Destination: United States
Paparazzi Fishing at the Baggage Claim
by Jim Benning | 09.27.10 | 10:47 AM ET
The Los Angeles Times covers the work habits of celebrity photographers who camp out at LAX:
If tips are scarce, photographers make their own luck by “fishing”—strolling the terminal baggage claims and entrances for shots. Airport paparazzi scour crowds less for actual famous people than for signs that actual famous people are about to appear. A shiny black Escalade with tinted windows. A muscle-bound man with an earpiece. And, above all, the “star greeter,” hired by movie studios and other companies to whisk VIPs through lines at the airport. Airport photographers tend to memorize the greeters’ faces, walks, wardrobes and client lists.
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Yahoo! BuzzSix Spots to Relive ‘Travels With Charley’
by Robert Reid | 09.23.10 | 10:43 AM ET
Robert Reid Fifty years ago John Steinbeck began the road trip that begat a travel classic. Robert Reid unearths the spots where you can still make like the author -- minus the poodle.
A Detour to Seattle
by Eva Holland | 09.21.10 | 3:10 PM ET
Over at Gadling, World Hum contributor Andrew Evans has a sad, thoughtful piece about a last-minute trip to Seattle to attend a funeral. It’s worth reading in full, but here’s a favorite sequence:
The day after the funeral, the friend I was crashing with whipped out a yellow legal pad and began making a list of things to see and do in Seattle. Mostly, he suggested I do a lot [of] eating. We made plans to meet up for lunch at a popular Russian café; my friend slipped me the address as we walked downtown. I had no map and no idea how I would find him.
“Just remember,” he panted, “Jesus Christ Made Seattle Under Protest.” He ran all the words together as one and it didn’t make any sense at all.
“Huh?”
“It’s a way to remember the streets: Jesus is for Jefferson/James. Christ—Cherry and Columbia. Made—Marion/Madison . . . and so on, you’ll see. It’s easy—just follow the streets in that order. Be at Cherry and Third at one o’clock.”
“Jesus! Christ! Made! Seattle! Under! Protest!” he shouted out each word as he spun around the corner and marched uphill. Every street in Seattle goes up or down.
Retracing Steinbeck’s ‘Travels With Charley’
by Jim Benning | 09.20.10 | 3:50 PM ET
Fifty years ago this week—on Sept. 23, 1960—John Steinbeck set out on the 10,000-mile road trip that would inspire the classic American memoir, “Travels With Charley.”
This Thursday, writer Bill Steigerwald will set out to retrace Steinbeck’s journey. He plans to write about it, using the trip as “the frame for a book that compares simple, poor, square 1960 America with 2010 America.”
He admits the two journeys will be very different.
Steinbeck camped out under the stars a bunch of times. I won’t. He drove a clunky uncomfortable truck with a Spartan camper shell on its back. I’ll stay at pre-1960 motels when I can and drive a 2010 Rav4 I can sleep in when I must. When Steinbeck was on the road he had only an AM radio and pay phones to keep him tethered to the world. I’ll have enough communication gear for a trip to the moon.
The book “Travels With Charley” will be my map/guide/timeline to the places Steinbeck went and the things he mused, complained or fretted about. Unfortunately, “Charley” is not a travelogue and wasn’t meant to be. It’s often vague and confusing about where Steinbeck actually was on any given date, and Steinbeck, who died in 1968, left no notes, no journal, no expense records.
There’s more information and an interactive map here.
R.I.P. Liberace Museum
by Eva Holland | 09.14.10 | 3:57 PM ET
The Vegas classic is closing its doors after more than 30 years—apparently, due to shrinking revenue, from both the museum itself and the Liberace music royalties that help support it. Over at Flyover America, Sophia Dembling laments:
What is the world coming to?
I’ve been to the Liberace Museum more times than I should probably admit. Three? Four? I’m not sure, but I’ve been dazzled every time. What’s more, even though I lived through the Liberace era, I didn’t know until I visited the museum how really huge Liberace was—he sold out the Hollywood Bowl, for Pete’s sake! (Or George’s sake. And if you don’t know what I mean, then you don’t know Liberace.)
The Liberace Foundation is hoping to reopen the museum someday. In the meantime, some traveling exhibits are in the works.
Travel Morality Tales
by Tom Swick | 09.13.10 | 10:54 AM ET
Screen shot from commercial for DIRECTV Parsing the hidden travel advice in two DirecTV commercials
Interview with Michael Scott Moore: ‘Sweetness and Blood’
by Jim Benning | 09.08.10 | 12:32 PM ET
Jim Benning talks with the author of a new travel book about the spread of surfing around the globe
What We Loved This Week: Rachid Taha, Fall Colors at Alaska’s Denali Park and More
by World Hum | 09.03.10 | 3:49 PM ET
Jim Benning
Algerian musician Rachid Taha. I discovered him recently on a flight—he was a featured artist on Delta’s in-flight audio entertainment system. He has covered the Clash’s “Rock the Casbah.” Here’s a taste of something perhaps slightly less familiar:
Political Pundits Tackle American Vacation Time
by Eva Holland | 09.03.10 | 10:28 AM ET
‘Tis the season for lots of vacation talk, and so the Capitol Hill crowd turned its attention to shrinking vacation syndrome this week: First, a British columnist speculated that Americans “find it hard to relax” because of their Puritan heritage. Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein responded:
I’d say it’s more closely related to the fact that it’s hard to pass social welfare legislation in the American political system, and thus America is the only industrialized country that doesn’t guarantee its workers some amount of paid-vacation leave.
