Perhaps. Brad Newsham, author of the travel memoir Take Me With You, announced via email that he’s collecting signatures to become a write-in candidate to represent California’s 9th District, now represented by Democrat (and National Passport Month supporter) Barbara Lee. Newsham explained that he disagrees with her on only one issue, “but it’s a fundamental issue for me, and perhaps for you: the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. For me, this issue is so important that it eclipses all others.” Newsham, pictured here running naked on a Hawaiian beach, has been rallying for the pair’s impeachment.

Travel stories are usually told in writing, or on film, or over a meal. But Jeff Greenwald is the rare travel writer who has turned his tales into a one-man stage show. It’s called “Strange Travel Suggestions,” and I caught it at last year’s Book Passage travel writing conference. I found it funny, fast-moving and surprisingly compelling. Judging by the enthusiastic response from others in the audience, I wasn’t the only one. In the show, Greenwald celebrates adventures in far-flung places. Even better, with audience input, he captures that addictive (and often elusive) sense about travel that anything can happen around your next turn. 

Continue reading >>

In honor of this weekend’s Oscars ceremony, I’ve put together a few shout-outs to some of my favorite travel-related movie moments of the year. These picks make an odd collection, but each one made me curious about a place I’d never been, or made me see one that I had visited in an entirely new light.

Best Turning of a Romantic Travel Cliché on its Head
2 Days in Paris
Plenty of movies show people falling in love, in two days, in Paris. In fact, in a global vote for the most romantic city in the world, Paris would probably be John McCain to everywhere else’s Mike Huckabee. So it’s a bold move on director Julie Delpy’s part to chronicle the unraveling of a relationship there instead. 

Continue reading >>

San Francisco voters rejected a proposal this week to turn Alcatraz Island—the former prison site and ridiculously popular tourist attraction—into a “global peace center.” Whew. Given the rough U.S. economy, I’m afraid any move that could threaten the bustling Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary souvenir T-shirt industry could be this nation’s ruin. Sure, peace center T-shirts would sell, especially in San Francisco, but they wouldn’t do Federal Penitentiary numbers. For a vicarious visit and a few grim statistics, here’s video of the approach to the island from a tour boat:

Continue reading >>

After a fun and invigorating four days at the Book Passage Travel Writers conference in Corte Madera, California—the closest thing I’ve ever experienced to a travel writers’ Woodstock, complete with karaoke—I headed to San Francisco International Airport yesterday for my first flight on the new Virgin America airlines. I’d been looking forward to the flight and the highly touted entertainment system, which on the gleaming white seatbacks looks like a giant iPod. The flight and entertainment were great. I’d happily fly Virgin America again. But the highlight wasn’t the plane. 

Continue reading >>

It’s a publicity stunt, sure, but one that might help JetBlue get back some of its mojo after its February meltdown. As part of the massive hype for the upcoming The Simpsons Movie, C. Montgomery Burns—known best as Homer Simpson’s boss at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant—has taken over the blog of former JetBlue CEO David Neeleman. From his first entry: “Smithers entered my chambers this morning, toting wretched tales of congenial customer service and overly indulgent amenities on your JetBlue Airways. And for what… your precious passengers? Soon, the riff raff will demand ‘fair treatment’ from all corporate overlords, like myself. Well, not in my chemically prolonged life-time.”

Continue reading >>

It’s been 40 years since the famed Summer of Love, when San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood became either the embodiment of brotherhood and sisterhood or, in the words of the Beatles’ George Harrison, full of “hideous, spotty little teenagers.” I tend to believe more in the latter characterization, not because I experienced it (or was even alive) in 1967 but because around the turn of the millennium, when I lived in San Francisco, I saw a lot of “spotty little teenagers” there and that colors my impression. Don’t get me wrong. I like the Haight, and I still go there often when I’m in San Francisco. It’s got an all-time great music store, Amoeba Music; an excellent and cheap pizza place, Fat Slice; and a fine bookstore, The Booksmith, among other things. But I never really felt that Summer of Love spirit.

Continue reading >>

Travelers kept the Grand Canyon Skywalk top of mind this week, as well as San Francisco, Jackson Hole and ways to stretch their travel dollar. Here’s the Zeitgeist: 

Most Viewed Travel Story
Los Angeles Times (current)
Insider’s Tour of San Francisco’s Chinatown

Most Read Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
Jessica Smith of MTV’s ‘Laguna Beach’ Named Let’s Go Spokesperson
* She allegedly did a very bad thing.

