Reverse media spin-off! ShermansTravel, one of the many travel deal aggregators on the web, has just launched a dead tree version of their site. Called Sherman's Travel (oh, the Old Media and their emphasis on punctuation), the magazine is meant to compete with Budget Travel. No word yet on what the circulation is meant to be, although the newsletter is sent to over 3.5 million subscribers.
We always wish new travel magazines the best of luck, but it's a difficult niche of a difficult industry. Overhead is higher than most, and even the fact-checking process can take extra time and is more involved than verifying what Beyoncé wore to the photo shoot. Mr. Sherman, of the web site and magazine, said that they hope to be the go-to place for "luxury value". We love the idea of such a thing; let's hope that the term doesn't become an oxymoron anytime soon.
The cover of Wallpaper's annual Design Directory is a bit of a mess: one or another version of pop art meets some kind of bad "cyber" art circa 1996. What's the aim here?
Happily, the cover doesn't direct the book. Possibly the most surprising item is Eva Hagberg's on the modernist gems strewn around Columbus, Indiana. Columbus, it turns out, can claim amazing buildings designed by the Saarinens, Deborah Berke, and I.M. Pei, among others.
Yet possibly even more surprising than an ode to a town in Indiana is Warren Singh Bartlett's "Trip" feature on Riyadh and Jeddah, and not only because tourism to Saudi Arabia is, as yet, close to nonexistent for non-Muslims. The feature functions more as a sociology of contemporary Saudi Arabia than as a travel primer. We learn, for example, that Bluetooth is a key flirting technology, which makes the Kingdom seem considerably less exotic to anyone who's spent time watching television advertisements in, say, Germany.
Also in the August issue: some gorgeous California houses by Ray Kappe, Neon phones designed by Naoto Fukasawa, South American fashion designers, a tribute to barely trafficked Gander International Airport, and a dossier on the biggest names in Italian design.
What happens when tourism and politics are out of alignment? Beirut is what happens. Sure, it was one of Travel and Leisure's top ten cities to visit this year in the most recent issue of the magazine, but that's already outdated, thanks to the bombing that's taken place. An article in this week's New York talks with Ramsay Short, the editor of the months-old Time Out Beirut.
Understandably, he's quite sad about the recent turn of events, although he felt that Americans saw the city in the same way they did in the 80s. Mostly, though, there's a real sense of what has already been lost, no matter how Beirut may recover:
"Time Out is a magazine about arts and culture," Ramsay Short says. "But everything has been canceled and half my staff have left the country." Last year, he published A Hedonist's Guide to Beirut. "Maybe sales will go up," he says. "It'll almost be a collector's item of what was this high point, what now seems like a dream."
Maybe P.J. O'Rourke's article touring Lebanon during the civil war in the 80s will become the most useful guidebook to the region yet again. Let's hope not.
Finally, Matt Gross of the New York Times Frugal Traveler column has decided to undertake something of a challenge. While we've liked the weekly reports thus far, traveling on the cheap where everything is cheap is less of a trial than making your way through Venice on a budget, as he did today.
Venice can feel like a giant tourist trap. There are obligatory things to see all in once place, and as Matt mentions, it's hard to feel like you're having a moment if you've paid 14 euro for a bellini at Harry's Bar. He recommends the spritz, a combination of prosecco and Campari, instead, but it's still depressing.
Ultimately, for us, Venice is a lot like living in New York City. It's great if you're a student and don't mind surviving on sandwiches and pizza, or if you have a ton of money, enough to not care how much you have to drop to do everything you want (including a 100 euro water taxi ride to the airport, which we highly recommend). Doing it in the middle is the hardest. Besides, gondolas are cheesy, but you have to do it at least once. Where's the fun in denying yourself a gondola ride?
This is our last summary of West Coast lifestyle magazine summer travel tips, we swear!
After noticing the perplexing status of Tofino in two West Coast US magazines as a top summer destination, we were just slightly worried when we picked up Seattle Metropolitan the other day at a Borders in Tacoma.
