Seattle Ranked ‘Best City For Hipsters’ According To Travel & Leisure

by Laurel Miller on

So Travel & Leisure has published a list of “America’s Best Cities for Hipsters.” This is amusing – and a wee bit annoying) to me for a variety of reasons – not least of which because Seattle makes the top of the list. I’ve lived here (actually “there,” because as I write this, I’m in a sublet in Oakland) for nearly three years. Apparently, I’m reverse-trending, because San Francisco is #3 (Portland, OR is #2).

As the sun (metaphorically – this is Seattle we’re talking about) sets on my time in the Pacific Northwest and I prepare to relocate back to the Bay Area for what I hope to be at least a couple of years, I’m filled with mixed emotions. Hipster-mocking and -baiting has been one of my favorite pastimes in Seattle, which is both ironic and hypocritical of me when you take T & L‘s definition of “hipster” into consideration:

“They sport vintage bowling shoes and the latest tech gear-but they also know all the best places to eat and drink. [The magazine] ranked 35 metropolitan areas on culturally relevant features like live music, coffee bars, and independent boutiques. To zero in on the biggest hipster crowds, we also factored in the results for the best microbrews and the most offbeat and tech-savvy locals.

It’s our take on the debated term hipster….whatever your take, you generally know hipsters when you see them-most likely in funky, up-and-coming neighborhoods. A smirking attitude toward mainstream institutions means they tend to frequent cool, often idiosyncratic restaurants, shops, and bars-the same kinds of venues that appeal to travelers looking for what they can’t find at home. There’s also an eco-conscious influence in contemporary hipsterdom.”

So let me get this straight: I’m a hipster because I care about the environment, and I write about food, thus I eat and drink in places that are too idiosyncratic for mere mortals. And jeez, I just edited a craft beer guide. And I really support my local indie businesses. Conversely, I know jack about tech, and you will never, ever see me in a pair of bowling shoes. I also want to bitch-slap the bejesus out of smirky, pretentious funksters who feel the need to categorize themselves in order to maintain a sense of self. Cliques are for high school, kids.

[Image via Flicker user Conor Keller fortysixtyphoto.com]I also find it deeply ironic that a luxury magazine likes to think it knows what’s hip, because real hipsters love nothing more than a bargain, whether it’s $2 happy hour PBR’s or a sweet bowling shirt from Value Village. I can assure you the average T & L reader does not shop at Value Village.

What I find interesting, however, is that part of my mixed feelings about leaving Seattle have to do with its very hipsterness. I love street fashion, vintage, indie anything, tattoos and food artisans (hipster alert!). People watching has been one of my favorite activities in Seattle, because most Seattlites have such great style. It’s a city where the alternative-minded can grow old semi-gracefully, without looking like roadkill from Gen X or beyond. In Seattle, no one gives a f— about what you look like, or what you’re into. You can just be.

It’s sheer coincidence that last week, while reacquainting myself with Berkeley (where I lived for nearly a decade), I wondered why it is the natives here have no style (in my hipster eye view, pilled fleeces, flowy hemp clothing and ergonomic shoes are terminally unhip). I already missed Seattle’s eclectic street style, which never fails to inspire, amuse, and yes, sometimes horrify me (Boys, please stop with the neon, nuthugger skinny ankle jeans. Just sayin’).

Is this essentially a very shallow essay on an incredibly superficial topic? Yes, absolutely. But if it is a “tipping point” as T & L claims, then hell, I’m game. I’m ultimately leaving Seattle – an amazing, beautiful, vibrant city – because the climate kicked my ass (see my forthcoming post on “Sleeping In Seattle: SAD And Its Side Effects”). I’m back in the Bay Area because the economy is simmering and for someone in the food business, this is Ground Zero.

You can’t have it all, and the grass is always greener. Those cliches aren’t very hip, but they’re true. I miss all the hipsterness that once surrounded me, but I also love seeing sun, citrus trees and the Bay Area’s unbeatable food scene again. And that, in a nutshell, is why I’m trading down to a place a little less hip. I can always visit Seattle when I’m feeling frumpy.

