Travel Blog: News and Briefs
Bill Bryson: Britain has Become ‘Self-Absorbed’
by Eva Holland | 06.03.10 | 9:47 AM ET
The travel writer was commenting at a recent literary festival on the changes he’s seen in his adopted country. The BBC quotes Bryson: “When I first came to Britain it really was all about fair play and queuing… Everybody is in a hurry now and there is a ‘the rules don’t apply to me’ sort of thing.” (Via The Book Bench)
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Yahoo! BuzzAnthony Bourdain on Food, Authenticity and Being Wrong
by Eva Holland | 06.02.10 | 5:45 PM ET
Slate has a lengthy, compelling interview with the writer and No Reservations host, centered around the ideas of “right” and “wrong” in cooking. Here’s Bourdain on food, tradition and authenticity:
There’s enormous respect and a romanticized reverence for what’s considered the “right” way—meaning, the classic way—and I think most chefs feel powerfully that one should know that before moving on. Like, “I’ve researched this, this is the way they were making it in 1700, goddamn it, and that’s the way it should be made.” Or: “This is the way they make laksa in Kuching and Borneo; that stuff I just had on Ninth Avenue is definitely not the same; ergo it’s wrong.” But, you know, what does “real” or “authentic” mean? The history of food is the history of migrating ingredients and occupation and foreign influences and accommodation.
We spoke recently with Andrew Potter, the author of “The Authenticity Hoax,” about similar themes.
What’s the Next Foodie Eco Trend? ‘Entrepreneurial Foraging.’
by Jim Benning | 06.01.10 | 2:10 PM ET
What’s “entrepreneurial foraging,” you ask?
That would be the businesses sprouting up around foraging for miner’s lettuce, mushrooms and other food growing wildly, even in urban environments. Think mushroom-hunting safaris.
Writes Greg Beato in Reason:
All across America, enterprising eco-aggregators are engaged in the somewhat paradoxical pursuit of commercialized foraging, leading mushroom-hunting safaris in forests and selling wild-harvested dandelion roots in bulk on the Internet. Iso Rabins, a 28-year-old resident of San Francisco, joined their ranks two years ago, when he started organizing “wild kitchens,” paid events where diners enjoy “rambling dinner[s] of wild foraged foods” in private locales around the Bay Area. A few months later, Rabins added home delivery of food boxes to his menu of services.
(Via the New York Times Ideas blog)
What’s the Only Thing Worse Than a Fear of Flying? Having Something in Common With John Madden.
by Michael Yessis | 06.01.10 | 12:53 PM ET
Jean Hannah Edelstein managed to make me laugh and feel her pain in this essay about her flying phobia.
I think about how after the plane crashes, my family and I will be featured in a special issue of People magazine about the tragedy, and other people waiting at airports will sit at airport gates, waiting for delayed flights, biting their nails, and reading about how we all died in the tiny plane’s flaming wreckage. And they will think: How sad.
This is, in fact, a special technique I have developed over most of my life to prevent the plane from crashing: If I think enough about the crash, if I am sufficiently scared, then it won’t crash and I’ll feel sheepish, because the opposite of what I anticipate always comes true. If I don’t do this—if for just one minute I think, “Hey, this is OK. What a nice view, and a tasty small bag of cheese-flavored pretzels,” then that singular happy thought will make the plane disintegrate in mid-air like the balsawood gliders my brother and I used to chuck out of our bedroom windows. So when we at last are boarding the plane, hours delayed, I am thinking more about the special issue of People and what kind of coverage we will get, and assessing the other passengers at our gate. That man is handsome, so he will get some extra column inches, perhaps even an inset box with a color photo and some details about his work with underprivileged children. That lady is scowling and has really unfortunate hair. I think they will print her black-and-white memorial headshot extra small.
R.I.P. Dennis Hopper
by Eva Holland | 06.01.10 | 11:43 AM ET
Hopper wrote, directed and starred in the road trip classic “Easy Rider,” which celebrated its 40th anniversary last year. The New York Times obituary includes an overview of his long and varied career.
What We Loved This Week: The Big Caption, a Surf Memoir and Nike’s ‘Write the Future’
by World Hum | 05.28.10 | 4:34 PM ET
Photo by Eva Holland Eva Holland
Getting out of town for my first camping trip of the summer. Here’s a shot from the area where I spent last weekend, south of Whitehorse near the Yukon-B.C. border:
Making the Best of a Flight Delay or Cancellation
by Jim Benning | 05.28.10 | 12:38 PM ET
Don George offers an alternate take on flight woes:
One moment the day is all organized and itineraried; we’ve already lived it in our minds, we’re already arriving in San Francisco. And then the universe sends a little gift - your flight is cancelled; there’s a rupture in the fabric of certainty and expectation. The itinerary is out the window. Suddenly an alternative stream of possibilities, sunlit, floods into the scene.
