Destination: United States
Free Pizza Delivery…By Airplane
by Michael Yessis | 01.10.06 | 1:46 PM ET
More proof that Americans do love their pizza: A couple of Nome, Alaska entrepreneurs have started what could be the world’s first pizza parlor delivering its goods by airplane. Nome, a city of 3,500 so remote it’s the finish line for the Iditarod, had no take-out restaurants before Airport Pizza arrived on the scene in early August. Now Alaskans from hundreds of miles away are hooked on Airport Pizza’s pies, which are carried by Frontier Flying Service.
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Yahoo! BuzzReflecting on Key West, Cuba and Whether Misfortune Makes for Great Travel Stories
by Tom Swick | 01.10.06 | 8:03 AM ET
Las Vegas, Where Thousands of Taxis Still Aren’t Enough
by Jim Benning | 01.09.06 | 11:18 PM ET
I just stopped off in Las Vegas for a couple of nights en route home from a snowboarding road trip to Park City, Utah, and I couldn’t have picked a worse time. The gigantic Consumer Electronics Show just ended, and the city has been jammed for days. The crowding got so bad that the Nevada Taxicab Authority, which had already added 300 additional cabs for the trade show, had to hold an emergency meeting to add 300 more. And I still saw long, snaking cab lines in front of many hotels. It’s ugly.
Welcome Guest Blogger Thomas Swick
by Tom Swick | 01.09.06 | 6:53 AM ET
Regular World Hum readers will be familiar with South Florida Sun-Sentinel travel editor Thomas Swick. We often link to his columns and stories; we’ve interviewed him; and we’ve enjoyed his two books, A Way to See the World: From Texas to Transylvania with a Maverick Traveler and Unquiet Days: At Home in Poland. His 2001 essay in the Columbia Journalism Review, Roads Not Taken, about the dismal state of travel writing in American newspapers, is a must-read for travel writers and editors alike. So when we decided to begin inviting some of our favorite travel writers to be guest bloggers in 2006, Swick’s name immediately came to mind. We’re delighted that he accepted our invitation to contribute all this week.
Pico Iyer, Tom Arnold and the Key West Literary Seminar
by Tom Swick | 01.09.06 | 5:57 AM ET
I’m in Key West; drove down Thursday from Fort Lauderdale for the Key West Literary Seminar on the Literature of Adventure, Travel and Discovery. In the evening Pico Iyer gave the opening address, speaking for 80 minutes without notes and almost without pauses to a packed and dazzled crowd of mostly older citizens. Sketched his story—born in England to Indian parents who then moved to California, currently living in rural Japan—and the themes of his writing—interchange of cultures, traveling for contradictions, travel as a dialogue between a person and a place, an interest in the romance rather than the clash of cultures, etc. Leaving I heard an elderly woman ask her friend, “Did he say he lives in royal Japan?”
Update: Farewell to L.A.‘s Ambassador Hotel
by Michael Yessis | 01.06.06 | 7:24 AM ET
Only a small portion of the famed hotel still remains, and The Ambassador’s Last Stand has the latest photos of the demolition. Readers have also sent in a couple photos of the pantry where Sirhan Sirhan assassinated Robert Kennedy in 1968.
2006: The Year of the Long-Haul Airliner
by Michael Yessis | 01.04.06 | 1:36 AM ET
Superjumbo jets like the soon-to-debut Airbus A380 “will fundamentally change the experience of flying around the world,” writes Joe Sharkey in today’s New York Times. Besides making it easier for travelers to get from continent to continent, the planes also promise extra comfort. Airports around the world are beginning to modify their infrastructure to accommodate the 500 to 900 passenger behemoths, but some are lagging, including Los Angeles International Airport.