[Image via Flickr user Andrew . Walsh]

Travel Smarter 2012: Use CouchSurfing to ditch your hotel addiction

by Sean McLachlan on

Hotels are so passé.

How many times have you visited an exciting destination only to find you’re staying in a generic hotel room completely lacking in local flavor? When I visited Greece last month, I stayed in affordable, centrally located hotels in Athens and Sparta. While they offered good service at a fair price, they could have just as easily been in Los Angeles, London, or Cairo.

CouchSurfing offers a better way. With a bit of online networking you can stay in a local home, and it’s free! CouchSurfing is a social networking site linking up friendly people around the world. Once you’ve created a profile, you can search through profiles in your destination and request to sleep in their spare room or couch. No money changes hands, although guests often bring an inexpensive gift from their home countries or take their host out to dinner. It’s a fun way to make friends and makes traveling a richer and less lonely experience.

As I’ve mentioned before, even though I’ve never actually surfed a couch, CouchSurfing has been hugely helpful to me. When I moved to Santander in northern Spain, the local CouchSurfers threw my wife and I a welcome party and 25 people showed up. Soon we knew the best barrios to get an apartment, where to shop, and they hooked me up with a hiking group. The group for Cantabria is pretty active and in the four months I’ve been here I’ve been to several meetings and met lots of people.More recently, local CouchSurfers gave me a ton of information that helped inform my travel series on Greece. One memorable night, two Athenians showed me around the Exarchia neighborhood. We visited some great bars I probably would have never found on my own and I got insights into the life of an area noted for its activism. The two CouchSurfers showed me a park that had been slated to become an ugly parking garage until the locals took it over and turned it into a garden.

On a more somber note, they also showed me the spot where a fifteen-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos was shot and killed by a policeman during a demonstration in 2008. The cop is serving time for murder and the spot where his victim died is now a shrine and political rallying point. Try getting that sort of information from your hotel’s concierge.

Couches can be found in some surprising places. One Gadling blogger has tried CouchSurfing in Haiti, and while I was in Ethiopia, I met someone who was going to stay with some expats in Somaliland.

CouchSurfing had a big year in 2011 that’s making 2012 the start of a new era for the organization. After having its 501(c)(3) charity status rejected, its owners decided to become a for-profit corporation. Currently, all revenues come from the verification service, in which members donate money in order to have their address verified, thus making them more trustworthy in the eyes of other members. There’s no word yet on how else the new corporation plans to make money. This change has not gone without protest, with many members pointing out that the website and network were built communally for free, and therefore should not be used for profit.

A more popular move last year was the creation of the CouchSurfing Cultural Exchange Fund, which offers grants for cultural exchanges between refugee groups and their new communities, classroom-based international information exchange and relationship building programs, and cultural understanding between ethnically or racially disparate communities.

CouchSurfing now has more than three million profiles in about 250 countries and territories–not bad for a group that only started in 2003. While you should always keep safety in mind when dealing with strangers, I highly recommend you try it. I’ve had nothing but good experiences.

[flickr image via CaseyDavid]

Budget travel tips from the girls of Sixpenny Globe

by Jessica Marati on

Last year, recent college graduates Kelsey Ogden and Kristen Refermat set off on the adventure of their lives — a four-month, 12-country backpacking trip — armed with two packs, four cameras, and a desire to document the ups and downs of traveling on $30 per day.

The result is Sixpenny Globe, a Kickstarter-crowdfunded travel documentary series following Kelsey and Kristen on their budget round-the-world trip. Episode 1 premieres on February 12 on their website and Blip.TV, with a prologue providing the girls’ backstory launching the week before. I caught up with the girls to see what inspired them to create Sixpenny Globe, how they made it happen, and what their tips are for traveling on a tight budget.

What inspired Sixpenny Globe?

