76-Second Travel Show: "Holden's Central Park Ducks (Still There)"

Episode #019

E X A C T L Y * 7 6 * S E C O N D S

"I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy in a truck came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away."

That's Holden Caulfield, wondering in print about the ducks of Central Park.

After JD Salinger's death yesterday, many articles are doing a great job of revisiting Holden's New York, as dictated by the immortal two-day walking tour as dictated Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye -- this is the best one, though this one has photos.

I revisited the most memorable point, Central Park's pond, to see how Holden's ducks were faring on a particularly cold day.

76-Second Travel Show: 'Sand Makes the Beach'

Episode #018
F E A T U R I N G * 3 6 * B O N U S * S E C O N D S

AN ARENOPHILE ISN'T AN ARENA LOVER
Everyone is talking beaches this time year. Geologist/author Michael Welland makes a fascinating case for what makes beaches so interesting: sand. He studies sand patterns, science and histories, and could never put a name on his favorite beach. 'I find something intrinsically interesting of any beach I visit.'

76-Second Travel Show: 'Love for Cold Travel'

Episode #017

F E A T U R I N G * 6 0 * B O N U S * S E C O N D S

COLD STUFF
In Charlie English's spotty, but occasionally interesting, book The Snow Tourist, he builds a (failed) igloo in Nunavut, hikes in avalanche country in the French Alps, visits the snowiest city in the world in upstate New York, and lingers at Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum to see the 1565 painting by Pieter Bruegel The Hunters in the Snow.

The painting depicts the 'pleasure of winter,' showing a fully snow-covered land, with much activity and joy outside -- other than the man who has fallen flat on his face (look closely).

English follows the trend of snow in art to when Japan opened up in the 19th century, and Impressionists such as Claude Monet were overwhelmed by Japanese artists' stylized snow scenes -- where the 'snow' comes from the absence of ink -- only the plain white of the paper showing through.

It's a nice spin on the glory of winter, a time when most travel publications focusing on escaping it (note the flurry of Caribbean and Hawaii deals these days).

Nothing wrong with a beach, but there's nothing wrong with the cold either.

And, unlike scorching August days in New York when subways become saunas, and we cling to shadows to minimize the pools of sweat that form on our business outfits, you can do something about the cold: wear more clothes. In summer the only respite is from a beach or an air-conditioned movie theater.

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Here's my recent list of some of the world's best winter festivals for Lonely Planet.

New Oklahoma City Slogan: 'Real Chill'?

In the most underrated travel story of our young decade, veteran NBA guard Kevin Ollie spoke to ESPN about his new home, Oklahoma City -- a place that has the reputation as something of an "NBA purgatory." Ie The last place you'd want to be traded to.

But Ollie joined fellow Thunder players to defend it, and talk up post-game ballyhoo around Bricktown's Flaming Lips Alley, food at Mickey Mantle's Steakhouse, before returning home to "play the crib" early.

Ollie said, "It's not LA or Miami, but it's cool here. REAL CHILL."

The Oklahoma City CVB should take note. Currently Oklahoma's capital -- and one of a handful of cities I've voted as the best made-over ugly-duckings around the USA -- has no tourism pitch phrase, slogan, moniker.

How about 'Oklahoma City: Real Chill'?

Though one anonymous player whined that the "selection of women here isn't exactly off the charts," star forward Kevin Durant, who grew up in DC and spent a year at the University of Texas at Austin, joined the defense:

"People always ask, 'Wouldn't you rather be in Miami or L.A.?' I always tell them, 'No.' This place is perfect for me... You can get tired of tall buildings after a while. Man, I live across the street from a farm."

"Perfect," he said, not purgatory.

Seeing an alternate view in a place that gets one-sided treatment from most? That's a travel writer's job. Maybe NBA players should chip in more?

76-Second Travel Show: 'Quest Lessons from David Farley'

Episode #016
F E A T U R I N G * 6 0 * B O N U S * S E C O N D S

THE CITIZEN KANE OF TRAVEL
I always call Italy the 'Citizen Kane of travel' -- it has the accolades, the press, the attention, the love. And anytime I go, I leave feeling all the hype was justified.