Most Viewed Travel Story
Telegraph (current)
Sheer terror
* Sheer terror? Skiing Jackson Hole’s Corbet’s Couloir must be really scary.

Most E-mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
Urban Human Hounds Tracking Down the Beers
* A must read if you want to “basically run around a lot and end up at a bar.”

Best Selling Travel Book
Amazon.com (current)
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert
* We’ve lost count how many weeks in a row this has topped the list. It’s been that long.

Most Read Story
World Hum (this week)
A Very Long Way to the Hong Kong Cafe

Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
Soft Caribbean Cruise Market Could Mean Savings for Passengers
* Just don’t get too giddy and end up like these people.

Continue reading >>

When visiting San Francisco, Amy Tan says, bypass Chinatown and instead head for the Richmond. The author of The Joy Luck Club and occasional rock ‘n’ roller offers the good advice—tourists tend to go to Chinatown, while locals and newly arrived immigrants make Clement Street a vibrant place to eat and shop—and reveals a handful of her other favorite haunts in a “Their Town” round-up in the Washington Post. Tan is a Bay Area native who grew up hearing the “siren’s call” of the city in the 1960s. 

Continue reading >>

All travelers want this week, it seems, are trips to Utah, San Francisco, Montreal, India and Ireland, and literary journeys to the top of Everest and into the mind of Bill Bryson. And they want airport security to leave their T-shirts alone. Here’s the Zeitgeist.

Most Literate U.S. City
Central Connecticut State University study (2006)
Seattle
* University President John W. Miller measured newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment and Internet resources to rank U.S. cities.

Most Popular Travel Story
Netscape (current)
Man Not Allowed to Board Flight Because He Was Wearing a ‘Bush is a Terrorist’ T-Shirt
* Add this to the airport ruckus-causing T-shirt Hall of Fame. Remember Meet the Fockers and We Will Not Be Silent?

Most Viewed Story
World Hum (this week)
How to Down a Pint in a Real Irish Pub

Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
The Best of India, One Cup at a Time

Most Popular Travel Podcast
iTunes (current)
Travel With Rick Steves
* Another reminder: ‘Tis the season for Rick Steves’ European Christmas.

Most Viewed Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
Tourism Suffers in Bethlehem, But Hamas Might Help

Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
Now Boarding: Utah’s Polar Express

Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (current)
Farecast

Best Selling Travel Book
Amazon.com (current)
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir by Bill Bryson
* Two Three Six Seven Eight Nine weeks in a row at the top for Bryson’s memoir of growing up in 1950s Iowa.

Top Travel and Adventure Audiobook
iTunes (current)
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Continue reading >>

The most gorgeous city in the United States—that would be San Francisco—steps into the Zeitgeist spotlight this week, along with Hawaii, road tripping, airlines of all sorts and the nemesis the government of Kazakhstan, Borat.

Top United States City
Conde Nast Traveler (Readers’ Choice Awards)
San Francisco
* The city has finished first in the magazine’s survey in 18 of its 19 years. Guess readers can’t get enough of this view.

Most Blogged Travel Story
New York Times (current)
Affordable San Francisco

Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (current)
RealTravel

Most Viewed Story
World Hum (this week)
Oprah Winfrey, Amanda Congdon and the New Golden Age of the Cross-Country Road Trip

Most Popular Food & Travel Story
Netscape (current)
Airline Will Cater to Smokers

Top Ranked Travel Podcast
Podcast Alley (October)
808Talk
* 808 is the area code for Hawaii, which seems to have already rebounded after the recent 6.7 earthquake.

Best Selling Travel Book
Amazon.com (current)
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir
* The New York Times has the first chapter of Bryson’s memoir of growing up in 1950s Iowa.

Top International Route Airline
Conde Nast Traveler (Readers’ Choice Awards)
Singapore Airlines
* The carrier has also topped its category for every year of the magazine’s survey but one.

Most Read Weblog Post
World Hum
A Week in the Life of American Airlines

Continue reading >>

Michael Dukakis (the guy who taught us all that one bad photo-op can ruin your whole presidential campaign) makes the case in today’s L.A. Times for a high-speed train connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco. We know, it’s a pipe dream. But we can dream, can’t we?