We both had always wanted to do a huge trip. We’d both traveled quite a bit and lived abroad, but we’d never traveled for a truly extended period of time. So six months after we graduated from college, the time felt ripe for the Big Trip, but we were both pretty broke. Voila, the $30-a-day budget was born. As far as the web series aspect goes, there just seemed to be this gaping hole in travel documentation. There’s that romantic, idealized open road you read about in Kerouac, where all you need is 2 bucks in your pocket. Then there are the travel shows you see on TV where the perfectly manicured host is cracking canned one-liners about bratwurst from the comfort of her chic boutique hotel room. You can either read about bohemian broke people having adventures or you can watch Hollywood’s fake versions of adventures. But there seemed to be very little video documentation of real people traveling cheaply. Tons of people do it, but very few have endeavored to tell the story for the screen. So we figured we’d give it a go!

Once you decided to take the plunge, what were your first steps?
Our first step was buying the ticket! We had just casually emailed a round-the-word ticket broker to get a quote. It wasn’t as expensive as we’d expected, so we spent a couple days tweaking the itinerary and then just impulsively bought the ticket on credit, bandaid-removal style. Then once we decided to do the web series, we raised some money on Kickstarter for the cameras and equipment, got our visas sorted out for the countries that necessitated them, and got our shots and vaccines! That’s pretty much it. We really had absolutely no plan, aside from the set dates of our flights.

Where did your travels take you?
We left Los Angeles on February 28, 2011. We landed in Paris and spent almost a month going overland through France, Austria, Germany, and Denmark. We left out of Frankfurt but ended up with a detour through Cairo on our way to Amman, Jordan. Next came India, then Thailand. We went overland from Bangkok, through Cambodia, and into Vietnam. Left out of Ho Chi Minh City, landed in Sydney. Flew out of Melbourne back to LA after four months away. Compared to everyone else we met traveling, we went extremely quickly!

How did you survive on just $30 a day?
It wasn’t always sunshine and daisies, especially in Europe and Australia, where everything is so expensive. We Couchsurfed, hitchhiked, tap danced in the street with a hat out, slept in hallways of hotels we weren’t staying at, accepted a lot of hospitality from friends and strangers, and probably broke a few laws. We couldn’t do a lot of the museums or the other attractions with hefty price tags, but I think that actually made the whole trip better. We spent a lot of time walking the streets and a lot of time bonding over cheap wine. Since we couldn’t afford to have a rigid schedule of activities to stick to every day, we ended up actually enjoying time instead of worrying there wouldn’t be enough of it.

What budget tips can you give other wannabe globetrotters?
1. STAY AWAY FROM PACKAGE TOURS. No matter how much they tell you they’ll give you a good price, you can always arrange the same thing on your own for a fraction of the cost.
2. Stay at hostels with free breakfasts and LOAD UP. If you stuff yourself properly, you might not be hungry until dinner.
3. Don’t take taxis. There’s always a bus.
4. Learn to trust people, but follow your gut. If someone offers you help, take it, but if you start to feel like something’s fishy, bail out of that car and roll.
5. Just roll with the punches. When you’re on a budget, something will always go wrong and you won’t necessarily have the cash to fix it. It’s a lot more fun to laugh at it than cry about it.

10 ways travel can boost your resume

by Jessica Festa on

While many people view travel as a fun hobby or interest, it can actually help gain experience and improve skills that are of interest to employers. While you shouldn’t put travel under work experience unless you had an internship or job abroad, you can create a separate section to discuss your international skills, include anecdotes in your cover letter, or give examples during the interview to give yourself a boost over the competition.

Communication

Traveling to foreign countries shows you have excellent communication skills, especially if you were able to pick up a new language. Many companies do business with foreign organizations or clients who may not speak English as a first language, and being able to communicate with a diverse population makes you an attractive candidate. Moreover, even if you don’t speak a foreign language fluently, it shows you have the ability to get by using unique communication methods.
Adaptability

Being able to adapt to unique situations is a skill that is useful in the business world. First of all, as a new employee your boss will want to know that you can adapt to the company culture as well as new policies, procedures, and technologies. Moreover, it shows you are creative and forward thinking enough to take a situation or project you are given and make it work for the benefit of the company.

Negotiating

Many travelers often find themselves frequenting markets and open-air shops where haggling is condoned. Moreover, bartering over taxi fare is also a common occurrence. Being able to negotiate is important when traveling, but even more important in the workplace, when business deals take place on a daily basis. Proving that you have the skills necessary to negotiate in favor the company can make you a more appealing candidate.

