Travel Blog
Book Passage Travel Writers Conference 2009
by Jim Benning | 08.07.09 | 2:00 PM ET
The annual Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference kicks off Thursday in lovely Corte Madera, just north of San Francisco. Given the tumult in the publishing world, this year should be interesting, to say the least. The faculty lineup is impressive, as always, including such writers and editors as Tim Cahill, Jen Leo, Rolf Potts, Spud Hilton, John Flinn, Phil Cousineau, Pauline Frommer, Larry Habegger, Michael Shapiro and Wendy Perrin.
I’ll be teaching a three-hour class each morning on Travel Writing in the Digital Age. We’ll cover everything from blogging to producing audio slideshows to writing personal essays and web-friendly articles. And we’ll dig into the business side of things. Jen Leo and Rolf Potts have promised to pop in to offer their perspective.
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Yahoo! BuzzTravel Song of the Day: ‘First Train Home’ by Imogen Heap
by Alicia Imbody | 08.07.09 | 12:27 PM ET
Airline Crew Crash Pads: The ‘World’s Largest Illegal Housing Network’?
by Michael Yessis | 08.07.09 | 11:41 AM ET
Senators questioned airline executives yesterday about the living conditions of some pilots and other airline workers, who often live in crash pads around the country. Some context: In another Washington Post story this week, crash pads were characterized as the “world’s largest illegal housing network.”
The Hard Life of Los Angeles’ Street Tamaleros*
by Jim Benning | 08.07.09 | 10:55 AM ET
We’ve written before about the sometimes tough plight of L.A.’s taco trucks. Fortunately, taco trucks these days are ascendant—thanks in part to the mobility patterns of young urbanites.
So let us now turn our attention to L.A.’s Mexican street-food vendors. They’ve never had it easy, what with gang battles sometimes raging around them and the watchful eye of health inspectors threatening their livelihoods.
Public radio’s Marketplace recently put together a fine little profile on the struggles of one tamale vendor who works the tough neighborhood of MacArthur Park.
Tamalero Antonio, who sells tamales out of a box mounted on a tricycle, told the show: “It’s dangerous. It’s very, very dangerous. You have to be careful with the gangs, you have to be careful with the police, you have to be careful with the cars. There are a lot of dangers in the street.”
(Via Boing Boing)
* Update 4:16 p.m. P.T. Speaking of dangers, today’s L.A. Times reports that at least 22 taco truck operators have been robbed at gunpoint in East L.A. in the last three months. (Thanks for the tip, Eli.)
‘The Era of the Small Town has Passed’
by Eva Holland | 08.07.09 | 9:50 AM ET
In The Smart Set, Jessa Crispin reflects on the dual pop culture mythologies of small town America—the nostalgic’s warm, sleepy hamlet and the horror movie’s lurking nightmare—and the ways in which both miss the point. Her conclusion is stark: “[T]he era of the small town has passed, and if all we ever remember are these false versions, we’ll never understand what we’re losing.”
For my part, I think there are more nuanced portrayals of small-town American life out there than those she mentions—see, for instance, John Updike’s earlier short stories. But I take her point about the dominant portrayals being cartoon-ish more often than not. My proposed remedy: some real-life exposure. Trans-American road trips for all?
Found: A New ‘Wanderlust Gene’
by Michael Yessis | 08.07.09 | 9:03 AM ET
Scientists at the University of British Columbia identified it in the stickleback fish, which, of course, is now my all-time favorite fish. Wondering about a wanderlust gene in humans? Scientists may already have discovered that, too.
Travel Song of the Day: ‘Amelia’ by Joni Mitchell
by Jim Benning | 08.06.09 | 7:24 PM ET
R.I.P. John Hughes
by Eva Holland | 08.06.09 | 5:45 PM ET
Hughes, who wrote “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” has died of a heart attack at age 59. Other travel movie favorites from the prolific writer-director included “European Vacation,” “Christmas Vacation,” “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” and “The Great Outdoors”—the last two made our lists of great travel race movies and great summer vacation movies, respectively, while we gave “Vacation” the World Hum Travel Movie Club treatment for its 25th anniversary last summer.
