Travel Blog
‘Why Your Plane is Always Full’
by Eva Holland | 07.15.10 | 3:22 PM ET
James Fallows explains the increased congestion in the air, with helpful charts.
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Yahoo! BuzzMark Twain: Traveling Foodie
by Eva Holland | 07.15.10 | 12:52 PM ET
The Atlantic’s Andrew Beahrs examines Mark Twain’s food fantasies, and the ways in which his tastes were shaped by his travels. Here’s his take on a list of must-haves Twain composed during a long European tour:
Twain didn’t just want mussels; he wanted steamed mussels, from San Francisco. He wanted terrapin from Philadelphia, stewed with sherry and cream (the recipe’s main rival, from Baltimore, omitted the cream—Twain loved cream). He wanted partridge from Missouri, shad from the Connecticut River, and perch and canvasback ducks from Baltimore. The list went on ... In a very real sense, his menu was a memoir of fondly remembered travels, from the prairies to the mountains and from the New Orleans docks to the backstreets of San Francisco.
Chicago: The City Built by Geniuses
by Michael Yessis | 07.15.10 | 11:34 AM ET
Inspired by Justin Kern’s beautiful photos of the “University of Chicogwarts,” Roger Ebert has written a terrific post on Chicago architecture and the tension between beauty and commerce.
I walk around Chicago, and look up at buildings of variety and charm. I walk into lobbies of untold beauty. I ascend in elevators fit for the gods. Then I walk outside again and see the street defaced by the cruel storefronts of bank branches and mall chains, scornful of beauty. Here I squat! they declare. I am Chase! I am Citibank! I am Payless Shoe Source! I don’t speak to my neighbors. I have no interest in pleasing those who walk by. I occupy square footage at the lowest possible cost. My fixtures can be moved out overnight. I am capital.
‘‘Remote’ is a Word We Like to Misuse’
by Eva Holland | 07.15.10 | 9:49 AM ET
Dave Weigel is blogging this week from an island way out in the Aleutians. Here’s his introduction to Dutch Harbor, Alaska:
There is usually some diversity of companions on an airplane. Not on this one. The men have beards and gear and heavy boots; the women have all but one of these things. Your fellow travelers look like they’re heading to the same bar after work, possibly because they are. Another thing you notice is that most of them have shirts or jackets with “Alaska” written on them. This seems odd—you don’t head into Newark and bump into travelers with “New Jersey” jackets. Then you realize you’re being foolish, and that almost everyone you’re flying with works for some Alaska company, in construction or fishing or research, and that they’re wearing the raincoats they’ve been handed for free.
Could Neverland Ranch Become a California State Park?
by Eva Holland | 07.14.10 | 3:29 PM ET
Well, maybe. California assemblyman Mike Davis suggested the idea this week, but he also acknowledged one major stumbling block: “Given that we have an economic shortfall ... I suspect it would be difficult for the State Parks Department to purchase the property alone.”
We wondered last summer, shortly after Michael Jackson’s death, where his fans would congregate to remember him. Seems like Neverland Ranch remains the leading contender, whether it winds up in government hands or not. (Via Gawker)
Stieg Larsson Tourism Hits Sweden
by Eva Holland | 07.14.10 | 2:20 PM ET
The AP has a rundown of the key Stockholm sites from Larsson’s monster bestseller, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” We’ve written before about traveling the world through crime fiction—I suppose this closes the circle? (Via The Book Bench)
Kristof and the Challenge of Race in Africa Stories
by Jim Benning | 07.14.10 | 1:37 PM ET
Photo by Fred R. Conrad New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof is answering reader questions on video, and one answer, in particular—see the video below—touches on a sensitive topic: coverage of black Africans as victims and white visitors as their saviors.
Kristof admits to sometimes using white people as “bridge” characters in his Times stories to help draw in readers in America who might otherwise turn the page upon seeing a story about Central Africa.
San Francisco Chronicle Editor at Large Phil Bronstein likes Kristof’s answer: “[A]dmitting that there’s a white reporter’s burden in writing about Africa is among the braver things he’s done. It’s the bold revelation of a messy little secret not so mysterious to those of us in the profession.”
Bronstein’s blog post about it, which draws on his own reporting experiences, is a good read.
A quick note on related World Hum coverage: Kristof has talked about his own formative travel experiences in a World Hum interview, and Frank Bures has tackled the “white man’s burden” in Africa—and the perspective of Bono, among others—in a provocative World Hum essay, Suffering and Smiling: Vanity Fair Does Africa.
Here’s the Kristof video:
(Via Romenesko)
Bourdain on Pekar and Cleveland
by Jim Benning | 07.13.10 | 12:19 PM ET
Anthony Bourdain offers an eloquent tribute to Harvey Pekar, who died yesterday—a writer “whose life and works will surely remain an enduring reference point of late 20th and early 21st century cultural history.”
