Indie travel guides – pipe dream or way of the future?

by Leif Pettersen on

With all due respect to my generous client Lonely Planet, without whom I’d still be an obscure, broke, moonshine junkie in a forlorn corner of Romania, guidebook authors wallowing below the Sushi Line are increasingly probing new “Screw the Man” applications for their hard-won expertise – namely their very own online travel guides.

There’s certainly something to be said for a trusted brand name guidebook, but equally independently produced, digital travel guides allow authors to toss in all kinds of wacky content in addition to the usual sights/eating/sleeping content, uncorrupted by editors, guidelines, house styles and meddling lawyers.

A 2,000 word, absurdly detailed walking guide to Tijuana? Why not? A sidebar entitled “Top Ten Curse Words You Should Know Before Attending an Italian Football (Soccer) Match”? Bring it on! Why [insert your least favorite German city] sucks? I’m all ears.

This developing genre was recently augmented by the completion of Robert Reid’s online guide to Vietnam. As Reid rightly points out, the advantages of an independent online travel guide are numerous:

• It’s free – Guidebooks cost $25. Why pay?
• It’s fresher. Unlike a guidebook, turn-around time is immediate.
• You can customize it. The most common complaint guidebook users have is having to tote around 400 pages they’ll never use.
• It’s more direct, personalized. With my site I can ‘tell it like it is’.
• Anyone can talk with the author. [Just] hit ‘contact’.

In addition to this excellent resource, other free sites serving the online travel community include Croatia Traveller, Kabul Caravan, Turkey Travel Planner, Broke-Ass Stewart’s Guide to Living Cheaply in San Francisco, and (cough), the Romania and Moldova Travel Guide (now with extra moonshine).

For the time being, these independent travel guides are usually not money-making ventures (and boy do they take a lot of time to put together!), thus the current scarcity. However, as print media gasps to its inevitable conclusion – one decade, mark my words – the online stage is set for authors to leverage their expertise and provide autonomous, interactive, up-to-the-minute travel information for anyone with an internet connection.

Roller skates and Halloween

by Jamie Rhein on

I used to have a pair of roller skates with metal clamps that fastened to my shoes. No matter how I tightened them, they wouldn’t stay put. Finding out about Halloween roller skating events has made me nostalgic. Around the world people don costumes and roller skates this time of year for organized Halloween skates. These are not at a skating rink, but out on the town. I was in a Halloween run at midnight once, but roller skating sounds a lot more fun.

If you agree, then check out this list of places around the world you can skate in honor of the ghoulish holiday:

  • Pari Roller happens on Friday nights in Paris, France. This Friday, is Randoween when people dress up. This section of the Web site is in French and I don’t know how to read French all that well, so if you show up on Friday in a costume and no one else does–sorry.
  • If you read Dutch, here’s the Halloween skate event in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Part of the Web site is in English so you could probably find out where this is taking place.
  • London’s event, London Skate is this Sunday. After the skating, there’s a party.
  • Philadelphia might have the least attractive people (I don’t believe that, by the way) but they sure know how to have fun. There are two Halloween skating events mentioned on its skating club Web site.
  • The Beach Bladers in South Florida had three different Halloween skates according to its calendar.
  • In San Francisco, The Midnight Rollers‘ Halloween themed skating event is tomorrow night, Oct. 26.
  • New York City, as you might expect, also has a Halloween Skate, and it’s on Halloween. This one is a parade that starts at Union Square and heads through Greenwich Village. The photo, thanks to Edward Sudenta, was taken at a Halloween skate in Central Park in 2005. I love the dreamy quality. Check out his others.

Here’s a Web site devoted to roller skating Halloween events. The dates are last year’s, but I’ve checked links and they go to this year’s. There are even costume suggestions and other Halloween tidbits.

The worst U.S. cities for gridlock

by Catherine Bodry on

Our good buddy Christopher Elliott has laid out the 5 worst U.S. cities for traffic — and there’s only one surprise. It’s unfortunate that cities with the worst reputations haven’t been able to do any problem-solving. In more than a few of the blacklisted cities, the traffic is getting progressively worse.

