Destination: United States
March Madness Hits Las Vegas
by Michael Yessis | 03.16.06 | 12:43 PM ET
I clearly remember March Madness of 1990. It’s the year I won $120 on a three-team parlay (big money in those days) when Duke’s Christian Laettner drained a buzzer-beater versus Connecticut, and I remember having no problem finding a seat at any of the Las Vegas sports books where I watched the NCAA basketball tournament that year. People cared, but not like these days. Now it’s truly March Madness. Round one of the NCAA men’s college basketball championship begins today, and hotels and casinos are guaranteed to be slammed. And not just for today. For three consecutive weekends.
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Yahoo! BuzzRolf Potts in New Orleans: A Visit to the Lower Ninth Ward
by Michael Yessis | 03.14.06 | 12:46 PM ET
Crass as it might seem, Potts writes in his latest Yahoo! column, “disaster tourism” is a time-honored travel tradition. “Thomas Cook started taking British travelers on tours of American Civil War battlefields in 1865; a couple years later, Mark Twain and his cohorts famously toured the war-torn city of Sevastopol (where Twain chided his travel companions for carrying off armfuls of shrapnel as souvenirs),” Potts writes. And a lot of travelers are now heading to the Lower Ninth Ward, the district in New Orleans that took the brunt of the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina last year.
Thomas Swick Takes the Train to Orlando
by Jim Benning | 03.13.06 | 2:28 PM ET
How was it? “I looked like a contented man,” he writes in Sunday’s South Florida Sun-Sentinel, “but inside I was raging.”
Bullfighting School: ¿Quién es Más Macho?
by Jim Benning | 03.13.06 | 12:50 PM ET
I don’t talk about this much because, frankly, it just intimidates people, as it should. But back in 1998, when I was but a young magazine freelancer with a dog-eared copy of Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” on my bookshelf, I enrolled in bullfighting school. The California Academy of Tauromaquia in San Diego, to be specific. That’s me in the photos. It was for a story for Men’s Fitness magazine.
I studied the art of bullfighting for several weeks, learning the ins and outs of cape-handling, among other essentials. For homework, I studied episodes of the TV show “When Animals Attack.” And then, wearing the traditional white shirt and cap of a bullfighting student, I stepped into a stone bullring in Mexico under a hot desert sun (actually, it was rather cool, but “hot” sounds more unforgiving; stick with me here), and went mano a mano with a snarling, charging 400-pound heifer. I graduated with honors.
Before any of you send angry e-mails: Not only did I not harm the animal, but at the time, I was a vegetarian who wouldn’t go within 10 feet of a Big Mac, so send your notes elsewhere. But I digress. I bring this up now because Gadling just pointed out a recent New York Times story in which the writer attended the same bullfighting school and faced a 300-pound heifer.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: Three hundred pounds? That’s it?
Exactly. That’s the first thought that ran through my mind.
Back in the day, if you wanted to prove yourself in the ring and deliver a meaty story to your editors, you made sure you faced at least 350 pounds of lumbering beef. Know what I’m saying? And honestly, if you were an editor worth your salt, you wouldn’t print a bullfighting story by a writer who faced anything close to 300 pounds. At the New York Times, you’re just giving more ammunition to those in Red America who claim the liberal media elite are out of touch. Don’t you editors know your heifers? Get back in touch. We need you. No bull. Okay, a little bull.
As for the California Academy of Tauromaquia, it offers an excellent bullfighting education, and I’d recommend it to anyone interested in learning the basics. And really, shouldn’t we all know at least the basics? No? Okay.
Los Angeles: Three Great Books
by Jim Benning | 03.11.06 | 5:24 PM ET
$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.”
Killing My Lobster in San Francisco’s Mission District
by Michael Yessis | 03.03.06 | 1:16 PM ET
The acclaimed San Francisco comedy group Killing My Lobster finishes up a two-weekend run of its travel-themed show “Killing My Lobster Takes a Cruise” tonight and tomorrow at the Brava Theater Center in San Francisco. I recommend this or any other Killing My Lobster event. The group puts on themed shows several times a year, and when I lived in San Francisco a few years back I saw a bunch of performances. All were hilarious. Here are a few ideas for what to see and do before and after the show.
San Francisco: The Mission District
by Michael Yessis | 03.03.06 | 1:05 PM ET
San Francisco’s Mission District, with its strong Latin tradition, is beloved by artists, activists, hipsters and foodies. “I try to get anybody coming to San Francisco to come to the Mission,” San Francisco-based writer Dave Eggers recently told the New York Times. “Not to misuse the word ‘authentic’—I think that’s such a troubling word—but the Mission really does have all the best parts of San Francisco intersecting here.”
Atlanta’s Georgia Aquarium Reaches 1 Million Visitors Milestone
by Michael Yessis | 03.02.06 | 2:14 AM ET
It comes only 98 days after the Georgia Aquarium opened its doors, according to a CNN report today. Impressive numbers and a rousing success, yet I have to admit that I’ve never really understood the appeal of aquariums.
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.
Iowa Embraces Bookstore Tourism
by Michael Yessis | 02.27.06 | 5:05 AM ET
We’re believers in bookstore tourism, so our hats are off to Iowa for becoming the first state to officially promote it. The Travel Iowa Web site now lists more than two dozen local independent bookstores and encourages visitors to the Hawkeye State to drop in to get a taste of local communities. And, of course, to buy books. Bookstore tourism founder Larry Portzline, who I interviewed for World Hum last year, applauded Iowa’s efforts. “I hope other state and regional tourism offices follow suit and start promoting their indie bookstores as travel destinations,” he writes on his bookstore tourism blog. “It’s a great way to spread the word.”
Americans, Finns and Danes Have Most Freedom to Travel Visa-Free
by Jim Benning | 02.03.06 | 7:38 AM ET
I’ve been spending the week in Grand Cayman working on a story and chatting with travelers and ex-pats from around the world. Twice I’ve found myself struggling to explain the United States’ ban on travel to Cuba to people understandably baffled by it. When they ask what I think, I find myself saying that whatever you think of Fidel Castro’s government, and I’m not a fan, you should have the right to visit the country and make up your own mind. Besides, the policy has proved remarkably ineffective. The man is still in power. All this was on my mind when I came across this AP headline on CBC.com: Citizens of Denmark, Finland, U.S. have most freedom to travel without visas. It turns out that citizens of these countries can travel to 130 countries without having to get a visa, according to a landmark report. Germany, Ireland and Sweden tied for a close second place, with their citizens able to visit 129 countries without visas.
Hooters Casino Hotel Opens Today in Las Vegas
by Michael Yessis | 02.03.06 | 4:51 AM ET
First came the airline. Now comes what the folks over at the Best Week Ever are calling “a place for boobs to go.” The new Hooters Casino Hotel takes the place of the Hotel San Remo, just off the south end of the Las Vegas Strip, and will be hosting grand opening festivities all weekend.
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.
Rolf Potts on the Key West Literary Seminar
by Jim Benning | 02.01.06 | 7:28 AM ET
The four-day January writing seminar has gotten more electronic ink than any recent travel-writers’ gathering I can recall. Thomas Swick blogged about it here. We noted a newspaper column about it. And now Rolf Potts has offered his own take. He had a grand time, but he had a few critical words, too. “I’d reckon that one weakness of the seminar was a total lack of political diversity among the panelists,” he writes. “At times, the panel discussions came off sounding like another episode of ‘Liberals Being Self-Congratulatory’ (the longest-running show in American letters).”