Travel Blog: News and Briefs
Gawker’s Guide to New York City in the Summer
by Eva Holland | 05.21.10 | 12:14 PM ET
Brian Moylan offers some advice for peaceful co-existence between visitors and locals on the busy streets of New York this summer—though some of it, like the suggestion that tourists should stay strictly on the beaten path of big-time Manhattan attractions, seems more geared towards the comfort of city-dwellers than the enjoyment of newcomers.
Our own Mike Barish shared his tips for a successful holiday visit to New York this past winter.
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Yahoo! BuzzMapped: ‘International Number Ones
by Michael Yessis | 05.21.10 | 11:25 AM ET
Every country is the best at something, so Information is Beautiful dug up the stats and laid out the excellence and shame—the U.S.A. ranks No. 1 in serial killers—on a map.
Hooray for Estonia, though. It leads the world in adult literacy. (Via The Daily Dish)
‘The Truth is People do Walk in L.A.’
by Michael Yessis | 05.20.10 | 11:06 AM ET
Ryan Bradley’s Good series Walking in L.A. gets off to a strong start. He aims to reverse the notion that Los Angeles isn’t a place for walkers, and he’s carrying a lot of statistical ammunition.
Everyone thinks they know L.A., even if they’ve never been west of St. Louis. Nobody walks in L.A., right? There’s that Missing Persons song, or that line from Steve Martin’s L.A. Story: “...it’s not like New York, where you can meet someone walking down the street. In L.A. you practically have to hit someone with your car. In fact, I know girls who speed just to meet cops.”
But the truth is people do walk in L.A. And bike. Fully 12 percent of all trips in Los Angeles are by bicycle or on foot—that’s more than Austin or Portland. In sheer numbers, L.A. has more bikers and walkers than Washington, D.C., or Chicago, or even San Francisco. And it happens to be far safer for biking and walking than all three, according to a 2010 Benchmarking Report by the Alliance for Biking and Walking. I lump walking and biking together only because, until very recently, so did everyone else. In the 1990s biking and walking were “alternative,” like rock music. Fifteen years ago, Los Angeles spent “about $1 million” a year on pedestrians and bike services. This year Los Angeles has earmarked $36 million on walking alone. Could it be that this western cow-town, this place that’s synonymous with self-reinvention, is reinventing itself?
Bradley’s first exploratory walk in L.A.: a 17-mile trek from LAX to downtown.
Mapped: California as the World’s Stand-In
by Michael Yessis | 05.20.10 | 10:18 AM ET
In 1927, Paramount Studios apparently produced this map of California, designating cities and regions that could double as various parts of the world. Now I can say I grew up near the stand-in for Wales. (Via The Map Room)
More Tocqueville: James Wood Weighs In
by Michael Yessis | 05.19.10 | 5:05 PM ET
In the New Yorker, Wood immerses himself in two new books about Alexis de Tocqueville and the enduring significance of the Frenchman’s American travels.
Unlike some other European visitors (Charles Dickens and Fanny Trollope, and, more recently, Jean Baudrillard and Bernard-Henri Lévy come to mind), he reserves serious judgment for mortal American sins, not venial ones. His anguish and scorn are provoked not by tobacco-chewing or unreal dentistry but by slavery and the extermination of the Indians. He often teeters on the edge of disdain—as when he notes the poor calibre of American politicians, or the people’s “immense opinion of themselves”—only to find the hospitality of explanation more interesting than the solitude of dismissal. To most non-Americans, American patriotic self-regard can be hard to take (an entire country seemingly innocent of the idea that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel), but Tocqueville is interested in the rationality of American pride, which he sensibly locates in the success, against all odds, of the young democracy.
We noted earlier that Tocqueville might also have been a bad traveler.
Which American City Spends the Most on Food and Drink?
by Eva Holland | 05.18.10 | 10:54 AM ET
That’d be Austin, TX, per this cool graphic posted at Flowing Data. As the chart’s creators note, that’s a lot of Torchy’s Tacos. (Via Andrew Sullivan)
The Atlantic Tackles the Future of the City
by Eva Holland | 05.17.10 | 10:29 AM ET
Blogger Conor Friedersdorf is curating the sprawling collection of links, quotations, by-the-numbers breakdowns of major world cities and first-person tales of urban life sent in from readers. It’s an impressive project. (Via Andrew Sullivan)
Route 66: The Multimedia Graduate Thesis Project
by Michael Yessis | 05.17.10 | 9:40 AM ET
A few years ago I wrote that we were experiencing a new Golden Age of the Road Trip because, among other reasons, new technologies were providing incredible ways to tell road trip stories:
Now instead of writing a book like Kerouac or marking those lines in felt-tip on a map, travelers can use video and flash and Google Maps and blogs and audio to interpret what they’ve seen on the road and bring it to life in unexpected ways. In the age of the Web, the road trip has arrived as an artistic statement.
Here’s one of those ways I never expected. Students at California State University East Bay are creating a virtual tour of Route 66 utilizing Wii, Google Earth and other technologies—all contained in a 1969 VW bug:
The project is scheduled to debut in June.