Planning

When you travel, there is a usually an extensive amount of planning that goes into the trip, from what to pack to what cities and sites to visit to what modes of transportation are best utilized. You’re future-boss will appreciate the fact that you have the ability to strategize, which can be helpful for basically any task you are given, like managing new campaigns, product development, events, and effectively managing your time each time.

Problem Solving

Being a traveler is usually synonymous with being a great problem solver, especially since the inevitable kinks in your plan are also happening to you in unfamiliar territory. Don’t think that just because you didn’t solve a country’s economic crisis doesn’t mean you can’t problem solve. Think of issues that arose on the trip, from missing a train connection to lost baggage to trying to get cough drops and not being able to speak the language. How did you effectively deal with these problems? Make a list and think of how these methods can be transferred to the workplace.

Confidence

Most travelers are confident individuals who are not afraid to take risks, especially when the possible benefits are worthwhile. Because employers often have a lot to gain when employees aren’t afraid to take a chance, this can help give you an edge over the competition. Being assertive in your decisions is also a highly valuable leadership skill.

Budgeting

Going on a trip means being in a charge of a budget, a skill that can easily transfer over into the workplace. If you can successfully map out and stick to a budget, it shows you have self control, a logical way of thinking, and the ability to make the most out of your resources. It also shows great leadership skills and the probability of successful campaign and project management.

Broader Point of View

The fact that you’ve traveled shows you have experiencing interacting with different cultures and have had unique experiences that many others have not. It gives you a bank of knowledge to pull from, and can help during times when a unique idea or perspective is needed at work.

Desire to Learn

Travel often shows a desire to learn, and you can bring up the fact that you are passionate about broadening your knowledge base. Maybe you visited art museums in Paris because you wanted to know more about the art culture, or participated in cultural ceremonies in China in order to gain some perspective on the traditions of the locals. Employers want to hire people who want to improve themselves and be proactive learners, not individuals who are okay being stagnant.

Interesting Conversation Starter

While this isn’t exactly something you put on your resume, having traveled can be very helpful when meeting a prospective employer. In every interview I’ve been on, employers have always been very enthusiastic about the fact that I’ve traveled, some even outwardly telling me that was the main reason they called me in to meet. What’s really great, too, is if you can relate to them in some way, such as when you’ve both had a great experience in the same city or if their son or daughter has done a similar project abroad. It will help make you more memorable when it comes time for them to make the decision on who to hire.

[photos via bpsusf, jessieonajourney, katmeresin, yomanimus, jessonajourney]

Budget Vacations 2012: Ghana

by Jessica Festa on


For those looking to travel on a budget, Ghana, Africa, is a prime destination. According to exchange-rates.com, as of December, 2011, $1 was equivalent to about 1.63-1.65 Ghanaian Cedis.

It is not hard to travel around Ghana and spend very little money. While taxis are considered the “expensive” form of transportation, you can still get pretty far for $5 or less. The more economical form of transport is the tro-tro, which will allow you to ride locally for $0.10-$0.40. If you’re riding to another city, it is still budget-friendly. A 2 hour tro-tro ride from Swedru to Cape Coast took about 2 hours and cost a little less than $5. A longer ride from Accra to the Volta Region, which took about 5 hours, cost me about $9.

In terms of food and drink, it’s usually locally produced and always affordable. You can get a full meal at a local restaurant for less than $1. Moreover, there are tons of open-air markets and hawkers on the side of the street selling fresh food for a small price. And no need to worry about drinking water, as a 16 ounce bag of water costs less than $0.05.

Budget accommodation abounds in Ghana, and not just for backpackers. While a bed in a hostel will usually cost around $6 a night, like Big Milly’s Backyard in Kokrobite and the Oasis Beach Resort in Cape Coast, there are plenty of hotels that offer budget-friendly rooms, like Hansonic Hotel in Accra for $10 a night and the nature-surrounded Wli Water Heights Lodge in the Volta Region for $16 a night.

[flickr image via Stig Nygaard]