Cool shop alert: Eurostyle Your Life, Seattle

by Alex Robertson Textor on

There is an ongoing lifestyle shift at play in the US and beyond. This shift is all about favoring clothes and household objects from sources that rely on sustainable practices, recycled materials, and small production batches. I wrote back in September about a number of shops in Sydney that have followed this general impulse along quite divergent aesthetic lines.

Seattle’s Eurostyle Your Life is part of this global trend, with an eclectic product base focused somewhat on European small-scale designers. Eurostyle Your Life’s inventory includes clothes, bags, jewelry, children’s toys, greetings cards, and various decorative objects for the home.

One tried-and-true favorite at Eurostyle Your Life is its selection of remarkably elegant shoulder bags crafted out of inner tubes by Amsterdam-based designer Doreen Westphal. Another beautiful standby is a set of notebooks by Andrea Kohler, a Swiss bookbinder resident in Seattle.

Newer objects of note include jewelry made out of recycled silver and pewter by Potluck Paris, washable Pappelina rugs (made out of discarded plastic) from Sweden, Tyvek coats by New York’s Mau, leather bags by an Argentine designer named Guadalupe Martiarena, and “Frizzle Sizzles,” wildly colorful and very attractive children’s miniature play stove tops made out of reclaimed tins by the dynamic Switzerland-based rafinesse & tristesse.

The shop’s current location opened in summer 2009; from that point through this past summer, Eurostyle Your Life operated at two locations. The prior venue, in Seattle’s Fremont district, opened its doors in April 2008. The current location benefits from the next-door wood workshop, which is actually owned by the store’s proprietors, Leslie Conti and Urs Berger. The workshop churns out a steady stream of high-quality children’s wooden toys for the store.

The resulting product base is a mash-up of craftsy wooden objects and very modern, very sustainable reclaimed and recrafted goods. The latter impulse is nicely summed up by the tagline of Mau, one of EYL’s suppliers: “post industrial folk wear.”

Eurostyle Your Life is located at 2008 Westlake Avenue in Seattle’s evolving Denny Triangle neighborhood.

Weekend travel media top five

by Alex Robertson Textor on

Among the best travel stories this last weekend of October: emerging Armenia, undervisited Northern Vietnam, a rail journey across China, top spots to celebrate Halloween (start your research for Halloween 2011 here!), and a wine-free tour of St. Helena, California.

1. In the Financial Times, Teresa Levonian Coles writes about the emergence of Armenia as a tourist destination. Her piece is inspiring and right on the curve. Armenia (along with neighbors Georgia and just possibly an apparently unwilling Azerbaijan) are moving into the tourist limelight.

2. In the New York Times, Jennifer Bleyer writes a piece on Northern Vietnam, providing an exciting window into an underexplored region of ethnic diversity and few tourists.

3. In the Globe and Mail, Mitch Moxley takes an entertaining ten-day journey across China by train, from Beijing to the southern tip of the country and then back again.

4. In the Los Angeles Times, Judy Mandell writes about top Halloween destinations.

5. In the San Francisco Chronicle, Spud Hilton attempts the near-impossible with a wine-free tour of St. Helena, Calfornia.

[Image: retlaw snellac / Flickr]

Q & A with travel and fiction writer Hilary Davidson

by Alex Robertson Textor on

I recently chanced upon a copy of Hilary Davidson’s The Damage Done and found myself smitten. Davidson’s story, which centers around a glamorous if complicated travel writer embroiled in a messy family mystery, is a compelling read. It’s also of particular interest to travel media types: Davidson’s protagonist, like Davidson herself, is a travel writer.

Q: Describe your profession.

A: For the past 12 years, I’ve been a freelance travel writer. For the past five years, I’ve been writing fiction, too. Fiction used to be something I snuck in at odd hours, either early in the morning or very late at night, but since I got a two-book deal with Tor/Forge last year, the two have been on a pretty even footing.

Q: In your novel The Damage Done, the protagonist is a travel writer whose main base is New York. You are a travel writer living in New York. The question has to be asked: What are the points of overlap between Hilary Davidson and Lily Moore?

A: We’ve traveled to many of the same places, and we both love film noir and vintage clothes. If we met in a parallel universe, we’d probably raid each other’s closets. But our personal lives couldn’t be more different: when Lily comes home to New York, it’s to identify her sister’s body at the morgue, only to discover that the corpse belongs to a woman who’d stolen her sister’s identity and that her sister is missing. I have to confess, I don’t have a sister. Also, Lily has a complicated on-again, off-again relationship with her former fiancé, who she suspects may have been sexually involved with her sister. I’ve been married for a decade.

Q: As a travel writer, what is your preferred medium? Your beat?

A: I am the world’s most boring travel writer. Most of what I’ve written – including all of my 17 Frommer’s guidebooks – have been about my hometown, Toronto, or my adopted home, New York, where I’ve lived for the past nine years. Writing for magazines has let me be more adventuresome and see places such as Spain and Peru and Easter Island. I also run a website, the Gluten-Free Guidebook, which is about my travels since I was diagnosed with celiac disease almost seven years ago. I realized that I was doing a lot of research before and during every trip, and if I put what I learned online, it could help other people, too.Q: You moved from Toronto to New York in 2001. Is your hometown loyalty to New York or Toronto? Or is it divided?