It turns out that there was no real reason to be scared. Seattle Metropolitan organizes things conceptually, see, so there's no opportunity to be hit over the head by our East Coast failure to grasp the reality that Tofino is the hottest new spot on the globe.
Phew. Sally Farhat and Val Mallinson's dossier of Seattle-proximate getaways is organized into several categories, including (among others) extremish outdoorsy activities, family fun, high-end retreats, foodie fixes, and chill-out zones.
Highlights? We dig the idea of escaping to a Benedictine monastery on Shaw Island, one of the stunning San Juan Islands. Our Lady of the Rock Monastery sounds like a peaceful retreat. Also rockin: Carlton, Oregon's Abbey Road Farm , a working farm in the middle of Oregon's Wine Country.
Sure, Jeroen Bergmans of Wallpaper* may have recently anointed Puglia, in the south of Italy, as the next big thing. But that's not enough for Condé Nast Traveler. Nope, they prefer to explain the situation in many, many words, none of which are particularly service-y. Avoiding yet another catalogue of restaurants and bars that are nebulously hip is a perfectly acceptable way to pen an article, right?
Sadly, the hook was the construction of scores of new hotels in the region, but they don't seem to get much ink, save a section jammed into the end. Nor was there much mention of Pugilese cities save Bari, which is known for being unpleasant compared to the rest of the area--it's where you take the ferry to get to Albania, after all.
We learned some odd facts nonetheless. If Southern Italy were separated from the North, it would be one of the poorest countries in Europe was a surprising tidbit, as was the existence of the barattiere, a "cucumber-melon hybrid". Good things come from hybridizing fruits and vegetables--just look at broccoli, or Suri Cruise--but we never thought we'd hear about that kind of combo. Sounds delish.
Still, a little more service would be appreciated, even though, as our friend put it, "CN Traveler thinks anointing Puglia as the next big thing is service enough".
Did Tofino launch a stealth PR campaign that somehow passed us by?
No sooner did we extol the West Coast pleasures of Sunset Magazine, in particular its special summer travel issue's featured destinations, than we chanced upon yet another western US mag banging the drum for Tofino.
Portland Monthly touts northwestern summer getaways in its May 2006 issue. Tofino, Coeur d'Alene, Glacier Bay National Park, Vancouver, and Montana's Big Sky country are featured destinations.
All this attention on Tofino makes us wonder if we're missing something.
Three Oregon road trips also see the light of print in Portland Monthly's May issue. We dig the three-day itinerary that cuts through the state's utterly desolate center, from the village of Plush in the south to the town of Bend. C'mon--who wouldn't want to visit Bend, Oregon?
The new Vanity Fair Travel section, in the May issue, opens with a listing of high-end retail that intends to escape "the homogenized high street of Prada, Gap, and Chanel." Thank God. Nothing is more oppressive than page after page of Chanel and Prada.
Apparently the antidote to the beaten retail path arrives in the form of Argentine polo shop La Martina, São Paolo's emporium of over-the-top luxury Daslu, and Chistina Yu's Hanoi Ipa-Nima handbag shop, among others.
In terms of destinations, the supplement ensnares Beijing, Moscow, Kenya (sample ranch rental just $14,000 a week!), and Baja California. Editor Victoria Mather leads with a comparison of Baja and Sienna Miller that reads as follows:
If Baja California were a person it would be Sienna Miller: boho-gone-smart, and definitely in vogue.
Baja Californians everywhere are doubtlessly overjoyed at the rechristening of a tiny speck of their peninsula as "boho-gone-smart", netting said peninsular speck a comparison to Sienna Miller in the process. All Oaxaca got was a comparison to Nicole Richie.
We kid. We know that Baja is hip, and wish we could be lunching on tortillas right now while watching the surf. We just don't want to be thinking about B-list actresses while we're there.
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by AVB
The new Vanity Fair Travel section, in the May issue, opens with a listing of high-end retail that intends to escape "the homogenized high street of Prada, Gap, and Chanel." Thank God. Nothing is more oppressive than page after page of Chanel and Prada.