Blogged: Bad Postcards
by Eva Holland | 05.28.10 | 11:51 AM ET
This Tumblr digs deep into the vault to find some so-bad-they’re-good postcards from the ’50s and ’60s. A must-see for the travel nostalgists among us. (Via Boing Boing)
The Frugal Traveler Bids Farewell
by Jim Benning | 05.26.10 | 3:13 PM ET
The author of the New York Times’ Frugal Traveler column, Matt Gross, is leaving the gig after four years—soon to be replaced, as is customary, by a new Frugal Traveler columnist.
Gross, who is also a World Hum contributor, will be working on a blog about fatherhood and an idea for a TV project, among other things. In a farewell post, he looked back on his frugal travels and notes that it wasn’t always easy being the Frugal Traveler.
Often, I’d wind up on a beach somewhere (France, Greece, Malta) and want nothing more than to lie on the sand all day, with occasional forays into the cooling surf. But then I’d think: Where’s the drama there? If I didn’t go do something—anything—I’d have nothing to write about! And so off I’d go, anxiety-ridden and not nearly tan enough, in search of more prose-worthy excitement.
May your future travels be anxiety-free and allow you the time you need to tan sufficiently, Matt.
Photos: Tokyo Taxi Tops
by Michael Yessis | 05.26.10 | 2:24 PM ET
Alexander James shares 50 of them in the Los Angeles Times Magazine. The tops feature, among other things, dogs, frogs and what appears to be a neon green football—see No. 17. (Via Coudal)
Mapped: ‘Touristiness’ Around the World
by Eva Holland | 05.24.10 | 4:26 PM ET
A Google maps user has created a heat map of the world’s most visited places, using data from photo site Panoramio. The results aren’t all that surprising, but they sure do look cool. (Via Lifehacker)
‘The Only True Requirement of a Great Hotel is That it Have a Decent Bar’
by Michael Yessis | 05.24.10 | 3:09 PM ET
Peter Jon Lindberg breaks down just what decent means in a terrific piece for Travel + Leisure.
Regarding the crowd, the proper measure is key: three-fifths out-of-town guests (for novelty) to two-fifths nonguests (for local color), with a dash of resident weirdo (for zest). Tip the balance in locals’ favor and you’ve upset the fundamental contract of a hotel bar, which is that the guest is always, always the most important person in the room.
A hotel bar should probably have a decent name, too, unlike these.
What Kiss Cams Say About Cities
by Michael Yessis | 05.24.10 | 2:22 PM ET
I love this idea from a sportswriter I usually can’t stand: The Kiss Cam as a two-minute glimpse into a city’s soul. In this case, Bill Plaschke’s talking about the Kiss Cam at Staples Center in Los Angeles during Lakers’ games.
Nowhere, it seems, are the couples as animated, or the crowd as involved, or the message about the heart of Los Angeles any more clear. In a night filled with supermen, it is a brief, heartwarming reminder that the Lakers have been built upon the hopes and ideals of those who are real.
In a town where everything is supposedly disposable, no Kiss Cam moment is cheered louder than a smooch between an elderly couple. In a town that supposedly doesn’t trumpet family values, the second-loudest cheers occur for the forehead pecks of a parent on a child.
The third-most popular Kiss Cam moment? Hugh Hefner sitting in a luxury suite kissing three or four bunnies. C’mon, this is still Hollywood.
What We Loved This Week: Slug-Lines, Bicycle Rush Hour, and the Hidden Gems of the Southwest
by World Hum | 05.21.10 | 4:56 PM ET
Eva Holland
I loved canoeing a 40-kilometer section of the Yukon River with a group of friends last weekend. Stiff shoulders and a sunburn were a small price to pay for six hours spent floating downstream with the river and mountains almost entirely to ourselves.
Of Great Buildings and Tourist Tchotchkes
by Jim Benning | 05.21.10 | 1:11 PM ET
Edward Hollis’s relatively new book—The Secret Lives of Buildings: From the Ruins of the Parthenon to the Las Vegas Strip in Thirteen Stories—is getting some good press. While a post in The New York Review of Books is worth a look, I most enjoyed coming across a 2009 review from the Guardian.
