Jaunted

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Finding Destinations Before They're Over

Other people--why are they always ruining travel? Such is the onus hip travelers must bear, forced to flit from one spot to the next before the fatties arrive. At least, if you ask Jeroen Bergmans, the editor of Wallpaper*, that's the case. He says there are several ingredients to make a destination hip, and fatties are not one of them.

One, the place has to be hard to get to. This is becoming even more difficult as low-cost carriers such as easyJet and Ryanair fly to obscure destinations like Brindisi or Valencia. Two, it must be relatively free of both Eurotrash--scourge of the Mediterranean--and Uru-trash, their South American equivalents. Does this mean that the Pakistani version is called Urdu-trash?

To achieve maximum hipness, the idea is to arrive after the construction of nice hotels, but before the opening of nice chain hotels. Get there after fancy new restaurants open, but before the hoi polloi knows where they are. Know about the place after the Hedonists Guides writes it up, but before at appears in Fodor's. Hipness has a very narrow window.

The concept is also a steaming pile of horse manure. Places change; just track Prague since 1991, or New York City, for that matter. There will always be the next hip destination; calling it that can only accelerate the process by which a place gets overrun with people looking for something intangible and drinking overpriced cocktails while they are doing it. Please, enjoy this vacation instead of worrying about the next one.

Related Stories:
·   So hip it hurts [Guardian]
·   This Season's Vacation [dfarley]