More on Pekar:
He was famed as a “curmudgeon”, a “crank” and a “misanthrope” yet found beauty and heroism where few others even bothered to look. In a post-ironic and post-Seinfeldian universe he was the last romantic—his work sincere, heartfelt, alternately dead serious and wryly affectionate.
And on Cleveland:
“What went wrong here?” is an unpopular question with the type of city fathers and civic boosters for whom convention centers and pedestrian malls are the answers to all society’s ills but Harvey captured and chronicled every day what was—and will always be—beautiful about Cleveland: the still majestic gorgeousness of what once was—the uniquely quirky charm of what remains, the delightfully offbeat attitude of those who struggle to go on in a city they love and would never dream of leaving.
A Return to Zimbabwe
by Michael Yessis | 07.13.10 | 11:17 AM ET
The theme for Granta’s latest issue is “Going Back,” and it features a compelling story from Owen Sheers about a return trip to Zimbabwe. I love the feel of the opening:
The knees of the soldier from the Presidential Guard are pressing against my spine through the driver’s seat. When he shifts his position they roll across my back like the mechanism of an airport massage chair.
The issue also includes an interview with Sheers.
Travel Writing: ‘A Failed Defense Against Impermanence’?
by Eva Holland | 07.12.10 | 10:05 AM ET
The New Inquiry’s Helena Fitzgerald dusts off Walter Benjamin’s essay on acquisition and collection, “Unpacking my Library,” and applies it to those of us who chronicle our travels. Here’s Fitzgerald:
Travel writing wants to defeat the impermanence of being in any one place. In keeping records of the intangible—people or places or experiences -we attempt to forget that the things we love are not, in fact, things, and therefore can’t be kept, preserved, or possessed… Location is necessarily fleeting. As with art and with beauty and even, finally, with people for whom we feel things, there is nothing to be done about it.
The post is worth reading in full. (Via @travelingpam)
What We Loved This Week: World Cup Cookies, Gary Shteyngart and ‘The Father of All Things’
by World Hum | 07.09.10 | 6:12 PM ET
Eva Holland
My copy of The Father of All Things, by World Hum contributor Tom Bissell, arrived in the mail this week and I can’t wait to crack it open. It’s been on my must-read list since I first came across Bissell’s story, War Wounds, in The Best American Travel Writing 2005 a couple of years back.
Pittsburgh’s Conflict Kitchen: Axis of Edible?
by Eva Holland | 07.09.10 | 1:24 PM ET
Over at Gadling, blogger Jeremy Kressmann has a cool find: A new Pittsburgh take-out restaurant that serves up food from those countries that America most often finds itself at odds with on the international scene. First up at Conflict Kitchen? Iranian kubideh. The restaurant’s theme will rotate every few months.
Awhile back, we talked to Rick Steves about travel—to Iran and other less-visited countries—as “a political act that broadens your perspective.” I guess we could call this eating as a political act?
Bullfighting, Hemingway and the ‘Seduction of Death’
by Jim Benning | 07.09.10 | 12:17 PM ET
Is bullfighting an important tradition that should be preserved? Is it so cruel it should be boycotted and banned? And why was Hemingway so taken with it?
In a fine TNR review of Bullfighting: A Troubled History, Ben Wallace-Wells offers a brief history of the sport and summarizes the perspective of author Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier.
She falls squarely in the reformist camp, and her history argues that the sport seduced artists, who glamorized and abstracted a cruel and ugly pursuit into something that bore little resemblance to bullfighting itself. On the matter of Hemingway she is not subtle. “Hemingway is an emblematic representative of the aficionados who were in love with death,” she writes.
As I’ve noted before, I’ve had my own brushes with death in the bullring. (Via AL Daily)
Jim Harrison: ‘Road Trips Are Good For You’
by Eva Holland | 07.09.10 | 10:18 AM ET
The author of The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand talks travel in this video interview. His favorite road trip ever? A 12,000-mile, 39-day circuit around North America.
A Foodie Road Trip Across… Small-Town Canada?
by Eva Holland | 07.08.10 | 2:46 PM ET
The Globe and Mail’s Ian Brown is on a road-tripping mission to explore the foodie scene beyond Canada’s “big three”—Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. He’s been blogging the trip as he goes, and his latest post finds him at a restaurant called Moose’s in North Bay, Ontario, home to 102 flavors of chicken wings. Here’s Brown’s introduction to North Bay:
You pull into North Bay, which is full of interesting people but does not present well, if you know what I mean, you see the Bull and Quench pub, ‘Home of the 1 lb burger’ - think about that - and Indra’s Curry House, next to the Heart and Stroke Foundation office.
You think: Maybe this is my last day on earth. Maybe this is where my heart explodes.