LAX Through Hotel Room Windows
by Jim Benning | 01.02.06 | 12:58 PM ET
Photographer Zoe Crosher embarked on an unusual and oddly compelling project in 2001: She decided to photograph planes coming in to land at Los Angeles International Airport, shooting them through the windows of 31 motels and hotels around LAX. “Crosher shoots in the morning, and the images (which often feature the plastic linings of cheap curtains) are in a sense second to the narrative thread of the series: transience, anonymity and the fleeting promise of Los Angeles,” writes Steffie Nelson in last Thursday’s L.A. Weekly. A book collection of the photos, “Out the Window (LAX),” is due to be published this spring, with an introduction by Pico Iyer.
We’re Back, and So is Farris Hassan
by Michael Yessis | 01.02.06 | 12:44 PM ET
Welcome back, Farris. The 16-year-old high school student, who had taken $1,800 his parents gave him to invest in the stock market and embarked on a solo trip to Iraq, returned home to Fort Lauderdale, Florida last night. It ended one of the most fascinating odysseys of 2005. Hassan took off for the Middle East on December 11, reportedly to research a school journalism project.
Hemingway Was a Regular on Chalk’s Ocean Airways
by Jim Benning | 12.22.05 | 1:23 AM ET
I hadn’t heard of Chalk’s Ocean Airways until this week, with the news that a twin-engine Mallard seaplane it operated crashed off Miami on Monday, killing at least 19 people on board. It turns out the company and its planes have a long, storied history. The Florida carrier claims to be the world’s oldest surviving airline, and according to a fine story in the Palm Beach Post, Ernest Hemingway was once a regular passenger on flights to the island of Bimini. The Post story opens with a description of a Mallard taking off.
Transit Strike Hits New York. (Insert Whistle Here.) “Taxi!”
by Jim Benning | 12.20.05 | 2:03 PM ET
Farewell to L.A.‘s Ambassador Hotel
by Michael Yessis | 12.19.05 | 6:02 PM ET
Not too long ago I took a drive east along Wilshire Boulevard from Koreatown to downtown, a part of Los Angeles that many people seem to be avoiding these days. It’s just too painful for a lot of them, Ken Bernstein, director of preservation issues for the Los Angeles Conservancy, recently told the L.A. Downtown News. The reason: That’s where the demolition of the Ambassador Hotel, a Los Angeles landmark since 1921, is currently taking place.
Kerouac’s “On the Road” Manuscript to be Displayed in San Francisco
by Jim Benning | 12.19.05 | 5:38 PM ET
A yellowing, 36-foot section of the original “On the Road” manuscript scroll will be displayed at the San Francisco Public Library from Jan. 14 to March 19, along with Kerouac-related books and photographs.
“Kerouac wrote the novel over a 20-day span in 1951, typing on 12-foot rolls of tracing paper so he didn’t have to pause to load paper in his typewriter,” an AP story on ABC News explains.
The AP story also notes:
After Kerouac died from alcoholism in 1969, the single-spaced manuscript, which has become yellow and brittle with time, changed hands several times. Some said it spent time in a dorm room closet before it turned up at the New York Public Library. Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay bought the scroll in 2001 at an auction for $2.43 million.
Related on World Hum:
* Jack Kerouac’s “Dharma Bums” Mansucript Moves to Florida
Catherine Watson: “Roads Less Traveled”
by Michael Yessis | 12.15.05 | 10:17 PM ET
Photo of Catherine Watson courtesy of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Michael Yessis talks with the pioneering editor and writer about serendipity, travel as education and why travelers should talk to everyone they can, especially the quiet people
Final Score: United States 5, Burma 5
by Jim Benning | 12.15.05 | 1:51 PM ET
Five journalists, that is. The Committee to Protect Journalists has issued a report on nations detaining correspondents. The news isn’t pretty: The United States and Burma (perhaps the most Orwellian nation on the planet) tied for sixth place for most held, with each nation detaining five journalists. None of the five journalists being held by the U.S. in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has been charged with a crime. China is holding 32 reporters, more than any other nation. The New York Times has the gory details.