NRO’s Reihan Salam followed up with a mild defense of the American system. (Via The Daily Dish)
Jonathan Gold and Rick Bayless Tweet Off Over Mexican Food in L.A.
by Jim Benning | 08.31.10 | 11:49 AM ET
What was it? A battle? A shot over the bow? Maybe, looking back, it was just a misfire. But it got L.A. Mexican foodies pretty excited for a few days.
At a talk in Orange County last week, Pulitzer Prize-winning restaurant critic Jonathan Gold—a hero of ours who has made a career of championing great hole-in-the-wall ethnic restaurants in SoCal—took a shot at PBS TV host and restaurateur Rick Bayless. The chef, whose Frontera Grill in Chicago gets rave reviews, just designed the menu for a new upscale Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles, Red O—his first project in the region.
Now, L.A. loves its homegrown Mexican food. It’s a source of pride. So the arrival of Bayless earlier this year was bound to raise eyebrows.
The Los Angeles Times gave Red O a favorable review. Then Gold took the mic at a gathering of journalists last week.
Gold said Bayless was a “good” chef who knew his way around Mexican recipes, but he sneered at Bayless’ nerve in coming to Los Angeles and opening a restaurant—Red O—that presumed to introduce Angelinos to “authentic” Mexican cuisine. In particular, Gold zeroed in on Bayless’ inclusion of chilpachole—a glorious seafood soup from Veracruz—as some rarity, when Gold said the soup was easily available in the Southland, along with dozens of other Mexican regional specialties.
Word reached Bayless, and he tweeted:
@thejgold Thought a Pulitzer meant you checked facts. Sneering at me for something I never said is either mean or sloppy. I’m offended
He also posted this comment on the OC Weekly’s article:
I know it’s all the rage for journalists to go into unsupported hyperbole, but I never said I was going to introduce Southern California to “authentic” Mexican cuisine. I said I was going to bring the flavors of Frontera Grill to Los Angeles.
Ouch.
As of today, however, both sides are tweeting that the spat is behind them.
Gold’s tweet:
@Rick_Bayless and I have kissed and made up, I think. Further thoughts will have to wait for the full review.
Bayless’ reply:
Yes, i think we have :) RT @thejgold @Rick_Bayless & I have kissed & made up, I think. Further thoughts will have to wait 4 the full review.
Taco détente.
Whew. Now we can all go back to eating our enchiladas in peace.
From Paris to New York—in 1906
by Eva Holland | 08.27.10 | 9:26 AM ET
Conor Friedersdorf digs up an old gem from the Atlantic’s archives: a dispatch from a native New Yorker, returning to the city after an extended stay in Paris. It’s a must-read for NYC-philes. Here’s a taste:
In a word, this returned New Yorker finds few familiar landmarks; and the few he does find seem to have lost most of their original meaning. He is as much dazed and puzzled by his surroundings as Rip Van Winkle after his twenty years’ sleep. Nobody resides, does business, dines, or drinks in the same places as before. Nobody frequents the same pleasure resorts. Nobody saunters along the same walks. It is not safe for him to make a business or social call, or to set out for a restaurant, a chop-house, a theatre, or a club, without consulting the Directory in advance; and, even so, he risks having his trouble for his pains, inasmuch as there is more than a chance that a move has been made since the Directory was issued.
After he so far recovers from the shock of his initial disenchantment, however, as to be able to take note of details, he finds that there is some balm in Gilead, after all. At the end of a month he begins to catch the spirit of New York; and at the end of six months he has come completely under its spell, and loves it, as Montaigne loved the Paris of his day, “with all its moles and warts.” The radiant white city by the Seine still appears to him at intervals, like the memory of a favorite picture or poem; but it has lost the power to disquiet him with desire. Paris is no longer a perpetual obsession,—the absolute norm by which he judges everything he sees. Indeed, it has passed so far out of his life that he is in danger of being as over-lenient in his judgments as he was at the outset over-severe.
Nine Great Stories About New Orleans
by World Hum | 08.26.10 | 10:32 AM ET
Photo by Wayne Curtis To mark the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we've collected stories from our archives that explore the city's heartbreak, passion and rebirth
Ohio: The Bedbug State?
by Eva Holland | 08.25.10 | 3:09 PM ET
With bedbug infestations apparently on the rise across the country, the Daily Beast has put together a list of the top ten buggiest cities in America—and burgs in Ohio landed in the first, second and eighth spots. If you’re headed to Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton, or any of the other cities on the list, you may want to put this retro travel technique to use.
Life on I-95: ‘The Road Most Traveled’
by Michael Yessis | 08.25.10 | 10:00 AM ET
NPR’s Weekend Edition launched an ambitious series Saturday, a three-weekend-long look at the most trafficked interstate in the U.S. It’s not this trafficked, but it’s pretty busy. And it plays a huge role in American life:
All along the Eastern Seaboard, Interstate 95 has helped shape the daily lives and vacation dreams of the roughly 100 million people who reside alongside it. They live in dense cities and rural counties in the 15 states through which I-95 passes on its nearly 2,000-mile, north-south path.
The Department of Transportation says that each year I-95 gets more VMTs—that’s vehicle miles traveled—than any other road. The traffic on I-95 peaks in August as legions of vacationers and college students join commuters, truckers, migrant farm workers and others on the road.
As an accompaniment, NPR recommends 95 songs for driving on I-95.
The All Coast U.S.A. Map
by Michael Yessis | 08.25.10 | 8:21 AM ET
Craig Robinson’s all coast map of the U.S. eliminates the borders with Mexico and Canada. The country looks a bit like a turkey leg. Clever and disorienting.