For my part, I’ll never be able to visit Chicago without thinking of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” another Hughes classic.
A Resuscitated Keats House Reopens
by Eva Holland | 08.06.09 | 3:59 PM ET
The Hampstead house where John Keats wrote “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and spent some of his final, tubercular days has reopened to the public after a two-year, $700,000 restoration. This Wall Street Journal story has some nice details about the house, and about Keats’ own literary pilgrimage to the one-time home of Robbie Burns.
Sam Sifton: Hard-Traveling NYT Restaurant Critic
by Eva Holland | 08.06.09 | 2:53 PM ET
The latest New York Times restaurant critic was unveiled yesterday, and after the announcement the lucky winner, Sam Sifton, took some questions from readers. Among them: Where would he like to travel on assignment for the Times? By his response, I’m guessing we have a fellow travel enthusiast on our hands:
I’m forwarding [your question] to the accountants and news administrators as complete explanation for why I just booked flights to and hotel rooms in Paris, Aix-en-Provence, Brussels, Shanghai, Barcelona, Riga, Los Angeles, Seattle, Toronto, Mexico City, Stellenbosch, South Africa and Big Pine Key, Florida (home to the only credibly fantastic ham and pineapple pizza on Earth—no lie).
For Sale: Dinosaur Adventure Land
by Eva Holland | 08.06.09 | 11:20 AM ET
Theme park down: Dinosaur Adventure Land, a creationist theme park in Pensacola, Florida, has been seized by the government to satisfy nearly half a million dollars owed by its owners to the IRS. The site will be divided up into its nine constituent properties and sold in pieces until the debt is paid—so if you’ve dreamed of owning a fraction of a defunct religious tourist attraction, now’s your chance. (Via Gawker)
A Global Foodie Tour on Film
by Eva Holland | 08.06.09 | 10:04 AM ET
Publicity still via IGN With Julie and Julia set to open tomorrow, bringing a true food-blogging tale to the masses, the Globe and Mail’s Alexandra Gill decided to come up with a list of 10 cooking-centric movies—and winds up offering a global culinary tour-by-DVD. There are stops in Taiwan, Denmark, New Jersey, Mexico, and—no surprise here—three trips to Paris.
Hitchens: A Taste of Japan in California
by Eva Holland | 08.05.09 | 5:02 PM ET
In his latest over at Slate, Christopher Hitchens visits a Japanese cultural festival in Palo Alto and makes a nice point about reconciliation in the wake of Pearl Harbor, civilian internment camps and the atomic bomb. What I liked best, though, was his observation about the resilience of cultural events in the face of rising tourist interest. Hitch writes:
There’s a large turnout of non-Japanese for these attractions, getting larger every year it seems to me, but it doesn’t succeed in swamping the main event or in making it into a mere tourist attraction. You come across a group of grave and serious Japanese gardeners, engaged in the judging of a bonsai competition, and you suddenly appreciate that nothing can turn this consideration into a hucksterish sideshow.
(Thanks Frank Bures.)
Travel Song of the Day: ‘Albion’ by Pete Doherty
by Michael Yessis | 08.05.09 | 3:48 PM ET
Museums and the Lost Art of ‘Slow Looking’
by Eva Holland | 08.05.09 | 2:41 PM ET
In the New York Times this week, Michael Kimmelman watched tourists power-walking through the Louvre, and lamented the lost days of “slow looking” at museums and galleries. I enjoyed the article, and I can certainly relate—my first visit to Notre Dame, in Paris, was largely spoiled by a businessman who dashed up and down the aisles holding a camcorder over his head while shouting into a cellphone—but at the same time, if the faster-moving visitors aren’t actively disrupting the slowpokes, I don’t have much energy to condemn them.
After all, as Kimmelman himself says, there is “no single, correct way to look at any work of art, save for with an open mind and patience.” I think he had it right without the qualifiers.
