Venice is opening its normally protected waterways to the public this Sunday for the 34th annual Vogalonga rowing event. The "Long Row" began in the 70s as a peaceful protest--"the revenge of oars over engines"--and now thousands of boating clubs, rowers and tourists come to experience the colorful spring regatta.
If you're keen to participate, the rules are rather uncharacteristically pretty lax. You'll need a row boat of any weight and size, some oars and at least one rower. The deadline for entrants is this Thursday so we suggest you quickly round up a few friends, hire a dinghy and submit your €15 entry fee. (Considering gondaliers are charging tourists upwards of €80 for a 30 minute float down the Grand Canal, the enrollment cost for Vogalonga is cheap!)
According to Wikipedia, some have even tried swimming the 19 mile route, but can hardly recommend it without at least some inflatable swimmies. If you haven't got your sea legs, take a front, uh, row seat near the Cannaragio Canal. It's a less touristy area and a perfect spot to watch the thousands of boats enter Venice.
Post-click, check out a groovy Vogalonga video montage with moody elevator music.
We've already covered Freddy's diorama nights here, but the popular Brooklyn dive bar's got us thinking again. There's no real reason to be intimidated about visiting a neighborhood place anywhere, but if you suffer from the occasional out-of-towner jitters, you can leave them at the door at Freddy's Bar & Backroom. We recently participated in one of their famous Monday night spelling bees (yeah, yeah) and were impressed by just how welcoming the competition was--perfect for out-of-towners, too, as the host will force you to awkwardly introduce yourself on your first turn. Spelling bees are $1 to enter, and the winner takes the pot home or, more likely, recycles it at the excellent bar. Check the bar's calendar for listings and consider dropping by next time you're in town.
This Saturday, two activities will merge like they should've ages ago. In fact, they're our three-year-old niece's two favorite activities -- dancing and parades. New York's First Annual Dance Parade kicks off May 19 at 1 p.m. The parade and festival are in the same free-for-all, fun-loving spirit as other New York institutions like Art Parade and Burning Man. Attendees will pirouette, tap, and shimmy down Broadway from 32nd Street to 13th Street.
Sure, parades have always had their fair share of dancing. But Dance Parade doesn't discriminate by genre (or even skill level). Plus, it's the end-all purpose of the event. Forget about your silly national pride or charity cause, Dance Parade is just a few thousand friends getting down.
The car rental weasels are so against this, it ain't even funny! If there's anywhere in the country tourists should be tempted into submitting themselves to a beating from, say, Hertz, it's Los Angeles, where a car is pretty much required if you want to get around. Lucky for Hertz & co., this won't be happening anytime soonever before the year 2165, so there's plenty of time left for them to make good money at LAX, BUR and LGB.
Leave it to an overachieving Harvard student to solve L.A.'s public transportation problem with a click of his mouse. Damien Goodmon's "Get L.A. Moving" subway system mock-up made the rounds on the internets last fall, and it now has a proper home on the web. Powerpoint presentations and more are available at www.getlamoving.com. You can see Goodmon present the plan in person on Saturday, May 12 in Los Angeles.
Vancouver is the place the be this 4/20, and no place within the city beats the Vancouver Art Gallery when it comes to smokey mass gatherings. The Gallery is best attended by mellow potheads who don't mix and match their drugs, as the crowd doesn't really lend itself to the paranoid. 'Tis a Vancouver tradition, and you don't have to worry about the cops. Get there before 4:20 p.m., duh.
High Times magazine also hosts a 4/20 party at Mansion in Miami tonight. It's a release party for an issue that features a "Top 10 Ganja Getaways" article. Apparently DMX is performing, though he doesn't have a very good track record for showing up for anything. More event listings are available at the magazine's website.
Little country towns will do anything to attract attention. Corrigin in Western Australia has already put itself on the map with its dog cemetery, but apparently that's not enough. That's why for the last decade, Corrigin has been the proud host to several Dog in a Ute world record attempts.
To clarify that a bit, a "ute" in Australia is what others would call a pickup truck, and the Dog in a Ute record refers to how many vehicles with a dog on the back can form a queue in a field. Of course. But Dog in a Ute is a serious business and the rules are very strict, too:
Every ute entered must have a live real dog in or on the ute in the queue to be counted. No stuffed dogs or fake ones permitted. This is absolutely unchangeable. If you come without a dog we will endeavour to provide a pooch for you if we can but no promises are made. There are no size restrictions on a dog large or small.
While the world record stands at 1527 (set in Corrigin back in 2002), the last attempt to break the record in 2005 turned up only 1325 dogs on the backs of pickups. Definitely room for improvement so get your truck and pooch ready for next time.
Keeping Austin Weird, indeed. This Saturday in the Texan capital, you can congregate with potted pork lovers at Spamarama, a festival dedicated to the Hormel food company's infamous canned meat. Spam is one of those "foods" you either love or hate. Personally, we could go without Spamburgers, but if you're curious, $5 will get you into the party. Just remember that you'll never get those five bucks back.
The Spam cookoff is the fest's main draw. Other events and activities planned include a Spamburger eating contest, a "SPAM JAM® Concert" (?!?), and a few other "SPAMALYMPICS™" contests. Gates open at noon and close at 6 p.m., but the upset stomachs™® last all night.
Copenhagen's real fashion week took place back in February, but a less exclusive event starts tomorrow. Copenhagen Catwalk is organized by the city's tourist board and bills itself as "a fashion festival for everyone." It's something like L.A. fashion week here, except possibly more budget. On the bright side, you still get hot Danish models (but not our hero, Lykke May Andersen, above) and innovative designers, albeit packaged a bit cheesily.
Fashion shows are open to everyone who can pay for a ticket ($13.40) and feature several designers per show, grouped into themes like "Beautiful Rebels" and "Classic Heroes." Just slightly curious is a lecture, also part of Copenhagen Catwalk, entitled "Global Luxury Fashion: 80% Marketing, 80% Sex," that promises to answer the question "Which logo bags guarantee the best orgasms in the Autumn of 2007?" Yes, pray tell, which?
