Surfing the Eisbach
When the ocean isn’t enough, head for a river. The Eisbach is a manmade river in Munich, Germany that boasts a “standing wave,” near a bridge just past the Haust der Kunst museum. Practically an art installation in and of itself, surfers have come from around the world to take it on since its creation […]
Jean-Philippe Piter / The Eye of St. Barth
Ever since I came across the unassuming Clic bookstore and gallery on Centre Street last year, I keep returning to check out the photographers they feature in New York and their other locations. Consistently bouncing between emerging and established artists, events at Clic always draw a richly diverse crowd. This Saturday, December 29th, Clic gallery in […]
800 Views of Airports
David Weiss, who with Peter Fischli made art under the collaborative name Fischli and Weiss, died last April at age sixty-five. The duo had worked together for several decades, making videos, films, photographs, and sculptures that were conceptually sophisticated and often ravishingly beautiful. Though the latter phrase may be most often applied to their double-exposure […]
Slow Is Fast
Dan Malloy on the lessons learned from biking, rather than driving, the California coast: We have been on the road for five weeks now and we are thoroughly convinced that we have found the fabled confluence of old California and new California. The bummer is, it’s not a physical place and the only way we […]
“Next Stop:” Nosara
Writer Bonnie Tsui reports on her recent trip to Nosara in the “Next Stop” column of the New York Times‘s Travel section. The article mostly focuses on the surf schools, and her experiences: During a week in Nosara surfing with Mr. Hill and his crew, I became a bit of a surf nerd, learning the finer […]
California’s Central Coast
Apropos my last post about surfing in California, T, the New York Times style magazine, released its fall travel issue this weekend, and it features an extended look at California’s central coast. The tips—perfect for surfers passing through the region—are slowly being made available online. I travel for food as much as for anything else, so […]
The Annual New York Times Latin America Travel Section
Last weekend the New York Times published its annual issue featuring Latin American getaways. It includes stories on Managua, Nicaragua; Bogotá, Colombia; food destinations in Mexico City—not in Latin America, I know!—and Buenos Aires; and more. Most relevant to readers of this site, however, is an article on Chile’s surf coast. From that last story: About […]
2012 World Savers Awards
Beginning several years ago, Condé Nast Traveler magazine has given out annual World Savers Awards. This year’s finalists and winners have been chosen. A description: They have planted 366,100 trees in 2011 alone, from Australia to Thailand and South Africa. They have helped educate 96,298 students in Kenya, India, and the United States and provided […]
Timothy “Speed” Levitch and the Art of Guiding a Tour
None who have seen the 1998 documentary The Cruise can forget its funny, eccentric, chattermouth star, Timothy “Speed” Levitch. He was a Gray Line tour guide in New York City who elevated the job to a form of avant-garde art, and his romantic monologues on art and sex and violence and depression in the big city […]
Bruce Chatwin’s “The Songlines”
I have lately spent much time thinking about travel writing as a genre, and was therefore pleased to discover the New York Review of Books has published a portion of Rory Stewart’s introduction to a new edition Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines. I’ll allow him to explain the significance of Chatwin’s book: The publication of Bruce Chatwin’s The […]
Stephanie Gilmore’s Surf-Beauty Tips
T Magazine has some helpful beauty tips from twenty-four-year-old Stephanie Gilmore, the Aussie pro surfer who just won her fifth ASP Women’s World title. J.E-L.: Which products do you use? S.G.: My skin is pretty sensitive and the saltwater dries it out. Sunscreens can clog your pores, and then, because the saltwater is cleansing your skin anyway, […]
Robert Macfarlane, “The Old Ways”
Between the appearance of my last post and this one, I have traveled from New York to London. I browse bookstores everywhere I visit, but doing so in England offers a special thrill: the ability to purchase (English-language) books not yet published in the United States. In advance of this trip, I’ve had my eye […]
Reclaiming Travel
As I prepare for back-to-back international trips, I have been reading about travel. Here, writers Ilan Stevens and Joshua Ellison consider what it means to leave one’s surroundings: George Steiner wrote that “human beings need to learn to be each other’s guests on this small planet.” We usually focus on the ethical imperative of hospitality, […]
V-E-N-U-E
For several years Geoff Manaugh (of BLDGBLOG) and Nicola Twilley (of Edible Geography) have examined the landscape from unconventional perspectives. Now they have teamed up with the Nevada Museum of Art and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation to create VENUE, a sixteen-month collaborative project. Manaugh describes the project as being […]
Toot Toot!
We’re not big on tooting our own horn, but sometimes you just can’t resist. The Harmony Hotel was recognized in a CNN article today about 10 luxury eco-hotels around the world. They had such lovely things to say:Â “I have yet to find another hotel that inspires green living more than this sweet spot in the […]
On Kawara, Pure Consciousness
In Pure Consciousness, a traveling exhibition initiated in 1998, Kawara lent seven Date paintings (January 1 to January 7, 1997) to kindergartens and schools in Madagascar, Australia, Bhutan, Ivory Coast, Columbia, Turkey, Japan, Finland, Iceland, Israel, and the United States. At all schools they hang in classrooms, bearing dates that fall within the lifespans of the children.[15] Kawara does […]
Frieze Debut in NYC
Frieze New York brings the famed British contemporary art fair to US soil for the first time starting tomorrow. It will take place on Randall’s Island from May 4-7 and will feature approximately 170 international galleries. More details and tickets here.
Not so the traveler
Angels & Demons, Nosara, Costa Rica, 2011, by Arthur Ou [A]nother important difference between tourist and traveler is that the former accepts his own civilization without question; not so the traveler, who compares it with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking.—Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
West Oz 2012
Summer Solstice from Rick Rifici on Vimeo. For your viewing pleasure from Australia. Pro surfer Taj Burrow makes it look so easy.
Silence
Fish Scales, Nosara, Costa, Rica, 2011, by Arthur Ou There is a way to master silence Control its curves, inhabit its dark corners And listen to the hiss of time outside. — Paul Bowles
Begin at the horizons
Birds, Nosara, Costa Rica, 2011, by Arthur Ou A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessences. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a […]
An inexhaustible well
Rocks, Nosara, Costa Rica, 2011 Arthur Ou Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don’t know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It’s that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don’t know, we get to think of life as an […]
21st-Century Cruising
Looking for an adventure? Consider a spot aboard a 72-foot steel-hulled sloop called the Sea Dragon for their cruise to an ocean garbage patch happening this May. Sponsored by Algalita Marine Research Foundation, 5 Gyres Institute and Pangaea Explorations, LLC, paying guests ($13,500 per person) can join scientists and educators to sail through the projected debris […]
Burning Man: Rites Of Passage – Night
The second and last part of the video series that I wrote about in a previous post is now up! This time we get to see what goes on at night at the Burning Man festival.