So, what are they? First on the list is — surprise, surprise — New York City. Welcome to gridlock hell. With an already top notch public transportation system, there doesn’t seem to be any easy solutions on the horizon for the Big Apple. Elliott suggests that the only reasonable fix is congestion pricing — charging motorists who use roads during peak hours.

Next up is San Francisco, another no-brainer. And like New York, it’s got a great transit system in place. No problems easily solved there. Any suggestions?

Third is Seattle. I grew up there, and I watched the traffic go from bad to worse to I’ll-never-live-here-again. The city is getting a light-rail system, but I’m pretty pessimistic about it being able to alleviate traffic. But I’m hopeful.

Minneapolis came in 4th, due in part to the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge. The city already had an awful traffic problem, but the 35W bridge was a main access point to the city. Not no more. The commute has been compared to Los Angeles’ nightmare — and that was before the bridge collapse.

At number 5 is Miami. It may seem like a surprising choice, but Elliott links to a list of construction projects and challenges you to disagree with him. He argues that he knows no one who regularly uses its mass transit system, and the roads can’t keep up with the city’s growth.

Wondering where L.A. is? Elliott listed it as a semi-finalist. If L.A. is a runner-up, then the winners must truly be awful.

Halloween boos at zoos

by Jamie Rhein on

Here’s another mega round-up of Halloweeny things to do–some of them mentioned in other posts. But when I saw our beloved Leif Pettersen’s name as the writer for Minneapolis: Zoo Boo at the Como Zoo & Conservatory, I wanted to give this list a shout out. [Check out Leif’s very witty, I can’t say it enough, WITTY Gadling series, My Bloody Romania]

Leif’s zoo mention can be multiplied to take in about any major zoo in the U.S. and reminded me to put our zoo membership to good use. I’ll head to the Columbus Zoo’s Boo at the Zoo, probably this weekend. This photo by Fly on Flickr is from Boo at the Zoo at the Atlanta Zoo in Atlanta, Georgia.

Here are 10 other zoos with boos–some start this weekend. There are lots more since boo rhymes with zoo. What could be more perfect than that?

  1. Boo at the Zoo, Toronto Zoo, Toronto, Canada
  2. Boo at the Zoo Denver Zoo, Denver Colorado
  3. Night of the Living Zoo and Boo at the Zoo. Hogle Zoo, Salt Lake City, Utah
  4. Haunt at the Zoo, Oklahoma City Zoo, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
  5. Boo at the Zoo and Dia de los Muertes, San Franciso Zoo, San Francisco, California
  6. Boo at the Zoo, Philadelphia Zoo, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
  7. Boo at the Zoo, Ft. Worth Zoo, Fort Worth, Texas
  8. Boo at the Zoo, Cleveland Metro Parks Zoo, Cleveland, Ohio
  9. Boo at the Zoo, Lincoln Children’s Zoo, Lincoln, Nebraska
  10. Boo at the Zoo, Little Rock Zoo, Little Rock, Arkansas

Zoos have found pushing holidays are real money makers. The events hook me in–otherwise going to the Columbus Zoo on a regular day is just a matter of looking at the world’s largest snake in captivity –again –and deciding if, for variety, we should make our way around the zoo from left to right this time instead of the other way around.

America’s Favorite Cities from Travel & Leisure and CNN

by Catherine Bodry on

60,000 people chose their favorite towns from 25 choices across the U.S., and the list is in. The results are divided into 9 categories and 14 subcategories, including Shopping, Food and Dining, Culture, and After Dark. The winners are to be expected: New York won a first-place favorite for diversity, ethnic food, and classical music. Also consistently near the top were Washington D.C., Chicago, and San Francisco. No surprises there.

Missing? Philadelphia didn’t get too many votes — one third place win for its Farmer’s Markets. Miami didn’t fare too well either with no top-three wins, and same goes for Orlando and Dallas.

What’s your least favorite city? (I think that’s a much more interesting question than asking about favorites.)

Check out the results at CNN, and get more info on methodology at Travel & Leisure.