What We Loved This Week: Portland, ‘This American Life’ and Coming Home Again
by World Hum | 05.14.10 | 4:54 PM ET
Eva Holland
I loved arriving back in Whitehorse after three and a half weeks on the road. I don’t think it takes anything away from a great trip to admit that coming home—putting security pat-downs, early morning departures and bad take-out sandwiches behind you for awhile—can be a relief, and even one of the pleasures of going away in the first place.
Pirates to Captain: Just Tell Us Where the Tourism Boats Are
by Michael Yessis | 05.14.10 | 11:53 AM ET
Chilling story by Sean Flynn in the latest GQ. He recounts the sagas of two hijacked boats in the Indian Ocean and tells how tourists—and tourism—are increasingly targets of pirates. One exchange:
“Tourism?” One of the pirates was close now. “Tourism boat?”
Roucou nodded. “Yes.”
The pirates broke into wide smiles, congratulating themselves, celebrating.
“Where is tourism? Where?”
“No tourists,” Roucou said. “There are none. They’ve all gone.”
The pirate scowled, then dispatched a few of his men to search the Explorer. They returned, confirmed there were no passengers on board. The pirates were no longer pleased.
“Where tourists? Where?”
The tourist boats were a few hours to the south, three of them near Assumption Island. Roucou had seen them earlier that day: the Sea Bird, the Adventurer, and the Hebridean Spirit, with nearly 200 passengers and crew among them.
“There are none,” Roucou told the pirates. “There’s only us.”
He’d answered quickly and surely, but the pirates did not believe him. Eight of them took most of the crew to the aft deck, and three stayed with Roucou and his chief engineer in the wheelhouse. One of them used the Explorer’s satellite phone to call a contact in Somalia, who spoke perfect English. He put Roucou on the line with a man named Abdi.
“Tell them where the tourism boats are,” Abdi said, “and they will let you go.”
An Ode to Hawaii’s Messy Reality
by Eva Holland | 05.14.10 | 10:42 AM ET
Over at Nerd’s Eye View, World Hum contributor and Hawaii enthusiast Pam Mandel ponders the typical expectations of visitors to the islands, and how they stack up against the reality she’s gotten to know and love. From the post:
It’s weird to have a long term relationship with a place that isn’t my home. I’m keen to the flaws but part of my heart remains in the islands… [O]n my last trip there, I watched a traveler open the envelope and take out that staged photo, and, then, respond with such disappointment at the real thing. How can a place stack up against such oppressive expectations? Why would Hawaii want to be our Shangri-La, our Atlantis, our Bali Hai? It’s so much work, too much makeup, the lighting and the filters and the fiction to make a place paradise belies what’s really there.
And I’m good with what’s really there.
Growing Up on the Grand Trunk Road
by Eva Holland | 05.13.10 | 12:32 PM ET
NPR has a compelling series about the young Pakistani and Indian men and women who live alongside one of Asia’s most famous roads. The stories are supported by a great multimedia package—interactive maps, graphics, slideshows and more. It’s worth a good browse.
Frequent World Hum contributor Jeffrey Tayler cycled the Grand Trunk Road last year; here’s his five-part series about the experience.
An Insomniac in New York
by Eva Holland | 05.12.10 | 3:58 PM ET
Bill Hayes has a lovely essay in the New York Times about life in his new home, New York City, a place seemingly purpose-built for insomniacs. Here’s a choice quote:
Sometimes I’d sit in the kitchen in the dark and gaze out at the Empire State and Chrysler buildings. Such a beautiful pair, so impeccably dressed, he in his boxy suit, every night a different hue, and she, an arm’s length away, in her filigreed skirt the color of the moon. I regarded them as an old married couple, calmly, unblinkingly, keeping watch over one of their newest sons. And I returned the favor. I would be there the moment the Empire State turned off its lights for the night, as if getting a little shut-eye before sunrise.
The whole thing is worth a read.
‘Kyoto Should Not be Building Concrete Boxes’
by Eva Holland | 05.11.10 | 12:43 PM ET
The New York Times takes a look at an ongoing debate in Japan over the future of the country’s tourism industry. At the heart of the issue: Should efforts to boost tourism emphasize modern initiatives, like the monster aquarium in the works in Kyoto, or focus on the country’s heritage buildings and traditional culture?
It’s an important question for a national tourism industry that has lagged behind its competitors. Reporter Hiroko Tabuchi notes that “the country generated just $10.8 billion from foreign tourism in 2008, a tenth of the $110 billion the United States earned from overseas tourists that year. Ukraine and Macao each attract more foreign tourists a year than Japan.”
Mapped: The Great Gulf Oil Spill—in London, New York and Paris
by Eva Holland | 05.11.10 | 11:52 AM ET
While we’re on the subject of the massive Gulf oil spill, here’s something clever: Paul Rademacher has created a satellite image of the slick that can be superimposed on the city or region of your choice. Really brings home the scope of the disaster. (Via Gawker)
