAX officials decided to consolidate them in Lot B. Now operating as an organized camp overseen by the airport, it has an unofficial mayor, a code of conduct and residency requirements, including background checks, regular vehicle inspections and proof of employment at an air carrier.
The constant noise of the airplanes flying overhead would drive me nuts, but the residents of the colony don’t seem to mind. Or maybe they just have good white noise machines, like one of the three residents profiled in the terrific accompanying audio slideshow.
R.I.P. Julius Shulman
by Jim Benning | 07.16.09 | 5:37 PM ET
REUTERS/Fred Prouser/Files The famed Los Angeles architectural photographer died yesterday at his home in Laurel Canyon at the age of 98. Among his most iconic photographs: a shot of Pierre Koenig’ Case Study House #22—the photo within the photo here.
Dwell magazine put it well: “His photography helped define mid-century modernism and no one can claim more credit for documenting, and in some ways inventing, what post-war California cool looked and felt like.”
William Least Heat-Moon on Travel, Twitter and the Call of the Open Road
by Michael Yessis | 07.16.09 | 12:19 PM ET
The author of Blue Highways theorizes why the United States is “the most mobile nation the planet has yet seen” in an intriguing essay in WSJ magazine. Here’s the part where he addresses Twitter and our era of self-absorption:
For the past three decades, travel—especially when it gets written down—often has at its center a defining solipsism: the Self in search of itself in strange places promising to cast a different and edifying light on the Quest. In an era of self-absorption and self-gratification—Facebook and Twitter may be the ultimate in narcissism—such is to be expected. On a stretch of open road, a driver can roll along with his window reflection laid over the landscape ahead so that he must see through himself to see the territory—call it windshield therapy (it’s probably as effective as any couch counseling and certainly cheaper and more accessible, no appointment necessary). On the road, where no one knows your name or your past, the miles can efface one’s identity and make a traveler ready for reception.
I love the kicker to the piece: “In America, our prayer wheels come with vulcanized nonskid treads.”