Some people equate things like seeing art and eating pasta in a Tuscan hill town as the 'real Italy.' Others might say it's hearing profanity on a gritty alley of Naples. Nearly getting hit by a Vespa in Rome. Shopping 21st-century fashion in Milan. Seeing where Darth Vader courted in one of those awful prequel Star Wars films at Lake Cuomo.

David Farley, whose travelogue An Irreverent Curiosity, wouldn't take a stab at defining a 'real Italy' when I met him for a Roman lunch in New York a couple months ago. He only knows that the town he bases his search for Jesus' stolen foreskin counts too.

Calcata, just outside Rome, is off the main Roman roads -- and indeed modern-day guidebooks. His 2007 New York Times article gave it some attention, for better or worse, as he wrote in World Hum.

Next time I'm in Rome, I'll be taking the bus out from Saxa Rubra bus station in suburban Rome to see a medieval town that looks like a 'cupcake on a high perch,' as Farley writes -- one filled with 'hippies, artists and bohemian types,' who saved it from demolition a few decades ago.

Maybe I'll go to take clarinet lessons.

Chris Jagger is Travel

I made the claim in Tuesday's 76-Second Travel Show that travel is kinda like Chris Jagger. That the biggest things we pick up from trips aren't usually from a glimpse of the leaning tower of Pisa, Red Square or that big Jesus in Rio -- but what we find around it. Meaning, extended conversations with rice-bag clerks, minor-league hockey games, asking to speak to curators of small, neglected museums. Or a Chris concert for 100 at the now-defunct Bottom Line in New York, rather than seeing Mick belt out 'Satisfaction' for the 14, 237th time from the back of Giants Stadium (I've done both).

Turns out I was righter than I figured: Chris Jagger is a travel writer.

Last May Chris wrote about his little romp through Texas, crossing the center of the state's wide girth at places you might expect -- the Alamo, Austin's swimming holes, a dude ranch.

Though he loses points for his typo for Galveston's historic Balinese Room (he calls it the 'Bali Club') -- and he probably could have pointed out Indian Territory is today's Oklahoma and that Abilene is in Kansas -- we at SSSTS applaud the effort and award Chris 3.4 stars out of 5.0 stars on the Perfect Travel scale for picking local diners over chain restaurants (which, per Chris, 'seek to ruin any sense of adventure') and finishing a horse ride by picking up some Wranglers on location (I did the same in Valentine, Nebraska a few years ago -- call me Chris, let's travel).

To me Texas is the most overrated and underrated state: overrated by Texans, underrated by everyone else.

Chris gave us a nice overview of central highlights. But I'd vote that the real Chris Jagger of Texas is more likely Big Bend National Park , rooting for TCU football, spending some time in Lubbock, or seeing the world's greatest cheerleaders, the Kilgore Rangerettes.

These are all big-time Chris Jaggers.

76-Second Travel Show: "Manhattan Bridge's 100th Birthday Party"

Episode #015

F E A T U R I N G * 1 8 6 * B O N U S * S E C O N D S

The NYC Bridge Centennial Commission planned the 100th birthday celebrations two months early, for 'convenience' per a recent New York Times article (which may have been based on this press release).

The commission's celebration timing upset us then, and it still upset us enough on its actual birthday -- December 31 -- that we braved the morning snowstorm to hold a small party for a bridge generally overlooked by its more famous neighbor, the Brooklyn Bridge.

In addition to cake, we crafted commemorative booklets that deemed recipients as a 'travel hero' for celebrating on the actual birthday. (Overstock copies will be sold for $150 each next December 31.*)


The party also marked the debut of the first, as we know it, song dedicated -- with lyrics -- to Manhattan Bridge. We asked local musician Beau Scott Jennings to write one -- suggesting something in the vein of Woody Guthrie's "Grand Coulee Dam" -- and he came up with "Manhattan Bridge." (An abridged version, recorded by the bridge, appears in the video).

Thanks to all the party-goers and to Beau for the great song.

Phil Collins nearly tributed the Manhattan; he used the

nearby Brooklyn Bridge as a backdrop over his
leather jacket in the 1985 video "Take Me Home."

* not really