A: I feel a greater affinity and affection for New York, which may have something to do with moving here a month after 9/11 and watching the city come back from those sad days. New York energizes me and Toronto relaxes me, and I feel lucky that I get to move back and forth between both.

Q: Any NYC or Toronto off-the-beaten path secrets you’d like to share?

A: In New York, I feel like much of the Bronx is an off-the-beaten-path secret. Some of the most interesting spots in the city are there: the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, Wave Hill, Pelham Bay Park, and Woodlawn Cemetery. Toronto has little gems scattered throughout the city, like the Malcove Collection, an art gallery hidden on the University of Toronto grounds – an amazing collection that runs the gamut from Byzantine artifacts to Russian icons. I also love the Scarborough Bluffs, on the eastern edge of the city; early settlers in the area thought they were like the white cliffs of Dover.

Q: What are some of your favorite places to visit, either for work or relaxation?

A: I love visiting Spain, which may have something to do with why I have Lily living there. Barcelona is one of my favorite cities in the world; I love its quirky architecture and it’s a foodie paradise, especially for gluten-free diets. But the most interesting trips I’ve ever taken have been to Peru and Turkey. My favorite get-away-from-it-all spot is Banff, in the Canadian Rockies, especially in the middle of winter.

Four Chincoteague tips

by Alex Robertson Textor on

Chincoteague, Virginia, located just a few miles south of the Maryland border on the Delmarva Peninsula, is best known for a children’s novel, Misty of Chincoteague, published by Marguerite Henry in 1947. Misty is a beloved pony.

Beloved ponies provide the key to Chincoteague, and the local ponies, called Chincoteague Ponies, are essential to the Chincoteague mystique to this day. In late July, there is a pony migration by water from neighborhing Assateague Island to Chincoteague Island. After swimming across the channel separating the two islands, the ponies are penned and then sold at auction. Jay Jones wrote an entertaining story in the Los Angeles Times back in July about the pony migration.

Old-timers will tell stories of a place that used to be far quieter, with fewer facilities, though to many visitors Chincoteague will appear rather rustic today. Its downtown is full of little tourist shops, while the long strip of Maddox Road leading out to the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge is full of chain restaurants, miniature golf courses, tchotchke stores, and supermarkets. Chincoteague is affordable, low-key, and unpretentious.

The National Wildlife Refuge is the most beautiful part of Chincoteague, and includes a vast swath of broad beach. The beach gets very busy in the summer, of course, though it seldom forces sunseekers into cheek by jowl proximity.

Here are four retail and activity tips for Chincoteague.

1. Woody’s Beach BBQ, 6700 Maddox Boulevard. The best barbecue in town is also one of the newest arrivals on the local restaurant scene. Woody’s does fantastic chicken, pork, sandwiches, sides, and desserts. The “Fam Packs” are cost-effective for feeding hungry armies of friends and family.

2. Main Street Shop & Coffeehouse, 4288 Main Street. Housed in an early twentieth-century house, Main Street Shop and Coffeehouse is imbued with a casual if relatively upscale charm. The coffeehouse component of the Main Street Shop is but a tiny piece of the establishment, which is otherwise concerned with home wares, gift cards, books, and clothing. This is the best place in Chincoteague to fuel up on caffeine.

3. Bike rental. Check out Jus’ Bikes (6527 Maddox Boulevard) for a bike rental. (Jus’ Bikes, rather confusingly, rents more than just bikes, but no matter.) A bike will allow you to enter and exit the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge free of charge. Multiday rentals will amount to around $10 per day for your rental.

4. Mister Whippy, 6201 Maddox Boulevard. Soft-serve ice cream and sundaes are an essential component of the Chincoteague experience, and Mister Whippy is the old favorite.

(Image: Flickr/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – Northeast Region)

Weekend travel media top five: July 17-18, 2010

by Alex Robertson Textor on

This weekend’s most interesting travel stories include a take on apartment rental listings services, an overview of the delightfully uncrowded White Mountains of Crete, an exploration of boutique caravan rentals in Cornwall, a search for pies in southern Alberta, and a list of NYC hotel rooftop bars.

1. In the New York Times, Benji Lanyado explores new developments in the orbit of inexpensive apartment rentals. Lanyado’s article got a lot of attention this past weekend, all of it deserved. His is essential ammunition for the budget-friendly fight against gratuitously expensive hotels.

2. In the Financial Times, Henry Shukman walks all over Crete’s White Mountains. The article ends with a quick guide to four additional European island hideaways.

3. In the Guardian, Gemma Bowes explores the new wave of boutique caravans (or trailers, as we know them stateside.)

4. In the Globe and Mail, Cinda Chavich embarks on a road trip across southern Alberta’s Cowboy Trail, sampling pie in towns with names like Black Diamond, Twin Butte, and Okotoks.

5. In the Los Angeles Times, Sherri Eisenberg provides a primer to Manhattan’s hotel rooftop bars.

(Image of Crete’s White Mountains: Flickr/bazylek100).